"Go on. Get about your business," I told him. "I'll have the
information for you the next time we meet, if I can find a certain man."
The body beside which he had been sitting raised itself on the couch
and swung its feet around. It rose. "You've got to find him, man,"
Jason's physical voice told me without making the least break in the
conversation, as he began to dress. "You know, Murray, I can perceive
you dimly even so, and I can get your thought waves, of course--just as
Naia was able to do the same thing the night of Jason's birth--so if
you have any more suggestions to offer in what occurs inside the next
few hours, make them of course. I'm not exactly myself. My spirit is
still hot within me, where presently I think now it is going to grow
deadly cold."
He jerked the fastenings of his leg-casings into position and clasped
the belt of a short sword about him. "Now, I'm going before Zud first."
He turned to a door that slid back before his touch into a recess in
the massive wall. I followed him into a corridor, constructed top
and floor and sides of huge blocks and slabs of stone, lighted at
intervals by a lamp whose rays served to no more than partly dispel the
night-shrouding gloom. Age--age--the age of the pyramids of Egypt. The
thing impressed me. Countless generations had passed since mortal hands
had set those walls in position, where Jason's sandals now clanked
along the passage. And then he paused before another door, lifted his
sword, and rapped with its hilt for admittance. From somewhere a night
breeze sighed along the hall and stirred the plumes of azure on his
helmet.
"Who calls on Zud?" a voice came muffled through the door.
"Jason, Mouthpiece of Zitu, man of Zitu," Croft replied.
The door slid back. Zud stood before us, blinking aged eyes.
"Mouthpiece of Zitu," he questioned, "what does this visit betide?"
"Work of Zitemku and his agents," Croft said hoarsely, stepping inside
the high priest's apartments and pausing while Zud closed the door.
"Thou knowest of my sleeps, O man of Zitu--and what occurs at times
when my body lies sleeping, and how my spirit gains knowledge beyond
the power of most men in the gaining--for I have explained to thee, and
shown thee somewhat, O Zud, so that by thyself something of the same
power was attained," he went on.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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