Table of Contents
Glossary of Foreign Terms and Places
Copyright
Published by Geoff Micks at Smashwords
Version 1.3 - Last Edited August 27, 2011
Copyright © 2011 Geoff Micks
ISBN: 978-1-4661-2992-4
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced by any means without written permission except for brief quotations for review purposes.
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Cover and map composed by Geoff Micks with art from the public domain.
The following is a work of fiction. All characters including those based on recorded historical figures are the product of the author’s imagination and are used ficticiously.
This book is for Paulette Micks.
I plan to write many more, and in a way they will all be for her. My mother is my greatest supporter and my harshest critic. She is my foundation. I love you, Mom.
This book has been blessed with the encouragement, generosity, and assistance of a team of friends and well-wishers. I could not possibly name them all, but particular mention should go to Seana Dawson, Chris Bourque, and Matt Cimone, people who have known of this work since its earliest days. Thanks as well to Leigh Beadon: His fresh eyes and brilliant mind guided a red pen through a stack of paper five inches thick to catch inconsistencies and embarrassments and nonsensical drivel that had escaped me time and again.
I’m grateful to David Fugate, who did his best to open doors and make things happen. I also need to praise Desiree Finhert and Jeremy Britton, two firm friends who have always been in my corner. A special thank you as well to Jillian Warring-Bird: After reading my manuscript we met me at a Peruvian restaurant where she presented me with a winning literary bingo card with squares like ‘Flood Scene’ and ‘Laugh Out Loud Moment.’ Thanks also to Meghan Kelly, whose approval means a great deal to me. Finally, I’d like to thank my father, Terry Micks, whose simple comment, “This... This is like a real book,” is all I could have ever asked for.
There are hundreds of others, of course. From teachers and authors to friends and total strangers, those of you who have helped me in thought or word or deed, thank you.
Any errors you find in these pages are mine and mine alone. Some are deliberate after much hand-wringing, and the rest are not for want of trying. Cheers!
Map
(High Resolution Version of the Map Available Here.)
Glossary of Names
(Asterisks denote characters based on recorded historical figures.)
Members of the Inca Imperial Family:
Atauhuallpa*
A prince, the eldest bastard of Huayna Capac. His childhood name was Tito.
Cari Ocllo*
One of Topa Cusi Yupanki’s many wives; one of the infamous Ocllo sisters.
Chiqui Ocllo*
Another of Topa Cusi Yupanki’s many wives; one of the infamous Ocllo sisters. She is rumoured to be Viceroy Hualpaya’s lover.
Huascar*
A prince, the eldest son of Huayna Capac and Rahua Ocllo prior to her becoming Coya. Often called the Hummingbird.
Huayna Capac*
An emperor, son of Topa Inca Yupanki and father to more than fifty prices. Before his coronation his name was Titu Cusi Huallpa.
Illescas*
A prince, one of Huayna Capac’s younger sons.
Inca Roca*
A long-dead emperor whose palace became the House of Learning.
Manco Capac*
The first emperor, founder of the Imperial line.
Manco Inca*
A prince, one of Huayna Capac’s youngest sons.
Mama Ocllo*
Topa Cusi Yupanki’s Coya (empress); Huayna Capac’s mother, and one of the infamous Ocllo sisters.
Ninan Cuyuchi*
A prince, eldest son and heir to Huayna Capac. His childhood name was Ninan.
Pachacuti*
An emperor, father of Topa Inca Yupanki.
Palla Coca*
One of Huayna Capac’s wives, Chalcuchima’s sister, and Atauhuallpa’s mother.
Paullu Inca*
A prince, one of Huayna Capac’s youngest sons.
Rahua Ocllo*
Huayna Capac’s Coya after the death of Ninan Cuyuchi’s mother. Mother of Huascar and Manco Inca.
Quilaco*
A prince, son of Huayna Capac.
Topa Inca Yupanki*
An emperor, son of Pachacuti, father of Huayna Capac among many others, often called Old Topa.
Toparca*
A prince, one of Huayna Capac’s youngest sons.
Urcos*
An emperor for a short time before he was deposed by Pachacuti in a coup during the Chanca War.
Viracocha Inca*
An emperor, father of Urcos, Pachacuti, and Tillca Yupanki.
Affiliated with Tupac Capac’s Clan:
Cayo Topa*
Haylli’s apprentice, childhood name Cayo.
Haylli Yupanki
The narrator, childhood name Waccha.
Huaman Paullu
Tupac Capac’s secretary.
Pariwana Cumpi
Haylli’s daughter, childhood name Pariwana.
Ronpa
Haylli’s half-brother.
Tillca Yupanki*
Haylli’s grandfather, a general executed by Pachacuti.
Tupac Capac*
Haylli’s father, Tocoyricoc of Condesuyu.
Yahuar Huacac
Haylli’s son. Name means Blood Weeper, the name of his great-great grandfather, a long-dead emperor. His childhood name was Anka.
Affiliated with Illyapa’s Clan:
Capac Yupanki*
Eldest brother of Illyapa and Hualpaya, a general executed by Topa Inca Yupanki.
Capac Huari*
Treated as a prince of Topa Inca Yupanki; actually Hualpaya’s son by Chiqui Ocllo.
Chalcuchima*
Son of Capac Yupanki, childhood name Mallku.
Hualpaya*
Viceroy of Andesuyu, brother of Capac Yupanki and Illyapa, secret father of Capac Huari.
Illyapa
Viceroy of Collasuyu, brother of Capac Yupanki and Hualpaya.
Other Inca:
Achachi Michi*
Viceroy of Chincaysuyu, a famous general.
Atoc China
A chosen woman of Inca-by-privilege status, usually called the Vixen.
Colla Topa*
Major-domo of the Socso Panaca, Rumiñaui’s father.
Huaypalcon*
A soldier, son of Kiskis. Childhood name Llakato.
Huamachuco*
A much-respected oracular priest in Chincaysuyu.
Kiskis*
A general, childhood name Chusek.
Mayta*
Viceroy of Condesuyu.
Rumiñaui*
General, childhood name Allallanka.
Tiso Yuncailo
A bureaucrat.
