The virgin of the sun

by George Chetwynd Griffith

BOOK I

CHAPTER I.
THE SUNSET OF AN EMPIRE

The sun had set over Quito, “the City of the Great Ravine,” but high above the night that had fallen upon the valley rounded tops and pinnacles of rock, gleaming domes of snow and shining minarets of ice were glowing with rosy fires changing every moment the wondrous hues which they borrowed from the light that seemed to stream across them from an unseen source. The unclouded sky was still a fathomless sea of radiance, and, high above all its attendant peaks, the mighty dome of Chimborazo towered up from the gloom into the light, crowned with a canopy of smoke whose rolling clouds seemed like a glorified chaos of light and darkness, of the sombre shadows and brilliant, many-coloured radiance, suspended between heaven and earth.

On a couch of the softest textures ever woven by human hands, draped over a framework of precious woods clamped and in a great part overlaid with gold, Huayna-Capac, the last of the long line of Incas descended from the Divine Manco and his sister-wife Mama-Occlu, son and daughter of the Sun, lay dying. The heir of the great Inca Yupanqui, during his long life of unsparing conquest and yet wise and most merciful rule, had extended the empire of the Children of the Sun until, from the burning regions of the North, beyond the central line of the earth, to the arid deserts of the far South, and from the trackless forests of the East to the shores of the Western sea, all the lands and peoples of Tavantinsuyu^[1] owned, with gladness and without question, the glory of the Rainbow Banner and the just, yet rigid, sway of the Son of the Sun.

All that the valour of his soldiers, the wisdom of his councillors, and his own imperial genius could do had been done, and in all the world there was no other empire whose ruler was so completely all-powerful and whose subjects were so peaceful, prosperous, and contented as his were.

It was an empire at its zenith. It had reached that acme of military strength and social organisation beyond which, as the history of the world would seem to tell us, the Fates who govern human destiny do not permit a human society to develop.

Over an extent of a thousand leagues from north to south, and for four hundred leagues from east to west, in a land which rose from the deserts and torrid valleys of the Pacific coast through infinite gradations of climate to the eternal winter of mountain solitudes soaring far beyond the clouds into the realms of everlasting frost, and from the tropical valleys of the eastern and western slopes where Nature laughed in unrestrained luxuriance to the vast, treeless plains of grass which lay high above the limit of cultivation, walled in by the tremendous rock-ramparts which were crowned with the snowy diadems of the Andes, there was not a man who had need to take thought for the things of to-morrow, not one who did not know that if he fulfilled his duty to the State of which he was a unit, all that he could demand from it would be freely and ungrudgingly granted.

There had never been such a society upon earth before, it might be that there would never be such again, and now the work of twenty generations was finished, and the jealous Fates, as though unwilling that too much felicity should be the lot of man on earth, were looking down with angry eyes upon its perfection and conspiring even in the very centre of its power and glory to work its destruction. Nay, they were even gathered, pitiless and vindictive, around the death-bed of the dying warrior and statesman whose hand in the fulness of its strength had placed the coping-stone on the stately and symmetrical structure of the Empire of the Incas.

On the rich, many-coloured furs which carpeted the cedar-boarded floor of the golden-walled, silver-ceiled room lit with silver lamps hanging by chains of gold, stood by the bedside in an attitude of attendant deference a very old man clad in the splendid robes which distinguished the priesthood of the Sun. His arms were crossed over his breast and his bared head was bowed, though every now and then the lids of his downcast eyes were raised and he looked anxiously at the face of his sleeping lord as though he were waiting for him to wake—perhaps even wondering whether he would ever wake again.

At last a deeper breath filled the breast of the sleeper and raised the embroidered coverings. A long sigh broke the silence of the death-chamber, and the eyes of the Inca opened. The priest took a soft step forward, and then he bent his head still lower and waited for his lord to speak.

“Are you still waiting for the end, Ullomaya? It is a long time coming, is it not? Yet it may be still longer, for my sleep seems to have given me new strength, and it may be that I shall even now see another day.”

“May He who is above the Gods grant it, Son of the Sun and Lord of the Four Regions!” the priest answered, raising his hands palms outward and lifting his face to the ceiling, and making with his lips the mute sign which the Children of the Sun made when the name of the Unnameable was in their hearts. “For your Father, the Sun, has put it into the heart of his servant to say words to you that should not be left unsaid in such a solemn hour as this.”

“Then say them, Ullomaya, and say them quickly, for neither you nor I know at what moment the summons may come to me to take my place with my fathers in the Mansions of the Sun. Speak freely, therefore, yea, even though you would speak on things forbidden.”

“It was even of a thing forbidden that I would speak, Lord!” the priest replied, taking another step forward and stretching out his hands as though in entreaty. “It was even to seek that permission that I came.”

The Inca’s eyes closed for a moment, and then he opened them again and said with a smile, half of weariness and half of indulgence—

“Say on, then, old friend and good counsellor. For your sake the law of my lips shall be broken for the first and the last time. What is it? Not that which is already resolved? Do not tell me it is that, for the decree is already gone forth, and the last act of my life cannot be the revoking of words that an Inca’s lips have spoken.”

“Yet is it even that, Lord,” said the priest more boldly; “for in this matter only in all the long years that I have served you you have listened to my counsel and taken that of others. Your footsteps are approaching the thresholds of the Mansions of the Sun, and mine are not very far off. Once past them we shall stand side by side in the presence of our Father, and each must give to the Divine Manco an account of that which he has wrought in the land that he gave to our fathers. And you, O Lord, would go into that sublime presence with the guilt of a disobedience lying heavy on your soul.”

As the priest said these last words in a low and yet unfaltering tone a light seemed to kindle in the dying despot’s eyes, a faint flush rose into his cheeks, and his hands caught nervously at the bed-coverings as he said with the ghost of the voice that had once rung high above the clamour of battle—

“Only one man in the land of Tavantinsuyu dare say that to me, Ullomaya, and even he scarce dare say it to me save on my death-bed.”

“The Son of the Sun is still Lord of the land, and his word could still send me to the doom of those who disobey!”^[2] said the priest, crossing his hands over his breast again and bending low before his master.

“Nevertheless, for the sake of the love I bear you, say on!” said the Inca.

Then the priest drew himself up again and said—

“It is not my will that speaks, Lord, but rather the spirit of my duty to the Children of the Sun and you, their Lord. By the might of your arms and the wisdom of your counsel you have enlarged the borders of the empire that your fathers gave you and brought many new peoples under its sway. Your throne has been higher, and your rule wider, than those of any that have gone before you. In this you have done well and fulfilled the commands that have been obeyed by twenty generations of the Children of the Sun, yet the last act of your royal power will undo in its evil all the good that you have accomplished.

“When the Divine Manco left the world to return to the presence of his Father he left, as his last charge, the command to all who should come after him to keep the empire that he had given them one and indivisible for ever.

“Yet, by your last act, you have divided it. Nay, more, you would set on the throne of the North a prince whose blood is not of the pure and holy strain, and you have taken the sceptre of empire far away from the City of the Sun, and in so doing you have made those to lie who said that the Son of the Sun can do no wrong. Lord, it is not yet too late to undo this and save the empire of your fathers from the doom that will surely fall upon it when the laws of its Creator cease to be obeyed.”

“And would you have me disinherit my son Atahuallpa, the darling of my old age, the gallant lad who has followed me to battle and fought by my side, and who, under my own eyes, has grown to be a man and a warrior, while Huascar, to whom you would give the lands that are his by right of birth, has been dallying with his women and his courtiers amidst the delights of Cuzco and Yucay, never giving anything but an unwilling hand to the work that I have spent my own life in? Would it not be a greater wrong to do this—to rob my warrior-son of his right?”

“The laws of the Divine Ones are above all human rights, Lord!” the priest replied, looking steadily into the eyes of the man whose word could send him instantly to a death of torment. “Though I never speak other words on earth, though to-morrow’s light may shine upon my ashes, yet I must speak what long and lonely vigils and many ponderings on this matter have taught me.

“The empire that the great Yupanqui gave you, and which you have made so mighty and so glorious, can only subsist as one. To divide it is to destroy it, for it is not in the hearts of princes to live at peace when their borders touch. Nay, more, Huascar, your son and your firstborn, is of the Divine descent, pure and undefiled, and the ancient laws will tell him that the realm is his from end to end and from the mountains to the sea, and think you not that our Lady, his mother, and the nobles of the Blood will not urge him to claim his right when the hand of Death has taken the borla from your brow?

“Moreover, Atahuallpa, the Prince of Quito, though the son of their conqueror, has yet also in his veins the blood of a conquered people, and many generations are needed to wipe the stain of defeat away. So when the grasp of your own strong hand is loosed, though there may be peace between them for a season, a time shall come when these two princes shall draw the sword upon each other and a war of brother against brother and of kindred against kindred shall desolate the land that your wisdom and strength have blest with prosperity and contentment.

“Yet a few more words, Lord, and I have done. On those who see the portals of the Mansions of the Sun open before them there shines a light which no eyes but theirs can see. May our Father, the Sun, grant even now that in the radiance of this light you may see into the future that was hidden from you before, and save while there is yet time your children and your people from the destruction which you would bring upon them!

“These are the words of truth, Lord, for while you have fought and striven I have watched and thought and prayed, and out of the silence of the night there have come voices from the stars that rule our fate, and this is the lesson that they have taught me.”

