3rd Person POV (Sicaza)
Year 3 of the SuaChie Calendar, Eighth Month (October 1485).
East City Temple, Muisca Territory.
The dense, sickly-sweet smoke of copal swirled beneath the temple's woven thatched roof, climbing the dark wooden beams like spirits seeking an escape.
Sicaza, one of the most revered priests in the region, knelt before the cold stone altar. His hands, gnarled and scarred by decades of devotion and ritual, caressed the edge of a ceremonial obsidian knife. The volcanic glass returned a distorted reflection of his stern face, barely illuminated by the orange glow of the braziers.
The situation of the Muisca peoples had changed at a dizzying, almost terrifying pace over the last two years. The ancient villages, once separated by mountains and petty squabbles, now began to beat as a single organism.
And all of this was due to a single creature.
For decades, the priests had scrutinized the stars and the entrails of animals, searching for the sign of the destined child promised by the prophecies. Many had lost faith, abandoning the search, but a revelation granted to Simte had rekindled their hope.
Simte had been there when the child was born, and alongside his parents, Hyba and Za, bestowed upon him his sacred name: SuaChie Chuta, the Son of the Sun and the Moon. The divine seal was undeniable, etched onto his very face with one eye as dark as the deep night and the other as bright as the dawn.
Sicaza, too, had awaited the arrival of this child with a fervor that consumed his soul.
According to his strict interpretation of the prophecies, the gods' envoy would rule the earth with an obsidian fist, unifying the tribes under an absolute reverence for tradition and cementing his power upon altars overflowing with offerings.
And, at first, little Chuta's actions seemed to spectacularly prove him right.
Sicaza set the knife down upon a cloth of pure cotton and stood up, walking toward the temple entrance. From there, he could see the smoke of the new smelting furnaces rising in the valley.
Approaching merely his first year of life, that infant, who could barely articulate words without babbling, began to demonstrate a wisdom that did not belong to this earthly realm.
He guided artisans and builders to erect furnaces capable of melting metal, designed tools that carved the earth with ease, and taught ways to prepare food that multiplied both its flavor and longevity.
Furthermore, the child spoke of distant lands, of endless lakes and neighboring cultures, describing them in astonishing detail without ever having taken a single step outside his village.
The priest had fervently supported the boy. He was convinced that he was the true Son of Heaven.
How could he doubt it when, under his directives, midwives had seen the mortality rate of women and newborns plummet?
The fevers that once decimated infants retreated before the new measures of cleanliness and health. The crop fields, once capricious, now yielded robust harvests thanks to the child's counsel on crop rotation and soil care. All was abundance; all was progress.
However, as the cold wind of the mountain range struck his face, Sicaza frowned with profound bitterness. Something was wrong. Fundamentally wrong.
Despite being but an infant in body, Chuta's will shaped the laws, and his demeanor was far removed from what Sicaza deemed sacred.
He had expected a severe leader, a king who would demand greater sacrifices to repay the gods for such bounty. After all, did not the laws of the cosmos dictate that blood was the price of divine favor?
But it was the exact opposite.
The Son of Heaven was soft. Under his mandate, human sacrifices in the temples had been progressively abolished, replaced by lesser offerings and empty prayers.
To Sicaza's horror, even the very structure of punishment and power was diluting: criminals and slaves who once would have appeased the gods' wrath upon the altar now roamed freely through the streets of the new cities after completing ridiculous "social work" or temporary sentences of servitude.
"He is mistaken," Sicaza whispered, clenching his fists beneath his tunic. "The Son of Heaven has been blessed with the knowledge to build, but his young heart does not comprehend the weight of balance… He has forgotten that the gods are hungry."
The murmurs of the lesser priests behind him pulled him from his internal monologue. A young acolyte rushed up the temple's stone steps, his face pale and breathing heavily.
"Revered Sicaza," the boy panted, bowing deeply. "I bring news from the house of the Zaque Hyba... It is the younger brother of the Son of Heaven."