Topa Cusi Yupanki*
A priest and augur, often called Bird Man.
Non-Inca:
Antalongo*
Mapuche chieftain, father of Koonek.
Chiaquitinta*
Governor of Tumipampa, famous for living to an extreme old age.
Kiske Sisa
A chosen woman of the Lupaca tribe.
Koonek
A Mapuche maiden, daughter of Antalongo.
Mama Ocllo’s Voice*
A chosen woman of the Cañari, made an oracular priestess to a cult dedicated to Mama Ocllo.
Mamani
A Lupaca lord.
Minchan-caman*
Grand Chimu of the destroyed Kingdom of Chimor.
Pilla-huaso*
Sinchi of the destroyed Kingdom of Quitu.
Puma
A chaski mitmak from Caxamalca stationed on the Maule River.
Tumbala*
Ruler of the Puná tribe.
Vilauma*
High Priest after the Spanish arrival, probably not an Intip Churi; his name means Blood Drinker in the language of the Colla.
Spaniards:
Alonso de Molina*
A Spaniard left behind in Tumpez by Pizarro’s first expedition.
Diego de Almagro*
Leader of a Spanish faction.
Hernando de Soto*
Leader of Pizarro’s horsemen.
Felipillo*
Interpreter taken by the Spaniards upon their first expedition to Tahuantinsuyu, renamed ‘Little Phillip.’
Francisco Pizarro*
Leader of the Conquistadores.
Glossary of Foreign Terms and Places
Maize beer.
Amauracancha
Serpent Enclosure, the palace of the Socso Panaca.
Andesuyu
The eastern jungle quarter of Tahuantinsuyu.
Angasmayu
Blue River, the northern border of Tahuantinsuyu.
Apurimac River
Speaking Lord River running through a deep canyon near Cuzco.
As!
It must be so! An exclamation of despair and surrender in the face of the inevitable.
Atacama
The driest desert in the world and the tribe that inhabits it.
Aucca
A dire word for traitor. To call a man such means either your life or his is forfeit.
Ayamalca Raimi
A winter month of storms falling between November and December.
Cañari
A tribe of Chincaysuyu who served their labour tax exclusively as soldiers.
Cancha
House, compound, enclosure.
Cantut
A flower.
Capac Ñan
The Royal Road, the Imperial highway system.
Capac Panaca
The cult dedicated to the mummy of Topa Inca Yupanki.
Capac Quipucamayoc
Royal Quipu Master, a literate individual.
Carangui
A populous tribe of the Kingdom of Quitu famous for their martial spirit.
Caxamalca
A highland city.
Cayambi
The dominant tribe of the Kingdom of Quitu.
Chacapoya
The Cloud People, a tribe inhabiting the eastern slopes of the eastern range of the Andes famous for the rebellious behaviour, martial prowess, and beautiful women.
Chanca
A feared tribe that once almost subjugated the Inca.
Chan Chan
The opulent former capital city of the Kingdom of Chimor.
Chaski
A postal courier.
Chibcha
The language of the Kingdom of Quitu.
Chimu
The dominant tribe of the Kingdom of Chimor.
Chincaysuyu
The northern quarter of Tahuantinsuyu.
Chonta
A hardwood used to make weapons and armour.
Chuncacamayoc
Master of ten taxpaying families.
Chuno
Dehydrated potato, a staple.
Colla
A populous tribe of the Puna.
Collao
The vast stretch of the Puna with Lake Titicaca --known in antiquity as Lake Chucuito-- as its drainage basin.
Collasuyu
The southern quarter of Tahuantinsuyu.
Condesuyu
The western quarter of Tahuantinsuyu.
Coricancha
The Golden Enclosure, home of Cuzco’s pantheon.
Coya
Empress.
Cumpi
High quality vicuna cloth, forbidden to commoners.
Curaca
Headman.
Curiquinque
A rare bird whose feathers decorate the Sapa Inca’s Red Fringe.
Cusi
Joy.
Cuzco
The capital of Tahuantinsuyu.
Great Chimu
The ruler of the Kingdom of Chimor.
Hacha hacha
The Amazon jungle.
Hiwaya
The dropping of a large stone onto a prone figure from a set height as a means of corporal punishment under Inca law. Often fatal.
House of Chosen Women
A convent of girls and women removed from their families. Brides of Inti shall remain chaste for life, dedicated to the worship of Inti. Virgins of the Sun are women whose future is still to be determined but many will be married off to Imperial favourites. Both categories are considered Chosen Women.
Huaca
Anything felt to be holy.
Huacaypata
The main plaza of Cuzco.
Huanacauri
The Inca war idol, a boulder believed to be a petrified brother of Manco Capac.
Huanca
A highland tribe.
Hunocamayoc
Master of ten thousand taxpaying families.
Huarango
An unworkable coastal tree.
Huarangacamayoc
Master of one thousand taxpaying families.
Huarco
A coastal tribe famous for their long besiegement by the Inca.
Huatanay
The river that flows through Cuzco.
Ichu
A hardy Puna grass.
Illapa
The thunder god.
Incap Ranti
He Who Stands in for the Inca, a title of nebulous but vast authority.
Inti
The sun god, the Inca’s patron deity.
Intip Churi
Children of the Sun, pure-blooded Inca.
Intip Raimi
Festival of the Sun, celebrated at the summer solstice.
Intihuasi
The fortress on Sacsahuaman Hill overlooking Cuzco.
Itu
A ceremony in which the Inca humiliate themselves to beg Viracocha’s pardon and restore his blessings.
Jivaro
A headhunting tribe in the jungle east of Quitu.
Kallawaya
A tribe of medicine men renowned as linguists.
Kalparicoc
A diviner from the lungs of sacrificed animals.
Kingdom of Chimor
A fabulously rich coastal kingdom.
Kingdom of Quitu
A prosperous confederation of northern tribes.
Kon-Tiki
The Collao’s creator god, interchangeable with Viracocha.
Lake Chucuito
Lake Titicaca.
Lupaca
A tribe that lives south of Lake Titicaca.
Macchu Picchu
Grandfather Mountain, the white granite bluff overlooking an Inca city whose name is uncertain.
