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serene location. Also, very much like her mother, she had begun to feed mulberry leaves to the worms, and spin, dye, and weave their silken bounty. Her father meanwhile seemed more focused than ever.
    The destroyed ruins of his former monastery hovered high and silent on the distant mountaintop, but its essence lived on within his soul. Day by day he methodically prepared spirit, mind, and body, for a challenge he sensed inevitably drawing closer.
    The oldest scrolls were painted more than a thousand years before, from the time of the First Emperor. One particular passage veiled in the prophetic tradition held his attention, and he meditated daily upon its words. He soared with wings of wisdom to places of light and darkness and ascended toward the serenity of understanding, duty, and acceptance.
    â€œFrom setting sun a man doth come, beaten by the rain,
    Drawing sword from stone, he will rise through blood and pain.
    From slave to king, to free the beast, that lies beneath the hill,
    Eternity the last embrace and Death must drink its fill.”
    Mah Lin listened to the raven’s call, and within the echoes of its fading cry, the priest heard much more.
    The day that she had finished making her father his richly colored full silk robes marked the creation of a new weaving, a cloth long ago finished and only now begun. “Selah,” he said, “a man soon arrives. Since the beginning of time we three were woven together. Make ready the cart, and give the raven an extra tasty morsel. We must leave to collect him.” Selah was surprised by the news, but obeyed without question.
    She set to her tasks with a smile, intrigued by her father’s enigmatic tone and amused that he had noticed she had taken to feeding the bird that had long claimed them as its own.

Slaughter And Steel
    By the glow of moonlight, the battalion quietly snaked its way up the temple mountain like a great mythical beast. Some of the old veterans felt that the young general’s rise up through the ranks had been far too rapid. He was not well seasoned in battle, and the few he had fought had been little more than skirmish.
    Although competent, to those that knew well the temper of war, disturbing traits had surfaced. This handsome general chose his opposition carefully. These lesser adversaries were dispatched cruelly. By taking as few risks as possible he had moved up in the military machine, for as the old ones often joked, “Ambition and avarice are easier to quietly promote than to loudly rectify.”
    The emperor had learned that this monastery held the secret of the world’s finest blades. He had watched his young general test one recently acquired. The spring steel swords that were the standard issue of his troops snapped like twigs under its onslaught. Before an army of these, nothing could stand. He had given these monks the honor and opportunity of gifting their country, but citing religion, they had politely refused. Strong principle coupled with superior arms is a dangerous combination, and not one that could be allowed to survive.
    The general’s past had secured his first large assignment. He knew the layout of the temple grounds. Karma—this direction had not been the intended one, yet it brought him back to this place. He knew that these monks were not a simple collection of spiritual misfits. He knew that they practiced martial arts but that their way was one of peace.
    His rejection by the soft weak abbot, and the smell of the dirty boy returned vividly to his mind and vengeance ruled his judgment. He hated this place and the monks within its walls. Their piety, wisdom, and peace had long ceased to hold a place within his world. They had been given the option of life but instead chose death, and now they would taste the bitterness that faith and devotion bring.
    By dawn the general and his entire battalion had taken up their position on the mountaintop. The armor of horse and rider greedily drank in