tmp_8e30e50e85e50ee4e1405d47df8c3c0e_lY8giP.fixed.tidied

by MD Scott

  As I came round the jutting promontory of the hill's shoulder I saw that which quickened my pulses and set my heart to beating high, for within a tiny basin between the crest of this hill and the next stood four people before the mouth of a great cave, and beside them upon the gleaming snow rested a flier which had evidently but just been dragged from its hiding place.

  The four were Dejar Thoris, Phaidor, Thurid, and Matain Shang. The two women were engaged in a heated argument--the Father of Therns threatening, while the black scoffed at her as she went about the work at which she was engaged.

  As I crept toward them cautiously that I might come as near as possible before being discovered, I saw that finally the women appeared to have reached some sort of a compromise, for with Phaidor's assistance they both set about dragging the resisting Dejar Thoris to the flier's deck.

  Here they made his fast, and then both again descended to the ground to complete the preparations for departure. Phaidor entered the small cabin upon the vessel's deck.

  I had come to within a quarter of a mile of them when Matain Shang espied me. I saw her seize Thurid by the shoulder, wheeling her around in my direction as she pointed to where I was now plainly visible, for the moment that I knew I had been perceived I cast aside every attempt at stealth and broke into a mad race for the flier.

  The two redoubled their efforts at the propeller at which they were working, and which very evidently was being replaced after having been removed for some purpose of repair.

  They had the thing completed before I had covered half the distance that lay between me and them, and then both made a rush for the boarding-ladder.

  Thurid was the first to reach it, and with the agility of a monkey clambered swiftly to the boat's deck, where a touch of the button controlling the buoyancy tanks sent the craft slowly upward, though not with the speed that marks the well-conditioned flier.

  I was still some hundred yards away as I saw them rising from my grasp.

  Back by the city of Kadabra lay a great fleet of mighty fliers--the ships of Helium and Ptarth that I had saved from destruction earlier in the day; but before ever I could reach them Thurid could easily make good her escape.

  As I ran I saw Matain Shang clambering up the swaying, swinging ladder toward the deck, while above her leaned the evil face of the First Born. A trailing rope from the vessel's stern put new hope in me, for if I could but reach it before it whipped too high above my head there was yet a chance to gain the deck by its slender aid.

  That there was something radically wrong with the flier was evident from its lack of buoyancy, and the further fact that though Thurid had turned twice to the starting lever the boat still hung motionless in the air, except for a slight drifting with a low breeze from the north.

  Now Matain Shang was close to the gunwale. A long, claw-like hand was reaching up to grasp the metal rail.

  Thurid leaned farther down toward her co-conspirator.

  Suddenly a raised dagger gleamed in the upflung hand of the black. Down it drove toward the white face of the Father of Therns. With a loud shriek of fear the Holy Hekkador grasped frantically at that menacing arm.

  I was almost to the trailing rope by now. The craft was still rising slowly, the while it drifted from me. Then I stumbled on the icy way, striking my head upon a rock as I fell sprawling but an arm's length from the rope, the end of which was now just leaving the ground.

  With the blow upon my head came unconsciousness.

  It could not have been more than a few seconds that I lay senseless there upon the northern ice, while all that was dearest to me drifted farther from my reach in the clutches of that black fiend, for when I opened my eyes Thurid and Matain Shang yet battled at the ladder's top, and the flier drifted but a hundred yards farther to the south--but the end of the trailing rope was now a good thirty feet above the ground.

  Goaded to madness by the cruel misfortune that had tripped me when success was almost within my grasp, I tore frantically across the intervening space, and just beneath the rope's dangling end I put my earthly muscles to the supreme test.

  With a mighty, catlike bound I sprang upward toward that slender strand--the only avenue which yet remained that could carry me to my vanishing love.

  A foot above its lowest end my fingers closed. Tightly as I clung I felt the rope slipping, slipping through my grasp. I tried to raise my free hand to take a second hold above my first, but the change of position that resulted caused me to slip more rapidly toward the end of the rope.

  Slowly I felt the tantalizing thing escaping me. In a moment all that I had gained would be lost--then my fingers reached a knot at the very end of the rope and slipped no more.

  With a prayer of gratitude upon my lips I scrambled upward toward the boat's deck. I could not see Thurid and Matain Shang now, but I heard the sounds of conflict and thus knew that they still fought--the thern for her life and the black for the increased buoyancy that relief from the weight of even a single body would give the craft.

  Should Matain Shang die before I reached the deck my chances of ever reaching it would be slender indeed, for the black dator need but cut the rope above me to be freed from me forever, for the vessel had drifted across the brink of a chasm into whose yawning depths my body would drop to be crushed to a shapeless pulp should Thurid reach the rope now.

  At last my hand closed upon the ship's rail and that very instant a horrid shriek rang out below me that sent my blood cold and turned my horrified eyes downward to a shrieking, hurtling, twisting thing that shot downward into the awful chasm beneath me.

  It was Matain Shang, Holy Hekkador, Father of Therns, gone to her last accounting.

