He staggered up, yammering as if the sight had almost unseated his reason. She was amazed to realize that she understood him. He was gibbering in the Stygian tongue, though in a dialect unfamiliar to her. "Who are you? Whence come you? What do you in Xuchotl?" Then rushing on, without waiting for her to reply: "But you are a friend--goddess or devil, it makes no difference! You have slain the Burning Skull! It was but a man beneath it, after all! We deemed it a demon _they_ conjured up out of the catacombs! _Listen!_" He stopped short in his ravings and stiffened, straining his ears with painful intensity. The girl heard nothing. "We must hasten!" he whispered. "_They_ are west of the Great Hall! They may be all around us here! They may be creeping upon us even now!" He seized her wrist in a convulsive grasp she found hard to break. "Whom do you mean by 'they'?" she demanded. He stared at her uncomprehendingly for an instant, as if he found her ignorance hard to understand. "They?" he stammered vaguely. "Why--why, the people of Xotalanc! The clan of the man you slew. They who dwell by the eastern gate." "You mean to say this city is inhabited?" she exclaimed. "Aye! Aye!" He was writhing in the impatience of apprehension. "Come away! Come quick! We must return to Tecuhltli!" "Where is that?" she demanded. "The quarter by the western gate!" He had her wrist again and was pulling her toward the door through which he had first come. Great beads of perspiration dripped from his dark forehead, and his eyes blazed with terror. "Wait a minute!" she growled, flinging off his hand. "Keep your hands off me, or I'll split your skull. What's all this about? Who are you? Where would you take me?" He took a firm grip on himself, casting glances to all sides, and began speaking so fast his words tripped over each other. "My name is Techotl. I am of Tecuhltli. I and this man who lies with his throat cut came into the Halls of Science to try and ambush some of the Xotalancas. But we became separated and I returned here to find him with his gullet slit. The Burning Skull did it, I know, just as he would have slain me had you not killed him. But perhaps he was not alone. Others may be stealing from Xotalanc! The gods themselves blench at the fate of those they take alive!" At the thought he shook as with an ague and his dark skin grew ashy. Valeria frowned puzzledly at him. She sensed intelligence behind this rigmarole, but it was meaningless to her. She turned toward the skull, which still glowed and pulsed on the floor, and was reaching a booted toe tentatively toward it, when the man who called himself Techotl sprang forward with a cry.