Mamacocha
Goddess of the sea.
Mama Quilla
Goddess of the moon, Inti’s celestial wife.
Mana Apuyoc
Men without a leader, barbarians.
Mapuche
A partially conquered tribe living on either side of the Maule River.
Maule River
The southern border of Tahuantinsuyu.
Mitmak
A colonist relocated by the Inca.
Mochica
The language of the Chimu and the Cañari.
Molle
A fruit-bearing tree.
Mullu
A red and white seashell, valuable as a trade good.
Ñaupa Pacha
Once upon a time.
Ollantaytampu
A fortress in the Yucay Valley.
Pachacamac
The Yunga’s creator god, interchangeable with Kon-Tiki and Viracocha. A powerful idol and oracle of Pachacamac was located in the Rimac Valley.
Pahuac Oncoy
The swift-running sickness, a plague.
Pasto
A poor and savage tribe of the Kingdom of Quitu, famous for paying their taxes in fleas and lice plucked from their own bodies.
Picchu
A hill overlooking Cuzco.
Pacaritampu
The Inn of First Appearances where Manco Capac is said to have set out after the Great Flood to create Tahuantinsuyu.
Pachacamayoc
Master of one hundred taxpaying families.
Pacha
Time, earth, and universe, depending on the context.
Pachacuti
Many meanings and difficult to translate, most often ‘End of an Era’ or ‘Earthquake.’
Pacuyok
Ear Plug Man, an Inca.
Panaca
A cult dedicated to the mummy of a former emperor.
Puco puco
A morning songbird.
Puna
The treeless prairie between the eastern and western ranges of the Andes.
Puná
An island tribe, famous for their slavery and piracy.
Punchao
God of the day, embodied by a golden disc idol.
Puric
A commoner.
Puquin
A hill overlooking Cuzco.
Red Fringe
The Inca equivalent of a crown, made up of tassels of red yarn descending from a headband to cover the forehead.
Rimac
Speaker, the name of an important coastal valley.
Quipu
An instrument of record keeping based on knotted string. Most quipus dealt with numbers. Royal quipus were phonetically based.
Quitu
The former capital of the Kingdom of Quitu.
Quipucamayoc
Quipu Master, an accountant, a bureaucrat.
Rucana
A highland tribe who paid their labour tax by carrying Inca officials in litters. Usually dressed in blue livery, they were often called the Feet of the Inca.
Runa Tinya
A drum made out of a stuffed corpse.
Sacsahuaman
Speckled Hawk Hill overlooking Cuzco. The fortress of Intihuasi sits upon it.
Sankihuasi
Commonly called the Pit, an underground prison filled with flint-lined walls and wild animals.
Sapa Inca
The Only Inca, Son of the Sun, the Emperor.
Saramama
Goddess of the harvest.
Scyri
The ruler of the Kingdom of Quitu.
Sinchi
Warlord.
Socso Panaca
The cult dedicated to the mummy of Viracocha Inca.
Supay
Tahuantinsuyu’s equivalent of the devil.
Tahuantinsuyu
The Land of the Four Quarters. The Inca Empire.
Tampu
A storehouse and inn.
Tampucamayoc
The curaca of a tampu.
Tarawari
A major tampu on the Chincaysuyu Road near Cuzco.
Tchili
The mountainous region of Tahuantinsuyu south of the Collao.
Tiahuanaco
The ruins of an ancient holy city on the shore of Lake Titicaca.
Tocoyricoc
He Who Sees All, an Imperial auditor, the highest rank of bureaucrat.
Topo
A unit of measurement: For distance it was roughly a Spanish league, but it was based on how long it took to walk, so topos become shorter over rough terrain; for area it was based on how much land a man could work on his own.
Totora
Bouyant lake reeds.
Tumipampa
The capital city of the Cañari, much beautified by the Inca.
Tumpez
A major coastal city between the kingdoms of Chimor and Quitu, very close to the Island of Puná.
Urca Huari
God of underground treasures.
Uru
Worms. A poor tribe of lake fisher-people.
Urupampa River
The river that runs through the Yucay Valley, past Macchu Picchu, and deep into the rainforest.
Usno
The stand upon which the Emperor puts his low stool. It can be equated to the word throne.
Viñapu
An illegal and potent liquor.
Viracocha
The Inca’s creator god and ruler of the pantheon. The depth of their devotion to him was not made public to purics.
Wawa
Baby. The name of all highland children until the risk of infant mortality has passed.
Xaquixahuana
A plain just beyond the Huatanay Valley, site of the famous victory of Pachacuti over the Chanca.
Xauxa
A highland city.
Yachapa
He Has Taught. An honorific added to the name of anyone who has served as an instructor at the House of Learning.
Yahuarcocha
Lake of Blood.
Yanacona
Servants, commoners who are not tied to the land and do not pay a set labour tax, roughly equivalent to the status of a Roman house slave.
Yellow Fringe
The Imperial heir’s equivalent to the Red Fringe.
Yucay Valley
A beautiful valley with a pleasant climate a day’s journey from Cuzco, home of many summer palaces and the Ollantaytampu fortress.
Yunga
Hot Lands. A generic term for people living in the coastal river valleys.
Quotations
“Explain your words so that I can understand them.
They are like a tangled skein.
You should put the threads in order for me.”
-- Act 1, Scene I of the Quechua play Ollantay
“Tempus edax rerum.”
Time, the devourer of all things.
-- Ovid
Prologue of Inca
I am tired of you, and that shoddy brown robe you wear. I would not have given such an embarrassing rag to the poorest llama drover who ever worked my flocks.
I am tired of this thing we must do together before we have even begun. I used to savour a long and difficult task, but now I begrudge even the small annoyances of finding you parchment and ink. The scratching of your quill sets my teeth on edge. I would weep, but even a useless old man knows his tears will change nothing.
I begrudge the new reality that darkens the twilight of my life. I used to be able to guide the lives of millions of people with just a few balls of string, but now all I can do is sit here and speak to you in your clumsy tongue. My life’s work is gone, and those squiggles you labour over shall produce my only lasting legacy.
