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.