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  'Who knows?' the boy murmured.

  'The therns, I judge from what you have said, are no less mortal than we; and yet have I always heard them spoken of with the utmost awe and reverence by the people of Barsoom, as one might speak of the gods themselves.'

  'The therns are mortal,' he replied. 'They die from the same causes as you or I might: those who do not live their allotted span of life, one thousand years, when by the authority of custom they may take their way in happiness through the long tunnel that leads to Issus.

  'Those who die before are supposed to spend the balance of their allotted time in the image of a plant woman, and it is for this reason that the plant women are held sacred by the therns, since they believe that each of these hideous creatures was formerly a thern.'

  'And should a plant woman die?' I asked.

  'Should she die before the expiration of the thousand years from the birth of the thern whose immortality abides within her then the soul passes into a great white ape, but should the ape die short of the exact hour that terminates the thousand years the soul is for ever lost and passes for all eternity into the carcass of the slimy and fearsome silian whose wriggling thousands seethe the silent sea beneath the hurtling moons when the sun has gone and strange shapes walk through the Valley Dor.'

  'We sent several Holy Therns to the silians to-day, then,' said Tara Tarkas, laughing.

  'And so will your death be the more terrible when it comes,' said the maiden. 'And come it will--you cannot escape.'

  'One has escaped, centuries ago,' I reminded him, 'and what has been done may be done again.'

  'It is useless even to try,' he answered hopelessly.

  'But try we shall,' I cried, 'and you shall go with us, if you wish.'

  'To be put to death by mine own people, and render my memory a disgrace to my family and my nation? A Princess of the House of Tardoa Mors should know better than to suggest such a thing.'

  Tara Tarkas listened in silence, but I could feel her eyes riveted upon me and I knew that she awaited my answer as one might listen to the reading of her sentence by the foreman of a jury.

  What I advised the boy to do would seal our fate as well, since if I bowed to the inevitable decree of age-old superstition we must all remain and meet our fate in some horrible form within this awful abode of horror and cruelty.

  'We have the right to escape if we can,' I answered. 'Our own moral senses will not be offended if we succeed, for we know that the fabled life of love and peace in the blessed Valley of Dor is a rank and wicked deception. We know that the valley is not sacred; we know that the Holy Therns are not holy; that they are a race of cruel and heartless mortals, knowing no more of the real life to come than we do.

  'Not only is it our right to bend every effort to escape--it is a solemn duty from which we should not shrink even though we know that we should be reviled and tortured by our own peoples when we returned to them.

  'Only thus may we carry the truth to those without, and though the likelihood of our narrative being given credence is, I grant you, remote, so wedded are mortals to their stupid infatuation for impossible superstitions, we should be craven cowards indeed were we to shirk the plain duty which confronts us.

  'Again there is a chance that with the weight of the testimony of several of us the truth of our statements may be accepted, and at least a compromise effected which will result in the dispatching of an expedition of investigation to this hideous mockery of heaven.'

  Both the boy and the green warrior stood silent in thought for some moments. The former it was who eventually broke the silence.

  'Never had I considered the matter in that light before,' he said. 'Indeed would I give my life a thousand times if I could but save a single soul from the awful life that I have led in this cruel place. Yes, you are right, and I will go with you as far as we can go; but I doubt that we ever shall escape.'

  I turned an inquiring glance toward the Thark.

  'To the gates of Issus, or to the bottom of Korus,' spoke the green warrior; 'to the snows to the north or to the snows to the south, Tara Tarkas follows where Joan Carter leads. I have spoken.'

  'Come, then,' I cried, 'we must make the start, for we could not be further from escape than we now are in the heart of this mountain and within the four walls of this chamber of death.'

  'Come, then,' said the boy, 'but do not flatter yourself that you can find no worse place than this within the territory of the therns.'

  So saying he swung the secret panel that separated us from the apartment in which I had found him, and we stepped through once more into the presence of the other prisoners.

  There were in all ten red Martians, women and men, and when we had briefly explained our plan they decided to join forces with us, though it was evident that it was with some considerable misgivings that they thus tempted fate by opposing an ancient superstition, even though each knew through cruel experience the fallacy of its entire fabric.

  Thuviar, the boy whom I had first freed, soon had the others at liberty. Tara Tarkas and I stripped the bodies of the two therns of their weapons, which included swords, daggers, and two revolvers of the curious and deadly type manufactured by the red Martians.

  We distributed the weapons as far as they would go among our followers, giving the firearms to two of the men; Thuviar being one so armed.

  With the latter as our guide we set off rapidly but cautiously through a maze of passages, crossing great chambers hewn from the solid metal of the cliff, following winding corridors, ascending steep inclines, and now and again concealing ourselves in dark recesses at the sound of approaching footsteps.

