“They are leaving for the Forbidden Realm, you mean.” High Tahn Tin-Tsu nodded. “Then why not let them go?”
“Because we’ll have no soldiers left to fight the djen-forsaken war.” Tigan Rhog-Kan stirred uncomfortably in his seat. He appeared to remember protocol reluctantly. “My tahn.”
The tigan took another breath before continuing. “The dream may have seemed harmless when it touched only a few and they fled in the night, but from the best count we have, three in ten may have the dream and that includes our armies. At present, fewer than one in ten follow the false prophet. However, if a third of our forces were to march off at sunset to follow that new demon star in the night sky, we’d all be slaughtered in the next invasion of those Tanshen heathen bastards.”
“Yes. I see your concern.” High Tahn Tin-Tsu looked at his hands. “What has the Tanshen response been to the dreams and the pilgrims?”
“The same as ours, my tahn,” Kao-Rhee said.
Before he could amend his thought, one of the other councilmembers, the treasurer, Tafan-Lu, spoke. Fifty years old with a gray-black beard and an over-wide nose that matched his wide set eyes, he was the only ethnic tollith at the table. His grandfather immigrated north decades before the war, and while his ancestry still raised talk among the lesser tahns, Kao-Rhee had never had cause to question his loyalty, nor his financial acumen.
“They run them to ground and kill them the same as we do, or they catch them on the Old Border Road.” Tafan-Lu leaned forward, obviously intending to say more. “My tahn, the problem posed by the pilgrims is more than one of faith or armies; it is one of coin. We cannot afford to continue to pay militiamen to hunt the heretics while losing the revenue their taxes once provided.”
“Yes,” Tin-Tsu said. “I see your point. Without the coin from taxes, we cannot pay our armies. And without the men and women to work the forges and tend the crops, we cannot arm or feed our forces, much less the palace.”
“Exactly, my tahn.” Tafan-Lu looked pleased to have so easily impressed his concerns upon the future zhan.
Kao-Rhee appraised his high tahn and soon-to-be zhan in silence. Tin-Tsu had readily grasped a concept that had eluded his elder brother for weeks. That worried him for reasons he wished he did not have to contemplate. Another issue concerned him as well.
“We must also consider the implications of the Atheton pilgrims spreading the Living Death as they pass through our nation for the port of Tanjii.” Kao-Rhee had received new messages from his spies in the neighboring dominion late the previous night.
“The Living Death?” The high tahn’s voice rose in curiosity as he intoned the words.
Kao-Rhee noticed the other members of the council turn to him with concern in their eyes. The last outbreak of the strange plague a generation and a half ago decimated wide swaths the realm. Once infected, a person had only days before they became a mindless living corpse wandering the countryside, with no purpose beyond spreading the disease to others. A new wave of contagion threatened more than merely the outcome of the war.
“Reports tell of several villages in Atheton being afflicted by the illness,” Kao-Rhee said. “The Atheton Teyett is concerned enough that she has ordered her armies to burn all of the infected and raze the towns and villages to ashes. If this vile infection were spread by Atheton pilgrims, my tahn, it would devastate the Daeshen Dominion and our hopes for a successful conclusion to the war.”
“Do you propose closing the border with Atheton?” High Tahn Tin-Tsu placed his hands flat on the table, his face tightening in concerned thought.
“No, my tahn.” Kao-Rhee straightened in his chair. “To close the border imperils trade with our neighbor and would be nearly as deleterious to the prosecution of the war as pestilent pilgrims. I suggest checkpoints at the borders, allowing only merchants and their goods to pass, holding them in quarantine for a few days to ensure they pose no threat. It will slow our supplies, but guarantee their eventual arrival. It will also stop the majority of heretic pilgrims from passing into our dominion. Although I am sure many will seek to traverse the border through forests and fields, these can be stopped from potentially spreading plague by the militias.”
“Sound advice.” High Tahn Tin-Tsu removed his hands from the table to place them in his lap.
“So you will support the militias in their cleansing of our own heretics and those who cross our borders, my tahn?” Tigan Rhog-Kan’s tone indicated his desired response.
