'Before long you will be beseeching your first ancestors for death,' hissed the keeper of the keys, 'but you will not have death too soon, and remember that no one knows how long it takes to die The Death. We cannot add to your physical suffering, but for the torment of your mind let me remind you that we are sending you to The Death without letting you know what the fate of your accomplices will be,' and he nodded toward Tavia and Phao.
That was a nice point, well chosen. He could not have hit upon any means more certain to inflict acute torture upon me than this, but I would not give him the satisfaction of witnessing my true emotion, and so, once again, I laughed in his face. His patience had about reached the limit of its endurance, for he turned abruptly to a padwar of the guard and ordered him to remove us at once.
As we were hustled from the room, Nur An called a brave good-bye to Phao.
'Good-bye, Tavia!' I cried, 'and remember that we still live.'
'We still live, Hadron of Hastor!' she called back. 'We still live!' and then she was swept from my view as we were pushed along down the corridor.
Down ramp after ramp we were conducted to the uttermost depths of the palace pits and then into a great chamber where I saw Haj Osis sitting upon a throne, surrounded again by his chiefs and his courtiers as he had been upon the occasion that he had interviewed me. Opposite the Jed, and in the middle of the chamber, hung a great iron cage, suspended from a heavy block set in the ceiling. Into this cage we were roughly pushed; the door was closed and secured with a large lock. I wondered what it was all about and what this had to do with The Death, and while I wondered a dozen men pushed a huge trap door from beneath the cage. A rush of cold, clammy air enveloped us and I experienced a chill that seemed to enter my marrow, as though I lay in the cold arms of death. Hollow moans and groans came faintly to my ears and I knew that we were above the pits where The Death lay.
No word was spoken within the chamber, but at a signal from Haj Osis strong men lowered the cage slowly into the aperture beneath us. Here the cold and the damp were more obvious and penetrating than before, while the ghastly sounds appeared to redouble in volume.
Down, down we slid into an abyss of darkness. The horror of the silence in the chamber above was forgotten in the horror of the pandemonium of uncanny sounds that rose from beneath.
How far we were lowered thus I may not even guess, but to Nur An it seemed at least a thousand feet and then we commenced to detect a slight luminosity about us. The moaning and the groaning had become a constant roar. As we approached, it seemed less like moans and groans and more like the sound of wind and rushing waters.
Suddenly, without the slightest warning, the bottom of the cage, which evidently must have been hinged upon one side, and held by a catch that could be sprung from above, swung downward. It happened so quickly that we hardly had time for conjecture before we were plunged into rushing water.
As I rose to the surface I discovered that I could see. Wherever we were, it was not shrouded in impenetrable darkness, but was lighted dimly.
Almost immediately Nur An's head bobbed up at arm's length from me. A strong current was bearing us onward and I realized at once that we were in the grip of a great underground river, one of those to which the remaining waters of dying Barsoom have receded. In the distance I descried a shoreline dimly visible in the subdued light, and, shouting to Nur An to follow me, I struck out toward it. The water was cold, but not sufficiently so to alarm me and I had no doubt but that we would reach the shore.
By the time that we had attained our goal and crawled out upon the rocky shore, our eyes had become accustomed to the dim light of the interior, and now, with astonishment, we gazed about us. What a vast cavern! Far, far above us its ceiling was discernible in the light of the minute radium particles with which the rock that formed its walls and ceiling was impregnated, but the opposite bank of the rushing torrent was beyond the range of our vision.
'So this is The Death!' exclaimed Nur An.
'I doubt if they know what it is themselves,' I replied. 'From the roaring of the river and the moaning of the wind, they have conjured something horrible in their own imaginations.'
'Perhaps the greatest suffering that the victim must endure lies in his anticipation of what awaits him in these seemingly horrid depths,' suggested Nur An, 'whereas the worst that realization might bring would be death by drowning.'
'Or by starvation,' I suggested.
Nur An nodded. 'Nevertheless,' he said, 'I wish I might return just long enough to mock them and witness their disappointment when they find that The Death is not so horrible after all.'
'What a mighty river,' he added after a moment's silence. 'Could it be a tributary of Iss?'
'Perhaps it is Iss herself,' I said.
'Then we are bound upon the last long pilgrimage down to the lost sea of Korus in the valley Dor,' said Nur An gloomily. 'It may be a lovely place, but I do not wish to go there yet.'
'It is a place of horror,' I replied.
'Hush,' he cautioned; 'that is sacrilege.'
'It is sacrilege no longer since John Carter and Tars Tarkas snatched the veil of secrecy from the valley Dor and disposed of the myth of Issus, Goddess of Life Eternal.' Even after I had told him the whole tragic story of the false gods of Mars, Nur An remained skeptical, so closely are the superstitions of religion woven into every fiber of our being.
We were both a trifle fatigued after our battle with the strong current of the river, and perhaps, too, we were suffering from reaction from the nervous shock of the ordeal through which we had passed. So we remained there, resting upon the rocky shore of the river of mystery. Eventually our conversation turned to what was uppermost in the minds of both and yet which each hesitated to mention-the fate of Tavia and Phao.
'I wish that they, too, had been sentenced to The Death,' I said, 'for then at least we might be with them and protect them.'
'I am afraid that we shall never see them again,' said Nur An gloomingly. 'What a cruel fate that I should have found Phao only to lose her again irretrievably so quickly.'
'It is indeed a strange trick of fate that after Tul Axtar stole her from you, he should have lost her too, and then that you should find her in Tjanath.'
He looked at me with a slightly puzzled expression for a Moment and then his face cleared. 'Phao is not the woman of whom I told you in the dungeon at Tjanath,' he said. 'Phao I loved long before; she was my first love. After I lost her I thought that I never could care for a woman again, but this other one came into my life and, knowing that Phao was gone forever, I found some consolation in my new love, but I realize now that was not the same, that no love could ever displace that which I felt for Phao.'
'You lost her irretrievably once before,' I reminded him, 'but you found her again; perhaps you will find her once more.'
'I wish that I might share your optimism,' he said.
'We have little else to buoy us up,' I reminded him.
'You are right,' he said, and then with a laugh, added, 'we still live!'
Presently, feeling rested, we set out along the shore in the direction that the river ran, for we had decided that that would be our course if for no other reason than that it would be easier going down hill than up. Where it would lead, we had not the slightest idea; perhaps to Korus; perhaps to Omean, the buried sea where lay the ships of the First Born.
Over tumbled rock masses we clambered and along level stretches of smooth gravel we pursued our rather aimless course, knowing not whither we were going, having no goal toward which to strive. There was some vegetation, weird and grotesque, but almost colorless for want of sunlight. There were tree-like plants with strange, angular branches that snapped off at the lightest touch, and as the trees did not look like trees, there were blossoms that did not look like flowers. It was a world as unlike the outer world as the figments of imagination are unlike realities.
But whatever musing upon the flora of this strange land I may have been indulging in was brought to a sudden termination as we rounded the shoulder of a jutting promontory and came face to face with as hideous a creature as ever I had laid my eyes upon. It was a great white lizard with gaping jaws large enough to engulf a man at a single swallow. At sight of us it emitted an angry hiss and advanced menacingly toward us.