I feel it in my bones. I am weary all the way down to the marrow. I ache where the monster of Time gnaws at me, swallowing my accomplishments, digesting all the people and places and things that I have ever loved. Time is relentless, unstoppable, and it devours all memory, some faster than others. When the monster voids its bowels, everything I care about vanishes into the emptiness and loneliness and stillness and silence that is to be forgotten forevermore.
I can see you don’t understand, and your ignorance exhausts me. How can I make you see what I am trying to do? Speaking in Spanish is like trying to play the drum when all you have is a flute. It is a lover’s language, and full of colourful obscenities, but it is not a proper medium for lofty discourse.
Do you know that the Inca chose a language that was not our own with which to rule our world? You call it Quechua, which is the name of an unimportant tribe of river people who live not too far from Cuzco. We call it Runa Simi, the Language of the People, and of all the tongues I have mastered I always marvel at Runa Simi’s versatility, its capacity, its grace.
Take the word Pacha, Friar. Pacha means Time, Earth and Universe. You can tell which one a man means by the context, but it is always there in the back of your mind that Time and Earth and Universe are all one whole, inseparable from one another.
There is another word, Cuti, which means change, movement, alteration. A simple term, to be sure, but what happens when you put it together with a word that has three meanings that are the same thing seen from different angles? How do you translate Pachacuti, a thoroughly complex and beautiful word in my tongue, into your unimaginative language? Does it mean Earthquake? It does, but not always. Does it mean Change of Time? Yes, but what does that mean to you? It terrifies me, so I must find a better term than a mere Change of Time for Pachacuti.
Think of the world you know, Friar. Think of the reality of your life that wraps around you like a warm blanket. That is not the way things are. It is just the way things are right now. At any moment the world you know can stop, and a new and different world, unimaginable and unacceptable to you before, will begin. That is a Pachacuti. It is the end of one era and the beginning of another. It is the Apocalypse. One era ends and a new era begins. Do you see now?
One of our emperors even named himself Pachacuti so there would be no confusion: There was a time before him and a time after him, and during his reign the old world changed and a new world --the world that was divided into four quarters with each paying homage to the Inca-- was born.
Your very presence here is because of a Pachacuti that clenches my heart and disturbs my dreams. My old eyes fog up with regrets sometimes, and when I try to blink them away I see flashes of what we were, and what we should have been long after my death. When I was a boy my people ruled. Today those few of us who survive bow to your kind, or we cower in the darkness of the hacha hacha, the cloying sticky jungles that are fit only for beasts and men prepared to act like beasts.
That was a Pachacuti. Our time is gone, and now I must spend my final days bitter and useless and defeated in your time. The world has changed, and not for the better. I am so tired of being helpless, of not being able to correct the great wrongs and injustices that have swept my world from Quitu to Tchili, from the never-ending ocean to the never-ending forest.
I have brought you here, Friar, to preserve some small part of all that I have lost. After a Pachacuti no one remembers what life was like before. What will the future remember of the past? Shaped stones, abandoned cities and dusty graves are no fit legacy for all that my people accomplished, but someday that will be all that remains unless I do something with the few days I have left to me.
It falls to me, or it will never be done. I am the only one left to do it. My kind ruled Tahuantinsuyu, an empire the size of which the world has never known. It was forged in the crucibles of war and diplomacy by grandfather, father, and son. I am related to all of them.
The first was Viracocha Inca, who took the name of our creator god as his own and then set out to earn such a title. The second was his son Pachacuti, a name whose implication I have already explained to you. He took the Imperial Red Fringe from his father’s preferred son and defended Cuzco in its darkest hour, when Chanca invaders were about to reduce us to serfdom.
Pachacuti turned his victory into a war of expansion, pushing the edges of Tahuantinsuyu further than his father would have imagined possible before giving his armies to his son Topa Inca Yupanki. That grand old man stretched our Empire to almost its furthest extent, and all before your Christopher Columbus found his New World --though I can assure you this place is as ancient as the one on your side of the Never-Ending Ocean.
Viracocha Inca was my great-grandfather. Pachacuti was my great uncle, and he ordered my grandfather --his bastard half-brother-- executed on a whim. I met Old Topa several times when I was a young man and spent my adult life serving his son and grandsons. There is no Inca of the Blood left alive better suited to tell you about Tahuantinsuyu.
I have seen more than seventy harvests come and go, and Time is stalking my last days. Am I to stay silent while your kind tells the story of my people? What do you Spaniards know about the Inca except that we had mountains of gold and big ears, and with us out of the way you can pillage across the rest of Tahuantinsuyu, the Land of the Four Quarters, just as you have done to Royal Cuzco?
Among the many duties I have performed for my people throughout my long life, I have done my best within the narrow window of my own experiences to record the great events of my land as they actually happened, and not as some would prefer them to be remembered, be they Spaniard or Inca--
You snort your disbelief, Friar? To quote one of your peers, ‘Oh ye of little faith.’ Just as you have your scribe’s tools laid out before you, so I hold in my hands threads that can speak of great victories and foul deeds, of love’s triumphs and lust’s treacheries. Your conviction that we were too stupid to record the world around us is still further proof that only a true Pacuyok, an Earplug Man, can tell our story.
From an empire of twelve million there may have been five or ten thousand with my special education. Building the empire took its toll on us, and the plague was worse. Both were as nothing compared to the War Between the Brothers, and you Spaniards killed most of the rest. Now there are so few like me that you have never heard of the Royal Quipu, the knotted strings that remember words instead of cold numbers. I have my story ‘written’ --though in the Language of the People the term is tied-- across hundreds of thousands of knots, but who will be able to read my tangled skein after I’m gone?
It seems Time will swallow up the last of the capac quipucamayocs, the royal quipu masters, just as it has swallowed up Tahuantinsuyu. Perhaps one day the Language of the People will be replaced with Spanish. I shudder to think of a time when the hills around Cuzco forget the sound of Runa Simi echoing from their faces.
No, I must save some small part of the truth. I must take these knots of string and make them speak in Spanish. Even if no one is interested now, someday someone will look at the ruined cities of the Inca and wonder what glories and tragedies were played out in these places.