“No.” High Tin-Tsu cast his gaze around the table, briefly catching each man’s eye. “If what you tell me is accurate, killing our pilgrims will only lead to our own deaths and the demise of the dominion. It may be three in ten today who have the dream, but it may be seven in ten tomorrow. Can we stop such a large number of our own people from leaving with the threat of slaughter? Might they not kill us as they flee to follow the false god of their deluded slumber? And if a quarantine is sufficient for Atheton merchants, it will surely suffice for Atheton pilgrims. While the Atheton Teyett may wish to rid her nation of the problem of her pilgrims, the Athetonions are an often duplicitous people. It is not difficult to imagine the Athetonions using the butchering of their people in our lands as a feigned excuse to seek redress for the death of their subjects. No, we must find another way, an option that preserves our advantage in soldiers for the next assault against the Tanshen Dominion and protects us from a possible plague from the east, all while allowing for those who have strayed from the path of Ni-Kam-Djen to return of their own choosing.”
“No one returns from the Forbidden Realm,” Tigan Rhog-Kan said.
“The tigan is correct,” Kao-Rhee said. “If we allow them to leave, they will die at sea or the urris will kill them. They will be dead either way.”
“There may be a middle path.” Tin-Tsu closed his eyes for a moment, as though trying to envision something never yet seen.
While Kao-Rhee admired the man’s tenacity in clinging to his principles and trying to find a workable method to enact them, he did not appreciate the sentiments themselves. If the dreaming pilgrims were allowed to undermine the balance of the war, it meant the end of the Daeshen Dominion.
“We will release an edict in conjunction with the celebration of my ascendance to zhan of the dominion.” High Tahn Tin-Tsu opened his eyes, a light of fervor behind them.
Kao-Rhee noted the look in the high tahn’s eyes. He did not trust fervent men. They often acted not in their best interests, but in the interests of others, or in their own interest to the exclusion of all others. Zeal made a man unpredictable. One could not trust a man whose actions could not be predicted.
“The edict will proclaim that while the dreams and the pilgrimage are heresy, they will not be punished by death or persecution.” Tin-Tsu’s words held the room captive with their import. “Anyone who leaves to follow the pilgrim dream will forfeit all lands and possessions in doing so. Such lands and possessions will be divided among the faithful. Moreover, if any one person shall take to pilgrimage, their entire family, from fathers to brothers to cousins shall also lose their lands and possessions. The militias will no longer harass the pilgrims. They will enforce the edict. They will also enforce the quarantine along the border. The Atheton pilgrims will be allowed to pass if they prove themselves free of illness, but they will be required to pay a new tax to do so.”
The high tahn’s proposed edict left the councilors in perplexed silence. Kao-Rhee noted Tigan Rhog-Kan’s hands gripping the table edge, knuckles pale with exertion. He understood the tigan’s dismay. In the week since the high tahn’s arrival, their conversations had hinted at what Kao-Rhee considered an unhealthy idealism. The sort of passionate consideration well suited to the confines of a remote mountain temple, but ill-fitting a zhan ruling a dominion at war with its rival and neighbor, and threatened from within by heretics following a supernatural nocturnal missive from an unknown source.
The high tahn did not see how his edict, while conceived with the best of intentio
ns, ultimately undermined his rule and unsettled the stability of the dominion. The zhan must command the lives of his subjects. He could not give them choices. If farmers and soldiers and merchants suddenly felt they could choose between alternatives in their lives, rather than obey the laws set before them, they would demand more choices. And if the lower tiered men were granted choices, then the greater tiered men, the lesser tahns, would soon insist on the right to govern the affairs of their provinces with a freer hand. And, inevitably, this would lead one or more tahns to the conclusion that they could choose to be zhan if they only fought hard enough. A struggle within the dominion for the seat of power would give the Tanshen usurper the opportunity to win the war decisively. And allowing apostates from the neighboring Atheton Dominion to avoid the checkpoints and wander through Daeshen lands, potentially spreading disease, posed an equal danger.
Kao-Rhee had hoped to act as the new zhan’s trusted adviser, guiding him as he had his father and brother. Kao-Rhee saw now, as he should have before, that High Tahn Tin-Tsu could not be counseled in the usual manner. He would try to set his own course as zhan, even when the entire council warned him against a particular path.
Kao-Rhee wondered if it would have been better for all if the high tahn had been greeted earlier that morning by Ni-Kam-Djen in the Pure Lands rather than by a young warden saving his life. He wondered, moreover, if it might not be best to rectify that course of events and ensure the more desired outcome. He remembered the last words his father spoke to him. When Kao-Rhee had left to take a lowly position in the palace court, filled with ambition and fantasies of high attainment, his father, a wealthy lesser tahn from a southern fishing province, offered simple words of advice.
