An old man sitting on a tiana greeted them. His long hair was as white as the snows of Salcantay.
‘Many years have passed, Huilloc Topac,’ said Anamaya slowly. ‘But you’re still the guardian of this place.’
The snow-haired Indian’s eyes were covered in a film the color of mother-of-pearl, like those of a blind man. Yet when he turned to face them, Gabriel felt as though the old custodian was looking into his very soul. The guardian said simply:
‘I’ve been waiting for you.’
* * *
Set in the middle of an immense cradle of hills entirely bathed in a gray light, the six mounds formed an almost perfect circle. The sea was many days’ walk behind Katari now, and yet he could still smell its scents. A river snaked along at the bottom of the slope, both its banks crowded with vegetation.
Katari’s heart beat hard.
To the uninitiated eye, the mounds were nothing more than piles of dust and dirt that stood out only because they were of a darker tint than the rocks and stones surrounding them. For the Master of Stone, on the other hand, who had traveled from far further afield than the dimensions of his own lifetime, this was the end of the road.
Here, time ended and began.
Katari slowed his pace and let the wind sound in his ears as though they were seashells; a trumpet echoed throughout his body, a horn from before the birth of time that told Katari the legend of what had been and what was to come.
This was where it had all begun. It had even started well before the time when Viracocha had emerged from Lake Titicaca, long before he had headed north and waded into the Great Sea at Tumbez, now desecrated for all time by the coming of the Strangers.
It was here that the monolithic huaca, the Stone of Origin, lay, marking Man’s link to the Andes.
The stones had told him this, and the ancient quipus saved from the rape of Cuzco had confirmed it.
Katari drew the quipus from his bundle and ran his fingers along the knots on the cords. With his eyes closed he chanted a wordless invocation. A very ancient amauta had given him the key. The quipus were the memory of the Andes, and he knew how to interpret them. He could smell the scent of the river mixing with that of the sea in his nostrils. His long black hair blew across his face. He headed unhesitatingly for the highest of the mounds.
Its shape became clearer as he approached, and he could see the regular staging of terraces hidden beneath the pile of earth. He was standing in front of a pyramid.
His quipus still in his hand, Katari didn’t waste any time looking for an entrance beneath the pile of stones. He slowly walked around the pyramid, letting himself be inspired by its presence and that of the cults of past generations who had practiced their rites here.
When he was at the base of a ramp that he could make out beneath the mass of earth, he saw that he was within a vast circle.
His face lit up.
‘Urku Pacha,’ he whispered. ‘The passage to the Under World. It is here. Come.’
Katari sat down in the center of the circle and spread his quipus out in front of him. Then he lay down on the ground and spread his arms and legs. A rumble from the heart of the earth rose up around him.
* * *
Anamaya and Gabriel had spent the entire previous day and night with Huilloc Topac. The old man hadn’t wanted to know anything about the wars or what was happening in the outside world. He displayed none of the contemptuous hostility that Anamaya remembered from their first meeting. He was now as smooth and tranquil as a stone polished by centuries of rain.
At dawn, just as first light was skimming over the uppermost terraces, he had led them silently through a series of steep alleyways until they reached a stone terrace with a cave entrance at one end. Dominating it was the statue of a condor, its beak plunging into the earth.
Huilloc Topac set out a few coca leaves, and Gabriel felt oddly in harmony with the old guardian as he helped him light a fire and pour chicha.
‘Soon,’ said Huilloc Topac, his eyes rolling back, his head turning slowly from side to side as he slipped into a visionary trance.
They left him and wandered freely through the city. They encountered young girls and priests, goldsmiths and weaver women. They saw workers already toiling in the corn terraces off in the distance. A heavy black stillness had fallen over the city, the calm before the storm.
They spoke to one another only occasionally, saying very little, sometimes only a word or two.
At dusk, they returned to the house overlooking the valley and watched the evening fall.
Suddenly a voice rose up and reached them, and soon the entire valley was loud with song. The music’s beauty was tragic and mysterious, a penetrating, monotone melody in which human voices, trumpets and drums all merged into one haunting cadence.
Anamaya and Gabriel rose and followed it to its source.
The entire population of Picchu had gathered out on the square, below the temple with the five niches. They all wore white unkus and añacos, and those lining the way to the center of the square held torches. The song grew louder, all the singers’ chests rising and falling – a harmony that echoed endlessly across the valley. Gabriel and Anamaya drew nearer.
He had arrived.
The Sacred Double was there, waiting for them, the sun setting behind him.
The people of Picchu bowed their heads. Some had even prostrated themselves on the ground to show their reverence.
Anamaya approached the Sacred Double on her own. When she touched his head, the song ended instantly, and the only sounds to be heard throughout the entire valley were those of the wind and the Willkamayo’s rumble from below. Then a prayer arose:
Nothing exists in vain, O Viracocha!
Everyone leaves from the shores of Titicaca.
Everyone arrives at the buried pyramids.
Everyone returns to the place that you have accorded them!
