And, now, despite all these things, despite the scene in the room of the Gayana, the shock of surprise attendant upon his waking—the first startled comprehension of what had happened wearing off ever so slightly, Croft's future course became to him more clear.
Since the commanding part remained to him yet, it was his to command, not to question or advise. He stalked across the sunlighted vastness of the region of the Gayanas where the chatter of the maidens sank to silence as he passed, bade the vestal who had taken him to Naia send some of the women to attend her and passed through the silver door.
Stern of lip, utterly composed in outward seeming once more, giving no outward sign of the tempest of black despair, of heart-sick and baffled yearning which raged within him, he made his way down three of the angling flights of the pyramid stairs and flung back into its masonry sockets the high priest's door.
Never perhaps in the history of the nation has so unceremonious an entrance of those chambers in the sacred structure been made. Yet Croft had deliberately planned on the effect and a quiver of satisfaction filled him, as Zud, seated at a table of the wine-red wood so much used for furnishings in Tamarizia, refreshing himself with some cakes of beaten grain and wine, and fruit, glanced up sharply with an expression of surprised resentment and then started to his feet.
"Sit, man of Zitu," he directed bruskly, and watched the high priest comply as he himself advanced and occupied a richly upholstered couch close to where Zud sat. Then as the priest dipped his hands into a crystal bowl of water and dried them on a square of cloth reserved for the purpose, he went on. "It were well to consider the form of this proclamation concerning the Mouthpiece of Zitu, I think."
Zud eyed him. Plainly the high priest was ill at ease. Croft's whole manner had altered strangely since he had left him at the door of the Gayana, and he must have sensed it. The thing was in his intonation, the settled lines of his face, his eyes. "I—give ear, lord," he began, after a momentary pause. "What suggestions are there—"
"Suggestions?" The Mouthpiece of Zitu caught the last word from his mouth. "Think you that I shall offer suggestions, priest of Zitu? Does Zitu suggest when he speaks?"
"Nay." Zud's expression grew troubled. "Hold not my words against me, lord. I seek not thy displeasure. Yours is the speaking, mine it is to—obey."
"That is well," said Croft in a milder voice. "Listen then, Zud. It is my will that neither you, nor the brothers of the priesthood, nor any other man in Tamarizia, bend the knee to me again. Render unto Zitu that obeisance as heretofore—to Ga and Azil—not to me. Those things are of the spirit, Zud, not of the flesh. In Tamarizia after fourteen days men walk equal in Zitu's sight. Let thy word go forth to this effect."
A tremor shook the high priest's hand as he stretched it forth. "I hear and obey, O lord; yet was it to thy spirit the knee was bent, not to Jasor of Nodhur's flesh."
"My spirit is what Zitu by his grace has made it," Croft returned. "What I am lies between me and Zitu himself."
"Yet how then shall the Mouthpiece of Zitu be proclaimed?" Zud quavered. Suddenly, despite his priestly trappings, the sumptuous quarters in which he sat, he seemed no more than a shaken old man.
"It is of that I would give you counsel," Croft replied. "Were I minded I could forbid this proclamation altogether, Zud, and compel you to hang your head, admitting that you had meddled to bring about those things Zitu had not ordained. Think you he needs any man's assistance in working out his plan? Yet because I have watched closely since I awakened, and find your act inspired by no evil intent, but by lack of understanding, because to discredit your words were to strike not only thee, but at the very foundation itself of each man's belief, I am minded to let what you have decreed take place.
"You shall proclaim me thus. Not as a spirit, but as a man, a teacher, one to whom Zitu permits certain things to be known; one by whom the welfare of the nation is considered, through whom shall be given to Tamarizia's people much for their own good; through whom those things Zitu permits for them shall be transmitted to them, and in so much Zitu's mouthpiece still." Abruptly he broke off as a sudden conception seized him. For a time he considered a startlingly daring plan before he spoke again in a tone of musing: "Zud—Zud, if you only knew the truth."
"The truth, O lord!" said the high priest slowly. "Have I not sought it all my life?"
Croft nodded. "Aye, priest of Zitu, I think you have. Wouldst hear the truth of those things Abbu told you from my mouth?"
Zud leaned forward somewhat quickly. For an instant an eager light gleamed in his eyes before they met Croft's steadily watching, and then wavered.
"Lord!" he faltered, "lord!"
Croft told him the tale.
For that was the plan which had filled his mind—to tell it; to narrate to Zud the truth; to explain those things which had been done, and the how of each act so fully as he could inside the other's comprehension, to convince him by word of mouth if he might, or, failing that, to win his consent to a practical test.
While he talked time dragged on, and by degrees Zud relaxed his pose, of something like overborne embarrassment.
