“Because, Master, in this land there are many sorts of poison, as I have learned to my cost.  Also there are knives, if not of steel, and many who might wish to discover whether a god who courts women like a man can be harmed by poisons or pierced by knives.  Oh!” he added, in another tone, ceasing from his bitter jests, “believe me that I would shield, not mock you.  This Lady Quilla is a queen in a great game of pieces such as you taught me to play far away in England, and without her perchance that game cannot be won, or so those who play it think.  Now you would steal that queen and thereby, as they also think, bring death and destruction on a country.  It is not safe, Master.  There are plenty of fair women in this land; take your pick of them, but leave that one queen alone.”

“Kari,” I answered, “if there be such a game, are you not perchance one of the players on this side or on that?”

“It may be so, Master, and if you have not guessed it, perhaps one day I will tell you upon which side I play.  It may even be that for my own sake I should be glad to see you lift this queen from off the board, and that what I tell you is for love of you and not of myself, also of the lady Quilla, who, if you fall, falls with you down through the black night into the arms of the Moon, her mother.  But I have said enough, and indeed it is foolish to waste breath in such talk, since Fate will have its way with both of you, and the end of the game in which we play is already written in Pachacamac’s book for every one of us.  Did not Rimac speak of it the other night?  So play on, play on, and let Destiny fulfil itself.  If I dared to give counsel it was only because he who watches the battle with a general’s eye sees more of it than he who fights.”

Then he bowed in his stately fashion and left me, and it was long ere he spoke to me again of this matter of Quilla and our love for one another.

When he was gone my anger against him passed, since I saw that he was warning me of more than he dared to say, not for himself, but because he loved me.  Moreover, I was afraid, for I felt that I was moving in the web of a great plot that I did not understand, of which Quilla and those cold-eyed lordlings of her company and the chief whose guest I had been, and Kari himself, and many others as yet unknown to me, spun the invisible threads.  One day these might choke me.  Well, if they did, what then?  Only I feared for Quilla—­greatly I feared for Quilla.

On the day following my talk with Kari at length we reached the great city of the Chancas, which, after them, was called Chanca—­at least I always knew it by that name.  From the dawn we had been passing through rich valleys where dwelt thousands of these Chancas who, I could see, were a mighty people that bore themselves proudly and like soldiers.  In multitudes they gathered themselves together upon either side of the road, chiefly to catch a sight of me, the white god who had risen from the ocean, but also to greet their princess, the lady Quilla.