Croft marveled. To him she seemed to think of each infinitesimal detail. "No," he gave his promise. "I shall be merely as one who from one sun to another fails."
Naia lifted her lips. And as once before in similar fashion, she yielded them to him. For an instant it was as though their two beings blended, intermingled, and then she had torn herself from him, divinely glowing. "Zitu keep you, beloved," she whispered, and vanished from before his eyes.
For the succeeding seven days Croft endured—simply endured discomfort—the trussing up of his arms and feet at night in none too gentle fashion, the scant irregularity of poorly furnished meals, the absence of aught save trampled grass to sleep upon, renewed attempts on the part of Bandhor to force from him some intimation of Tamarizia's plans—the haughty, venomous hate that glared out of Kalamita's tawny eyes—that fury of a woman of the purely physical type, whose allurement has been scorned—of an adventuress, a schemer, whose scheme has failed.
But on the seventh day, as he lay brooding in his tent, close by the huge skin headquarters tent of Bandhor, which reminded him more of some Tatar chieftain's domicile than anything else, with its hide walls, its semibarbaric trappings, its red-and-green standard floating on a pole before its door, the door of his own tent was drawn slightly to one side and a face appeared to send his heart leaping into his breast.
Maia, Naia's own maid, was looking shrewdly into his starting eyes. And as lost in a maze he lay staring at her, filled with a vast wonder at her presence here in the heart of the Mazzerian camp, yet afraid to speak—torn between a desire to learn the meaning of her presence and a fear lest any sign of recognition should destroy whatever purpose that presence might portend, she flung the flap entirely back and darted inside.
"Thou canor of Tamarizia!" she cried in the voice of a termagant—a shrew—and struck him with her right hand a smart blow. "Thou foul offspring of Zitu fallen to the ground—thou devil who sent fire against my people, whose own people have cast him off, die—like the canor thou art!" And all the time she was shrieking she continued to buffet him with blows, striking him with her bare hand, kicking him with her feet. "Die, thou pale-faced fiend, whom Bel—greater than thy Zitu struck down and hurled among us—die—die now!"
But Croft, under the storm of her words, her buffetings, made no movement of resistance, lay limp and unresisting on the grass. Because even as she struck him, even as she lashed him with her tongue, calling him fiend and devil and canor—the name of the great beasts such as Naia's pet and protector, Hupor, which was the nearest approach in Palos to a dog; yet as her one hand rose and fell above him, her other drew from the narrow apron about her blue loins a little looped silver cross, and showed it to him briefly and thrust it back, and between the anathema of her lips they moved in almost soundless speaking. "Hupor—give ear to my berating of thee closely. I come from one who loves thee greatly—to show you the cross."
The cross ansata—the looped symbol of life—the little sign Zud had placed in Naia's hands at their betrothal—the sign of immortal life which came to men through women—Naia of Aphur was sending it by this servant of hers, who loved her, to him! He closed his eyes and nodded slightly in understanding as Maia continued to rave. Only now his brain was whirling, seething; was a caldron of troubled questions he dared not voice—questions as to why Maia had been sent to aid in his escape, as he felt sure now she had. Yet to question the girl was impossible under the present conditions, and what was she screaming?
"Die—thou canor—die as Bandhor has decreed thou must, since Jadgor has refused thy ransom! Die now—thou Tamarizian dog!"