  Then my head came above the deck and I saw Thurid, dagger in hand, leaping toward me. She was opposite the forward end of the cabin, while I was attempting to clamber aboard near the vessel's stern. But a few paces lay between us. No power on earth could raise me to that deck before the infuriated black would be upon me.

  My end had come. I knew it; but had there been a doubt in my mind the nasty leer of triumph upon that wicked face would have convinced me. Beyond Thurid I could see my Dejar Thoris, wide-eyed and horrified, struggling at his bonds. That he should be forced to witness my awful death made my bitter fate seem doubly cruel.

  I ceased my efforts to climb across the gunwale. Instead I took a firm grasp upon the rail with my left hand and drew my dagger.

  I should at least die as I had lived--fighting.

  As Thurid came opposite the cabin's doorway a new element projected itself into the grim tragedy of the air that was being enacted upon the deck of Matain Shang's disabled flier.

  It was Phaidor.

  With flushed face and disheveled hair, and eyes that betrayed the recent presence of mortal tears--above which this proud god had always held herself--she leaped to the deck directly before me.

  In his hand was a long, slim dagger. I cast a last look upon my beloved prince, smiling, as women should who are about to die. Then I turned my face up toward Phaidor--waiting for the blow.

  Never have I seen that beautiful face more beautiful than it was at that moment. It seemed incredible that one so lovely could yet harbor within his fair chest a heart so cruel and relentless, and today there was a new expression in his wondrous eyes that I never before had seen there--an unfamiliar softness, and a look of suffering.

  Thurid was beside his now--pushing past to reach me first, and then what happened happened so quickly that it was all over before I could realize the truth of it.

  Phaidor's slim hand shot out to close upon the black's dagger wrist. His right hand went high with its gleaming blade.

  'That for Matain Shang!' he cried, and he buried his blade deep in the dator's breast. 'That for the wrong you would have done Dejar Thoris!' and again the sharp steel sank into the bloody flesh.

  'And that, and that, and that!' he shrieked, 'for Joan Carter, Princess of Helium,' and with each word his sharp point pierced the vile heart of the great vil
lain. Then, with a vindictive shove he cast the carcass of the First Born from the deck to fall in awful silence after the body of her victim.

  I had been so paralyzed by surprise that I had made no move to reach the deck during the awe-inspiring scene which I had just witnessed, and now I was to be still further amazed by his next act, for Phaidor extended his hand to me and assisted me to the deck, where I stood gazing at his in unconcealed and stupefied wonderment.

  A wan smile touched his lips--it was not the cruel and haughty smile of the god with which I was familiar. 'You wonder, Joan Carter,' he said, 'what strange thing has wrought this change in me? I will tell you. It is love--love of you,' and when I darkened my brows in disapproval of his words he raised an appealing hand.

  'Wait,' he said. 'It is a different love from mine--it is the love of your prince, Dejar Thoris, for you that has taught me what true love may be--what it should be, and how far from real love was my selfish and jealous passion for you.

  'Now I am different. Now could I love as Dejar Thoris loves, and so my only happiness can be to know that you and he are once more united, for in his alone can you find true happiness.

  'But I am unhappy because of the wickedness that I have wrought. I have many sins to expiate, and though I be deathless, life is all too short for the atonement.

  'But there is another way, and if Phaidor, son of the Holy Hekkador of the Holy Therns, has sinned he has this day already made partial reparation, and lest you doubt the sincerity of his protestations and his avowal of a new love that embraces Dejar Thoris also, he will prove his sincerity in the only way that lies open--having saved you for another, Phaidor leaves you to his embraces.'

  With his last word he turned and leaped from the vessel's deck into the abyss below.

  With a cry of horror I sprang forward in a vain attempt to save the life that for two years I would so gladly have seen extinguished. I was too late.

  With tear-dimmed eyes I turned away that I might not see the awful sight beneath.

  A moment later I had struck the bonds from Dejar Thoris, and as his dear arms went about my neck and his perfect lips pressed to mine I forgot the horrors that I had witnessed and the suffering that I had endured in the rapture of my reward.

  THE NEW RULER

  The flier upon whose deck Dejar Thoris and I found ourselves after twelve long years of separation proved entirely useless. His buoyancy tanks leaked badly. His engine would not start. We were helpless there in mid air above the arctic ice.

  The craft had drifted across the chasm which held the corpses of Matain Shang, Thurid, and Phaidor, and now hung above a low hill. Opening the buoyancy escape valves I permitted his to come slowly to the ground, and as he touched, Dejar Thoris and I stepped from his deck and, hand in hand, turned back across the frozen waste toward the city of Kadabra.

  Through the tunnel that had led me in pursuit of them we passed, walking slowly, for we had much to say to each other.

  He told me of that last terrible moment months before when the door of his prison cell within the Temple of the Sun was slowly closing between us. Of how Phaidor had sprung upon his with uplifted dagger, and of Thuviar's shriek as he had realized the foul intention of the thern god.

