Hours afterward, as it seemed, Croft opened his eyes, and blinked at a flare of light and closed his lids again, while he sought to collect his shaken senses.
He remembered by degrees.
The plane had fallen. There was nothing after that. But he had fallen upon a night-wrapped plain, studded with the fires of a camp. Now, instead of stars above him, there was what looked like the bellied top of a tent. Slowly he spread the fringes of his lashes and sought to verify the impression he had gained.
He was correct. He lay in a tent, seemingly of skins joined to form the sloping top and walls. The interior was lighted dimly by a couple of flaring torches. But the light was sufficient to show Croft piles of military gear, rugs of native skin, on one of the latter of which he seemed to be lying, and some crude stools scattered about.
He lay with head half turned as he had been thrown down, and now he became aware of other life in the tent as his senses more fully returned. There was a sound of voices. He opened his eyes widely and stared about. And inwardly at least he gasped.
This was the headquarters of the army he had sought to bomb, past any doubt. Blue men—a dozen, a score were clustered about a huge chair to one side, in which another blue man sat. And yet—in the latter Croft detected something familiar in a flash, and immediately after he understood. He had heard it alleged that certain Zollarian captains had stained their bodies and shaved their heads and dyed the remaining scalp lock of their light hair to match the Mazzerian red.
And—and—this was Bandhor of Zollaria—brother of Kalamita—that tawny female magnet with which the northern nation had sought to bind the profligate Prince of Cathur to her cause. This was Bandhor, his massive body stained blue in its every ungainly line, seated upon this chair before which the other blue men stood. And inspecting the latter more closely, marking their features well in the murky light, Croft decided that most of them were men of Zollaria tinted and shaved and dyed like Bandhor himself.
Here then was proof of Zollaria's hand in the Mazzerian invasion, proof that Croft lay in the spot which was the brain center of the Mazzerian army in the field. Croft's head was splitting, but he sought to focus his attention on what was being said.
"Sayest thou that this man fell out of the skies?" Bandhor roared, turning his eyes toward where Croft lay on the farther side of the tent.
"Aye," said one of the captains, whom Jason felt positive was a Zollarian for all his naked blue length. "Aye, Bandhor, he fell from a device like to a pair of wings. Before that had strange weapons fallen upon my men from the skies in a rain of death. Then suddenly came this man."
"Tamarizian devil," Bandhor swore with savage force. "This newest method of their fighting would seem to be like their last, when they struck Zollaria's army with a blast of fire. Go see if still he breathes."
Two of the men turned and approached Croft. They bent above him. He stared straight into their faces.
"Aye, Bandhor of Zollaria," reported one. "He has opened his eyes."
"Bring him here."
Croft rose. Without waiting the touch of a captor's hand he staggered up and faced Bandhor's chair. "Stand back," he hissed to men beside him. "I would walk alone." He took a step forward, swaying; whereupon the others seized him and hurried him to Bandhor's place.
"Spawn of Tamarizia," Bandhor began, "what is thy name?"
"Thou hast said it, Bandhor," Croft retorted, determined to give no information.
"Came you from Atla?" Bandhor roared.
"Yes."
"How many men inside her walls can Jadgor and Medai claim?"
"Enough," said Croft. "Enough blue-dyed men of Zollaria to pile other thousands of your naked dupes before them. There are not men enough in all Mazzer to scale at Zollaria's command Atla of Bithur's walls."
"Hai! By Bel of Zollaria thy fall has not broken thy tongue at least!" Bandhor exclaimed. "But thy man-made wings are broken, and thy insolent spirit may be broken also. Hai—bring a brazier and a spear head. Since this Tamarizian fights with fire we shall give him a taste of it himself, and learn perchance what within Atla transpires."
"Hold!" Suddenly the wall of the tent behind Bandhor's chair swept back, revealing a small private tent beyond it, and a tawny woman appeared.
White she was in the murky light as a ray of moonlight in the dusk—white, and splendidly formed in every supple line of sensuous body and limb. Jeweled cups covered her breasts, and a scarf of shimmering tissue was twisted about her sinuous loins and fell half down her thighs. With the grace of a stalking panther she advanced, accompanied by another blue-stained Zollarian captain, and took her stand beside her brother. In the flare of the torches she gleamed among those blue-tinted bodies like a silver wand.
