Golden Relic (26 page)

"Inti instructed Manco to get his finest goldsmith to fashion a powerful
huaca
that would
protect the Sapa Inca and his people from further harm from the invaders. The
huaca
would
reveal 'itself' as always, Inti said, and take the form of his fingers. The leftover gold was to be
crafted into a wrist band. The six separate pieces, Inti commanded, were to be taken to the far
reaches of Tahuantinsuyu to guard the 'four quarters'. Manco was told he could choose the sacred
place for each of the pieces himself, but that the fingers of the Sun God's hand must always be kept
in formation, with the thumb to the west and the little finger to the east. The wrist band would
protect the southern frontier.

"Manco returned to Vilcabamba and followed Inti's instructions. When the Hand was complete, he
selected six of his most trusted couriers, and a warrior to travel with each, and dispatched them in
different directions along the Inca roadways. The task given these men was a lifetime one. They were
required to stay with their sacred piece, to protect it, and were empowered to choose a successor to
act as Guardian on their death, but they were never to return to Vilcabamba unless the safety of the
huaca
itself was threatened."

"This is a lovely legend, Pavel," Maggie commented sarcastically.

"Legend it may be, Maggie my dear, mystical, magical and unbelievable too. But you have been
flying around the world with two of Inti's fingers in your pocket so there is some truth in this
myth."

"Well, I'm intrigued," Sam said, casting a 'don't be a spoil sport' glance at Maggie. "What
happened next?"

"The Sapa Inca and his warriors continued to harass the enemy but Manco began to worry that his
kingdom was too vulnerable with only one city, which the Spanish knew existed, so in about 1542 he
started building fortified towns deeper in the jungle. One of these, he decided would be built as a
royal city, a place waiting to receive him should the Spanish ever take Vilcabamba.

"Manco entrusted the construction of this city, Inticancha, to his son Tupac Amaru. Tupac was
still quite young but Manco endowed him with a title akin to vice regent which gave him complete
authority. The young prince decided that the second thing to be built, after the Sun Temple, would
be the
Acllahuasi
, the House of the Chosen Women, so that most of the
mamakuna
could
be relocated from Vilcabamba immediately. Manco Capac agreed this would be a good thing." Pavel
pointed to the large roofless building bordering the Sacred Plaza opposite the Sun Temple.

"Another thing the Sapa Inca and his son decided was that no raids were ever to be carried out
from Inticancha. It was regarded as a sacred place, but the decision was one of strategy rather than
reverence. By using Vilcabamba as the base for all their attacks on the Spanish, they reasoned the
enemy would never know that Inticancha existed."

The arrival of Richarte and his coffee pot interrupted Pavel's story.

"Richarte, my friend, you realise I can never let you leave here," Pavel stated, after just one
sip.

"My wife would track me down and drag me home, Pavel," Richarte laughed.

"Where were we?" Pavel asked, when they were alone again. "Oh yes. It was about this time, in
1544, that Tupac Amaru first met Vasco Dias who was wandering on a trail near Vilcabamba. Tupac
ordered his body guard to execute Dias on the spot but the foreigner, uncharacteristically, threw
himself on the ground and bowed to the Inca. Dias was 27-years-old, had been in the New World for
three years and in Cuzco for one, but had learnt enough Quechuan to make Tupac understand that he
was not the enemy. Tupac returned to Vilcabamba with his captive, where Manco too was impressed by
the young man's efforts to communicate in the Inca's own language. Though not completely trusted at
first, it soon became obvious that Dias was not interested in either gold or the actions of the
raiding parties, and he and Tupac eventually became friends.

"A year later, five weeks after the death of Manco Capac, a badly-injured Inca stumbled through
the gates of Vilcabamba. This man was the warrior who had been sent out with the Guardian of Inti's
thumb. The very same one you have been carrying Maggie," Pavel stated.

"The man said he had returned with his piece of the
huaca
because it was safe no more. The
Guardian had been killed by a Spanish soldier who had come across the sacred place and tried to
steal the golden
huaca
. The warrior battled with the soldier and although badly wounded
himself managed to slit his enemy's throat. It took him five weeks of walking, hiding and tending
his wounds to make it back to Vilcabamba. A soothsayer, who two months before had warned Manco that
his life was in danger, calculated that the Sapa Inca and the Guardian had died at the same
time."