The Inca heard him in silence to the end, now frowning and now smiling sadly, and when he had finished he lay in silence for a while with his eyes closed, and so still did he lie that the priest at last softly stole close up to the side of the bed and leant over him, wondering whether he was still alive. Then his eyes opened again, and he said in a soft, clear voice and with a smile on his pale lips—

“Nay, Ullomaya, I am not dead yet, my friend, and your words have sunk deep into my heart. I have seen the light that shines over the threshold which I must soon pass, and it has shown me the way of right and justice. The ancient laws shall not be broken. It shall be as you say. Huascar shall reign after me, supreme lord of all the land, and Atahuallpa shall be Prince of Quito under him.

“Go now and summon the princes of the household and the priests and curacas of the provinces that I may make my will known to them while yet I have strength to do it, for the hand of Death is already upon me, and the light of the lamps is growing dim in the brighter light that comes from beyond the stars. But first send Zaïma, my wife, and Atahuallpa, my son, to me that I may tell them.”

The priest bowed low before his lord again, and then, murmuring words of praise and thankfulness, went quickly from the room to do his thrice-welcome errand. For a few minutes the silence of the splendid death-chamber was unbroken save by the faint sound of the dying Inca’s breathing. Then the thick woollen curtains which covered the door were drawn aside, and a woman, tall and of imperial carriage, and still fair to look upon, with the relics of a beauty that had once been peerless, came into the room followed by a stalwart, splendidly robed youth who could have been none other than her son.

As they entered the Inca opened his eyes, and with the hand that was lying outside the coverings of the couch he beckoned to them to come near. They went and stood by his bedside, and he told them in the brief words of a man who knows that he has not many words to waste that which he had summoned them to hear.

For a moment they stood silent and motionless, looking each at the other and then at the Inca who lay watching them and waiting for them to speak. Then suddenly a deep flush of anger burnt in the woman’s cheeks and a fierce light leapt into her eyes, and with a swift movement she laid her hands over the dying Inca’s mouth and nose and pressed his lips and nostrils tightly together.

His eyes opened widely into a stare of horror. There was a brief, convulsive movement under the covering, and then the glaze of death dimmed the staring eyes, and when the high priest came back, followed by the chief princes and nobles of Quito, Zaïma the Queen was lying wailing over the dead body of her husband and her Lord, and Atahuallpa, Inca of the North, was cowering by the bedside with his face buried in his hands and his body trembling and shaking with sobs.

At the same moment, far away to the northward and westward, a man was drawing with his sword-point a line along the sandy beach of the desolate island of Gallo, and in the years to come, though neither he nor the son of the murderess knew it, the steel of that same sword was destined to cleave its way to the heart of the great empire which Huayna-Capac would have made impregnable but for the hand of his queen which robbed him of the last half-hour of his life.

CHAPTER II.
THE DOOM OF THE ANCIENT LAW

Ullomaya and those who followed him stopped suddenly on the threshold of what was now in truth the death-chamber of the Inca, and bent their heads and remained for a moment in respectful silence. Then the High Priest of the Sun went forward to the bedside and spoke to the prostrate woman, saying—

“Alas, I see we come too late, for our Lord is already standing in the bright courts of the Mansions of the Sun, and yet not too late, since before he departed he spoke the words of wisdom and comfort for his people. Is that not so, O Queen?”

The self-widowed queen rose to her feet as she heard him speak, and faced him with clenched hands, head erect and somewhat thrown back. There were no tears in the great deep dark eyes which burnt angrily under her straight, black brows, but the pale olive of her cheeks and brow looked a ghastly grey under the yellow fringe of the Llautu which denoted her rank, and her lips, of wont so red and fresh, though she had been a mother for twenty years, were pale and drawn and twitched somewhat at the corners as though betraying the workings of some fierce passion within her; and when she spoke, her voice, which had been the sweetest that had ever spoken the liquid speech of the Valley, rang harsh and angry on the silence of the chamber.

“Yes,” she said, “he is dead, my lord and master, the love of my youth and the honour of my age—he is dead! and as thou sayest, priest, he died with words of wisdom and comfort upon his lips. With his last breath he granted my prayer that he would not disinherit his son or take the empire of Quito away from the House of my fathers and give its children to be subjects to the men of the South.

“This is not what you have come to hear, you who vexed the last hour of my Lord’s life by seeking to turn his footsteps from the path of justice as they were approaching the threshold of the Mansions of the Sun, but it is said beyond recall, and thou, Ullomaya—High Priest of the Sun and man of the Divine Blood as thou art—art yet a traitor, for Atahuallpa is, from this hour forth Inca and Lord of Quito, and thou hast sought to rob him of his inheritance and make him the vassal of Huascar. Go forth, now, for thou art not fit to look upon the face of thy dead Lord!”

As she said this, Zaïma the Queen, with a swift movement of her arms, threw the bright-hued mantle that hung from her shoulders on to the couch so that it fell over the dead Inca’s face, and then her right arm went out, pointing with extended forefinger to the door.

The high priest shrank back instinctively before the imperious gesture, and the little throng of priests and nobles gathered about the doorway, parted, leaving the way clear for him, for in their eyes he was already accursed, since he stood charged by the lips of the all-powerful queen-mother of a crime so great that no man of the Divine Blood had ever been guilty of it before him.

His deep knowledge of his people and their laws told him that any words of defence would be useless and worse than useless. So, throwing himself for the moment into the posture of supplication, he made a silent invocation to the Unnameable, whose name he would not utter even in a moment so solemn as this, and then turned and went slowly towards the door; but before he reached it a hand was laid heavily upon his shoulder and a grip like the clutch of a condor’s talon held him motionless.

Atahuallpa had sprung erect from the place where he had been cowering by the bedside. The horror that had shaken his soul had passed. At the sight of his mother’s imperial gestures, and the sound of her fierce and pregnant words, the warrior spirit and the fierce pride of the despot had awakened within him. He had accepted his destiny, and so sanctioned the crime which had given it to him.

Thousands of lives were to be sacrificed, rivers of blood were to be poured out, and the empire of the Children of the Sun was to pass away for ever like a golden dream ending in an awakening of horror because of that swift and irrevocable resolution of his. But all this was in the future. In the present were the glories of empire and the delights of Divine honours and unquestioned rule, and other than these he saw nothing.

The priest looked up as he felt his grip and saw his eyes, bloodshot and fierce, looking into his.

“Thou who wouldst have changed the course of Destiny appointed by the Divine Ones, who wouldst have robbed me of my rights, and made my Lord and thine a liar with his last breath—is there any need for me to tell thee the doom of the traitor and the worker of sacrilege? Thou and thy wife and thy children and thy children’s children shall share it, according to the justice of the Ancient Law. The fire shall consume thee and them, and the winds shall scatter thine ashes and theirs from the sight of men. The places where ye have dwelt, the works ye have done, and the fields ye have tilled shall be destroyed utterly and laid waste for ever, so that when men see the wilderness that was once thine home, they shall remember the law which says that the doer of evil and all that are his shall be taken away from among the Children of the Sun and no vestige of them suffered to remain.”^[3]

The yet uncrowned Inca spoke these fearful words in a tone so coldly fierce that none who heard them doubted for an instant that he would use the power and the right that was his, and carry out the terrific penalty of the inexorable law to the last extremity, and none knew better how dire and all-embracing was the doom that impended over him and all that were his better than he who but an hour ago had held the highest and holiest dignity in the land, saving only that of the Inca-Royal himself.

Yet awful as it was, the old man gave no outward sign that it had any terrors for him. His eyes met the fierce gaze of Atahuallpa’s without flinching, and his voice, as he replied to his hideous words, was mild and yet unwavering—

“Son of him who was my Lord, there is no justice save that which the Divine Ones have given us, and there is no vengeance that is terrible save that which the sins of men call down from the hand of Him who may not be named. That which I sought to do was but to uphold the ancient laws and fulfil the parting spoken words of the Divine Manco, and the last words which my ears heard from the lips of my dead Lord and thine yonder told me that I had done rightly.

“Earth is small and life is short, but the Mansions of the Sun are vast and the life of those who reach them is without end. So I and mine are ready to depart. What thine eyes have seen here I know not, nor yet what it was that the eyes of him who is now among the Divine Ones last beheld, but ere long his lips will tell me——”

What else he might have said was never uttered, for Atahuallpa, with a cry like the snarl of a wounded mountain lion, shifted his grip from his shoulder to his throat and flung him stumbling backwards to the door, so that he fell prone across the threshold and lay stunned on the marble floor of the passage.

“Lift him up and take him away!” he said sharply to the frightened priests who were now huddled about the doorway. “He is no longer a Priest of the Sun or a man, but an outcast that may not be permitted to live. Let all of his blood be put in safe keeping instantly, and by the coming of our Father^[4] to-morrow let all be made ready for them to meet their doom. Your Lord has spoken.”

“Well and royally done, my son, and now my Lord!” said Zaïma the Queen, coming from where she stood by the head of the couch with both hands outstretched and making as though she would embrace him, but Atahuallpa started and shrank back ever so little. Yet he took her hands in his and bowed his head as if in deference before her, though it might have been that he feared to look into her eyes, and said humbly—

“The son of my father and my mother could have done no less. I did but what the Ancient Law has commanded. He has polluted the Blood with the poison of sin, and he must die. But go now, my mother, to your own house, for the embalmers must do their work before morning. Come, I will lead you to your door. Challcuchima, my uncle, come hither.”

