The Gods Of Mars (7 page)

“Because my friend fights there alone,” I answered, as I hastily sought
and found the keys upon the carcass of the dead custodian of this grim
chamber of horrors.

There were many keys upon the oval ring, but the fair Martian maid
quickly selected that which sprung the great lock at her waist, and
freed she hurried toward the secret panel.

Again she sought out a key upon the ring. This time a slender,
needle-like affair which she inserted in an almost invisible hole in
the wall. Instantly the door swung upon its pivot, and the contiguous
section of the floor upon which I was standing carried me with it into
the chamber where Tars Tarkas fought.

The great Thark stood with his back against an angle of the walls,
while facing him in a semi-circle a half-dozen huge monsters crouched
waiting for an opening. Their blood-streaked heads and shoulders
testified to the cause of their wariness as well as to the
swordsmanship of the green warrior whose glossy hide bore the same mute
but eloquent witness to the ferocity of the attacks that he had so far
withstood.

Sharp talons and cruel fangs had torn leg, arm, and breast literally to
ribbons. So weak was he from continued exertion and loss of blood that
but for the supporting wall I doubt that he even could have stood
erect. But with the tenacity and indomitable courage of his kind he
still faced his cruel and relentless foes—the personification of that
ancient proverb of his tribe: “Leave to a Thark his head and one hand
and he may yet conquer.”

As he saw me enter, a grim smile touched those grim lips of his, but
whether the smile signified relief or merely amusement at the sight of
my own bloody and dishevelled condition I do not know.

As I was about to spring into the conflict with my sharp long-sword I
felt a gentle hand upon my shoulder and turning found, to my surprise,
that the young woman had followed me into the chamber.

“Wait,” she whispered, “leave them to me,” and pushing me advanced, all
defenceless and unarmed, upon the snarling banths.

When quite close to them she spoke a single Martian word in low but
peremptory tones. Like lightning the great beasts wheeled upon her,
and I looked to see her torn to pieces before I could reach her side,
but instead the creatures slunk to her feet like puppies that expect a
merited whipping.

Again she spoke to them, but in tones so low I could not catch the
words, and then she started toward the opposite side of the chamber
with the six mighty monsters trailing at heel. One by one she sent
them through the secret panel into the room beyond, and when the last
had passed from the chamber where we stood in wide-eyed amazement she
turned and smiled at us and then herself passed through, leaving us
alone.

For a moment neither of us spoke. Then Tars Tarkas said:

“I heard the fighting beyond the partition through which you passed,
but I did not fear for you, John Carter, until I heard the report of a
revolver shot. I knew that there lived no man upon all Barsoom who
could face you with naked steel and live, but the shot stripped the
last vestige of hope from me, since you I knew to be without firearms.
Tell me of it.”

I did as he bade, and then together we sought the secret panel through
which I had just entered the apartment—the one at the opposite end of
the room from that through which the girl had led her savage companions.

To our disappointment the panel eluded our every effort to negotiate
its secret lock. We felt that once beyond it we might look with some
little hope of success for a passage to the outside world.

The fact that the prisoners within were securely chained led us to
believe that surely there must be an avenue of escape from the terrible
creatures which inhabited this unspeakable place.

Again and again we turned from one door to another, from the baffling
golden panel at one end of the chamber to its mate at the
other—equally baffling.

When we had about given up all hope one of the panels turned silently
toward us, and the young woman who had led away the banths stood once
more beside us.

“Who are you?” she asked, “and what your mission, that you have the
temerity to attempt to escape from the Valley Dor and the death you
have chosen?”

“I have chosen no death, maiden,” I replied. “I am not of Barsoom, nor
have I taken yet the voluntary pilgrimage upon the River Iss. My
friend here is Jeddak of all the Tharks, and though he has not yet
expressed a desire to return to the living world, I am taking him with
me from the living lie that hath lured him to this frightful place.

“I am of another world. I am John Carter, Prince of the House of
Tardos Mors, Jeddak of Helium. Perchance some faint rumour of me may
have leaked within the confines of your hellish abode.”

She smiled.

“Yes,” she replied, “naught that passes in the world we have left is
unknown here. I have heard of you, many years ago. The therns have
ofttimes wondered whither you had flown, since you had neither taken
the pilgrimage, nor could be found upon the face of Barsoom.”

