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  Shigeru laughed out loud, which only served to increase Ryuu’s irritation. “It’s not funny.” He crossed his arms and attempted to stomp his feet, although his position on a barely steady tree stand limited him to shuffling his feet in childish anger.

  Shigeru continued laughing. It was only Ryuu’s prolonged angry stare that caused Shigeru to calm down.

  “I’m sorry. . . I realize it’s not funny to you.” Shigeru had his hands on his knees. “Oh, to see your face. I’m sorry, that was priceless. I forget sometimes how respected the monks are here. What if I told you that the monks that you know are less intelligent than your average piece of rabbit droppings?”

  Ryuu glanced at Shigeru to see if he was joking. He seemed serious, but there was a glint in his eye. “They can’t be dumb. They are responsible for making sure that the sense is protected, and they protect all of our kingdoms, making sure that there is never another great war again!”

  Shigeru chuckled again, but held himself better than before.

  “Trust me when I say that none of that is true, but for now I am willing to let it rest. There are larger problems afoot, and the first is that we need to teach you how to use the sense.”

  Ryuu’s respect for Shigeru clashed with the deeply ingrained fear and respect of the monks.

  “I’m going to be a nightblade? Even if the monks said I never would?”

  “I think you will be. I hope you will be. At least, most of me does. In the end, the decision is up to you. It’s not always going to be easy or fun, but it’s up to you to decide whether or not you keep training.”

  There was no hesitation on Ryuu’s part. He had feared the monks, but he trusted Shigeru. “Let’s get started then.”

  Shigeru nodded and motioned for him to lie down. “It’s easiest to begin when you are relaxed and focused.”

  Ryuu lay down and did his best to relax. It was difficult with the excitement running though his body.

  “The first and most important thing you must know is this: the whole world around us is alive. I’m not saying that the moss in the stream has feelings or that the trees have thoughts like you do. But there is energy, a connection between all things. Simply put, your ability with the sense is the ability to be aware of that energy, to know where living things are and to know how things are going to move. In reality, the sense is nothing more than the ability to have a little bit more information than the others around you.”

  Ryuu didn’t understand what Shigeru was talking about. In his head he imagined everything being connected by a rope, but everything was stuck in place because it was connected to everything else, the whole world stuck in one large spider web. The imaginary picture almost made him giggle, but he caught it in time. Shigeru was speaking very softly and with reverence. This was not the time for laughter.

  Shigeru paused for a moment as if deciding what to say next. He stopped talking about the sense and switched to giving Ryuu concrete instructions. As he lay down on the tree stand, Shigeru tried to get him to focus on his breathing.

  Ryuu had never thought about his breathing before. Shigeru coached him in taking deep breaths, slowing him down until Ryuu thought he wasn’t getting enough air. “If you can hear yourself breathing through your nose, you are breathing too quickly.” It took a little practice, but soon Ryuu was maintaining a perfect breathing rhythm.

  As Ryuu narrowed his attention on his breath, he experienced the strangest sensations. It was like he was trying to close a window in his imagination, but the more he focused, the more he shut out his thoughts, the more the light came in. Something was happening, but he lacked the words to describe his experience.

  His eyes were closed per Shigeru’s instructions, and his mind relaxed and focused on his breathing. He felt emptied. A part of his mind was aware of the brush of the wind moving through the trees and the sounds of the forest, but he paid no attention to any sensation except his breath. He knew the deer approaching the tree below was a young buck.

  Something clicked in his mind and realization hit him. There was no deer below them. He hadn’t seen or heard a deer, but he knew that a deer was present nearby. He sat up and opened his eyes to see Shigeru studying him, a knowing smile on his face.

  “I saw a deer. Did I imagine it?”

  Shigeru didn’t say anything. He had just the slightest trace of a smile as he pointed with his left hand. Approaching below them was the same deer Ryuu had just seen. Ryuu’s disbelief and excitement quarreled with each other, but the excitement overpowered doubt like water breaking through a dam.

