Three Princes (29 page)

THEN A
new sound, a new voice rose from the plaza below, the voice of the mountain singing. The people were shouting Viracocha’s name, urging him on, cheering for him. His name was a battle cry that rose in strength and volume.

“Viracocha! Viracocha!”

From the vantage of this higher level, Oken could see that people were streaming up the Qurikancha steps, coming in from every direction. They carried farming tools, hoes, and scythes, hammers, and wooden clubs, held to the ready as weapons, every one of them chanting Viracocha’s name. The ballplayers were among them, members now of a greater team. The fans had risen, their rivalry in the ball game forgotten in their sudden participation in a game of national significance.

“Viracocha!”

The people wore no armor, just traditional garb—rainbowcolored skirts atop petticoats, tunics, and jackets, and woolen pants, and black hats with narrow brims, decorated with flowers of every kind. Children were joining them, chanting along with the adults.

“Viracocha!”

More and more of them climbed the steps, watching the drama unfold on their sacred Qurikancha, shouting in unison, “Viracocha! Viracocha!”

Pachacuti’s men hesitated on the steps, looking back and forth at the Inheritor ranting down at them, the royal Quetzal Mixcomitl impossibly overhead, and the people pouring in and filling the plaza below, charging up the steps to challenge them.

Villagers grabbed at the heels of the warriors, risking their own balance to send them plummeting down, screaming, to smash against the steps. Each conquest was met with cheers from the people, their voices growing louder and more strident.

“Viracocha!”

Fights broke out among Pachacuti’s men as more of them defected, joining the people, surrendering their weapons, ripping off their armor and throwing it down.

Oken pushed his weary legs and burning lungs to climb faster, after Natyra and Viracocha. Zaydane ran climbed beside him, with Blestyak pounding after.

The voices of the people got louder as they scrambled up the sides of Qurikancha, following their prince.

“Viracocha!”

Oken caught up with Viracocha as they reached the terrace at the top, a narrow expanse of paving where the pink chapel with its ornate attic stood.

Pachacuti waited in front of the chapel with his back to the stone altar. The warrior’s calm and solemn face gazed into eternity, ignoring Pachacuti’s ranting. Hatred distorted Pachacuti’s features, terrible to see, and the hard sunlight flashing on his golden armor made him difficult to look at directly, no longer the son of the Sun, no longer quite human. He waved the axe over his head and thrust it about at invisible enemies, snarling and cursing.

His last loyal man, Captain Hukuchasatil, ran up to him, arms out to drag him to safety. He snatched a handful of golden armor and pulled his leader around, but Pachacuti used the momentum to spin on his heel, swinging the axe-blade in a vicious arc that sliced through Hukuchasatil’s throat so deeply, he almost severed the spine.

Pachacuti faced Viracocha in battle stance, feet planted, weapons at the ready. The ruby eyes in his headpiece cried bloody tears, and Hukuchasatil’s blood dripped from the golden teeth.

Mabruke, Oken, Zaydane, and Blestyak spread out to surround Pachacuti and Viracocha. Viracocha circled, out of reach of his swinging weapons. Natyra kept up with him, slightly behind so as not to tangle his feet, defiant, Sakhmet in her fierceness, a lioness ready to pounce.

Oken kept glancing skyward.

“I just want to leave,” Viracocha said to Pachacuti. “Keep your cursed throne! I don’t want to rule Tawantinsuyu. I never did. I’m taking Mixcomitl to Memphis. This empire is yours!”

“Liar!” Pachacuti swung wildly, snarling in rage as he slashed at his brother.

Viracocha sidestepped, dodging the obsidian blade. Natyra matched his movements, staying carefully out of reach.

“I’m not a god up there in the sky,” Viracocha said. “I’m just a man, and that’s all I want.”

“Liar! King of Liars! I will be free of you. I am the god. I am Inty the Sun—I erase you and your precious Memphis! I erase you from my world!”

Hanaq Pacha had brought Mixcomitl as close to the mountainside as he dared. Multiple rope ladders were dropped from the hatches, and Viracocha’s loyal guardsmen swarmed down them to the chapel.