“Tell me,” I said, “and who be you, and why a prisoner, yet with power
over the ferocious beasts of the place that denotes familiarity and
authority far beyond that which might be expected of a prisoner or a
slave?”

“Slave I am,” she answered. “For fifteen years a slave in this
terrible place, and now that they have tired of me and become fearful
of the power which my knowledge of their ways has given me I am but
recently condemned to die the death.”

She shuddered.

“What death?” I asked.

“The Holy Therns eat human flesh,” she answered me; “but only that
which has died beneath the sucking lips of a plant man—flesh from
which the defiling blood of life has been drawn. And to this cruel end
I have been condemned. It was to be within a few hours, had your
advent not caused an interruption of their plans.”

“Was it then Holy Therns who felt the weight of John Carter’s hand?” I
asked.

“Oh, no; those whom you laid low are lesser therns; but of the same
cruel and hateful race. The Holy Therns abide upon the outer slopes of
these grim hills, facing the broad world from which they harvest their
victims and their spoils.

“Labyrinthine passages connect these caves with the luxurious palaces
of the Holy Therns, and through them pass upon their many duties the
lesser therns, and hordes of slaves, and prisoners, and fierce beasts;
the grim inhabitants of this sunless world.

“There be within this vast network of winding passages and countless
chambers men, women, and beasts who, born within its dim and gruesome
underworld, have never seen the light of day—nor ever shall.

“They are kept to do the bidding of the race of therns; to furnish at
once their sport and their sustenance.

“Now and again some hapless pilgrim, drifting out upon the silent sea
from the cold Iss, escapes the plant men and the great white apes that
guard the Temple of Issus and falls into the remorseless clutches of
the therns; or, as was my misfortune, is coveted by the Holy Thern who
chances to be upon watch in the balcony above the river where it issues
from the bowels of the mountains through the cliffs of gold to empty
into the Lost Sea of Korus.

“All who reach the Valley Dor are, by custom, the rightful prey of the
plant men and the apes, while their arms and ornaments become the
portion of the therns; but if one escapes the terrible denizens of the
valley for even a few hours the therns may claim such a one as their
own. And again the Holy Thern on watch, should he see a victim he
covets, often tramples upon the rights of the unreasoning brutes of the
valley and takes his prize by foul means if he cannot gain it by fair.

“It is said that occasionally some deluded victim of Barsoomian
superstition will so far escape the clutches of the countless enemies
that beset his path from the moment that he emerges from the
subterranean passage through which the Iss flows for a thousand miles
before it enters the Valley Dor as to reach the very walls of the
Temple of Issus; but what fate awaits one there not even the Holy
Therns may guess, for who has passed within those gilded walls never
has returned to unfold the mysteries they have held since the beginning
of time.

“The Temple of Issus is to the therns what the Valley Dor is imagined
by the peoples of the outer world to be to them; it is the ultimate
haven of peace, refuge, and happiness to which they pass after this
life and wherein an eternity of eternities is spent amidst the delights
of the flesh which appeal most strongly to this race of mental giants
and moral pygmies.”

“The Temple of Issus is, I take it, a heaven within a heaven,” I said.
“Let us hope that there it will be meted to the therns as they have
meted it here unto others.”

“Who knows?” the girl murmured.

“The therns, I judge from what you have said, are no less mortal than
we; and yet have I always heard them spoken of with the utmost awe and
reverence by the people of Barsoom, as one might speak of the gods
themselves.”

“The therns are mortal,” she replied. “They die from the same causes
as you or I might: those who do not live their allotted span of life,
one thousand years, when by the authority of custom they may take their
way in happiness through the long tunnel that leads to Issus.

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

“And should a plant man die?” I asked.

“Should he die before the expiration of the thousand years from the
birth of the thern whose immortality abides within him 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 Tars
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 her, “and what has been
done may be done again.”

“It is useless even to try,” she 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 Prince of the House of Tardos Mors
should know better than to suggest such a thing.”

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

What I advised the girl 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 girl 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,” she 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, Tars
Tarkas follows where John 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 girl, “but do not flatter yourself that you can
find no worse place than this within the territory of the therns.”

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

There were in all ten red Martians, men and women, 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.