Now the proclamation of this peace had had two effects, both of which worked momentously on the future fortunes of captors and captive. Most sorely against his will, Challcuchima believed that his master--still stricken by the same stupor of madness that had caused him to reject the plans which might have placed the invaders at his mercy--had abandoned his people at the very moment when the tide of victory was rolling at full flood towards the South. Clearly divining the true character and purpose of the invaders, he had given him up for lost, and was already considering in the privacy of his own soul how the deeds of the Day of Massacre might be best undone and how, should Atahuallpa prove helpless or unworthy, the forces which he had so far led to victory might be best employed in upholding the throne of the Four Regions. In the direct line of descent there were three princes of the Blood who possessed an almost equal right to wear the imperial borla. Of these the first was Huascar, whose title was better even than that of Atahuallpa himself, for Atahuallpa was the son of Huayna-Capac and Zaïma, Princess of Quito, and this marriage was by the Ancient Law inferior to the union between Huayna-Capac and Amara-Coyllur, his own sister and Coya, who was the mother of Huascar. But Huascar himself was already conquered and a prisoner, and at any moment Atahuallpa might find means to send the order for his death to those who were guarding him. After him came his younger brother Manco, also of the pure blood-royal, and he, after the death of Huascar, would be the true heir to the throne. Lastly, there was the Prince Toparca, also a son of Huayna-Capac, but not born within the circle of the Sacred Blood, and he, following in the train of Atahuallpa, had shared his fate and was already a prisoner in the hands of the Spaniards. Upon Huascar the old General, well versed as he was in the ways of his master, looked as already lost. To rescue him would be to raise the standard of open revolt and once more to open the wound of dissension between Quito and Cuzco, and, moreover, Huascar, as he knew well, was but a dreamer of dreams and a lover of women, who lived such a life as no man could live who had great things to do; and even if he could have released him by force of arms he was but too well assured that he would lend a ready ear to the vain legend which had already deceived Atahuallpa, and greet the Spaniards, not as invaders and hungry adventurers, but as the true sons of Viracocha who had come to raise the Empire of the Children of the Sun to a height of glory before undreamt of. Toparca was a mere lad, unformed alike in mind and body, already the Spaniards’ captive, and, it might be, ready to become their puppet and their slave.