The Chessmen of Mars
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!"
CHAPTER XX
THE CHARGE OF COWARDICE
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