"Bethink you my brother," she continued as Croft recognized in her that Kalamita, that feminine magnet of flesh, who had tempted Cathur's Prince Kyphallos through the spell of her unclean charms, her unhallowed embrace, "would destroy or even mar the weapon in your hand?"
"Hai, by Bel," began Bandhor.
"Aye," his sister went on. "Where are Bandhor's eyes? Call on Bel and you will, yet have you not sacrificed to him enough of blood to glut his heart, without adding this? See you not this is a man of importance—and one to me before this described? Mark you not the closeness of the hair upon his head, his stature? Know you not that before you stands the Mouthpiece of Zitu of whom Tamarizia boasts—him to whom Zollaria must mark the score of her defeat, her loss of Mazhur? Rather than for gaining information can Bandhor not think of a better way in which such a one may be used?"
"Hai—you mean a ransom, Kalamita my sister?" Bandhor burst out as she paused.
"Aye." The eyes of a tigress looked into Croft's as she answered, studied his every expression, marked the effects of her words. "Aye, Bandhor, and you and other captains—and the ransom—should be—large. Much should Tamarizia be asked in payment for her Mouthpiece of Zitu, who tumbles from the skies."
And suddenly she smiled as she broke off her flippant taunt—smiled and looked steadily into Croft's staring eyes.
"By Bel!" once more Bandhor roared. "The words of Kalamita are of wisdom. Go—Mamai. Take portions of the device from which he fell. See they are carried to Atla. Say that this man fell among us with them. Demand a parley, at which terms for his return shall be named."
"Aye, Bandhor!" One of the captains saluted and left the tent.
Inwardly Croft writhed. Here was a pretty pickle, indeed, since by his own blunder he had become to Tamarizia a weakness rather than a strength—since because of it, Tamarizia would seem to be confronted with the choice of leaving him to fate or paying Mazzer's and Zollaria's price. And—he had caught all the meaning in the tawny depths of the Zollarian courtezan's eyes. That price would indeed be large.
And now she bent and whispered into Bandhor's ear and he nodded. "Bind him," he said, and pointed to Croft. "Lift him and bear him into my sister's tent. Place a guard about us when it is finished. That is all, my captains. We wait for word from Atla. Go!"
To resist was useless. Croft did not try. He stood passively while his hands and feet were trussed. Even then he was trying to think, to scheme some way out of the mess into which he had brought himself. And—a vague question roused as to Kalamita's object in having him carried into her own tent. Object he was sure there was, but it baffled him for the moment. Then he was lifted and borne beyond the flapping door through which she had entered, and laid on a pallet of skins beside a copper couch.
The woman followed, remained standing until his bearers had left, then approached and reclined on the couch from whence she could watch his eyes.
"Mouthpiece of Zitu," she began after a moment of contemplation, "Mouthpiece of Zitu, who tumbles from the skies."
Croft made no answer, and suddenly she left the couch and knelt beside him. "You are a handsome man, Mouthpiece of Zitu; am I not beautiful myself?"
"Yes," said Croft, since in a purely physical way she was no less than a creature to drive most men mad, and he knew that she knew it, and because of the knowledge, left none of her charms concealed.
"And"—she bent above him, closer, closer, until her reddened mouth seemed about to touch him, until her breath played softly against his cheek—"wisdom and beauty may accomplish much together, Mouthpiece of Zitu, think you not?"
So that was it—wisdom and beauty together. A sudden loathing—an impulse to put more space between that gleaming body, that blood-red mouth so very close above him, gripped Croft and shook him. But he kept it out of his voice and out of his eyes as he replied. "What mean you, Kalamita of Zollaria, you magnet of the flesh?"
She laughed—laughed with a note of exultation in the sound as though his words were a tribute to the power she knew was her own. "Why think you Kalamita saved you from the fire?"
Croft quibbled. "Said she not the reason in words?"
The woman frowned. "Think you Jadgor of Tamarizia will pay the price for you that Mazzer will ask?"