"And you know all this from the documents your team found?" Maggie queried.

"No, this was recorded in the journal of Vasco Dias," Pavel stated.

Sam cocked her head and looked at Pavel. "You said
you
found a sort of diary and your team
this time
found the documents. When did you actually discover his journal?"

"She's got a memory like an elephant," Maggie explained when Pavel stared at Sam in
amazement.

"She must be a good cop too to pick up on little clues like that," he said admiringly. "I found
the journal during our first visit here. But that revelation is getting ahead of the story."

"Please go on, Pavel," Sam urged.

"Following the death of Manco Capac," Pavel continued, "his first son became king but decided to
live with the Spanish in Cuzco. Titu Cusi, Tupac's older brother, then became Sapa Inca and, after a
vision of his own, recalled the rest of the Guardians. He entrusted his younger brother with the
Hand of God and told him to keep it safe in the Sun Temple at Inticancha. This was 1547 and Vasco
Dias accompanied Tupac Amaru on that journey. It was his first visit to the secret city.

"For the next 27 years life just went along. Titu Cusi continued his guerrilla attacks on Spanish
outposts and several times a year Tupac would make the journey from Inticancha to join his brother's
raids. Vasco Dias sometimes stayed behind in the secret city but most often he made the trip to
Vilcabamba with his friend and on occasion would slip into Cuzco to spy on the Spanish.

"On the death of Titu Cusi, Tupac Amaru, the last of Manco's sons, became Sapa Inca. A year
later, in 1572, a runner brought word to Inticancha that a great many enemy soldiers were gathering
in Cuzco. The Sapa Inca returned at once to Vilcabamba to prepare his warriors for battle. But when
Dias, who had travelled on to Cuzco, returned with the news that the Spanish Viceroy was raising an
army to destroy Vilcabamba, Tupac realised it was time to fall back. Viceroy Francisco de Toledo,
the bastard," Pavel snarled, "had made it his personal mission to finish off the Inca once and for
all.

"Tupac ordered that Vilcabamba be burnt to the ground, so the Spanish would gain nothing from
their efforts. His people set fire to their stores, their homes, the palaces and temples, then
disappeared into the jungle. Tupac remained until the end, taking charge of the destruction of his
father's great city. But he stayed too long. He was supervising the removal of sacred items,
including the
punchao
and the mummies of his father and brother, when the Spanish entered the
smouldering city."

"Mummies?" Sam queried. "I didn't know the Incas were into mummification."

"Oh, they were into it in a big way," Maggie said. "The process and their motivation for it was
quite different from that of the Egyptians though. The Sapa Incas believed they would live forever
in the form of mummies, so the bodies of kings, nobles and other important people were dried,
dressed in finery and sat up on chairs in special niches or caves were they could continue to give
advice and be fed and attended to by family members. The shrivelled corpses were carried out on
litters for festivals or special ceremonies, given food and drink and generally treated as if they
were alive."

"And the
punchao
?" Sam asked.

"The
punchao
," Pavel said, "was a golden effigy that contained the dust of the hearts of
past Inca kings. Tupac did not save his father but he fled into the jungle with the
punchao
;
to no avail however. The Spanish troops hunted and captured him, dragged him back to Cuzco and
publicly beheaded him."

"Where was his mate Vasco Dias during all this?" Sam asked suspiciously.

"Tupac had sent him ahead with the high priest but when Dias heard that the king had been taken
prisoner he hurried back to Cuzco. He witnessed the execution of his friend, the last Sapa Inca, and
was so appalled, and ashamed of his kind, that he returned here to Inticancha where he remained
until the compound was abandoned in 1595. Only 32 of the city's population of nearly 2000 had
survived an outbreak of the common cold. Dias himself was 78 when they closed the gates and left
here forever."

"And then?" Maggie prompted.

Pavel responded by tapping his mug on the table and winking at Sam.