As he turned to lead his mother from the room he stopped and beckoned to an old man, grey and bronzed and scarred with the marks of battle, but glittering from head to knee with plates of gold and silver linked together by rings and fastened on to a long tunic of fine, soft leather, clasped round the waist with a broad belt of interlaced gold and silver links from which hung a heavy golden-hilted sword of tempered copper. This was Challcuchima, the brother of the dead Inca, chief general of his armies, and the most renowned warrior in the Land of the Four Regions.

He had a short, copper-headed spear in his hand, and as he approached his new Lord he laid this across his shoulders, stooping slightly as one who bears a burden, for this was the act of homage which the greatest princes and nobles of the empire, even those of the Inca’s own blood, never dared to omit when they entered his presence, or were honoured by having speech with him, and as Atahuallpa saw it he smiled, and a sparkle came into his eyes, for it told him that the ally and the servant whose help was most precious of all to him had taken him for his lord and master.

“Let the room be cleared and guarded!” he said. “Remain here yourself with the guard and let none enter on any pretence till I return.”

“I hear but to obey, Lord!” the old warrior answered, bending yet lower. “I will guard the chamber with my life, even as I will guard thy dominions against all that shall dare seek to take them from thee.”

“Nor could they be better guarded than by him whose shield was ever the best bulwark of my father’s realm!” Atahuallpa replied almost tenderly, as he laid his hand lightly on the old man’s head. Then, leading his mother by the hand that had slain his father, he passed from the death-chamber through the little throng of princes and nobles, who bowed themselves almost to the floor as he went by and then arose and followed him at the bidding of Challcuchima, who at once blocked the passage with a guard of soldiers and remained alone in the room to await the coming of his master.

He drew the heavy curtains of brilliantly dyed wool, interthreaded with fine-drawn strings of gold, closely across the entrance and then he went to the bedside and reverently drew back the covering from the face of the dead Inca. He stooped and looked at it, and then suddenly started upright and clasped his hands over his forehead. Then he looked down again more closely than before, and, after gazing awhile, he closed with a gentle and reverent touch the glazed eyes that were staring up with their last look of horror scarce faded from them. Then he softly pushed the protruding tongue back into the mouth and bound up the fallen jaw with a strip of dyed cotton that lay beside the pillow.

“My Lord died hard, it would seem,” he muttered to himself, “and yet all thought his end could not fail to be peaceful. Well, well—hard or easy, it was very near, and I had rather have Atahuallpa the soldier-prince for my lord and leader than Huascar the lover of women and dreamer of dreams. What is done is past, and who knows but that some day we may have a wider realm than this and my Lord may reign with one foot planted on Quito and the other on Cuzco, master of all the Four Regions.

“There is no strife like the strife of brothers, and these two will not long reign side by side in peace. After that will come the day of brave men and stout warriors, and the victory shall be with us—with skill and order and strength and valour! It was a bold deed and a fearful one—I would have slain a score of men ere I had permitted it, yet now it is done and the Divine Ones themselves could not undo it.”

CHAPTER III.
THE WARNING OF THE LLAPA

While Challcuchima was soliloquising thus to himself over the dreadful secret that he had discovered, a youth, who could scarce have seen his fifteenth year, was walking with slow steps and down-bent head from the great gate of the palace towards a vast building which loomed darkly through the dusk of the starlit night some five hundred paces along the side of the slope on which it stood, like the palace, facing on to the great square of the city.

Though he was one of those favoured Children of the Sun who ripened to maturity so rapidly, he had yet hardly passed from boyhood to youth, but his stature was already tall and his limbs lithe and strongly shaped, and his thoughts, as he walked, were rather those of a man than of a boy. He was one of those who had been summoned by the high priest to hear the last words of his father the Inca; for this was Manco-Capac, bearer of the Divine Name, and youngest and fairest son of Huayna-Capac and his sister-wife and Coya,^[5] Mama-Oello, princess of Cuzco.

What he had seen and heard in the death-chamber had filled him, not only with the darkest forebodings for his people and his country, but also with feelings close akin to agony and terror which in this hour were sharper and bitterer than they. The great building towards which he was walking was the House of the Virgins of the Sun, in which dwelt the fairest and most nobly-born daughters of the Sacred Race, awaiting the time of their marriage or vowed to their perpetual maiden-wifehood in the service of their Divine spouse, the Sun, and among them was one, the very gem and flower of them all, Nahua, the daughter of Amaro, son of Ullomaya the high priest, a little maiden who had seen but ten years of life, and whose beauty, like that of one of Nature’s fairest flowers just opening to smile at the sun, had in one fatal instant set his heart aflame.

He had seen her day after day during his sojourn in Quito, tending with her sister-virgins the flower-crowned altar of the Sun in the Great Temple. Their eyes had met and flashed to each other greetings in the language that needs no words to tell its tender and yet momentous secrets. After this his high rank and the favour of the Inca and Ullomaya had gained him the rare and priceless privilege of speech with her in the golden Garden of the Sun within the temple precincts.

The Inca and the high priest had seen their childish love without displeasure, and it might well have been that some day he would have taken her to his palace in the South on a green hill-slope that overlooked the splendours of Cuzco, and to his pleasure-house in the lovely paradise of Yucay—but now, how was he to think of such delight as this?

Could it really be possible that Atahuallpa, the son of his own father, had spoken those dreadful words, and that the light of to-morrow morning would show her to him being led out with her father and mother, her sisters and brothers, all that were near and dear to her, from the baby brother she was wont to fondle to the grandsire who was held to be the wisest man in the land, to be flung into the fierce flames that would consume them all till only their ashes were left, in obedience to the savage law which had been broken only in the vengeful imagination of the Inca—he had almost called him the Usurper!

As his eyes wandered over the long lines of mighty masonry which now formed, not her home but her prison, sorrow and anger seemed fighting for the possession of his soul, and dreams of rescue and vengeance, each one wilder than the other, crowded through his brain until he could bear the stress of them no longer. He felt that he must do something or go mad—and yet what could he do? He was powerless to alter ever so slightly the pitiless march of the inexorable law, even as he was to turn the vengeful Inca a hair’s-breadth from his course.

Even to intercede for the doomed ones who were now accursed would be sacrilege, and a word from Atahuallpa would send him to share their doom. As well might he seek to put forth his hand and take the brilliant Chasca^[6] from her place in the sky above the vanished sun as to save his child-love from her fate.

Yet he must do something, something that at least might set flowing through his veins the blood that seemed stagnating in his brain. The huge dark walls of the temples and palaces and store-houses and fortresses which filled this quarter of the city seemed to be coming together upon him, and the air of the streets seemed hot and stifling, but outside the gates was the free, open country, and above it the cool, wind-swept hillsides.

So, wrapping his cloak more closely about him and throwing one corner of it over his left shoulder, he set out to walk rapidly out of the square and along the street which skirted the wall of the House of the Virgins, and by this he reached one of the city gates. The guard turned out as he approached, but at the sight of the yellow fringe on his brow^[7] and the familiar features of the great Inca’s youngest born they fell back in an orderly rank and saluted him as he passed out.

Once clear of the city, he left the paved highway that ran for many leagues over the mountains until it joined the coast-road of the west, and with the long, swift tireless stride of his race struck out along a narrow path which led out of the valley, winding upwards towards the heights of Yavirá, which hid the dark peaks of Pichincha from the view of the city.

He had been striding along for nearly an hour when he saw a dark, slowly-moving shape on the path ahead of him. He quickened his pace, and as he came up with it it stopped and a familiar woman’s voice said to him—

“Have the tidings of evil to come reached the ears of the bearer of the Divine Name as well as those of the old woman? Art thou too, Prince, going to the altar of the Unknown round which the voices of To-morrow whisper?”

The voice and the strangely spoken words told him that she was Mama-Lupa, one of the oldest of the priestesses of the Sun and a palla, or wise woman, who was credited in the city with the gift of visions and prophecy. A swift thrill ran through his breast as he recognised her, for he knew that she could only have come from the House of the Virgins, where she dwelt, performing the work of her office and instructing the maidens in their daily duties and the simple lore which comprised their worldly education.

“My heart is hot and heavy, Mama-Lupa,” he said, “and my soul is full of sorrow. The city was hateful to me, and so I came out to breathe the fresh air of the mountains. Yet I scarce knew which path I had taken, though I could have taken no better one in such a time as this. Thou knowest the reason of my sorrow and how bitter it must be. Tell me, does my little Nahua know yet of her doom?”

“Nay, not yet, Prince,” the old woman answered, shaking her head; “neither she nor any other of the sacred maidens know anything of what has been done or said at the palace. So to-night she will sleep sweetly and dream of thee as ever.”

“Alas, Mama, those are cruel words though kindly spoken!” cried the young Inca, clasping his hands across his eyes. “She will dream of me, and to-morrow——”

“How knowest thou, Prince, what to-morrow will bring forth?” she interrupted in a sharp, shrill voice. “Let to-morrow look to the things of itself. Maybe it will have enough to do, and all those who shall see the evening of it. But, since thou art going my way and youth is stronger of limb than age, lend me the support of thy strong young arm and we will go together into the presence of the Unknown, and perchance I may be permitted to show thee signs of the things that are to be.”

So he gave her his arm to lean upon and together they went along the upward winding path, speaking but few words, for the old woman had but little breath to spare, and at last they stopped where the path ended before a great square altar of black stone which stood on the apex of the mountain.

