and other parts—to make offerings or prayers in that place where the gods once had gathered. There was even a campground to accommodate such visitors: a vast, rectangular, sunken meadow at the southern extremity of the main avenue. It was believed that it had originally been Teotihuacan's marketplace, and that under the grass must be enclosing walls and a stone-paved plaza.
The night was full dark by the time the torchlight procession reached that place, and for a time I watched, as some of the torches stopped and stayed in a circle, while others moved here and there, their carriers busy with the activity of making camp. Then, being sure that none of the pilgrims would venture farther into the city before morning, I swung around on the platform to face eastward and watch the early rising moon. It was full, as perfectly round and benignly beautiful as Aztlan's stone of Coyolxauqui. When it was well up above the undulant profile of the far-off mountains, I turned yet again to look at Teotihuacan by its light. A gentle night breeze had dispelled the ground mist, and the many edifices were sharply outlined in every detail by the blue-white moonlight, and they threw stark black shadows across the blue ground.
Almost all the roads and the days of my life had been hectic and eventful, with not many leisurely intervals, and I expected that they would continue to be so to their end. But I sat in serenity there for a little time, and I treasured it. I was even moved to make the one poem I ever made in my life. It had little regard for facts or history; it was inspired purely by the moonlight loveliness and silence and tranquility of that place and that time. When I had made the poem in my head, I stood erect atop that towering Pyramid of the Sun, and I said the poem aloud to the empty city:
Once, when nothing was but night,
they gathered, in a time forgotten—
all the gods of greatest might—
to plan the dawn of day and light.
Here... at Teotihuacan.
'Very nice,' said a voice not my own, and I started so that I nearly leapt off the pyramid. The voice recited the poem back to me, word for word, slowly and savoringly, and I recognized the voice. I have heard my small effort recited by other people on later occasions, and even in recent times, but never again by the Lord Motecuzoma Xocoyatl, Cem-Anahuac Uey-Tlatoani, Revered Speaker of the One World.
'Very nice,' he said again. 'Especially since Eagle Knights are not noted for their poetic turn of mind.'
'Nor even sometimes for their knightliness,' I said ruefully, knowing that he had recognized me too.
'No need for apprehension, Knight Mixtli,' he said, without any audible emotion. 'Your elderly under-chiefs took all blame for the failure of the Yanquitlan colony. They were duly executed. There remains no debt outstanding. And before they went to the flower garland they told me of your intended exploration. How did you fare?'
'No better than at Yanquitlan, my lord,' I said, suppressing a sigh for the friends who had died on my behalf. 'I merely proved that the fabled Azteca stores do not exist and never did.' I gave him a much abbreviated account of my journey, and of my finding the legendary Aztlan, and I concluded with the words I had heard in various languages everywhere. Motecuzoma nodded somberly and repeated the words, staring out into the night as if he could see before him all the lands of his domains, and he made the words sound ominously like an epitaph:
'The Azteca were here, but they brought nothing with them, and they left nothing when they went.'
After a while of rather uncomfortable silence, I said, 'For more than two years I have had no news of Tenochtitlan or The Triple Alliance. How fare things there, Lord Speaker?'
'About as dismally as you describe the affairs of the dreary Aztlan. Our wars win us nothing. Our territories have not grown by a hand span since you last knew them. Meanwhile the omens multiply, ever more mysterious and threatening of future disaster.'
He favored me with a short history of recent events. He had never ceased harrying and trying to subdue the stubbornly independent neighbor nation of Texcala, but with notable lack of success. The Texcalteca were still independent, and more inimical than ever toward Tenochtitlan. The only recent fighting that Motecuzoma could call even moderately successful had been a mere raid of reprisal. The inhabitants of a town called Tlaxiaco, somewhere in the Mixteca country, had been intercepting and keeping for themselves the rich goods of tribute intended for Tenochtitlan, sent by cities farther south, Motecuzoma had personally led his troops there and turned the town of Tlaxiaco to a puddle of blood.