His attitude now became that of an amazed and eager attention. His eyes lighted and his breathing quickened, and now and then he moistened his lips with his tongue. By degrees his excitement increased, until he was gripping the arms of his chair and leaning toward Croft, in a posture which seemed no more than physical reflex of his mental determination to miss no single word.
"Thou—thou sayest a man may leave his body at will?" he stammered as Croft paused.
"Yes, if he knows the method of controlling his spirit to affect his object," Croft replied.
"May go to other places while his body remains where he leaves it—and see and know, and return again?" Zud said. His eagerness struck Croft as almost pathetic. It was like that of a child.
"Yes," he repeated again.
"It is hard to believe," said Zud.
"Would you like to have proof?" Croft decided to convince the high priest now and at once.
"Proof?" Zud queried.
"Yes. Would you like to leave this body of yours, Zud of Zitra, under my direction, learn I have spoken the truth?"
His words were followed by a widening of the high priest's eyes. In them waked something like a startled desire, combined with a cautious hesitation. His whole expression was that of one who falters on the brink of the unknown, longing to dare it yet deterred by the very fact that it is the unknown.
"Thou canst bring that about?" he questioned at length.
"Yes, if you obey me wholly." Croft held him with a steady regard. To him that which he meant to do was no more than play. To cast this old man into a cataleptic sleep by his own consent and project his astral consciousness, whither he willed, was naught for one who by his own volition had spanned the gap of interstellar space. Yet to Zud the venture seemed to appear very vast, and he hesitated yet a moment briefly before:
"My obedience is yours, O lord," he gasped.
"Then," said Croft, summoning all the powers of his trained will to his aid, "fasten thy eyes on me, O man of Zitu, and fix thy mind on sleep, for this leaving of the body begins indeed with a something approaching sleep in its nature. Think therefore of sleep, O Zud—of sleep, of only sleep!"
Fastening his gaze upon him in complete attention, until by degrees his lids, at first wide, began to droop above his eyes, Zud obeyed.
"So then," Croft droned on as he noted the change, "your eyes are closing, Zud; the lids grow heavy; sleep creeps now upon thee; sleep, a deep sleep. Zud, thou art asleep, yet sleeping thou canst hear my voice. Speak I not the truth?"
"Aye"—a muffled murmur from the high priest's mouth.
"And hearing me, Zud, even in your sleep you will render obedience to my words. Hence, listen closely and obey. Do you know where Lakkon and Jadgor and Robur lodge?"
"Aye," quavered the high priest.
"Then shall you go there, Zud, on my command. In the name of Zitu I command you to leave your body—now."
For a moment he gave over speaking and waited while the form of the high priest relaxed and sagged down in the chair of ruddy wood. Then abruptly he resumed:
"Have you obeyed me, Zud?"
"Aye," no more than a whisper from the lips of the body in the chair.
"What do you see?" Croft demanded.
"A strange sight, indeed. My own form, as in a reflecting water-pool, seated with downcast head, as wrapped in sleep."
"'Tis well," Croft spoke in answer and direction. "Await my company, Zud." He threw himself prone upon the couch and freed his own astral shell from Jasor's body by the effort of his will. An instant later he floated midway between the floor and ceiling at Zud's side. Below them, sat and reclined each body. There stood the table, still bearing food for the material body midway between couch and chair. Croft turned to his companion. And now all communication was on the astral plane, without sound, yet by a none less evident diffusion of conscious vibration.
"Thou seest?" he queried with a smile.
"Aye," the answer came to him from Zud's wraith—that strange replica of his earthly form, implacable, invisible to any save Croft's and his own eyes, which hung there between the floor of the apartment and the burnished roof, weaving to and fro, in each intangible current of the air, swaying and billowing, like a wind-stirred effigy in smoke. "Aye, lord, I see, and am filled with amazement."
"Thou seest but the first step as yet," Croft told him. "Come!"
There was an open embrasure in the pyramid wall. Through it Croft willed himself, and seizing the thin arm of the weird form beside him, dragged it along. They shot out and up through a sun-filled air—out and up and up. The pyramid lay beneath them, the snow-white temple of Zitu glinting in dazzling fashion on its top. East, west, north and south Zitra lay spread to their sight, with its houses, its palaces and hovels, the ringing circumference of its mighty walls. Its harbor studded with sails was all asparkle in the sunlight, and beyond that the bosom of the central ocean rose and fell slowly like the breast of a woman asleep.
"Lord! Lord!" Croft sensed that the high priest gasped again in his emotions at least.
"Behold!" Croft returned and swept an arm in the gesture of a circle. "Priest of Zitu, behold! And, now, in which direction do the men I mentioned lodge?"
"In the palace of Tamhys himself, as his guests," Zud replied, and pointed with a spectral arm.
"Will thyself to their presence, even as you were in the flesh. Think only that you desire immediate nearness to them. So shall you come upon them, Zud."
