Ptah turned back. "Hail emperor, favorite of Bel," he said, bending his heavy neck to incline his head to Panthor.
Panthor's expression changed. He drew himself up to his fullest height. Already he seemed to sense the weight of authority upon him as he answered. "By Bel—O Ptah—thou and I together once Helmor sits no more upon the throne."
CHAPTER X
THE ATTACK
Ten days, at most twelve, before Helmor's spurious sign should be cut on a lying stone. And then one would bear it down to that dungeon where Naia waited a promised rescue, and with it as authority demand the child. And after that? Croft sickened as he left Ptah's chamber—sickened at the thought of what might have happened save for Maia's listening ear as she lay on the straw inside the door of the dungeon—Naia's mention of the words the blue girl had overheard to him.
But—suddenly he stiffened. In ten days a great deal might be done. Helmor might be warned as he had said to Naia—or—the rescue might actually be performed.
Helmor might be warned as before in a dream—yet to make plain to the Zollarian monarch all by which he was threatened, it would need to be an elaborate dream indeed. And to speed the blimps to Berla would necessitate a start with crews but illy trained.
And even were Helmor warned, how much would it avail, when his mind was matched against that of Kalamita, unless he might be induced to act directly against her, unless she and Bandhor and Panthor were arrested and confined? And could such a warning as Croft was able to give inspire the man on Zollaria's throne to such a move—or if it did so, would it not precipitate internal troubles in Berla, perhaps as fatal to Croft's own purpose as Kalamita's schemes? Torn on the horns of such a dilemma, his spirit writhed.
In the end he made his way back to the palace and into Helmor's chamber. The man would be asleep, he fancied, but once he had gained his apartments he met with a surprise. Far from sleep, Zollaria's emperor sat in consultation with Gazar, the soothsayer he had summoned to him the night of his first dream of danger, and a man Croft had once defeated on a bloody field, and learned later to know by sight at the end of the first Zollarian war as Helmon, Helmor's son.