I attained the platform at the summit at the same time the last sunlight lifted from the pyramid, and I sat down heavily, wheezing for breath. A late-flying butterfly came fluttering up from somewhere and perched on the platform companionably near me. It was a very large and entirely black butterfly, and it gently waggled its wings as if it too were panting from the climb. All of Teotihuacan was by then in twilight, and before long a pale mist began to rise from the ground. The pyramid on which I sat, for all its massiveness, seemed to be floating unattached to the earth. The city, which had been flamboyantly red and yellow, had become muted blue and silver. It looked peaceful and drowsy. It looked its great age. It looked older than time, but so steadfast that it would still endure when all of time had passed away.

I scanned the city from end to end—at that height it was possible—and, using my topaz, I could see the innumerable pits and dimples in the weed-grown land stretching far on both sides of The Avenue of the Dead: the places where had stood more habitations than there were in Tenochtítlan. Then I saw something else, and it startled me: distant small fires taking bloom. Was the dead city coming to life again? But then I perceived that they were torch lights, a long double line of them, approaching from the south. I was briefly annoyed that I no longer had the city to myself. But I knew that pilgrims often came there, singly or in crowds—from Tenochtítlan, from Texcóco 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 Motecuzóma Xocoyatl, Cem-Anáhuac 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 Aztéca 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. Motecuzóma 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 Aztéca 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 Tenochtítlan 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 Tenochtítlan. The only recent fighting that Motecuzóma 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 Tenochtítlan, sent by cities farther south, Motecuzóma 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 Texcóco 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 Huitzilopóchtli 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 Motecuzóma, "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.