CHAPTER V
BEHIND THE SILVER DOOR
They passed from the room and along a corridor in which the oil sconces had now been extinguished, faintly illuminated by the light of the new day. Before a massive door Zud paused and set his hand to a slender cord. His action was followed by the muffled clanging of a brazen gong. He slid the door open and revealed the shadow-wrapped throat of a shaft, up which a platform presently trembled into view. It was a primitive form of elevator operated, as Croft knew, by a Mazzerian crew in the foundations of the pyramid itself, lifting and lowering it on signal, by winding its cable on and off a revolving drum.
With Zud, he stepped aboard. The platform mounted slowly up the shaft. The high priest, with a hand on an inner cord, observed its progress, and presently once more the gong far below clanged out. The platform stopped.
They stepped into a very short corridor between masonry walls of a cut and polished stone not unlike marble, save that it held a strange, translucent quality in its substance and was wholly white. The main staircase of the pyramid mounted before them and ran on toward the top, with its crowning Temple of Zitu, and just beyond it, at the far end of the corridor, was a door. Silver it was, the most precious of Palosian metals, tooled and carved into the design of a full-sized woman's figure, in whose hand was the looped cross of immortal life.
Croft thrilled as they paused before it. This was the entrance to the quarters of the Gayana. Here it was that Naia had waited for him when he plunged into the venture of the Zollarian war. Then briefly he had held her in his arms, and she had told him that none should claim her ever save himself, or, failing that, she would remain forever virgin in the sanctuary of Ga beyond this door outside which now he stood so very, very differently from what he had once thought that he should.
And suddenly the knowledge of what Zud had told her—of the shock of revelation that must have come upon her, the torment to her every finer sensibility and feeling—caused an actual sensation of constriction in Croft's chest. He stood with tight-set lips and flaring nostrils as Zud put up a hand and pressed against the left breast of the woman on the door.
There was a tiny click, and the door slid to one side, disappearing into a socket in the wall and flooding the corridor with light. No gloomy abode was that in which the vestals dwelt. High up on the pyramid, but one flight beneath the crowning temple on the truncated apex, it caught the first of Sirius's rays, and the last, through deep embrasures set with slanting glass in the structure's walls. As the door slipped aside a scene was presented to Croft's eyes, brilliant with light and life.
"Hold!" he said as Zud would have entered and stepped past him on one side.
"Wait me below in your own apartments, man of Zitu. Consider meanwhile those words we have spoken before you brought me here. Peace be with you, priest of Zitu. Go!"
Then, as Zud turned to do his bidding and regained the platform in the shaft, he stepped through the aperture of the door to the other side and paused, a trifle abashed.
He had come at a stride to a region of youth and beauty. It surrounded him on every side. Feminine forms in diaphanous fabrics were grouped about the room. The chatter of their voices filled the place. Directly before him a group of maidens already at work about an immense basket of flowers, forming the garlands and sprays which at the noontide hour of prayer they would fling at the feet of the statue of Tamarizia's god, paused and stood staring as Croft appeared.
Their hair, unrestrained save for a metal filet or cincture, fell in masses down their graceful backs. The flesh of their shoulders and arms and sandalless feet, glowed warm and pinkly white. Their lips grew parted, and their eyes, unaccustomed to masculine presence, save possibly that of old Zud, grew wide. For Croft was no ancient as he stood there in his azure robe, with the cross and the wings in gold upon his breast and his yellow hair in a tawny mass upon his head. More he was like some young and comely god himself, with his bold, strong features, his hint of latent strength.
So for a moment they stood staring until, as though her attention was arrested by their postures and the direction of their glances, an older woman appeared, coming directly toward where Croft stood, to pause before him and bend in a genuflection, and inquire with a voice leveled, as it seemed, by repression: "What does my lord of Zitu seek?"
"Speech with the maiden Naia, priestess of Ga." Croft met her glance directly.
"So be it," said the woman. "Come with me."
He followed—across a hugely pillared room where others of the vestals sat on cushions or divans, engaged in simple tasks—toward a mighty figure of a woman, carved from the strangely beautiful translucent stone the Tamarizians used mainly in their sculpture—the figure of a woman seated, brooding with a face of divinely maternal affection above the form of a babe stretched prone across her knees. Mighty, magnificent in her womanhood, beautiful in her maternity, she sat there, back of a silver altar on which leaped from an oil-fed sconce the eternal flame of life which never died.
