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.