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Book View Cafe
Category:
Fantasy
Publisher: Book View Cafe
ISBN-10: 9781611386141
Type: Fiction
Pages: 268
Copyright: Dec 15, 2004
Price: $4.99 (eBook)
In the twenty-fifth year of the reign of Cyne Colfre, a fifteen year-old girl named Mereddyd-a-Lagan sought to wield powers reserved, until now, for men.
Would she attain the station of Osraed ... or die a heretic like the one who went before her?
THE MERI is a Locus Magazine Best First Novel pick and a Crawford Fantasy Award finalist.
Excerpt
CHAPTER ONE
There is a bridge between the finite and the Infinite. This Bridge is the Meri, the Spirit of the Spirit of the Universe, which men call God. Nothing may cross that Bridge: neither day nor night, nor old age, nor death nor sorrow nor evil nor sin.
Only the pure of heart may cross that Bridge, because the world of the Spirit is pure.
In the crossing of this Bridge, the eyes of the blind will see, the wounds of the ailing will be healed, and the sick Man will become whole.
To the crosser of the Bridge, the night becomes day, because in the world of Spirit there is everlasting Light.
-- The Book of the Meri, Chapter I, Verses 34-36
It was not lost on Meredydd-a-Lagan that she was the only girl at Halig-liath. It was brought home to her every morning at Assemblage where she stood, front and center in the huge cobbled yard, Surrounded by the other Prentices--boys, all of them.
It hadn't been so bad when she was younger; she had been almost indistinguishable then--cropped chestnut hair, tunic hung loosely on a slender, angular frame. But she was fifteen now,
and in the last year, many things had grown apace with height and hair.
This morning was particularly bad; she felt completely alien, awkward and unwelcome. In the warmth of a fine spring morning, she stood out from the others like a briar among roses--her bare arms hairless, her light tunic betraying mounds and bends and curves no other Prentice possessed. She sensed eyes on her as they murmured their congregational prayers and prepared for a day of lessons.
She dared to glance up at the Osraed in their gallery high up on the imposing stone wall of the Academy. They were looking at her too--Ealad-hach, Calach and her guardian, Osraed Bevol. She got Osraed Bevol to meet her eyes and he smiled. She forgot her awkwardness in an instant and filed away with the others for classwork.
"She's gotten to be such a tall girl," said Osraed Calach. "Taller than some of the boys."
"She's still a girl," Ealad-hach reminded him, and glanced at the silent, smiling Bevol. "She will always be a girl. She should be training in the domestic arts. Training to be the wife
of an Osraed and the mother of Prentices."
"And why," asked Bevol, "should she do that when she could become Osraed, herself? She has absolutely no talent for the domestic arts, Ealad. None. But she is already practicing the Divine Arts with some skill."
"You should not let her practice."
"Why not? You let your personal favorite practice and Meredydd has shown far more natural talent and inclination than he has."
Ealad-hach wrinkled his knife-blade nose.
"Ah?" Bevol pressed, pointing a finger at that oversized feature. "Ah now, admit what you cannot deny. Meredydd is second to none in her class."
"And it goes to her head. A bad condition for a girl."
"If it went to her head and if she were an ordinary child--of either sex--I would agree, but neither is true."
"The Meri will not accept a female Prentice, you know that."
"I know nothing of the sort. There is nothing in the Books that denies Prentice-ship to girls."
"There is tradition-"
"Pah! Old folk tales, hearsay-"
Osraed Calach cleared his throat. "Do you intend to abandon your students in favor of this ancient argument?"
Osraed Bevol smiled and wagged his head. Snow-streaked copper, his hair and beard rippled with the motion, cascading over the azure of his robe. "I will never abandon my student," he said pointedly, and led the way from the gallery into the Academy.
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