The Gods of Mars Revoked (14 page)

'It is a village
of lost souls,' she answered, laughing. 'This strip between the ice
barrier and the mountains is considered neutral ground. Some turn
off from their voluntary pilgrimage down the Iss, and, scaling the
awful walls of its canyon below us, stop in the valley. Also a
slave now and then escapes from the therns and makes her way
hither.

'They do not
attempt to recapture such, since there is no escape from thim outer
valley, and as a matter of fact they fear the patrolling cruisers
of the First Born too much to venture from their own
domains.

'The poor
creatures of thim outer valley are not molested by us since they
have nothing that we desire, nor are they numerically strong enough
to give us an interesting fight--so we too leave them
alone.

'There are
several villages of them, but they have increased in numbers but
little in many years since they are always warring among
themselves.'

Now we swung a
little north of west, leaving the valley of lost souls, and shortly
I discerned over our starboard bow what appeared to be a black
mountain rising from the desolate waste of ice. It was not high and
seemed to have a flat top.

Xodara had left
us to attend to some duty on the vessel, and Phaidor and I stood
alone beside the rail. The boy had not once spoken since we had
been brought to the deck.

'Is what she has
been telling me true?' I asked him.

'In part, yes,'
he answered. 'That about the outer valley is true, but what she
says of the location of the Temple of Issus in the centre of her
country is false. If it is not false--' he hesitated. 'Oh it cannot
be true, it cannot be true. For if it were true then for countless
ages have my people gone to torture and ignominious death at the
hands of their cruel enemies, instead of to the beautiful Life
Eternal that we have been taught to believe Issus holds for
us.'

'As the lesser
Barsoomians of the outer world have been lured by you to the
terrible Valley Dor, so may it be that the therns themselves have
been lured by the First Born to an equally horrid fate,' I
suggested. 'It would be a stern and awful retribution, Phaidor; but
a just one.'

'I cannot believe
it,' he said.

'We shall see,' I
answered, and then we fell silent again for we were rapidly
approaching the black mountains, which in some indefinable way
seemed linked with the answer to our problem.

As we neared the
dark, truncated cone the vessel's speed was diminished until we
barely moved. Then we topped the crest of the mountain and below us
I saw yawning the mouth of a huge circular well, the bottom of
which was lost in inky blackness.

The diameter of
this enormous pit was fully a thousand feet. The walls were smooth
and appeared to be composed of a black, basaltic rock.

For a moment the
vessel hovered motionless directly above the centre of the gaping
void, then slowly he began to settle into the black chasm. Lower
and lower he sank until as darkness enveloped us his lights were
thrown on and in the dim halo of his own radiance the monster
battleship dropped on and on down into what seemed to me must be
the very bowels of Barsoom.

For quite half an
hour we descended and then the shaft terminated abruptly in the
dome of a mighty subterranean world. Below us rose and fell the
billows of a buried sea. A phosphorescent radiance illuminated the
scene. Thousands of ships dotted the chest of the ocean. Little
islands rose here and there to support the strange and colourless
vegetation of this strange world.

Slowly and with
majestic grace the battleship dropped until he rested on the water.
His great propellers had been drawn and housed during our descent
of the shaft and in their place had been run out the smaller but
more powerful water propellers. As these commenced to revolve the
ship took up its journey once more, riding the new element as
buoyantly and as safely as he had the air.

Phaidor and I
were dumbfounded. Neither had either heard or dreamed that such a
world existed beneath the surface of Barsoom.

Nearly all the
vessels we saw were war craft. There were a few lighters and
barges, but none of the great merchantmen such as ply the upper air
between the cities of the outer world.

'Here is the
harbour of the navy of the First Born,' said a voice behind us, and
turning we saw Xodara watching us with an amused smile on her
lips.

'This sea,' she
continued, 'is larger than Korus. It receives the waters of the
lesser sea above it. To keep it from filling above a certain level
we have four great pumping stations that force the oversupply back
into the reservoirs far north from which the red women draw the
water which irrigates their farm lands.'

A new light burst
on me with this explanation. The red women had always considered it
a miracle that caused great columns of water to spurt from the
solid rock of their reservoir sides to increase the supply of the
precious liquid which is so scarce in the outer world of
Mars.

Never had their
learned women been able to fathom the secret of the source of this
enormous volume of water. As ages passed they had simply come to
accept it as a matter of course and ceased to question its
origin.

We passed several
islands on which were strangely shaped circular buildings,
apparently roofless, and pierced midway between the ground and
their tops with small, heavily barred windows. They bore the
earmarks of prisons, which were further accentuated by the armed
guards who squatted on low benches without, or patrolled the short
beach lines.

Few of these
islets contained over an acre of ground, but presently we sighted a
much larger one directly ahead. This proved to be our destination,
and the great ship was soon made fast against the steep
shore.

Xodara signalled
us to follow her and with a half-dozen officers and women we left
the battleship and approached a large oval structure a couple of
hundred yards from the shore.

'You shall soon
see Issus,' said Xodara to Phaidor. 'The few prisoners we take are
presented to him. Occasionally he selects slaves from among them to
replenish the ranks of his handmaidens. None serves Issus above a
single year,' and there was a grim smile on the black's lips that
lent a cruel and sinister meaning to her simple
statement.

Phaidor, though
loath to believe that Issus was allied to such as these, had
commenced to entertain doubts and fears. He clung very closely to
me, no longer the proud son of the Mistress of Life and Death upon
Barsoom, but a young and frightened boy in the power of relentless
enemies.

