Book One: Featherless Arrows
One: Calling Swords

Sitting cross-legged amid the Sword Grave, Arrow called his sword to him. His joints frozen stiff and with prolonged inaction knotting up his muscles, it was hard to focus. Taking deep breaths, he closed his eyes and tried again, concentrating on a vague image of a sword and repeatedly mouthing the words "come to me..."

There was a stillness in the air and the wind was silent, even the low droning of the cicadas was oddly distant, as though they too were waiting for something. The pale trees which enclosed the Grave seemed spectral in the darkness. The moon was round, awake and watching him with interest. Blackened swords jutted out from the black soil: like rigid blades of overgrown grass. These were all the blades of their order, once wielded by the great Xia of their order, but now rusted with disuse they waited for a new wielder - him.

It was one of the first lessons of the order: "The greenest shoots grow from decaying remains."In the same way, he must in the Grave of Swords find a new blade. He had walked into the Grave as wood-wielder of the Followers of the Jian Mountains, only allowed wooden practice swords. By daybreak, a real sword would have found its way into his grasp and Arrow will be no more. There will be a new name, a new title and a new life.

He waited.

Agitated, he rested his hands on his knees, then overlapped them by his stomach. He rested them on his knees again palms upwards and turned over. He repeated the sequence half a dozen time more before clasping them conclusively by his stomach again. Absently he chewed on his braid. It tasted of the long grass, which have been braided into his hair as symbol of his wood-wielding status of the Followers.

He waited.

Realising what he was doing, he spat out his braid again. Stray hairs tickled the nape of his neck. He tossed his head. He unclasped his hands. He clasped them again. Hair now irritated his forehead; he shook his head vigorously.

The Xia were mostly aloof, but when they indulged the young with brief insight into the deapth of their wisdom they could never quite describe the importance of a sword to a swordsman: It was an extension of oneself, part of one's arm, one's external soul. Neither could they explain exactly what they meant by calling.

"Never doubt yourself. Know that it will come and call for it," one had said.

"You're to young to grasp the concept... no respect for the aged these days. Badgering us with questions. When I was young..."

The anticipation was almost too much to bear. What would it look like? Arrow imagined wielding the graceful twin knives of Li Shi'fu or the green glyph-inscribed sword of Mao Shi'buo. Barb had emerged from the Grave a week ago with a long sword that sung metallic notes when unsheathed. Maybe his would be like that...

"I had felt my whole life flash before my eyes. All that was, why I was there... and a glimpse of what could be... Good luck, brother of the sword." Those were Barb's last words before ceremoniously stripping away the layers of himself inside the Jian Temple and reappearing as Swordsmaster Beng the next day.

Arrow closed his eyes; his history wasn't flashing. Maybe it needs a little help... I was born sometime in late Autumn. He was adopted at the age of three into the order like many other orphans as the Followers" annual act of charity. Once adopted, he shed all traces of his former existence and became one of the many nameless rascals. Beneath everyone else, he was subservient to all the Followers and was subject to their whim. He had even thought of leaving the Jian Mountains and its Followers. Even life on the streets couldn't be as hard as waking before daybreak, sleeping long after moonrise and spending every watermark in-between with bones sore from menial labour. Waddling around in clothes too big for him, he fetched and polished, scrubbed and scurried six years away. But that rascal had endured to become Arrow the wood-wielder. The many watermarks of training and a strong daily dose of awkwardly positioned bruises and splinters made many consider leaving, but Arrow had survived.

Guiltily, Arrow peeked from behind his eyelids to check the progress of his sword.

Nothing. There was no dancing spectrum of colours or sword flying through the air to meet him, just the jagged landscape of the Grave clawing at the sky.

Doubt crept over him. What if the sword doesn't come? What if it doesn't want me? What if I'm not worthy? What if... He thought back to the years of training, the mornings he had awakened before sunrise for extra practice, the afternoons he had spent perfecting all the motions at snailspace, the evenings he had lingered at the practice fields, the nights he had laid awake too sore and strength-sapped to sleep... He cast the memories aside.

The sword will come.

Arrow thought back to Barb's advice. What was he and why was he there? I was a lost orphan. I was a nameless rascal. Now, I am Arrow the wood-wielder and I am here to become a swordsman. It was hard to structure his calling to become a Xia into thoughts. It was as compulsive and reasonless.

