Read Online John Carter by Stuart Moore - Free Book Online

sun’s weak orb just vanishing over the horizon. The light was fading now, sand shifting from red to brown. A Thark sentry patrolled in the distance, his spidery green form dwarfed by the huge thoat beneath him.
    I want to go home , Carter realized. Suddenly nothing was more important…not even this alluring, frustrating woman who’d fallen out of the sky.
    â€œThere are no seas on this planet,” Dejah called to him. “Not anymore. Only a madman would rave about the Time of Oceans.”
    He turned to look back. “That your expert view? I’m mad?”
    â€œOr a liar.”
    Sola gave a tiny Thark smirk. “She is well matched to you, Dotar Sojat.”
    â€œDon’t call me that—” He stopped, snapped his head to face Dejah. “You said ‘planet.’”
    Dejah stared at him, a strange look in her eyes. Walking to the end of her leash, she knelt down, picked up a stick, and drew a single circle in the sand.
    â€œSun,” she said.
    Then she drew a ring around it, and another. Nine circles in all, surrounding the “sun.” As Carter watched, Dejah marked a dot along each circle, beginning with the innermost.
    â€œRasoom,” she counted off.
    â€œMercury,” Carter said softly.
    â€œCosoom.”
    â€œVenus. Then Earth—that’s us.”
    She looked up at him, a strange light of discovery in her eyes. “That is Jasoom.” Then she placed a dot in the fourth ring out from the sun.
    â€œYou are on Barsoom , John Carter.”
    He turned away, shaking his head. The sun had set; darkness was falling swiftly. Carter cast his eyes upward…and saw not one but two bright moons shining in the night sky.
    â€œCluros and Thuria,” Dejah said. “The Heavenly Lovers. Paired, like the bands you wear on your finger.”
    Carter fingered his wedding rings. Suddenly he felt a deep sorrow, as vast as the distance between here and…and Jasoom .
    â€œI’m on Mars,” he whispered.
    â€œSo your home is Jasoom—sorry, ‘Earth.’” Dejah’s tone was skeptical. “Did you come here in one of your sailing ships? Across millions of karads of empty space?”
    Carter was too shell-shocked even to rise to her taunting. “No,” he said. “A medallion brought me here. The same one that now hangs around Tars Tarkas’s neck.”
    â€œA medallion…” Dejah straightened. “Ah! Well, that explains everything.”
    â€œIt does?”
    â€œYes. You’re a Thern…and you wish to return to your rightful home. Is that it?”
    â€œI don’t know what a Thern is.”
    â€œWe can sort this out right now. Come on.”
    Grabbing hold of her leash, Dejah started off away from the wreckage, toward the Thark settlement. Sola frowned, looked to Carter. He shrugged, and together they followed.
    â€œI don’t like her tone,” Sola said.
    Carter had to admit: he didn’t either.
    â€œYou cannot enter here,” Sola protested. “It is forbidden!” But Dejah Thoris paid her no heed. The Helium woman ran into the ruined temple, waving a torch to illuminate toppled pillars and walls made of jumbled stone.
    Carter and Sola followed her into a huge, echoing chamber. An ancient statue of a goddess loomed above them, several stories high.
    â€œ You insisted I unleash her,” Sola said. Carter nodded, grimacing.
    Dejah lifted her torch, lighting up a window made of dusty, rose-colored glass. In its intricate stone mullions shone a nine-legged pattern identical to the one on the medallion.
    â€œLook familiar?” she asked.
    Sola knelt. She raised two hands to cover her head, two to her heart.
    â€œSure,” Dejah sneered, “kneel before the Holy Thern.” She turned angrily to Carter. “You can cloak yourself in religion to fool savage Tharks, but not me. I see what you’re doing.”
    Carter shrugged, baffled.
    â€œYou