Around them lay a scene which had not its equal even in the wonderland that was the cradle of their race—mountain piled on mountain and peak on peak, some dim and dark, and others gleaming pale and ghostly white beneath the clear light of the brilliant stars which thronged the heavens above, where the constellations of two hemispheres mingled, and before them towered the black peaks of Pichincha, dominated by the snowy central cone, some two leagues away to the north-west.

At one corner of the altar a stairway hewn in the solid stone led to the top, and, beginning at the foot of this, Mama-Lupa walked thrice around the base with her hands clasped behind her and her face upturned to the stars, muttering swift words which had no meaning for Manco save that he knew them to be spells and incantations of some mystic import. Then she stopped at the foot of the stairway and called to him, saying—

“Come and lead me to the top, Prince of the race that is doomed, for my eyes are dim to the things of outer sense though they see clearly with the sight that pierces the shadows that lie between now and to-morrow.”

Without speaking, he mounted the steps in front of her backwards, leading her by both hands until they stood together on the broad, flat top of the stone. Then she drew herself upright and, throwing her long, thick white hair behind her, she turned slowly round, facing all sides of the horizon in turns, and at the moment that she faced Pichincha for the second time a dull red glow began to flicker in the sky above it.

She grasped his hand and, stretching out her long, lean arm, pointed to it and said—

“Look, Prince and bearer of the Divine Name! My eyes are dim yet I can see it. Pichincha is putting on her fire-crown, and woe to the People of the Valley when it shall encircle her brows in all its flaming splendour! This night a deed of sin and horror has been done and the Divine Ones have seen it from the windows of the Mansions of the Sun, and they are angry. To-morrow a new reign will be begun with the torment and death of the innocent, if they in their anger do not stretch out their hands and do justice on the guilty. Nay, do not speak, Prince; thou hast come here to watch and not to speak.”

She ceased, still pointing towards the red glow in the sky, which, while she was speaking, had deepened and broadened; and now Manco, watching with straining eyes and bated breath, saw it broaden and deepen until he could see the jagged walls of the great crater standing out black and sharp against it, and above the ever-broadening glare perceived a long line of inky cloud like a pall of sable with a lining of flame.

Suddenly a dull roar of thunder seemed to roll up from the bowels of the earth and the cloud was rent in twain as though by a swift blast from the awakening monster’s throat. At the same instant a red-blue globe of fire rushed up out of the westward, sped across the sky, leaving a track of flame behind it, and then, in the mid-most heaven right over the city, it burst with a crash that shook the air and vanished.^[8]

Manco, whose eyes, wide open and fixed with fear, had followed it in its awful course, covered his face with his hands and cowered shuddering at the old woman’s feet when the crash had passed; but soon another roll of thunder growled across the valley and he looked up to see what new horror was coming. The clouds above Pichincha were now leaping and tossing in billows of mingled flame and ink, and from behind the black crater walls shone the fierce red glare of the eternal fires, once more unchained after the imprisonment of centuries.

Then, as he watched, a thin tongue of flame, red as new-shed blood, crept out through a gap in the crater wall and began licking its way down through the crimson, gleaming snow on the mountain-side. At the same instant the thunder rolled out again deeper and louder than before, and he felt the great stone on which he crouched heave and reel beneath him.

As he sprang terror-stricken to his feet he saw Mama-Lupa stagger backwards, and he caught her in his arms to save her from falling from the altar. Again the stone reeled beneath them and he fell on his knees, dragging her down with him. But she freed herself instantly and, rising to her feet, she stood tall and menacing above him, pointing downwards towards the city, and cried in a shrill voice that rose almost to a scream—

“Go back, Manco-Capac, son of the race that is doomed, go back and tell them yonder that the Divine Ones are wrath with their children, and that in their anger they have unchained the demon powers which dwell beneath the mountains. Tell it in street and square, in palace and temple, that all may be ready, from the Inca on his couch of gold to the slave shivering in his hovel. Nay, have no fear for me, Prince, the Llapa^[9] will not strike me, for I have work to do to-morrow. I must stay here and watch and listen and learn the things thou canst not understand. Now go, go with thy best speed, that the warning may not come too late, for the Llapa travels fast and no man knows when it may strike.”

Scarcely knowing what he did, Manco obeyed, and stumbled blindly down the steps. When he reached the ground he paused, breathing deeply, and strove to steady his whirling senses, his hands clasped tight over his wildly beating heart. Then, with a last look at the great altar-stone crowned by the tall figure of Mama-Lupa with her fluttering garments and outstreaming hair sharply outlined against the red glare in the sky beyond, he turned and sped down the mountain-side towards the city as fast as his fear-winged feet could carry him.

CHAPTER IV.
THE CROWNING OF ATAHUALLPA

When he reached the city the summits of the eastern mountains were already beginning to glow and glitter in the light of the still invisible dawn, but the angry glare which he had seen flaming so fiercely through the night had grown fainter and fainter until it had become so dim that the bulk of the Yavirá, rising up between it and the city, had completely hidden it from the view of those who had been in the streets and squares during the night.

As he entered the gate by which he had left he saw from the stolid calm of the guard who admitted him that no warning of the impending disaster had so far reached the men of Quito. The great city was just awakening from its slumber, for this morning every one would be abroad betimes. The news of the unheard-of crime of one whose holy office was believed to raise him above human frailty, and of the young Inca’s terrible sentence had reached every ear in the city overnight, and so every one woke early on the morning of doom.

Many, indeed, had not slept at all, for a crime so fearful as the high priest’s had been made out to be by the busy tongues of rumour was looked upon by the simple-minded folk as a presage of disaster, since, as they argued in their homely fashion, the Gods could not have permitted their chosen minister to sin if, for some cause or another, they were not grievously angry with their children.

More than this, too, vague, wild stories had ever and anon drifted up to the mountain-walled valley from the sea-borders of the West and North concerning the deeds of a strange new race of men, or demigods, as some called them, who had come from unknown lands, or perchance from the skies themselves, wafted by the winds in marvellous winged vehicles from which they could pour out thunder and flame and death—nay, it was even said that they carried the Llapa itself in their hands, and could smite with instant death all who offended or withstood them, while they themselves, mounted on mighty and terrible beasts which snorted fire and smoke from their nostrils, would fly over the earth with incredible speed. Moreover, they were made invulnerable to all weapons by clothing of white, shining stuff that neither spear nor arrow would pierce.

Some said that they were the long-foretold messengers from the Sun, fair of skin and mighty of arm, who were coming to rule over the Land of the Four Regions, and advance its borders till they included the whole habitable world and all the men that lived upon the earth. Others, again, said that they were demons which the powers of evil had let loose upon the world, armed with weapons of infernal origin, to lay it waste ere they repeopled it with their own hideous kind.

There had been strange signs in the sky, too, for flaming shapes had leapt across it, as one had done this very night, or sailed slowly through its depths, bright and terrible or pale and ghastly, like warning heralds of universal doom—and now the great Inca was dead, the grasp of the mighty conqueror was loosed from his sceptre, and his sword had been sheathed, and the first act of the new Inca had been the uttering of a sentence which doomed the noblest and holiest family in the land save his own to utter extinction and a death of torment. It was little wonder, then, that sleep had fled from many eyes in Quito that night.

When Manco reached the terrace in front of the palace he saw men already dragging and carrying beams and planks and fagots towards the centre of the square, and his heart, beating hard with the exertion of his long and swift journey, stood still in an instant, as he remembered the awful purpose to which they were destined; for the labourers were about to build the funeral pyre on which his beloved Nahua and all her dear ones were to perish amidst the torment of the flames ere the new-born day was but a few hours older—unless, indeed, some mightier power than that of the despot who had doomed them should be exerted to save them, and, if not to save them, perchance to avenge them.

Scarce knowing what he said or did, he went to the guards at the great door of the palace and sought to find admission, but all he gained was the reply, respectful and yet inexorable, that none, not even a prince of the Blood, could now enter the palace until the Inca came forth to salute the coming of his Father, the Sun. It was in vain that he commanded and besought by turns, and spoke of the anger of the Gods, and coming disaster to the city and its people. Only the formal words of blind obedience to orders answered him, and when at last he sought to force his way to the door crossed spear-shafts and lowered points showed him that he must die before he reached it.

Then at length he drew back, and in the tumult and bitter agony of his soul he paced up and down the broad terrace muttering disjointed and incoherent words, and watching with dry, aching eyes the stolid labourers silently doing their work in the square.

Beam by beam and plank by plank he saw the great scaffold rise, like the creation of some hideous magic, by the toil of many hands, and all the while the eastern peaks glowed brighter and brighter, heralding the coming of the fatal hour.

At last the guards fell back from the door of the palace and stood to their arms. A weird, low sound of song seemed to rise from all parts of the city at once, every moment growing louder and stronger and more jubilant. Then, as though called into being by some spell or miracle, troop after troop of gaily-accoutred soldiery, glittering with gold and silver and burnished copper, and clad in bright-hued uniforms, streamed out of the streets into the square and formed up in silent, orderly ranks along its sides and on the great terrace which flanked it.

Then from the Temple of the Sun and the House of the Virgins came two long processions, one of priests and the other of the Brides of the Sun, chanting the Hymn of Greeting, for this was no ordinary day; it was the morning on which the new Inca was to hail the coming of his Father and his God for the first time, and, standing in the radiance of the first beams that fell into the valley, place the imperial borla upon his brow.

