The woman questioned in Aztec and then spoke to the pale man in another language. And the king memorized each sound as it came from her lips for there was much he had to learn to save his people. And then the warrior said he had captured this slave fleeing from the city of Moctezuma.

The warrior paused, and the woman talked the strange language, and while she pronounced Moctezuma correctly, the pale man could not. When he repeated it, he said "Montezuma" with different emphasis.

The warrior said the slave was worthless and had nothing because Moctezuma and the Aztecs were poor. And the woman spoke in the other language, and the pale man spoke, and there was tension in their voices. And the woman said to the warrior that the Aztec was not poor, that Moctezuma himself had rooms of gold. And the warrior said, no gold. Just worthless slaves. And when the woman spoke again, the king of the Actatl, dressed as a slave, let loose the many heavy weights of gold he had run with for many days, and he paid scant attention to them, brushing off his poor rags as though the gold was but the dust of the earth.

And, as he had planned, this caused great commotion, and the pale ones even tried to eat the gold by pressing their teeth into it. And the king pretending to be a slave laughed and cried out: "Oh, great queen, why do these pale ones love the yellow dirt so much?"

"Did this come from Moctezuma's city?" she asked, and the king nodded low like a slave and said, "Yes. It comes from the rooms of gold."

And when she repeated this to the pale one, he jumped up and danced, and from then on the pale man wanted words from the slave and ordered the warrior put to death for telling untruths. And thus was the slave-king trusted and taken into the camp of the pales, and thus did this pale man, whom the king later found out was named Cortez, proceed to his long and difficult siege of Moctezuma's city, finally taking it.