The Chessmen of Mars (30 page)

Gahan, his curiosity aroused by the legends surrounding this
portion of the palace, crossed to the dais to examine the figure
that apparently had fallen from it, to find the dried and
shrivelled corpse of a man lying upon his back on the floor with
arms outstretched and fingers stiffly outspread. One of his feet
was doubled partially beneath him, while the other was still
entangled in the sleeping silks and furs upon the dais. After
five thousand years the expression of the withered face and the
eyeless sockets retained the aspect of horrid fear to such an
extent, that Gahan knew that he was looking upon the body of
O-Mai the Cruel.

Suddenly Tara, who stood close beside him, clutched his arm and
pointed toward a far corner of the room. Gahan looked and looking
felt the hairs upon his neck rising. He threw his left arm about
the girl and with bared sword stood between her and the hangings
that they watched, and then slowly Gahan of Gathol backed away,
for in this grim and somber chamber, which no human foot had trod
for five thousand years and to which no breath of wind might
enter, the heavy hangings in the far corner had moved. Not gently
had they moved as a draught might have moved them had there been
a draught, but suddenly they had bulged out as though pushed
against from behind. To the opposite corner backed Gahan until
they stood with their backs against the hangings there, and then
hearing the approach of their pursuers across the chamber beyond
Gahan pushed Tara through the hangings and, following her, kept
open with his left hand, which he had disengaged from the girl's
grasp, a tiny opening through which he could view the apartment
and the doorway upon the opposite side through which the pursuers
would enter, if they came this far.

Behind the hangings there was a space of about three feet in
width between them and the wall, making a passageway entirely
around the room, broken only by the single entrance opposite
them; this being a common arrangement especially in the sleeping
apartments of the rich and powerful upon Barsoom. The purposes of
this arrangement were several. The passageway afforded a station
for guards in the same room with their master without intruding
entirely upon his privacy; it concealed secret exits from the
chamber; it permitted the occupant of the room to hide
eavesdroppers and assassins for use against enemies that he might
lure to his chamber.

The three chiefs with a dozen warriors had had no difficulty in
following the tracks of the fugitives through the dust of the
corridors and chambers they had traversed. To enter this portion
of the palace at all had required all the courage they possessed,
and now that they were within the very chambers of O-Mai their
nerves were pitched to the highest key—another turn and they
would snap; for the people of Manator are filled with weird
superstitions. As they entered the outer chamber they moved
slowly, with drawn swords, no one seeming anxious to take the
lead, and the twelve warriors hanging back in unconcealed and
shameless terror, while the three chiefs, spurred on by fear of
O-Tar and by pride, pressed together for mutual encouragement as
they slowly crossed the dimly-lighted room.

Following the tracks of Gahan and Tara they found that though
each doorway had been approached only one threshold had been
crossed and this door they gingerly opened, revealing to their
astonished gaze the four warriors at the jetan table. For a
moment they were on the verge of flight, for though they knew
what they were, coming as they did upon them in this mysterious
and haunted suite, they were as startled as though they had
beheld the very ghosts of the departed. But they presently
regained their courage sufficiently to cross this chamber too and
enter the short passageway that led to the ancient sleeping
apartment of O-Mai the Cruel. They did not know that this awful
chamber lay just before them, or it were doubtful that they would
have proceeded farther; but they saw that those they sought had
come this way and so they followed, but within the gloomy
interior of the chamber they halted, the three chiefs urging
their followers, in low whispers, to close in behind them, and
there just within the entrance they stood until, their eyes
becoming accustomed to the dim light, one of them pointed
suddenly to the thing lying upon the floor with one foot tangled
in the coverings of the dais.

"Look!" he gasped. "It is the corpse of O-Mai! Ancestor of
ancestors! we are in the forbidden chamber." Simultaneously there
came from behind the hangings beyond the grewsome dead a hollow
moan followed by a piercing scream, and the hangings shook and
bellied before their eyes.

