All the monks that fell that fateful morning fought and died like true warriors, but even in the company of these heroes one monk stood above the rest. With strength, skill, and courage, this singular monk inspired his brothers throughout the battle. He held his ground on a growing pile of bodies, while the remnants of his monastic order fell one by one. Eventually, only this one still lived, and the storm of battle raged solely around him. He was the last of his order.
His silver blade flashed through flesh and sunlight, its razor edge the border of life and death.
Recognition struck like a thunder clap. He knew this monk. His features had changed little—he could still smell the dirty little boy.
Even from horseback the general had to look up at the sole survivor. The monk fought like a wild animal high upon the hill of those who had fallen under his blade. Steel moved too fast around the monk to be seen, but on the slower moving hilt of the young monk’s sword, the general glimpsed a pentagram within a circle.
The face of the monk was almost completely covered by the blood of those that had tried to take his life. The vivid colors, the smell of dying, the sounds of agony; these were memories seared into the mind of the general. But it was the eyes of the monk, eyes that spoke of true power that branded the general’s very soul.
Amid the chaos of war and destruction the general saw a man at peace. In the chilling heart of combat he witnessed monks inspired and emboldened by this man’s true courage. He saw men follow without question. No amount of blood could obscure the terrible truth: this monk was everything that he was not, and everything that he had wanted, all his life, to be.
Like a jackal he waited until the monk was fighting with the strongest and largest soldier in his command. With the monk engaged face to face with the massive soldier, horse and rider moved in quietly from behind. For the task at hand, timing was everything.
The monk continued to fight with a strength that verged on legendary. The general paused while his archers took their positions, and then he shouted the order to fire. Horse and general charged forward and upward to take the head. He moved quickly now to silence the voice of inner demons as he charged toward glory.
To the eye all three things happened at the same time. Ten arrows hit their mark, the last sweep of the falling monk’s blade cut through the huge soldier’s weapon and found the heart, and the blade of the general was launched upon its deadly journey to an unprotected neck. But at the edge of life and death, time slows and events that seem simultaneous unfold in separate clarity.
Mah Lin did not see the severed tip of the giant’s saber flying past his shoulder for the arrows landed and his body dropped. He did not sense the impending blow to his neck, nor hear the aspiring assassin behind him scream and fall backwards as that forged steel tip sliced through his face, cleaving bone from sinew. He did not feel the hulking weight of adversary crush out his last breath, whispering through arrow holes as it crashed down and buried him.
The lower jaw clung precariously by shredded flesh to its place upon the general’s features. It tried to form the order to find and remove the library, but it could not. Through the pain and the fog of seething hatred, the general looked back to where the last monk had stood. The giant lay dead and fallen, and the monk as if by magic had vanished into the thin morning air.
The general surrendered to the darkness.
In the aftermath of battle the monk was nowhere to be found. This ruined monastery was now a place of fear and phantom. In great haste what remained of the battalion left the mountaintop. The dead, even their own, were left where they had fallen, and the living were gone before the sun had set. They tied their wounded general securely to his horse, and for the next three days and nights he slipped fitfully in and out of consciousness. The image of the fearless monk never left his mind. It haunted him in his delirium—the specter of his own inadequacy.
While this young general lay recovering from his open wound, the emperor’s own men had reported that the scrolls had not been found. There may have once been a library, but a pile of bodies and barren shelves were all that remained. The empty structure was carefully combed from floor to ceiling for any clue, but the timeless collection of sacred knowledge had vanished as though it had never been. The black feather of a nameless bird went unnoticed by the men who searched unsuccessfully for scroll, silk, and parchment.
The vision of the Son of Heaven does not compare to the sight of an ordinary man. For the sake of a people, it must be clear from western desert to eastern ocean and from icebound northland to wild and humid southern jungles. The emperor stared through the wounded soldier that lay before him. He assessed the condition of the butchered general, and with his mind’s acumen he surveyed the success and failure of the mission.
The monks were dead. The threat of their great metal was now removed. The method of its making destroyed beyond any skill of resurrection. The loss of this art was a regrettable casualty of war, but the security that it afforded balanced well against the deficit. The mind of the emperor did not stop there. It browsed within the missing library, and it hungered.
Throughout the ages its secrets had been guarded by the cloistered hands that held it, its reputation grown freely in rumor. This was not just the usual collection of monastic sutras and scripture. It was so much more. In reverent tones it was said to hold the wisdom of the ages, from both this land and places far away. Its fading pages were thought to have descended from the time of the First Emperor. It was whispered that among its yellowed parchments, the arts of war rested peacefully beside the way of enlightenment, and that even the enigma of immortality was recorded on its pages. Like the methods of their metal this treasure, too, was gone, but this loss could never find a balance.
The general moaned, fighting his way to consciousness only to feel the sting of his emperor’s words. “You are an efficient killing machine, but much was trampled in the fray.” The swollen eyes of the general blinked slowly as the emperor continued. “You are now the Supreme Commander, but do not dare think this a promotion for a job well done. It is not. Consider it merely a gift from the times. The people need heroes, and luckily your face destroyed in the service of your emperor has made you one.”
It was officially recorded as a successful completion of mission, but it had taken one hundred and seventy three lives to do it. More accurate but unrecorded was the truth that under the direction of an ambitious and untested leader, the strength of the enemy had been grossly underestimated, and that the value of what had not been recovered far outweighed the measure of anything that had been gained.
The pain of the emperor’s harsh rebuke and the emptiness of his movement up the ranks did not fade with the healing of his wounds. The commander, however, embraced the power of his title despite its dubious origin. When the wounded leader had healed enough to slur an order, a permanent sentry was posted at the site, but no order for search or salvage was ever issued.
The presence of a guard assured the new commander that the cinders of truth would never again be stirred, and he hoped that by taking no plunder he might seal up the ghosts of his past. For the next twelve years, the commander’s man on the mountain had nothing of any consequence to report.
The commander had changed much in the twelve years since the slaughter. His oily black hair sat in a topknot, and he had grown a beard to try and hide his ruined face. The armor that he now wore at all times was ornate and polished. His memory of that day had not faded or softened. The dead monks upon the mountaintop were silent and forgotten by most, but the figure of the last spectral monk still haunted the general. Hatred had taken root in the darkness of his soul and grown like a twisted leafless