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Then we came to Manator instead, she taking a new name and I the name A-Sor, that we might not be traced through our names. With her great wealth she bought me a post in The Jeddak's Guard and none knows that I am not a Manatorian, for she is dead. She was beautiful, but she was a devil." "And you never sought to return to your native city?" asked Gahan.
"And your punishment?" asked Turan. "I do not know. O-Tar has not yet spoken. Doubtless the games perhaps the full ten, for O-Tar does not love A-Kor, his son." "You are the jeddak's son?" asked Turan. "I am the son of O-Tar and of a slave, Haja of Gathol, who was a princess in her own land." Turan looked searchingly at the speaker. A son of Haja of Gathol!
So, without hesitation, he descended into the utter darkness below. Feeling with a foot before taking a forward step his descent was necessarily slow, but Gahan was a Barsoomian and so knew the pitfalls that might await the unwary in such dark, forbidden portions of a jeddak's palace.
"U-Kal of Manataj," said O-Tar, "you have deserved the stakes. Seldom have we looked upon more noble swordplay. And you tire of Manataj there be always here in the city of Manator a place for you in The Jeddak's Guard."
Carthoris and Thuvia turned their eyes in the direction of the several doorways which pierced the walls of the great chamber. Each was tightly closed by huge stone doors. "Well?" asked Carthoris. "We are to die the death," whispered Jav faintly. Further than that he would not say. He just sat upon the edge of the jeddak's couch and waited.
The Gatholian thought quickly, and stopping his thoat called to the guardsmen to let him pass, "In the name of O-Tar!" They hesitated a moment. "Aside!" cried Gahan. "Must the jeddak's messenger parley for the right to deliver his message?" "To whom would you deliver it?" asked the padwar of the guard.
First to his mind, naturally, had sprung the thought that Astok of Dusar had stolen the fair Ptarthian; but almost simultaneously with the report of the abduction had come news of the great fetes at Dusar in honour of the return of the jeddak's son to the court of his father. It could not have been he, thought Carthoris, for on the very night that Thuvia was taken Astok had been in Dusar, and yet
I had been more than half suspicious of the seeming sincerity of the Kaolian jeddak's sudden apostasy, but the alacrity with which he embraced my suggestion, and the despatch with which a force of officers and men were placed at my disposal entirely removed the last vestige of my doubts. Two days later the flier rested upon the top of the watchtower, ready to depart.
Even now, far above the gold-shot scarlet dome of the jeddak's palace, she could see the huge bulk of a giant freighter taking its majestic way through the thin Barsoomian air toward the west and Dusar.
They had covered a considerable distance along the almost deserted avenue before signs of pursuit developed and then there came upon them suddenly from behind a dozen warriors mounted on thoats a detachment, evidently, from The Jeddak's Guard. Instantly the avenue was a pandemonium of clashing blades, cursing warriors, and squealing thoats.
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