If I am to cheat Time I will have to do it in Spanish with the help of an educated Spaniard, but where was I to find one while hiding in this city, deep in the jungle? We have several of your countrymen living here, deserters from Almagro, but they’re as illiterate in your writing as a Colla potato farmer would be with my royal quipus.
I think your God and my gods have conspired to help me, Friar. When our pickets said a Spanish priest was wandering in the hacha hacha I ordered them to spare you. I need you. I need you enough to let you live when all I want to do is burn you alive as you and yours have done to me and mine.
So we have each other’s oaths, Friar. You shall write my story word for word as I read it from my quipus. Where my Spanish falters we shall use other translators to aid us, and we shall go back and forth through the story until my words are as lucid in your language as they are in mine. When I allow you to leave this place, you will make sure the manuscript is stored somewhere safe for the future to contemplate. One day someone will want to know what really happened, and my story will be found preserved within these pages.
In exchange for this task you will have the run of the city and permission to preach your Christian gospel every seventh day to whomsoever wishes to hear you. I will even sit in the front pew for every sermon.
Who knows? Clearly your God beat my gods, or you would not be here, and I would not be in this stinking, chittering, sweating jungle, and there would be no need to transfer a royal quipu from string to parchment, knot to ink. Perhaps you will convert me, but I warn you now I am a stubborn man, and old. I have walked a long road under a harsh sun to appear before you today. If you can change me now then you will be the finest son of Castile I have ever met, but considering the ilk of your countrymen that might be an easy feat.
Enough rambling, it is the blessing and curse of the elderly to be able to sit and talk all day, whether anyone wants to listen or not. Let us begin...
Chapter 1 of Inca
My father was not much of one to tell stories -–he preferred to lecture and instruct-- but I remember being a little boy, waking in terror at phantoms and ghouls who swirled through my dreams and seemed to lurk still in the quiet corners of my dark room. My father would show affection in the night that he would never have given in the light of day, cradling me in his strong arms and whispering stories that always began with Ñaupa Pacha, Once Upon a Time.
The story of my life will leave my father behind far too soon, and so much will be left unsaid. Thus I begin my tale as he would have wanted me to, and I beg you to write it in my own language as well as your Spanish so that a piece of him will be remembered.
Ñaupa Pacha, Once Upon a Time, there was a land called Tahuantinsuyu, the Four Quarters of the World, which was ruled by the Intip Churi, the Children of the Sun.
Just calling it the Four Quarters of the World does not convey how immense it was. At its highest zenith it was literally the entire known world, including areas only discovered as we conquered them.
Tahuantinsuyu was bigger and broader than the mind’s eye can imagine, holding every trick of land and water that the most imaginative of gods could conjure. There were mountains so tall that their peaks punched through the roof of the sky, so that a man could suffocate at their tops. There were weed-choked swamps that reduce the ground to a perfect flatness all the way out to the horizon, so that a man born in that fetid place could not conceive of a slope, let alone a hill, and never dream of the sky-piercing mountain.
There were deserts so dry that not one green thing grew, and you dared not open your mouth for fear that the greedy air would snatch your life’s moisture from your insides. There were jungles so wet that when it rained a man looked at the ground to create a hollow for his nose to draw air, otherwise he would splutter and drown where he stood.
All of this was Tahuantinsuyu, and all of it belongs to a single man, the Sapa Inca, the Only Inca, the Shepherd of the Sun, the Son of the Sun, the Emperor. It all belonged to him, this king of kings, the Imperial leader of the Imperial people, and everyone knew it.
Pomposity? Hubris? No! One need only look back before the Spanish Pachacuti to see the proof of it. In the most remote village of the snowy land of Tchili, or in the smallest mountain hamlet in the dark jungles beyond Quitu where the people had so little they paid their taxes in dead fleas and lice plucked from their own bodies, even there you would see that the Inca rule: Ask for a drink, beg a meal, and it would appear in an Inca beaker, on an Inca plate.
In the four quarters of the Empire there were eighty tribes, and before each one was firmly fixed into the State, before our legions had even left, a colony of settlers was imported from a land long loyal to the Sapa Inca; that colony’s job would be to make the standard Inca pottery, the same made in all directions for a thousand topos, roughly the same distance as your Spanish leagues.
Every man, loyal or rebellious, needs to drink; he pours his drink from an Inca amphora into an Inca beaker before he puts it to his lips. When he eats, it is off an Inca plate. He will be reminded with each sip and every bite that he lives with the permission of the Children of the Sun, and if he wishes to do so in the future he must stay in their good graces.
That was the awesome power of the Sapa Inca, the Only Inca, the Emperor. Lands he would never see recognized him as the most important thing in their lives.
It was in such a world --though not yet extended to its highest glory-- that I was born. By and large people born up in the mountains do not keep track of their birthdays or their exact ages, but my household never forgot that day. All the omens were bad, and all of them proved true.
While no one can speak with great authority on the moments of their birth, my coming into this world was unusual enough at the time that many people remembered it. What I am telling you now is drawn from the accounts of many who I respect, and I have spent a lifetime without hearing a single contrary version of the story.
I was to be my father’s first legitimate child by his official wife, so he had summoned two fortunetellers to make their predictions for my future. The first was a kalparicoc, a diviner from the lungs of sacrificed animals. He killed a guinea pig and inflated its lung with a straw. The veins on the outside of the gory balloon foretold a life that would cause woe early and experience it often.
The next man was a spider augur, capable of answering only yes or no questions. My father asked if I would be a boy, and the man pulled away his pot to reveal a giant spider from the distant jungles with legs neatly splayed out, meaning yes. My father then asked if the kalparicoc’s gloomy tidings were wrong. The pot was pulled back again to show the spider had shifted a hairy leg askew, meaning no.
My father tried to pay the two men for their time with bolts of red cotton, but their predictions had been so unpleasant that they declined payment. While I’m sure they did so in the hopes that their bad tidings would prove false, my father took their refusal as yet another bad omen. His life’s work revolved around maintaining reciprocity, an equal exchange of goods for services. He retired to his counting room to work while he worried.
