A few years passed, and life began to become routine for Arthael. Some parts of it were idyllic, and he could do things he never could have done in the city that was his former home. The woods were fun to explore, full of creeks and abandoned stick forts made by the other boys.

Sometimes he would find himself forgetting that he had been stolen away from his family and trapped in an isolated city. But there were guards, men who stood at key points around them, armed with swords and dressed in stiff leathers. They served as a stark reminder that they were being kept here and not there by their own choice.

He learned a lot about the church, mainly from the lectures in which the instructors rambled on about the church and its history. They told them how the church started and taught the names of past kings and queens. They taught them about other cultures and other peoples who had tried to overthrow the church, and the economic troubles brought on by outsiders.

They also instructed them about the strict hierarchy in the church, from the elite warrior-priests known as paladins, who served as the king's guard and commanders, to the priests who served them, and then the servants themselves who served everyone.

And they were told where they existed in the hierarchy. They were trainees, picked and selected by the church to join its ranks wherever they fit best, whether as a paladin, priest, or other servant.

One of the instructors who taught history was an older man named Oref. He was incredibly tall, taller than any man Arthael had ever seen, and so slender that it looked as if his white robes held nothing inside them but his bones. Arthael couldn't be sure how old the man was, but he wondered if one day the frail older man would disappear in the wind and never return.

Oref said he had once been one of the church's highest-ranking members, a high priest. But he was old now, so he had been called here to instruct the next generation.Arthael found most of the lessons tedious, and as Oref's voice droned on and on about some battle or other, he found himself losing focus in class and thinking of home.

Sometimes it felt like it had been forever ago, and other times it felt like hardly any time had passed at all. But as the days became weeks and then months, it became harder to remember the little things that once drew his attention, like the smell of his mother's bread cooking in the oven, the smell of his father's sweat, or the feel of his favorite leather toy.

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Perhaps the strangest of all the new things they learned and did daily was the chanting. At first, Arthael thought the instructors were trying to teach them to become a part of a choir or maybe see if any of them had musical talent. Arthael wasn't sure, but he knew that the church needed priests who could sing. Sometimes he remembered hearing the singing echoing from the large cathedral back when he lived in Mildor.

But they only learned a few songs, and they sang them day after day. Eventually, he could remember the words by memory and the inflections and notes of the song came second nature to him. The teachers wanted them to practice while they ran and fought, and sometimes he found himself humming the strange songs before he slept.

There was something strangely soothing about the pattern of words and melodies. When Arthael sang, he could feel a lightness in his bones, and he felt calmer too. His mind seemed sharper, and it was easier to focus. It was as if the world stretched out, and he could pick and choose which parts to experience and in what detail he wanted.

When they chanted the songs together, he could follow the path of a butterfly in the air even while running briskly or pick out a small rodent hiding in the nearby brush. The runs themselves became longer and longer, but his bones and muscles didn't ache in the same way they always did, and then they stopped hurting altogether.

But it wasn't just his endurance that improved, but his strength as well. The force of blows in their sparring sessions became so intense that the wooden practice swords often broke into splinters. After a while, they had broken so many practice swords in mock combat that they had to chop down trees and make more.

Arthael asked some of the other boys if they had noticed it, and they had. Karthas thought they were getting stronger on their own, and it was natural that the training got easier and they could do more. They were boys, after all, and they were becoming men. He was right about that, but Arthael also thought Karthas's ego wouldn't allow some supernatural force to aid them.

His new friend Benny, a quiet lad who enjoyed sharpening the eating knives into throwable weapons, thought it was magic that Oref had cast on them. That struck a chord in Arthael, as the instructor had something odd about him. But when they sang most of the time, Oref was nowhere to be seen.

There were no answers to be had, and the instructors, while friendly enough during the instructions, would shake their heads to questions they didn't want to answer. Since they had already learned the songs and how to chant, there was never time to ask anymore.

And so, they chanted, fought, and ran, over and over again.