I want... to follow the steady footsteps of the Jian Mountains and to mimic their stony serenity. To do something about all the little injustices in the world, like that which resulted in the loss of my parents. To be a Xia and wander the wild of Jiang'hu.

Jiang'hu, the River Lakes, is the dangerous underworld of intrigue and honour that lies thinly-veiled beneath everyday mediocrity. Its people are those who have turned their backs to a normal life, choosing instead to devote their existence to the study of martial arts and to use that knowledge for good - or for more ignoble purposes. The different factions and schools of weaponry and practice hold a delicate balance of power guarding the secrets of their arts.

The Followers of the Jian Mountains was among the largest of these factions and the most righteous. Inspired by the ring of six mountains, a wandering Xia conceived of a philosophy and a set of sword techniques that imitated the mountains. He called it the Art of the Mountain. Its ninety eight movements and their subsequent variations won him much fame among martial circles. After being rejected by the woman who had defeated him in a duel, this Xia wandered distraught into what would become the Grave of Swords. Even then it was an eerie place; the annals described it as a place of "unnatural stillness." After meditating there for three whole days he stumbled from it light-headed, but enlightened. He changed his name to Shan'zi, meaning "child of the mountain," and founded the Followers of the Jian Mountains. His disciples later adapted and elaborated the Art of the Mountain, but the basics remained the same.

I want to be out there with sword in hand and fighting evil, reliving the famous tales of old, like Yan'An or Wei'zhi. To try and make things better, instead of sitting and waiting for things to heal themselves.

A merchants" caravan richly laden with trade goods, like a fat worm wriggling slowly across the countryside. Its guards was little more an exhibition of expensive armour and weapons than true swordsmen, wobble behind in half-drunken-stupor. The merchants, dressed in luxuriously inappropriate vesture for the harsh roads ahead, ride on overweight ponies with braided manes.

With a rustle of leaves, black-clad bandits rush from their hiding place, brandishing swords and spears. They shout insults at the merchants as half the guards are shocked awake and the other half fumble with their weapons.

"Wandering by. Peace Disturbed. One must unsheathe the sword in aid." That would be me. The metallic ring of a sword unsheathed will follow and I'd appear sword in hand, ready to defend the hapless merchants...

That was how Tian Shi'fu and Mao Shi'buo found me - but they weren't as swift. By the time they leapt out of the sky, the bandits had killed all members of the merchants" caravan except for the women and the children who hung about their apron strings. Arrow winced. He was too young to retain any memory of the tragedy.

Market day bustles into town. Merchants and vendors shouting out their inventory and waving their goods in one's face. Scales are jingling and goods exchange hands, both with and without the counterpoint of money. I would wander through the plaza and when the familiar call of "Thief!" arises, I'll be quick to respond. A quick eye to sieve out the thief in the crowds and even quicker feet to catch him. The same quick eye will spot the clay pressed to make false the scales and the stealthy hands of an pickpocket.

A mother and her child huddle by streetside. The child is sick and feverish, moaning for something to soothe its suffering. Their garb grey and worn. A chipped dish is set out for donations, but the cheerful clink of pottery is always it being kicked aside. A black-clad figure will wander by and press a string of coins into her hand and vanish into the crowds. That too would be me... Arrow smiled. Once he gained the title, there was much he would do.

And there would be adventures... yes, adventures... like that dream: A tower gleams pearlescent in the distance, minaciously beautiful against a landscape of grey mountains. Mist coalesces into fog, obscuring all. The moon is just a thin slivers of curved light, as though it is averting its sight from this night's happenings. A horse whinnies in the distance. Shadows snakes between the trees.

Horses gallop towards me in a crescendo of hoofbeats and a furious storm of dust. The hooded figure astride the foremost horse reaches out a hand and snatched mine. The rush of speed hits me all too suddenly. Instinct took hold and I swing myself astride the horse in front of the figure.

"Lead. You know the way." Reins are pressed into my hands and I feel arms wrap around my waist. "Hurry."

I cannot comprehend the orders I shout to the horse, they are just loud sharp barks to me, but the horse seems to understand. It dives into the forest and weaves between the trees.

The shadowy horses seem closer than ever, their hoofbeats an echo of mine own. I feel the arms around my waist tighten and the warm breath of speech against my back, though I can't make out the words. The horse's gait smoothes as it seems to leap more than gallop; the gap between each set of hoofbeats lengthens. The woods gather around us: spaces between the trees narrow and the undergrowth thickens. Stray twigs snag clothes and branches whip at us...

