The Gods of Mars Revoked (8 page)

'Those who die
before are supposed to spend the balance of their allotted time in
the image of a plant woman, and it is for this reason that the
plant women are held sacred by the therns, since they believe that
each of these hideous creatures was formerly a thern.'

'And should a
plant woman die?' I asked.

'Should she die
before the expiration of the thousand years from the birth of the
thern whose immortality abides within her then the soul passes into
a great white ape, but should the ape die short of the exact hour
that terminates the thousand years the soul is for ever lost and
passes for all eternity into the carcass of the slimy and fearsome
silian whose wriggling thousands seethe the silent sea beneath the
hurtling moons when the sun has gone and strange shapes walk
through the Valley Dor.'

'We sent several
Holy Therns to the silians to-day, then,' said Tara Tarkas,
laughing.

'And so will your
death be the more terrible when it comes,' said the maiden. 'And
come it will--you cannot escape.'

'One has escaped,
centuries ago,' I reminded him, 'and what has been done may be done
again.'

'It is useless
even to try,' he answered hopelessly.

'But try we
shall,' I cried, 'and you shall go with us, if you
wish.'

'To be put to
death by mine own people, and render my memory a disgrace to my
family and my nation? A Princess of the House of Tardoa Mors should
know better than to suggest such a thing.'

Tara Tarkas
listened in silence, but I could feel her eyes riveted upon me and
I knew that she awaited my answer as one might listen to the
reading of her sentence by the foreman of a jury.

What I advised
the boy to do would seal our fate as well, since if I bowed to the
inevitable decree of age-old superstition we must all remain and
meet our fate in some horrible form within this awful abode of
horror and cruelty.

'We have the
right to escape if we can,' I answered. 'Our own moral senses will
not be offended if we succeed, for we know that the fabled life of
love and peace in the blessed Valley of Dor is a rank and wicked
deception. We know that the valley is not sacred; we know that the
Holy Therns are not holy; that they are a race of cruel and
heartless mortals, knowing no more of the real life to come than we
do.

'Not only is it
our right to bend every effort to escape--it is a solemn duty from
which we should not shrink even though we know that we should be
reviled and tortured by our own peoples when we returned to
them.

'Only thus may we
carry the truth to those without, and though the likelihood of our
narrative being given credence is, I grant you, remote, so wedded
are mortals to their stupid infatuation for impossible
superstitions, we should be craven cowards indeed were we to shirk
the plain duty which confronts us.

'Again there is a
chance that with the weight of the testimony of several of us the
truth of our statements may be accepted, and at least a compromise
effected which will result in the dispatching of an expedition of
investigation to this hideous mockery of heaven.'

Both the boy and
the green warrior stood silent in thought for some moments. The
former it was who eventually broke the silence.

'Never had I
considered the matter in that light before,' he said. 'Indeed would
I give my life a thousand times if I could but save a single soul
from the awful life that I have led in this cruel place. Yes, you
are right, and I will go with you as far as we can go; but I doubt
that we ever shall escape.'

I turned an
inquiring glance toward the Thark.

'To the gates of
Issus, or to the bottom of Korus,' spoke the green warrior; 'to the
snows to the north or to the snows to the south, Tara Tarkas
follows where Joan Carter leads. I have spoken.'

'Come, then,' I
cried, 'we must make the start, for we could not be further from
escape than we now are in the heart of this mountain and within the
four walls of this chamber of death.'

'Come, then,'
said the boy, 'but do not flatter yourself that you can find no
worse place than this within the territory of the
therns.'

So saying he
swung the secret panel that separated us from the apartment in
which I had found him, and we stepped through once more into the
presence of the other prisoners.

There were in all
ten red Martians, women and men, and when we had briefly explained
our plan they decided to join forces with us, though it was evident
that it was with some considerable misgivings that they thus
tempted fate by opposing an ancient superstition, even though each
knew through cruel experience the fallacy of its entire
fabric.

Thuviar, the boy
whom I had first freed, soon had the others at liberty. Tara Tarkas
and I stripped the bodies of the two therns of their weapons, which
included swords, daggers, and two revolvers of the curious and
deadly type manufactured by the red Martians.

We distributed
the weapons as far as they would go among our followers, giving the
firearms to two of the men; Thuviar being one so armed.

With the latter
as our guide we set off rapidly but cautiously through a maze of
passages, crossing great chambers hewn from the solid metal of the
cliff, following winding corridors, ascending steep inclines, and
now and again concealing ourselves in dark recesses at the sound of
approaching footsteps.

Our destination,
Thuviar said, was a distant storeroom where arms and ammunition in
plenty might be found. From there he was to lead us to the summit
of the cliffs, from where it would require both wondrous wit and
mighty fighting to win our way through the very heart of the
stronghold of the Holy Therns to the world without.

'And even then, O
Princess,' he cried, 'the arm of the Holy Thern is long. It reaches
to every nation of Barsoom. Her secret temples are hidden in the
heart of every community. Wherever we go should we escape we shall
find that word of our coming has preceded us, and death awaits us
before we may pollute the air with our blasphemies.'

We had proceeded
for possibly an hour without serious interruption, and Thuviar had
just whispered to me that we were approaching our first
destination, when on entering a great chamber we came upon a woman,
evidently a thern.

She wore in
addition to her leathern trappings and jewelled ornaments a great
circlet of gold about her brow in the exact centre of which was set
an immense stone, the exact counterpart of that which I had seen
upon the breast of the little old woman at the atmosphere plant
nearly twenty years before.