Croft knew that his heart leaped. He had been afraid—afraid—yet now he recalled Jadgor as he knew him—Jadgor who had bowed his haughty crest on the day just passed for Tamarizia, but never for himself. Turning the thought in his brain he forget to answer.
"You know he will not." Almost Kalamita hissed. "And if not, is death preferable to life, power—love? Wouldst prefer to lie in the ground, wise man of Tamarizia, or in Kalamita's arms? Wouldst prefer to give of your strength to Zollaria and her, or to the worms?"
More and more Croft sickened at her words. For this he had been brought into her private tent. There alone with this shameless woman he was to be intrigued, turned traitor, in spirit and body seduced. Almost instinctively he turned away his eyes. Her beauty had become a deadly menace—the perfume of her tinted flesh had become a stench. To him she was offering what to Cathur's prince had been given, which had made of the man's name a synonym for treason in his nation. And now once more she was speaking.
"Behold, we are alone. I can unbind you, and—Kalamita's couch is—wide."
"Aye, too wide, by Zitu!" suddenly Croft roared. "The need was too patent in its making to have foreseen the fact that width would be required. Sister of Bandhor, beautiful as the dream of a soul in the realms of Zitemku you may be, but—Jason of Tamarizia barters not the welfare of his nation for a moment's lust."
"So!" Kalamita rose and stood above him. Cruel was her red lips' smile, and cruel was the light that flashed from her oval, tawny eyes. "So, then, we know your name at last. Hark ye, Jason—for Kalamita's favor prouder heads than thine have bended down in the dust. Nor is her favor a thing to be lightly brushed aside. Wherefore and Jadgor pays not the price we ask, then the Mouthpiece of Zitu dies."
A space of time dragged past and Croft had not replied.
Suddenly Kalamita was again beside him. "Or, perhaps," she said in a softer fashion, "it is because of that maid of Aphur, of whom one has told me—that Jason turns aside. If so, forget her—and remember only that Kalamita also is a woman."
"Nay—by Zitu, and Azil and Ga, the pure woman," Croft flamed. "Jason forgets not the virgin to whom he is plighted for one who has lain in Kyphallos of Cathur's or another's arms."
"By Bel." Once more Kalamita rose. A tremor shook her tightened figure and quivered in her tones. "By Bel, who delights in slaughter, you shall die by torture. Tested by fire shall you be, and staked out for the insects to devour. The carrion birds of Mazzer shall pluck out your beauty-blinded eyes. The beasts of the forest shall tear thy entrails from thee for thy words to me." She turned and went swiftly toward the flaplike door and flung it open. "Bandhor, O ay Bandhor!" she cried.
Her blue-stained brother appeared. They conferred together. Bandhor turned away.
But only for a moment longer were Croft and the woman alone. Then came Mazzerian soldiers, and lifting the trussed figure, bore it swiftly into the night through Bandhor's tent and to another, smaller, unlighted as to its interior, with naught for a floor save the grass-grown ground. And there they flung him down.
But Jason smiled. That quiet dark, the sweet, pure kiss of the grass beneath him was better than the atmosphere he had left. He stretched out his limbs so far as his bonds would let him and breathed a sigh of relief.
And after a long time, as it seemed to his troubled senses, all his planning focused on Zud and Naia—dwindled down to those two words. Lying here, bound, practically doomed to die, he could yet communicate with them in the astral state. To Zud, whom he had taught to recognize his coming, he could go then, and even though thereby he made his own death practically certain, he would still serve best the Tamarizian states. And Naia—-he quivered at the thought. Naia—as he knew her, would like himself, consider him unworthy if he did less than that. Therefore he took a deep breath; he would go to Zud.
And swiftly as the thing was always accomplished when he so desired it, he was bending over the high priest's body, asleep in the Zitran pyramid.
"Zud," his spirit was calling. "The Mouthpiece of Zitu commands you. Come forth."
And Zud appeared. "Aye, Jason of Zitu," he quavered. "Zud is here."
