Read Online The Makers of Light by Lynna Merrill - Free Book Online
Authors: Lynna Merrill
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had been gone for a long time. Adept Morten had chosen the Sunset Lands, where the mountains was tall and the ores and rocks many, pledging his fire and craft to the Mines. Adept Brelle had gone to the forests of the North, her own spells breathed into the metal of tree-felling tools—axes and the wretches she selected to wield them.
They hope that I, too, will go away some day. It was said that the first adept to teach a newly-made acolyte was special, that if Merley had any adept potential at all, she was more likely to follow the path and even habits of her first master than the paths of masters who came after. She would study all paths in her time—Artificery, Catechism, Sagacity, Humanism, Scrivenry, Physicka, Treasury, and Transformation—until she proved she was ready to be an adept herself, or until ten years had passed with her skills and actions not sufficient to make her more than a generalist.
Henna was a generalist. Merley would not be one! She would be an adept, and in more paths than one. She would be a High Adept, as only the most skilled of Bers could be. No, not even that—she would be an Adept of All Paths, as only Adept Endarion had once been. Some history books—books with real history, not the easy, digested truths served to those not blessed by the Master—said that he had quenched the Great Fire of Year 400 by himself, that without him the other Bers might have not succeeded. He had become an Adept of All Paths then, at age thirty.
If he could have learned and done so much, certainly Merley could, too. Only ... two hundred years was a long time. Ber knowledge and Magic had not stayed still for two hundred years, and neither had perceptions. What was deemed a Great Fire then was no longer great and was more easily quenched, and perhaps if she had the same knowledge of all paths now that Endarion then had, she would be more of a generalist than an Adept of All Paths. She was born later. She had more to do and prove.
Brighid, Keagan, Henna and the rest of them expected her to wane in old Darius's high, remote tower, perched on a hill on the eastern edge of Mierber. It was half a city away from the Fireheart with the Head Temple, and almost a city away from the Firemind, where most Ber towers, including the Acolyte and Novice towers, stood.
In the Firemind, Adept Weyli taught Artificery interspersed not with tiny clocks and mountain metal stories but with social venom and gossip. Her students were likely to achieve positions of Firemind power, rather than wander off to unsavory responsibilities in the country like Darius's few were apt to do. " Weirdus, " Merley had heard some acolytes call him. They knew nothing, the accursed fools. She already loved the kind old man and even his remote, gray old tower, and she could almost love Brighid herself, for serving him as punishment for Night 11 and Morning 12, for Merley's latest and greatest defiance.
Merley
Night 11 and Morning 12 of the First Quarter, Year of the Master 706
Merley spent Night 11, like many nights before, out on the walls of the Novice tower. The moons glowed above the Acolyte tower across the narrow path. Specks of light collided with its gloomy windows, scampering, escaping with the wind like a rain of flames and flickers, as if the moons had decided to send messengers to the world. She suppressed the urge to close her eyes, extend her neck from the cranny in the Novice tower wall she was hunched in, and feel the wind.
It would be unwise; she could be seen. Besides, the wind would just slip beside her, fleeing with no trace of light.
There was an old aberrant peasant song that said one could catch the wind that flew by her lonely window, and fly with it herself; that she could run across the land to freedom and to her special someone.
Oh, really, fly where? To whom? It was a silly folk song, but it had become stuck in Merley's mind, its simple but pervasive melody pulling strings it was not supposed to pull. A Ber should not
They hope that I, too, will go away some day. It was said that the first adept to teach a newly-made acolyte was special, that if Merley had any adept potential at all, she was more likely to follow the path and even habits of her first master than the paths of masters who came after. She would study all paths in her time—Artificery, Catechism, Sagacity, Humanism, Scrivenry, Physicka, Treasury, and Transformation—until she proved she was ready to be an adept herself, or until ten years had passed with her skills and actions not sufficient to make her more than a generalist.
Henna was a generalist. Merley would not be one! She would be an adept, and in more paths than one. She would be a High Adept, as only the most skilled of Bers could be. No, not even that—she would be an Adept of All Paths, as only Adept Endarion had once been. Some history books—books with real history, not the easy, digested truths served to those not blessed by the Master—said that he had quenched the Great Fire of Year 400 by himself, that without him the other Bers might have not succeeded. He had become an Adept of All Paths then, at age thirty.
If he could have learned and done so much, certainly Merley could, too. Only ... two hundred years was a long time. Ber knowledge and Magic had not stayed still for two hundred years, and neither had perceptions. What was deemed a Great Fire then was no longer great and was more easily quenched, and perhaps if she had the same knowledge of all paths now that Endarion then had, she would be more of a generalist than an Adept of All Paths. She was born later. She had more to do and prove.
Brighid, Keagan, Henna and the rest of them expected her to wane in old Darius's high, remote tower, perched on a hill on the eastern edge of Mierber. It was half a city away from the Fireheart with the Head Temple, and almost a city away from the Firemind, where most Ber towers, including the Acolyte and Novice towers, stood.
In the Firemind, Adept Weyli taught Artificery interspersed not with tiny clocks and mountain metal stories but with social venom and gossip. Her students were likely to achieve positions of Firemind power, rather than wander off to unsavory responsibilities in the country like Darius's few were apt to do. " Weirdus, " Merley had heard some acolytes call him. They knew nothing, the accursed fools. She already loved the kind old man and even his remote, gray old tower, and she could almost love Brighid herself, for serving him as punishment for Night 11 and Morning 12, for Merley's latest and greatest defiance.
Merley
Night 11 and Morning 12 of the First Quarter, Year of the Master 706
Merley spent Night 11, like many nights before, out on the walls of the Novice tower. The moons glowed above the Acolyte tower across the narrow path. Specks of light collided with its gloomy windows, scampering, escaping with the wind like a rain of flames and flickers, as if the moons had decided to send messengers to the world. She suppressed the urge to close her eyes, extend her neck from the cranny in the Novice tower wall she was hunched in, and feel the wind.
It would be unwise; she could be seen. Besides, the wind would just slip beside her, fleeing with no trace of light.
There was an old aberrant peasant song that said one could catch the wind that flew by her lonely window, and fly with it herself; that she could run across the land to freedom and to her special someone.
Oh, really, fly where? To whom? It was a silly folk song, but it had become stuck in Merley's mind, its simple but pervasive melody pulling strings it was not supposed to pull. A Ber should not
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