Pachacuti shrieked in desperate denial, swinging the axe. Viracocha dodged, and Natyra pirouetted away, leaped behind Pachacuti, and sharply kicked the back of his knee. He staggered sideways and fell, howling, dragged down by the weight of his golden armor. Momentum rolled him over and over, and he only caught himself at the edge of the terrace, scattering his golden fingertips. The jade staff broke as it struck the stone.

Zaydane stepped in, grabbed the obsidian axe away from Pachacuti, and jumped back out of reach.

Pachacuti struggled to regain his feet, hampered by his armor. He was alone, caught between Viracocha’s loyal men and the equally loyal and valiant villagers, who filled the steps and terraces, the living and the dead.

“Viracocha!” they chanted.

Once he was on his feet, Pachacuti shouted at the crowd, calling them traitors, and worse. “I am Inca!”

The people met his words with the same, victorious cry, “Viracocha!”

Pachacuti howled, throwing himself at Viracocha.

The two men fell, tangled together. Pachacuti had his hands around Viracocha’s throat, and spat into his face. Viracocha flipped them both around, pinning his brother to the ground beneath his weight. He pressed down on the puma headpiece so that the lower jaw dug into Pachacuti’s throat, holding him there. Both men were breathing heavily.

“Kill me,” Pachacuti croaked, forcing the words out past the pressure on his throat. “You’ve taken everything else from me. Are you too weak to kill—Best Boy? Will you make your foreign demons do it for you?”

Their eyes locked for long, tense seconds; then Oken called quietly to Viracocha, “Lucky?”

Viracocha released Pachacuti and stood up and away from him. “Decent, civilized men do not kill their brothers,” he said.

Viracocha shouted those words to the crowd in Quechua, making the syllables ring. He pointed to Pachacuti, who was struggling to his knees, and told them that the Inheritor had slain his father, that the Inca was dead.

Then he motioned for the others to follow him, and they ran for Mixcomitl’s ladders. Pachacuti pulled himself up to scramble  after them. Mabruke, Oken, and Zaydane were already climbing, Mabruke in the lead. Blestyak was last, blood dripping steadily.

Viracocha and Natyra reached the ladder, and he made her go ahead of him; then he grabbed a rung and began climbing, signaling the winch-man to draw them up.

Pachacuti made one final, tremendous effort and hurled himself at the ladder, caught it, and swung up to grab the next rung, and the next, climbing after Viracocha with mad determination. Blood smeared his face, and his breath came in short gasps. He grabbed Viracocha’s leg, attempting to pull him free. When this failed, he let go of the rung to use both hands. Viracocha tried to shake free, but Pachacuti clung to him.

Natyra climbed down Viracocha as agilely as if he were a ladder. She held on to him tightly and, using all the power of those wild Cossack thighs, smashed Pachacuti in the face with her feet, forcing him to lose his grip. Natyra smacked his face again, and Pachacuti fell away.

Around that flash of blood and ancient stone, time struck a balance with death and paused for Oken’s panoramic view— a golden puma suspended above the splendid colors and ancient stone of Qurikancha, above the Attic of the Sun where he had imprisoned them, above the fields and the gardens, above the villagers who had fought for Viracocha, above those who were dead because they loved their prince.

Pachacuti crashed to the altar with a dreadful and final noise, broken and wrapped in gold.

THIS LONG,
stunned moment held; then Viracocha signaled the winch-man to lower them back to the ground. When he and Natyra stepped onto the terrace before the chapel, the people shouted, “Viracocha Inca!” over and over.

Viracocha went to the altar and the golden corpse. His sharp eyes missed nothing. His rough condition, the damaged, dirty suit, could not diminish him. He was Inca. The people had spoken.

Ihhuipapalotl appeared out of the chapel building, having fled the battle through secret passages. The magnificence of his priestly robes and headdress doubled the intensity of the voices acclaiming their new Inca, happy voices of joy and release. He picked up the largest surviving piece of the jade staff, and Zaydane gave him the obsidian axe he had taken from Pachacuti.

Ihhuipapalotl knelt before Viracocha and offered these imperial emblems to him. “The throne of Tawantinsuyu stands empty, Glorious One.” His voice was clear, and joy shone around him. “Your people beg you to take your place as their new Inca, Glorious One. You have freed us from the tyranny of Yupanqui Inca, and the madness of the Inheritor Pachacuti.”