The people prayed slowly. When they had finished, Anamaya spread the quipus out in front of her and ran her fingers along the knots as Katari’s spirit passed through her. To Gabriel, she appeared more beautiful, more luminous than ever as she straightened and said:
‘A long time ago, the Sapa Inca Huayna Capac confided in an inexperienced young girl from the forest. Since then, many have fought to possess the secrets, many believed that they could find them in war and endless destruction. That time is now over. There is but one secret: that the Sacred Double must now find his home so that the eternal soul of our mountains and the unity of all the worlds – this one, the Other World, and the Under World – are conserved for the rest of time, which is itself the soul of our people.’
They began chanting again when Anamaya fell silent. The people of Picchu now moved their bodies in a slow, undulating dance, a solemn, somehow trusting ritual. The bearers raised the Sacred Double onto its palanquin and Anamaya led them through the three levels of terraces below the square, where the throng remained, chanting and swaying. They went to a small, steep-sided platform, one edge of which fell away into the Willkamayo ravine and where tunnels driven through three rocks embedded in the sheer hillside seemed to plunge into the very bowels of the earth.
‘Urku Pacha,’ said Anamaya, taking the stone key that had been given to her by Katari. ‘This is the place.’
The sun’s last rays linked themselves to the Intihuatana and lingered there for a moment as the Sacred Double disappeared into the central tunnel.
The chant stopped once more. Now the entire earth trembled as though everyone in the world was stamping their feet, or as if ten thousand drums were being beaten beneath them.
* * *
Seeing that the sun was about to slip behind the mountains, Katari sat down and prepared for the last throw of the stone-that-stops-time.
He saw a ray of light hitch itself to the top of the pyramid before sliding down its side like a barely slowed-down bolt of lightning. It landed at his feet, at the spot where the portal of the underground temple opened.
�
�This is the place,’ Katari repeated, and took out his bronze key.
A muffled hammering sound came from below the ground, which began to tremble. He felt its vibrations penetrate his feet and move up his legs, as though a thousand armies were on the march and converging on him. The age-old hardened detritus that covered the Stone of Origin at the top of the pyramid cracked, then crumbled away. The wind from the ocean carried away its dust. As the bare point of the pyramid emerged, drops of rain exploded against its granite skin.
Katari raised his face and offered it to the downpour.
* * *
The sun had disappeared behind the mountains, and Gabriel had joined Anamaya on the terrace at the ravine’s edge.
The people of Picchu slowly walked away and were swallowed by the night. They walked in long, silent columns, leaving the city forever. They left toward the Four Cardinal Directions, carrying torches, and they appeared from afar like enormous snakes of fire slipping down the mountainside. Stars were beginning to appear in the sky.
They had spent years building the secret city of Picchu so that it would be a final resting place worthy of the Sacred Double. His gold entrails contained the entire history and power of the Incas, the past and the future of the Andes, the memory of the glories that they had created and the tests that they had endured. Did those leaving now know it? Most probably not, thought Anamaya, yet they’re still proud of the work that they accomplished. They left without a word, and without looking back: what had to be said had been said, what had to be done had been done.
Anamaya and Gabriel watched Huilloc Topac leave with them, his long, snow-white hair fluttering on the night breeze the last thing visible as the people of Picchu walked into the darkness. Then he too was gone.
Nothing remained but silence.
The air was heavy, and they felt a dampness suddenly against the skin of their faces. They looked up and saw storm clouds, blacker than the night that they were traveling through, shut out the sky. It began to rain. They could make out the silhouettes of the mountains by the pale, silent flashes streaking through the sky. The clouds and lightning bursts very quickly surrounded Machu Picchu like a pack of wild animals, fangs gleaming through the dark. The thunderbolts struck here and there with ear-splitting crashes.
Anamaya instinctively huddled against Gabriel, whose breathing had quickened. She reached for his hand and held it against her belly. As though attracted by her gesture, a thunderbolt landed very close to them, on the highest of the terraces. They trembled together, their eyes closed, expecting a roar of thunder. With a sound like that of dead wood cracking, all the flames in the sky converged into one dazzling sphere. It hurtled down the slope, spitting sparks of molten gold, and exploded into a multitude of blazing rivers that flowed into the slightest cracks in the stone. An acrid, sulfurous odor filled the water-laden air. Only then did the thunder begin rolling from peak to peak and into the depths of the valleys, so intense that it echoed in Anamaya and Gabriel’s chest cavities. It fell like sky-fury from above and rose like earth-wrath from below, shaking the entire world.
They weren’t frightened.
The storm ended. A fresh wind came up and blew away the clouds, clearing the sky.
Once again the wind rustled through the leaves.
The night was so absolute that it seemed as if the world consisted of nothing but sky.
* * *
When the rain ended, Katari traveled through the stars. From the horizon, he followed the way of the Mayo, the celestial Sacred River, and when he stopped in front of the hazy cloud of the Llama, he smiled. The Powerful Ancestors of the Other World were thanking him for what he had accomplished.
