KYPHALLOS AND KALAMITA
Yet once outside the mountain villa, Croft knew where he wanted to go. It was back to Himyra—back to the palace of Lakkon itself—to be alone with his thoughts. To that point, therefore, he once more willed himself.
The city swam beneath him. The yellow Na sparkled and glinted in the flickering gleams of the fire basins lighted along the embankments as they leaped and flared. Other fires flashed out in various of the public squares. And here the population met for their hours of relaxation. Here groups of wandering musicians played on reed and harp and horn as the gaily decked crowds filed by. Here mountebanks plied their stock of tricks, and acrobats proved their supple agility and strength. Over it all the three moons of Palos poured a silvery light as Croft flitted past.
Then he was at the palace of Lakkon, finding still open, a window of Naia's own room, and so at length the place he sought. The moonlight filtered in. It fell in a broad bank, which struck across the pure white figure of Azil with its outstretched wings.
Through a long moment Croft stood gazing at the statue, bathed in the light of the moons. Then, without removing his eyes, he found the couch and sat down upon it, and thought, still staring at Azil—the material symbol of that spirit to whom the girl, the aura of whose presence pervaded this room, had prayed.
And, after a time, out of all his agony of spirit, his tumult of thought, his rebellion at what was proposed for the girl's fate, the sick knowledge of his own futility to aid her, there came to him a prompting impulse as to his future course. To what end he did not know. In his present state he could do nothing and knew it—had raged at the knowledge ever since he had seen Naia of Aphur on her way to this room, where he now sat.
Yet despite the acknowledged fact of impotency, something seemed to urge him to go on, to learn all he might of Palos and its people, of Tamarizia and its history, its manners and customs, its government and laws, and more particularly the true state of things in Cathur and the truth concerning Kyphallos, son of Cathur's king.
To Cathur then would he go, Croft decided, while he sat there staring at Azil, the Angel of Life. And Cathur, he judged, lay toward the north since Jadgor had spoken of the state of Nodhur as lying beyond Aphur on the Na. Hence he willed his spirit in projection without further delay.
Thereafter followed a week in which Jason Croft, disembodied spirit, learned much concerning the nation and the country to which he had dared venture across millions of miles of space.
He found Cathur, a mountainous state lying to the north of a wide mountain walled strait. He found Scira, its capital city, not unlike Himyra save that it was built of an odd blue stone quarried from the mountains which ribbed the state in all directions. There was white stone, too, used in the governmental palace, and also in a splendid collection of buildings lying on a small plateau above the city proper. This was the National University of Tamarizia, as Jason quickly learned, once he was inside its walls. Endowed as he was with the peculiar ability of reading the words of the people by reason of his sublimated state, he found this school a wonderful means of quickly gaining all knowledge of the nation which he desired to know.
He literally went to school, an unknown scholar who listened to the recitation of classes and the lectures of grave professorial men clad in long robes of spotless white. Geography held his interest mainly at first. He learned that Tamarizia lay upon a continent holding itself completely surrounded save for the narrow strait, a vast central sea, studded here and there with islands, the major of which, Hiranur, some fifty miles long by twenty wide, was the seat of the imperial throne at the city of Zitra, of which Jadgor had made mention before. The Tamarizian states bordered this central ocean—or had done so before the Zollarian war had wrested Mazhur, on the extreme north shore, from the original group of states.
East of Mazhur lay Bithur. South of that was Milidhur, completing the eastern side of the Central Sea. Aphur joined Milidhur on the west—its name literally meaning "the state to the west," and south of Milidhur and Aphur was Nodhur, gaining outlet for its commerce by means of the river Na.
Cathur lay west of Mazhur, north of the strait, to the outer ocean, completing the circle. Its name might be translated as the battle-ground, which, in fact, it was, Zollaria having more than once sought to conquer it and lost because of the nature of its mountainous terrain. Having learned so much, he could readily see wherein the possession of this state would give Zollaria the freedom of the seas, which she desired, and a joint control of the entire Central Sea.
From geography he turned to sociology and science. He found out quickly that the Tamarizians used a metric system, numbering their population by tens and dividing the national census on the basis of thousands and tens of thousands, each thousand unit having a captain and each ten thousand a local governor. Their day was twenty-seven hours long, their year longer than that of earth, but divided into twelve periods or months, each in their belief ruled over by an angel designated by a symbolic sign.
