She finished by lifting her arms up, thumb tips touching, index fingers touching, in a salute to the morning sun. And then she bowed low as she brought her arms back to her sides, her whole body perfectly still except for the bending at her waist.
Brother Dynard gave a great sigh as the woman walked back into her private quarters to resume work on her sword. Then he, too, faced the rising sun and went through his practice. Not nearly as proficient as SenWi, of course, he nevertheless managed to get through sing bay du, a routine designed to battle two opponents, front and back, with some measure of grace. Then he came to the part he most enjoyed: the stance of the mountain. He found his line of chi, head to groin, and consciously extended that life energy down his legs and through his feet, rooting himself to the stone of the wide terrace. A strong gust of wind blew by, but Dynard didn't budge. He felt the strength of the earth grasping him, becoming part of him, and felt as if he wouldn't flinch if a large man charged into him at full speed. Once he had achieved the posture, he allowed himself to absorb the sensations of the morning: the smell of the flowers, the warmth of the sun, the soft feel of his light clothing brushing his skin.
He saluted the sun, he bowed, and he went inside to his work.
He couldn't help but notice his old clothing hanging on a rack just inside the door. Like all the common folk of Honce, each of the brothers of Abelle wore a simple woolen tunic that reached to the knees and was typically belted at the waist with a leather cord. The brothers also added a coarse woolen traveling cloak, dark brown in color. Dynard considered that tunic and cloak, then looked at the silk clothing the Jhesta Tu had given him.
"Beasts of Behr," he said with a chuckle and a shake of his large head.
The monk rubbed his face and moved to the desk, where two books sat open and quills and inks of various colors waited. As she had advanced through the ranks of the Jhesta Tu, SenWi had found her private quarters moved forward and forward, and now, as a budding master, the young woman's rooms were at the very front of the house and cave complex built so high on the mountainside. Several windows lined the front wall of her two-room abode, facing south and east. They were open holes in the stone wall, but SenWi usually kept the heavy drapes pulled aside, except on the coldest of winter nights and when she was at her private work.
Fresh from her morning exercise, she moved to close those drapes, but paused, catching a glimmer of slanting morning sunlight streaming in to illuminate the ivory and silver hilt and crosspiece of her sword. SenWi walked over and gently stroked the carved piece, fashioned to resemble the flared, curving neck of one of the great hooded vipers known in the steppes of To-gai. Shiny silver and smooth white ivory intertwined through the length of the hilt, an artwork in and of itself. SenWi let her fingers trace the crafted lines, taking satisfaction in the solid grip she had created beneath the illusion of beauty. The neck tapered just a bit down to the crosspiece, which was comprised of two thinner rods of shining steel. Even these had been worked intricately by SenWi so that they bent at their respective ends to form snake heads. Above the crosspiece was a steel rod, just under three feet in length.
SenWi looked across the room, to the roll of thin metal, much of it already folded to form the sword's blade. Those first few folds had been critical, for SenWi had to leave an exact opening into which this center pole could be inserted, joining blade to hilt.
SenWi released the hilt and stared at it, hardly believing that years had passed since she had begun this process, since she had crafted the hilt. She remembered the day when the masters had returned it to her, smiling all, with the news that she could begin to craft her sword.
How many thousands of hours had she toiled in this one pursuit, this singular goal? Only now, with the end clearly in sight, did SenWi appreciate how well spent those hours had been. For she had learned so much about herself in these last few years. She had found the limits of her discipline, had learned the patience of a true craftsman. She couldn't help but smile as she recalled days, weeks even, when she had managed to craft only a single line of scales on the serpent-headed hilt. And now she worked on the blade no less meticulously, bending one by one the hundreds of folds that would comprise it. Each one of those folds consumed the working hours of a single day.
Even on those days when SenWi was able to complete the single fold easily, she could not then go on. There was no "getting ahead" in the crafting of a Jhesta Tu sword. There was only the process, methodical and disciplined.
The woman drew the heavy curtains closed and moved across the small room to the special metal table and the rolled steel. She felt the heat more profoundly with each step forward, for under the table was set a small oven, which she had fired up before going out to her morning exercise. She picked up another block of coke, slipped a heavy glove onto her left hand, and used an iron poker to pull open the small round hatch. She tossed in the fuel, then paused and watched as the orange glow increased, as lines of smoldering fires ran like living caterpillars across the face of the new block. Above it, waves of heat climbed, funneling into the seams of the furnace and table so that it would be properly distributed.
SenWi closed the furnace hatch and moved to the side of the table. To her right lay the beginnings of the shaped blade, with the unfolded metal sheet running to her left like an unwound bolt of silk. Just past the blade, farther to the right, was a raised edge, the apex of the heat zone, slightly glowing in the dimly lit room.
A small diamond-edged rule and cutter, fashioned with a concave edge designed to fit tightly against the edge of the blade facilitated the next part of the process. When SenWi slowly and precisely ran it across the thin sheet, it drew the line of the next fold and also drew a lighter line indicating the breadth of the overlap area. With her bare hand, she lifted the blade and brought it up and over, using all of her focus and discipline to set it precisely in place, so that the scratched line rested perfectly along the raised and heated edge.
Then she removed her glove and let the metal sit, while she went across the room and prayed, finding her center of focus, aligning her ki-chi-kree. When the appropriate time of heating had passed, she took up a pair of tiny hammers and moved back to the table.
SenWi began to sing softly, finding a rhythm and cadence. She began to dance around the table, her hands working slow circles, tap-tapping the metal atop the raised edge, but gently, so as not to tear the already thin sheet. It went on for nearly an hour: the soft singing-chanting really-the graceful steps, each bringing her arms in reach of a different point of the crease; and the continual tapping. Never once in all the days of her work had the woman touched the formed blade with those hammers, despite their proximity. That was the discipline of the dance and the movements, to strike precisely along that single, definitive line.
When she was done, she dropped the hammers and quickly put on the heavy gloves. Moving fast now, she folded the blade back over the raised bar with even pressure, so that the fold line was perfectly in place with the edge of her previous work. She pulled it as tightly as her honed muscles would allow and held it there, squeezing, for a long moment. Satisfied, breathing heavily, SenWi then poured water over the length of the blade, smiling at its hissing protest.
She was equally quick to dry the blade, thus hardening the fold.