And this he thought was Ga, to whom Naia of Aphur had prayed that she might be spared the unclean ordeal of a marriage with Cathur's prince. This was the eternal woman, the eternal mother, the eternal source—the Tamarizian virgin who had given birth to Azil, the Angel of Life. Ga—the virgin, the madonna. This was the woman and—her child—woman the shrine of the fire eternal, watching it, guarding it, replenishing it against extinction through the eons of ages within and from herself.
A sudden passionate desire to do her and the members of her sex some form of honor seized him in an impulse which sent him without premeditation to his knees, bending before her majestic presence, forming the sign of the cross horizontal, beneath her brooding features; glancing up then, and then only, to meet the eyes of his guide—and find them less frigid, in a subtle manner pleased.
But she made no comment as Croft rose slowly and once more followed her lead toward the door of a room, which she unlatched and pushed aside.
Through the opening Croft's eyes leaped, to fall upon the figure of a woman, her hair as golden as the sunshine falling in a rippling, silken mass to the couch of wine-red wood on which she sat, her head bent above a frame in which her tapering fingers were embroidering a pattern in small, pierced jewels on a fabric of sheerest gauze.
All that in a flash. Then, as though attracted by the opening of the door, the woman glanced up, lifting a pair of pansy-purple eyes.
"Naia!" Croft's lips framed the word rather than spoke it. He stepped swiftly toward her through the door. It clicked shut behind him as the vestal closed it.
Naia, of Aphur, rose. The last vestige of color seemed drained from her face, leaving her eyes very dark in its pallor, their pupils stretched wondrously wide. So for a moment, she stood staring straight before her at him she had known as Jasor of Nodhur, before her body took on a sudden panting, so that the tissues or the temple garment she was wearing became no more than a creamy ripple above her firmly rounded busts. And then while Croft waited, choked by his own emotions, drunk in his innermost being with her beauty, she moved and sank down on her slender, supple knees.
"Beloved!" Croft went one swift pace toward her. He stretched out his hands. "Naia—mine own—arise."
She glanced up. A quiver shook the perfect curve of her mouth. And then for the first time her lips writhed open. "How speaks the Mouthpiece of Zitu in a lover's guise?"
"Arise," repeated Croft, and waiting until she had once more regained her feet before he went on: "Were I to answer your question, beloved, would any hear?"
She regarded him strangely. It was almost as though she sensed some new, some unsuspected meaning in his words, some hint of something of which she had not dreamed, yet which, now that her intuition gave it seeming, she desired to have made plain. "No," she made answer slowly. "This is my own apartment—set aside for my use for such time as I remain with the Gayana. What things may be said within it shall remain unknown."
"Then—" In a single stride Croft approached her. He swept her into his arms. They closed about her with an almost yearning gesture. He drew her to him, held her against his breast. The warmth of her, the glorious litheness, the pliant softness of her figure, struck against his own. He gloried in it, thrilled in every cell to the sudden contact—to the quick, instinctive tremor which shook her form. "Hark ye, beloved," he cried softly into the shell-pink ear beneath his lips. "Hark ye—mark well my answer. The Mouthpiece of Zitu is no supernatural being, but a man and a lover—thy lover in very truth."
And on the word the supple body of the woman went tense inside his arms. It struggled, it writhed. It struck its hands against his breast and pushed back her torso, straining, bending it against his restraining hold from the hips. Its face became convulsed, a panting, lip-parted, eye-wide mask of horror. With a final effort Naia tore herself free. Hot words poured from her mouth as she choked and gasped for breath.
"Then—in the name of Zitu—-what do you here—with that—that"—she lifted a naked arm and pointed—"with the wings of Azil—the looped cross of Ga—upon your breast?"
"Is not Zud a man—and wears he not the cross at least—and comes he not among the Gayana at will?" stammered Croft, more disturbed than he cared to admit at her manner and words.
And as he paused she blazed out in a fashion of almost scathing contempt. "A man, yes, is Zud—one in whom the flame of life burns low, who comes thither only when the work of him he serves demands it; who speaks, when he comes, naught but what to him seems truth."