"Aye, lord," Zud knit his astral brows as though in mental effort.
The sunlight vanished in a flash. With it went out the far-flung view of the Tamarizian landscape—the city, the waves of the central sea. Suddenly vast walls appeared on every hand—a tessellated floor inlaid in white and gold and silver, stretched out beneath a roof of silver inlaid beams, supporting frames containing varicolored glass.
This was the interior court of the Zitran palace as Croft knew. It swept past quickly. He had the impression of the balcony surrounding it on all four sides in Tamarizian style, of the supporting arches, of the groups of statuary between them, of the ascending stairways, and then they vanished, too, and he found himself in a smaller apartment, its sliding doorway covered by a scarlet curtain, its floor in part concealed by gorgeous rugs, its windows draped with other scarlet tissues through which the outer light shone redly—a room equipped with couches and chairs and tables, adorned between the doors and windows with frescoes and groups of sculpture done in the customary translucent stone, and supported on pedestals of copper, silver and gold. So much he saw at a glance before he fastened his attention on the figures of three men grouped about a table in front of a scarlet-curtained window in the outer end of the room.
These men he knew, had met and known and conversed with before this in the flesh. Jadgor, of Aphur, heavy set, dark of eyes and complexion, grizzled of hair, his nose high and somewhat bent in the middle, his whole appearance that of a man of driving purpose, sat there now clad in leg-cases, shirt and metal cuirass, with Aphur's rayed sun on his breast. And close beside him on the table reposed his helmet with its nodding scarlet plumes.
Opposite him sat Lakkon, noble of Aphur and adviser to the king, heavy set like his brother-in-law, strong of feature, with iron-gray poll, dressed like to Jadgor in every essential detail, though in a fashion less royal. By the end of the table stood Robur, Jadgor's son, clean-limbed, strong-featured, with well-formed jaw and mouth, about which lurked often a hint of humor, as Croft knew. In a fleeting glance he recognized its absence now. The face of the crown prince was set into almost stubborn lines, its cheeks a trifle flushed.
And even as Croft perceived the attitude and expression of the several occupants of the apartment, Jadgor hit the table with one fist a resounding crash, whose vibration eddied out and set Zud to drunkenly rocking in their whorl close by Croft's side.
"By Zitu, and by Zitu!" He swore a double oath. "I like not this delay in an understanding. Thrice in as many days have we visited the pyramid, and Zud has said he sleeps. Much has he done for Tamarizia, as I shall last deny; nor did he tell us to remain in Zitra at the last. Yet if Zud be right, as he should, being high priest, my brother, Lakkon, finds himself in difficult case."
Lakkon's visage darkened. "Yet was the pledge given of his seeking," he broke out in querulous fashion. "Jadgor knows that Jasor, be he spirit, as Zud saith, or man, sought it of me ere he entered the armored car to lead into the conflict wherein Helmor, of Zollaria, was overthrown. And Jadgor himself did sponsor my words wherein Naia, my daughter, was promised him to wife. Wherefore, she hath permitted his arms, and yielded him her mouth, as none save an unclean woman doth to any save the men of her own family or him to whom she is betrothed."
"Aye," said Jadgor, frowning. "Yet shall a spirit mate with the flesh. Continence is no less a vow of the priesthood than of the Gayana. Were a spirit sent by Zitu to do his work, even though to that end he employs the body of one whom Azil has recalled, is he to be considered as man or priest?"
"Think you Zitu wouldst choose a rebellious spirit for his mouthpiece?" Robur broke in with considerable heat. "Jadgor, my father, who are we to judge?"
"Robur seems minded to attempt it," Jadgor rejoined with a sarcasm he plainly did not wish to conceal.
"Aye." The color deepened in the crown prince's cheeks. "For by Jadgor's command I labored beside this Jasor, of Nodhur, as he then was known, for the better part of a cycle, toward the end of making Tamarizia safe against what Helmor did intend, and in nothing did I find him other save steadfast and just. Man he was in every seeming, save that his knowledge surpassed the knowledge of all other men, and for these sleeps such as holds him now. We became as brothers in our common purpose, whereby Jadgor now bids fair to attain his ends."
Croft's heart warmed swiftly to Robur's defense, though it was no more than from his knowledge of the crown prince he had felt he might expect. As Robur said the bond between them in their year of mutual endeavor in the shops of Himyra and Ladhra, where the motors and rifles used in the war were made, had become exceedingly close. Indeed, so intimate had they grown that he had addressed Robur as "Rob."
They had been as brothers, indeed, and he felt new confidence now, knowing Gaya would reflect the attitude of her husband rather than any one else. And Gaya in the past had been at one time the means of communication between Naia and himself, when Lakkon had felt himself bound by a pledge to Cathur, to discourage Croft's suit. Now, therefore, he waited eagerly to see what response Jadgor might make to his son's final sentence which was no more than an allusion to those plans of mounting the Zitran throne that had held Jadgor's mind when Croft came to Palos first, toward which, by a marriage with Cathur's profligate prince, Naia was to aid.
