SIXTY
Islept, and dreamed of falling. Downward and downward, as though I’d leapt into an immense chasm, until at last I struck bottom and woke with a violent jerk, unsure if I was awake or dreaming, alive or dead.
There was a hand clamped over my mouth.
For a moment, I was confused, once again imagining myself in a tent in the Abode of the Gods with Manil Datar assaulting me; but there was no knife at my throat, no scent of his cloying perfume. I squinted in the faint moonlight filtering into my bedchamber and made out the face of the old woman Ocllo above me.
“Be still!” she hissed.
I nodded my understanding. Ocllo withdrew her hand and straightened. I sat upright to see the shadowy figures of several other women in my chamber, Cusi among them, her pretty face somber. Ocllo beckoned imperiously to her.
“Pampachayuway, lady,” Cusi whispered to me, taking a seat beside me. “I do not wish to pain you, but I must do this thing. Give me your hand.”
I hesitated.
Her dark eyes were grave, and older than her years. “You put the lives of your Nahuatl men in my hands. Will you not put your own?”
Slowly, I extended my right hand. Wrapping her fingers around my wrist, Cusi pressed the tip of her little bronze knife against the heel of my palm. With one surprisingly powerful thrust, she sliced open my palm.
Bronze does not take a point or hold an edge like steel, and it hurt a great deal more than I would have reckoned. I bit back a cry and breathed the Breath of Wind’s Sigh, willing my mind to distance itself from the pain while my cupped palm filled slowly with blood, dark and shiny in the faint light. Releasing my wrist, Cusi administered the same treatment to her own right hand, opening a gash without flinching.
“Now.” She held out her hand to me, blood dripping from it. On their sisal rope, the ball of ants stirred with interest. The other women in the chamber watched with silent concentration.
I clasped Cusi’s wounded hand with my own. It was slippery with warm blood. She returned my grip firmly. I could feel my pulse beating in my palm, and imagined I could feel hers, too, every beat a throb of dull agony.
It went on for a long time, until at last Ocllo nodded in approval and beckoned to two more women. Cusi relinquished her grip. One of the women came forward with a golden bowl full of water, kneeling and gently bathing Cusi’s and my injured hands, after which the other woman bandaged them gently.
“Now you are of one blood,” Ocllo murmured. “Now you are as sisters. Now you may enter the Temple of the Maidens of the Sun, lady.” She beckoned to me. “Come.”
After exchanging my thin sleeping-shift for a gown, I exited the palace and followed the Maidens of the Sun through the streets of Vilcabamba, accompanied by the ever-present stream of ants.
The city was quiet and sleeping, for Lord Pachacuti had no need to post sentries. His ants would respond to any intruder, or anyone seeking to flee. We were neither, and there was no one to take notice of us. We passed through the city like silent ghosts. My hand continued to throb, slow blood seeping through the bandages.
I daresay the Temple of the Maidens of the Sun was a glorious place in daylight, when the sun was meant to be worshipped. By night, it was a vast, eerie space. Low flames flickered in a firepit in the center of the main temple chamber, shedding enough light to illuminate a massive golden disk depicting the Quechua sun god Inti on the far wall, not enough to chase the shadows from the corners or the high ceilings.
More silent women awaited us, many of them young and pretty.
After the black stream of ants had finished pouring over the threshold, the doors to the temple were closed.
“So!” Ocllo’s voice echoed in the vast chamber. “You say Lord Pachacuti is not a god!”
There was a soft, murmuring echo as someone translated her words from D’Angeline into Quechua.
“I do,” I said.
She gestured at the thousands upon thousands of ants. “Yet he has great power. What other man can do such a thing?”
“None here,” I said. “Lord Pachacuti killed the only man in our company to possess the ability to understand them.”
Ocllo frowned. “You say his gift comes from bad spirits, yet you have a gift, too. I have seen it.”
I nodded. “It is a gift from my gods.”
Her shrewd eyes narrowed. “How is that different?”
“I did not ask for it, my lady,” I said honestly. “I was born with it. Lord Pachacuti asked for his gift.”
“And the gods gave it to him,” Ocllo observed.
“A fallen spirit who was once a god’s servant, yes. With my aid—aid I gave him because I was young and foolish and knew no better. And the gift that was given him, the gift of the language of ants, was not even the gift he sought. It was given him as a jest, one he has turned to dire ends I daresay not even the spirits themselves could have foreseen.” I opened my arms. My wounded right hand throbbed, wrapped in blood-stained bandages. “My lady, I do not lie. If Lord Pachacuti succeeds in this conquest, he will become more powerful than ever. He will become a god in truth.” I shook my head. “But if you think he cares for the people of Tawantinsuyo, you are wrong. In the end, only bad will come of it.”
