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"Remove the spell from them," suggested the girl he had called Ozara. "Let them
see and hear us. There are only four men among them; they cannot harm us."
"They shall see us and they shall hear us when they are led out to die," replied
the man, "and not before."
"I have an idea that the light-skinned man among them can see us and hear us
now," said the girl.
"What makes you think so?" demanded the man.
"I sense it when his eyes rest upon mine," she replied dreamily. "Then, too,
when you speak, Ul Vas, his eyes travel to your face; and when I speak, they
return to mine. He hears us, Ul Vas, and he sees us.
I was indeed looking at the woman as she spoke, and now I realized that I might
have difficulty in carrying on my deception; but this time, when the man she had
called Ul Vas replied to her, I focused my eyes beyond the girl and did not look
at him.
"It is impossible," he said. "He can neither see nor hear us." Then he looked
down at the officer in command of the detachment that had brought us from our
cells to the audience chamber. "Zamak," he demanded, "what do you think? Can
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this creature either see or hear us?"
"I think not, All-highest," replied the man. "When we went to fetch him, he
asked this Masena, who was imprisoned with him, if there were anyone in the
room, although twenty-five of us were all about him."
"I thought you were wrong," said Ul Vas to his jeddara; "you are always
imagining things."
The girl shrugged her shapely shoulders and turned away with a bored yawn, but
presently her eyes came back to me; and though I tried not to meet them squarely
thereafter, I was aware during all the rest of the time that I was in the
audience chamber that she was watching me.
"Let us proceed," said Ul Vas.
Thereupon an old man stepped to the front and placed himself directly before the
throne. "All-highest," he intoned in a sing-song voice, "the day is good, the
occasion is good, the time has come. We bring before you, most august son of the
Fire God, seven enemies of the Tarids. Through you, your father speaks, letting
his people know his wishes. You have talked with the Fire God, your father. Tell
us, All-highest, if these offerings look good in his eyes; make known to us his
wishes, almighty one."
Ever since we had come into the audience chamber, Ul Vas had been inspecting
us
carefully; and especially had his attention been centered upon Dejah Thoris and
Zanda. Now he cleared his throat.
"My father, the Fire God, wishes to know who these enemies are," he said.
"One of them," replied the old man who had spoken before, and whom I took to
be
a priest, "is a Masena that your warriors captured while he was hunting outside
our walls. The other six are strange creatures. We know not from whence they
came. They arrived in two unheard-of contraptions that moved through the air
like birds, though they had no wings. In each of these were two men and a
woman.
They alighted inside our walls; but from whence they came or why, we do not
know, though doubtless it was their intention to do us harm, as is the intention
of all men who come to the castle of the Tarids. As you will note, All-highest,
five of these six have red skins, while the sixth had a skin only a little
darker than our own. He seems to be of a different race, with his white skin,
his black hair, and his grey eyes. These things we know and nothing more. We
await the wishes of the Fire God from the lips of his son, Ul Vas."
The man on the throne pursed his lips, as though in thought, while his eyes
travelled again along the line of prisoners facing him, lingering long upon
Dejah Thoris and Zanda. Presently, he spoke.
"My father, the Fire God, demands that the Masena and the four strange men be
destroyed in his honor at this same hour, after he has encircled Ladan seven
times."
There were a few moments of expectant silence after he had ceased speaking  a
silence that was finally broken by the old priest.
"And the women, All-highest?" he asked; "what are the wishes of the Fire God,
your father, in relation to them?"
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"The Fire God, to show his great love," replied the jeddak, "has presented the
two women to his son, Ul Vas to do with as he chooses."
CHAPTER XIX
OZARA
LIFE is sweet; and when I heard the words of doom fall from the lips of the [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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