Under the Moons of Mars Read online

  It can be found frozen on the snowy mountains of the poles and as morning dew in the temperate forests. The northern lands are silvered with canals and rivers, and the fetid jungles of the equatorial lands are like steam-baths. In truth, water is not so rare on Mars.

  One night, years ago while in lethal pursuit of Matai Shang, Father of the Therns, I was walking in the far northern region late into the night, bleary-eyed, recent wounds scabbing over, near collapse. All of a sudden I saw a darker mass against the dunes, its mountainous bulk bigger than any Martian beast. I crept closer and it obscured the stars. It was so large I had difficulty deciding how far away it was and I ran up against it by mistake, catching my breath and scraping my knuckles on the cool, rough stone.

  I stepped back to see it fully, and knew what it was. It was a Barsoomian sphinx, a statue with the long body of a crouching Banth, with its five legs on either side, and the bald and tusked and bug-eyed head of a Green Martian. Nameless, it stood astride a small canal that might once have fed a small farming community. The ancient Martians knew much that has been lost, and the sphinx meant something to them—a mystic, profane union of Barsoomian opposites. I spent the rest of the night asleep between its forepaws, and in the morning I ran on.

  The book Llana of Gathol collects four Barsoom stories that were originally published in the magazine Amazing Stories. Those stories are “The Ancient Dead,” “The Black Pirates of Barsoom,” “Escape on Mars,” and “Invisible Men of Mars.” In “The Ancient Dead,” John Carter travels to Horz, capital of a vanished empire, where he discovers a small community of surviving Orovars (the white-skinned race of Barsoom). Carter rescues one of them, Pan Dan Chee, from a group of attacking Green Men, thus earning Pan Dan Chee’s friendship, but Carter is then captured by other Orovars and sentenced to death, a fate from which he narrowly escapes. He soon encounters his granddaughter Llana (daughter of Gahan of Gathol and John Carter’s daughter Tara), who explains that she was abducted by the nefarious Jeddak Hin Abtol. Carter and Llana flee the city, along with their new comrade Pan Dan Chee. Our next tale picks up many years later, when the bold young son of Llana and Pan Dan Chee returns to seek adventure in the haunted byways of Horz.

  THE BRONZE MAN OF MARS

  BY L. E. MODESITT, JR.

  It’s a terrible thing to be the son born of a great love story, perhaps the greatest in the recent history of Gathol—to be the son of Pan Dan Chee, the only Orovar to leave the hidden sanctuary of ancient Horz in hundreds of thousands of years, who offered his sword to my mother at first glance, and then fought his way across the rugged terrain of Barsoom. After protecting her honor the entire way, he arrived just in time to break the siege of Gathol, which was under attack by millions of the frozen men of Panar. If that were not enough of a burden, it is even more terrible to be the great-grandson of the most famous warrior of Barsoom. Yes, my mother was Llana of Gathol, the granddaughter of the Jeddak of Jeddaks, John Carter, whose accomplishments and legends are so vast as to be beyond enumerating . . . as well as unbelievable to those who do not know him.

  Those accomplishments were the reason I now stood in the ancient city of Horz, listening, in the darkness, to the shuffling feet of the creatures that scurried within. I had heard that the ulsios of Horz were far larger than the knee-high creatures that frequented the depths and declivities of most cities. I turned slowly, torch in one hand, sword in the other, searching for the first sign of one of the repulsive needle-toothed rodents.

  I barely managed to get my blade up in time to slash-block the leap of the creature that had suddenly leapt at me—an ulsio almost twice the size of any I’d ever seen in my explorations of the depths beneath Gathol. My quick defense barely deflected the beast, however, and it took another series of cut-and-thrusts to leave it gasping for life on the ancient stone pavement, missing three of its six legs by the time it finally expired. Leaving me no time to celebrate, another leapt forward out of the gloom. I dispatched it quickly with a slash to the neck, removing its head with one clean strike. The sight of me removing its head was apparently sufficient to quell any further attack, for, although another followed at a distance, it clearly decided that feasting on its own kind was preferable to the risk I posed.