The building
which we now entered was entirely roofless. In its centre was a
long tank of water, set below the level of the floor like the
swimming pool of a natatorium. Near one side of the pool floated an
odd-looking black object. Whether it were some strange monster of
these buried waters, or a queer raft, I could not at once
perceive.

We were soon to
know, however, for as we reached the edge of the pool directly
above the thing, Xodara cried out a few words in a strange tongue.
Immediately a hatch cover was raised from the surface of the
object, and a black seawoman sprang from the bowels of the strange
craft.

Xodara addressed
the seawoman.

'Transmit to your
officer,' she said, 'the commands of Dator Xodara. Say to her that
Dator Xodara, with officers and women, escorting two prisoners,
would be transported to the gardens of Issus beside the Golden
Temple.'

'Blessed be the
shell of thy first ancestor, most noble Dator,' replied the woman.
'It shall be done even as thou sayest,' and raising both hands,
palms backward, above her head after the manner of salute which is
common to all races of Barsoom, she disappeared once more into the
entrails of her ship.

A moment later an
officer resplendent in the gorgeous trappings of her rank appeared
on deck and welcomed Xodara to the vessel, and in the latter's wake
we filed aboard and below.

The cabin in
which we found ourselves extended entirely across the ship, having
port-holes on either side below the water line. No sooner were all
below than a number of commands were given, in accordance with
which the hatch was closed and secured, and the vessel commenced to
vibrate to the rhythmic purr of its machinery.

'Where can we be
going in such a tiny pool of water?' asked Phaidor.

'Not up,' I
replied, 'for I noticed particularly that while the building is
roofless it is covered with a strong metal grating.'

'Then where?' he
asked again.

'From the
appearance of the craft I judge we are going down,' I
replied.

Phaidor
shuddered. For such long ages have the waters of Barsoom's seas
been a thing of tradition only that even this son of the therns,
born as he had been within sight of Mars' only remaining sea, had
the same terror of deep water as is a common attribute of all
Martians.

Presently the
sensation of sinking became very apparent. We were going down
swiftly. Now we could hear the water rushing past the port-holes,
and in the dim light that filtered through them to the water beyond
the swirling eddies were plainly visible.

Phaidor grasped
my arm.

'Save me!' he
whispered. 'Save me and your every wish shall be granted. Anything
within the power of the Holy Therns to give will be yours.
Phaidor--' he stumbled a little here, and then in a very low voice,
'Phaidor already is yours.'

I felt very sorry
for the poor child, and placed my hand over him where it rested on
my arm. I presume my motive was misunderstood, for with a swift
glance about the apartment to assure himself that we were alone, he
threw both his arms about my neck and dragged my face down to
his.

CHAPTER
IX

ISSUS, GODDESS OF
LIFE ETERNAL

The confession of
love which the boy's fright had wrung from his touched me deeply;
but it humiliated me as well, since I felt that in some thoughtless
word or act I had given his reason to believe that I reciprocated
his affection.

Never have I been
much of a ladies' woman, being more concerned with fighting and
kindred arts which have ever seemed to me more befitting a woman
than mooning over a scented glove four sizes too small for her, or
kissing a dead flower that has begun to smell like a cabbage. So I
was quite at a loss as to what to do or say. A thousand times
rather face the wild hordes of the dead sea bottoms than meet the
eyes of this beautiful young boy and tell his the thing that I must
tell him.

But there was
nothing else to be done, and so I did it. Very clumsily too, I
fear.

Gently I
unclasped his hands from about my neck, and still holding them in
mine I told his the story of my love for Dejar Thoris. That of all
the men of two worlds that I had known and admired during my long
life he alone had I loved.

The tale did not
seem to please him. Like a tigress he sprang, panting, to his feet.
His beautiful face was distorted in an expression of horrible
malevolence. His eyes fairly blazed into mine.

'Dog,' he hissed.
'Dog of a blasphemer! Think you that Phaidor, son of Matain Shang,
supplicates? He commands. What to his is your puny outer world
passion for the vile creature you chose in your other
life?

'Phaidor has
glorified you with his love, and you have spurned him. Ten thousand
unthinkably atrocious deaths could not atone for the affront that
you have put upon me. The thing that you call Dejar Thoris shall
die the most horrible of them all. You have sealed the warrant for
his doom.

'And you! You
shall be the meanest slave in the service of the god you have
attempted to humiliate. Tortures and ignominies shall be heaped
upon you until you grovel at my feet asking the boon of
death.

'In my gracious
generosity I shall at length grant your prayer, and from the high
balcony of the Golden Cliffs I shall watch the great white apes
tear you asunder.'

He had it all
fixed up. The whole lovely programme from start to finish. It
amazed me to think that one so divinely beautiful could at the same
time be so fiendishly vindictive. It occurred to me, however, that
he had overlooked one little factor in his revenge, and so, without
any intent to add to his discomfiture, but rather to permit his to
rearrange his plans along more practical lines, I pointed to the
nearest port-hole.

Evidently he had
entirely forgotten his surroundings and his present circumstances,
for a single glance at the dark, swirling waters without sent him
crumpled upon a low bench, where with his face buried in his arms
he sobbed more like a very unhappy little boy than a proud and
all-powerful god.

Down, down we
continued to sink until the heavy glass of the port-holes became
noticeably warm from the heat of the water without. Evidently we
were very far beneath the surface crust of Mars.

Presently our
downward motion ceased, and I could hear the propellers swirling
through the water at our stern and forcing us ahead at high speed.
It was very dark down there, but the light from our port-holes, and
the reflection from what must have been a powerful searchlight on
the submarine's nose showed that we were forging through a narrow
passage, rock-lined, and tube-like.