Knave Tepulpai is dismissed by the residing shaman from the village's annual coming of age ceremony because he refuses to sacrifice his most precious possession, the condor feather he just found. He plans to redeem himself by giving chase all the way to imperial capital Cuzo when a neighboring village's delegation steals their golden 'huaco', the pride of the shrine, to be offered as tribute to the Great Inca. Only neighbor Naïra comes along. They make it, and the emperor orders the gold returned to them before accepting it as uninterested as the rest, but then Conquistadores, whose arrival he earlier dismissed as impossible, bomb the temple and start plundering the empire. Tepulpai rescues the 'huaco' and escapes from the subterranean labyrinth he landed in with the disgraced court astronomer, back to the village. The Spaniards arrive and burn it down, but the wounded shaman and condor magic enable him to turn things around.