Chương 17: Words

Once Theodere left the training ground, Mr. Hall took control of the new students. His first instruction was directed at most of the older trainees.

"Regular groups return to training. Assistants stay." The field immediately began reorganizing itself. Older students moved back toward their usual sections while a smaller group remained near Hall. To Joe's surprise, Simon was one of them. Joe looked toward his brother. Simon noticed. His shoulders straightened slightly. Joe recognized the expression. Simon had something to be proud of and was trying very hard not to announce it before anyone asked. Hall selected several older trainees to help with the new batch.

Some would assist with literacy and classroom work, while the more advanced students would help demonstrate basic exercises, breathing principles and static stances once formal physical training began. Simon belonged to the first group. The reason was obvious enough. Over the previous three years, his literacy had become unusually good for a village child his age. Part of that improvement came from Joe helping him review lessons at home, although nobody inside the Hall knew how much.

Simon had already been trusted occasionally with younger students. Now the role was becoming formal. Hall explained the compensation after assigning everyone.

"Students who regularly assist with literacy will receive one meal from the medicinal canteen each week. Those assisting with martial instruction will receive three." Simon stopped pretending not to be excited. His eyes immediately brightened. Joe almost laughed. The Hall had found an efficient incentive system. Theodere did not need to hire a large number of permanent instructors.

Older students reinforced their own fundamentals by teaching beginners, younger trainees received more individual attention, and the assistants were rewarded with something valuable enough to make the extra work desirable. Simon leaned toward Joe as soon as Hall looked away.

"Once every week."

"I heard."

"I told you I'd eat there eventually. This is even better because I don't have to convince Father to spend ten silverlings." Joe glanced at him.

"You said you were going to earn enough to buy it yourself."

"Eventually. This happens first."

"Convenient." Simon smiled.

"Being useful has advantages." Joe decided not to remind him who had helped make his reading useful. Hall continued organizing the group.

"Who already knows enough characters to read basic passages?" Joe raised his hand. He looked around. Only two others did the same, both children from outside Green Hollow. None of the other three newly accepted children from the village appeared able to read properly. That was hardly surprising. Literacy among farming families was limited even for adults. A seven-year-old child was more likely to know how to weed, carry grain, feed animals or recognize weather than how to read a written passage.

Among the eleven newly accepted students, only three claimed basic literacy. Hall looked mildly surprised.

"Three. Better than usual." He pointed toward them.

"You will still be tested by Scholar Sean. Knowing a few characters is not the same as being literate." Then he addressed everyone else.

"Morning literacy instruction runs from seven until nine for those who need it. Basic reading is not optional. Martial inheritance is not passed only by demonstration. Much of it is written." The children became more attentive.

"If you cannot understand instructions, you cannot safely practice what is written. Misread a story and you misunderstand the story. Misread a tempering method and you may injure yourself." That gave literacy a very practical purpose. The new students followed the assistants through a gate beyond the main training area and into one of the classroom buildings. Simon walked near the front with the other assistants. He was the youngest among them.

That did not stop him from behaving as if he had recently been appointed to manage the entire Hall. He turned twice to check whether the younger children were following and once told one boy not to drag his writing board along the wall. Joe watched silently. Simon was enjoying this far too much. When they entered the classroom, a man with partly white hair was already waiting near the front. Simon stepped forward before any of the older assistants could speak.

"Scholar Sean, this is the new group. Hall said three of them claim they already know enough to read, so you'll need to test them." Sean looked at Simon. Then at the children. Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author. Then back at Simon.

"You became an assistant this morning." Simon nodded. Sean's expression did not change.

"Try not to sound as though you've been managing the classroom for ten years." Several children laughed. Simon's satisfaction disappeared immediately. Joe looked toward an empty desk before his brother noticed him smiling. Sean turned toward the class.