Thrill lingered in him, but Arrow forced himself from the dream. He needed a sword before he could start doing heroic deeds. Arrow closed his eyes and tried to focus on his sword.

Come to me. Come to me...

His focus shifted and in his mind he was atop the silver horse again with the warm weight of his passenger pressed against him. The forest blurs into fog, which crystallises into the pearlescent tower. It looms before me, just a bridge away - a long, narrow stone bridge, which the architect had designed in a fit of insanity, across a yawning chasm. The horse balks at the threshold of the bridge. I reassure it, patting its shoulder. We dismount, knowing there was no way we could ride across the bridge.

"Tie up Hei. You have no need of him in the tower," comes the calm voice of my cloaked passenger.

My fingers shake with excitement as I fumble with knotting the reins. When I look up, my companion has moved to the ornate threshold and was barring the way with spread arms. Before I can draw conclusions, the cloaked one speaks.

"Arrow in flight yet without purpose. Will you accept this marksman's aiming?" The voice is deep, harsh and echoic, as though spoken from the opposite end of a tunnel. In the moonlight the cloaked one seems but an overgrown shadow.

"What quarry do you wish me to hunt?"

The voice grows deeper, more strained and distant. "You cannot know until you can tell the target from the arrow, the arrow from the bow, the bow from the bowman... Would you piece a life from the fragments of a dream? Would you let a legend guide you? Would you let an illusion, fabricated by a slumberer, rule your destiny?" The cloaked one waits. The wind whips the cloak to mimics the dance of flame, but the cloaked on remains motionless and waiting, with all the grace of a stalking cat, ready to pounce... and somewhere, there are tears... I can feel someone crying...

A breath of cold, metallic air scraped on his skin.

It had come.

He did not know how he knew, only that he did. The certainty of instinct was interrupted by reasoning doubt. Excitement pulled taunt his nerves and his stomach squirmed against his ribs. Silently, Arrow counted to six before looking down to what the ghosts of the Grave had deemed him worthy of.

Eyes met sword. For moments Arrow wasn't sure if he was judging it or it him. It stared back at him, waiting for him to move, the same way he waited for it to move. Sheathed in a battered leather scabbard.

The leather was warm and as his fingers closed around the hilt he knew that this was his sword and that he would never let go. It was like recognising an old friend in a foreign place. Old friends have changed; old swords have changed, but not so much that he does not recognise it. In a fleeting glance - a misplaced memory, or a prophecy of sorts - he saw how this sword will became one of the cardinal truths of his world, like his parentage, his ambitions and his skill. He knew he would be measuring time from this moment of this day; this was when he became real. All those years were but mimicry, cruel parodies of this truth.

With the sword came a new understanding. All the time he had wasted on lead-balanced practice blades and empty-handed arts, where the hand half-curled around an imagined sword. All those years was not enough to prepare him for this. It felt too different. How could warm, welcoming leather compare with harsh wood, which bristled with splinters?

He dared not draw it yet; the sword had chosen to come sheathed, such a choice should be respected. Arrow ran a finger down its length: from the brown tassels which hung from the ring at the end of the hilt, along the crisscross of the leather grip and to the tarnished bit which capped the scabbard. He judged the blade to be seven handspans in length, but it was hard to be sure with it still sheathed. The hilt was just over a handspan in length: a single-handed blade, but space enough for two hands to wielded it.

The crossguard, curving gracefully towards the blade, shone in the moonlight. The metal was smooth and cold to touch. The scabbard was flecked with gold and slightly damp, smelling of sweat, blood and saltwater. Angular patterns had been scorched into the leather of both the scabbard and the grip, but it was too dark to read them.

Arrow picked it up, weighing it in his hands. It was much heavier than a practice blade, but that could simply be due to the added weight of the scabbard. His fingers drifted curiously to the brown tassels hanging at the end of the hilt, a relic from its former owner. Arrow drew from his robes the knot his mother had supposedly carried; he wasn't to bring it, but tonight of all nights he needed her blessing. Like his mother's, the knot from which the tassels sprung was a lovers" knot, often used by young lovers to seal a promise of marriage. Arrow tried not to craft a history for the blade's previous owner; he needed to focus.

Hello, sword... thank you for coming...

He had until dawn to bond with the sword. What exactly that entailed was another mystery. Like the calling of the sword, it was something that was to spontaneously happen and make sense.