With one accord, chieftains and warriors, they turned and bolted
for the doorway; a narrow doorway, where they jammed, fighting
and screaming in an effort to escape. They threw away their
swords and clawed at one another to make a passage for escape;
those behind climbed upon the shoulders of those in front; and
some fell and were trampled upon; but at last they all got
through, and, the swiftest first, they bolted across the two
intervening chambers to the outer corridor beyond, nor did they
halt their mad retreat before they stumbled, weak and trembling,
into the banquet hall of O-Tar. At sight of them the warriors who
had remained with the jeddak leaped to their feet with drawn
swords, thinking that their fellows were pursued by many enemies;
but no one followed them into the room, and the three chieftains
came and stood before O-Tar with bowed heads and trembling knees.

"Well?" demanded the jeddak. "What ails you? Speak!"

"O-Tar," cried one of them when at last he could master his
voice. "When have we three failed you in battle or combat? Have
our swords been not always among the foremost in defense of your
safety and your honor?"

"Have I denied this?" demanded O-Tar.

"Listen, then, O Jeddak, and judge us with leniency. We followed
the two slaves to the apartments of O-Mai the Cruel. We entered
the accursed chambers and still we did not falter. We came at
last to that horrid chamber no human eye had scanned before in
fifty centuries and we looked upon the dead face of O-Mai lying
as he has lain for all this time. To the very death chamber of
O-Mai the Cruel we came and yet we were ready to go farther; when
suddenly there broke upon our horrified ears the moans and the
shrieking that mark these haunted chambers and the hangings moved
and rustled in the dead air. O-Tar, it was more than human nerves
could endure. We turned and fled. We threw away our swords and
fought with one another to escape. With sorrow, but without
shame, I tell it, for there be no man in all Manator that would
not have done the same. If these slaves be Corphals they are safe
among their fellow ghosts. If they be not Corphals, then already
are they dead in the chambers of O-Mai, and there may they rot
for all of me, for I would not return to that accursed spot for
the harness of a jeddak and the half of Barsoom for an empire. I
have spoken."

O-Tar knitted his scowling brows. "Are all my chieftains cowards
and cravens?" he demanded presently in sneering tones.

From among those who had not been of the searching party a
chieftain arose and turned a scowling face upon O-Tar.

"The jeddak knows," he said, "that in the annals of Manator her
jeddaks have ever been accounted the bravest of her warriors.
Where my jeddak leads I will follow, nor may any jeddak call me a
coward or a craven unless I refuse to go where he dares to go. I
have spoken."

After he had resumed his seat there was a painful silence, for
all knew that the speaker had challenged the courage of O-Tar the
Jeddak of Manator and all awaited the reply of their ruler. In
every mind was the same thought—O-Tar must lead them at once to
the chamber of O-Mai the Cruel, or accept forever the stigma of
cowardice, and there could be no coward upon the throne of
Manator. That they all knew and that O-Tar knew, as well.

But O-Tar hesitated. He looked about upon the faces of those
around him at the banquet board; but he saw only the grim visages
of relentless warriors. There was no trace of leniency in the
face of any. And then his eyes wandered to a small entrance at
one side of the great chamber. An expression of relief expunged
the scowl of anxiety from his features.

"Look!" he exclaimed. "See who has come!"

Gahan, watching through the aperture between the hangings, saw
the frantic flight of their pursuers. A grim smile rested upon
his lips as he viewed the mad scramble for safety and saw them
throw away their swords and fight with one another to be first
from the chamber of fear, and when they were all gone he turned
back toward Tara, the smile still upon his lips; but the smile
died the instant that he turned, for he saw that Tara had
disappeared.

"Tara!" he called in a loud voice, for he knew that there was no
danger that their pursuers would return; but there was no
response, unless it was a faint sound as of cackling laughter
from afar. Hurriedly he searched the passageway behind the
hangings finding several doors, one of which was ajar. Through
this he entered the adjoining chamber which was lighted more
brilliantly for the moment by the soft rays of hurtling Thuria
taking her mad way through the heavens. Here he found the dust
upon the floor disturbed, and the imprint of sandals. They had
come this way—Tara and whatever the creature was that had stolen
her.

