The Chessmen of Mars
commands, or to abandon Ghek; but there was no other way. Could he have
saved you I would have stayed in his place. Tell me that you forgive
me."
"How could I do less?" she replied graciously. "But it seemed cowardly
to abandon a friend."
"Had we been three fighting men it had been different," he said. "We
could only have remained and died together, fighting; but you know,
Tara of Helium, that we may not jeopardize a woman's safety even though
we risk the loss of honor."
"I know that, Turan," she said; "but no one may say that you have
risked honor, who knows the honor and bravery that are yours."
He heard her with surprise for these were the first words that she had
spoken to him that did not savor of the attitude of a princess to a
panthan--though it was more in her tone than the actual words that he
apprehended the difference. How at variance were they to her recent
repudiation of him! He could not fathom her, and so he blurted out the
question that had been in his mind since she had told O-Tar that she
did not know him.
"Tara of Helium," he said, "your words are balm to the wound you gave
me in the throne room of O-Tar. Tell me, Princess, why you denied me."
She turned her great, deep eyes up to his and in them was a little of
reproach.
"You did not guess," she asked, "that it was my lips alone and not my
heart that denied you? O-Tar had ordered that I die, more because I was
a companion of Ghek than because of any evidence against me, and so I
knew that if I acknowledged you as one of us, you would be slain, too."
"It was to save me, then?" he cried, his face suddenly lighting.
"It was to save my brave panthan," she said in a low voice.
"Tara of Helium," said the warrior, dropping to one knee, "your words
are as food to my hungry heart," and he took her fingers in his and
pressed them to his lips.
Gently she raised him to his feet. "You need not tell me, kneeling,"
she said, softly.
Her hand was still in his as he rose and they were very close, and the
man was still flushed with the contact of her body since he had carried
her from the throne room of O-Tar. He felt his heart pounding in his
breast and the hot blood surging through his veins as he looked at her
beautiful face, with its downcast eyes and the half-parted lips that he
would have given a kingdom to possess, and then he swept her to him and
as he crushed her against his breast his lips smothered hers with
kisses.
But only for an instant. Like a tigress the girl turned upon him,
striking him, and thrusting him away. She stepped back, her head high
and her eyes flashing fire. "You would dare?" she cried. "You would
dare thus defile a princess of Helium?"
His eyes met hers squarely and there was no shame and no remorse in
them.
"Yes, I would dare," he said. "I would dare love Tara of Helium; but I
would not dare defile her or any woman with kisses that were not
prompted by love of her alone." He stepped closer to her and laid his
hands upon her shoulders. "Look into my eyes, daughter of The Warlord,"
he said, "and tell me that you do not wish the love of Turan, the
panthan."
"I do not wish your love," she cried, pulling away. "I hate you!" and
then turning away she bent her head into the hollow of her arm, and
wept.
The man took a step toward her as though to comfort her when he was
arrested by the sound of a crackling laugh behind him. Wheeling about,
he discovered a strange figure of a man standing in a doorway. It was
one of those rarities occasionally to be seen upon Barsoom--an old man
with the signs of age upon him. Bent and wrinkled, he had more the
appearance of a mummy than a man.
"Love in the pits of O-Tar!" he cried, and again his thin laughter
jarred upon the silence of the subterranean vaults. "A strange place to
woo! A strange place to woo, indeed! When I was a young man we roamed
in the gardens beneath giant pimalias and stole our kisses in the brief
shadows of hurtling Thuria. We came not to the gloomy pits to speak of
love; but times have changed and ways have changed, though I had never
thought to live to see the time when the way of a man with a maid, or a
maid with a man would change. Ah, but we kissed them then! And what if
they objected, eh? What if they objected? Why, we kissed them more. Ey,
ey, those were the days!" and he cackled again. "Ey, well do I recall
the first of them I ever kissed, and I've kissed an army of them since;
she was a fine girl, but she tried to slip a dagger into me while I was
kissing her. Ey, ey, those were the days! But I kissed her. She's been
dead over a thousand years now, but she was never kissed again like
that while she lived, I'll swear, not since she's been dead, either.
And then there was that other--" but Turan, seeing a thousand or more
years of osculatory memoirs portending, interrupted.
"Tell me, ancient one," he said, "not of thy loves but of thyself. Who
are you? What do you here in the pits of O-Tar?"
"I might ask you the same, young man," replied the other. "Few there
are who visit the pits other than the dead, except my pupils--ey! That
is it--you are new pupils! Good! But never before have they sent a
woman to learn the great art from the greatest artist. But times have
changed. Now, in my day the women did no work--they were just for
kissing and loving. Ey, those were the women. I mind the one we
captured in the south--ey! she was a devil, but how she could love. She
had breasts of marble and a heart of fire. Why, she--"
"Yes, yes," interrupted Turan; "we are pupils, and we are anxious to
get to work. Lead on and we will follow."
"Ey, yes! Ey, yes! Come! All is rush and hurry as though there were not
another countless myriad of ages ahead. Ey, yes! as many as lie behind.