  Our destination, Thuviar said, was a distant storeroom where arms and ammunition in plenty might be found. From there he was to lead us to the summit of the cliffs, from where it would require both wondrous wit and mighty fighting to win our way through the very heart of the stronghold of the Holy Therns to the world without.

  'And even then, O Princess,' he cried, 'the arm of the Holy Thern is long. It reaches to every nation of Barsoom. Her secret temples are hidden in the heart of every community. Wherever we go should we escape we shall find that word of our coming has preceded us, and death awaits us before we may pollute the air with our blasphemies.'

  We had proceeded for possibly an hour without serious interruption, and Thuviar had just whispered to me that we were approaching our first destination, when on entering a great chamber we came upon a woman, evidently a thern.

  She wore in addition to her leathern trappings and jewelled ornaments a great circlet of gold about her brow in the exact centre of which was set an immense stone, the exact counterpart of that which I had seen upon the breast of the little old woman at the atmosphere plant nearly twenty years before.

  It is the one priceless jewel of Barsoom. Only two are known to exist, and these were worn as the insignia of their rank and position by the two old women in whose charge was placed the operation of the great engines which pump the artificial atmosphere to all parts of Mars from the huge atmosphere plant, the secret to whose mighty portals placed in my possession the ability to save from immediate extinction the life of a whole world.

  The stone worn by the thern who confronted us was of about the same size as that which I had seen before; an inch in diameter I should say. It scintillated nine different and distinct rays; the seven primary colours of our earthly prism and the two rays which are unknown upon Earth, but whose wondrous beauty is indescribable.

  As the thern saw us her eyes narrowed to two nasty slits.

  'Stop!' she cried. 'What means this, Thuviar?'

  For answer the boy raised his revolver and fired point-blank at her. Without a sound she sank to the earth, dead.

  'Beast!' he hissed. 'After all these years I am at last revenged.'

  Then as he turned toward me, evidently with a word of explanation on his lips, his eyes suddenly widened as they rested upon me, and with a little exclamation he started toward me.

 
'O Princess,' he cried, 'Fate is indeed kind to us. The way is still difficult, but through this vile thing upon the floor we may yet win to the outer world. Notest thou not the remarkable resemblance between this Holy Thern and thyself?'

  The woman was indeed of my precise stature, nor were her eyes and features unlike mine; but her hair was a mass of flowing yellow locks, like those of the two I had killed, while mine is black and close cropped.

  'What of the resemblance?' I asked the boy Thuviar. 'Do you wish me with my black, short hair to pose as a yellow-haired priestess of this infernal cult?'

  He smiled, and for answer approached the body of the woman he had slain, and kneeling beside it removed the circlet of gold from the forehead, and then to my utter amazement lifted the entire scalp bodily from the corpse's head.

  Rising, he advanced to my side and placing the yellow wig over my black hair, crowned me with the golden circlet set with the magnificent gem.

  'Now don her harness, Princess,' he said, 'and you may pass where you will in the realms of the therns, for Satora Throg was a Holy Thern of the Tenth Cycle, and mighty among her kind.'

  As I stooped to the dead woman to do his bidding I noted that not a hair grew upon her head, which was quite as bald as an egg.

  'They are all thus from birth,' explained Thuviar noting my surprise. 'The race from which they sprang were crowned with a luxuriant growth of golden hair, but for many ages the present race has been entirely bald. The wig, however, has come to be a part of their apparel, and so important a part do they consider it that it is cause for the deepest disgrace were a thern to appear in public without it.'

  In another moment I stood garbed in the habiliments of a Holy Thern.

  At Thuviar's suggestion two of the released prisoners bore the body of the dead thern upon their shoulders with us as we continued our journey toward the storeroom, which we reached without further mishap.

  Here the keys which Thuviar bore from the dead thern of the prison vault were the means of giving us immediate entrance to the chamber, and very quickly we were thoroughly outfitted with arms and ammunition.

  By this time I was so thoroughly fagged out that I could go no further, so I threw myself upon the floor, bidding Tara Tarkas to do likewise, and cautioning two of the released prisoners to keep careful watch.

  In an instant I was asleep.

  CHAPTER V

  CORRIDORS OF PERIL

  How long I slept upon the floor of the storeroom I do not know, but it must have been many hours.

  I was awakened with a start by cries of alarm, and scarce were my eyes opened, nor had I yet sufficiently collected my wits to quite realize where I was, when a fusillade of shots rang out, reverberating through the subterranean corridors in a series of deafening echoes.

  In an instant I was upon my feet. A dozen lesser therns confronted us from a large doorway at the opposite end of the storeroom from which we had entered. About me lay the bodies of my companions, with the exception of Thuviar and Tara Tarkas, who, like myself, had been asleep upon the floor and thus escaped the first raking fire.

  As I gained my feet the therns lowered their wicked rifles, their faces distorted in mingled chagrin, consternation, and alarm.

  Instantly I rose to the occasion.