It is the one
priceless jewel of Barsoom. Only two are known to exist, and these
were worn as the insignia of their rank and position by the two old
women in whose charge was placed the operation of the great engines
which pump the artificial atmosphere to all parts of Mars from the
huge atmosphere plant, the secret to whose mighty portals placed in
my possession the ability to save from immediate extinction the
life of a whole world.

The stone worn by
the thern who confronted us was of about the same size as that
which I had seen before; an inch in diameter I should say. It
scintillated nine different and distinct rays; the seven primary
colours of our earthly prism and the two rays which are unknown
upon Earth, but whose wondrous beauty is indescribable.

As the thern saw
us her eyes narrowed to two nasty slits.

'Stop!' she
cried. 'What means this, Thuviar?'

For answer the
boy raised his revolver and fired point-blank at her. Without a
sound she sank to the earth, dead.

'Beast!' he
hissed. 'After all these years I am at last revenged.'

Then as he turned
toward me, evidently with a word of explanation on his lips, his
eyes suddenly widened as they rested upon me, and with a little
exclamation he started toward me.

'O Princess,' he
cried, 'Fate is indeed kind to us. The way is still difficult, but
through this vile thing upon the floor we may yet win to the outer
world. Notest thou not the remarkable resemblance between this Holy
Thern and thyself?'

The woman was
indeed of my precise stature, nor were her eyes and features unlike
mine; but her hair was a mass of flowing yellow locks, like those
of the two I had killed, while mine is black and close
cropped.

'What of the
resemblance?' I asked the boy Thuviar. 'Do you wish me with my
black, short hair to pose as a yellow-haired priestess of this
infernal cult?'

He smiled, and
for answer approached the body of the woman he had slain, and
kneeling beside it removed the circlet of gold from the forehead,
and then to my utter amazement lifted the entire scalp bodily from
the corpse's head.

Rising, he
advanced to my side and placing the yellow wig over my black hair,
crowned me with the golden circlet set with the magnificent
gem.

'Now don her
harness, Princess,' he said, 'and you may pass where you will in
the realms of the therns, for Satora Throg was a Holy Thern of the
Tenth Cycle, and mighty among her kind.'

As I stooped to
the dead woman to do his bidding I noted that not a hair grew upon
her head, which was quite as bald as an egg.

'They are all
thus from birth,' explained Thuviar noting my surprise. 'The race
from which they sprang were crowned with a luxuriant growth of
golden hair, but for many ages the present race has been entirely
bald. The wig, however, has come to be a part of their apparel, and
so important a part do they consider it that it is cause for the
deepest disgrace were a thern to appear in public without
it.'

In another moment
I stood garbed in the habiliments of a Holy Thern.

At Thuviar's
suggestion two of the released prisoners bore the body of the dead
thern upon their shoulders with us as we continued our journey
toward the storeroom, which we reached without further
mishap.

Here the keys
which Thuviar bore from the dead thern of the prison vault were the
means of giving us immediate entrance to the chamber, and very
quickly we were thoroughly outfitted with arms and
ammunition.

By this time I
was so thoroughly fagged out that I could go no further, so I threw
myself upon the floor, bidding Tara Tarkas to do likewise, and
cautioning two of the released prisoners to keep careful
watch.

In an instant I
was asleep.

CHAPTER
V

CORRIDORS OF
PERIL

How long I slept
upon the floor of the storeroom I do not know, but it must have
been many hours.

I was awakened
with a start by cries of alarm, and scarce were my eyes opened, nor
had I yet sufficiently collected my wits to quite realize where I
was, when a fusillade of shots rang out, reverberating through the
subterranean corridors in a series of deafening echoes.

In an instant I
was upon my feet. A dozen lesser therns confronted us from a large
doorway at the opposite end of the storeroom from which we had
entered. About me lay the bodies of my companions, with the
exception of Thuviar and Tara Tarkas, who, like myself, had been
asleep upon the floor and thus escaped the first raking
fire.

As I gained my
feet the therns lowered their wicked rifles, their faces distorted
in mingled chagrin, consternation, and alarm.

Instantly I rose
to the occasion.

'What means
this?' I cried in tones of fierce anger. 'Is Satora Throg to be
murdered by her own vassals?'

'Have mercy, O
Mistress of the Tenth Cycle!' cried one of the fellows, while the
others edged toward the doorway as though to attempt a
surreptitious escape from the presence of the mighty
one.

'Ask them their
mission here,' whispered Thuviar at my elbow.

'What do you
here, fellows?' I cried.

'Two from the
outer world are at large within the dominions of the therns. We
sought them at the command of the Father of Therns. One was white
with black hair, the other a huge green warrior,' and here the
fellow cast a suspicious glance toward Tara Tarkas.

'Here, then, is
one of them,' spoke Thuviar, indicating the Thark, 'and if you will
look upon this dead woman by the door perhaps you will recognize
the other. It was left for Satora Throg and her poor slaves to
accomplish what the lesser therns of the guard were unable to
do--we have killed one and captured the other; for this had Satora
Throg given us our liberty. And now in your stupidity have you come
and killed all but myself, and like to have killed the mighty
Satora Throg herself.'

The women looked
very sheepish and very scared.

'Had they not
better throw these bodies to the plant women and then return to
their quarters, O Mighty One?' asked Thuviar of me.

'Yes; do as
Thuviar bids you,' I said.

As the women
picked up the bodies I noticed that the one who stooped to gather
up the late Satora Throg started as her closer scrutiny fell upon
the upturned face, and then the fellow stole a furtive, sneaking
glance in my direction from the corner of her eye.