"List ye, Priest of Zitu," Croft replied, and told him what had occurred. "Wherefore give ear further to my words. Go to Lakkon, and bid him, in Zitu's name, to send to Jadgor at Atla, advising him to hold out and seek for delay until the aid from Himyra arrives. Let it be said to him that Zollaria inspires all things which Mazzer requires. Let him know that through the power of the spirit which is mine, I shall inspire Naia of Aphur to cause Robur, his son, to come swiftly to Atla in person, to direct the use of the weapons that together with myself he understands, and that through you and Naia of Aphur, I shall keep him informed of all that transpires while yet my body survives."
"And thou—thou?" Zud faltered in distraught fashion, clasping his shadowy hands.
"I? I know not," said Jason. "My fortune is in Zitu's hands. To you I give this mission. Say that you understand."
"Zud hears, and Zud obeys."
Croft left him. His work was finished. He sought Himyra and Robur's palace, and Naia—-his other self. And this part of his plan he felt would be the hardest, since in order to make her comprehend fully he must tell a painful truth—must confess that through his own daring was Jason at last undone—that his body lay prisoner to Mazzer, condemned if what he meant to attempt were accomplished, to what seemed inevitable death.
And suddenly, as he gained her chamber, Croft had the odd sensation that he stood before a tomb. Why it was he did not know at the moment, but it was as though he faced a ravished or an empty shrine. So strongly had he willed himself to this spot that the very concentration of his purpose had blotted out all else, and only now, when he reached it, did there come upon him the feeling that his coming here was vain.
Yet he crept inside. He moved swiftly toward her couch. In the dusk her form lay stretched upon it. But—it was motionless, with no stirring of the coverlet stretched above it, no evidence of breath. Pale as a lovely image it lay before him, in the semblance of what might be death.
Fear—sheer, stark fear gripped Croft and held him through the span of a startled instant. And then he knew the truth. Because as he stood there it seemed to him that Naia of Aphur was calling—not from the form on the couch, but from somewhere else. "Jason—Jason—O Jason, my beloved!" that subtle cry rang out.
And it drew him. It compelled him. It was the voice of love—the voice of the affinity of the ages, soundless, as the spinning of the planets down the grooveless tracks of time—a blind thing, a mad thing, beyond all thinking in its sweetness—the voice of atom to atom—of the soft wind to the pollen—the voice of the bird to its mate—of the maiden to her lover—the ceaseless song of creation—the voice of God to man.
"Jason—O my beloved!"
It filled Croft's being. It engulfed him. It caught him up and carried him he cared not whither on the tide of a swift irresistible flood. It made of his astral substance no more than a straw swept up and off and about in an eddy of compelling force. It was more like that ceaseless urge which had drawn him from the Dog Star always while yet he dwelt on earth.
It carried Croft out of the palace and across the Central Sea. It swept him across Bithur, with its plains and night-wrapped woods. It drew him above the camp of the Mazzerian army, and inside that tent where his body lay stretched out upon the ground.
And then Croft understood—that Naia had accomplished for herself, what heretofore had been by him induced—that her spirit's love—her desire for knowledge, had enabled her soul to break the body's bonds. That as she suggested she might, in a former conversation, she had found the way to visit him in dreams.
Yes, Croft knew all this in a blinding flash of comprehension. Because—there in the little tent, its auric fires paling and glowing, its soft arms twined about his unconscious body, lay Naia's astral form.
She had come to find him. Suddenly it seemed to Croft that he might have known. And all at once he was glad, with a great unreasoning gladness that when she came, she had found him here alone, like this rather than in Kalamita's tent.
Then very softly, "Beloved," he let steal forth the soul call.
She heard. She lifted her head from where it had lain upon his breast. She turned its wide eyes toward him, and saw him and rose swiftly toward him, and into his embrace.
"Jason—I came to Atla, and could not find you. And I sought you—sought you. What is the meaning of this?"
"The plane fell. I told you always there was danger," he explained briefly. "I was taken prisoner by the Zollarian masters of the men of Mazzer. I am held to ransom for a price."
"Zitu!" Naia panted. "And what else?"