Croft instinctively flinched. Her allusion to what he felt she considered his own deceit in regard to himself flicked him despite his own knowledge of his own sincerity in all that he had done. The sensation which gripped him was due to no sense of guilt, but was more a poignant regret that she should have been led to consider him in any way false to the holiest emotions of his life.
"What seems truth, aye," he rejoined, therefore quickly holding Naia's eyes, from which flashed what seemed a purple fire, with his own. "Yet what man shall know the mind of Zitu, save as by his own interpretation, or be free from error in his words at times, even though years should have taught him discretion in his tongue?"
Naia's lip curled. As Zud had said, hers was a haughty spirit—one not prone to break or yield as a weaker might have done. And now she refused to give ground in her position even with this man to whom she had given her love in the past—had stood ready to yield herself in every way the word implied. "At least," said she, "Zud makes no claim of being any other than he is."
"Nor do I." Croft drew himself up. He seized what appeared to him an opportunity for arresting her sense of justice, which past experience had taught him was true and fair if once it were reached. "Have I claimed ever to be aught save a man who loved thee? Was it I or Zud who named me Mouthpiece of Zitu while I slept, or by whose orders, when I asked for clothing, was given me this priestly dress? Has Jasor of Nodhur ever in the past sought any greater exaltation in rank or fame or power than that alone which would bring him to your side? Have his spirit, his lips sought ever to call out to any other save to thee alone? Have not his arms fought ever those enemies who were thine because of his love for Naia of Aphur—to keep her country safe, herself from the pollution of other arms less clean?"
And now for the first time it seemed that the Princess Naia faltered. Some of the tension went out of her graceful figure. Doubt crept into her eyes. "You—you," she asked a broken question, "would have me believe the Mouthpiece of Zitu, a—man?"
"Yes—as he is—a man who loves you as none ever loved you before." Croft threw out his arms. "Seem I not a man to you, Naia of Aphur—maid of gold—who have willingly lain in my arms, yielded me your lips—before this—who stand here now in the quarters of the Gayana, pledged to me by Lakkon—as well as by yourself. Is a man any less a man because he wears the garments of a priest?"
"Hold, in Zitu's name!" Abruptly a tremor, a shudder shook the slender, half-veiled form he watched. "Man, though he be a priest, is sworn to chastity in Zitu's sight. Yet you, whom Zud names the Mouthpiece of Zitu—"
"Am sworn to love you, beloved," Croft cut her protest short.
"Love?" Terror woke in Naia's face. She drew back. "Would seek to compel me with your newly acknowledged power? So long as Zud named you a spirit, I was ready to bend before you. But now that you name yourself a man, would seek to lead me into sin, even were I minded to give heed to your plea?"
"Nay," said Croft in a softer voice. "Nay, Naia, woman of my soul—whom Zitu himself decreed in the beginning to be my mate. For love such as mine is no sin, but the law of Zitu himself—the cause of all living—all life. Yet, save you yield yourself to me of your own will, those things my spirit cries for shall not be. And—can I not convince you that, despite the words of Zud, which were ill advised, I am no more than him to whom you gave your promise—than are you—free?"
He broke off and for the first time bowed his head. Something like despair seized upon him—a sick wave of discouraged purpose, as he realized how fully the leaven of the high priest's revelations had been at work—as he sensed that the very union she had confessed to him in the past she herself desired, had come to appear now a breaking of the law—a union unnatural—unsanctioned by the God of her religion—a sacrilegious thing.
And as he stood there a change came over the girl who watched. For the first time in her knowledge of him Jasor of Nodhur bent his unflinching crest; for the first time a hopeless something weakened the lines of his strongly commanding face. And only one who knows the hearts of women may tell what things stirred that moment in her breast. She moved. Step by step she approached him where he stood. In an almost timid fashion she lifted a bared arm and laid her hand against his chest.
"But," she faltered, "Abbu said—"
"What?" Croft did not alter his position.
"Those things which sent my spirit down to the dark world of Zitemku, ruler of the lost souls, in surprised dismay—that made me tremble as with cold—that sent me to kneel before Ga for hours that, being a woman and knowing women, she might help me to understand—that the spirit which dwelt in Jasor of Nodhur's body was not his own, but another's—sent by Zitu to possess it—when Jasor—died." The last was a quivering whisper, no more than a sibilant breath.
