"Flynn-ThePromiseOfGod" - читать интересную книгу автора (Flynn Michael)

more interesting.

To ply the craeft, as all men knew, would nibble the soul away.

His parents had begun the search for a rixler that very evening. The priest had
come up from Lechaucaster, down by the forks of the river, where the chain dam
hoarded the headwaters for the southern canal. He had come up the mountainside
a-muleback and had tested Nealy with an ankh. It was stuffy in the close-bed
with the priest. The man stank with the sweat of his riding and his breath was
foul. Nealy remembered everything about that day with the clarity of a landmark
spied across miles of fog and mist.

Mama had cried. He remembered that, too.

"For a while yet, he may refrain," the priest said with a shaking head.
"Ynglings oft try to abstain; yet in the end, they cannot restrain themselves
and are drawn back to the Other Way in spite of everything."

His mother rose from the table and turned crossing her arms across herself-- and
Nealy drew back quickly in to the confines of the close-bed lest she see him.
But he leaned his head by the door so as to hear everything.

"But Nealy is a good boy," she said. "And dweormen do much good in the world."

"Esther. . . " Papa's voice, warning.

"But only under the tutelage of a trained rixler," insisted the priest. "One who
may provide a soul for him when his craeft has eaten his own." Then he chanted
from the Gospel of Thomas:

*
"'When you make the two into one, When you make the inner like the outer, And
the outer like the inner, And the upper like the lower, When you make the male
and the female into a single one. . . '"

Nealy had heard the words before, at synagogue, when the priest sang from the
Hermetic books, but they had meant nothing and still meant nothing.

"He is too young," said Mama through a quiet sob. (Oh, and Nealy bristled at
that. Too young? Why, he was seven! All of seven . . .)

"It comes on them at the age of reason," the priest said. "Best that his
training begin tonight."

"So soon?" Papa's voice had been laced with sorrow. "I had thought that. . . "
Papa's voice trailed off.

The priest was silent a moment. Then he spoke firmly. "Nothing is gained by
putting it bye. There is only loss. I shall have a mister come to tutor you, and
to select the rixler. Does the lad prefer girls or boys?"