And that Jadgor sensed the half-veiled rebuke, he saw at once, since the Aphurian's frown but deepened before he spoke. "Man in seeming is he, I admit, yet to Abbu he confessed that he was not Jasor but another. This thing I do not understand, nor doth Zud. Yet were he an agent of Zitu, then were the end of which you speak of Zitu's willing for Tamarizia's good, which, as my son knows, lies nearest Jadgor's heart. Zud, as you know also, I have questioned, and he holds that none save a mortal may know a woman, save only by Zitu's will, as Azil was conceived of Ga."
"Then why question Zitu's will, as expressed by Zitu's Mouthpiece?" said Robur quickly, and paused with a gasp.
"What mean you?" Jadgor half rose from his seat.
"Nay—" Suddenly Robur faltered, he seemed disturbed, abashed. He lowered his eyes. "Nay, my father, I spoke in haste. What says the maiden herself? Did not my uncle speak with her the prior sun?"
"She holds to her promise as she has held since the beginning," Jadgor replied. "She refuses to leave the Gayana until she has speech with the sleeper himself."
"Nor will she leave ever, should Abbu's words and Zud's judgment prove true," Lakkon said with a twitching face. "Virgin is she in all save the love she has given to him she knew as Jasor. Failing its consummation, she becomes Gayana herself."
"Nay, by Zitu!" Robur cried a savage protest. "My father and uncle, of this thing there lies some explanation. He who I, too, knew as Jasor, won not the full love of my cousin for any such sterile fate. Himself, he told me that all he did was by Zitu's grace; and of all that he did was not this too a part?"
A part—rather the all—the motive, the object of what he had done, thought Croft, as he once more thrilled to the sturdy, unyielding quality of Robur's partizanship.
Then as Jadgor made no immediate answer, and Lakkon sat with troubled countenance, lost as it appeared in the prospective fate of the daughter whom he loved with an almost adoring devotion, and now saw embrace the life of a vestal as escape from what, by Tamarizian custom, must otherwise amount to a technical disgrace, Robur went on. "Wherefore, as said before, who are we to judge the Hupor Jasor or the Mouthpiece of Zitu, be he what he may, ere he awakes? Like to my cousin, Naia, I would ask him to speak for himself."
Jadgor gave him a glance. "For that waking we have waited many suns."
"Yet, perhaps he wakes even now," Lakkon suggested quickly, his manner that of a man who grasps at straws.
"Aye," said Jadgor, "perhaps. And—since we are met for the purpose, rather than useless discussion, let us seek the pyramid at once. He rose, a commanding figure in his glistening cuirass and moved toward the curtained door.
"Back!" Croft commanded Zud. "Desire the return to thy body."
He suited his own act to the word, and an instant later opened his physical eyes to find Zud sitting tensely erect, regarding him out of staring, startled eyes.
He sat up. "You saw, O Zud," he questioned. "You heard?"
"Aye," said Zud a trifle hoarsely. "This passes understanding."
"Only until understood," Croft told him. "Art any less yourself for having left your flesh?"
Zud dropped his eyes. "Nay, not so," he said at last.
"And had you entered this body upon the couch, rather than that in the chair?" Croft pressed him closely. "Think you, Zud, you would have been any less yourself, any less Zud, the—priest of Zitu, and—a man?"
"Zitu!" Zud breathed sharply. Plainly he caught Croft's drift. "In such a fashion then you have visited other places, even to the stars, and seen strange things, and brought back what you deemed good?"
"Aye," said Croft with a smile. "In the spirit, Zud, you have seen your body lie sleeping, even as in the flesh you have seen my body lie. Yet are you Zud in the spirit or in the flesh; for with each man it is the spirit commands the flesh; that acts, and the spirit, Zud of Zitra, is of Zitu, breathed from his nostrils, into the flesh, to give the body life."
"Man then is a spirit?" Zud began slowly. He seemed shaken, yet in some subtle way exalted, despite the fact that he was pallid to the lips.
"Aye, Zud, priest of Zitu. There were no man else."
A rap fell on the door of the apartment. It slid back, revealing a lay brother in bare feet and cord-belted robe. He advanced, bending before Zud from the waist, his arms extended in the sign of the horizontal cross.
"Jadgor of Aphur, and Lakkon, and Robur, son of Jadgor, await audience with Zud of Zitra," he announced.
"Admit them," Zud glanced at Croft as the brother withdrew. "Thou art as thou hast said, a teacher not only of all men, but of Zitu's priest. I would speak with thee more of this."
For the second time the door slid back. Jadgor, Lakkon, and Robur filed in.