"And if what Abbu said were truth?" Croft lifted his somber visage and looked down into her darkly tragic eyes. Twin pools of mental agony, they seemed, very close beneath his face—and Naia of Aphur's flesh on cheek and throat and scarce-veiled bosom gleamed bloodless, pallid. Even her parted lips were white.
"If?" they questioned as he paused. "Think you that, right or wrong in Zitu's sight, I myself could mate with you were it the truth—couldst give myself to the embrace of a body filled by another than that spirit Zitu breathed into it at birth; think you my flesh would not shrink in very horror from the contact, my spirit rebel, nor force my flesh to yield? And were Abbu's tale true, then, too, were the high priest right. For how might such a thing transpire save by the will of Zitu himself—how else the body of a man who had given up the spirit return to life?"
"I have told you," said Croft, "that those things I did were done by Zitu's grace. But I have not explained my full meaning. That I had reserved for another time, and for your ears alone. Yet I swear now by Zitu and Ga and Azil that I meant in my heart to tell you all things before I claimed you as my wife—make all things plain."
"Then—" Once more Naia's figure stiffened. One hand crept up and lay pressed in above her heart. "Abbu said truth—your spirit is not Jasor's, but another's?"
"Yes," said Croft, dully refusing further evasion, "Abbu said the truth. Yet not all the truth, and Zud overshot the mark in his interpretation." He paused.
For the figure before him had risen, stretching upward on the balls of its rosy feet, lifting its arms in a high-flung gesture with fingers outstretched, extending, as it seemed, in every line of its slender, rounded length, with head back-tilted until its golden hair hung half-way down its tapering thighs in a shimmering cascade, its face raised, its lips parted, its eyes half closed. So sudden was the change that the girl's form seemed to have flung itself into that strange posture of abandonment to woe, as a stricken creature leaps in its death throes when struck by the hunter's shaft. And as Croft broke off, arrested by that tragic and yet still beautiful pose, a scream came out from the round, soft pillar of Naia of Aphur's throat.
"Zitu! Ga! Befriend me!"
All life went out of her glorious body. It sank down, seemed to shrink, to bend and sway before him like a tempest-riven reed.
Croft caught it as it fell and lifted it in his arms—lifted it and held it, the dearest burden they had ever known—held it and bent above it with sick despair in his heart, despair for her whom he held, whose pliant glory now lay impotently unconscious, upborne, saved from the injury of its fall by his strong and reverent hands—despair for her and for himself—for them both—victims of Zud's curious meddling in their affairs.
Zud! He ground his teeth together. He was not done with Tamarizia's high priest. Zud—or another—or ten thousand others—must pay for this. Something like a sob caught in his throat as he gazed at the down-dropped lids above those pansy-purple eyes in which Zud's interference had waked the look of horror they had held before they closed.
The sound of a muffled groan escaped his lips. How different was this meeting from the one he had planned as taking place. Then, too, he had thought to hold her in his arms, but that she would lie there willing, gladly, responsive in her inmost being to his presence, not like this. And suddenly moved again by a strange impulse, because Zitu or God—what mattered it as to name, since, by any name whatever, there was for life but one source?—he lifted that splendid form and held it stretched prone and motionless before him, extended face uppermost across his powerful arms. And—
"Ga befriend her. Zitu befriend me. Azil have compassion upon us both!" he cried before he laid her on the couch of wine-red wood.
For a long moment after he had straightened, he stood gazing down upon her. The sun streaming into the room through the glass of an embrasure struck out the golden design of the wings and cross upon his breast. It sparkled, shimmered, as it rose and fell with his breathing. But it was no more golden, no more shimmering than the flood of golden hair about Naia of Aphur's head. Nor was Croft's robe more blue in its jewel-wrought folds than the limpid eyes beneath her fallen, long-lashed lids.
Of a sudden Croft's own eyes fired with purpose. He drew a sharp, deep breath. Naia of Aphur was his no longer. But—as Mouthpiece of Zitu—all men must obey his mandates; there would be no exception; not even the high priest himself, and—if he were to be cheated of the major object for which he had labored, to attain which he had finally broken the last bond between himself and earth—then let all men beware. He turned away to go in search of Zud.