They believed in the immortality of the soul, as he had learned the first day. They believed in the resurrection of the dead. They used a system of social castes, to which the naturalized descendants of the Mazzerian nations belonged, being purely a caste of the lowest or serving type. The trades of fathers descended to sons, instruction in crafts and arts being largely by word of mouth alone. They had a bard or minstrel caste, a caste of dancers wholly female in its circle.
A Palosian year was called a cycle, a day a sun, a month a Zitran—or period set by Zitu, the national God. There was a priesthood and a vestal order of women. Also, there was an order of knighthood, to which belonged men of noble blood or those raised to it by kingly decree for some signal accomplishment in the arts or sciences or some other service to the state.
The royal house of each state was hereditary, but governed jointly with a state assembly elected by the vote of each ten thousand unit of population, each unit selecting a state delegate to the assembly. The imperial throne was filled by the choice of the states, as he had once before heard Jadgor, of Aphur, say.
Agriculture was highly held and greatly specialized. Metal working was a very advanced science, as he had already guessed. Copper was abundant, and the Tamarizians held the secret of tempering the metal, now unknown on earth. Of it they made their weapons and most of their public structural metal, including their carriages and chariots and all conveyances of a finer sort. Gold was plentiful, too. But silver and lead were rare and held in high esteem. Steam and electricity were unknown in their application, as Croft had already seen.
They had reached a high plane in art, sculpture and weaving. He discovered that the golden cloth was actually gold spun into threads and mixed with a vegetable fiber to form warp and wool. There was also a medical caste, somewhat crude, but seemingly efficient, so far as he could learn, and attached to it a female or nursing caste, consisting wholly again of women, who entered it from choice. In fact, women, as he came to see, held a prominent place in the nation. They held the right of suffrage. Their citizenship was coequal with their men. They sat in the class-rooms of the university, as he actually saw, and even took part in public ceremonials and competed in the public games.
All in all, before his week at Scira was past, he had come to understand that Tamarizia was a very democratic nation despite its form of royal rulership, and that the emperor of Zitra was little more than a relic of old-time government, with little more power than a republican president.
And that, like most republics, the nation had grown weak in the pursuit of the profession arms, he had to admit that Jadgor was right. Each city had a sort of civic guard—each unit of ten thousand possessed a military police. There was an imperial guard at Zitra of possibly five hundred men. Civic guards, imperial guards and police, the national maximum force none too well armed or trained would not be judged as aggregating over fifty thousand effective men.
To the north of Tamarizia lay Zollaria, her western shore line that of the great or outer ocean. Like Tamarizia, Zollaria was a nation of whites, differing, however, in their national regime and their physical appearance to no small degree. As Jadgor had said to Lakkon, theirs was a rule of absolutism, first and last, with the governing class distinct from the common people in each detail of their life.
Larger than Tamarizia, Zollaria looked with envy on the position of the country to the south. Fifty years before she had sought to change it and failed. Yet Jadgor was assured she had not laid aside her ambition, and Croft was inclined to agree.
The Zollarians themselves were a light-haired race, to a great extent, heavily built, strong, virile, sturdy, many of them blue-eyed, except in the southern part of the nation, where they approached more nearly to the Tamarizian type.
East of Tamarizia and south of Zollaria, in the hinterland of the continent on which the three nations lived, was the half-savage tribe of Mazzer, the blue men, inhabiting a region consisting mainly of semitropic forests and plains, living largely by hunting and the exporting of skins and dried meats and natural fruits, together with a variety of cheese. In these articles they maintained commerce with Zollaria and Tamarizia, along their adjoining borders, and had done so for years. Commerce was entirely by water in such boats as Croft had seen on the Na, and by means of the sarpelca caravans across stretches of desert to regions not approachable by the streams.
That week in school proved a rather peculiar experience to Croft. He came to feel actually at home in Scira. Without being seen or known he came to know the youths of the various classes.
And to one in particular he gave special note. He was a wonderful man in so far as physique was concerned. He stood a good six feet in height and was built in perfect proportion. In the games and sports he always excelled because of his splendid strength. And there he ceased. Mentally he was not the equal of those with whom he strove.
Nature seemed to have left her task uncompleted so far as Jasor was concerned. That was his name—Jasor, from Nodhur, the state to the south of Aphur as Croft learned by degrees. He was a lovable young man, mild-mannered, friendly and kind. But he was rated in his studies with youths two years his juniors and appeared unable to do more than maintain his standing with them. Watching him, Croft felt both pity and interest develop through the course of the seven days wherein he himself acquired so great an understanding of Palosian life.
