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"You think she is no Corphal, then, I-Gos?" he asked, wishing to carry the subject from the man who was still at large. "No more than you," replied the ancient taxidermist. O-Tar looked long and searchingly at Tara of Helium. All the beauty that was hers seemed suddenly to be carried to every fibre of his consciousness.
I-Gos' cackling laughter rose above the silence of the room. "Ey, ey!" he shrilled. "What the young warriors of O-Tar cannot do, old I-Gos does alone." "Only a Corphal may capture a Corphal," growled one of the chiefs who had fled from the chambers of O-Mai. I-Gos laughed. "Terror turned your heart to water," he replied; "and shame your tongue to libel.
This be no Corphal, but only a woman of Helium; her companion a warrior who can match blades with the best of you and cut your putrid hearts. Not so in the days of I-Gos' youth. Ah, then were there men in Manator. Well do I recall that day that I " "Peace, doddering fool!" commanded O-Tar. "Where is the man?" "Where I found the woman in the death chamber of O-Mai.
"The laws of Manator are just," said O-Tar, addressing her; "thus is it that you have been summoned here again to be judged by the highest authority of Manator. Word has reached me that you are suspected of being a Corphal. What word have you to say in refutation of the charge?" Tara of Helium could scarce restrain a sneer as she answered the ridiculous accusation of witchcraft.
"U-Thor remembers," replied the jed of Manatos, "that the laws of Manator permit any who may be accused to have advice and counsel before their judge." Tara of Helium saw that for some reason this man would have assisted her, and so she acted upon his advice. "I deny the charge," she said, "I am no Corphal." "Of that we shall learn," snapped O-Tar.
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."
"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.
"The life of your jeddak is in my hands. You believe me a Corphal and so you believe, too, that only the sword of a jeddak may slay me, therefore your blades are useless against me. Offer harm to any one of us, or seek to approach your jeddak until I have spoken, and he shall sink lifeless to the marble. Release the two prisoners and let them come to my side I would speak to them, privately.
She was still garbed in the rich harness of a Black Princess of Jetan, and as O-Tar the Jeddak gazed upon her he realized that never before had his eyes rested upon a more perfect figure a more beautiful face. "She is no Corphal," he murmured to himself. "She is no Corphal and she is a princess a princess of Helium, and, by the golden hair of the Holy Hekkador, she is beautiful.
"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.
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