"I went in the spirit to converse with Zud, and send him on a mission to thy father," Jason told her, loath to answer her questions with a mere avowal of the numbing truth—that truth which as it seemed must blast their own hopes for the future, unless in some blind way he could contrive escape. "Through him I shall send word to Jadgor that the price must be refused."
"Refused?" Naia drew back slightly. Those quivering fires of her life force faltered, grew dim and uncertain, died down like a flame well nigh blown out by a deadening wind of fear. "But Jason—thy body—which I found lying—here?"
"Belongs to thee, while yet it survives," Croft answered slowly, and went on before she could find a reply. "Then went I to Himyra, and finding your form stretched on its couch, seemed to hear you calling, and returned to find you here. Listen, Naia, my beloved, you must find Robur and speak to him for me. To Jadgor you must send him, explaining what has befallen, telling him from me as the one Lakkon sent will tell him, that when Robur shall arrive to take charge of the motors and the riflemen of Aphur, they must strike, strike, strike until Bithur shall be freed. Also to Robur you must say he shall call on Nodhur and Milidhur to arm so quickly as they may, and send their men to reenforce and support Aphur. So shall Tamarizia vanquish Mazzer and once more defeat those things Zollaria plans."
"And—you ask me—to do this?" Naia faltered.
"Aye—for Tamarizia I ask it," Croft replied.
"But—you—you?" She glanced toward the tight-bound body.
Croft sought to stay her questions. "Look not there, beloved. I am here."
"But—unless this price of Mazzer you mentioned—be paid?" She would not be refused.
Croft drew her to him. His position was perhaps rather more peculiar than that of any living man. The answer to what she had asked was death, and he knew it. Once he had snapped the astral cord that bound him to a body, but only after control of another had been gained. And that second body, the one he had made his own on Palos when he forsook earth because of the woman whose vital substance now glowed and paled against him, was the one which lay bound beside them on the ground. There was no other—the loss of it meant to him what the loss of physical life must mean to all men—nothing else. "If the price is not paid, it is easy enough to snap the cord that binds my life within it, at the proper time," he said at length.
"And," said Naia in a tone of horror, "you would ask me in taking your message to Robur, in sending him to Jadgor, to consign our love to death?"
"The price," said Croft in justification, "is very great. Much will Mazzer ask—more than by Tamarizia can be paid for one man's life."
Swiftly the auric fires leaped up in Naia's slender figure. "Is there no escape?"
"I know not," Croft made answer. "It is as Zitu wills. These Zollarians with the men of Mazzer have stained themselves blue. Yet whom have I to stain my body, were the stain within my grasp, or shave my hair and dye it red in time to make the venture? This tent is under guard, and will be, and the hands of my body are bound."
Naia considered. "And the price Mazzer will ask," she spoke slowly after a time, "is large?"
"Aye, as large, I fear, as though the Zollarian war had been lost by Tamarizia and Mazhur not regained."
"And if not paid—your body—dies—and mine."
"Thine?" Croft tightened the grip of his arms upon her. "What mean you, maid of Aphur, by such words?"
"Aphur means what Aphur says," she returned, and looked him in the eyes. For a moment her own were steady, and then they wavered. She clung to him in an almost frantic agony of what seemed a momentary panic of more than mortal grief. Then that, too, had passed, giving way to an almost passionate mood. "Think you that when life has left your body, Naia of Aphur, too, shall not lie dead; that to her the body has no longer any meaning, save as it delights you, save as through it she knows the touch of yours? Did you not swear to me by Zitu and Azil to return and claim me? And if that promise remains unfulfilled, think you that Naia of Aphur will live?"
"Yet," Croft stammered, shaken by this breath of passion, dazzled by the flashing of her being's fire, "if the welfare of Tamarizia demands the failure of that promise—if not with honor can I return to Himyra in the body. If your words, beloved, make doubly hard my purpose, when you shall have left me and returned to carry my message to your cousin—"
"By Zitu—and by Zitu," Naia fired into desperate protest, "it shall not be. Azil, giver of life! Shall these foul spawn of Zitemku keep you from me? Nay, as I am a daughter of Ga, with your seal upon me, now Ga speaks to me!" She broke off and lifted her hands to her breast. Her very eyes were fired.