Sicaza turned slowly, his dark eyes locking onto the youth.
"Little Hyqua? Speak, boy. What has happened?"
"He has fallen gravely ill," the acolyte explained, trembling. "His body burns with a fever that will not break. The healers have given him the herbs and medicines that Young Chuta taught them, but nothing works. The child coughs and can barely breathe… Lady Za weeps inconsolably."
A deathly silence descended upon the temple. Sicaza felt no pity; he felt the overwhelming weight of divine revelation. A shiver ran down his spine—not of fear, but of profound theological certainty.
The gods were finally speaking.
The mortal medicines, the "advancements," and Chuta's prohibitions were failing because the earth demanded its tribute.
The deities could not be deceived with herbs when what they claimed was a blood sacrifice to restore the order that the prophesied child had unraveled. Chuta was a builder of things, but he, Sicaza, was a bridge to the sacred.
Sicaza walked back toward the altar and gripped the obsidian knife firmly.
The opportunity opened before him like a path illuminated by lightning. He would save little Hyqua's life through the old ways, appeasing the divine wrath with bloodshed upon a secret altar.
When the Son of Heaven saw that his brother recovered thanks to tradition, he would understand his error. He would make him see that the true power of the gods lay not only in creation and mercy, but in sacred terror and the ruthless fulfillment of the ancient rites.
Three days after making the unbreakable decision that would change the destiny of the realm, the ancient adobe temple was plunged into an oppressive gloom.
Sicaza was in a state of deep trance, moving with a cadence dictated by the sacred. His hands, gnarled and scarred by decades of devotion, were stained a dark, thickening red; the blood of the sacrificed men coated his skin like a macabre glove.
He had proceeded with the ancestral ritual, delivering the hearts necessary to appease the divine wrath and save the life of little Hyqua.
A few steps away, shrouded in the flickering shadows of the chamber, Hyba and Za watched the scene with a toxic blend of relief and irrational terror. Despite the profound fear they felt regarding the impending reaction of their son, Chuta, desperation had broken them. Their respect for the most ancient traditions still pulsed in their minds, and, clinging to blind hope, they had acceded to Sicaza's request.
Sicaza had prepared the altar with a level of detail surpassing any ceremony he had ever officiated. Before him, in a beautifully adorned little crib, rested the fragile body of Hyqua.
After endless hours of guttural chants, feverish prayers to the deities, and the administration of potent herbal tonics, a miracle seemed to manifest before the priest's eyes: the baby ceased to thrash, the feverish heat left his body, and his breathing became incredibly peaceful.
Sicaza, utterly engrossed in his religious ecstasy, observed the scene in rapture.
In his devout mind, blinded by traditional faith, this calm was the affirmative answer of the deities, the irrefutable proof that he had won their favor. In his mystical arrogance, he failed to realize that this sudden stillness was not the hoped-for recovery, but the cold and final embrace of the gods; the inexorable rigor mortis that had just claimed the young soul.
Barely a few minutes after the tragic and silent conclusion, the dense atmosphere of the temple was shattered. The echo of frantic footsteps rang out at the entrance, and a group of warriors violently burst into the enclosure. One of them carried young Chuta, a boy of little more than two years old, who was hastily set down upon the floor.
Upon the small, infantile face of the Son of Heaven, a frozen fury was drawn that grotesquely clashed with his tender appearance. His unusual eyes, which normally radiated a serene wisdom, now distilled a rage so pure and murderous that it seemed capable of striking down the very stone.
The child observed the overflowing vessels of blood and the still-warm hearts on the altar, but it was the deathly pallor of his brother in the crib that unleashed the true storm within him.
With a voice laden with despair and fury, Chuta erupted into a harrowing scream, roaring that the infant was dead and that the gods had accepted nothing; he accused them all of having stained the temple by playing butcher.