Ocllo pursed her lips. “So you say.”
I raised my voice in frustration, unwanted tears stinging my eyes. “I’ve seen it! How can I make you understand?”
“Hush.” Ocllo’s voice deepened, unexpectedly soothing. The corners of her eyes crinkled. “There is one way, child. But I fear it cannot come from you.”
“The ancestors?” I asked.
Cusi’s bandaged hand found mine and squeezed it. Despite the pang of pain, I welcomed her grip.
Finding herself with a captive audience, Ocllo paced the floor of the temple in a leisurely manner, treading with care and drawing her skirts to avoid the ants. “It begins many, many years ago with the first Earth-Shaker,” she said conversationally. “The first Lord Pachacuti, the first Sapa Inca. He told the secret to his Queen, his Queen of Queens, his first wife, the great Mamacoya, and swore that she and her descendants must keep it always.” She nodded to herself. “So we have, every one of us. Have we not?”
Voices murmured in agreement.
My skin prickled. “Will you speak of it now?”
She fixed me with her gimlet gaze. “You say to me that the man who is your husband died, and lives. I ask again, is it true?”
“Aye, it is.”
Ocllo snorted. “I do not mean that he was struck on the head and slept for a time.”
“Bao died,” I said simply. “Everything I told you is true. He was killed by a poisoned dart. He drew no breath, no blood beat in his veins. I felt his body myself, felt it grow cold and stiff. For a long time, not a short time. He journeyed to the Ch’in underworld, and remembers it. And I do not know why this matters to you, but it is true.”
“Because the first Sapa Inca said that one who had returned from death would wield the key to call on the ancestors in our hour of need,” she said. “Call them out of death into life to save their people.”
I stared at her, open-mouthed. “You think Bao can do this? But… but they’re not his ancestors!”
“No.” Ocllo frowned. “That is why we are uncertain. But the prophecy does not say the twice-born would be the one to call them, only that he would wield the key.” She held up a bronze knife like Cusi’s. “This.”
“I don’t understand,” I whispered.
Cusi’s hand tightened on mine. “He would be the one to offer the sacrifice,” she murmured. “It is the sacrifice that calls the ancestors.”
And then I did understand, and I wished that I didn’t.
“You,” I said, my throat tight. “You’re the sacrifice. That’s why you’re afraid, isn’t it?”
Her chin lifted. “I was not afraid when Lord Pachacuti chose me,” she said with dignity. “It was an honor. But I am afraid now…” Her voice broke. “Afraid to be wrong and anger the gods. If I am wrong, they will cast me aside.”
I gazed at her in horror, then glanced at Ocllo, at the other women in the temple. “Is there no other way? Surely there must be!”
One by one, they shook their heads. “You claim Lord Pachacuti is not a god, but you cannot prove it,” Ocllo said, not without sympathy. She gestured at the ants again. “And he holds the power of death in his hands. If the hour of our need is here, the ancestors will answer. It is the only way to be sure. But it must be a true sacrifice, a willing sacrifice, of one of their own.”
“Why?” I could hear a child’s resentment at the unfairness of the world in my voice.
“It is necessary,” the old woman said soberly. “You know this in your heart, lady. You told me that the man who loved your husband like a son gave his own life for him. To call the ancestors out of death, a life must be given.” She laid a hand on Cusi’s shoulder. “And Cusi has already been chosen. I think maybe it is no accident that she is the one to find the twice-born who wields the key.”
There were solemn nods all around.
“No, of course it’s not!” I said helplessly. “Because gods-bedamned Raphael de Mereliot, Lord Pachacuti, gave her to me knowing he’d already chosen her as the sacrifice, knowing it would cause me pain! That’s the only reason Cusi met Bao, and learned what she did!”
“Did Lord Pachacuti know your husband was twice-born?” Ocllo asked me.
It brought me up short. “No. No, I don’t think so.”
“So mayhap it was the will of the gods after all, and Lord Pachacuti erred because he does not know the secret of the ancestors,” she said softly. “Or maybe you are wrong, and he is only testing our loyalty. Either way, it is not for you to decide the fate of the Quechua. It is for us.” Her gaze settled on Cusi. “And in the end, the choice falls to the chosen one. No one else can make it.”
A faint sigh echoed throughout the temple.
Cusi glanced at me, tears glimmering in her dark eyes. “It is as you told me, is it not, lady? I must choose.”
“I did not know the stakes,” I murmured.
“I did.” Releasing my hand, Cusi clasped hers together before her. “I have chosen,” she announced in an unexpectedly firm voice. “I choose the path of the ancestors.”