So for a moment she stood before she went on. "Hark you, Jason, whom I love more than my own soul. This tent is guarded as you have said, and a price is laid on Tamarizia for your returning. Yet am I not woman whom you have wakened for nothing, and my love is not in vain. What price for a man who is dead?"
"By Zitu!" Croft caught her meaning. His glance turned toward the body on the ground beside their feet.
And Naia nodded. "Aye—Gaya told me in speaking of those things you told to Robur and to Zud, and now I know for myself that when the spirit is without it, the body lies as dead. Wherefore were it possible for you to remain as now you are for a space sufficient to deceive these men of Mazzer into thinking that injured in your fall you perchance had died—think you they would keep your body under guard or even near them, lest it foul the air even like those rotting corpses which tainted it with horror as I passed this night by Atla's walls?"
"No by Zitu—they would cast it forth in some other place," Croft answered quickly. "Naia—Ga—priestess of life, you have said it. Together we shall beat them yet."
"Aye, we shall beat them. Listen further," Naia said. "For a few suns you shall appear to be alive, yet faint and not recovered from injury. To Himyra shall I return and carry your message to Rob. When seven suns beginning with the next are passed, then must you seem to die. Thus shall they carry you forth. But the seven days shall be to gain time for what you direct to be done. Hai, I am not daughter of Ga for nothing. Beloved—give me your mouth. I must be gone."
Life! Life and this woman! There was a chance. Her wits had found it where his had milled around. Daughter of Ga was she as she said—and perhaps Ga—the eternal woman, had spoken to her through the elements which went into forming her nature first. Croft took her once more closely into his arms.
"Seek not to leave your body for one moment between now and the end of the seventh sun," she cautioned, "lest one should note it and so at the proper time entertain a doubt of your real death."
Croft marveled. To him she seemed to think of each infinitesimal detail. "No," he gave his promise. "I shall be merely as one who from one sun to another fails."
Naia lifted her lips. And as once before in similar fashion, she yielded them to him. For an instant it was as though their two beings blended, intermingled, and then she had torn herself from him, divinely glowing. "Zitu keep you, beloved," she whispered, and vanished from before his eyes.
For the succeeding seven days Croft endured—simply endured discomfort—the trussing up of his arms and feet at night in none too gentle fashion, the scant irregularity of poorly furnished meals, the absence of aught save trampled grass to sleep upon, renewed attempts on the part of Bandhor to force from him some intimation of Tamarizia's plans—the haughty, venomous hate that glared out of Kalamita's tawny eyes—that fury of a woman of the purely physical type, whose allurement has been scorned—of an adventuress, a schemer, whose scheme has failed.
But on the seventh day, as he lay brooding in his tent, close by the huge skin headquarters tent of Bandhor, which reminded him more of some Tatar chieftain's domicile than anything else, with its hide walls, its semibarbaric trappings, its red-and-green standard floating on a pole before its door, the door of his own tent was drawn slightly to one side and a face appeared to send his heart leaping into his breast.
Maia, Naia's own maid, was looking shrewdly into his starting eyes. And as lost in a maze he lay staring at her, filled with a vast wonder at her presence here in the heart of the Mazzerian camp, yet afraid to speak—torn between a desire to learn the meaning of her presence and a fear lest any sign of recognition should destroy whatever purpose that presence might portend, she flung the flap entirely back and darted inside.
"Thou canor of Tamarizia!" she cried in the voice of a termagant—a shrew—and struck him with her right hand a smart blow. "Thou foul offspring of Zitu fallen to the ground—thou devil who sent fire against my people, whose own people have cast him off, die—like the canor thou art!" And all the time she was shrieking she continued to buffet him with blows, striking him with her bare hand, kicking him with her feet. "Die, thou pale-faced fiend, whom Bel—greater than thy Zitu struck down and hurled among us—die—die now!"