But what could it have been? Gahan, a man of culture and high
intelligence, held few if any superstitions. In common with
nearly all races of Barsoom he clung, more or less inherently, to
a certain exalted form of ancestor worship, though it was rather
the memory or legends of the virtues and heroic deeds of his
forebears that he deified rather than themselves. He never
expected any tangible evidence of their existence after death; he
did not believe that they had the power either for good or for
evil other than the effect that their example while living might
have had upon following generations; he did not believe therefore
in the materialization of dead spirits. If there was a life
hereafter he knew nothing of it, for he knew that science had
demonstrated the existence of some material cause for every
seemingly supernatural phenomenon of ancient religions and
superstitions. Yet he was at a loss to know what power might have
removed Tara so suddenly and mysteriously from his side in a
chamber that had not known the presence of man for five thousand
years.

In the darkness he could not see whether there were the imprints
of other sandals than Tara's—only that the dust was
disturbed—and when it led him into gloomy corridors he lost the
trail altogether. A perfect labyrinth of passages and apartments
were now revealed to him as he hurried on through the deserted
quarters of O-Mai. Here was an ancient bath—doubtless that of
the jeddak himself, and again he passed through a room in which a
meal had been laid upon a table five thousand years before—the
untasted breakfast of O-Mai, perhaps. There passed before his
eyes in the brief moments that he traversed the chambers, a
wealth of ornaments and jewels and precious metals that surprised
even the Jed of Gathol whose harness was of diamonds and platinum
and whose riches were the envy of a world. But at last his search
of O-Mai's chambers ended in a small closet in the floor of which
was the opening to a spiral runway leading straight down into
Stygian darkness. The dust at the entrance of the closet had been
freshly disturbed, and as this was the only possible indication
that Gahan had of the direction taken by the abductor of Tara it
seemed as well to follow on as to search elsewhere. So, without
hesitation, he descended into the utter darkness below. Feeling
with a foot before taking a forward step his descent was
necessarily slow, but Gahan was a Barsoomian and so knew the
pitfalls that might await the unwary in such dark, forbidden
portions of a jeddak's palace.

He had descended for what he judged might be three full levels
and was pausing, as he occasionally did, to listen, when he
distinctly heard a peculiar shuffling, scraping sound approaching
him from below. Whatever the thing was it was ascending the
runway at a steady pace and would soon be near him. Gahan laid
his hand upon the hilt of his sword and drew it slowly from its
scabbard that he might make no noise that would apprise the
creature of his presence. He wished that there might be even the
slightest lessening of the darkness. If he could see but the
outline of the thing that approached him he would feel that he
had a fairer chance in the meeting; but he could see nothing, and
then because he could see nothing the end of his scabbard struck
the stone side of the runway, giving off a sound that the
stillness and the narrow confines of the passage and the darkness
seemed to magnify to a terrific clatter.

Instantly the shuffling sound of approach ceased. For a moment
Gahan stood in silent waiting, then casting aside discretion he
moved on again down the spiral. The thing, whatever it might be,
gave forth no sound now by which Gahan might locate it. At any
moment it might be upon him and so he kept his sword in
readiness. Down, ever downward the steep spiral led. The darkness
and the silence of the tomb surrounded him, yet somewhere ahead
was something. He was not alone in that horrid place—another
presence that he could not hear or see hovered before him—of
that he was positive. Perhaps it was the thing that had stolen
Tara. Perhaps Tara herself, still in the clutches of some
nameless horror, was just ahead of him. He quickened his pace—it
became almost a run at the thought of the danger that threatened
the woman he loved, and then he collided with a wooden door that
swung open to the impact. Before him was a lighted corridor. On
either side were chambers. He had advanced but a short distance
from the bottom of the spiral when he recognized that he was in
the pits below the palace. A moment later he heard behind him the
shuffling sound that had attracted his attention in the spiral
runway. Wheeling about he saw the author of the sound emerging
from a doorway he had just passed. It was Ghek the kaldane.