The priests and virgins, entering the square from opposite sides, took their places at either end of the great terrace on which the palace stood, leaving a triangular open space narrowing towards the great doorway and opening to the eastward. Manco went and stood among the guards by the door, eagerly and yet hopelessly scanning the shining ranks of the virgins in the vain search for the face that he would willingly have given his life to see among them, and so he waited till the master of human fate throughout the valley should come forth, and the solemn ceremony which it would be death to interrupt even by a word or a gesture should be over.

And as he waited and watched the silver deepening into gold and the gold blushing into crimson behind the far-off peaks, he thought of the fiery pall that he had seen flaming above Pichincha through the darkness of the night, and in his fancy he saw it rise and spread with the blackness of the cloud and the glare of the flame till it blotted out the dawn and hung like a pall of death and desolation over the whole of the lovely valley.

Then a louder burst of song roused him from his waking dream, and he turned to the door and saw Atahuallpa, splendid in the pride of his imperial array, shining with gold and glittering with gems, come forth with a slow, stately step, his head bare and down-bent, like one going into the presence of his God, and carrying in his hands the scarlet Llautu fringed with the scarlet and gold borla, the insignia of his sovereignty and the symbol of his Divine descent.

He came out alone and walked into the midst of the vacant space. Then behind him came the High Priest of the Sun, newly appointed in Ullomaya’s place, with the chief priests attending on him. Then came Zaïma the Queen-Mother with the princesses of her household, and then Challcuchima with his brother chieftain, Quiz-Quiz, and a glittering array of the chief warriors of the realm and princes of the Sacred Blood.

As they halted each at their proper distance behind the Inca the melody of the singing suddenly stopped, a brilliant point of fire blazed for an instant beside the peak of Antisana, then the whole summit of the great mountain seemed to melt away into a sea of flame, and at the same instant every knee, from that of the Inca to that of the meanest labourer in the city, was bent to the earth in adoration.

Then in the midst of the solemn silence of the breathless multitude, Atahuallpa upturned his face towards the risen sun, and in a loud, clear, musical voice, whose words rang like the notes of a silver trumpet through the silent, crowded square, spoke for the first time the solemn Invocation to the visible shape of his Father and his God.

“O Thou whose sublime throne shines with immortal glory, with what incomparable majesty dost thou dominate the illimitable empire of the skies! When thou comest forth in thy splendour crowned with the flaming diadem of thy glory thou art the pride of heaven and the delight of the earth!

“Where now are those pale fires which flickered round the sombre brow of night? Have they sustained for an instant the attack of the shining shafts of thy heralds, or even the glance of thy glory? If thou didst not give them permission to shine on us for a little space they would remain for ever lost in the ocean of thy splendour, even as though they were not!

“Soul of the Universe, radiant and glorious, without thee the great ocean would be but a lifeless wilderness of ice, even as are the upper regions of the mountains. The earth would be but a barren desert of sand and rock, and the heavens but a gulf of darkness.

“Thou dost penetrate all elements with thy beams, and from their warmth springs life and beauty. By them the air is made sweet and fresh, the waters bright and flowing, and the land green and beautiful. Thy vital fires penetrate the womb of the earth, and she brings forth her fruits that thy children may enjoy them, for thou, O Sun, Soul of the Universe, art the giver of all the blessings of life!

“Yet if it may be that even thou, bright and glorious as thou art, art but the messenger and the minister of the Unnameable One, whose glory no mortal eyes may see, then hear the vows of our obedience and the praise of our adoration, and take them from us to Him, since we are not worthy to enter His presence.

“Thus, O Sun, I, chief of thy children, salute thee! May thy glory for ever shine unclouded upon us, and may thy blessings never cease to fall upon the homes of thy children and thine adorers!”

When the Inca ceased there was silence for a space, and he and all about him remained motionless on their knees. Then he rose and stood alone erect amidst the vast kneeling throng, raising his two hands with the Llautu poised between them high above his head. Then he brought it down slowly until the scarlet fringe rested upon his brow, and then, spreading out his arms with the palms of his hands out-turned towards the sun, he said in a loud voice—

“Thus, O Lord and Father of thy chosen people, do I crown myself in accordance with the precept of the Divine Manco, and in obedience to the will of my father and thy servant, who now sees me from the abodes of the Divine Ones, Inca and ruler supreme of thy children and my people throughout this land.

“May the glory of my reign be a reflection of thine! May thy strength be in my heart and thy light in my soul, and, even as thy blessings flow from thee to the earth and make it bright and beautiful and fruitful, so may the blessings of my just rule make the homes of my people glad and their lives full of peace and comfort!”

When he ceased there was silence again for a space, and those who were standing behind him parted to right and left, and then, from out of the great door of the palace, there came a procession of bearers in two rows, twenty on each side, carrying between them suspended on silver rods the golden throne from which Huayna-Capac had given laws and dispensed justice to his people of the North. Every one of the bearers was a prince of the royal house, for none other than princely hands might touch the throne sanctified by contact with the sacred person of the Inca.

They stopped just behind Atahuallpa, who remained standing facing the sun as though unconscious of any mortal presence near him. Then three of the oldest and noblest of the bearers came on each side of him and put their hands under his armpits and loins and feet, and, with no seeming effort, the body of the Inca rose in the air and was borne backwards till it rested in a sitting posture on the throne.

At the same instant a great shout of joy and acclamation rose up from hundreds of thousands of throats. It was thrice repeated, and then as it died away the priests and virgins raised the Song of Homage, chanting alternately in strophe and antistrophe the glories of the Inca’s ancestors and his own valiant deeds achieved in the wars of his father.

This ended, the Inca sat for a little while, as though absorbed in thought, in the midst of a perfect silence, and then he rose to his feet, and, standing on a broad, massive plate of burnished silver which formed the first step of the throne-seat, he raised his voice and addressed the assembled thousands for the first time as their crowned lord and absolute master.

He told them of the conquest of their ancient kings by his father, and reminded them how, from being their conqueror, he became their king and father and protector. How he had taken their own princess to wife, and how, sprung from that union, he united in his own veins the purest blood of the South and the North. Then he spoke of the decree by which his father had given him, the son of a Quitan mother, the lordship of the land of the North, independent and absolute, and he took the new-risen Sun to witness that, with their help, he would preserve it as he had received it to the last day of his life.

After that, with a fiercer ring in his voice, he spoke of the crime of Ullomaya, and told how he was self-convicted of seeking to rob him, their lawful Inca, prince of their own blood, of his rightful inheritance, and to make him the vassal of his brother and them the slaves of the people of the South. Then, pointing to the scaffold now surrounded with great banks of fagots, he pronounced the formal sentence ordained by the ancient law.

And now he paused for a little, and when he began to speak again his voice, though still loud and clear, was mild and gracious, and he told them how, being unwilling that the first act of his new reign should be one of severity, however just, he would delay the execution until midday in order that the interval might be passed in hearing petitions according to the ancient custom, in righting the wrongs of those who had suffered injustice, and in rewarding those whose services to the State had given them a claim upon his bounty.

This was the moment for which Manco had been waiting in breathless anxiety. Yet, so deathless is hope in the heart of a youth, that when he had heard the Inca give the respite of even a few hours it rose again and his pulses throbbed with new life. Then a sense of awe, almost of fear, came over him as he remembered again what he had seen and heard and felt the night before—the fire-sign in the sky, the warning roll of the thunder that came, not from above, but from below, the terrible words of Mama-Lupa, and the shuddering of the solid earth beneath his feet as he stood with her on the altar on Yavirá. What if the anger of the Gods should smite judge and victims alike before the hand of human vengeance closed upon its prey!

CHAPTER V.
THE CHOICE OF MANCO

By law and custom alike it was his right to claim the first audience, for, saving only the Inca himself, he stood highest in rank, even as he was noblest in descent, among all the princes and nobles of Quito. Nay, he was more even than this, though in the stress of his sorrow and the whirl of emotions which the experiences of the night had given birth to he had forgotten it: his blood was purer and his true rank higher even than that of the crowned despot who now sat on the golden throne of Quito, for, by the laws of the Divine ancestor from whom he took his name, he stood next in succession after his brother Huascar to the imperial borla and the rightful lordship of the Northern and Southern kingdoms.

Had he remembered this it might have saved him from a near and deadly peril, and yet, again, it might not, for so strong were his pity and his love and his sorrow that he would have pleaded, at least, for Nahua’s life even with the threat of the flames sounding in his ears.

But he thought nothing of any peril save that of his darling and her dear ones, as he took a light spear from one of the guards, and, laying it across his shoulders in the fashion prescribed by the ancient custom, took his way to the front of the terrace and stood with his body slightly bent before Atahuallpa’s throne. The Inca’s face flushed, and his black brows came closer together, but his voice was mild and smooth when he said—

“So my brother is the first to come and ask a boon or a gift of me, though he was not among those who brought their loyal greetings to the door of my chamber.”

“It was from no lack of duty, Lord,” replied Manco, still keeping his head bent down and his eyes on the foot of the throne. “I only returned to the city at daybreak, and then the guard refused me admittance to the palace. But for that I had not only saluted the majesty of my Lord but given him also a message of moment that I had brought.”

“From whence?” said the Inca, sharply interrupting him. “If you were not in the city, where were you?”

