Read Under the Moons of Mars Online
Authors: John Joseph Adams
Under the Moons of Mars (20 page)
I had no more time to devote to pondering the door, for the top of the first chest suddenly dropped away, revealing a well-muscled man with the harness of a panthan who darted forward, blade flashing toward my gut. Both his harness and his sword were jet black. He was half a head taller than me, and quick. I barely managed to slide his blade and jump sideways. Thinking that the dark might benefit me, as I moved back, I capped the torch, only to discover that a faint greenish radiance issued forth from the chest he had vacated—and that the lid of the second chest was now moving as well.
The jet panthan’s blade flashed like black lightning, and almost as swiftly, yet I managed to parry it and then slashed back with a rising twist-cut that ripped his biceps, causing his blade to fall from his hand and strike the stone floor with a muted clang. Yet he—relentless—pulled a dagger from the sheath on his harness and attacked again. I could not help but admire his persistence, but when I saw another panthan emerging from the second chest, I had to end things quickly and so thrust my blade through the jet panthan’s neck, jerking it out just in time to block the thrust of the gold panthan that now approached me.
Unlike the first warrior, this one held his blade in his left hand, and—strangely—his moves seemed to be mirror-images of those of the first. But that is where the opposite-mirroring ended, for our encounter ended in exactly the same way—with the panthan dead on my blade.
For several moments, I simply stood there, breathing heavily. As I watched, the bodies of both panthans crumbled
into dust before my eyes, leaving behind only their harnesses, daggers, and blades. Then the green luminescence also vanished, leaving me in pitch darkness.
I quickly uncapped the torch and stepped toward the green metal hexagonal door. It had no lever, only another depiction of a Jetan board, this one with the pieces displayed in red and green.
The puzzle was one with which I was unfamiliar. So I had to work through the possibilities, visualizing each potential move . . . and where each would lead. Finally, I touched the red odwar and the square to which I would move him . . . unsure if the move I was making was the correct one, for the move was actually a sacrifice.
The stone trembled beneath my feet before the door split and each half recessed into the wall. So perfect had the seam been between the two halves that I’d had no inkling that the door had been in two sections. Beyond the green metal door was a far smaller chamber, with yet another chest in the center, one of gleaming bronze resting flat on a low pedestal made of the same green metal as the door. A shimmering gold and black cable ran from one end of the chest into a green metal pedestal and through a bronze fitting.
I stepped forward to the chest. There were three Jetan boards inlaid in the metal on the top of the chest. Below the center of each board was a jet-black square, and a different piece was circled by a gold ring on each board. It took but a tal for me to grasp that the puzzle posed was to determine which move on which board represented the correct one.
A faint grinding sound began to build. I glanced around. The green metal door had closed behind me! No sooner did I realize this than a faint shower of dust drifted down past me, and I looked up to see the ceiling descending! There appeared to be a recess in that solid slab of stone that
matched the chest and pedestal. Clearly if I didn’t solve the puzzle—and soon—I would be flattened by the inexorably descending stone.
I examined the first Jetan board, but the move shown would lead to defeat by the jet pieces. The same was true for the second board—and the third!
What was I missing?
The stone ceiling was pressing down now, less than an od above my head.
I decided . . . and pressed black squares on all three of the boards, one after the other, as quickly as I could, in the order in which the games would end, beginning with the one that had the shortest number of moves remaining.
The grinding stopped, and the ceiling halted its progress toward me, but did not return to its former position.
The top of the chest before me suddenly swung back, revealing a young woman whose skin was the same gold as that of the Jetan pieces, and whose hair was as black as jet. Her eyes were closed, but I could see her breathing . . . or had she just begun to breathe? And was there the faintest tinge of green on that perfect skin? It had been her likeness, I realized, on the princess piece on the first Jetan board! Lying beside her in the chest was a sword, shorter than mine, made entirely of black metal, except for gold traceries on the hilt. The same was true of her harness: black with traceries of gold.
Her eyes flicked open.
For long moments, we looked at each other. Her forehead wrinkled, but the frown vanished after a moment, and she sat up in the chest, that single movement creating a shower of greenish dust, leaving her bare skin unblemished gold.
“What manner of man are you?” Her words were clear, although it took me a moment to understand, for
the way in which she spoke was somehow . . . different.
