Aztec

together, each with a chip of jadestone in its mouth or hand.

For a few moments, Nezahualpili and I were alone together. He said, 'You have done here today a deed to be proud of—and to be ashamed of. You rendered harmless the one man most to be feared among all our opponents on this field. And you brought a noble knight to an ignoble end. Even when Armed Scorpion reaches the afterworld of heroes, his eternal bliss will have an eternally bitter taste, because all his comrades there will know that he was ludicrously brought down by a callow, shortsighted, common recruit.'

'My lord,' I said, 'I only did what I thought was right.'

'As you have done before,' he said, and sighed. 'Leaving for others the bitter aftertaste. I do not chide you, Mixtli. It was long ago foretold that your tonali was to know the truth about the things of this world, and to make the truth known. I would ask only one thing.'

I bowed my head and said, 'My lord does not ask anything of a commoner. He commands and is obeyed.'

'What I ask cannot be commanded. I entreat you, Mixtli, from now henceforward, to be prudent, even gingerly in your handling of the right and the truth. Such things can cut as cruelly as any obsidian blade. And, like the blade, they can also cut the man who wields them.'

He turned abruptly away from me, called to a swift-messenger, and told him, 'Put on a green mantle and braid your hair in the manner signifying good news. Take a clean new shield and maquahuitl. Run to Tenochtitlan and, on your way to the palace, run brandishing the shield and sword through as many streets as you can, so the people may rejoice and strew flowers in your path. Let Ahuitzotl know that he has the victory and the prisoners he wanted.'

The last few words Nezahualpili did not speak to the messenger, but to himself: 'That the life and the death and the very name of Jadestone Doll are now to be forgotten.'

* * *

Nezahualpili and his army parted from the rest of us there, to march back the way we all had come. The Mexica and Tecpaneca contingents, plus myself and the long column of prisoners, went directly west on a shorter route to Tenochtitlan: across the pass between the peak of Tlaloctepetl and that of Ixtacciuatl, thence along the southern shore of Lake Texcoco.

It was a slow march, since so many of the wounded had to hobble or, like Armed Scorpion, be carried. But it was not a difficult journey. For one thing, the rain had finally stopped; we enjoyed sunny days and temperate nights. For another, once we had crossed the fairly rugged mountain pass, the march was along the level salt flats bordering the lake, with the serene, whispering waters on our right and the slopes of thick, whispering forests on our left.

That surprises you, reverend friars? To hear me speak of forests so near this city? Ah, yes, as short a time ago as that, this whole Valley of Mexico was abundantly green with trees: the old-old cypresses, numerous kinds of oak, short- and long-leaved pines, sweet bay, acacias, laurel, mimosa. I know nothing of your country of Spain, my lords, or of your province of Castile, but they must be sere and desolate lands. I see your foresters denude one of our green hills for timbers and firewood. They strip it of all its verdure and trees that have grown for sheaves of years. Then they step back to admire the dun-gray barren that remains, and they sigh nostalgically, 'Ah, Castile!'

We came at last to the promontory between the lakes Texcoco and Xochimilco, what remained of the Culhua people's once extensive lands. We smartly trimmed our formation to make a good show as we marched through the town of Ixtapalapan and, when we were past it, Blood Glutton said to me, 'It has been some time since you saw Tenochtitlan, has it not?'

'Yes,' I said. 'Fourteen years or so.'

'You will find it changed. Grander than ever. It will be visible from this next rise of the road.' When we reached that eminence, he made an expansive gesture and said, 'Behold!' I could, of course, see the great island- city yonder, shining white as I remembered it, but I could not make out any detail of it—except, when I squinted hard, there seemed to be an even more shining whiteness to it. 'The Great Pyramid,' Blood Glutton said reverently. 'You should be proud that your valor has contributed to its dedication.'