With the absolute authority of a ruthless king, the boy immediately ordered the veteran warriors to seize Sicaza and throw him into the city's darkest cells.
One week later.
The cold wind of the mountain range battered Sicaza's austere garments as he walked slowly along a steep, dusty path.
Following his sentencing, he found himself journeying toward the distant south, heading to the mysterious territory of the people who worshipped the Sun, the domains of the Inca Empire. By his side marched, in mournful silence, some of the few loyal priests who had decided to accompany him in his disgrace.
The veteran cleric's mind was a whirlwind of confusion and denial. He looked up at the clear sky and the arid surrounding mountains, scrutinizing the clouds and the flight of the birds in search of answers, hoping for some divine sign that would validate his supreme sacrifice.
He flatly refused to blame the ancient traditions, much less admit that his own foolishness had provoked the tragedy. For Sicaza, the cosmos demanded blood; that was an immutable fact.
Yet, despite his justifications, the image of that fateful day remained burned into his conscience. He could still see with terrifying clarity the gaze of Chuta's small, heterochromatic eyes.
He remembered the volcanic wrath the child displayed upon seeing the spilled blood profaning his vision of the world, but, above all, the overwhelming grief upon realizing his little brother was dead.
In his long hours of solitary walking, Sicaza reached a conclusion that brought him a twisted, somber comfort. He believed that the little Son of Heaven, deep in his heart, blamed himself.
Sicaza was convinced that Chuta believed that, with all his vast and strange healing knowledge, had he been closer to the crib at that critical moment, he could have prevented the gods from claiming Hyqua's young soul.
Defeated, stripped of his sacred temple, and exiled forever from the flourishing lands he swore to protect, Sicaza felt a bitter void in his chest. He fervently wished that little Chuta had arrived just a few moments earlier to the ceremony.
He wanted the child to have seen with his own eyes the immense peace of the baby upon the altar; to understand how agonizingly close he, Sicaza, had been to winning the gods' favor before destiny cut his work short.
But amidst the desolation of his banishment, the old priest salvaged one invaluable thought from that dark event. In that death-stained temple, before the corpse of his own blood, the child had not reacted like a frightened infant, but had passed judgment, acting as a true and wrathful sovereign.
Now, as his blistered feet trod upon strange lands, Sicaza traced a faint, almost imperceptible smile.
He firmly believed that pain forges the iron of the soul. He knew that the darker hardships and tragedies Chuta faced on his solitary path of leadership, the more his spirit would harden.
Eventually, misfortunes would push him to abandon his softness, moving him inexorably closer to the ideal of the severe, iron-fisted leader that Sicaza had always hoped the true chosen one would be.
Three years later.
Year 6 of the SuaChie Calendar, Tenth Month (December 1488).
Amarucancha Palace in Cusco, Tahuantinsuyo (Inca Empire).
The thin air of Cusco burned his lungs in a different way than the mists of the Muisca lands did.
Three years had passed since Sicaza was cast into exile, three winters dragging his sorrow and ambitions along trails of dirt and rock until ending up at the navel of the world: a colossal fortress of polished stone where men defied the clouds.
From the elevated terrace of the Cusco palace, the old priest contemplated the vibrant ebb and flow of the Tahuantinsuyo capital. Below, the tightly woven thatched roofs contrasted with walls of cyclopean blocks, fitted together with a precision so supernatural it seemed the work of the gods themselves.
The clamor of commerce, the echo of the pututus, and the aroma of fermented chicha and burnt coca permeated the atmosphere, granting the city a crushing mysticism that rivaled, and at times surpassed, the sacredness of his former home.
During his stay, Sicaza had been nothing more than a silent spectator to the bloody human comedy that defined the imperial succession.
He had watched the previous Inca hesitate, changing his mind time and time again on his deathbed, plunging the empire into a maelstrom of intrigue. The legitimate candidate, Titu Cusi Huallpa, had to pay with tears and paranoia for the right to don the Mascapaicha.