“I am Dan Lan Chee of Gathol. And you?”
“Gathol? I have never heard of it, and I have heard of all the cities of Barsoom. Are all who live there bronze?” She frowned.
“No. Most are red.” I waited.
She continued to study me. Finally, she said, “ I am . . . Cynthara Dulchis . . . of high Horz, of course, but you should know that.”
“Perhaps I should, but high Horz has vanished. All but a tiny part of the city is abandoned, and the once mighty ocean Throxeus is no more.” Even as I said those words, I wondered if she would protest, as my father had said the fading survivors of Lum Tar O did before they had turned to dust. Would Cynthara do the same?
“I might doubt your words, but let us go see.” With that she stepped from the chest, retrieving her black blade and sliding it into the scabbard on her harness.
“Before we go,” I said quickly, “is there anything that will reveal the secrets of this chamber and the devices that have kept you alive for all these eons?”
Another frown followed my question. “I can only have been here a few years, a few hundred at most, while my family’s enemies were vanquished.”
“I fear they were not, Princess Cynthara.”
“Princess? I am . . .” She broke off and laughed, softly and bitterly. “I suppose that title is as good as any other. Your very presence indicates an unpleasant truth. How unpleasant . . . well, let us see.”
I looked at the platform below the chest. “How did this all come to be?”
“From my father, Emperor of Jeddaks, and his workshops adjacent to this chamber.”
“And how might we enter them?”
“In the same fashion as you entered this one,” replied Cynthara.
Rather than argue that point, I gestured toward the closed green metal doorway. “Shall we?”
For the first time since she awakened, Cynthara looked puzzled.
I found that momentary lapse of attention most attractive, though I must admit that she was already the most beautiful woman I’d ever beheld.
“That door . . . it wasn’t there before. You came through it?”
“I had to solve two Jetan puzzles and evade a few traps to get through it.”
The side of the door facing us remained featureless as we neared it. There were no Jetan boards, just a black and a gold square at shoulder height.
“Touch the gold one,” I suggested, because she represented the gold princess on the Jetan boards.
She did, and the door split and slid back into the recesses, revealing the chamber that held the two empty chests and the weapons and harnesses of the two panthans.
“My guardians . . .” Her eyes took in the dust and harnesses left behind.
“They tried to kill me.”
“And you vanquished them?”
“I had little choice.”
She walked through the square arch and studied the levered door, her eyes drawn to the inlaid Jetan board. “This was not here when I last stood in this room, but the work has the mark of my father.”
She glanced around, as if searching for something, before walking to the wall and, using a small knife—jet-black—that she pulled from her harness, she scraped away a small section of the wall’s surface. After several tals, her scraping
cleared away the surface to reveal a golden square edged in black.
She pressed it. The wall began to shake. I pulled Cynthara back as the very stones of the wall collapsed away with a roar. We waited until the dust of ages and sundered stone dissipated. Beyond the irregular gap in the wall were the remains of machines of black and jet. The curves and swirled tubes of those strange devices threatened to twist my eyes and mind—even though they had already been wrecked and smashed in places.
“No . . . it cannot be . . .” Cynthara’s words were barely above a whisper. She turned to me. “How long has it been . . . ?”
“So many years that no one knows how long.”
From out of the mass of half-untouched, half-wrecked machinery emerged a huge silver-skinned calot—more than twice the size of any I’d ever seen, larger and more fearsome than even the largest of banths, with shining silver teeth and eyes like red coals. How had it survived in a place where there was so little food? For that matter, how had the ulsios that had attacked me earlier?
“That is the destroyer of warriors,” said Cynthara. “My grandsire imprisoned it beneath the city hundreds of years before I was born. It took all of his skills and the deaths of a hundred panthans to capture it.”
A dagger arrowed from the red eyes of that calot toward Cynthara, a missile of the beast’s mind accompanied by a feeling of hatred and vengeance so palpable that it felt more deadly than the missile it accompanied. Somehow, my blade moved quickly enough to slice through the dagger—and both halves changed into smaller darts that arced toward me. I concentrated on trying to block those missiles with my thoughts, even as my blade wove in and out and across their path, finally blocking and destroying
them, only to find that the silver calot was now almost on top of Cynthara. Her black blade was a blur, yet she was retreating, not quite able to hold her ground against it, its claws like shimmering knives, its teeth like short, sharp blades.