"Sit." Joe did. The room surprised him almost immediately. There were actual desks and chairs arranged in rows. Not rough benches. Desks. At the front stood a dark writing board, and beside it lay several pale sticks that looked almost exactly like chalk. A single bound book rested on Sean's table. Joe chose a seat near the front. The assistants remained only long enough to settle the younger children and explain where writing boards and water stones were kept.

On ordinary days, they would return after formal lessons to help beginners repeat characters and practice writing. Sean himself taught only three mornings each week. On the remaining days, assistants supervised repetition. Simon paused beside Joe before leaving.

"I'll be back tomorrow."

"For what?"

"To help teach."

"I might pass Sean's test." Simon considered that.

"Then I'll teach someone beside you. You can still listen if you want." Joe looked at him. Simon nodded seriously, apparently satisfied with his solution.

"I'm sure I'll learn something."

"You usually do." Simon followed the other assistants outside. Joe looked around the classroom again. Something about the room bothered him. Paper existed in this world. Books existed too. Neither fact was new. What bothered him was the quality. The sheets on Sean's desk were far more uniform than the rough scraps Joe had occasionally seen around Green Hollow. Their edges were straight, the surface was smooth and the thickness appeared remarkably consistent. The writing board raised the same question.

None of this was impossible for a pre-industrial society. That was important. Joe did not want to mistake uncommon in Green Hollow for technologically impossible. A wealthy town could support specialized paper makers. The Talent Hall might simply purchase better materials from Blackwood. Still, the contrast was noticeable. Green Hollow used crude farming tools, thatched houses and expensive iron products, yet Sean possessed smooth paper, a large writing board and bound books sturdy enough for regular classroom use.

Perhaps manufacturing elsewhere was simply more advanced than village life suggested. Joe did not know. Simon had never mentioned any of it because Simon apparently saw nothing unusual. To him, paper was paper. Sean began the lesson.

"Words are more important than most of you understand." He wrote several characters on the board.

"A farmer can live without reading. A martial artist cannot." The children quieted.

"Words carry knowledge. They carry laws, contracts, history and martial inheritance. A person who died centuries ago can still teach someone born today because his thoughts were written down." Joe liked that explanation. Sean continued.

"But writing can carry more than meaning." His tone changed slightly. Joe noticed.

"At a sufficiently high level, written characters can retain spirituality." Joe became completely attentive. One of the children raised a hand.

"The paper has spirituality?" Sean looked faintly offended by the simplification.

"Not ordinary paper." He turned back toward the board.

"A skilled calligrapher can place something of his understanding and spirituality into his writing. Truly accomplished works can retain that quality for generations." Joe immediately remembered Hall's explanation during the Starlight test. Spirituality could gather in an environment. Children absorbed it while growing. The connection was obvious enough to ask about. Before Joe could speak, another child did.

"Then rich people buy those writings for their children?" Sean nodded.

"Wealthy families sometimes keep spiritual calligraphy in their homes. A strong piece can improve the spiritual environment around it and, over time, may improve the chances that a child develops the necessary foundation for martial qualification."

"Then their children all become martial artists?"

"No." Sean answered quickly.

"It improves probability. Nothing guarantees qualification." Wealth could not simply purchase a successful Starlight result. Apparently, it could still influence the odds. Joe thought again about the better-dressed children elsewhere in the Hall. The advantages began before training. Better food during childhood. More varied nutrition. Medicinal support. Perhaps spiritual calligraphy hanging inside the home for years before the child ever touched a testing stone.

The path was unequal long before anyone entered the yard. Sean seemed increasingly pleased as the subject moved toward calligraphy.

"Truly accomplished spiritual calligraphers are respected almost everywhere. A single excellent work can sell for more silver than an ordinary farming household sees in years." A boy near the middle of the room raised his hand.

"Can you make one?" The room became very quiet. Sean cleared his throat.

"Not yet." Several children smiled. Sean ignored them.

