Linnear 03 - White Ninja by Eric Van Lustbader Page A

or Nangi introduced her to was so damn polite Justine couldn't stand it. No one could consistently be that polite, she suspected, and really mean it. And yet, Nicholas had repeatedly told her that the virtue of sincerity was extremely important to the Japanese.
    What, then, was she missing? Was she crazy in her belief that she would never be allowed into the inner social circles of even Nicholas's closest Japanese acquaintances? She did not think so.
    Again, she felt as if she were missing something vital, some kind of Rosetta stone which, once deciphered, would explain the inexplicable Japanese to her.
    And now, Justine understood that she needed Nicholas's help more than ever. She could not allow him to push her away. She had to persevere. She knew in her heart that whatever difficulties both of them might encounter, they could survive them only if they stuck together, and did not tolerate this eerie estrangement in their relationship.
    Justine allowed herself one brief moment to feel the fear that her estrangement from Nicholas engendered in her. Then, she did her best to clamp it off. She listened, instead, to the sounds of summer all around her.
    In a moment, she had drunk her fill. She replaced the ladle on the stone basin, and immediately the carved michi disappeared. Justine turned, and went through the twilight, taking a different route back to the house.
    Inside, she heard Nicholas in the workout room. She could hear his deep exhalations as he hit the padded pole over and over again with knuckles as hard as steel.
    She exhaled deeply, as if she had been holding her breath for a long time, felt how much tension she had been holding in her upper body. For months, she had ached with worry for Nicholas. She passed by the workout room now and thought, Everything will soon be all right. He's starting to get back to his old self.
    Nothing could have been further from the truth, however. Nicholas knew it the moment he threw the first of the aikido atemi. It was clumsy, out of skew, the result
    -not only of being rusty, but of something more pervasive, something sinister.
    The unthinkable had occurred. Nicholas had suspected it months ago. Now he was sure.
    In the first few weeks after the operation, there had been a great deal of pain. Out of reflex, Nicholas had
    sought to dissipate it through his martial arts training. There was a way to open, internally, the endorphin channels in order to damp down on the brief, immediate pain one experiences in hand-to-hand combat. For more lasting pain, such as he had, there was another way.
    Getsumei no michi. The Moonlit Path. Akutagawa--san, one of Nicholas's sensei, had said, In Getsumei no michi you will experience two immediate insights. One, all sensation will gain in weight and significance. You will, in effect, simultaneously see the skin and what is beneath it. Two, there will be an awareness of light even when there is none.
    What Akutagawa-san had meant, Nicholas had learned, was that Getsumei no michi allowed him to combine intuition with insight. He could hear lies spun in the air; he could make his way through the most labyrinthine enclosure blindfolded. Getsumei no michi was a return to man in his most elemental state, long before the layers of civilization accreted, stifling his primitive power.
    But Getsumei no michi was much more. It was, in effect, a haven, the source of Nicholas's inner strength and resolve. In Getsumei no michi all things were made clear to bun. Without it, he was far worse than deaf, dumb and blind. He was defenceless.
    When, in pain in the hospital, he had sought surcease in Getsumei no michi, he had found none/ His connection with that mystical state was not only severed, but his knowledge of the state itself was gone altogether. It was not a question simply of memory. Nicholas could remember what Getsumei no michi was, could even conjure up what it had felt like to be there, and that proved the most painful realization of all. A person born