“On the altar of the Unknown on Yavirá, Lord!” answered Manco, raising his head and looking him unflinchingly in the eyes. “And from thence I saw Pichincha put on her fire-crown, and heard the voices of the demons shouting in the halls of the under-world, and felt the earth beneath me tremble with the strength of their struggles as they sought to free themselves from their bondage. And then I saw the Llapa leap up out of the Westward, where they say the pale strangers are, and burst over the city, and Mama-Lupa the priestess was with me, and at her bidding I came to bid thee and all thy people make ready to appease the wrath of the Divine Ones who are angry with their children.”

“And since when, my brother, hast thou been a soothsayer and the messenger of old women?” said Atahuallpa, with a sneer on his lips. “How knowest thou or this doting priestess that the signs portend disaster? Has not Cotopaxi yonder flamed and slept by turns for many years of victory, and has not the Llapa ere now sped flaming through the skies before our armies as they marched to conquest? What has a lad like you to do with signs and omens? Leave them for the old and foolish, and if this is all you have to tell me think your errand done, and give place to those who have weightier matters to speak of. I will forgive your foolishness for the sake of your youth. Nay, I will even grant you a boon if you have one to ask of me.”

“The Inca’s word is passed!” cried Manco, suddenly drawing himself up straight and facing the despot with a smile on his lips, “and the Son of the Sun will perform what he has said.”

“What now?” said Atahuallpa, scowling darkly at him.

“What need for such words from you to me?”

As he spoke Manco dropped suddenly on his knees before him, and, letting the spear fall from his shoulders, spread his hands out towards him, and, with the tears that the grief and terror of the night had frozen falling from his eyes, he said in a low, pleading voice—

“Because I have a prayer to lay at the feet of my Lord, in granting which he will win more favour in the eyes of the Divine Ones, and more love and glory in the hearts of his people than by many victories. I pray for mercy, Lord, such as thy great father and mine has often shown, and which thou, his son, wilt honour him by showing—mercy for the innocent who have not sinned, and forgiveness for him who sinned only because his heart told him that he was doing the right!”

Then he looked up, and so terrible was the wrath depicted on the Inca’s face, and so fierce was the fire that glared out of his eyes, that he shrank back appalled and covered his face with his hands.

“Ay! well mayst thou shrink and cover thy shameful face in the presence of the majesty which thine impious daring has outraged—thou who wouldst plead for a traitor and his accursed brood! Dost thou think that so poor a device will avail thee? Didst thou hope to entrap thy lord and master in his own words, and make him a liar and a destroyer of his own justice, a breaker of the laws that have never been broken? Thy sin is as great as his whom thou wouldst save, and the sacred blood in thy veins shall not save thee from the penalty.

“Yet I know the cause of thy madness, for thou art sick of love, and thinkest that thy Nahua is too dainty a morsel for the flames. Aye, thou lovest one of this accursed brood. I had forgotten that, though of itself it is a sin that stains the purity of thy blood and befouls the honour of thy race.

“Now, brother, I will give thee a boon, as I said I would—nothing less than the means of purging thyself of this pollution. Thou shalt choose between lighting the fagots with thine own hand or standing with thy Nahua in the midst of them. So shalt thou live, cleansed from thy dishonour, or the flames shall purge it for thee. Now go! I want no answer yet. When the guilty stand in the place of judgment it will be time enough for thee to speak. Then I will hear thy choice.”

With a wave of his hand Atahuallpa dismissed him. All the sense that his despot brother’s pitiless words had left him told him that remonstrance would be in vain, so he rose to his feet and, with a last look of silent appeal in the face of the Inca, now calm and passionless as that of a statue, he went back to where he had been standing, meeting on the way a look from the deep, dark eyes of the queen-mother as fierce and threatening as that which he had seen in those of the Inca’s, and then being stopped by a hand laid upon his arm. He looked round and saw the kindly eyes and grim features of Quiz-Quiz, his great-uncle, a noble of the purest blood, and, next to Challcuchima, or, as some said, equal with him, the greatest warrior in the North and South.

“Nephew,” he said, “I have heard what has passed yonder before the throne of our Lord. Come with me into the palace, for you need counsel, and an old head may advise better than a young heart in such a strait as this.”

“I have already chosen, my uncle!” Manco answered shortly but respectfully.

“Ay, that I could have guessed,” said the old warrior. “Nevertheless, it may be that I can change your resolve without hurting either your love or your honour. So come and let me tell you my thoughts. They will not harm you even if they do not please you.”

So saying, he took him by the arm and led him into one of the rooms which were set apart for his use in the palace, and there he talked long and earnestly with him, and when they came out together on to the terrace again Manco’s resolve was changed, as Quiz-Quiz had said. There was also a flush on his cheeks and a brighter light in his eyes, and his carriage was that of one who has taken a high and solemn resolve.

Hour after hour passed for him in suspense, that was all the more agonising because it was also utterly inactive. He could do nothing but wait until the moment of his fate came—nothing but watch the long line of petitioners coming and going at the foot of the throne, but the end came at last.

The last of the petitioners had been dismissed, and the Inca clapped his hands thrice. Challcuchima, laying his spear across his shoulders, strode forward to obey the summons. The Inca spoke a few words to him in a low tone, and then Manco, his heart fluttering in the clutch of a deadly horror, saw the general make a signal to an officer at the head of a file of soldiers drawn up on the square facing the throne. Like machines they fell into a new formation and marched four abreast, with spears sloped over their shoulders, towards a long, low, heavily built building which formed nearly half of one side of the square.

Manco watched them with fixed, aching eyes till they disappeared through the low, wide, central portal, down the spear-lined lane that opened to receive them. For a few minutes there was utter silence in the great crowded square, for the multitude was waiting for the promised tragedy of the day to begin. Then there came out of the doorway a train of bearers carrying loads of clothing, furniture, and utensils of the household, which they carried across the square and up on to the scaffold, where they laid them down; for the tremendous penalty that Ullomaya had incurred extended even to the smallest possessions belonging either to himself or any member of his family.

When this had been done and the bearers had retired, the Inca clapped his hands again. The sharp sound was heard clearly all over the square and the crowded terraces. The treble files of guards which kept the open space about the scaffold brought their spear-butts to the ground with a simultaneous crash, and then, guarded on either hand by a file of spear-men, those who were doomed to die came forth to look their last on earth and sky and sun.

There were nearly threescore of them, all clothed alike in a single garment of coarse grey cotton, and the sight of them would have melted any heart not frozen to insensibility by the pitiless chill of superstition.

Yet not a murmur of pity or sorrow came from a single breast in all the vast, silent throng, though there were old men and stalwart youths, grey-haired women stooping under the weight of years, young mothers with their last-born babies in their arms, bright-faced boys and girls who had never known an hour of real sorrow in their lives, and little toddling children who looked about them and laughed, wondering what all the splendid show was for.

But in all the piteous little throng Manco saw but one slight figure and one sweet, pale, childish face in its framing of long brown shining hair, for this was his Nahua, walking wondering to her death with her hand clasped in her mother’s.

The procession passed across the square, keeping pace with the slow, measured stride of the guards, till it stopped opposite an incline of planks which led to the floor of the scaffold. Then the doomed ones were driven up this like sheep being driven into a pen, and half the guard broke their ranks and followed them with thongs in their hands, and began silently and swiftly to bind the hands and feet of all save the very youngest. When this was done they piled a wall of fagots round the platform, and then came back down the incline, pulling the planks away and heaping fagots in their place.

Then the Inca clapped his hands once more and called Manco before him. When he had taken his place, standing in the same attitude of homage as before, he said to him in a quiet, almost kindly tone—

“Well, my brother, have you chosen? Will you carry the torch or stand amidst the fagots?”

“I will carry the torch, Lord,” Manco replied in a low, steady voice.

Atahuallpa started, and for an instant he looked at him as though he could have slain him with his own hand. Then his scowl changed swiftly to a smile and he said—

“That is well, my brother. It is better to live purged of dishonour than to die a death of shame. Let the torch be brought.”

Then a soldier brought a blazing torch of aromatic, resinous wood with the upper half wrapped thickly about with strips of cotton soaked in oil. Manco took it from his hand and, saluting the Inca, walked backwards from the throne down the steps of the terrace without a word, and then turned and walked towards the scaffold through a gap made for him by the guards, with one hand gripping the shaft of the torch and the other in his breast closed upon the hilt of a long, keen knife of tempered copper.

Until now the little throng of victims on the scaffold had uttered no sound. Those who knew what the ghastly preparations meant had steeled themselves to meet their fate with the heroic stoicism of their race. Those who did not know were still wondering what it all meant, and some of the little children were even playing with each other among the fagots, of whose terrible purpose they were still in happy ignorance.

But now, as the elders saw their executioner—to them the strangest of all who could have been found for the task—approaching they knew that the end was near, and for the first time they opened their lips, and the shrill, wailing cadencies of the Death-Song floated to the ears of the listening multitude, whose every eye was now turned on Manco.

With slow, steady steps he advanced to within ten paces of the scaffold. There he stopped, and, turning his face upward to the sun, he closed his eyes and with his lips made the silent Invocation to the Unnameable One. Then with a swift motion he dashed the torch to the ground, sprang forward at a run with the yellow shining dagger in his hand, and bounded with swift leaps up over the wall of fagots on to the scaffold and into the midst of the throng of victims crying—

“Nahua, where are you? I cannot save you, but I will die with you, and my dagger will be kinder than the flames!”

CHAPTER VI.
THE VEILING OF THE SUN

He found her standing bound beside her mother, leaning her head against her breast, and looking with fixed, dazed eyes blankly at the wall of fagots in front of her. In an instant he was at her side, in another he had severed the thongs which bound her wrists and ankles, and the next they were in each other’s arms, and she was sobbing on his breast and imploring him piteously to save her, and not to let them burn her father and mother and little brother.

