“Come!” he whispered. “Or he will have the bowmen upon you, and this time there will be no escape. Did you not see how futile is your steel against thin air!” Carthoris turned unwillingly to follow. As the two left the room he turned to his companion. “If I may not kill thin air,” he asked, “how, then, shall I fear that thin air may kill me?” “You saw the Torquasians fall before the bowmen?” asked Jav. Carthoris nodded. “So would you fall before them, and without one single chance for self-defence or revenge.” As they talked Jav led Carthoris to a small room in one of the numerous towers of the palace. Here were couches, and Jav bid the Heliumite be seated. For several minutes the Lotharian eyed his prisoner, for such Carthoris now realized himself to be. “I am half convinced that you are real,” he said at last. Carthoris laughed. “Of course I am real,” he said. “What caused you to doubt it? Can you not see me, feel me?” “So may I see and feel the bowmen,” replied Jav, “and yet we all know that they, at least, are not real.” Carthoris showed by the expression of his face his puzzlement at each new reference to the mysterious bowmen—the vanishing soldiery of Lothar. “What, then, may they be?” he asked. “You really do not know?” asked Jav. Carthoris shook his head negatively. “I can almost believe that you have told us the truth and that you are really from another part of Barsoom, or from another world. But tell me, in your own country have you no bowmen to strike terror to the hearts of the green hordesmen as they slay in company with the fierce banths of war?” “We have soldiers,” replied Carthoris. “We of the red race are all soldiers, but we have no bowmen to defend us, such as yours. We defend ourselves.” “You go out and get killed by your enemies!” cried Jav incredulously. “Certainly,” replied Carthoris. “How do the Lotharians?” “You have seen,” replied the other. “We send out our deathless archers—deathless because they are lifeless, existing only in the imaginations of our enemies. It is really our giant minds that defend us, sending out legions of imaginary warriors to materialize before the mind’s eye of the foe. “They see them—they see their bows drawn back—they see their slender arrows speed with unerring precision toward their hearts. And they die—killed by the power of suggestion.” “But the archers that are slain?” exclaimed Carthoris. “You call them deathless, and yet I saw their dead bodies piled high upon the battlefield. How may that be?” “It is but to lend reality to the scene,” replied Jav. “We picture many of our own defenders killed that the Torquasians may not guess that there are really no flesh and blood creatures opposing them. “Once that truth became implanted in their minds, it is the theory of many of us, no longer would they fall prey to the suggestion of the deadly arrows, for greater would be the suggestion of the truth, and the more powerful suggestion would prevail—it is law.”