The cloud parted and he saw clearly the llamacñawin, the llama’s eyes. The two stars twinkled softly. Theirs was a regular, slow, harmonious pulsation – the eternal couple sharing the beat of one heart.
‘You have arrived,’ Katari murmured within himself, ‘and I am with you. Time is unified. We have come from the past and we shall be here again in the future. All is well.’
* * *
Gabriel and Anamaya spent the entire night wandering through the constellations.
Anamaya called the Pleiades Collca, and said that, together, they were the Celestial Mother of all the other stars. She pointed at the three stars of Orion’s belt and whispered in Gabriel’s ear:
‘The Condor, the Vulture, and the Falcon.’
He flew with her and discovered, outlined by stars, the shapes of the Bird, the Bear, the Snake, and, finally, the Puma.
By the half-light of dawn, Anamaya pointed out Venus to him, calling it Chasca Cuyllor.
The world had been swallowed up, and now the world was reborn.
Like a snake, time had coiled up, and time was now unfurling itself.
They kissed for a long time.
Then they climbed back up the terraces and made their way through the city’s alleys to the steps leading out of it. Anamaya led Gabriel up the steep and slippery slope through the jungle to the summit of Machu Picchu where, years before, she had held the hand of a little girl who was meant to be sacrificed, but wasn’t.
They climbed through the lush vegetation, their eyes dazzled by the sun of the new day. They passed through the stone doors and looked up, feeling as though the vault of the sky was within reach of their hands.
The wind played with the clouds and fog, and they walked on fearlessly to the rock at the peak. Still hand in hand, they stretched out their arms as though they were wings, as though they were about to launch themselves into the void.
The wind strengthened. The blue on the horizon grew deeper. They still held each other, two bird-people filled with love, facing the rising sun.
Down below there was nothing but rocks and, already, ghosts.
‘We’re alone!’ Gabriel shouted to the wind.
Quietly, Anamaya replied:
‘We’re together.’
* * *
Around 1520, a decade before Peru was discovered by Francisco Pizarro, the Inca Empire faced invasion along its eastern borders by hordes of Tupinambas. Leading these Indians from Brazil was a European called Alejo Garcia. The Sons of the Sun managed to check the invaders, who nevertheless established themselves at the base of the Cordillera and came to be known as Chiriguanos.
A legend tells that Alejo Garcia, a Portuguese man of Flemish descent, captured an Inca princess and took her as his companion before disappearing into the east. Garcia had eyes as blue as turquoise.
After having first rescued his son Titu Cusi, who had been captured by the Spanish, Manco managed to survive for a few more years in his refuge at Vilcabamba. He was killed at Vitcos in 1544 by seven men loyal to de Almagro whom he had received as friends. The men were hoping that their cowardly murder would earn them a pardon from Gonzalo Pizarro.
Along with the most important members of his family, Paullu was baptized as ‘Cristoball’ in 1543. In 1545, a title was conferred on him, and he became a hidalgo. During those dark times, he was one of the few main players to die a natural death, in 1549.
The dwarf, Chimbo Sancto, most probably spent his old age on his land in the Yucay valley. Of his many children, only two daughters inherited his dwarfism. But all trace of them has been lost in the shadows of the past.
Hernando Pizarro spent twenty years in captivity in Spain. From his prison in the de la Mota castle, in Medina del Campo, he carefully and tenaciously managed the Pizarro clan’s immense and ultimately useless fortune, a position he obtained thanks mainly to his marriage to his brother Francisco’s daughter. When he was released in 1561, he built a palace in his native Trujillo. He died there in 1578, almost completely blind, having reached the ripe old age of seventy-one – something of an achievement during that era.
Gonzalo Pizarro never changed his ways, and life appeared to reward his undiminished ambition. In 1544, he declared himself Governor of Peru, in open rebellion against the Spanish Crown. He spread terror among his enemies for four more years, espe
cially through the armed forces of his lieutenant Francisco de Carbajal, nicknamed ‘the Demon of the Andes’. In 1548, Gonzalo was finally defeated by royal troops and was beheaded on the battlefield.
Manco’s successors resisted from their base at Vilcabamba until 1572. Throughout that time, periods of guerrilla war alternated with peace negotiations. In 1572, Tupac Amaru, the last legitimate Sapa Inca, was captured in his jungle refuge, taken to Cuzco, and beheaded on the square of the Inca Empire’s former capital, by order of the Viceroy, Francisco de Toledo.
Tupac Amaru’s head was nailed to the pillory. But instead of putrefying, it grew more handsome every day, and became the object of growing veneration. To this day, a myth predicts that the Inca will return when his head is once more joined to his mutilated body.
GLOSSARY
Acllahuasi – House of the Chosen Women (acllas).
Amauta – Sage, learned man
Añaco – A long, straight tunic reaching to the ankles, worn by women.
Apu – Quechua word meaning ‘Lord’ or ‘Governor’; also used as a title preceding the names of sacred mountains.
Ayllos – A throwing weapon similar to a bola; it consists of three leather strips ballasted with rocks, designed to entangle the legs of a running quarry.
The Light of Machu Picchu Page 35
