A Swordsman of Mars

Chapter II The Palace of Perfection

As I have stated, I do not mean to bore my reader with a lengthy account of my birth and youth and education on Mars. This is, in part, because, from my way of thinking, my life on this planet up to my twenty-first year was only a prelude to the magnificent adventures into which Fate soon thereafter thrust me, and all that I had experienced before that fateful day was merely a preparation for what was to come.

The date whereof I speak was the thirteenth day of the Month of Thaad, which was the third month in the Martian calendar. It has lingered in my mind for so long primarily for two reasons, the second and lesser of which is that, as this day fell on the last day of one of the Martian weeks, it was thus virtually identical to “Friday the thirteenth,” a date popularly supposed by Earth superstition to be unlucky.

For me, however, it proved an occasion of supreme good fortune, for it was upon that day that my eyes first beheld the incomparable loveliness of Xana of Kanator. And that day I count as the true beginning of my second life.

A Prince of Mars must fulfill many social duties and must often attend ceremonies or social functions he would otherwise have no cause at which to be present. It is much the same with the royalty of my native world, whose position obliges them to lay cornerstones or christen battleships, which are not to be found in the general run of social events which a Duke or a Princess might be expected, by natural inclination, to desire to attend.

As a Prince of the ancient and royal house of Jad I was, therefore, frequently called upon to visit many functions of a purely ceremonial nature. One of these obligations, which either I or my father the jeddak were by custom and tradition expected to fulfill, was to attend the opening to the public of what the Zoradians call “the Palace of Perfection.” This edifice is much in the nature of a museum or a national gallery: therein are preserved every artifact surviving from the days of our ancestors which were considered to have attained artistic perfection. Sometimes the artworks housed therein are the productions of antiquity, such as statues or medallions or tapestries or painted frescoes salvaged from the oblivion that has devoured so many of the great Barsoomian cities. But sometimes—and this is extraordinarily rare—the productions of a living painter or sculptor are esteemed so highly as to merit them the supreme accolade of being placed in the spacious halls of the Palace of Perfection among the sublime achievements of ancient genius.

During the first months of the Martian year, it was the immemorial custom of Zorad to close this museum of the arts and to forbid public attendance while the many exhibits and displays were cleaned or refurbished with exquisite care by master artisans employed for that task. It was during this interval that the works of contemporary artists which had survived the scrutiny of a panel of judges composed of connoisseurs of the arts, and had been deemed worthy of comparison with the masterpieces of the past, were installed in the halls and rotundae of the immense, rambling structure. At the terminus of this period of closure, the Palace was again thrown open to the public in a formal ceremony, over which, as I have just mentioned, either I or my royal sire were expected to preside.

On this particular occasion, as chance would have it, my father was otherwise occupied with a council on military affairs. The savage green horde of Zarkol, who roamed the dead seabottoms of the mighty Xanthus, amidst the which our own city arose, were reported by an air scout in the sky navy of Zorad to be on the move. Customarily, this horde inhabits one of the many dead cities which litter the face of the Red World, abandoned ages since by our ancestors. It is the city of Zarkol, whencefrom the horde of Druj Morvath, their jeddak, derive their name.

This matter, which might portend a serious threat to the safety of the nation, precluded the jeddak from his merely formal attendance at the opening ceremonies, and I was dispatched from the Palace of a Thousand Jeddaks to take his place.

I recall that it was just before the noon hour of the Martian day that I rode forth from the palace of my fathers by the Gate of the Banths, attended by the officers and gentlemen of my retinue and their equerries.

We were dressed in our ceremonial regalia, and our leather trappings were resplendent with flashing gems and adornments of precious metals, while brightly colored pennons fluttered from the lanceheads borne by my retinue, charged with the colors not only of Zorad itself, but of my own personal ensign.

Crossing the vast plaza upon which the Palace of a Thousand Jeddaks affronts, we loped down a broad stone-paved boulevard lined to either side with immense, flowering pimalia trees, known as the Avenue of Victories from the monuments erected at intervals along the way in commemoration of ancient battles wherefrom the legions of Zorad had emerged to bear away the laurels in triumph over their enemies. It was a brave and splendid sight, the broad boulevard thronged with handsome men and women who waved and cheered as we went padding by on our restive, high-tempered thoаts. Carpets or awanings in a variety of brilliant hues adorned the carven facades of the noble mansions of the several aristocratic houses of the realm which stood in an imposing row along the way. From rooftop and dome and spire, heraldic banners fluttered in the brisk breeze, charged with a thousand bold blazonries.

Arriving at the Square of the Monuments, upon which the museum-gallery faced, we dismounted smartly, leaving our steeds in the hands of the equerries, and entered this vast temple reared to the genius of men, through gates carven in a remote epoch with the stern and frowning visages of jeddaks and jeddaras whose very names were forgotten ages ago. We were greeted within the central rotunda by a respectable crowd of citizenry, led by the officials and curators of the museum in their ceremonial finery.

