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The envoys first pointed out the capital to Roger, and then another great city, some distance to the right, as being Tezcuco. Beyond the lakes, a barrier of dark hills rose, forming a suitable background to the lovely prospect. Upon the road, Roger learned much from the Tezcucan envoys of the character of the king of their country, and of the Emperor Montezuma.
His plan of action was to establish his headquarters at some place upon the Tezcucan lake, whence he could cut off the supplies from the surrounding country, and place Mexico in a state of blockade until the completion of his ships should enable him to begin a direct assault.
The Tezcucan envoys, on the other hand, looked pleased. Tezcuco had maintained for a long time a milder form of worship. Her people were more gentle than the Aztecs, and had only reluctantly, and in part, adopted the terrible rites of their formidable neighbors. "Will you ascend the temple?" the governor asked. "No," Roger said firmly. "I say not aught against the god of battles.
If in fact there flowed in her veins the blood of that princess of the golden king of Tezcuco who could have smiled at the whisperings of her lord and the tender cadences of music floating through the gardens his love had made for her, while just here his priests made their sacrifices and she, turning her eyes from his ardent ones, now and then languorously watched was Zoraida mad or was she simply ancient Aztec or Toltec or Tezcucan, born four or five hundred years after her time?
The next morning Roger started with the Tezcucan envoys on his journey.
I have been to Tezcuco today, and we shall be married at the end of the week; so that I have every hope of leading a quiet and happy life, and think that, in the end, these troubles will tend to the happiness of the people of the country. As a Tezcucan, I can acknowledge that the Aztec tyranny was a heavy one, that the people were sorely oppressed.
The grandfather of the present king had been the greatest and most powerful of the Tezcucan princes. In his youth he had gone through a series of strange adventures. Tezcuco had been captured, the people subjugated by the Tepanecs, and the king killed when the young prince was but fifteen years old.
When the gardens of the golden Tezcucan were behind them and a door barred Kendric experienced a sense of relief, even though the tunnels were ahead of him. He kept close to Zoraida, prepared for any sort of trickery and with no desire to have her whisk suddenly through a door somewhere and slam it in his face.
This reply made Cortés very angry; but Montezuma, anxious to prevent bloodshed, begged him still to refrain from declaring war against Cacama, saying that it would be better to obtain possession of him personally, which he could easily do by means of several Tezcucan nobles who were in his own pay.
Just opposite the most enchanting spot in these underground groves of pleasure was a great pyramidal heap of human skulls, thousands of them. "The builders," explained Zoraida calmly. "Those who obeyed the commands of the Tezcucan king, who made his dream a reality, who were in the end sacrificed here.
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