There was much to concern an expecting father, and he did not need the services of fortunetellers to know that my birth was poorly timed: I was born in the month of Ayamalca Raimi, just thirteen days before the shortest day of the year. By your calendar that would be December the Eighth of the year Fourteen-Seventy.
That is the worst time of year for a birth, because there are no crops in the ground. Tahuantinsuyu was surviving off its storehouses. Meanwhile, the cold and damp that herald the presence of Supay --our version of your Devil-- crept into every room, threatening mother and baby alike with sicknesses while they are at their lowest ebb.
Worse still was the weather. Ayamalca Raimi is a month of storms that come off the never-ending forests of the east in rolling black thunderheads, sending rain and hail and snow one after the other to make even a walk across a courtyard a miserable affair. Such a storm was overhead all day and through most of that terrible night. The thunder god Illapa, smashing his fist against a great drum in the sky, caused such noise that twice my father came down to the kitchen to see if the servants were smashing the crockery.
Even the best efforts of the thunder god, though, paled beside those of my mother.
I have left the worst until last, and unfortunately the worst is my mother. She was unable to bear me with the quiet suffering of so many Inca women. I have been told that my mother’s screams made the stone walls of my house tremble, but I think that is an invention of one of my nursemaids. My father’s head was always turned by frail and fragile maidens, thin and graceful, like stately willow saplings beside a cold mountain brook. Not the sort of woman whose lungs could make stones quake, or the sort whose hips could easily pass a child.
Except for my own delivery I have never been present as a woman gave birth, but I know for most of my broad-hipped race the feat is no great effort. I have heard of many peasants who begin labour out in the fields, deliver, assure themselves that the baby is all right, and go back to work.
My father thought women with the figures necessary for such ease were too squat and ugly for a man who could have any woman in the world. My mother was of the Chacapoyas, the Cloud People who live on the mountain slopes just above the hacha hacha. Their women are pale and tall and slender even compared to you Spaniards.
She had been born far below my father’s station and should never have been eligible to become his official wife, but he was so taken with her --and not just with her beauty but with her heart-- that he gave generous gifts to her father until my maternal grandfather could buy his way into the highest ranks of his nation’s nobility. Once the necessary station was established my father obtained special permission from the Emperor himself to marry the newly ennobled princess.
My father loved my mother in a way few men are lucky enough to find. She was bright and always cheerful, and she returned his affections without reservation. In all the years of my life I have never heard anyone, from family friends to our most vicious enemies, speak an unkind word against her memory. She had only one flaw, narrow hips, and I killed her for it.
When her screams stopped a midwife entered my father’s counting room and told the great accountant, “You have a son!”
He allowed no smile to break his composed facade but continued moving his pebbles around his counting board by the light of a single rush torch. “And my wife? Is she still in pain? Can I see her?” He said.
“No lord, she is dead,” was the reply.
I am told his hand froze over the board, and it trembled as he set down his stone. “That is unfortunate,” was all he said.
Some might think my father’s lack of reaction was truly heartless, and his enemies at Court certainly circulated the story far and wide with that interpretation applied, but I have always known how hard he took the news of my mother’s death. I endured a tangible and constant reminder of his sorrow with me throughout my childhood, and until a decade ago there were many who could remember the penance I served for killing his beloved.
There is a tradition among mountain people to call a newborn simply Wawa, Baby, until it has lived long enough to live a good while longer. Only then is it given a childhood name. When I escaped my infancy without suffering any fatal disease I was named Waccha, Unfortunate, and every time my father called me to him he was reminding himself of what he had sacrificed for an heir.
My father was a Tocoyricoc, He Who Sees All, one of only four such men in all the world. He was in charge of making sure one quarter of the Realm ran smoothly, free from any corruption that cheated the Emperor of his taxes and the Emperor’s subjects of the state services those taxes provided. In the pursuit of just government he answered only to the Sapa Inca, and he could order any man save one of the four great viceroys, each the absolute lord of one quarter of Tahuantinsuyu, to aid him in his task.
I spoke earlier of the length and breadth of Tahuantinsuyu, and how each tribe recognized the Inca as supreme. It was men like my father who made it so.
I said my father had enemies at Court, and he did; not from envy at his rank and station or jealousy at the special trust the Sapa Inca placed in him, but for the fear of his talent and his ruthless honesty. When my father found a guilty man that man was brought to justice, and for that reason a great number of my father’s colleagues had to be honest men. He was very good at finding corruption.
My father’s name was Tupac Capac, Royal Lord. He had others, seven or so, for it is the fashion among nobility to tack on adjectives like jewelry. Once people call you a thing, Just, Fair, Wise, generally the honorific is adapted into your name. Whatever his full name, his few equals called him Tupac, and his legions of subordinates called him Inca, Tocoyricoc, Lord, Sire, Sir, or, in my case, Father.
We lived in a great house just off one of the main streets of Royal Cuzco. From the narrow lane outside it was unremarkable, a solid wall of fitted masonry joining us to the houses of our clansmen to the left and right. We had neatly thatched eaves and a single doorway of massive teak decorated with an alpaca wool blanket dyed with the family’s personal shade of yellow.
Our home was a compound, as all great houses are in Cuzco. We had eight buildings circling two courtyards, and the two buildings that linked the inner courtyard to the outer one were two stories tall with the counting room tower mounted on top of that.
My father’s counting room was a marvel: In my school days I had many friends who mocked my home for only having eight buildings, for there were palaces in Cuzco that had a hundred, but only the houses of tocoyricocs had counting rooms, and the counting room’s tower gave a magnificent view of the entire city.
This elevation was strictly for business, of course. The room had huge windows with thick silver frames, and the inside walls were of precisely fitted fieldstone speckled with sparkling chips of mica that were regularly whitewashed with lime from burned seashells. The end result was that from before sunrise to just after sunset and even on rainy days the whole room was brilliantly lit so my father could work.
The building is gone now, of course. Most of Cuzco is gone, but I can close my eyes and see that place still in my mind. I can remember my father’s assistants waiting outside in the early morning, stomping their feet at the cold but making as little noise as possible lest they disturb my father’s rest. After the household had made its dawn sacrifice of burned coca leaves --and not a moment before-- our doorman would unbar the teak entrance. My father’s underlings would come in with great mountains of jars in their arms, quietly fighting for position to be the last to admit their failures to the Tocoyricoc.