“Be you welcome in this palace dedicated to the arts, O my Prince!” declared the seniormost of the curators with a humble bow, which I politely returned, murmuring some stilted formal courtesy decreed by custom from of old.

I will not burden this narrative with an elaborate account of the rituals which followed. They were soon concluded, suffice it to say, and I believe that therein I played my part in a manner befitting the solemnity of the occasion. It would have been discourteous of me to have left the building at the moment my official duties were concluded; thus, gentility suggested that I should spend a little while strolling about the vast domed hall to view and admire the several new acquisitions on exhibition for the first time, before taking my departure .

I thank whatever gods may be that I did so!

For, hardly had I so much as begun my perfunctory circuit of the rotunda, before I paused in front of a large, jewel-bright painting as if thunderstruck. The involuntary gasp of amazement this masterpiece wrung from my lips must have been clearly audible to all who stood within the great room. Aware that I had drawn all eyes to me I laughed lightly, dissembling my awe behind a flimsy pretense of aesthetic pleasure.

It was the portrait of a young woman of such incomparable beauty as I had never heretofore imagined the human features could attain to, nor the brush of an artist express upon his canvas. Her face was an exquisite oval cameo, poised upon a proud and graceful and slender neck, her features delicately chiseled, her great eyes lustrous as black jewels. Her abundant masses of glistening hair, black as a raven’s wing, were confined by a gemmed tiara of bizarre design which encircled her brows, and from the starry crest of this coronet there soared a rare single curved plume, shimmering with the peacock hues of bronze and emerald and metallic azure.

Her complexion was clear and flawless, the warm tint of ruddy copper, glowing with the rich carmine of her dimpled cheeks, and her full, perfect lips shimmered like polished rubies. Her raiment consisted of a silken scarf of lucent gossamer through which the lines of her splendid figure could be ascertained. This crossed over one gleaming shoulder and then wrapped itself about her slender, rounded upper body, leaving bare, as is the custom with the women of Mars, her perfect breasts which were, however, partially but discreetly veiled by thin chains of precious metals and narrow necklaces of glittering gems. It was the expression in that radiant and exquisite face which rendered the portrait more than merely an admirable technical achievement. For the hand of the painter had somehow caught the living spirit of his unknown model—the radiant health, the roguish humor of her voluptuous yet playful smile, the fresh, exciting vigor and zest for life legible in her vivacious, laughing eyes—and rendered them immortal, preserved by the brush of genius for all the ages to come.

I stood before this miracle of art as one entranced, devouring with my eyes the laughing, vivid beauty of this young and delicious creature. Rapt as I was, and all but oblivious to my surroundings, I was aware that my fascinated attention to this one painting was drawing curious stares in my direction, and that puzzled whispers were arising from my audience.

A tactful young lieutenant in my retinue, Rad Komis by name, noticing that my peculiar behavior was attracting attention, cleared his throat behind me.

“An admirable work, is it not, my Prince?” he murmured.

“Oh, admirable, admirable,” I said in what I hoped was an offhand manner. “Whose work is this?”

Rad Komis consulted a leaflet in which the new exhibits were listed.

“An artist named Quindus Varro. I have heard of him; a genius, but somewhat eccentric. He lives in a half-ruined villa beyond the city, eschewing the companionship of his fellow men. The painting is entitled ‘Xana of Kanator’ ”

“Indeed?” I said, pretending polite indifference. “An excellent skill. Let us pass on to observe the other artworks.” But upon the tablets of my memory I engraved the name of the artist and that of his exquisite subject.

Early that evening after a light repast in my suite I repaired to the airship hangar atop the roof of the palace, cast off the mooring lines, and took to the skies in my private scout.

The villa in which the eccentric artist, Quindus Varro, made his abode lay directly north of Zorad, beyond those waterfront precincts of the city which had become abandoned with the lessening of the population over many ages.

Silent and swift as a hovering shadow, my flier skimmed above the spires of crumbling palaces and deserted piles of ruined masonry long given over to the stealthy scavengers of the fungus forest which mantled the hills to the north and east of Zorad. The night was clear and brilliant with stars, and as both of the twin moons of Mars were aloft at this hour, their doubled moonlight transformed the nocturnal landscape into a scene of weird and romantic grandeur. The Martians call the lesser of the twin moons, which Earthlings know as Deimos, by the name of Cluros; while it is much closer to the surface of Mars than is the satellite of my native world, it revolves so slowly that it requires thirty hours and a trifle more to make one complete circuit of the planet. The greater of the two moons, which we call Phobos, the Martians know as Thuria. It soars at a height of only some five thousand miles above the surface of the planet, and completes one circumnavigation of Mars every seven and one-half hours, presenting to the eye the semblance of an immense, luminous meteor hurtling across the heavens from horizon to horizon two or three times each night.

