Croft drew her to him. His position was perhaps rather more peculiar than that of any living man. The answer to what she had asked was death, and he knew it. Once he had snapped the astral cord that bound him to a body, but only after control of another had been gained. And that second body, the one he had made his own on Palos when he forsook earth because of the woman whose vital substance now glowed and paled against him, was the one which lay bound beside them on the ground. There was no other—the loss of it meant to him what the loss of physical life must mean to all men—nothing else. "If the price is not paid, it is easy enough to snap the cord that binds my life within it, at the proper time," he said at length.
"And," said Naia in a tone of horror, "you would ask me in taking your message to Robur, in sending him to Jadgor, to consign our love to death?"
"The price," said Croft in justification, "is very great. Much will Mazzer ask—more than by Tamarizia can be paid for one man's life."
Swiftly the auric fires leaped up in Naia's slender figure. "Is there no escape?"
"I know not," Croft made answer. "It is as Zitu wills. These Zollarians with the men of Mazzer have stained themselves blue. Yet whom have I to stain my body, were the stain within my grasp, or shave my hair and dye it red in time to make the venture? This tent is under guard, and will be, and the hands of my body are bound."
Naia considered. "And the price Mazzer will ask," she spoke slowly after a time, "is large?"
"Aye, as large, I fear, as though the Zollarian war had been lost by Tamarizia and Mazhur not regained."
"And if not paid—your body—dies—and mine."
"Thine?" Croft tightened the grip of his arms upon her. "What mean you, maid of Aphur, by such words?"