* *

From a bulging pocket of his tunic he fished a strip of the roots on
which he had subsisted so comfortably. Naida's eyes widened, and several
of the girls gave low cries.

"Yes," Naida exclaimed, "but such food! Why--why, do you know what you
are offering us? Why, this is the sacred Peyote! Only the Duca eats it,
and, at rare intervals, his priests."

Kirby was really startled now.

"But surely you and the others have taken quantities of the stuff away
from the Valley of the Geyser. Do you mean--"

"Because we gathered the Peyote does not mean that we have ever tasted
it. We gather it for the Duca. To taste would be complete, utter
sacrilege. Have _you_ been eating it?"

Inwardly Kirby was chuckling at this added proof of the buncumbe with
which the Duca--and other Ducas--had fooled all.

"Of course I've been eating the Peyote."

"And--and nothing has happened to you?" Naida asked.

"Hardly. I certainly haven't been blasted by the Lords of the Sun and
Moon, or the Serpent either!"

Naida and all the others were silent. The conflict between their
reverence for the food and their clear desire to eat it, now that it was
become the food of their leader, was pathetic.

Kirby put one of the strips in Naida's hand.

"Why not?" he asked. "We have bested the Duca in fair fight. We have
seized his tower. Why not eat his food?"

As he had hoped it would, the suggestion at last settled the matter. A
moment later, as Naida nibbled her first bite, she smiled.

"Why, it--it's good!"

With the question of provisions settled at least for a time, Kirby's
next thought was of the tower. The present lull of peace seemed made for
exploration.

"Come along," he said to Naida, "we've plenty to do," and then, when he
explained, they set out, accompanied by Nini, a cousin of Naida's, and
Ivana, a younger sister.

All of the others remained with little Elana.

* * * * *

While they climbed spiral stairs, Naida explained that the chamber they
had just left was used by the Duca as a place in which he prayed before
and after contacts with caciques or subjects. A sort of halfway station
between earth and heaven, as it were, where the Duca might be purged of
any sullying influence gained from human relationships.

At thought of the rank, egotistical hypocrisy implied by the story,
Kirby smiled grimly. Then they came to a new door, heavier than that
which barricaded the prayer chambe