The villa of Quindus Varro was one of the numerous edifices of antiquity which survive virtually intact due to the remarkable preservative qualities of the Martian atmosphere. The facade of this imposing structure was a colonnade composed of marble pillars, of which two were fallen; the remainder served to support a grand architrave whereon were sculptured with deathless skill the noble and graceful and heroic forms of men and women. The upper works presented a rich surface of ornament, heavy with carven faces of allegorical figures, some adorned with noble metals or precious stones. Only the east wing of this palatial edifice was slumping into decay; the remainder of the structure displayed a remarkable degree of preservation.

I brought my flier down to the courtyard before the colonnade, where slabs of marble lay tumbled about and overgrown with quantities of indigo moss. Tethering the mooring line to the capital of a fallen column, which lay mouldering amidst the rank and untamed growth, I strode up a flight of broken stone steps to discover the towering doors of the portal widely ajar. Within I found a circular rotunda whose marble floor was littered with dead vegetation and matted with indescribable filth. The many-colored moonlight fell in glorious shafts through broken clerestory windows to illuminate walls of gleaming alabaster, hung with tattered, faded tapestries, and to gleam along the dirty rail of a graceful stair which coiled to the second level.

A cracked, peevish voice hailed me from the darkness above.

“What noisome intruder disturbs the solitude of Quindus Varro? There is little else but garbage here to steal, if you be a thief; this, and the poor rags that clothe my body, and a few oddments of the painter's craft. Can it be that my rivals fear the genius of Quindus Varro to such an absurd extent, that they have secured the services of an assassin to forever extinguish that spark of divine fire?”

Another than an inhabitant of the Red Planet might have first suspected an uninvited intruder to be a burglar, but this is not so. On Barsoom, for some strange reason, thievery is so exceptionally rare as to be virtually unknown, and I have not the slightest reason why. It is another of the many mysteries which I cannot explain to my reader (if any shall ever peruse these words). It is almost as if stealing had never been invented by the dwellers on the Red Planet; if so, I greatly fear thievery to be the only crime or vice unique to the peoples of Earth, for the Martian civilisation enjoys, if that is the word I want, every other criminal tendency known to my former planet.

Thus addressed, I stepped into the pool of moonlight so that the man could clearly see me from above, and announced my name in a firm voice, although neglecting to state my rank in society.

“Jad Tedron, Jad Tedron,” the old man mumbled. “I know no Jad Tedron. What do you wish of me, that you must intrude your unwanted presence upon my meditations?”

I announced myself an admirer of his art, come to view such masterpieces as the portrait named “Xana of Kanator,” which I had but recently seen for the first time, and, perchance, to purchase a canvas or two, if the price did not exceed my modest means.

At the mention of my purchasing a painting, the old man warmed to something resembling good humor, and even displayed some rudimentary sense of hospitality, affably bidding me ascend to the second story where he maintained his studio, and, once I had entered, whisking dusty cloths and plaster forms from a low bench to provide me with a seat.

This Quindus Varro was a man of severely advanced years such as are seldom encountered on Mars, where a man may keep the trim, supple figure and unlined face of youth for centuries, and where by far the greater portion of inhabitants succumb to violent deaths before age wrinkles their lineaments or whitens their hirsute adornments. He was remarkably ugly, too, which further served to set him apart from the common run of humankind upon this planet, where perfection of form and beauty of features are many times more common than on my native world. For a nose he displayed a swollen proboscis whose broken veins and sanguine hue suggested an overfondness for intoxicants. His face and wattled neck were a mass of sagging wrinkles, and his seamed brow was furrowed by cares or by the years under untidy snowy locks. His rheumy eyes were sharp and keen, however, and his tongue sharper yet. And, however unkempt his gown and person, I noticed that his brushes were scrupulously clean, his pots of paint immaculate, and the various tools and implements of his art were kept in perfect condition.

“You admire my ‘Xana,’ eh, Jad Tedron! Mediocre, my dear sir; oh, charming enough for its kind, I’ll grant you; but it pales into insignificance before some of my recent work. Come, let me show you the canvas upon which I am presently at work—”

Assuming an air of polite interest mingled with indifference, my beating heart belied, I interrupted to ask if he employed living models, or worked from imagination alone.

“In the case of your ‘Xana of Kanator,’ for instance,” I finished. “Is there such a woman, and, if so, where did you find her?”

Quindus Varro shrugged peevishly. “Oh, she was a high-born lady of Kanator. I did her portrait within the year, you know. This painting upon which I am currently at work, by the way, should interest a connoisseur of your taste and discernment profoundly: the delicate use of line, the subtle balance of color—”

I disengaged myself from Quindus Varro as soon as could decently be managed, purchasing a small, superb, deftly composed miniature, for which I paid easily twice what it was worth, and returned to my flier just as the swifter of the twin moons in its rapid traversement of the sky dipped below the horizon.

My heart palpitated within my bosom; my breath came in light, fast panting. “Xana of Kanator” had a living model! And now I knew where and how to find her, which was the sole purpose which would motivate my entire existence from this point of time forward into the unknown and mysterious future . . .