“Alas! Nahua, I have but come to die with you!” he answered, stroking her hair and kissing her upturned brow. “The Inca gave me the choice of being burned alive with you or lighting the fagots myself, and, as he thought, I chose to be your executioner. But I only did that so that I could reach you unbound and armed and save you the torture of the flames.”

“But I do not want to die yet, Manco!” she pleaded with him, as though he himself held the power of life and death for her. “What have we done that our Lord should be so cruel?”

“There is no time to tell you that, dear,” he answered, brushing the tears from his eyes with the back of the hand that held the knife. Nahua’s eyes caught the yellow gleam of the blade, and she shuddered and clung more closely to him, murmuring—

“Then if I must die I would rather you should kill me than the fire should burn me, for you will not hurt me more than you must, will you, my Prince?”

“Quickly, Prince—quickly!” her mother cried out at this moment, “for our Lord has had more torches brought, and they are coming to fire the fagots. But I pray you set free Amaro first, that I may die by his hand, and not see thee shed my Nahua’s blood, even in mercy.”

Manco looked towards the throne and saw the Inca pointing towards the scaffold, and four soldiers, each with a lighted torch, descending the terrace steps backwards. He cut Amaro’s bonds and then those of Nahua’s mother, so that they might embrace each other for the last time. Then he gave the knife into Amaro’s hands, and taking Nahua in his arms again turned his head and hers away.

The four men with the torches were now inside the square of soldiers around the scaffold, and he knew that in a few minutes more the flames would be roaring about them. But the Fates had ordained that a greater tragedy even than the sacrifice of the threescore victims of Atahuallpa’s fury was to avenge the outraged shade of his murdered father.

The torchbearers stationed themselves one at each corner of the pyre and stood with their eyes on the Inca, waiting for the signal to fire it together. But the signal was never given, for, before Atahuallpa could make it, a long, shrill, piercing scream rang out over the square, and every eye was instantly turned upon a weird unearthly figure standing on the top of the wall of the House of the Virgins where it fronted on the square overlooking the terrace on which the throne was set.

It was Mama-Lupa the Palla and prophetess. Her white clothing was rent and disordered, her grey hair was streaming wildly about her face and shoulders, and her arms were outstretched above her head, waving slowly to and fro. Again and yet again the scream rang out. The torchbearers dropped their torches and stood trembling beside them, and a thrill of terror shook every heart in the vast multitude saving only Atahuallpa’s.

Then Mama-Lupa’s voice, high and shrill and clear, rose above the murmurs that were beginning to run from lip to lip, and her words reached every ear in the great throng as she half screamed and half chanted—

“There is woe coming to the great city and death to its people! Put out thy torches, Inca, for the Divine Ones have bidden the demons of the fire mountains light theirs and there shall be no need for thine. Thy Father is wrath with thee and shall hide his face from thee, and ye, O People of the Valley! fly while there is yet time, for ere long there shall be darkness in heaven and fire and desolation on the earth.

“Fly lest the rocks open and swallow you and the mountains come together and crush you, for the City of the Sun is doomed and its streets shall be graves and its palaces and temples shall be sepulchres, and the Llapa shall smite the altars and rend them, and where there is life there shall be death, for the Son of the Sun has sinned, and his Father shall turn his face away from him!”

No words more awful could have been uttered in the ears of the multitude, for to every man and woman in the city the Inca was as the visible incarnation of a God, and to say that he had sinned was to say that the Gods themselves had done wrong since they had permitted him to sin. It would have been blasphemy from any lips, but from those of Mama-Lupa, revered by the whole people as the wisest and holiest of the Pallas, they were more, and they smote the hearts of her hearers like words uttered by the very voice of Doom.

Atahuallpa heard them without moving a muscle or a feature till the last of them had died away in a long, wailing scream. Not even he, immeasurably far removed as he was above the common herd of the people, could resist wholly the great wave of terror which was sweeping over the souls of the multitude.

He saw the sea of upturned faces turning as though moved by a single impulse from the figure of Mama-Lupa on the wall to himself on the throne. He saw his soldiers, perfectly disciplined as they were, relaxing the rigidity of their lines, and looking about them with frightened, shifting glances. In another moment fear might have blazed up into panic and all order have been lost in a riot of terror. He sprang to his feet, and, pointing to where Mama-Lupa stood, he shouted—

“Let the blasphemer’s tongue be silenced! Pay no heed to her lying words, my children, go and fling her from the wall, and let her body be food for the vultures. Stop—no—such a death is too easy. Bring her here and I will judge her. Challcuchima, let the scaffold be guarded that none may escape, but let not the fagots be kindled till this speaker of lies is ready for the flames.”

“I will come to thee, Inca!” Mama-Lupa screamed. “I will come to thee without the bringing, and thou shalt judge me and I will judge thee.”

Then she vanished from the top of the wall, and presently, when the soldiers had reached the door of the House of the Virgins, she came forth and, waving them aside, strode along the terrace, every one making way for her as she passed, and, without deigning to make the universal sign of homage, she stood erect before Atahuallpa, looking him in the eyes, and said in a loud voice—

“The Son of the Sun has sinned, and would slay the innocent for his own sin! I tended my Lord that departed last night to the abode of the Divine Ones, and I saw his face when he was dead, and thou, Inca, didst see him die, thou and thy mother, the queen!”

Such words had never yet been spoken by mortal lips to a crowned Inca, and Atahuallpa, struck dumb by their daring and the terrible meaning that lay hidden in them, heard her to the end perforce ere the command of speech came back to him. When it did all he said was—

“She is mad! Take her away and throw her into the midst of the others, then let the fagots be kindled. Away with her, and let my eyes be no longer polluted by the sight of her!”

Four of the guards advanced to seize her, but their hands trembled as they stretched them out, for the terror of her words had sunk deep into their hearts. She waved them back, and they stood trembling and looking from her to their master, and she raised her voice again and replied—

“Thou canst send me to the flames, Inca, but that will avail thee but little against the wrath of thy Father, who shall presently turn his face from thee, and in the days to come thou shalt follow me, for on thee the embalmers shall never do their work, and thou shalt have no place in the Chambers of the Dead. The golden mask shall never cover thy face,^[10] and thy soul shall wander for ever in the darkness, seeking its body yet never finding it, for thou, Inca, shalt never see the bright portals of the Mansions of the Sun!”

Again the horror of her words held Atahuallpa silent, his face blanched to a dull grey; his lips were half parted and dry, and his eyes rolled in his head, striving vainly to meet her steady gaze, for the guilt that was in his soul opened the way to fear, and the crowned despot and lord of life and death to millions trembled before the victim he was about to send to the flames. But as soon as she had ceased his rage got the better of his terror. He snatched a spear from the hand of the guard who stood nearest to him and, with a stroke like lightning, drove it through the heart of one of the four soldiers he had bidden to seize Mama-Lupa.

“When thy Lord speaks to hear is to obey or die. Take her away and let me see her die, or may the face of my Father the Sun be darkened if I do not send you all to the flames with her!”

“Ay, it shall be darkened, Inca!” Mama-Lupa cried as they dragged her away. “It shall be darkened with a cloud of blood, and thou shalt see it fall from Heaven and consume thee and thine utterly with its flames!”

By this time, though terror was shaking every heart, the angry words of the Inca had stayed the impulse which had so nearly turned the fear into panic, and as Mama-Lupa was taken to the scaffold the multitude was silent and orderly once more. One of the soldiers climbed up the wall of fagots, dragging her after him by a rope that they had noosed round her waist, and then threw her down among the others, bound hand and foot.

All this while Ullomaya and Manco and the other victims had stood wondering and watching yet making no attempt to escape, knowing well that they could never pass the triple files of spearmen round the scaffold. But now the knowledge of their own near-approaching doom came back, and Amaro put his left arm about his wife and drew her to him. The next moment a shudder ran through her body, and with a little gasping cry her head dropped heavily on to his breast. Then he raised the red dripping knife high above him, and with a swift downward stroke drove it into his own heart.

As he fell with his arm still clasped about his dead wife, Manco snatched the knife out of his side and, throwing his arm round Nahua, drew her to him just as the Inca made the signal to light the pyre. Another instant and he would have heard the crackling of the kindled fagots, and the knife, wet with the blood of her father and mother, would have been buried in Nahua’s heart.

But before a torch touched the fagots a great screaming cry of almost more than mortal terror rang out from thousands of throats at once, and tens of thousands of hands went up, pointing to the sun. The torch-men looked up too and stood transfixed with terror, their torches dropping from their trembling hands, for Mama-Lupa’s terrible words were coming true. A blood-red haze was stealing across the face of the sun sailing unclouded in the zenith. In the whole heavens there was neither cloud nor mist, but as the bloody haze deepened all the sky grew dim at once, and its azure turned to dusky grey. From Atahuallpa on his throne to the destined victims of his unrighteous vengeance on the scaffold utter terror held every heart still and frozen in its icy grip.

CHAPTER VII.
THE KINDLING OF THE PYRE

When the sound of the first myriad-voiced cry had died away the spell of a great silence fell upon the multitude. The torches smoked and smouldered out harmlessly on the ground, and they whose nerveless hands had dropped them stood like the rest, gazing upwards with fixed eyes, forgetful of all else but the awful portent in the sky.