At the point of the promontory we came to the town of Mexicaltzinco, and from there a causeway vaulted out across the water to Tenochtitlan. The stone avenue was wide enough for twenty men to walk comfortably side by side, but we ranked our prisoners by fours, with guards walking alongside at intervals. We did not do that to stretch our parade to a more impressive length, but because the bridge was crowded on both sides with city folk come to greet our arrival. The people cheered and owl-hooted and pelted us with flowers as if our victory had been entirely the doing of us few Mexica and Tecpaneca.

Halfway to the city, the causeway broadened out into a vast platform which supported the fort of Acachinanco, a defense against any invader's trying to take that route into Tenochtitlan. The fort, though supported entirely by pilings, was almost as big as either of the two towns we had just passed through on the mainland. Its garrison of troops also joined in welcoming us—drumming and trumpeting, shouting war cries, pounding their spears on their shields—but I could only look scornfully at them for their not having been with us in the battle.

When I and the others at the front of the column were striding into the great central plaza of Tenochtitlan, the tail of our parade of prisoners was still trooping out of Mexicaltzinco, two and a half one-long-runs behind us. In the plaza, The Heart of the One World, we Mexica dropped out of the column and left it to the Tecpaneca soldiers. They turned the captives sharp left and marched them off along the avenue and then the causeway leading westward to Tlacopan. The prisoners would be quartered somewhere on the mainland outside that city until the day appointed for the dedication of the pyramid.

The pyramid. I turned to look at it, and I gaped as I might have done when I was a child. During my life I would see bigger icpac tlamanacaltin, but never one so luminously bright and new. It was the tallest edifice in Tenochtitlan, dominating the city. It was an awesome spectacle to those who had eyes to see it from away across the waters, for the twin temples on top of it stood proudly, arrogantly, magnificently high above every other thing visible between the city and the mainland mountains. But I had little time to look at it or at any of the other new landmarks built since I had last been in The Heart of the One World. A young page from the palace elbowed his way through the throng, asking anxiously for the Arrow Knight Xococ.

'I am he,' said Xococ importantly.

The page said, 'The Revered Speaker Ahuitzotl commands that you attend upon him at once, my lord, and that you bring to him the iyac named Tlilectic-Mixtli.'

'Oh,' said Xococ fretfully. 'Very well. Where are you, Fogbound? I mean Iyac Mixtli, Come along.' I privately thought we ought to bathe and steam ourselves and seek clean clothes before we presented ourselves to the Uey- Tlatoani, but I accompanied him without protest. As the page led us through the crowd, Xococ instructed me, 'Make your obeisances humbly and graciously, but then excuse yourself and retire, so that the Revered Speaker may hear my account of the victory.'

Among the plaza's new features was the Snake Wall surrounding it. Built of stone, plastered smooth with white gesso, it stood twice as high as a man and its upper edge undulated like the curves of a snake. The wall, both inside and out, was studded with a pattern of projecting stones, each carved and painted to represent a serpent's head. The wall was interrupted in three places, where the three broad avenues led north, west, and south out of the plaza. And at intervals it had great wooden doorways leading to the major buildings set outside the wall.

One of those was the new palace built for Ahuitzotl, beyond the northeast corner of the Snake Wall. It was easily as big as that of any of his predecessor rulers in Tenochtitlan, as big as Nezahualpili's palace in Texcoco, and even more elaborate and luxurious. Since it had been so recently built, it was decorated with all the latest styles of art and contained all the most modern conveniences. For example, the upper-floor rooms had ceiling lids which could be slid open to admit skylight in good weather.

Perhaps the most noticeable feature of the hollow-square-shaped palace was that it straddled one of the city's canals. Thus the building could be entered from the plaza, through its Snake Wall gate, or it could be entered by canoe. A nobleman idling in his oversized, cushioned acali—or a common boatman paddling a freight of sweet potatoes—could take that delightfully hospitable route to wherever he was going. On his way, he would drift through a cavelike corridor of dazzling new-painted murals, then through Ahuitzotl's lushly gardened courtyard, then through another cavernous hall full of impressive new-carved statuary, before emerging into the public canal again.

The page led us, almost at a run, through the Snake Wall portal to the palace, then along galleries and