Warrior-Maid of Mars

by Alfred Coppel

The pointer on his chronometer stood at the twenty second hour and the sun was low on the horizon when Telis was awakened by a liveried escort at his bedside.

With a respectful bow, the man indicated that Telis should follow him, and the young lord trailed him through the door, satisfied that within a very short time he would be before someone in authority here. His mind was full of thoughts concerning the attack on the camp that by this time the Maldia must surely have completed, unless....

Unless his disappearance had disrupted the carefully laid plans that had taken the secret organization so long to complete. In that case, agents would have to be sent out again among the Guski desert tribesmen to instruct the chieftains concerning a later date to be used for the attack, and a different leader would of course have to be picked. Telis grimaced. It would be Brand, naturally. And all the high officers of the Maldia would be convinced that Telis had defaulted, for they had no inkling that the Temple was involved or that it even knew of the projected attack. One way or another Telis of Lars would be the scapegoat.... Prince Brand would see to that!

Telis' guide led him out of the spire and into a sith-drawn car. The great beast stepped smartly along, its six padded paws soundless on the verdant moss of the thoroughfare.

As they neared the center of the city, Telis saw that he was being taken to the Central Temple, a graceful structure of alabaster whiteness. The guide halted the sith before the Temple and Telis alighted. An attendant came forward to take charge of the sith, and the escort motioned Telis into the building.

They passed the portal and entered into a fairyland within a fairyland, for the inner rooms of the Central Temple were by far the most wondrous in all Dorliss. There were panelled walls of purest quartz crystal, faceted to reflect the light in enchanting beams of polychromatic loveliness. And the mosaic floors depicted in silver and gold the scenes of historical significance from the long life of the Temple. A thousand other things there were that filled the young warrior with awe ... for mere beauty per se had long ago passed the surface of Laurr, and only here in the inmost sanctum of the Temple could such things survive and be cherished.

Another thing Telis noticed also. Though guards abounded outside the city, he had seen but a handful within the walls. He remembered something Gorla had told him long ago: that science could not really thrive against a militaristic background, and that was why so much of the ancient lore was lost when the planet became nothing more than a battleground. Plainly, the city of Dorliss was not ruled by force, and—a break for freedom might not be the impossible achievement that he had begun to imagine it.

Now they were within a long hallway, bare but for the crystal panelling. From somewhere came the whispering of plaintive music. It tinted the air with a gentle nostalgia that found a strangely responsive chord in Telis. He was told that the sound came from another chamber where a Priest was engaged in research on sounds and their effect on human emotions. It had been so long since music existed on Laurr that even this knowledge had been forgotten....

The guide led Telis on and on, past the long hall and through many portals that opened at last into a small circular room devoid of any sort of ornamentation. In the center of this room, a man sat at a table that rose in graceful lines out of the floor itself. He was old, old.

Telis stared at the man. He wore the sable robes and the insigne of the Seventh Cycle, the topmost rank of priest-scientists. Recognition came, too. This man was not merely a Seventh Cycle Priest ... he was actually the High Superior of the Temple. The old eyes and kindly face, the long white beard and sable robe were the same as he remembered from a hundred solideographs in a hundred provincial Temples.