  'What means this?' I cried in tones of fierce anger. 'Is Satora Throg to be murdered by her own vassals?'

  'Have mercy, O Mistress of the Tenth Cycle!' cried one of the fellows, while the others edged toward the doorway as though to attempt a surreptitious escape from the presence of the mighty one.

  'Ask them their mission here,' whispered Thuviar at my elbow.

  'What do you here, fellows?' I cried.

  'Two from the outer world are at large within the dominions of the therns. We sought them at the command of the Father of Therns. One was white with black hair, the other a huge green warrior,' and here the fellow cast a suspicious glance toward Tara Tarkas.

  'Here, then, is one of them,' spoke Thuviar, indicating the Thark, 'and if you will look upon this dead woman by the door perhaps you will recognize the other. It was left for Satora Throg and her poor slaves to accomplish what the lesser therns of the guard were unable to do--we have killed one and captured the other; for this had Satora Throg given us our liberty. And now in your stupidity have you come and killed all but myself, and like to have killed the mighty Satora Throg herself.'

  The women looked very sheepish and very scared.

  'Had they not better throw these bodies to the plant women and then return to their quarters, O Mighty One?' asked Thuviar of me.

  'Yes; do as Thuviar bids you,' I said.

  As the women picked up the bodies I noticed that the one who stooped to gather up the late Satora Throg started as her closer scrutiny fell upon the upturned face, and then the fellow stole a furtive, sneaking glance in my direction from the corner of her eye.

  That she suspicioned something of the truth I could have sworn; but that it was only a suspicion which she did not dare voice was evidenced by her silence.

  Again, as she bore the body from the room, she shot a quick but searching glance toward me, and then her eyes fell once more upon the bald and shiny dome of the dead woman in her arms. The last fleeting glimpse that I obtained of her profile as she passed from my sight without the chamber revealed a cunning smile of triumph upon her lips.

  Only Tara Tarkas, Thuviar, and I were left. The fatal marksmanship of the therns had snatched from our companions whatever slender chance they had of gaining the perilous freedom of the world without.

  So soon as the last of the gruesome procession had disappeared the boy urged us to take up our flight once more.

  She, too, had noted the questioning attitude of the thern who had borne Satora Throg away.

  'It bodes no good for us, O Princess,' he said. 'For even though this fellow dared not chance accusing you in error, there be those above with power sufficient to demand a closer scrutiny, and that, Princess would indeed prove fatal.'

  I shrugged my shoulders. It seemed that in any event the outcome of our plight must end in death. I was refreshed from my sleep, but still weak from loss of blood. My wounds were painful. No medicinal aid seemed possible. How I longed for the almost miraculous healing power of the strange salves and lotions of the green Martian men. In an hour they would have had me as new.

  I was discouraged. Never had a feeling of such utter hopelessness come over me in the face of danger. Then the long flowing, yellow locks of the Holy Thern, caught by some vagrant draught, blew about my face.

  Might they not still open the way of freedom? If we acted in time, might we not even yet escape before the general alarm was sounded? We could at least try.

  'What will the fellow do first, Thuviar?' I asked. 'How long will it be before they may return for us?'

  'She will go directly to the Father of Therns, old Matain Shang. She may have to wait for an audience, but since she is very high among the lesser therns, in fact as a thorian among them, it will not be long that Matain Shang will keep her waiting.

  'Then if the Father of Therns puts credence in her story, another hour will see the galleries and chambers, the courts and gardens, filled with searchers.'

  'What we do then must be done within an hour. What is the best way, Thuviar, the shortest way out of this celestial Hades?'

  'Straight to the top of the cliffs, Princess,' he replied, 'and then through the gardens to the inner courts. From there our way will lie within the temples of the therns and across them to the outer court. Then the ramparts--O Princess, it is hopeless. Ten thousand warriors could not hew a way to liberty from out this awful place.

  'Since the beginning of time, little by little, stone by stone, have the therns been ever adding to the defences of their stronghold. A continuous line of impregnable fortifications circles the outer slopes of the Mountains of Otz.

  'Within the temples that lie behind the ramparts a million fighting-womenwomen are ever ready. The courts and gardens are f
illed with slaves, with men and with children.

  'None could go a stone's throw without detection.'

  'If there is no other way, Thuviar, why dwell upon the difficulties of this. We must face them.'

  'Can we not better make the attempt after dark?' asked Tara Tarkas. 'There would seem to be no chance by day.'

  'There would be a little better chance by night, but even then the ramparts are well guarded; possibly better than by day. There are fewer abroad in the courts and gardens, though,' said Thuviar.

  'What is the hour?' I asked.

  'It was midnight when you released me from my chains,' said Thuviar. 'Two hours later we reached the storeroom. There you slept for fourteen hours. It must now be nearly sundown again. Come, we will go to some nearby window in the cliff and make sure.'