But Croft, under the storm of her words, her buffetings, made no movement of resistance, lay limp and unresisting on the grass. Because even as she struck him, even as she lashed him with her tongue, calling him fiend and devil and canor—the name of the great beasts such as Naia's pet and protector, Hupor, which was the nearest approach in Palos to a dog; yet as her one hand rose and fell above him, her other drew from the narrow apron about her blue loins a little looped silver cross, and showed it to him briefly and thrust it back, and between the anathema of her lips they moved in almost soundless speaking. "Hupor—give ear to my berating of thee closely. I come from one who loves thee greatly—to show you the cross."
The cross ansata—the looped symbol of life—the little sign Zud had placed in Naia's hands at their betrothal—the sign of immortal life which came to men through women—Naia of Aphur was sending it by this servant of hers, who loved her, to him! He closed his eyes and nodded slightly in understanding as Maia continued to rave. Only now his brain was whirling, seething; was a caldron of troubled questions he dared not voice—questions as to why Maia had been sent to aid in his escape, as he felt sure now she had. Yet to question the girl was impossible under the present conditions, and what was she screaming?
"Die—thou canor—die as Bandhor has decreed thou must, since Jadgor has refused thy ransom! Die now—thou Tamarizian dog!"
And she had told him to listen closely to her vituperations. Croft gained the message she intended. Jadgor had done as he advised, and Bandhor's captive had lost value. Wherefore he kept his eyes closed, and seemingly died.
Footsteps! Croft's guard burst through the door. He seized Maia and flung her to one side, and stooped above the body with a face of terror. And then he straightened and turned upon her. "By Bel, you have killed him!" he stammered. "He has been ailing ever since he fell among us. Fool that I was to listen to your plea to view him. May Bel send you our commander's rage."
"That rage," Maia said, panting as it seemed from her exertions and emotions, "seeing that he is of value no longer, should not be so intense."
"Come!" The guard seized her by an arm and led her toward Bandhor's tent.
Croft went along, trailing the man and woman's steps. And once inside the huge shelter of skins, the guard saluted sharply and hurled Maia before the Zollarian noble, so that she sprawled her length on the ground.
"Behold, O Bandhor"—he made his report in a gruff bluster designed to cover his own face as well as he could—"this woman who made her way by stealth into Jason of Tamarizia's tent and struck him so that he died!"
"Hai!" Bandhor half rose, and sank back and narrowed his eyes. He regarded Maia, who groveled before him, her body caught and held, half-raised, on stretching arms, her head lifted, gazing into his startled face with watchful eyes.
"How are you called?" he inquired.
"Maia," stammered the woman. "Child am I of a father and mother who have lived among his people. All my life have I served them until Bel sent Bandhor and my father's people to bring liberation. Then I slipped away and made my way to thy army, with which I have stayed the past sun. Wherefore, hearing that Bandhor had condemned this one to death, I desired to see him and, seeing him, rage overcame me, and I threw myself upon him. Mercy, O Bandhor, mighty commander of my people, for this which I have done."
"Hai!" said Bandhor again, his lids contracting still further. "After all, it is a small matter, though my sister will be annoyed. She had planned a more lingering death for this insolent man. Yet to death was he condemned, and it is finished. Say you that from the bondage of his people you have come?"
"Aye, from Atla, lord."
"Atla! Now, by Bel!" Bandhor roared. "And what inside the penned-up city do these white spawn plan?"
"They speak of resistance," Maia made answer, "as Bandhor knows. But perchance he knows not that many men from Aphur have arrived, armed with the chariots they call moturs, which run by fire, and breathe it forth as death, and with the sticks that throw death unseen with noise and smoke, unlike the flight of an arrow or spear. Ten thousand have reached Bithra, and are advancing to the relief of Atla even now. More are said to be journeying from Aphur across the Central Sea, and yet others from Nodhur and Milidhur are to come."
"Hai!" For the third time Bandhor said it with a heavy frown. "This is of importance. For the information your words contain, I give you pardon—were those other of thy father's children in Tamarizia as loyal—much might be wrought of ill among them were their caste of servants to rise and kill and burn. Go!" He turned to the guard, whose face had lightened. "Take men and bear forth this body, and cast it beyond the camp. Or hold! I will view him myself." For the third time his eyelids narrowed, and he rose.
