She blinked in surprise. "You had? Why?"

"A matter of unfinished business," I told her. "It could have waited a while, but the question of Béu's well-being means that I go now."

Zyanya was quick to understand, and she said, "You are going again to the mountain that walks in the sea! You must not, my love! Those barbarian Zyu nearly killed you last time—!"

I laid a finger gently across her lips. "I am going south to seek news of our sister, and that is the truth, and that is the only truth you will tell to anyone who inquires. Ahuítzotl must not hear any rumor that I have any other objective."

She nodded, but said unhappily, "Now I will have two loved ones to worry about."

"This one will return safe, and I will look for Béu. If she has come to harm, I will make it right. Or, if she prefers, I will bring her back here with me. And I will bring back some other precious things as well."

Of course Béu Ribé was my foremost concern and my immediate reason for going back to Uaxyacac. But you will have perceived, reverend scribes, that I was also about to consummate a plan I had carefully laid in train. When I suggested to the Revered Speaker that he raid The Strangers and make them agree to surrender all the purple dye they might forever after collect, I had not mentioned to him the vast treasure of that substance they had already stored in the cave of the Sea God. From my inquiries among the returned officers I knew that even in defeat The Strangers had not handed it over or volunteered any hint of its existence. But I knew of it, and I knew the grotto where it was hidden, and I had arranged that Ahuítzotl should subdue the Zyu sufficiently that it would be possible for me to go and get that fabulous hoard for myself.

I might have taken Cozcatl with me, except that he was also busy with house building, completing the one he had inherited from Blood Glutton. So I merely asked his permission to borrow a few items from the old warrior's wardrobe there. Then I went about the city and hunted up seven of Blood Glutton's former companions-in-arms. They were younger than he had been, though some years older than myself. They were still sturdy and strong, and when, after swearing them to secrecy, I explained what I had in mind, they were keen for the adventure.

Zyanya helped spread the story that I was going out to seek the whereabouts of her sister and that, as long as I was traveling, I was making a trade expedition of it as well. So when I and the seven plodded south along the Coyohuacan causeway, we excited no comment or curiosity. Of course, had anyone looked at us very closely, he might have wondered at the incidence of scars, bent noses, and bulbous ears among the porters I had chosen. Had he inspected the men's long packs of wrapped matting, ostensibly full of goods to trade, he would have found that they contained—besides traveling rations and quills of gold dust—only leather shields, every kind of weapon more wieldy than the long spear, various colors of war paint, feathers, and other regalia of a miniature army.

We continued along the southbound trade route, but only until we were well beyond Quaunahuac. Then we abruptly turned off to the right, along a less-used westbound route, the shortest way to the sea. Since that route led us, for most of our way, through the southernmost areas of Michihuácan, we would have been in trouble if anyone had challenged us and examined our packs. We would have been taken for Mexíca spies and instantly executed—or not so instantly. Though the several attempted invasions by our armies in times past had all been repulsed by the Purémpecha's superior weapons of some mysteriously hard and sharp metal, every Purémpe was still forever on guard against any Mexícatl's entering his land with dubious motive.

I might remark that Michihuácan, Land of the Fishermen, was what we Mexíca called it, as you Spaniards now call it New Galicia, whatever that means. To its natives, it has various names in various areas—Xalisco, Nauyar Ixu, Kuanahiuata, and others—but in total it is called Tzintzuntzani, Where There Are Hummingbirds, after its capital city of the same name.

The language is called Poré and, during that journey and later ones, I learned as much as I could of it—of them, I should say, since Poré has as many variant local dialects as does Náhuatl. I know enough Poré, anyway, to wonder why you Spaniards insist on calling the Purémpecha the Tarascans. You seem to have got that name from the Poré word tardskue, which a Purémpe uses to designate himself as an aloof "distant relation" of all neighboring other peoples. But no matter; I have had more than enough different names myself. I collected yet another in that land: Dark Cloud being there rendered Anikua Pakapeti.

Michihuácan was and is a vast and rich country, as rich as the domain of the Mexíca ever was. Its Uandakuari, or Revered Speaker, reigned over—or at least collected tribute from—a region stretching from the fruit orchards of Xichu in the eastern Otomí lands to the trading port of Potqamkuaro on the southern ocean. And, though the Purémpecha were constantly on guard against military encroachment by us Mexíca, they did not balk at exchanging their riches for ours. Their traders came to our Tlaltelólco market. They even sent swift-messengers daily bearing fresh fish for the delectation of our nobles. In return, our traders were allowed to travel throughout Michihuácan unmolested, as I and my seven pretended porters did.

Had we really been of a mind to barter along the way, we could have secured many valuable things: oyster-heart pearls; pottery of rich glazes; utensils and ornaments made of copper, silver, shell, and amber; the brilliant lacquerware that could be found nowhere else but in Michihuácan. Those lacquered objects, intense black etched with gold and colors, might take an artisan months or years to make, since they varied in size from simple trays to immense folding screens.

We travelers could have acquired any local product except the mystery metal of which I have spoken. No outlander was ever allowed a glimpse of that; even the weapons made of it were kept locked in armories, to be distributed to the soldiery only when they were needed. Since our Mexíca armies had never yet won a single battle against those weapons, none of our warriors had even been able to snatch from the battlefield so much as a dropped Purémpe dagger.

Well, I did no trading, but I and my men did partake of some of the native foods new to us or seldom available to us—the honey liquor of Tlachco, for example. The rugged mountain country around that town literally hummed all day long. I could imagine that I heard the vibration made by the men underground digging the local silver, but aboveground I definitely could hear the buzz of the swarms and clouds and skeins of wild bees among the numberless flowers on those heights. And while the men scratched for the buried silver, their women and children worked at collecting the golden honey of those bees. Some of it they merely strained clear and sold for sweetening. Some of it they let dry in the sun until it became crystalline and sweeter yet. Some of the honey they converted—by a method kept as secret as that of making the killer metal—into a drink they called chápari, which was far more delicious and far more potent in its effect than the sour octli we Mexíca knew so well.

Since the chápari, like the metal, was never exported outside Michihuácan, I and my men drank as much as we could while we were there. We also feasted on Michihuácan's lake and river fish, frogs' legs and eels, whenever we spent a night in a travelers' hostel. As a matter of fact, we got rather weary of aquatic fare after a while, but those people have peculiar strictures against killing practically every edible game animal. A Purémpe will not hunt deer because he believes them to be manifestations of the sun god, and that is because, to his eyes, the male deer's antlers resemble the sun's beams. Not even squirrels can be trapped or blowpiped, because the Purémpecha priests, as filthy and shaggy as ours, were called tiuimencha, and that word means "black squirrels." So most of the meals we took at inns were, when not fish, either wild or domestic fowl.