nodded and stood. “This way. To my private chamber.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE RACE!
F rom the way he said it, I was expecting his “private chamber” to be some kind of pervy pleasure room, and it was—at least part of it was. It was behind a secret door, just like it was supposed to be, and there were paintings of beautiful purple naked boys all over the place, and books of porny drawings open to the good parts on podiums. There was also a bed and a wardrobe filled with naughty costumes, but another part of the room was more like a professor’s office. There were scrolls on the desk, and thick leather-bound books with titles like The First Angao Dynasty and Heresies of the Khat Rebellion in piles on the floor, maps on the walls, and ink quills and notebooks and scribbled-on scraps of paper everywhere, which Rian-Gi was digging through like a dog looking for a bone.
I laughed and held up a book called History and the Nature of Divinity . “You have to hide history books too?”
He looked up from his search and pointed to the porn. “They might shun me for owning that.” His finger swung around to the history books. “They will kill me for owning that.”
He was dead serious. I didn’t get it. “What? Why?”
“You truly are from another world, aren’t you? History is the most dangerous thing in Ora. The truth about the Seven and the One? The truth about the Wargod? The church has guarded those for centuries. Men have disappeared for only wondering aloud about their true origins. Professors, men of great learning, they all tread carefully around those subjects, choosing, for the sake of their own skin, to concentrate on the succession of kings and the wars between them. Those who do not? Gone. They fall out of windows, they die in tavern brawls, robberies, of strange sicknesses, of accidental poisonings.”
I looked around at all the books again, shaking my head. He’d had all these in his house when the priests had come asking questions. “Damn. You’re braver than I thought.”
He shrugged. “Lhan and I and… others, are part of a loose circle of truth seekers, determined to learn the real story of our past, and we spent much of our youth hunting for forbidden books and digging in old dead cities.” He smiled, and his eyes went all far away. “Those are some of the fondest memories of a sad and profligate life. Lhan and I, alone together, full of youth and curiosity and appetite.”
Alone? Together? Appetite? I blinked. “Wait a minute. You and Lhan…?”
Rian-Gi smirked. “Surely, my dear, you knew he slept on both sides of the bed?”
“Well, yeah, but… but….” I couldn’t help it, my eyes dropped to his gut.
He looked down, shrugging. “Well, I was more svelte then, and Lhan more beautiful, if you can imagine. Ah, here we are.”
He pulled a map from the bottom of a pile and laid it across a desk. “It isn’t shown as Toaga here, but it is marked nonetheless. This is a poor copy of an ancient map of the old kingdoms I made for one of our expeditions. You may have it. It shows the route from Ormolu…” He pointed to a big dot on the upper left side of the map, then trailed his finger down to a smaller dot near the bottom edge of the map. “To Udbec the Impregnable.”
“The—the what?” I was still trying wrap my head around the idea of him and Lhan being together and was only hearing every other word.
“A great tower of rock rising from the forest—well, there is no forest now, but there was then. It was so high and so inaccessible that it was thought to be unconquerable, and the King of the Udar built his castle upon it. That, of course, was before the Seven granted us the gift of levitating air. After that it fell to the first Oran Emperor in a day. It has been abandoned since then, but for the pirates.”
I squinted at the map. There wasn’t much to it. I didn’t see any lakes or oceans or roads, and it was hard to tell what the scale was. “How far is this? How
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE RACE!
F rom the way he said it, I was expecting his “private chamber” to be some kind of pervy pleasure room, and it was—at least part of it was. It was behind a secret door, just like it was supposed to be, and there were paintings of beautiful purple naked boys all over the place, and books of porny drawings open to the good parts on podiums. There was also a bed and a wardrobe filled with naughty costumes, but another part of the room was more like a professor’s office. There were scrolls on the desk, and thick leather-bound books with titles like The First Angao Dynasty and Heresies of the Khat Rebellion in piles on the floor, maps on the walls, and ink quills and notebooks and scribbled-on scraps of paper everywhere, which Rian-Gi was digging through like a dog looking for a bone.
I laughed and held up a book called History and the Nature of Divinity . “You have to hide history books too?”
He looked up from his search and pointed to the porn. “They might shun me for owning that.” His finger swung around to the history books. “They will kill me for owning that.”
He was dead serious. I didn’t get it. “What? Why?”
“You truly are from another world, aren’t you? History is the most dangerous thing in Ora. The truth about the Seven and the One? The truth about the Wargod? The church has guarded those for centuries. Men have disappeared for only wondering aloud about their true origins. Professors, men of great learning, they all tread carefully around those subjects, choosing, for the sake of their own skin, to concentrate on the succession of kings and the wars between them. Those who do not? Gone. They fall out of windows, they die in tavern brawls, robberies, of strange sicknesses, of accidental poisonings.”
I looked around at all the books again, shaking my head. He’d had all these in his house when the priests had come asking questions. “Damn. You’re braver than I thought.”
He shrugged. “Lhan and I and… others, are part of a loose circle of truth seekers, determined to learn the real story of our past, and we spent much of our youth hunting for forbidden books and digging in old dead cities.” He smiled, and his eyes went all far away. “Those are some of the fondest memories of a sad and profligate life. Lhan and I, alone together, full of youth and curiosity and appetite.”
Alone? Together? Appetite? I blinked. “Wait a minute. You and Lhan…?”
Rian-Gi smirked. “Surely, my dear, you knew he slept on both sides of the bed?”
“Well, yeah, but… but….” I couldn’t help it, my eyes dropped to his gut.
He looked down, shrugging. “Well, I was more svelte then, and Lhan more beautiful, if you can imagine. Ah, here we are.”
He pulled a map from the bottom of a pile and laid it across a desk. “It isn’t shown as Toaga here, but it is marked nonetheless. This is a poor copy of an ancient map of the old kingdoms I made for one of our expeditions. You may have it. It shows the route from Ormolu…” He pointed to a big dot on the upper left side of the map, then trailed his finger down to a smaller dot near the bottom edge of the map. “To Udbec the Impregnable.”
“The—the what?” I was still trying wrap my head around the idea of him and Lhan being together and was only hearing every other word.
“A great tower of rock rising from the forest—well, there is no forest now, but there was then. It was so high and so inaccessible that it was thought to be unconquerable, and the King of the Udar built his castle upon it. That, of course, was before the Seven granted us the gift of levitating air. After that it fell to the first Oran Emperor in a day. It has been abandoned since then, but for the pirates.”
I squinted at the map. There wasn’t much to it. I didn’t see any lakes or oceans or roads, and it was hard to tell what the scale was. “How far is this? How
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