"Maybe one day you will hear the voices like silver whispers in the moonlight, that speak the hearts of men. Maybe; it is a gift to be God-touched so, but the Gods are intemperate and to them your anguish is just as sweet as your joy.

   "Grandson, be ready for the voices and what they will do to your heart, as well as to the hearts of men of ambition. Your gift, if it is so given, is not to be spoken of lightly.  So that you understand the path before you, you must learn of what became of the first to hear those voices."

Our story begins on the edge of Henan in the kingdom of Han, where Captain Long Liu is returning to his column after a reconnaissance of Han lands. His army, soldiers of Chu are retreating. As he passes, Long reins in his horse at the sound. Near the road there is the sound of a boy.

    "Mama mama! Wake up mama! Please, mama mama!" Long sees a small boy of perhaps four winters pleading with his mother. Even from where he sat, some metres away, Long saw the woman was dead. Normally he would pass by; women of the village would care for the boy, but something today compelled him. He picked up the boy and laid him across the pommel.
    "Your mother is dead. Come with me and live. Stay, you take your chances".

Many years later in a school outside the gates of the city of Jinling-yi, where the orphan boy Rain was being educated to be an officer-soldier. This was a good year, a time of peace in Chu. The war between the Chu and the Han had ended that spring, while the Qin's expeditionary force in the northwest was turned at Ru'nan.

This day started like any other. Rain was at breakfast with his friends after morning exercise. He was in his thirteenth summer, not yet into his man's growth and flourishing under the discipline and routine of his lessons. He was boasting with his friends that he was the boy, man, to unite all the rebel kingdoms under his banner... Chu's banner, not to be treacherous. Rain was unaware that the Gods had a different path laid out for him.

After the breakfast hour, Rain was to attend to his clerical lessons: today's was calligraphy, which he hated. The characters of Chu were flourished and complicated, not like the older Wuyue picture-script. Rain didn't have a memory for the characters and kept forgetting the order of the strokes. Many times he'd been beaten for putting the strokes down in the wrong order. The teachers always claimed they could tell, though he couldn't see the difference.

Today, though, it was easy. Somehow he knew the strokes, even on the new characters. "Downward left in the third quarter" the voice told him, "dash, then horizontal turn turn turn to long tail right" it came again, and Rain made the complicated flourish. He finished the phrase and ran to present his paper.

    "Wang Shi-fu! I am finished!" Rain was excited. Maybe he finally had learned the secret of characters. Maybe he'll escape a beating this time. Wang Shi-fu studied his work for a long time. Rain could sense the confusion in his teacher, tinged with envy,
    <<the boy has written with the hand of the Gods. But his characters are normally so poor. He must have cheated! But to cheat he would have to cheat in front of me. That would be a great loss of face. I would be low in front of the others. I will ignore this transgression and watch him carefully, find his subterfuge later.>>
    "Student Rain, you have done well. You may display this in the Great Hall."
    "Shi-fu, thank you. Please, Shi-fu, I did not cheat!"
    "Wha'! How di..." but Rain had already run off.

Rain was unaware that those few words would have such a profound impact on his path. Over the next weeks he began to excel in all his studies, performing unnaturally well. But his teachers and Wang Shi-fu in particular were suspicious and watching him closely. He did not know, but only Long Liu kept him from harm, and Long Liu was worried.
    "Rain, what are you doing? The teachers don't know whether to advance your training or cast you out as cursed!"
    "Long Shi-fu, I don't understand!"
    "Small-rain, you have until this season been an apt student and no better. Suddenly and for no reason we can see, you have started to exceed students many years your senior. You fight with techniques you have not been taught. You answer questions that you have not been asked and you appear to know the minds of your teachers!
    "Maybe if you were from a family in Jinling-Yi, or even of Chu, people might say you are gifted by the Gods, but you are an orphan and however much I might hide it, that you're from Han becomes more obvious as you grow. People say you're cursed, that you're a devil sent to destroy us from the inside."
    "I am not a spy, I am not cursed, I'm Chu, this is all I've ever known! How can you say such things?" Rain begins to cry. Long puts a hand on his shoulder, grips tightly.
    "I know what you are, and I know what you're not. But my influence is not as much as you might think, Rain. I warn you, the Great Master is on his way to test you. When he's here, I can do nothing."

In the two weeks before Great Master Ding Li arrived from Guangling the school was a flurry of activity. Students scrubbed the paths, cleaned and repainted panels, hung phrases in the Great Hall. Rain's work was discretely removed. The Great Master arrived with all the ceremony as befitted a man of his station: the Daoist warrior monk who had travelled the known world learning all the fighting arts, from the wild horsemen to the north to the barbarian fighters of the south. It was even rumoured that he'd travelled far down the Yellow River and across the sea to Sun's Source and studied with the peoples found there. Here was a great man, a wise man. Rain was worried.
 
For a further month, Ding Li paid no heed to Rain. He spoke with the teachers and with the Captains of the county. He trained many classes and prepared the graduation ordeal for those young men ready to advance to the military academy. Finally on the eve of the Autumn Festival, Rain received his summons.

    "You know why you're here"
    "Yes, Ding Da-shi." Rain is kneeling and bowed to the floor.
    "Look up." <<There is a knife in my left pocket>>

Rain looks up and towards the folds in Ding Li's cloak.
    "So you know about my little gift, then?" Rain nods. "Here, take it" <<The handle and blade are poisoned>>
    "Da-shi, that knife will kill me!"
    "TAKE IT!" Rain takes the knife gingerly by its shear-stop.
    "I have been Great Master of all the schools of southern Chu for nearly twenty years. In my time I have seen students learn to do as you do now. In the wild lands of the far south there are those that claim to possess these and many more powers. What all of them have in common is years of discipline and study. Before they learn the secrets of the mind, they have disciplined their own mind, steeled themselves against temptation. The warrior must not submit to temptation to use this power for himself: he must devote it in the service of his King." <<Without a discipline and strength, men are fallible and ambitious.  The fallible man will seek power and glory, with revel in this power and expose himself as weak. He can be turned and used against those that trust him.>>

Ding Li studied the child for a moment.
    "Do I believe that a mere boy has the strength to stand against men of power?"
    "Da-shi, I am worthy, I can be trained, I..."
    <<Should I even let you live?>>
    <<Please don't kill me! I'll do anything you want! Please!>>
    "You are not worthy! Look at you cowering there! I bet you'd even beg for your life!"
    "Then if I must die, we die together!" Rain leapt to his feet grasping the handle of his new dagger, and lunged forward aiming for Ding Li's heart. Before he'd taken the step, his legs collapsed.
    "So you thought you could kill me, eh?" <<On the blade, the poison is deadly>> "You thought you could best a Master, eh?" <<On the handle, it only makes you sleep a while>> "Little orphan boy fancied himself as a big warrior, eh?" <<You're the only natural Master of mind-lore ever seen>> "Well, devil child, you did not get your wish on this day, and never will. I do hope the poison isn't too painful!" <<You are not safe in Chu: their superstitions run too deep>> "We will burn your body at sunset, cursed boy, and send your spirit to the underworld with yesterday's sun!" <<You will wake in an hour. Run to Chang'an in Han, to the House of the Blue Orchid. Long will help you. He's at the north gate>> "GUARDS!"

The guards came and carried the limp child away. He made no movements and no sound, his pulse so weak that it was easily missed. His body was slung outside the walls, while others prepared a the pyre well away from the school grounds. "Don't want his cursed spirit coming to rest in our walls!"