Chapter 159

"I have a son called Irtysh" Rizantona said. She'd been thinking about her scattered offspring and which ones might get along with Otohime. Irtysh, although she didn't entirely approve of what she thought were his indolent ways, was certainly attractive and amusing. "He lives in the north, beyond the mountains, as they say there, between here and my home in Eastern Europe. Humans live south of the mountains mostly, very few of them venturing far into them. His name has even come to mean 'beyond the mountains,' and there is a river, a big one, that bears his name, flowing out of those mountains as the source of a larger system."