Sicaza remembered the tension in the streets when one of the late sovereign's concubines fought tooth and nail to seat her own son, Cápac Huari, on the throne, even going to the criminal extreme of poisoning the emperor.
And when the storm seemed to dissipate, danger ignited from within: Apo Huallpaya, the boy's uncle, the man who had cared for him and acted as regent, stretched out his treacherous hands to snatch the crown from the youth he had sworn to protect.
Nevertheless, Titu Cusi Huallpa—now acclaimed under the name Huayna Cápac—had survived. He had endured because beside him stood a monolithic force, a woman whose cunning rivaled that of any military strategist: his mother, Mama Ocllo Coya.
Sicaza diverted his gaze from the festive plaza toward the interior of the chamber.
The palace overflowed with jubilation. Servants passed by carrying golden vessels filled with ceremonial beverages, wearing unkus of the finest cottons and alpaca wools. After years of dismantled conspiracies in the shadows, the royal panacas of Cusco had finally recognized the young man as the auqui, the unquestionable heir.
Today, the entire populace cheered him with honor as the Sapa Inca, the one true lord.
Despite the general revelry, Mama Ocllo remained aloof from the celebration. Seated upon a low dais, adorned with golden tupus that reflected the torchlight, she kept her gaze fixed on the void, her brow furrowed in a grimace of deep concentration.
Noticing the presence of the foreign priest, the Coya exhaled a long sigh and adjusted the fine mantle covering her shoulders.
"The nobles celebrate the birth of a new sun," said the dowager queen, with a low but firm voice that cut through the noise of the music outside. "But a mother cannot afford the luxury of blindness. Arrogance is a disease that devours empires faster than fevers."
Sicaza took a step forward, keeping his hands hidden within the folds of his worn tunic, which contrasted starkly with the Incan opulence.
"Victory is a warm cloak, my lady, but it often lulls to sleep those who drape themselves in it," the priest replied with serenity.
Mama Ocllo fixed her dark, analytical eyes on the old man. There was something about this man from the north that intrigued her and simultaneously put her on guard.
When Sicaza arrived in Cusco, ragged yet possessing an unbreakable dignity, most of the Tahuantinsuyo generals simply underestimated his tales of an emerging kingdom beyond the northern jungles.
To the Incas, nothing great existed outside the boundaries of their four suyos. But she, moved by a visceral love for her son and the fear that a lack of information would make him vulnerable, had taken him under her protection.
"Tell me, Sicaza," spoke the Coya, pronouncing the foreign name with a strange blend of solemnity and suspicion. "Everything you have told me during these winters... this kingdom you call 'Suaza'... is the divine wisdom you claim they possess real? Or are they merely the delusions of an old man yearning for the land from which he was expelled?"
Sicaza did not flinch at the harshness of her words. In his mind, for a brief instant, the image of the Cusco temples vanished, replaced by the bloody memory of the Muisca altar three years ago.
He remembered the corpse of little Hyqua, the bloodstained hands, the bitter exile... and Chuta's face. That child had not broken like a frightened infant in the face of horror; he had passed judgment with the relentless coldness of a wrathful sovereign.
Pain forges the iron of the soul, Sicaza repeated to himself mentally, sketching an inward smile. Chuta was hardening himself in tragedy, abandoning all softness to become the iron-fisted leader he had always expected.
"It is as real as the stones upon which your throne rests, Coya," Sicaza answered, holding the queen's gaze. "It is my former people, the Muisca ethnicity, but they no longer walk alone. That prophesied child has unified the neighboring cultures under a single banner, weaving a web that grows in the shadows of the north. They do not possess gold in the quantities you boast of, but they hold a knowledge that defies human understanding."
Mama Ocllo looked at him with distrust, though her fingers unconsciously caressed a small sheet of a soft, whitish material resting beside her.
