On a tower above the fort at Ch'ên-t'ang Kuan, the boy No-cha finds what he takes for a plaything and what is in truth a weapon of the gods. The one witness wired to served text is a compilation of Chinese myth, Myths & Legends of China (published 1922), which tells how the reckless child — already blamed for the death of a dragon-prince — climbs to a height commanding the gate and there discovers "a wonderful bow and three magic arrows". He does not know, the record says, that this is "the spiritual weapon belonging to the fort", a thing kept for a destiny not yet his. Reasoning that a future soldier should perfect himself in arms, he "seized the bow and shot an arrow toward the south-west", and the shaft, which "hissed as it flew", drew a red trail across the sky.

Far off, at the foot of Skeleton Hill, the arrow finds a body: "The arrow pierced his throat", and a servant of the goddess Shih-chi Niang-niang falls dead. She draws the shaft from the wound and reads on it an inscription — "Arrow which shakes the heavens" — and by that mark alone knows it "must have come from Ch'ên-t'ang Kuan", "where the magic bow was kept". The bow asks no aim and no malice; it asks only a hand strong enough to bend it, and the harm travels the whole width of a kingdom to a victim the archer never saw. Its power is less accuracy than reach and signature — a weapon that names the place of its own crimes.

Only the Chinese bow is wired to served text here; the Greek weapon of Odysseus, the Hindu, and the Eskimo bows named at this same address wait unread. When a weapon carries its own name and finds a stranger's throat unbidden, whose deed is the killing — the boy's, or the bow's?