Viracocha stepped back a pace. “I did not kill my father!” “The Inheritor killed the Inca, Glorious One. That is known.” Ihhuipapalotl offered the symbols of power again. “Your father and your brother ruled with fear and cruelty, Glorious One. The temples stand with you, to a man.”

Natyra slipped her hands around Viracocha’s forearm, and whispered in his ear.

Oken, watching from the open hatch on Mixcomitl, strained to hear. He did not catch her words, but he could guess the meaning from the way they gazed into each other’s eyes. She had chosen him, just as the people had. Viracocha’s expression eased. He took the axe and the piece of the broken staff from the priest.

“I accept.” He spoke with the voice he had learned from shouting into the wind atop Mixcomitl, repeating his ac ceptance in Quechua, and a cheer rose from below. “Viracocha Inca!”

Viracocha walked the perimeter of the terrace slowly and steadily, holding the imperial emblems high, so the people below could see, those who were proved this day to be his most loyal followers. Their cheers and cries of “Viracocha Inca!” rose up to the mountains that held Qurikancha and the palace in their arms.

BEING IN
the sky restored much of Oken’s sense of himself. The ordeal was over, and he looked around at the survivors. He wanted to laugh, but his mouth was too dry. They were in the hold, in the lower belly of Mixcomitl, amid bamboo crates with the imperial seal. The crew were drawing up ladders and closing hatches, and he could hear overhead the growl of the engines revving.

Runa dashed about, beaming happily, distributing cold water and hot broth, large mugs of demon’s piss from Mama Kusay’s kitchen. Mabruke and Zaydane were already deep in conversation, seated on a crate. Natyra and Viracocha went up the spiral stair to the bridge, and Blestyak was carried away to have his wounds tended elsewhere.

Oken wanted to talk to Princess Usqhullu, but then the thought of being clean struck him as the better part of valor. “Runa,” he called to her. “Same room, upper deck?”

“Yes, yes! I will take you.” She handed her tray to one of the little maids following her about, and took his hand.

Hot water, soap, clean towels, and an endless supply of tasty dishes restored Oken’s sense of physical well-being, despite the scrapes, bruises, and aching muscles. He dressed in the oversized morning coat, borrowed from Viracocha’s closet, that Runa had set out for him. Flying pumas in golden thread chased after black-faced goddesses with streaming hair, on a sky as red as blood. Oken felt it a fitting image for the imperial family.

Mabruke came in, bathed and shaved, and wrapped in a similar robe. Even without makeup, the professor looked more himself than he had in some days. He said nothing, but stood reviewing the damage to his face in the mirror.

Oken came up behind him, roughly drying his hair with a heated towel. “Zaydane like your new look?”

“Indeed.”

Mabruke met Oken’s eyes in the glass. “I will recover,” he said calmly. “Mama Kusay’s poultice is a miracle of the mountains.”

“ ‘Miracle of the mountains,’ ” Oken mused. “We got a mountainful of miracles today, didn’t we.”

“Speaking of miracles,” Mabruke said, “what was Natyra doing here? She did not seem the type to follow a man around the world— not even you.”

“I said it before. Her reasons are entirely her own.” Oken could only smile. “She was here to rescue us.” He grinned at Mabruke. “As striking as finding Master Zaydane in the Andes, wouldn’t you say?”

Mabruke acknowledged the tease. “Zaydane was following Natyra and Blestyak, as it turns out—which was your suggestion, by the way. Blestyak’s connections with the Black Orchid group made him curious. He tells me that Ambrose LeBrun contacted him though the embassy in Urubamba, asking him to help find us. Zaydane is also responsible for bringing Natyra into the rescue plan.”

“As a diversion.” Okensaid.

“I do think Viracocha found her diverting.”

Oken had to agree with that. “Which brings us back to the question of why Natyra is here.”

“You must ask the lady herself.”