  Possibilities ran through his mind. In a moon he would be killing bandits with ease! He imagined glory and battles and helping those weaker than him with his skills. He could find lost animals! He would hunt like Shigeru, for now Ryuu knew how he did it. If you knew where the animal was going to be every time, hunting would be a simple task.

  Shigeru attempted to get Ryuu to focus, but he saw he was fighting a battle he couldn’t win. Ryuu tried, but he might as well have tried to stop a thunderstorm. He laid back down on the stand and attempted to focus once more, but his excitement was too great. Shigeru tried to hide his disappointment. No one ever succeeded on their first attempt. That much he knew. The boy had, but he lacked the ability to replicate the feat. Shigeru had felt Ryuu’s sphere of attention expand. His sense had expanded out in all directions, like tendrils searching for any life they could find. To be able to use the sense in a manner that was so natural would serve the boy well. He hoped that the initial success wasn’t just a fluke.

  It was clear no more success would visit them today. Shigeru could feel the boy trying to focus, but he was six and didn’t have such a high level of control. He sighed inwardly. He was beginning to realize just how patient his own tutors had been with him. No man could ever accuse Shigeru of being impatient, but even the simple training of a young boy was enough to push his limits.

  The problem was his potential. If the boy had been ordinary, just another boy, or even the type of boy the monasteries found and trained, Shigeru wouldn’t have had such high expectations. But the boy was special. He interacted with the sense in the old ways, in the ways that Shigeru himself had been trained. It was the natural way, the stronger path, but here on the mainland, no one followed the old ways anymore. The monasteries, corrupted by political influence and crippled by the knowledge lost in the Purge, had lost the way, and the sense was passed down in a new manner, a shell of the power it had once possessed. Ryuu had the potential to be great. Possibly even greater than Shigeru if he worked hard enough at it.

  But Shigeru, like the boy, had to remind himself success did not come overnight. He wanted the boy to succeed almost as much as the boy himself wanted it.

  The following moons and cycles passed by in a blur. Ryuu thought the previous training had been a dream come true; but the new training, which included instruction in the sense and combat, was pure bliss. That wasn’t to say it was easy. It was the hardest task Ryuu ever set himself to. There were days of physical training, conditioning, and combat. Mixed in was training in the sense. Over and over Shigeru brought Ryuu to the edge of complete exhaustion and then brought him back, giving him a day of rest while they focused on developing his sense.

  The days were filled and busy. Chores, studies, training, more chores. Ryuu was never bored with his environment. He learned how to cook, garden, and hunt, to understand the importance of the stars in the sky and the different ways to navigate through the world. He learned the geography and history of the Three Kingdoms and could recite distinguished bloodlines while performing challenging workouts.

  One technique Shigeru often employed was mixing learning with physical tasks. They would work with numbers while out running, or Ryuu would have to answer questions about the world while sparring. He became an expert at thinking on his feet while the world spun around him.

  Shigeru sharpened Ryuu’s love of observation. Before he met Shigeru, Ryuu had been curious about his surroundings, but t
hrough his new master he learned how to turn that curiosity into useful information. He learned how to tell if people were lying, how to mix his visual observations with what he learned about his environment through the sense and most importantly, he learned how to be aware of everything happening around him at every moment. The training even extended into his sleep as Shigeru taught him how to maintain a relaxed sense-awareness at night. As his sense skill grew he became, like Shigeru, impossible to sneak up on.

  Two cycles went by in this manner. Winter had turned to spring long ago, and spring turned into summer, fall, and winter again. Ryuu had determined that where he lived now was more temperate than the village where he had been born. There was still snow during the winter, but it didn’t blow and drift at Shigeru’s home the way it did on the plains of his early childhood. In the same way summer wasn’t too warm. The trees and the terrain kept much of the land shaded and cool.

  Ryuu had never had much, but with Shigeru he learned how to make do with less. They possessed little. Shigeru carried his weapons everywhere, but besides garden implements and cookware, there was nothing else in the house. At times Shigeru would make journeys and return with reading materials for Ryuu to practice with, but Ryuu didn’t have the toys of his younger days.