'But the affairs of state have not been so disheartening as the doings of nature,' he went on. 'One morning about a year and a half ago, the entire lake of Texcoco suddenly became as turbulent as a stormy sea. For a day and a night, it tossed and foamed and flooded some low-lying areas. And for no reason: there was no storm, no wind, no earthquake to account for the water's upheaval. Then, last year, and just as inexplicably, the temple of Huitzilopochtli caught fire and burned until it was completely ruined. It has since been restored, and the god has evinced no sign of outrage. But that fire on top of the Great Pyramid was visible everywhere around the lake, and it struck terror into the hearts of all who saw.'
'Most strange,' I agreed. 'How could a temple of stone catch fire, even if some madman held a torch to it? Stone does not burn.'
'Coagulated blood does,' said Motecuzoma, 'and the temple's interior was thickly caked with it. The stench hung over the city for days afterward. But those occurrences, whatever they might have portended, were in the past. Now comes this accursed thing.'
He pointed to the sky, and I raised my crystal to peer upward, and I grunted involuntarily when I saw the thing. I had never seen one before; I probably would never have noticed that one if my weak eyes had not been directed to it; but I recognized it as what we called a smoking star. You Spaniards call it a hairy star, or a comet. It was really quite pretty—like a luminous little tuft of down snagged among the ordinary stars—but of course I knew it was to be regarded with dread, as a sure precursor of evil.
'The court astronomers first espied it a month ago,' said Motecuzoma, 'when it was too small to have been seen by an untrained eye. It has appeared in the same place in the sky every night since, but ever growing larger and brighter. Many of our people will not venture out of their houses at night, and even the boldest make sure their children stay indoors, safe from its baleful light.'
I said, 'So the smoking star impels my lord to seek communion with the gods of this sacred city?'
He sighed and said, 'No. Or not entirely. That apparition is troubling enough, but I have not yet spoken of the even more recent and more dire omen. You know, of course, that the chief god of this city Teotihuacan was the Feathered Serpent, and that it has long been believed that he and his Tolteca would eventually come back to reclaim these lands.'
'I know the old tales, Lord Speaker. Quetzalcoatl built some sort of magical raft, and drifted away across the eastern sea, vowing to return some day.'
'And do you remember, Knight Mixtli, some three years ago, when you and I and the Lord Speaker Nezahualpili of Texcoco discussed a drawing on a piece of paper brought from the Maya lands?'
'Yes, my lord,' I said uneasily, not much liking to be reminded of it. 'A house of great size floating upon the sea.'
'Upon the eastern sea,' he stressed. 'In the drawing, the floating house appeared to have occupants. You and Nezahualpili called them men. Strangers. Outlanders.'
'I remember, my lord. Were we mistaken in calling them strangers? Do you mean the drawing represented the returning Quetzalcoatl? Bringing his Tolteca back from the dead?'
'I do not know,' he said, with uncommon humility. 'But I have just had report that one of those floating houses appeared again off the Maya coast, and it turned over in the sea, like a house toppling sideways in an earthquake, and two of its occupants were washed ashore, nearly dead. If there were others in that house, they must have drowned. But those two survivors came alive after a while, and are now living in some village called Tiho. Its chief, a man named Ah Tutal, sent a swift-messenger to ask of me what to do with them, for he asserts that they are gods, and he is unaccustomed to entertaining gods. At any rate, not living and visible and palpable gods.'
I had listened in growing astonishment. I blurted, 'Well, my lord? Are they gods?'
'I do not know,' he said again. 'The message was typical of Maya ineptitude—so hysterical and incoherent that I cannot tell even whether those two are male or female—or one of each, like the Lord and Lady Pair. But the description, such as it is, described no man or woman of my experience. Inhumanly white of skin, exceedingly hairy of face and body, speaking a language incomprehensible even to the wisest of the wise men thereabouts. Surely gods would look and talk differently than we do, would they not?'