It seemed a pity to Croft that one so splendidly endowed with physical perfection should be so mentally weak. He rather followed young Jasor about and discovered to his pleasure that although seemingly well provided with means the youth was naturally of a cleanly life. More than that, through association with him, he came to know that Jasor felt his position acutely, and was brooding over his own mental capacity to an unwise degree.
Throughout his stay in Cathur, however, Croft did not lose sight of his main object in coming to the northern state. He had come to find and judge Kyphallos for himself, and he attended to that, not the first night, as he had intended, but the next night after that. There was a reason for the delay. Kyphallos was not in Scira when Croft came to the capital of Cathur. Jason managed to see Scythys the king. He found him in a splendid room clad in a loose robe of scarlet, a senile husk of a once massive man, with a look of vague trouble in his half-blinded cataract-filmed eyes. But of Kyphallos the son there was no sign.
Only by chance remarks was Croft able to learn the whereabouts of the prince. By such means he finally learned of a second palace maintained on an island in the Central Sea, off the coast of Cathur, not far from the border of the former Tamarizian state of Mazhur. The island was known as Anthra, was a part of the state of Cathur, and a favorite retreat with the crown prince.
To Anthra on the second night Croft went. And on Anthra he plunged into such a scene as he had not met in Tamarizia as yet. Heretofore he had been struck with the mild beauty of Palosian life, with a sort of personal dignity which seemed to pervade the nation, despite the magnificence of their public structures and the undoubted wealth of the state.
Not but what, being human, there was a percentage of criminality in the social life. Such things, as among other races, were known and recognized, but he had found it here regulated to a surprising extent.
On Anthra, he came into an atmosphere the antithesis of this, combined with a degree of voluptuous luxury, cradled in a setting of utter magnificence.
He came upon a saturnalia of pleasure. He could liken it to nothing else. A feast was in progress in the palace Kyphallos had made the scene of his private debauches for years.
Above an artificial harbor as calm as glass, the palace rose an imposing pile. At the quays of the harbor their colored sails picked out by flaming fire-urns, their gilded hulls set asparkle in the flicker of the light-giving flames, lay a number of elaborate pleasure craft more like gold and copper galleys than anything else.
Steps led up from the stone quays to the palace proper, giving on a wide expanse of crystal flagging, under a heavy portico supported by pillars of lemon-yellow stone. And beyond this through wide airy arches was the main court, in the center of which was a pool of limpid water, some fifty feet long, by as many wide.
Like the other Palosian palaces this central court was the main gathering place of the inmates and guests. On Anthra the structure was flagged in a pale-green stone. The pillars supporting the balcony about it were lemon-yellow, and the stairways at either end of a clear translucent blue. Innumerable oil-lamps lighted it this night, and about one corner of the central pool were arranged the tables for the feast.
Here Croft found the man he sought, reclining on a padded divan, his too full red lips slightly parted in a bibulous smile, his long hair curled and anointed and perfumed till he reeked of aromatic scents; his well-formed hands loaded with rings, his body clad in a crimson garment, embroidered in gold.
Beside him, lying outstretched like some splendid creature of the jungle as it came to Croft, was a woman; tawny as a lioness in the tint of her hair and heavy-lidded eyes, lithe as a lioness, too, in every sensuous line of her body, well-nigh unclothed.
Her sandalless feet were stained on the soles with crimson. Anklets gripped her lower limbs, and tinkled tiny golden bells as she moved. Bracelets banded her graceful naked arms. Gem-incrusted cups, fastened by jeweled bands covered in part her breasts. A bit of gold gauze, studded with bright red stones, accentuated rather than veiled the rest of her perfect figure from waist to the bend of her knees. She lay there close to Kyphallos and after a bit she lifted a golden goblet and pressed it to his lips and laughed.
Beyond her was a man, Croft marked at a glance. He was heavy, gross; yet gave an impression of mighty strength in the size of his hairy arms, the pillars of his mighty limbs, the breadth of his shoulder and chest. And he, too, was tawny haired.
And on the other side of Kyphallos was a figure to give Croft pause. A blue warrior sat there; but surely no member of the serving class, Jason thought. This man was never made to serve. His were the features of one who commands, strong, firm-lipped, high-cheeked, with almost a somnolent sneer in the expression of his mouth and the glint of his eyes as he turned them on Kyphallos and the woman by his side. This was some Mazzerian chief—here in the palace of Cathur's prince. Who then were the tawny woman and man, Croft asked himself, and found he was soon to know.