  It was spring when Shigeru began to act distracted. Ryuu could tell there was something on his mind but decided not to ask. He would discover the reason in due time if he was supposed to. If Shigeru never spoke of it, it wasn’t for him to know. Whatever it was, it distracted him every day. Often Ryuu would catch Shigeru staring off into the distance as if the horizon was hiding the answer he was looking for.

  One evening over supper it finally broke.

  “Ryuu, in a couple of days I am going to leave. I’ll leave on the new moon, just for tracking time’s sake. I plan on being gone for several days, but it may be longer. I’d like you to stay here.”

  Ryuu accepted the news without comment. He had been expecting something of the sort. He had often been left alone at the hut but never for more than a few days. His childhood fears began to surface, bubbling through the protective layer he had hidden them under.

  Shigeru weighed his words. “I believe that it is time for me to take a journey. It touches on my own past, and I haven’t been sure about it, but I’ve made up my mind. I thought about taking you with me, but there is some danger involved and I would rather you remain here.”

  “Will I be fine here without you?” There was a hint of doubt in Ryuu’s voice.

  Shigeru flashed a smile at the question. “I don’t think you realize it yet, but though you’re only eight you’re probably the strongest warrior besides myself in the area. I’m sure you’ll be able to handle yourself, and I don’t expect anyone to show up here. I’ll make sure supplies are taken care of. I don’t want your training to change. You know how to push yourself. You’ve been doing it now for several cycles, it will just be up to you to motivate yourself to keep training for the next couple of days.”

  The morning after the moon turned, Shigeru prepared to leave.

  “I’m hoping I will only be gone for a half moon, but if you see a full moon before I return, you need to accept something might have happened to me. Go down to the village just like I’ve talked about in the past. You need to tell them I was your uncle but that I disappeared. Pretty much anyone in the village would be willing to help you. Just stay away from the monks. If I’m alive, I will find you.”

  Ryuu nodded his consent, but couldn’t help running up to Shigeru and embracing him. The move caught Shigeru by surprise. The two of them weren’t given to hugging. Still, Shigeru returned the embrace and tousled Ryuu’s hair. Then he turned around and was off without a backwards glance.

  Shigeru’s absence didn’t affect Ryuu as much as he expected. He followed Shigeru’s instructions to the letter. Being busy allowed him to forget he was alone in the world. Every morning he did chores and trained. He would play for a while and then finish the day with more chores and more training. He even pictured Shigeru’s stares of disapproval anytime he made a small error. It wasn’t hard to do.

  It was only at night that his fears manifested. Ryuu still had occasional nightmares. When he was awake he couldn’t remember his mother’s face anymore. He wished that he had a painting or something he could use to remember her, but she existed in his memories, locked away during the day. Every time she came to mind all Ryuu could think of was the final look she gave him, but even that look was decaying in his memory, leaving only the feelings of her death, exaggerated with every remembrance.

  Ryuu took to getting up and walking out of the little cabin at night when the nightmares would wake him. Walking naked in the night, he would come out into the cool air surrounding the hut and look up at the night sky. On the cloudy nights there was no relief, but on the clear nights Ryuu would stare at the moon. As the days passed it stopped fading and began to grow, a little more each night. As it grew Ryuu would look at it and think, “Shigeru will be on his way back soon. Just a few more days and he will be back. I just need to be strong until then. He would make fun of me if he knew how much trouble I had when he wasn’t around.” Repeating this mantra over and over, Ryuu would succumb to sleep.

  Shigeru returned two evenings before the full moon. Their meeting was a warm one. Ryuu sensed him coming from quite a distance away. He broke from the house and met him while he was still deep in the woods. Ryuu had expected to get in some trouble for his rashness, but Shigeru said nothing, answering Ryuu’s enthusiasm with his own grin. The two left much unspoken in a tight embrace.

