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Page 23
"I am of another world. I am John Carter, Prince of the House of
Tardos Mors, Jeddak of Helium. Perchance some faint rumour of me
may have leaked within the confines of your hellish abode."
She smiled.
"Yes," she replied, "naught that passes in the world we have left
is unknown here. I have heard of you, many years ago. The therns
have ofttimes wondered whither you had flown, since you had neither
taken the pilgrimage, nor could be found upon the face of Barsoom."
"Tell me," I said, "and who be you, and why a prisoner, yet with
power over the ferocious beasts of the place that denotes familiarity
and authority far beyond that which might be expected of a prisoner
or a slave?"
"Slave I am," she answered. "For fifteen years a slave in this
terrible place, and now that they have tired of me and become
fearful of the power which my knowledge of their ways has given me
I am but recently condemned to die the death."
She shuddered.
"What death?" I asked.
"The Holy Therns eat human flesh," she answered me; "but only that
which has died beneath the sucking lips of a plant man--flesh from
which the defiling blood of life has been drawn. And to this cruel
end I have been condemned. It was to be within a few hours, had
your advent not caused an interruption of their plans."
"Was it then Holy Therns who felt the weight of John Carter's hand?"
I asked.
"Oh, no; those whom you laid low are lesser therns; but of the
same cruel and hateful race. The Holy Therns abide upon the outer
slopes of these grim hills, facing the broad world from which they
harvest their victims and their spoils.
"Labyrinthine passages connect these caves with the luxurious
palaces of the Holy Therns, and through them pass upon their many
duties the lesser therns, and hordes of slaves, and prisoners, and
fierce beasts; the grim inhabitants of this sunless world.
"There be within this vast network of winding passages and countless
chambers men, women, and beasts who, born within its dim and gruesome
underworld, have never seen the light of day--nor ever shall.
"They are kept to do the bidding of the race of therns; to furnish
at once their sport and their sustenance.
"Now and again some hapless pilgrim, drifting out upon the silent
sea from the cold Iss, escapes the plant men and the great white
apes that guard the Temple of Issus and falls into the remorseless
clutches of the therns; or, as was my misfortune, is coveted by
the Holy Thern who chances to be upon watch in the balcony above
the river where it issues from the bowels of the mountains through
the cliffs of gold to empty into the Lost Sea of Korus.
"All who reach the Valley Dor are, by custom, the rightful prey of
the plant men and the apes, while their arms and ornaments become
the portion of the therns; but if one escapes the terrible denizens
of the valley for even a few hours the therns may claim such a one
as their own. And again the Holy Thern on watch, should he see a
victim he covets, often tramples upon the rights of the unreasoning
brutes of the valley and takes his prize by foul means if he cannot
gain it by fair.
"It is said that occasionally some deluded victim of Barsoomian
superstition will so far escape the clutches of the countless
enemies that beset his path from the moment that he emerges from
the subterranean passage through which the Iss flows for a thousand
miles before it enters the Valley Dor as to reach the very walls
of the Temple of Issus; but what fate awaits one there not even
the Holy Therns may guess, for who has passed within those gilded
walls never has returned to unfold the mysteries they have held
since the beginning of time.
"The Temple of Issus is to the therns what the Valley Dor is imagined
by the peoples of the outer world to be to them; it is the ultimate
haven of peace, refuge, and happiness to which they pass after
this life and wherein an eternity of eternities is spent amidst
the delights of the flesh which appeal most strongly to this race
of mental giants and moral pygmies."
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