The Chessmen of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs (best reads of all time .TXT) 📕

it wore my two swords and my dagger. And then the head disappeared down the hole of the ulsio with the key, and when it returned, it resumed its body and stood guard over me at the doorway until the padwar came to fetch it hither.”

“It is enough!” said O-Tar, sternly. “Both shall receive the jeddak’s steel,” and rising from his throne he drew his long-sword and descended the marble steps toward them, while two brawny warriors seized Tara by either arm and two seized Ghek, holding them facing the naked blade of the jeddak.

“Hold, just O-Tar!” cried U-Dor. “There be yet another to be judged. Let us confront him who calls himself Turan with these his fellows before they die.”

“Good!” exclaimed O-Tar, pausing half way down the steps. “Fetch Turan, the slave!”

When Turan had been brought into the chamber he was placed a little to Tara’s left and a step nearer the throne. O-Tar eyed him menacingly.

“You are Turan,” he asked, “friend and companion of these?”

The panthan was about to reply when Tara of Helium spoke. “I know not this fellow,” she said. “Who dares say that he be a friend and companion of the Princess Tara of Helium?”

Turan and Ghek looked at her in surprise, but at Turan she did not look, and to Ghek she passed a quick glance of warning, as to say: “Hold thy peace.”

The panthan tried not to fathom her purpose for the head is useless when the heart usurps its functions, and Turan knew only that the woman he loved had denied him, and though he tried not even to think it his foolish heart urged but a single explanation⁠—that she refused to recognize him lest she be involved in his difficulties.

O-Tar looked first at one and then at another of them; but none of them spoke.

“Were they not captured together?” he asked of U-Dor.

“No,” replied the dwar. “He who is called Turan was found seeking entrance to the city and was enticed to the pits. The following morning I discovered the other two upon the hill beyond The Gate of Enemies.”

“But they are friends and companions,” said a young padwar, “for this Turan inquired of me concerning these two, calling them by name and saying that they were his friends.”

“It is enough,” stated O-Tar, “all three shall die,” and he took another step downward from the throne.

“For what shall we die?” asked Ghek. “Your people prate of the just laws of Manator, and yet you would slay three strangers without telling them of what crime they are accused.”

“He is right,” said a deep voice. It was the voice of U-Thor, the great jed of Manatos. O-Tar looked at him and scowled; but there came voices from other portions of the chamber seconding the demand for justice.

“Then know, though you shall die anyway,” cried O-Tar, “that all three are convicted of Corphalism and that as only a jeddak may slay such as you in safety you are about to be honored with the steel of O-Tar.”

“Fool!” cried Turan. “Know you not that in the veins of this woman flows the blood of ten thousand jeddaks⁠—that greater than yours is her power in her own land? She is Tara, Princess of Helium, great-granddaughter of Tardos Mors, daughter of John Carter, Warlord of Barsoom. She cannot be a Corphal. Nor is this creature Ghek, nor am I. And you would know more, I can prove my right to be heard and to be believed if I may have word with the Princess Haja of Gathol, whose son is my fellow prisoner in the pits of O-Tar, his father.”

At this U-Thor rose to his feet and faced O-Tar. “What means this?” he asked. “Speaks the man the truth? Is the son of Haja a prisoner in thy pits, O-Tar?”

“And what is it to the jed of Manatos who be the prisoners in the pits of his jeddak?” demanded O-Tar, angrily.

“It is this to the jed of Manatos,” replied U-Thor in a voice so low as to be scarce more than a whisper and yet that was heard the whole length and breadth of the great throne room of O-Tar, Jeddak of Manator. “You gave me a slave woman, Haja, who had been a princess in Gathol, because you feared her influence among the slaves from Gathol. I have made of her a free woman, and I have married her and made her thus a princess of Manatos. Her son is my son, O-Tar, and though thou be my jeddak, I say to you that for any harm that befalls A-Kor you shall answer to U-Thor of Manatos.”

O-Tar looked long at U-Thor, but he made no reply. Then he turned again to Turan. “If one be a Corphal,” he said, “then all of you be Corphals, and we know well from the things that this creature has done,” he pointed at Ghek, “that he is a Corphal, for no mortal has such powers as he. And as you are all Corphals you must all die.” He took another step downward, when Ghek spoke.

“These two have no such powers as I,” he said. “They are but ordinary, brainless things such as yourself. I have done all the things that your poor, ignorant warriors have told you; but this only demonstrates that I am of a higher order than yourselves, as is indeed the fact. I am a kaldane, not a Corphal. There is nothing supernatural or mysterious about me, other than that to the ignorant all things which they cannot understand are mysterious. Easily might I have eluded your warriors and escaped your pits; but I remained in the hope that I might help these two foolish creatures who have not the brains to escape without help. They befriended me and saved my life.