The Chessmen of Mars (24 page)

"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
there is never any friction or misunderstandings. O-Tar has said
that it is the finest deliberative body upon Barsoom—much more
intelligent than that composed of the living jeds. But come, we
must get to work; come into the next chamber and I will begin
your instruction."

He led the way into the chamber in which lay the several corpses
upon their marble slabs, and going to a cabinet he donned a pair
of huge spectacles and commenced to select various tools from
little compartments. This done he turned again toward his two
pupils.

"Now let me have a look at you," he said. "My eyes are not what
they once were, and I need these powerful lenses for my work, or
to see distinctly the features of those around me."

He turned his eyes upon the two before him. Turan held his breath
for he knew that now the man must discover that they wore not the
harness or insignia of Manator. He had wondered before why the
old fellow had not noticed it, for he had not known that he was
half blind. The other examined their faces, his eyes lingering
long upon the beauty of Tara of Helium, and then they drifted to
the harness of the two. Turan thought that he noted an
appreciable start of surprise on the part of the taxidermist, but
if the old man noticed anything his next words did not reveal it.

"Come with I-Gos," he said to Turan, "I have materials in the
next room that I would have you fetch hither. Remain here, woman,
we shall be gone but a moment."

He led the way to one of the numerous doors opening into the
chamber and entered ahead of Turan. Just inside the door he
stopped, and pointing to a bundle of silks and furs upon the
opposite side of the room directed Turan to fetch them. The
latter had crossed the room and was stooping to raise the bundle
when he heard the click of a lock behind him. Wheeling instantly
he saw that he was alone in the room and that the single door was
closed. Running rapidly to it he strove to open it, only to find
that he was a prisoner.

I-Gos, stepping out and locking the door behind him, turned
toward Tara.

"Your leather betrayed you," he said, laughing his cackling
laugh. "You sought to deceive old I-Gos, but you found that
though his eyes are weak his brain is not. But it shall not go
ill with you. You are beautiful and I-Gos loves beautiful women.
I might not have you elsewhere in Manator, but here there is none
to deny old I-Gos. Few come to the pits of the dead—only those
who bang the dead and they hasten away as fast as they can. No
one will know that I-Gos has a beautiful woman locked with his
dead. I shall ask you no questions and then I will not have to
give you up, for I will not know to whom you belong, eh? And when
you die I shall mount you beautifully and place you in the
chamber with my other women. Will not that be fine, eh?" He had
approached until he stood close beside the horrified girl.
"Come!" he cried, seizing her by the wrist. "Come to I-Gos!"

Turan dashed himself against the door of his prison in a vain
effort to break through the solid skeel to the side of Tara whom
he knew to be in grave danger, but the heavy panels held and he
succeeded only in bruising his shoulders and his arms. At last he
desisted and set about searching his prison for some other means
of escape. He found no other opening in the stone walls, but his
search revealed a heterogeneous collection of odds and ends of
arms and apparel, of harness and ornaments and insignia, and
sleeping silks and furs in great quantities. There were swords
and spears and several large, two-bladed battle-axes, the heads
of which bore a striking resemblance to the propellor of a small
flier. Seizing one of these he attacked the door once more with
great fury. He expected to hear something from I-Gos at this
ruthless destruction, but no sound came to him from beyond the
door, which was, he thought, too thick for the human voice to
penetrate; but he would have wagered much that I-Gos heard him.
Bits of the hard wood splintered at each impact of the heavy axe,
but it was slow work and heavy. Presently he was compelled to
rest, and so it went for what seemed hours—working almost to the
verge of exhaustion and then resting for a few minutes; but ever
the hole grew larger though he could see nothing of the interior
of the room beyond because of the hanging that I-Gos had drawn
across it after he had locked Turan within.