  And how, you might wonder, did I come to be prowling the pits of Horz, whose dark depths had been unprobed (except by my father and great-grandfather) in hundreds of thousands of years? Horz—once heralded as the greatest of the now-dead cities of Barsoom, and the queen city and most magnificent port on the vanished Throxeus—had been built downward over the eons—to follow the dwindling ocean—then largely abandoned.

  My journey to Horz was inevitable, for from the moment I left the egg it was clear I did not look like either of my parents. My mother possessed the fair-skinned redness and red hair of a princess of Barsoom, while my father had the white skin and blond hair of an Orovar. I, meanwhile, appeared before my mother with golden bronze skin and reddish bronze hair. There had been, in the long history of Barsoom, white men, yellow men, black men, green men, and even plant men . . . but never, until my birth, a bronze man. Add to that the gray eyes of my great-grandfather, and I possessed an appearance unlike anyone in Gathol—at least until my brother left the egg some ten years later, but he’ll have to tell his own tale.

  When my father saw me, he swallowed . . . and then began to teach me everything he knew about swords. He had others teach me to fight with nothing but my body, a skill at which he was less adept . . . for he was an Orovar, and his weapon was the blade—though he was expert with the radium rifle as well. My parents would not let me leave the palace until they were convinced that I was a match for all but the finest of swordsmen. That training that took years and years, naturally, because all too many of the men of Barsoom are indeed accomplished with the blade.

  That did not mean I had no adventures as a youth—for the palace of Gathol is vast indeed, and some of those deep chambers had seen no man for centuries before I entered them. In those depths and darknesses I found some adventure; I fought off ulsios, and feral calots, and once even a banth that had found an ancient tunnel and made its way through haads of underground passages to the palace. Vanquishing a banth would have given me some small stature . . . but, alas, I had no proof, for, as I ran it through, it had thrashed about, and then rolled backward into a shaft that descended into such depths that I never heard the impact of its fall. Had I told anyone that tale, I would have been the laughingstock of all Gathol.

  On an unusually warm morning, prior to my journey to Horz, I had stepped into the small side courtyard of the palace where I made a practice of exercising, only to find the lovely Jasras Kan sitting on one of the ersite benches.

  “Kaor, Jasras.”

  “The same to you, Dan Lan Chee.”

  “You are most beauteous this morning, as you are every morning and evening. . . .”

  “Words . . . polished words, and words alone are but sounds and flattery. . . .” Like her mother, Rojas, Jasras said what she meant, if less politely.

  “I would flatter you, for you deserve it,” I said.

  “Without deeds behind the words, those words are like the wind. What have you done in your life, Dan Lan Chee? You are among the best Jetan players in Gathol, but that is but a game of mental skill. You have illustrious ancestors, but you have never even left Gathol. . . .”

  Strictly speaking, her words were not true. I had taken my personal flier hundreds of haads from Gathol, even into the frigid lands of the last remaining Panars. I’d served under my father when he led a force against the Yellow Men of Barsoom, but I had not distinguished myself individually. For all the skill required to move padwars and princesses across the squares of the gameboard, Jetan did not hazard the body. While I had heard that in times long before Jeddaks had played Jetan with real warriors on a life-size courtyard gameboard, I myself had never partaken of such a game, although I had heard stories about my grandmother Tara having been forced into playing as a live piece in on
e.

  Those quiet words of Jasras Kan had bitten deep into my mind, much as I would have liked to dismiss them. For Jasras was a worthy prize, a woman of wit and beauty, if of a wit sometimes too sharp. She was also the daughter of Rojas, once a princess of the invisible people, and of Garis Kan, an odwar of Hastor, who had won the heart, or at least the mind and body, of Rojas after she had returned to Gathol with my mother. Rojas had aided my mother’s return from her abduction by Hin Abtol, as had my father and great-grandfather, but none of them would ever speak of it, only her rescue and adventurous return.