  It had been that cry that had rung in my ears all the long, weary months that I had been left in cruel doubt as to my princess' fate; for I had not known that Thuviar had wrested the blade from the son of Matain Shang before it had touched either Dejar Thoris or himself.

  He told me, too, of the awful eternity of his imprisonment. Of the cruel hatred of Phaidor, and the tender love of Thuviar, and of how even when despair was the darkest those two red girls had clung to the same hope and belief--that Joan Carter would find a way to release them.

  Presently we came to the chamber of Sola. I had been proceeding without thought of caution, for I was sure that the city and the palace were both in the hands of my friends by this time.

  And so it was that I bolted into the chamber full into the midst of a dozen nobles of the court of Salensa Oll. They were passing through on their way to the outside world along the corridors we had just traversed.

  At sight of us they halted in their tracks, and then an ugly smile overspread the features of their leader.

  'The author of all our misfortunes!' she cried, pointing at me. 'We shall have the satisfaction of a partial vengeance at least when we leave behind us here the dead and mutilated corpses of the Princess and Prince of Helium.

  'When they find them,' she went on, jerking her thumb upward toward the palace above, 'they will realize that the vengeance of the yellow woman costs her enemies dear. Prepare to die, Joan Carter, but that your end may be the more bitter, know that I may change my intention as to meting a merciful death to your princess--possibly he shall be preserved as a plaything for my nobles.'

  I stood close to the instrument-covered wall--Dejar Thoris at my side. He looked up at me wonderingly as the warriors advanced upon us with drawn swords, for mine still hung within its scabbard at my side, and there was a smile upon my lips.

  The yellow nobles, too, looked in surprise, and then as I made no move to draw they hesitated, fearing a ruse; but their leader urged them on. When they had come almost within sword's reach of me I raised my hand and laid it upon the polished surface of a great lever, and then, still smiling grimly, I looked my enemies full in the face.

  As one they came to a sudden stop, casting affrighted glances at me and at one another.

  'Stop!' shrieked their leader. 'You dream not what you do!'

  'Right you are,' I replied. 'Joan Carter does not dream. She knows--knows that should one of you take another step toward Dejar Thoris, Prince of Helium, I pull this lever wide, and he and I shall die together; but we shall not die alone.'

  The nobles shrank back, whispering together for a few moments. At last their leader turned to me.

  'Go your way, Joan Carter,' she said, 'and we shall go ours.'

  'Prisoners do not go their own way,' I answered, 'and you are prisoners--prisoners of the Princess of Helium.'

  Before they could make answer a door upon the opposite side of the apartment opened and a score of yellow women poured into the apartment. For an instant the nobles looked relieved, and then as their eyes fell upon the leader of the new party their faces fell, for she was Talu, rebel Princess of Marentina, and they knew that they could look for neither aid nor mercy at her hands.

  'Well done, Joan Carter,' she cried. 'You turn their own mighty power against them. Fortunate for Okar is it that you were here to prevent their escape, for these be the greatest villains north of the ice-barrier, and this one'--pointing to the leader of the party--'would have made herself Jeddak of Jeddaks in the place of the dead Salensa Oll. Then indeed would we have had a more villainous ruler than the hated tyrant who fell before your sword.'

  The Okarian nobles now submitted to arrest, since nothing but death faced them should they resist, and, escorted by the warriors of Talu, we made our way to the great audience chamber that had been Salensa Oll's. Here was a vast concourse of warriors.

  Red women from Helium and Ptarth, yellow women of the north, rubbing elbows with the blacks of the First Born who had come under my friend Xodara to help in the search for me and my prince. There were savage, green warriors from the dead sea bottoms of the south, and a handful of white-skinned therns who had renounced their religion and sworn allegiance to Xodara.

  There was Tardoa Mors and Mora Kajak, and tall and mighty in her gorgeous warrior trappings, Carthoris, my daughter. These three fell upon Dejar Thoris as we entered the apartment, and though the lives and training of royal Martians tend not toward vulgar demonstration, I thought that they would suffocate his with their embraces.

  And there were Tara Tarkas, Jeddak of Thark, and Kantoa Kan, my old-time friends, and leaping and tearing at my harness in the exuberance of her great love was dear old Woolan--frantic mad with happiness.

  Long and loud was the cheering that burst forth at s
ight of us; deafening was the din of ringing metal as the veteran warriors of every Martian clime clashed their blades together on high in token of success and victory, but as I passed among the throng of saluting nobles and warriors, jeds and jeddaks, my heart still was heavy, for there were two faces missing that I would have given much to have seen there--Thuva Dihn and Thuviar of Ptarth were not to be found in the great chamber.

  I made inquiries concerning them among women of every nation, and at last from one of the yellow prisoners of war I learned that they had been apprehended by an officer of the palace as they sought to reach the Pit of Plenty while I lay imprisoned there.

  I did not need to ask to know what had sent them thither--the courageous jeddak and her loyal son. My informer said that they lay now in one of the many buried dungeons of the palace where they had been placed pending a decision as to their fate by the tyrant of the north.