The Sword Spirit Chose a Nobody for His New Master novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Stone Let Go
A water carrier trips on Founding Day and catches the hilt of the sect's legendary sword; it slides out of the stone and its spirit kneels and calls him master. The Hall wants the blade, and the spirit follows him home asking where a sword sleeps.
Every Founding Day, the whole Cloud-Anvil Sect gathered on the Tomb ridge to watch someone fail to move a sword.
The sword stood in a black stone, hilt up, and it had stood there for three hundred years.
Any disciple could lay a hand on it.
Shao Chuhe watched from the back, where the outer disciples stood with their water buckets.
He had a pole across his shoulders, a bucket at each end, and grey-brown robes with the sleeves rolled to the elbow.
The inner disciples went up one by one in their white and blue.
Yan Jingyi went last, the handsome favorite with the gold rings in his braid.
Everyone had expected the stone to give for him.
He pulled until the veins stood out in his neck, and then he stepped back, red to the ears.
"Water," said someone from the inner rows, without looking.
Chuhe hurried up the steps with the buckets.
He was near the top when his foot caught the edge of the last stair.
The pole swung and both buckets flew out in a wide silver arc.
Chuhe went forward with his arms out, and the nearest thing to grab was the hilt.
His fingers closed on cold, worn leather.
The sword slid out of the black stone.
Nobody breathed.
The blade rang once, a low note that Chuhe felt in his teeth.
White light ran down it, and it left his hand, hung in the air, and turned into a man.
He was tall, taller than Chuhe by a head.
His hair was silver-white and fell loose to his waist.
His eyes were the grey of new steel, and his black and silver robes shone at the hem.
He dropped to one knee in the spilled water and held the sword up flat across both palms.
"Master," he said.
Chuhe looked behind him.
Nobody was there but the outer disciples, who had all taken a step back.
"Master," the man said again, looking straight at him.
"I think you have the wrong person," said Chuhe.
"I do not. I am Hanjue, the blade in your hand. I have waited three hundred years for it."
Yan Jingyi's sword was out before anyone saw him draw.
"Step away from him," Yan said. "You're no master. He's a water carrier."
The man in silver rose.
He did not seem to hurry, and the sword was suddenly in his right hand, with its point resting under Yan's chin.
Yan went white.
"Don't," said Chuhe.
The point dropped away at once.
The man turned to him with the sword lowered and his head bowed, waiting.
Chuhe stared.
He had spoken flatly, the way he would to a dog near a bucket.
The legendary blade of the sect had obeyed it.
"I'm sorry," Chuhe said, because no other words came. "He's only upset."
"I will do as you say," said the man. "Tell me what you want."
"I want you to not stab anyone."
"Then I will not."
He stepped close.
Before Chuhe understood, the man tucked the sword into the crook of one arm.
Then he took Chuhe's face between both hands and tilted it up to the light.
His palms were rough, with hard ridges across them in the same places as Chuhe's own.
Chuhe's skin burned where they touched.
"Warm," the man said, almost to himself, and his thumbs moved over Chuhe's cheekbones. "You are warm."
"Let go of my face," Chuhe said, unsteady.
The hands left him at once.
The man stood there with his fingers still curved around nothing and looked bereft.
"Enough." The voice came from the stairs, and the crowd split to let a tall thin man through.
Elder Pei Zhaohong of the Sword Hall wore deep blue and a jade pin.
He looked at Chuhe.
"Name," he said.
"Shao Chuhe, Elder. Outer sect. Water."
"Root?"
"Poor, Elder."
"The Founding Blade does not belong to a water carrier," said Pei. "It belongs to the Hall. Give it here."
"I cannot be taken," said the man in silver, before Chuhe could speak. "Only given."
Pei's eyes moved to him, and something in them was very cold and very sure.
"Then he will give it," said Pei.
Chuhe looked at the sword in the man's arm, and at the man, and at Yan Jingyi's furious face.
He had carried other people's water for five years.
"No," he said.
"No?" said Pei softly.
"He picked me. I'm not giving him to anybody."
"The Hall will test this bond at dawn, in front of every elder," he said.
"Until then the blade stays with its bearer. If it fails, you go back to your village, boy, and the sword comes to me."
Chuhe walked down the ridge with his empty buckets, up the plank stairs to the long bunkhouse, and in at the door.
The man in silver walked one step behind him the whole way.
Chuhe stopped in the middle of the dark room, among the empty rows, and turned around.
"You can't follow me in here," he whispered.
"Where else would I go?" the man asked.
He looked at the bunks, and at the straw mats, and at Chuhe.
"Master, where does a sword sleep?"
"A sword doesn't sleep."
"I have never slept," said the man, and for the first time his cold voice cracked a little. "Show me."
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