  What else could I do? That very afternoon, I stocked my flier and set out for Horz, seeking to establish some honor by doing something my father had not: recovering the ancient and wondrous devices used by the near-immortal and evil Lum Tar O, who had preserved warriors for tens of thousands of years, creating food and sustenance from nothing, while surviving for untold generations in the depths beneath Horz. Hundreds upon hundreds of my ancestors had distinguished themselves by their blades, and Jasras was not a woman to be impressed by mere feats of arms; I was determined to do more than that. I had to.

  For days, I flew north and west, my directional compass holding my flier on course while I slept, over haads and haads of ochre moss that grew on the lands that had once held oceans, seeing not a soul in all that time. Late on the fifth day, I beheld Horz, a sweep of buildings at the west end of a vast plateau. As I neared the city, despite the tales I had heard, I was awed at its size, and at the buildings and towers, magnificent still in their partial ruin. Following what I recalled of the little my father had said—and what he had demanded that I tell no one, on my honor as his son—I took care to circle the uppermost level of ancient Horz, avoiding the great courtyard that was doubtless still watched by the remaining Orovars, for they would put to death any outsiders for fear that others would come to take their secrets—especially, no doubt, their secret of creating food and water from nearly nothing.

  I landed the flier on the flat roof of a small building on the far side of the great citadel, as close as I could to a narrow way leading to it, for, as my father had once revealed, the only known entrance to the pits of Horz was near that ancient citadel. Deep in those pits was where I determined to find Lum Tar O’s secrets. Not for me the mere baubles of ancient golden harnesses and endless jewels; of what value were those to Jasras Kan, a princess who was the daughter of a princess?

  There was no obvious access to the rooftop, only a covered staircase off a side alley in this deserted quarter of the ruins, affording a measure of security to the flier. I locked the controls, slipped the master key into a hidden space in my harness, and made my way down to street level, blade in one hand, a torch of the kind used by my ancestors in the other.

  Yet I saw no one, heard no one, on my way to the small windowless building set to the rear of the citadel. The massive gates had no locks, but they were so corroded that it took all my strength to move one enough to squeeze through and then move it back so that any Orovar who chanced to come that way would see nothing obviously amiss.

  As I walked toward the wide stone ramp that led away from the citadel and into the depths, I eased the cover off the torch. When the air struck its central core, a cold bluish light issued forth. I kept the light low, just bright enough to see by, and continued downward.

  I had not even reached the first of the ancient dungeon chambers when the first ulsio had darted from the darkness of a dungeon chamber and attacked. Even after disposing of two, a third followed me for another hundred ods or so before it slipped back into the darkness.

  Only after dispatching the vile creatures did I glance into the dungeon chambers from whence they came. The first held little besides ancient chains and bones and dust. The second held two carved, metal-bound chests. The first of these was filled with golden harnesses and jewels. Outside of a handsome dagger that fit on my harness, I left the jewels and moved to the second chest, some seven ods long; it was empty.

  With my torch in hand, I returned to the main corridor and proceeded onward through the darkness that retreated before my torch and closed in behind me. At each dungeon chamber I checked to see what lay within. Most held little but dust and chains unused in eons. Occasionally I found a chest like the others, chests that had once held bodies, according to my father, bodies embalmed in the ancient past by Lee Um Lo—embalmed so well that the dead did not know that they were dead when they were infused by the will of the maniacal Lum Tar O. They had all died a final time and turned to dust when my grandfather had slain the mad scientist who had almost taken over his very mind.

  I was not looking for treasure—although there was plenty to be found—but for the amazing devices of Lum Tar O that would bring me accolades—and the hand of Jasras Kan.

  Before long, certainly no more than a zode, I came upon a particular chamber, the very one I had sought. It was large and filled with all manner of items: a simple couch, a bench, a table, a stove of a design eons old, bookshelves filled with ancient tomes, and a reservoir of water. There was also a pile of dust, and beside it lay a dagger. Several empty chests with their lids set askew or detached and beside them lined the walls.