Inside each jar lay a quipu, a length of rope with strings descending from it, littered with knots. I am sure through my long life I have run more quipus through my hands than I have hairs on my head, for the knots record all manner of valuable information for those with the knowledge to tease the facts out of the skeins.
Among the quipucamayocs, the quipu masters, the strings brought to the house of He Who Sees All were called the problem quipus, because they recorded the inconsistencies in the records of the Empire as discovered by hundreds of accountants working in the Great Quipu Repository, the beating heart of the efficient Inca bureaucracy.
When my father was in Cuzco it was his job and special talent to look at the problem quipus. He could take an incompatible set of numbers that had baffled a dozen men before him, move backwards and forward through the ledgers and invoices and requisitions, and arrive at a solution.
The men would climb the ladders one by one to reach him in his counting room, and he would be waiting there, perched on a low stool carved from a single piece of mahogany to look like a man crouching in deep thought.
Up there he would stretch out the troublesome threads and run his fingers along the knots, the numbers lodging in his mind, faster than he could speak them aloud. Then he would turn to his counting board, a maze of boxes and compartments spread across the floor, littered with coloured stones. He would move the pebbles around, and to someone who did not know their pattern it seemed he would arrive at an answer by magic; then he would take some yarn from a basket behind him and tie the answer down, passing it to the man waiting at the top of the ladder. Each would scuttle off as fast as dignity would allow so that the next man and the next could climb the ladder, and so it would go for most of the day.
There were times where my father would snort with impatience, handing the quipu back to his assistant without even resorting to the counting board, barking the answer that he had seen while the knots were still tangled in the quipucamayoc’s fist. He rightly took those errors as a waste of his time and an insult to all the hard training he had put into his subordinates.
When a really complicated problem arose he took it as a personal challenge; he would furrow his brow and set his face as hard as granite, staring at the knots and daring them to defy his mind. You could always tell when my father was stuck because he would call for akha, maize beer, and the mug would appear instantly from the kitchen two floors below. He would usually have the answer by the time he drained the cup, and the rare times he did not that would mean an audit. Only he audited within his quarter of Tahuantinsuyu, but he loathed admitting he was stumped.
“Huaman Paullu! Note: Fifteen bags of maize are missing from the Cusi Tampu in the Nazca province. The ledgers say ten bags were destroyed by rodents, but what kind of idiot tampu keeper doesn’t notice mice eating ten bags of maize? Also, there’s no mention of what happened to the other five bags. Next trip we audit that tampu, and his ledgers had better be clearer than the copy he sent us or we’ll replace him with someone who can tie a two without making it look like a four!”
Behind him his faithful secretary would tie knots on a royal quipu, recording sounds instead of numbers. If there were four new strings on the audit list by the end of the day my father would be angry at his failure; meanwhile, hundreds of discrepancies had been corrected by his mind, the worst problems that had already defeated long days of bureaucratic scrutiny.
And that was the way of things. My father either solved the unsolvable or he would conduct an audit. Every year, sometimes twice a year, my father would leave Cuzco and follow the Royal Roads throughout Condesuyu, the western quarter of the Four Quarters of the World. He would stop at each inn and way station, each hamlet and village along his route between problems, making a long circle ending back at Cuzco where he balanced his archived account ledgers with the findings of his most recent trip. Doing this meant that every community in that entire quarter of the Empire was visited by He Who Sees All at least once every five years.
I spent my infancy and childhood in that man’s shadow, and I have always marveled at my good fortune. My father was a driven man. He cared only for results and hard work.
As you would expect from one so devoted, my father led a quiet home life, shunning the outside. There was one group of visitors, though, that even a man as powerful as my shut-in father could not turn away: The Ocllo sisters.
There were three of them, all more than ten years his senior, and all married to the Emperor Topa Inca Yupanki. My father could not have denied them entry even if it were within his vast power to do so. They could make a river freeze over with their glare. They were my father’s bane.
The eldest, Mama Ocllo, was actually Old Topa’s official wife, his Coya, his Empress. Her two sisters, Chiqui Ocllo and Cari Ocllo, had been married on the Imperial whim of having the entire trio within the Emperor’s harem. All three of them had long passed out of favour with the Sapa Inca and now contented themselves with using their considerable influence to bother quiet widowers like my father.
I can remember one visit in particular. They arrived without warning, as was their preference, and the leader of their bodyguard threw our doorman aside as he opened our teak portal. The guardsman stepped into the middle of our outer courtyard and announced the arrival of the Coya and her two sisters in his best parade ground voice; then he blew his conch-shell trumpet, rattling the teeth of every jaw in our compound.
My father descended from his counting room to join me, slightly dazed at the volume of the summons. Only when the entire household was turned out in the courtyard to greet them did the three preening women and their retinue come in from the street.
They were small, plump, and solid, and they looked around with unapologetic criticism on their faces as only the powerful can do. Our house was frugally decorated, as befitted the nation’s greatest accountant. We did not have elaborate tapestries, jaguar skin rugs, gold idols or silver icons. We may have been the only house on the street without a garden or fish pond or aviary of jungle birds. The three of them read this as a lack of taste. They each sniffed their disdain several times to make sure it was noted before deigning to be greeted.
My father and I blew them a kiss and bowed, followed by our household. Mama Ocllo nodded her acceptance and then pinched my cheek hard enough to take it off. “Little Waccha gets taller every day, Tupac! He grows like a maize stalk.”
“Skinny as one too,” Chiqui Ocllo added, her tone implying she was bored already.
“Yes, well, your son Capac Huari was the same at his age, and he’s filled out nicely,” my father replied. In his place I would have smiled sweetly to add insult to injury. It was a well-known but unspoken fact that her husband was not Capac Huari’s father. Chiqui Ocllo had cuckolded the short Emperor with Viceroy Hualpaya, the tall ruler of Andesuyu, the eastern quarter of Tahuantinsuyu. All Chiqui Ocllo could do was nod in agreement that her darling son had indeed been scrawny as a boy.