Two thousand years have passed since I broke my shell and always rush,
rush, rush, yet I cannot see that aught has been accomplished. Manator
is the same today as it was then--except the girls. We had the girls
then. There was one that I gained upon The Fields of Jetan. Ey, but you
should have seen--"
"Lead on!" cried Turan. "After we are at work you shall tell us of her."
"Ey, yes," said the old fellow and shuffled off down a dimly lighted
passage. "Follow me!"
"You are going with him?" asked Tara.
"Why not?" replied Turan. "We know not where we are, or the way from
these pits; for I know not east from west; but he doubtless knows and
if we are shrewd we may learn from him that which we would know. At
least we cannot afford to arouse his suspicions"; and so they followed
him--followed along winding corridors and through many chambers, until
they came at last to a room in which there were several marble slabs
raised upon pedestals some three feet above the floor and upon each
slab lay a human corpse.
"Here we are," exclaimed the old man. "These are fresh and we shall
have to get to work upon them soon. I am working now on one for The
Gate of Enemies. He slew many of our warriors. Truly is he entitled to
a place in The Gate. Come, you shall see him."
He led them to an adjoining apartment. Upon the floor were many fresh,
human bones and upon a marble slab a mass of shapeless flesh.
"You will learn this later," announced the old man; "but it will not
harm you to watch me now, for there are not many thus prepared, and it
may be long before you will have the opportunity to see another
prepared for The Gate of Enemies. First, you see, I remove all the
bones, carefully that the skin may be damaged as little as possible.
The skull is the most difficult, but it can be removed by a skilful
artist. You see, I have made but a single opening. This I now sew up,
and that done, the body is hung so," and he fastened a piece of rope to
the hair of the corpse and swung the horrid thing to a ring in the
ceiling. Directly below it was a circular manhole in the floor from
which he removed the cover revealing a well partially filled with a
reddish liquid. "Now we lower it into this, the formula for which you
shall learn in due time. We fasten it thus to the bottom of the cover,
which we now replace. In a year it will be ready; but it must be
examined often in the meantime and the liquid kept above the level of
its crown. It will be a very beautiful piece, this one, when it is
ready.
"And you are fortunate again, for there is one to come out today." He
crossed to the opposite side of the room and raised another cover,
reached in and dragged a grotesque looking figure from the hole. It was
a human body, shrunk by the action of the chemical in which it had been
immersed, to a little figure scarce a foot high.
"Ey! is it not fine?" cried the little old man. "Tomorrow it will take
its place in The Gate of Enemies." He dried it off with cloths and
packed it away carefully in a basket. "Perhaps you would like to see
some of my life work," he suggested, and without waiting for their
assent led them to another apartment, a large chamber in which were
forty or fifty people. All were sitting or standing quietly about the
walls, with the exception of one huge warrior who bestrode a great
thoat in the very center of the room, and all were motionless.
Instantly there sprang to the minds of Tara and Turan the rows of
silent people upon the balconies that lined the avenues of the city,
and the noble array of mounted warriors in The Hall of Chiefs, and the
same explanation came to both but neither dared voice the question that
was in his mind, for fear of revealing by his ignorance the fact that
they were strangers in Manator and therefore impostors in the guise of
pupils.
"It is very wonderful," said Turan. "It must require great skill and
patience and time."
"That it does," replied the old man, "though having done it so long I
am quicker than most; but mine are the most natural. Why, I would defy
the wife of that warrior to say that insofar as appearances are
concerned he does not live," and he pointed at the man upon the thoat.
"Many of them, of course, are brought here wasted or badly wounded and
these I have to repair. That is where great skill is required, for
everyone wants his dead to look as they did at their best in life; but
you shall learn--to mount them and paint them and repair them and
sometimes to make an ugly one look beautiful. And it will be a great
comfort to be able to mount your own. Why, for fifteen hundred years no
one has mounted my own dead but myself.
"I have many, my balconies are crowded with them; but I keep a great
room for my wives. I have them all, as far back as the first one, and
many is the evening I spend with them--quiet evenings and very
pleasant. And then the pleasure of preparing them and making them even
more beautiful than in life partially recompenses one for their loss. I
take my time with them, looking for a new one while I am working on the
old. When I am not sure about a new one I bring her to the chamber
where my wives are, and compare her charms with theirs, and there is
always a great satisfaction at such times in knowing that they will not
object. I love harmony."
"Did you prepare all the warriors in The Hall of Chiefs?" asked Turan.
"Yes, I prepare them and repair them," replied the old man. "O-Tar will
trust no other. Even now I have two in another room who were damaged in
some way and brought down to me. O-Tar does not like to have them gone
long, since it leaves two riderless thoats in the Hall; but I shall
have them ready presently. He wants them all there in the event any
momentous question arises upon which the living jeds cannot agree, or
do not agree with O-Tar. Such questions he carries to the jeds in The
Hall of Chiefs. There he shuts himself up alone with the great chiefs
who have attained wisdom through death. It is an excellent plan and