OKEN AND
Mabruke ventured down the spiral stair to the bridge. Hanaq Pacha was at his command seat in front of the front windows, with little Runa perched on the edge of a pilot’s seat, close beside him. They were whispering to each other. When Runa saw them step off the spiral stair, she leaped to her feet and ran over, to throw her arms around each of the men in a hug. Oken found he much preferred that to having her bow to him.

Mabruke rested his hands on her shoulders and kissed the top of her head. “My Lady Runa,” he said solemnly, “I will tell you again how relieved I am to know that you have been safe here these last days. I trust your son is well?”

Runa nodded happily. “He is helping in the galley, sir. I hope you will meet him soon.”

“I will meet him now,” Mabruke said. “His bravery in standing by you in these dangerous times should be acknowledged.”

“Mik’s hoping for a nosh along the way,” Oken said to Runa.

She laughed merrily and took Mabruke’s hand. “I have just the nosh for you!”

“Where is Princess Usqhullu?” Oken said to her. He had hoped to find her on the bridge, to thank her properly.

“She is tending wounds of that yellow giant who climbed up the ladders with you.” With this mysterious answer, she and Mabruke disappeared behind the tapestry.

“ ‘That yellow giant,’ ” Oken echoed. That had been his first impression of Blestyak, too.

Then he strolled over to Hanaq Pacha. The rearview glass was up. He stood without speakinggazing out at the view spread below, magnificent isolation, with tall mountains on the horizon.

Hanaq Pacha said, “Xochicacahuatl, at Quillabamba.”

Oken took that to mean their next destination. “Excellent news, Captain—I long for another feast at Mama Kusay’s table.”

Hanaq Pacha nodded“I have been away too long myself, sir.”

“Ah, that’s true. You did not get to linger there as we did that last trip.”

The captain twisted around in his seat to look up at Oken. “What happened, if I dare to ask?”

“Ah, so sorry, Captain, of course.”

The captain motioned to the musicians to lower the volume, so that he could speak with Oken without leaving his post.

Oken decided how far back to begin, then told Hanaq Pacha of his adventures with Mabruke and Prince Viracocha in leisurely detail.

As he wrapped up, complimenting the captain for arriving in good time to whisk them away, Oken realized that Zaydane had been standing silently behind him for a good part of his narration.

“Thank you,” Zaydane said. “That was an excellent report.”

Oken and Zaydane watched the landscape slide past below. They were at an altitude that showed the little valleys cradled in the mountains’ arms, each a miniature Egypt around a toy Nile, held up close to the sky.

Oken said to Hanaq Pacha. “What brought you here, Captain? Prince Viracocha told us that Quetzals are not allowed over Ollantaytambo.”

“The sacred space has not been violated since the first Quetzal took wing.” Captain Hanaq Pacha seemed quite pleased to be able to say this. His Third Eye almost twinkled. “We can only wait to see how the gods will punish us for that.” He spoke with such a serene smile that Oken had to laugh.

“Princess Usqhullu and Runa,” Captain Hanaq Pachaadded. “They made an excellent suggestion.”

“It’s good to be back in the sky,” Oken said with a nod.

“I was also grateful to see this airship appear,” Zaydane said. “I do not yet know how Prince Pachacuti got wind of our plan.” He sounded less than thrilled with his planning. “I pray they did not harm the horses. They were fine beasts. We are most fortunate that Princess Usqhullu and Captain Hanaq Pacha had their own plans. Since we did not know Mixcomitl was coming, the informant could not warn the Inheritor.”

Zaydane frowned, making his scar look even more sinister. “I have just sent a bird to Ambassador LeBrun, informing him. A number of people were involved in the cover story that got us onto the Qurikancha grounds. The investigation will have to be thorough.” Then he added thoughtfully, “Having Bismarck turn up in the middle of this . . .” He sighed. “I was certain I would find him hiding in the Atlas Mountains. You and Mik have proved I must broaden my view.”

“As broad as the Moon.”

“Yes. I want to see this place where you found him.”

“Do you think he’s still there?” Oken said. The thought was most unpleasant.

“That would be too much to hope for.”

“Scott?”

Oken turned at her voice. Natyra came down the spiral stair, her feathered headdress replaced by a single green scarf around her bare skull. She stood, regarding him with a stern expression. Oken felt the same electric surge she always inspired in him.