“When are you going to take little Waccha out on one of your inspections?” Mama Ocllo asked, patting my head as I would a llama, a dumb animal that did not know it was being talked about.
“He’s young for that yet,” my father replied.
“Nonsense! Do him good to get out of these walls and see the world. The sooner the better, if you ask me. It’s not natural keeping a boy inside, especially in a house without a woman.” The three of them each harrumphed their agreement and straightened their dazzling robes, as if to reassure everyone what women looked like.
“I have fifteen women living with us,” my father sighed. I could tell from his tone that he was rehashing an argument that he knew he would not be allowed to win.
“And which one do you call mother, Waccha?” Mama Ocllo asked.
My father only rarely sought the solace of one of his concubines’ arms, and without the clear signal from him none had stepped forward to be a mother to his only legitimate child. I opened my mouth, but my father beat me to it. “My domestic affairs are my business, good lady, and I will thank you to leave the raising of my son to me.”
I had seen quipucamayocs recoil as if burned when my father took that tone with them, but Mama Ocllo just sniffed a little, as if he had merely singed a nose hair. “You need a proper wife, Tupac. You’re too young to live alone.”
“I think there’s something to be said for a life of dedication, and if that leads to celibacy, so be it.” That was another calculated shot, as all three of the Ocllo sisters were much neglected by an Emperor with a thousand wives. Everyone knew of Chiqui Ocllo’s famous dalliance, but the other two were just whispered about, so far.
Our household suffered their company throughout the afternoon, and we were beginning to worry that they would stay for supper until Mama Ocllo delivered her ultimatum.
“Find a wife, or we will find one for you, Tupac. We don’t like you living alone. At least a wife would have the courtesy to invite us to visit once in a while. Oh, and take young Waccha out on an inspection. If he doesn’t look capable of taking over your position, Cari Ocllo has a friend whose son could use the opportunity.”
My father gave his least sincere smile and saw the three old hags out. He then ordered the teak door barred and had our servants sweep the courtyard, as if by removing the dust on the flagstones they could rid the house of the memory of this latest invasion of his home.
He muttered to me as he climbed the ladder back to his counting room, “Cari Ocllo has a friend, does she? Wants his son to be Tocoyricoc one day? You had better be as smart as you seem, boy. When those three get an idea in their heads, they’re like a dog with a bone...”
I lay awake all that night, wondering and worrying. As his only official son I had known from a young age that one day I might take my father’s place as a tocoyricoc. Can you imagine how frightening that is to a little boy, to see your father work with all the benefits of an education that staggers you and know that it might one day fall to you to do the same? It gave me nightmares.
Within days of the Ocllo sisters’ visit my father decided to go on an audit tour and to take me with him.
I had a number of older brothers, though none were official sons because my father had sired them with concubines instead of a wife, as he had me. Still, illegitimacy is not an insurmountable handicap -–my father himself was a bastard of one of the Emperor Viracocha Inca’s bastards-- and so the two of my father’s sons who were older than me and had shown some ability to think for themselves had each gone out with him on an inspection and returned in tears. He had told them flatly that they would not receive the patronage required from him to secure the education of He Who Sees All.
That might sound cruel coming from a father, but remember He Who Sees All is always looking for government waste, and there are few things more expensive than training a tocoyricoc.
All Inca sons can expect the standard four years at an Inca school, but a boy destined to become He Who Sees All will need much more. His schooling starts as soon as possible and continues on past the state school for another three, and throughout the entire time there are extra tutors and subjects and assignments and projects, and all the people involved in his training, including the student, will be fed and clothed and housed and feted at State expense.
You can put a legion of conscripts on the frontier for three months for what it costs to bring up a tocoyricoc-in-waiting, and so the selection of candidates is a serious business.
Whether it was Mama Ocllo’s prompting or not, he took me, and he had high hopes as he offered up the sacrifice to Inti, the Sun, at the beginning of our journey. For my part I had done my best to seem the ideal candidate: Of all his children I spent by far the most time in his counting room with him, watching him work. I asked questions and was interested in the answers.
My father took pride in his job and position in life, and I think he sensed I was his last chance to pass the post on to one of his sons. If I should fail he would start going around to schools, asking for the top students of mathematics, quipus, and Runa Simi. He would pick the best candidate for the good of the Empire, even if it meant leaving his boys to make their own way in the world.
I remember that inspection tour as one long lesson. Everywhere we went he lectured me in his crisp and exact manner of speaking. It was fascinating to see the world outside Cuzco and have all of its complexities explained by one of their foremost experts.
It wasn’t just my father and I on our trip, of course. My father’s retinue consisted of dozens of quipucamayocs carrying copies of ledgers and inventories for every community on my father’s route. Then there were the interpreters for the few languages he did not speak. My father took a handful of soldiers for the rare cases where a show of force might be necessary, and a few parcel couriers who could run across rough country all day, if need be. He also had dozens of llamas and their drivers, loaded with beautiful gifts to give as rewards to the deserving.
Then there was his retinue of thirty men of the Rucana tribe dressed in identical blue livery: These were a mark of true prestige and power for they carried his litter, a vehicle whose use could only be granted by the Sapa Inca himself.
My father’s one indulgence was his gherkin fetcher. The man’s job was to work up and down the royal highway and off down the side roads, searching for gherkins.
The tiny vegetable, watery yet firm, was my father’s absolute favourite. He ate handfuls of them at a time when it was seemly to do so. As a boy his odd love of them had inspired my grandfather to give him the childhood name of Gherkin, just as mine was Unfortunate, and so they were a part of who my father was. Many villages kept crops of gherkins just for his visits, a gesture of his popularity that did not escape my notice. Between these villages, meanwhile, he still had the craving, and so we had the gherkin fetcher.
As ungainly as all these people sound, my father moved fast, thanks in large part to the Capac Ñan, the Royal Road. Today the system is a shambles, but when the Inca ruled the royal roads were a network of transportation and communication stretching the length and breath of Tahuantinsuyu, tying together people separated by mountains and deserts and rivers and jungles into a unified whole.