Argosy All-Story Weekly, April 16, 1921 — page 25: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

16 answer in the grip of full realization, “you'll see without being seen, but—after it’s over—Naia wants to meet you astrally at least. Will you come?” Naia wanted to meet me. After the thing was over and the others were gone, we three would meet as Croft and I were meet- ing now and establish a personal relation. “Will I?” I exclaimed, ‘“ Well, rather,” Croft smiled. “It will be a somewhat brilliant spectacle. You'll enjoy it,” he declared. We talked for an hour after that, before he vanished, and I found myself sitting bolt upright in bed, staring into the darkness and filled with the firm conviction that on the second night from this I would witness the christening of Jason’s son, CHAPTER IV. THE CHRISTENING, HAT conviction went with me during the two succeeding days and it was with the positive expectation of its fulfillment that I locked myself in my room and stretched myself out on my bed the second night. I lay there and fixed my mind on the home of Lakkon in Himyra—the great red city of Aphur, where Croft had said ‘the ceremony would occur. I pictured it even as I had pictured Jason’s home in the moun- tains, its splendid court paved with the purest of rock-crystal, he had fancied glass . when first he saw it, its circling balcony reached at either end of the court by ane onyxlike stairs. I focused every vestige of my will on reaching to it, and—suddenly—it seemed that I heard Croft calling me just as he had said he would do; the sense of light- ness, of untrammeled freedom I had ex- perienced on the other occasion came upon me—and—1I was there Light, color. They were all around me. The flawless crystal of the floor caught the radiance from the lights abeve them in a million facets, broke it into a myriad flashing pin-points of refraction until the whole, vast court seemed paved with a shimmering iridescent carpet. White was “ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. the balcony about it, and the pillars on which it was supported, and the gleaming bits of sculpture between. And the shrubs, the banks and hedges of vegetation, in the unpaved beds of the court were green, saye that they were blooming, loaded down with flowers everywhere. Tables a-glitter with gold and glass stretched down the central portion of the sparkling pavement in the form of three sides of a rectangle, with a purple-draped dais at the closed end. Guests thronged — the vast apartment, seated on chairs of wine-red wood’ or reclining on couches in- terspersed among the beds of flowering vegetation. Nodding plumes of every hue and shade graced the heads of the women. Of every grade of richness were their jewel- embroidered robes. Nor were their men- folk any whit behind them in. the lavish ornamentation their tunics or metal cuiras- ses displayed. ' Men and women, they were like birds of brilliant plumage, and as the lights struck down upon them, save for the gleam of the ‘bared arms and shoulders and upper busts of the women, the glint of their fair limbs through the intricate slashings of their leg- casings and sandals of softest leathers, the rose tint of their knees, they blazed. A babble of yoices—the rhythm of music from concealed harps, was in the room,. I in- dulged in a single comprehensive glance and looked about for my hosts. But I did not find them anywhere among their guests. Nor did Jason appear to greet me, though that I did not expect. We had arranged between us that he should summon me just before the ceremony occurred, and that we would meet only after the depar- ture of the guests. Hence, failing to gk either Croft or Naia or even Lakkon, I made shift for myself. A trumpet blared with a softened tongue. I became aware of a page in purple gar- ments, standing with the instrument at his lips, on the topmost tread of one of the flights of yellow stairs. The thrum of the hidden harps quick- ened,’ The assembled company rose. They stood and faced the stairway where now, something in the nature of a ceremonial procession show 1A cCoOnmicloool< (©