us across the garden to the door of the palace.
Larico unlocked the door with a key and we entered, he and I alone, for
here I bade the Chancas await my return.

We crept down a short passage that was curtained at its end. Passing
the curtains I found myself in Upanqui's banqueting-hall. This hall was
dimly lit with one hanging golden lamp. By its light I saw something
more wondrous and of its sort more awful than ever I had seen in that
strange land.

There, on a dais, in his chair of gold, sat dead Upanqui arrayed in all
his gorgeous Inca robes and so marvellously preserved that he might have
been a man asleep. With arms crossed and his sceptre at his side, he sat
staring down the hall with fixed and empty eyes, a dreadful figure of
life in death. About him and around the dais were set all his riches,
vases and furniture of gold, and jewels piled in heaps, there to remain
till the roof fell in and buried them, since on this hallowed wealth
the boldest dared not lay a hand. In the centre of the hall, also, was
a table prepared as though for feasters, for amid jewelled cups and
platters stood the meats and wines which day by day were brought afresh
by the Virgins of the Sun. Doubtless there were more wonders, but these
I could not see because the light did not reach them, or to the doorways
of the chambers that opened from the hall. Moreover, there was something
else which caught my eye.

At the foot of the dais crouched a figure which at first I took to be
that of some dead one also embalmed, perhaps a wife or daughter of the
dead Inca who had been set with him in this place. While I stared at
it the figure stirred, having heard our footsteps, rose and turned,
standing so that the light from the hanging lamp fell full upon it. It
was Quilla clad in white and purple with a golden likeness of the Sun
blazoned upon her breast!

So beauteous did she look searching the darkness with great blind eyes
and her rich flowing hair flowing from beneath her jewelled headdress,
a diadem fashioned to resemble the Sun's rays, that my breath failed me
and my heart stood still.

"There stands she whom you seek," muttered Larico in a mocking whisper,
for here even he did not seem to dare to talk aloud. "Go take her, you
whom men call a god, but I call a drunken fool ready to risk all for
a woman's lips. Go take her and ask the blessing upon your kisses of
yonder dead king whose holy rest you break."

"Be silent," I whispered back