"Calligraphy is also a road of practice. I have studied for many years, and perhaps one day my writing will retain spirituality." There was unmistakable pride in his voice. Joe found that interesting. Sean was not a martial artist, but he still possessed a path that could apparently lead to status, money and something beyond ordinary craftsmanship. For the moment, teaching Theodere's students probably gave him stable work, access to books and regular use of materials most village households could never afford.

Joe's opinion of literacy shifted again. He had originally learned written characters because knowledge was useful and No Regression made retaining them unusually efficient. Now writing might have an additional value. If spiritual calligraphy could eventually become a profession, it could provide something martial training would increasingly demand. Money. Medicine. Better resources. Joe did not assume that remembering characters would make him a spiritual calligrapher. That would have been ridiculous.

Recognizing a written symbol and creating one capable of holding spirituality were obviously different abilities. Still, this was the first non-martial path he had encountered that connected directly to the strange forces governing this world. That made it worth exploring. Sean's lesson continued. The beginners practiced characters first by tracing shapes with their fingers. Later, they used water on flat stone boards so the same surface could be reused after drying. The dark board at the front belonged to Sean.

Nobody touched it. When the formal lesson ended, Sean dismissed most of the class but kept the three children who had claimed literacy. He brought several sheets of rougher paper from a cabinet.

"Write the characters I give you. Then write their meanings." The test began simply. Joe completed the first group without difficulty. Sean increased the complexity. Then came short phrases. Complete sentences. Finally, Sean gave them a broader task.

"Write what you saw during Master Theodere's demonstration and explain what you understood from it." Joe paused before beginning. That was a much better test. Recognizing characters and producing coherent written thought were different skills. He wrote. The exercise took much longer than the earlier portions. Nearly an hour passed before Sean collected the three pages. He read the first child's work, then the second. Joe watched his expression without trying to interpret too much. Sean picked up Joe's page.

His eyes moved across the first few lines. Then slower. After several moments, he looked up.

"Who taught you?"

"My brother brought characters home."

"Simon?"

"Yes." Sean looked mildly confused. Joe decided not to explain several years of watching Simon study, correcting his mistakes and remembering almost everything afterward. Sean returned to the page.

"You learned all this from what Simon brought home?"

"Mostly."

"Mostly?" Joe thought about the characters he had seen around the village, marks used for trade and things he had picked up from signs or scraps.

"I learned some elsewhere." Sean studied him for another moment.

"You don't need beginner literacy." Joe felt immediate relief. Two hours every morning was a substantial amount of time. Sean placed the page aside.

"That does not mean you stop practicing writing."

"I understand."

"Good. Reading something once and deciding you understand everything is how fools injure themselves." Joe suspected Sean had dealt with martial trainees before. The other two children received their results as well. One was excused from the beginner class, while the other was told to continue attending until his reading became more reliable. By the time they returned to the main training grounds, most of the day's activity was ending. The new students were allowed to go home.

Their real schedule would begin the following morning. Students who require literacy would study from seven until nine. Assistants would help with repetition afterward. Physical training, static stances and conditioning would occupy most of the remaining day. Hall personally spent about an hour each day moving between the beginner groups, correcting important problems and explaining principles that senior trainees were not trusted to teach on their own. Theodere's role remained much more limited.

He might appear around the Hall roughly once a week when he was nearby, but direct instruction from him was rare. Proper lessons from Theodere came closer to once a month, sometimes less, depending on his other responsibilities. That structure made far more sense now. Theodere provided the inheritance and the authority behind it. Hall managed the Hall itself. Senior trainees carried much of the daily repetition. Scholar Sean handled literacy and writing.

One capable martial artist could therefore train far more students than he could ever instruct personally. Joe looked once more toward the classroom building before leaving. Theodere's broken stone had shown him how strange martial arts could become. Sean's lesson had shown him something equally important. Martial arts were not the only unusual path in this world. And Joe had barely begun learning what else existed.