I struck at the calot’s right shoulder with all the force I could bring to bear, cleaving a wide and deep wound. The calot turned. As its mouth opened wider, I could see that gaping wound begin to close, healing instantly.
What kind of beast was this silver calot? Could it heal itself through its thoughts, such as they were? My father’s tales ran through my mind . . . about how the ruler of the last Orovars could create warriors and even food through his thoughts alone . . . but I had no more time to ponder, for the calot was almost upon me.
I slashed away a paw—only to see it regrow.
A cut across the beast’s eyes blinded it, but for only a few tals.
In desperation, as I kept my blade between myself and the creature, I thought of the calot’s death, of corruption of the wounds I had dealt it, of the futility of besting my blade, and followed this with thoughts of futility, ancient dust, and despair.
The animal offered a terrible scream—yet one that echoed only in my thoughts—before slumping to the stone floor, its wounds festering into corruption. In moments, it was a bloody heap of silver.
Then it was gone.
Cynthara looked at me, wide-eyed, if but for a moment. “No single warrior has ever bested the hunter of hunters.”
“No single warrior did now. It took both of us.”
“You are kind, Dan Lan Chee, but my blows scarcely slowed the destroyer of warriors.”
“Without your blows, it would not have died.”
“It wished me dead, as if it held me an enemy.”
“Perhaps it recognized you as the granddaughter of its ancient foe.”
I gestured toward the twisted tubes and strange machinery. “What do you know of that?”
“Everything.” She smiled proudly. “I helped my father build all of it.”
“Could you rebuild it, then?”
“I could . . . with time,” she said. “I even know the secrets of the genetor.”
I glanced around. The walls seemed to press in upon me.
“The genetor . . . what is that?” I asked.
“It creates things from the ether itself.”
From the ether itself? What ether?
I wondered.
She looked toward the ancient machinery. “The genetor looks untouched. The other machines? In time, perhaps. If the materials even exist, but they require Ur-radium to power them.”
My heart sank. The ancient tomes in the lower library of Gathol mentioned Ur-radium, but only as an element that vanished eons before.
Cynthara’s face suddenly took on a look of concern. She pointed at the gap in the wall. “Look!”
The twisted metal beyond the wall had begun to glow.
“We must flee. Now!” The urgency in her voice was palpable and commanding. “Before we are destroyed!”
Quickly, we retraced our steps back to the hidden stairs and up into the chamber of Lum Tar O.
Cynthara glanced around, then shook her head. “We must be farther away. The energies within the very metals are being released. Nothing will remain for haads and haads.” Her face was a mask of despair.
“Come!” I fully uncapped my torch, letting it blaze forth.
We began to run back along the passageway, then up
the ramp. I was breathing hard, and my heart was straining when we reached those corroded gates. Still, it took but a moment to push them open enough for us to step through and into the way beyond.
Cynthara looked around. “Where are the people?”
“As I said, all but a tiny handful have gone. The city died over the ages.”
“That cannot be. How could it—”
“Those who remain survive by their minds and wits.” I had never quite believed my father’s tales of how the Jeddak of Horz, if that was what he was, could create armies and food with his thoughts—except Cynthara had mentioned a genetor that accomplished the same thing. Had the Jeddak—and Lum Tar O—somehow drawn on that ancient machine without even knowing it?
A yell echoed down the walled avenue I had thought deserted. Two Orovars came charging around the corner, likely from the larger square on the other side of the structure that afforded access to the pits of Horz. Behind them were several others of their kind.
“Who are they?” asked Cynthara, bringing up her blade.
“The Orovars . . . they must have come here after your time.” I could say no more because the first Orovar sprinted toward me, his blade out and ready. He was no match for me, and in three quick passes, his blade lay on the stones, and he clutched his shoulder, staggering back.
The second man gaped—he even turned pale—as he beheld Cynthara, but that didn’t stop him from attacking. That was a mistake, because Cynthara ran him through with her jet blade that looked so delicate. That allowed me a moment to beat down the guard of the third man and deliver a deep cut to his sword arm, so hard that he dropped his blade.
“This way!” I called.