"John Norman - Gor 01- Tarnsman of Gor" - читать интересную книгу автора (Norman John)

Sacred Place and is the source of the Priest-Kings' power."

"Who are the Priest-Kings?" I asked.

My father faced me, and he seemed troubled, as if he might have said more than he intended.
Neither of us spoke for perhaps a minute.

"Yes," said my father at last, "I must speak to you of Priest-Kings." He smiled. "But let me begin
in my own way, that you may better understand the nature of that whereof I speak." We both sat
down again, the stone table between us, and my father calmly and methodically explained many
things to me.

As he spoke, my father often referred to the planet Gor as the Counter-Earth, taking the name from
the writings of the Pythagoreans who had first speculated on the existence of such a body. Oddly
enough, one of the expressions in the tongue of Gor for our sun was LarTorvis, which means The
Central Fire, another Pythagorean expression, except that it had not been, as I understand it,
originally used by the Pythagoreans to refer to the sun but to another body. The more common
expression for the sun was Tor-tu-Gor, which means Light Upon the Home Stone. There was a sect
among the people that worshiped the sun, I later learned, but it was insignificant both in numbers
and power when compared with the worship of the Priest Kings who, whatever they

were, were accorded the honors of divinity. Theirs, it seems, was the honor of being enshrined as
the most ancient gods of Gor, and in time of danger a prayer to the Priest-Kings might escape the
lips of even the bravest men.

"The Priest-Kings," said my father, "are immortal, or so most here believe."

"Do you believe it?" I asked.

"I don't know," said my father. "I think perhaps I do."

"What sort of men are they?" I asked.

"It is not known that they are men," said my father.

"Then what are they?"

"Perhaps gods."

"You're not serious?"

"I am," he said. "Is not a creature beyond death, of immense power and wisdom, worthy to be so
spoken of?"

I was quiet.

"My speculation, however," said my father, "is that the Priest-Kings are indeed men-men much as
we, or humanoid organisms of some type who possess a science and technology as far beyond our
normal ken as that of our own twentieth century would be to the alchemists and astrologers of the
medieval universities."