For as the woman laughed Kyphallos spoke. "Your laughter is music better than any I can offer, my Kalamita. Since first I heard it in Niera, the time I met you there with your brother, Bandhor, I have longed to hear it more. Your graciousness in coming to this farewell feast, ere I sail for Aphur, burdens me with debt. Yet were I loath to have sailed without a final sight of you—a parting word. And I have provided such entertainment as I might."
"As you do always, Prince of Aphur," his companion responded. "Is it not true, Bandhor, my brother, that we are honored to be present when Cathur desires?"
"Aye. Wine, food, music, and women. What more can a man desire?" the massive individual at whom she smiled over her rounded shoulder replied. "When Cathur returns, he must come to our house at Niera as he has done before. There are others of Zollaria I desire him to meet, as well as other men of Mazzer, besides the noble Bazd, whom we made bold to bring with us tonight."
As he finished the blue man smiled, and Kyphallos picking up his own goblet of wine passed it to the Mazzerian with a languid grace. "Thy friends are my friends, O Bandhor of Zollaria!" he exclaimed, and bending close to the face of the girl said: "Shall I come when I return from Aphur?"
And as he gazed upon her the heavy lids slowly contracted until her eyes narrowed to slits. Then they shot up, fully open, and she flashed him a smile. "Aye, my Kyphallos, unless you desire me to suffer, come when you return."
Kyphallos took back the cup from which Bazd, the Mazzerian, had drunk and drained it at a gulp. "I shall come," he shouted and clapped his hands. "Let the entertainment begin!"
After that Croft could only watch and marvel at what he beheld. A sound of harps burst forth. Golden and scarlet curtains drew apart at one end of the immense court. He caught a glimpse of moving figures behind them, and then—fifty dancing girls broke forth.
Swaying, posturing, gesturing they moved down the hall toward the tables. At first they were clothed. But as they advanced they dropped veil after veil from their posturing bodies, until they gleamed white and pink swinging figures, caught in the eddies of the dance. Closer and closer they came. They reached the tables themselves. They sprang upon them. They danced among the remnants of the feast. The hands of the guests—other companions of Cathur's prince, reached toward them—sought to capture them and draw them down upon the divans.
And then the music ceased. Crying aloud the dancers leaped from the table into the pool. Like nymphs they swam across it and disappeared behind a curtain of flowers and shrubs at the farther end. Yet in a moment they were back, dragging what looked like a monster shell in which sat the figure of an aged man, carrying yet another shell in his hand, and wearing a long green robe.
This they launched in the pool, and seizing ropes fastened to it they swam back toward the tables towing it along. At the corner of the pool they clustered on each side, while the aged passenger rose and stepped to land.
Kyphallos rose, too. "Hail Kronhor—Ruler of the Seas!" he exclaimed. "I am about to entrust myself to your domain for a journey to the south. What fare may I expect?"
"Good, O Prince of Cathur," the aged one returned. "I shall instruct all handmaids to wait upon you and steer your ship in safety, even as they have brought me into your presence tonight."
Kyphallos filled a goblet with wine and held it out.
He who played Kronhor took it.
"Drink!" the Cathurian cried. "Cathur does honor to Kronhor—thus."
Kalamita sprang to her feet. She filled other goblets, swiftly motioning the others about the tables to do the same. "Drink!" her voice rang out. "Drink to Kronhor. Drink to Kyphallos and the safety of his voyage."
The toast was drunk. Kronhor made his adieus and was towed back to the other side of the pool. Kalamita was leaning with both hands locked over Kyphallos's shoulder. "Tell me," she whispered. "Why does Jadgor of Aphur ask your presence, my friend?"
"I know not," said the Cathurian prince. "Some business of state, no doubt, to which I must attend for my father, who grows feeble with age as you know."
The dancing girls were hauling the shell from the pool. They made what looked like a straining group in pink bisque.
"It was a pretty play," Kalamita murmured. "Did you design it, Kyphallos? I know from the past you are clever."
The man turned and looked once more into her eyes. "I designed it—I planned it to amuse—you."
Croft turned away. He had seen enough. This was the man to whom it was planned to give the woman he—Jason Croft—loved; that sweet, pure Naia of Aphur who had knelt two nights ago in appeal before Azil the Angel of Life. This scented sensualist, caught fast in the charms of a Zollarian woman, of a type Croft could not mistake. Jadgor had hinted at something like this in his talk with Lakkon two days before. And tonight—on the eve of his departure of Aphur, Kyphallos of Cathur sat as the host of the enemies of his land. Surely Jadgor had reason for the fears he had expressed. Surely here was food for serious thought.