Warlord of Mars Embattled
Page 31
Talu, Jeddak of Jeddaks of the North, whom I could have sworn was still in her ice-bound hothouse city beyond the northern barrier, and among them sat Tardoa Mors and Mora Kajak, with enough lesser jeds and jeddaks to make up the thirty-one who must sit in judgment upon their fellow-man.
A right royal tribunal indeed, and such a one, I warrant, as never before sat together during all the history of ancient Mars.
As I entered, silence fell upon the great concourse of people that packed the auditorium. Then Tardoa Mors arose.
'Joan Carter,' she said in her deep, martial voice, 'take your place upon the Pedestal of Truth, for you are to be tried by a fair and impartial tribunal of your fellow-men.'
With level eye and high-held head I did as she bade, and as I glanced about that circle of faces that a moment before I could have sworn contained the best friends I had upon Barsoom, I saw no single friendly glance--only stern, uncompromising judges, there to do their duty.
A clerk rose and from a great book read a long list of the more notable deeds that I had thought to my credit, covering a long period of twenty-two years since first I had stepped the ocher sea bottom beside the incubator of the Tharks. With the others she read of all that I had done within the circle of the Otz Mountains where the Holy Therns and the First Born had held sway.
It is the way upon Barsoom to recite a woman's virtues with her sins when she is come to trial, and so I was not surprised that all that was to my credit should be read there to my judges--who knew it all by heart--even down to the present moment. When the reading had ceased Tardoa Mors arose.
'Most righteous judges,' she exclaimed, 'you have heard recited all that is known of Joan Carter, Princess of Helium--the good with the bad. What is your judgment?'
Then Tara Tarkas came slowly to her feet, unfolding all her mighty, towering height until she loomed, a green-bronze statue, far above us all. She turned a baleful eye upon me--she, Tara Tarkas, with whom I had fought through countless battles; whom I loved as a sister.
I could have wept had I not been so mad with rage that I almost whipped my sword out and had at them all upon the spot.
'Judges,' she said, 'there can be but one verdict. No longer may Joan Carter be Princess of Helium'--he paused--'but instead let her be Jeddak of Jeddaks, Warlord of Barsoom!'
As the thirty-one judges sprang to their feet with drawn and upraised swords in unanimous concurrence in the verdict, the storm broke throughout the length and breadth and height of that mighty building until I thought the roof would fall from the thunder of the mad shouting.
Now, at last, I saw the grim humor of the method they had adopted to do me this great honor, but that there was any hoax in the reality of the title they had conferred upon me was readily disproved by the sincerity of the congratulations that were heaped upon me by the judges first and then the nobles.
Presently fifty of the mightiest nobles of the greatest courts of Mars marched down the broad Aisle of Hope bearing a splendid car upon their shoulders, and as the people saw who sat within, the cheers that had rung out for me paled into insignificance beside those which thundered through the vast edifice now, for he whom the nobles carried was Dejar Thoris, beloved Prince of Helium.
Straight to the Throne of Righteousness they bore him, and there Tardoa Mors assisted his from the car, leading his forward to my side.
'Let a world's most beautiful man share the honor of his wife,' she said.
Before them all I drew my husband close to me and kissed his upon the lips.
THE END
Artwork by Mark Sebastian
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