toward the man in the doorway, who stood in silent
amazement. The man on the rack was Olmec, prince of Tecuhltli.

_6. The Eyes of Tascela_

"Why did you bring me into this chamber to bandage my legs?" demanded
Valeria. "Couldn't you have done it just as well in the throne room?"

She sat on a couch with her wounded leg extended upon it, and the
Tecuhltli woman had just bound it with silk bandages. Valeria's
red-stained sword lay on the couch beside her.

She frowned as she spoke. The woman had done her task silently and
efficiently, but Valeria liked neither the lingering, caressing touch of
her slim fingers nor the expression in her eyes.

"They have taken the rest of the wounded into the other chambers,"
answered the woman in the soft speech of the Tecuhltli women, which
somehow did not suggest either softness or gentleness in the speakers. A
little while before, Valeria had seen this same woman stab a Xotalanca
woman through the breast and stamp the eyeballs out of a wounded
Xotalanca man.

"They will be carrying the corpses of the dead down into the catacombs,"
she added, "lest the ghosts escape into the chambers and dwell there."

"Do you believe in ghosts?" asked Valeria.

"I know the ghost of Tolkemec dwells in the catacombs," she answered
with a shiver. "Once I saw it, as I crouched in a crypt among the bones
of a dead queen. It passed by in the form of an ancient man with flowing
white beard and locks, and luminous eyes that blazed in the darkness. It
was Tolkemec; I saw him living when I was a child and he was being
tortured."

Her voice sank to a fearful whisper: "Olmec laughs, but I _know_
Tolkemec's ghost dwells in the catacombs! They say it is rats which gnaw
the flesh from the bones of the newly dead--but ghosts eat flesh. Who
knows but that----"

She glanced up quickly as a shadow fell across the couch. Valeria looked
up to see Olmec gazing down at her. The prince had cleansed his hands,
torso and beard of the blood that had splashed them; but he had not
donned his robe, and his great dark-skinned hairless body and limbs
renewed the impression of strength bestial in its nature. His deep black
eyes burned with a more elemental light, and there was the suggestion of
a twitching in the fingers that tugged at his thick blue-black beard.

He stared fixedly at the woman, and she rose and glided from the
chamber. As she passed through the door she cast a look over her
shoulder at Valeria,