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.