Zaydane acknowledged Natyra with a polite bow, then went to stand beside the captain. The lower volume of the hara’wi enclosed them in privacy.

“Talk with me,” Natyra said to Oken, walking over to the lounge chairs. She sat down on the divan, motioning for him to sit beside her.

That pleasing warmth of being so close to her spread through Oken. The wild, mad ordeal he had lived through, dragging him through darkness and pain, nonetheless, had set him down here, close enough to touch her hand, to feel the fire.

She just looked at him, deciding something about him. Finally she spoke, her voice low and restrained. “When you turned up in Marrakech, I was terribly disappointed in you. I did not think you would reduce yourself to following me around Europe.”

“So you went to Tawantinsuyu?” This was the woman he was sure of, the woman he admired—always, and entirely, her own self.

“I spent months rehearsing that opera, and I made friends with so many of the artistes, and that sweet little costume designer— they all lived in Qusqo. They talked so much about the beauties of their world. When Marietta said you were on your way to Andalusia, I decided to see the New World for myself, to run to the other side of the world—to get away from you. The opera went on to Paris, and I took the first flight out of Casablanca— but you were here!”

Natyra hugged herself, refusing to meet his eyes. “Your Nubian prince was all they could talk about.” She turned her full glare on him. “They said you were his lover.”

Oken did not let himself smile. “He wishes I were.”

“You should be. He is a most beautiful man.”

“Are you jealous?”

She stood up so that she could stamp her foot at him imperiously. “I have never been jealous of anyone in my life!”

“I can believe that,” Oken said quietly, with sincerity. “Why did you agree to help Zaydane with our rescue?”

“I was bored. This country has so few places for the dance—and Zaydane offered me such an audience! To dance before the emperor? I could not refuse.”

“I was glad to see you again,” he said.

Natyra stood there, arms folded, regarding him with regal dismay; then she relented and lowered her chin, her gaze dropping for just a moment. “I missed you.” She tilted her head to the side as she looked at him. “You are trouble, and that is so much more exciting.”

“More exciting than what?”

She sat down again, this time gently touching his fingers. “Never mind. I did not come here to scold you, even though you deserve it. I lied to you, a great lie, the same great lie I have used since I left my village. I was twelve years old, yet I danced like a grown woman, so no one believed that. They thought I lied when I told the truth.”

Oken was heartened to see her expression as she remembered the moment of that first triumph. “So you told them you were twentyfive,” he said softly. “Of course.” He was amused with himself that he had believed her lie so passionately. “Logical.”

Natyra smiled with dazzling openness. “When I was a child, they treat me as an adult. Now I am an adult, they marvel how I look so young for my years. I am not forty-eight. I am only twenty-eight.”

“You are magnificent at any age, Natyra.” Somewhere inside himself, Oken laughed merrily. They were the same age.

“Thank you. I tell you this because I told Viracocha my true age.”

“A husband should know such things.”

“You know?”

“I was there the first time he saw you, when we were prisoners in the Attic of the Sun, about to die.”

“He told me of this moment.”

“He told the truth.” Oken then described the scene for her, the honesty of Viracocha’s passion, how his vision of her had transformed him, had revived them. Oken knew how to tell her, how to give her the moment the way a man felt it, less with words than with the eloquence of eyes and voice, ardor measured in breaths held and sighs restrained.

She listened with equal eloquence, her eyes and her whole being focused on him.

“For such a woman he would live. He would conquer.” Oken remembered Viracocha’s hushed voice and awed intensity. “He will also accept a throne he does not want,” he said, “sacrificing his greatest pleasure in life for you.”

“What is that?”

“Flying. He will let the throne clip his golden wings.”

“Why?”

“The Inca is not allowed to fly. It is considered too risky.” Oken was thrilled then by the way the lift in her eyebrows declared that this would change. She was already thinking like an empress.

“Thank you.” Natyra’s smile was solemn and she sat forward to speak seriously. “It is important to me that I know this. You are good to share this with me.”

Her green eyes made his heart jump, and he hoped that would always be true.

After she left, returning to Viracocha’s quarters, Oken sat there for some time, remembering.