At last, however, the panthan had hewn an opening through which
his body could pass, and seizing a long-sword that he had brought
close to the door for the purpose he crawled through into the
next room. Flinging aside the arras he stood ready, sword in
hand, to fight his way to the side of Tara of Helium—but she was
not there. In the center of the room lay I-Gos, dead upon the
floor; but Tara of Helium was nowhere to be seen.

Turan was nonplussed. It must have been her hand that had struck
down the old man, yet she had made no effort to release Turan
from his prison. And then he thought of those last words of hers:
"I do not want your love! I hate you," and the truth dawned upon
him—she had seized upon this first opportunity to escape him.
With downcast heart Turan turned away. What should he do? There
could be but one answer. While he lived and she lived he must
still leave no stone unturned to effect her escape and safe
return to the land of her people. But how? How was he even to
find his way from this labyrinth? How was he to find her again?
He walked to the nearest doorway. It chanced to be that which led
into the room containing the mounted dead, awaiting
transportation to balcony or grim room or whatever place was to
receive them. His eyes travelled to the great, painted warrior on
the thoat and as they ran over the splendid trappings and the
serviceable arms a new light came into the pain-dulled eyes of
the panthan. With a quick step he crossed to the side of the dead
warrior and dragged him from his mount. With equal celerity he
stripped him of his harness and his arms, and tearing off his
own, donned the regalia of the dead man. Then he hastened back to
the room in which he had been trapped, for there he had seen that
which he needed to make his disguise complete. In a cabinet he
found them—pots of paint that the old taxidermist had used to
place the war-paint in its wide bands across the cold faces of
dead warriors.

A few moments later Gahan of Gathol emerged from the room a
warrior of Manator in every detail of harness, equipment, and
ornamentation. He had removed from the leather of the dead man
the insignia of his house and rank so that he might pass, with
the least danger of arousing suspicion, as a common warrior.

To search for Tara of Helium in the vast, dim labyrinth of the
pits of O-Tar seemed to the Gatholian a hopeless quest,
foredoomed to failure. It would be wiser to seek the streets of
Manator where he might hope to learn first if she had been
recaptured and, if not, then he could return to the pits and
pursue the hunt for her. To find egress from the maze he must
perforce travel a considerable distance through the winding
corridors and chambers, since he had no idea as to the location
or direction of any exit. In fact, he could not have retraced his
steps a hundred yards toward the point at which he and Tara had
entered the gloomy caverns, and so he set out in the hope that he
might find by accident either Tara of Helium or a way to the
street level above.

For a time he passed room after room filled with the cunningly
preserved dead of Manator, many of which were piled in tiers
after the manner that firewood is corded, and as he moved through
corridor and chamber he noticed hieroglyphics painted upon the
walls above every opening and at each fork or crossing of
corridors, until by observation he reached the conclusion that
these indicated the designations of passageways, so that one who
understood them might travel quickly and surely through the pits;
but Turan did not understand them. Even could he have read the
language of Manator they might not materially have aided one
unfamiliar with the city; but he could not read them at all
since, though there is but one spoken language upon Barsoom,
there are as many different written languages as there are
nations. One thing, however, soon became apparent to him—the
hieroglyphic of a corridor remained the same until the corridor
ended.

It was not long before Turan realized from the distance that he
had traveled that the pits were part of a vast system
undermining, possibly, the entire city. At least he was convinced
that he had passed beyond the precincts of the palace. The
corridors and chambers varied in appearance and architecture from
time to time. All were lighted, though usually quite dimly, with
radium bulbs. For a long time he saw no signs of life other than
an occasional ulsio, then quite suddenly he came face to face
with a warrior at one of the numerous crossings. The fellow
looked at him, nodded, and passed on. Turan breathed a sigh of
relief as he realized that his disguise was effective, but he was
caught in the middle of it by a hail from the warrior who had
stopped and turned toward him. The panthan was glad that a sword
hung at his side, and glad too that they were buried in the dim
recesses of the pits and that there would be but a single
antagonist, for time was precious.