Followed by Maia and the guard, he entered Croft's tent and bent over the body on the ground. "Aye—his spirit has left him," he said as he straightened from the inspection and swung about on his heel.
"Mighty Bandhor," Maia stayed him. "I may remain for a time in the camp."
Bandhor eyed her. "Oh, aye," he said in careless fashion. "You are a comely girl of your people; you should have small trouble in finding some man to take you to his tent."
He turned away, and a moment later a brazen trumpet began sounding a summoning blast. As Croft learned, this was a signal to Bandhor's captains and advisers to assemble for a council with their chief.
Maia stole out with the arm of the guard about her, walking coyly at his side. Quite plainly the fellow was inclined to take Bandhor's suggestion about her to himself. Croft watched them vanish, and remained beside his own body, still huddled on the grass.
And in the end he followed it—followed his own body when it was borne outside the limits of the encampment and cast into a thicket of bushes, where its disposition was watched by Maia, who accompanied the now openly amorous guard and lingered beside the thicket with him after the other soldiers had cast down their burden and gone.
"Let us remove its clothing," she suggested. "To waste it were a loss."
The guard assented.
Five minutes later, more than a little aghast, Croft found his material tenement stretched stark upon the ground. Maia and her lover were moving off. In her arms the girl bore his suit of soft, brown leather.
In a way now Croft became more and more disturbed. Vague fancies filled his mind. At the first he had trusted her wholly, but this last move he did not understand. He recalled the story Parthys had told of the blue servants rising against their employers during the present trouble, and he marked the manner in which she accepted the blue man's advances.
After all, she was a Mazzerian herself, he thought, and there was no reason save her possible affection for Naia to insure her worthiness of trust. Still—she had shown him the tiny cross from the apron about her waist, and she had told him to die, as Naia had advised he should. After all, she might have some definite reason beyond his present knowledge for divesting his body of clothes. And he could do nothing until nightfall. That being the case, and the night being several hours removed, there was nothing to do but wait. Dead it might be in seeming, yet Croft knew that lying thus in the open his body needed protection. In the middle of the thicket he settled down beside it. It was rather odd, he found himself thinking, to be sitting there keeping an invisible watch of his own form.
Now and then, as the afternoon passed, he stole a glance at the camp. There was bustle there, a moving and shifting of men. It came to him that Bandhor, after his council, was preparing for another attack of Atla, urged thereto by Maia's report concerning the approaching reinforcements of weapons and men. Well, let them attack, he thought with a grim satisfaction. Jadgor would hold out through yet one more attack surely, and by then Bandhor would have lost his chance, once Robur and his forces had arrived.
Night came at last. Purposely Croft waited until late before making his venture at escape. And while he waited, there stole into the thicket a dim shape, which approached his body and sank beside it on the ground.
It was Maia. More than a little surprised, Croft watched her. She carried a bundle. She undid it. She moved higher beside his body and raised his head, supporting it on her thighs. Then swiftly she began to shave it, turning it to reach the back, and working rapidly on the sides. That done, while comprehension flashed into Croft's mind, and with it renewed confidence in this girl, as he recalled his words to Naia concerning some such thing as this, she took a small box from her bundle and began rubbing the scalp-lock she had left upon his poll with a substance it contained. After that she lifted a flask and removed a stopper. Working rapidly, she began smearing the body with some dark fluid, spreading it thinly upon the skin, rubbing it to as even a coating as she might with rapid hands. And as she worked Croft's body lost its ivory whiteness and became a dark-hued thing like her own. At the end she took a small cloth from the articles she had brought with her and twisted it deftly about his loins.
And as she finished and straightened herself from her labors, Croft, sensing it time for his reviving, opened the eyes of the body over which she had worked and spoke.
"Hai," said Maia, without any particular evidence of consternation. "It is even so she said it would happen when I had finished. She said that when I had shaved you, lord, and reddened your hair, and stained your body, and put the loin-cloth upon it, you would reappear."
"She?" Croft questioned her quickly. "You mean Naia of Aphur, Maia?"
"Aye. Who else, Hupor Jason?" She rose and picked up her bundle. "Naia, my mistress. These are your garments. Come, Hupor, till I lead you to her. She lies near."