  I had found the lair of Lum Tar O. Yet, there was no hint of the devices I sought. I walked to the wall opposite the doorway through which I had entered and examined it with care. Nothing. Nor did the wall adjacent to that reveal anything. On the third wall, I found a square slightly different in shade to the rest of the wall, and when I touched it, it flaked away to reveal the symbol of an armed warrior—a panthan by its appearance—in jet, inlaid into the stone.

  Knowing not what else to do, I pressed upon the figure. A rumbling, creaking noise followed, to no immediately obvious effect. It was only when I turned, holding the torch, that I saw the corner of the wall had recessed, leaving a narrow opening. I hurried toward it, uncapping the torch more to better see what I had uncovered.

  I beheld a set of stone stairs leading downward, with a door below, set perhaps ten ods from the bottommost step. I stepped through the opening and descended until I stood in a small square room facing the door. There was a massive bronze lever on the dark iron door, but no hole for a key. Nor was there a circular dial with numbers upon it, in the fashion of locks on Jasoom. Instead, there was a depiction of a game of Jetan, half-played, if not more, with the profile of each piece in either jet black or gold.

  The lever did not budge, even when I exerted all my strength—which is not inconsiderable.

  I examined closely the Jetan game before me. The pieces were displayed in outline, all except one: the gold princess. While her likeness was small, it showed an exquisite golden-skinned face, with jet-black hair and piercing green eyes. It would have been defilement to touch that figure, and so I did not. Instead, I studied the game, recognizing that the position of the pieces represented one of the timeless puzzles of Jetan, the beginning of the end game where every move but two led to disaster.

  The problem was simple. I could not tell whether the next move belonged to jet or to gold, and there were very different outcomes to the game depending on whether that move was by the jet or by the gold. Gold or jet? Jet or gold? Finally, as much by my sense as by logic, I looked again at the tiny perfection of the gold princess and touched the gold chief and then the square to which I would move him.

  For several tals, nothing happened. Then the door shuddered and the very stone beneath my feet trembled. But the door did not open, and nothing else occurred.

  I pulled down on the massive lever. Still, it did not move. I tried lifting it then, and suddenly the door slid sideways—not open toward me, but out and across the wall—revealing a larger room containing two upright chests, each on a pedestal and identical to those I had found in the other dungeon chambers. Behind them was another door, unlike any I had ever beheld, hexagonal in shape, and made not of iron, but of a greenish metal.

  I had no more time to devote to pondering the door, for the top of the first chest sud
denly dropped away, revealing a well-muscled man with the harness of a panthan who darted forward, blade flashing toward my gut. Both his harness and his sword were jet black. He was half a head taller than me, and quick. I barely managed to slide his blade and jump sideways. Thinking that the dark might benefit me, as I moved back, I capped the torch, only to discover that a faint greenish radiance issued forth from the chest he had vacated—and that the lid of the second chest was now moving as well.

  The jet panthan’s blade flashed like black lightning, and almost as swiftly, yet I managed to parry it and then slashed back with a rising twist-cut that ripped his biceps, causing his blade to fall from his hand and strike the stone floor with a muted clang. Yet he—relentless—pulled a dagger from the sheath on his harness and attacked again. I could not help but admire his persistence, but when I saw another panthan emerging from the second chest, I had to end things quickly and so thrust my blade through the jet panthan’s neck, jerking it out just in time to block the thrust of the gold panthan that now approached me.

  Unlike the first warrior, this one held his blade in his left hand, and—strangely—his moves seemed to be mirror-images of those of the first. But that is where the opposite-mirroring ended, for our encounter ended in exactly the same way—with the panthan dead on my blade.

  For several moments, I simply stood there, breathing heavily. As I watched, the bodies of both panthans crumbled into dust before my eyes, leaving behind only their harnesses, daggers, and blades. Then the green luminescence also vanished, leaving me in pitch darkness.

  I quickly uncapped the torch and stepped toward the green metal hexagonal door. It had no lever, only another depiction of a Jetan board, this one with the pieces displayed in red and green.