The first year, she had doubted his every word, taking him for a charlatan. However, the material proofs Sicaza had presented—with the help of some local artisans who followed his instructions—were impossible to ignore.
He had taught them the blueprints for a different kind of smelting furnace, a structure capable of concentrating heat to such a degree that it allowed copper metal to be melted with astounding ease, cutting the imperial metallurgists' working time in half. But what had truly disturbed the queen's sleep was not the metal, but that vegetal cloth Sicaza called "paper."
The Coya took the piece of paper in her hands. Her fingers, accustomed to the roughness of woolen quipus and the coldness of clay or stone, marveled at the lightness of the surface.
With black and red vegetal dyes, Sicaza had inscribed upon it intricate Incan symbols and harvest records. It was a miraculous canvas; it allowed the empire's memory to be preserved on light sheets that could be transported by the thousands on the back of a single chasqui, without the need to carry heavy tablets or memorize complex knots.
"At first I thought you were a demon sent to sow confusion," Mama Ocllo confessed, running the pad of her finger over an ink stroke. "But the reports from my spies on the borders of the Chinchaysuyo are beginning to arrive. They speak of merchants bringing strange tools, of northern towns whispering of colossal boats and men who write their thoughts… You were right; the north is moving."
"The Suaza Kingdom advances quickly, my lady," Sicaza warned, taking another step toward the dais. "Chuta does not build walls to isolate himself; he builds bridges to expand. If the Tahuantinsuyo grows overconfident in its immensity, the arrogance of your generals will turn your fortresses into monuments of the past."
Mama Ocllo squeezed the paper tightly, slightly crumpling it.
The face of her son, Huayna Cápac, radiant and proud amidst the ceremonial dances of the plaza, crossed her mind. She would ensure that her son ruled an eternal empire, and if that divine knowledge from the north was a threat, she would learn to master it, or to destroy it.
"There will be no arrogance in my son's palace," the dowager queen decreed, pinning a glacial glare on the priest. "You will remain by my side, Sicaza. You will teach me more of the secrets of that furnace, and you will tell me everything you know about the limits of this paper. If that young leader from the north has an unforgiving fist, the new Inca will learn to be made of stone."
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[A/N: CHAPTER COMPLETED
Hello everyone.
Thank you all for your support. Let's get straight to the chapter comments.
CHAPTER COMMENTS
First, I'd like to mention that this chapter completes chapter 132, "Memories - Chuta I."
This is where we meet Sicaza, and now we know what became of him. We also learn about his way of thinking and how he still believes in Chuta, albeit from a different perspective.
I must confess that I copied some aspects of this character from the animated film El Dorado. The priest in that film is very similar to Sicaza, except that, unlike in that story, Chuta brought about real changes, which justified his 'divinity' in Sicaza's eyes.
On another note, I hope you enjoyed and found the presentation of Inca and Hawaiian cultures intriguing in this and the previous chapter.
If I confused you, it's because I did a good job, hahaha.
Also, I should clarify that everything is well-researched, but there are differences of opinion among historians regarding the period each Inca (Emperor) ruled. So, if you'd like to look it up, you might find discrepancies in the specific years.
AUTHOR'S COMMENTS
First, I want to thank you again for your support, and also to the new readers who are joining us.
The truth is, the novel is receiving constant visits from new readers in addition to those who are already here. And that surprises and pleases me.
On another note, I'd like to mention that I'm writing constantly, keeping at least five chapters ahead of schedule. I'm still eager to continue.
I'm even starting to organize things to continue the other novels I've been publishing. Although I must be honest and say that I prefer to continue with the Race Against Time saga and start a new story about a different culture and a new protagonist.
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Read my other novels.
#The Walking Dead: Vision of the Future (Chapter 91) (ON HOLD)
#The Walking Dead: Emily's Metamorphosis (Chapter 34) (ON HOLD)
#The Walking Dead: Patient 0 - Lyra File (Chapter 14) (ON HOLD)
You can find them on my profile.]