  Shigeru didn’t speak to the purpose of his journey, but he was carrying a large package on his back. It was long and narrow, wrapped in a cloth that was covered in dirt and grime. It didn’t seem like something someone traveled many leagues to find. When they got back to the hut, Shigeru kicked Ryuu out to go play. Ryuu knew he was being sent away because of the package. His curiosity was overwhelming, and he tried several times to sneak back to the cabin, but Shigeru’s sense couldn’t be fooled, and he was yelled at from behind the closed door every time. Ryuu finally gave up and ran to play in the woods.

  When Ryuu returned closer to evening Shigeru was more prepared for him. There were a couple of new items around the cabin, but Ryuu knew that something more was still afoot. The package had been too large and the new items Ryuu could see around the house did not add up to the space of the package. A new pot and some spices did not a long journey make. Shigeru, as always, knew what Ryuu was thinking. He laughed out loud. “There’s really no use in trying to hide anything from you, is there?”

  Ryuu shook his head. Shigeru groaned to himself and thought for a minute, giving Ryuu the look he always dreaded. It was as if Shigeru was trying to stare right into his soul. Finally Shigeru seemed to reach a decision. “Fine, I think you’re ready, at least for the gift itself. I’ll show you the real purpose of my trip tomorrow. What I am going to do is something that should be done during the daylight, and so you’ll have to content yourself with one more night of waiting.”

  It turned out one more night of waiting wasn’t a problem at all for Ryuu. He was so tired from his sleepless nights he fell asleep early and slept in late. He awoke disoriented. It was unlike Shigeru to let him sleep in. The truth was apparent when he looked over and saw Shigeru asleep himself.

  Ryuu determined he was going to get a jump on the day. He did his best to complete his chores as quickly as possible, and much to his frustration Shigeru seemed content to try to sleep the entire day away. Ryuu had done all his chores and completed his morning training before Shigeru stirred from his slumber.

  To Ryuu’s dismay, Shigeru went about his morning routine as if nothing was different. He awoke, ate a light breakfast and went through his own morning routine. Having nothing to do, Ryuu watched his master, his father. He was so fast, and even though Ryuu had been training with him for almost three cycles, there was still no way for Ryuu to track all of his movements, although he w
as getting better.

  Shigeru finished his training and went into the house. Ryuu sat, pretending patience. When Shigeru reappeared Ryuu saw he was carrying a large bundle wrapped in the dirty cloth again. Shigeru nodded and the two of them went walking. It didn’t take Ryuu long to realize they were going back to the small clearing in the woods.

  They arrived and Shigeru knelt down to the ground, placing the package in front of him. Ryuu followed his master’s lead, facing him from three paces away.

  Ryuu’s breath caught as Shigeru unwrapped the package. His actions were deliberate and Ryuu thought he wouldn’t be more careful if he was unpacking a baby. It was a pair of swords, both the long and the short. The sheaths were simple black but beautiful. They were similar to Shigeru’s. The hilt was plain, but when Shigeru pulled the blade from its home, Ryuu knew he had been given an incredible gift. The blade was as fine as Shigeru’s, which Ryuu knew was unique in the Southern Kingdom. It was a sword fit for a prince.

  Ryuu bowed forehead to the ground as Shigeru presented him the sword.

  “These blades belonged to a dear friend of mine. I think she would be glad for you to have them.”

  Ryuu’s ears perked up at the mention of a “she.” Shigeru never spoke of women. He filed it away as his eyes continued to drink in the vision of his gift.

  “Take care of them, please.”

  Ryuu looked up. There was a surprising amount of emotion in Shigeru’s face.

  “I will.”

  Shigeru nodded. After a few moments of silence he composed himself again.

  “Always remember. You hold a weapon designed to take the life of another. It is a tool for killing. Never forget that. However, perhaps through one man’s death you can protect another. I pray you will succeed in your responsibility.”

  Ryuu was overwhelmed with gratitude, joy and excitement, but he just managed to catch what Shigeru said under his breath to no one in particular.