Slowly the haze grew deeper and redder, and as it grew the sun seemed to shrink until they could see it shining dully as through a mist of blood, scarce larger than the moon. Then the spell of silence was broken again, and a long, low, shuddering wail went murmuring round the square. But soon above it rose the sharp shrieks and shrill screams of women and children.

Soldiers flung down their arms and broke their ranks unreproved by their officers. Some grovelled on the ground, hiding their faces in their hands, and some ran about waving their arms and wailing like children or shrieking out incoherent words. Even the Inca had forgotten alike his majesty and his vengeance in the universal terror, and sat upon his golden throne, clutching with shaking hands at the arms and staring up with eyes that seemed about to burst from their sockets, and at his feet his queen-mother cowered, shuddering and moaning and covering her face with her cloak, not daring to look up.

A black shape, blacker than starless night, was beginning to creep across the sun’s rim, growing slowly broader and broader, and then, though it was scarcely an hour past midday, a darkness as of sudden midnight began to fall upon the valley, and here and there stars began to flicker palely in the sky as the black shape ate its way into the dimmed brightness of the fading sun.

And now there was not a sound in all the swarming, fear-stricken city as, right over the visible face of their God, the Children of the Sun watched that incarnate Blackness creep, until at last, in the very height and majesty of its noonday pride, it was blotted out from their sight. Then, from behind the blackness, there leapt out lurid flaming shapes of ghastly splendour, blue and red and yellow—the last flickerings, as they thought, of their dying God’s expiring glory.

But this was only the beginning of the terrors of that awful noontide, for as they watched the hideous disc of flame-encircled darkness a roar as of a thousand thunder-peals in one shook the firmament and seemed to bring its ruins crushing down upon the shuddering earth. Then out of the north-west there leapt up a vast sheet of glaring ruddy light, and against it they saw the shape of Yavirá, crowned by the altar of the Unknown God, stand out huge and black and sharp.

A fiery wind like a blast from the very mouth of Hell itself swept roaring through the valley, and, as though swiftly drawn out by invisible hands, a black curtain spread over the heavens from north to south and east to west, and under it the ever-broadening glare blazed out, swiftly changing it from black to red. The earth reeled and swayed beneath their feet: the stone-paved streets cracked and gaped, and the mighty walls of palace and temple, built to endure for ever, shook and split, and great stones came crashing down, crushing scores out of all human shape beneath them.

And now the spell of fear was broken and the bonds of horror loosed, and madness came. Those who had moaned and wailed before now laughed and sang and shouted, and at the sound Manco woke from his stupor.

All this time he had stood with Nahua in his arms and the knife ready poised above her breast. Both seemed as though the fearful magic of the sights and sounds about them had changed them to statues of bronze, paralysed alike in mind and body.

When her father and mother fell dead beside her a shudder had run through Nahua’s body and then it had become fixed and rigid, and she had stood staring at the dead with blank, unmeaning eyes, heedless of the horror that was in Heaven and the terror that was on the earth.

Manco too, though half-prepared by his vigil on the altar and the words of Mama-Lupa for what had come to pass, had been smitten with a thought at once terrible and glad, the thought that in another moment Nahua would have died by his hand, and this had seemed to turn his heart and brain to stone and his blood to ice.

But now, in the midst of the delirium about him, the spell that had bound him was suddenly loosened, for the love which but a little while before had bidden him slay the being dearest to him on earth, leapt up into new life in his soul, triumphant even over the terrors of the convulsed heavens and earth, and love brought hope with it now where it had brought despair before.

All order was at an end. In the face of the awful majesty of nature’s tragedy the Inca himself was nothing more than a trembling man, helpless as the meanest wretch who was running shrieking about the square. For the moment the whole fabric of his rule had crumbled to nothing, even as the monuments of his power seemed about to do. No one in that maddened multitude gave a thought to the bound and helpless ones on the scaffold. When Death, swift and terrible, was threatening all, what mattered the lives of three-score men and women?

And yet here was hope, if anywhere, and here too alone was calmness, for these had already set their faces to meet the bitterness of death. For nearly an hour now they had been standing bound on the brink of a fiery grave and death had lost well-nigh half its terrors for them. But if destruction were coming they should at least have the chance of flight with free feet, and their hands should be loosed so that, if it might be, they should save their little ones or die seeking to save them.

Waking Nahua from her stupor with a kiss, Manco bade her wait for him, and set to work cutting the bonds of the others, and they, as soon as they were free, took such garments as they could lay hands on and hastily clothed themselves and their children in some sort, and then, flinging the fagots aside, made themselves a way to freedom, leaving only the dead bodies of Amaro and his wife behind them, and, led by Manco, began to make their way as best they could towards the street that led to the Southern Gate.

But Mama-Lupa broke away from them and gained the terrace where Atahuallpa still sat, shivering on his golden throne, and, standing beside him over the prostrate Zaïma, she threw up her hands and screamed out shrilly above the tumult—

“The shade of the great Inca is angry! He stands alone in his house in the Mansions of the Sun. Where are those he honoured upon earth—wives of Huayna-Capac? Your Lord is lonely, get ye gone to him—sacrifice! sacrifice! The Divine Ones are wrath, and only sacrifice can appease them!”

A crowd of women that had been huddled about the palace door heard her and with one accord sprang towards her, tearing at their hair and their robes, and in shrill, screaming tones echoing her words—

“Sacrifice! sacrifice!”

They were the wives of the dead Inca, and they remembered how, in the olden times, when a king died, those who had loved him and whom he had loved had of their own accord gone with him to the Mansions of the Sun. It might be that the wrath of the Divine Ones would pass if they did this now, and one of them screaming out: “To the scaffold, to the scaffold! Let us go to our Lord on the wings of the flames!” began to fight her way down the terrace steps and towards the deserted pyre. Others caught up her cry and followed her. Then Mama-Lupa, pointing down at Zaïma’s prostrate form, screamed out again—

“Ay, to the flames and through them to your Lord, as becomes true wives according to the Ancient Law! But here lies she who was chief and dearest of you all in his eyes. Leave her not behind lest he shall send your souls back to seek her.”

Zaïma heard her and sprang to her feet, her fears banished by this nearer danger. But before she could turn to fly a score of eager, pitiless hands were clutching at her limbs and garments, and a score of screaming voices were crying—

“Come with us, Coya, come! We dare not go to our Lord without thee.”

She grasped one of the arms of the golden throne and clung to it, crying to her son to save her. But the Inca sat still, staring straight before him and seeing nothing, like one in a waking dream, and not seeming even to hear her prayer. So they dragged her away, screaming and chanting salutations to their Lord, and with her in their midst they ran across the square, now almost bare of people, for with one consent nearly all the throng had made for the outlets and were swarming into the narrow streets, strangling and trampling each other down between the rocking and gaping walls.

Some of the women who had gone first to the scaffold had picked up the smouldering torches, and, waving them swiftly in the air, had made them burst into flame again. Then, with Zaïma still struggling and shrieking in their midst, the others mounted the platform over the fagots, and then those with the torches followed and danced round them, while all but Zaïma chanted the Death-Song. When it was done they flung their torches in among the fagots, and as the wall of flame and smoke rose up around them they flung their arms about each other, calling upon their Lord to witness their faith and fondness, and so they went to bear him company in the land where there is no death, leaving the fire-smitten and shuddering earth behind them.^[11]

But all the while the terrors of the earthquake were multiplying throughout the valley of the doomed city. Mighty masses of red-hot rock were flung high into the air from the throat of the volcano and fell back to earth, some on the mountain-sides and some on the squares and streets and buildings of the city, bursting in the midst of close-packed masses of men and women and children. Great gaps were opening in the ground and closing again, swallowing fragments of walls and buildings and burying hundreds alive in their depths. But the new-crowned Inca sat still and unharmed upon his throne, for at length his terror had passed, lost in a cold despair, and he had resolved to die, if die he must, crowned and throned as became a king and the son of kings, and so, in the midst of the ruins of his city and the death-agonies of his people, he remained to the last, the one being unmoved, watching the blazing pyre and waiting for the hand of death to strike him.^[12]

In the cold, clear dawn of the morning after the Day of Terrors, Manco stood with Nahua in the doorway of a tambo, or rest-house, some five leagues to the south of Quito, on the great road that ran between the Sierras to Cuzco. They two alone of all the threescore victims who had stood together on the scaffold had escaped through the miracle or the mercy of the fate which had decreed for them the strange destiny of which the pages that follow will tell.

They were facing the eastern mountains, and their eager eyes were shining in the silver light of the fast brightening dawn. Soon long shafts of rosy light shot up from behind the clear-cut mountain-tops, and the morning star grew paler in the midst of their radiance. A broad band of ruddy golden light outspread across the sky behind the peaks and snowfields which gleamed and glittered in the glory it shed upon them, and then, in the eternal splendour of his unclouded majesty, the great sun rose up to smile once more upon the world.

Instantly Manco and Nahua bowed themselves in glad adoration before it. Then Manco took Nahua in his arms and said—

“Our Father’s wrath is past, my Nahua, and the wrath of the Divine Ones is appeased! See, his face shines as brightly as ever upon his children. He has given us his blessing again as he has done every morning that we have lived. Now let us go, and I will take you to my home, and you shall see the true City of the Sun.”

Then, hand in hand, they went on their way towards the South, leaving the darkened North where the doomed city still lay under its pall of mingled fire and darkness, behind them.