The Initiate Brother Duology Read Online Free Page B

contemplated the display of his chi quan instructor—basking in the perfection of it.
    The boy, Shuyun, had emerged from his Seclusion that morning and felt both a vast sense of freedom and at the same time a loss of freedom like none other he had known. Perhaps at no other time in his life would Shuyun have the opportunity to spend so much time totally alone. The Supreme Master had been right; six months could be a lifetime. A lifetime alone to meditate upon the Word of the Perfect Master.
    The routine of his Seclusion had been relentless. Rise with the sun and practice chi quan on the pattern set into the floor of his one-room house. At midday he took his only meal and was allowed to meditate or compose poetry in the enclosed garden. Then came an afternoon of chi ten. Sitting within the Septima, concentrating all his being upon the Fifth Concurrence where the sand glass sat. Then, again in the afternoon, chi quan practiced before his wall-shadow until dark, followed by meditation on the Seven Paths. He was allowed three hours’ sleep before sunrise.
    Each afternoon Shuyun had sat, as he was sitting now, on the pattern and practiced the discipline of chi ten. Controlling his breathing, feeling chi drop to his
Ooma,
the center of being, he had reached
out
with his chi, sending it into the lines of power in the pattern. And each day the sand ran more slowly in the glass as Shuyun learned to alter his subjective time.
    The ability to alter one’s perception of time was not unknown beyond the walls of Jinjoh Monastery. The kick boxers could do it, to a degree, and some of the best tumblers and dancers spoke of it. Shuyun wondered if perhaps everyone experienced the stretching of time in brief moments of complete concentration. But only the Botahist Orders had discovered the keys to its mastery: chi quan and chi ten, the disciplines of movement and meditation represented in the pattern of the Septima, the Form which taught perfection of motion and total concentration.
    “Entering the mind through the body,” Lord Botahara had called this. Shuyun was beginning to understand. It was as though he had finally begun to do that which he had only understood before in words.
    Sitting on the rock overlooking the sea, Shuyun felt chi drop and he beganto push it out from his body, imagining that it rushed out into the infinite space around him to slow all motion.
    A leaf fell from a ginkyo tree and spiraled endlessly downward. Anxiety touched the young monk and he felt his focus waver, but the leaf kept falling ever so slowly and Shuyun’s confidence returned. He was able to concentrate on the play of sunlight on the planes of the leaf’s surface as it fell against the background depths of a blue sky. Finally it touched the surface of a small pond and sent ripples out in perfect circles. Shuyun counted the tiny waves and named each one after a flower as it died at the pond’s edge. A poem came to him:
    The spring has blossomed
    Yet a ginkyo leaf
    Falls endlessly
    Into the lily pond.
    Shuyun released a long breath. Relief swept through him and it felt like an endless, powerful wave. Twice during his Seclusion he had lost control, or so he thought. Twice his altered time sense had seemed to distort and he had found himself somewhere…somewhere he could not describe. And when he had returned to the usual perception of time, it was with a crash which he knew indicated loss of all control. His teacher had never warned him of this and the young monk felt a strong fear that he was failing to learn what he must learn to become a senior of his Order.
    He had intended to speak of this with senior Brother Sotura but did not, deciding it would be better to wait. And he felt now that he was gaining control. There had been no reoccurrence of this strange experience in several months.
    A memory of the time before his Seclusion came to him: kneeling before his teacher, listening.
    “You must always move within the pattern, you must even breathe