"Richarte, could we have some more coffee please," Maggie hollered.

"Thank you my dear," Pavel said. "Now to part two of this story. In 1962 my team set out from
Machu Picchu in search of the lost city of the Incas. When we came across this place a month later
we were convinced we had found Vilcabamba."

"Hence the photograph being given the label Manco City," Sam said.

"Yes and no," Pavel said. "By the time that picture was taken we knew this was not the fabled
lost city but another built by Manco Capac. Proof of this we found in the only other of Dias's
documents that we found on that visit.

"We'd been here three weeks before I found the journal hidden in a cavity under a niche occupied
by a mummy. I called everyone together and we spent the night pouring over the writings of Dias. Of
course nearly everyone was then intent on turning the ruins upside down to search for the Hand of
God. We all assumed it would still be here, as Dias had made no mention of it being taken from the
city when they all left.

"Lloyd was quite beside himself with the prospect of finding such an incredible artefact, Noel
was like a boy on a treasure hunt and that annoying William Sanchez actually got up before dawn the
next morning to start digging in the Sun Temple. It was the violent earth tremor he caused that woke
everyone else up."

"He caused it?" Maggie said dubiously.

"Yes Maggie. He was violating the most sacred building in Inticancha and the
huaca
got
really pissed off."

Sam laughed, she couldn't help herself.

"This was not funny, Sam," Pavel insisted.

"I'm sorry, Pavel. It was the image of inanimate objects getting 'pissed off' that I found
amusing."

Pavel smiled. "I admit, it is something you have to experience for yourself. Anyway I laid down
the law, that we would proceed only in a methodical, professional and, above all, respectful manner.
Anyone who did otherwise, either through greed or impatience, would be forcibly evicted from
Inticancha and banned from working on the dig."

"Did everyone follow the rules?" Sam asked.

"We had no more warnings from the
huaca
so I had to assume they did. I suspected that
Sanchez had been digging around the
Acllahuasi
, but I never caught him at it."

"I don't know Sanchez," Maggie said. "Was he with us at the other site the year before?"

"Yes, he was the one with the tall tales about his exploits on other digs. Very irritating he
was. He was always going on about his Inca ancestors even though he was more American than I ever
was. His grandfather was a mestizo who married a Texan woman. Sanchez was born in Dallas and his own
wife came from San Francisco where he lived when he wasn't boring us all to death."

Maggie shook her head. "He must have been boring because I still can't place him."

"Well you must remember his idiot son Paolo the night we all tried the
vilca
."

"You tried the hallucinogenic plant?" Sam asked in amazement.

"I did not," Maggie said emphatically. "And neither did Lloyd. Someone had to ensure they didn't
all dance off into the jungle never to be seen again. But I do remember Sanchez and his son now
though."

"This boy, he must have been about 10," Pavel explained to Sam, "went into a frenzy on the
vilca
. When he calmed down he just sat for hours repeating that he was the reincarnation of
Tupac Amaru."

Maggie snorted. "I seem to remember you having an interesting conversation with a wall in the
high priest's house that night, Pavel."

"Yes, this is true, but while the rest of us were nursing our hangovers the next day, young Paolo
remained convinced that he was in fact Tupac Amaru."

"You can talk, you silly old man. That little chat you had with the spirits changed forever the
way you approached your work. To this day you believe the
huaca
have the ability to get
pissed off."

"Absolutely! And, as we discovered right here in this very city, they also have the power to
direct malevolent emanations that literally shrivel the desecrators of their sanctuaries."

Maggie just raised an eyebrow, while Sam wondered just how much more woo-woo stuff she could take
and still keep a straight face.

"We found the Hand of God on our 53rd day," Pavel continued, ignoring their scepticism. "It had
been hidden inside the second, smaller altar in the Sun Temple. We celebrated long into the night,
but were woken again the next morning by an earth tremor, which toppled most of what remained of the
Acllahuasi
's front wall. "We then discovered that Inti's Hand was missing, and so was William
Sanchez and his idiot son. Half our porters then ran off and left us because they feared punishment
from the ancient ones and, of the others, only two would join us to follow the thief.