In Training

  The walls
(when we reached them)
were ashes and mist.
They fell to powder
at the touch of our weapons.
(the dead fled at our coming)
(My blade is a line scribing lines before me.
Something is watching)

The old man's fingers move
in a gesture of Power.
(the boy makes a warding, a guarding,
alert that the master has begun to combine
Synchrony and Symmetry)
The master fades,
flickers,
and firms.
His feet move lightly as
he glances the blade around and back,
carving verse on the belly of Night.
(My blade is a line scribing lines before me.
Something is watching)

Bravely, intently,
the student watches,
wary,
waiting.
His eyes move slightly as
he glances the blade back and around.
(My blade is a line scribing lines before me.
Something is watching)

Out of Mist and Ashes
they build their
Walls,
and fill them with the ghosts of their
Dead.