“Remember who you serve,” his father said. “You serve the dominion and the zhan. There may come a time when you must decide which one deserves your greater loyalty. One will not remember you, not care for you, while the other may love you and lavish you with rewards. One has lived for thousands of years because of good men, the other will rot in a palace tomb after a brief stay among us. Choose well.”
Kao-Rhee had never seen his father nor the estate again. His father fell sick that winter and did not recovered. Kao-Rhee’s mother died shortly thereafter. He kept the estate, as it earned him a sizable annual income to supplement the stipend of his palace station, but could never bring himself to return to his childhood home. He often wondered if his father would have been proud of him. Would he be pleased by the action Kao-Rhee now vaguely considered?
“Let us turn to discussing the war.” High Tahn Tin-Tsu’s voice commanded the attention of those at the table once more. “Tigan Rhog-Kan, what is the status of the war, and when was our last assault?”
Kao-Rhee followed the conversation, but his previous thought refused to leave his mind. It bespoke a great desperation that a man who had, only hours before, sworn to uncover a plotted regicide might, not long after, consider the means of enacting his own such terrible plan.
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THE CARNIVAL
SHIFHUUL
A STIFF breeze carried the dust kicked up by dozens of human feet and the hooves of pack animals and wagon wheels back along the caravan. The airborne earth clouded around Shifhuul and his companions, coating them in a thin layer of dust. He brushed the grime from the pelt of his arms and looked at his hands. Steady. They still shook occasionally, but nothing like those first weeks. Especially on the ship.
He coughed against the sting of dirt in his throat. He hated walking at the rear of the caravan on days when the wind blew wrong. At least the dust reduced the number of black tree-flies that normally harassed them as they traveled. Unfortunately, they marched at their normal shambling pace. They could not hope to outrun the militia that followed them. The best they could do would be to convince the men that a carnival posed no threat to their religious dispositions. Doing so depended upon the pilgrims blending in and appearing as part of the troupe.
He stared at the old man riding in the back of the wagon directly ahead with no small amount of resentment. The pilgrim who had appeared from the forest with his people got to ride in a wagon while Shifhuul walked. True, the man did limp on a walking stick and would have been too slow for the caravan, but Shifhuul still envied him. They had done so much walking in the last months. What he would not have done for a palanquin and four runners. Or his own wagon. Or a horse. A small horse, but a horse. What did the humans call them? Ponies? Yes, he would have loved a pony. Wyrins did not have horses in their lands. Smaller pack animals, to be sure, but horses were too large and intimidating for the wyrin folk. Ponies would fit in quite well. He could purchase a few and bring them back with him when he returned. Breed them for profit. That would undoubtedly displease his mother. Her seventh son a merchant of pack animals. Shifhuul smiled at the thought.
“Enjoying the walk?” Tarak’s deep voice rumbled from high above his head.
“Always enjoy I walk.” Shifhuul coughed again, covering his snout with his paw.
“I always enjoy walking,” Tarak corrected.
“Walking. Yes.” Shifhuul hated being tutored by Tarak in his words. He found it endlessly irritating that the lumbering beast had such a facility for languages. Wyrins had many tongues and Shifhuul proudly spoke one of them, the one that mattered. Learning a new language, especially one as foreign as those spoken by the humans, proved vexing in its difficulty. He did not like difficulty. He particularly did not appreciate being vexed.
“Leotin does not seem pleased with our new traveling companions.” Yeth, the yutan woman, walked on the other side of him. Somehow, he always ended up between them, looking like a pet the two giants had forgotten to leash. He hated that.
“He is concerned with the safety of his carnival,” Tarak said.
“I am surprised he allowed Palla to convince him to bring the pilgrims along,” Yeth said. “It means more mouths to feed and more people to protect.”
“I am surprised Shifhuul supported her.” Tarak looked down his long muzzle at the wyrin.
Shifhuul had broken with his custom and addressed Leotin and the group of humans. He preferred to speak among his fellow scouts. For some reason, his poor diction did not bother him as much in their company. The humans, however, tended to look upon him as though he were a dimwitted forest animal, and he despised that. When he saw an opportunity to advance his cause and hopefully bring it closer to conclusion, he forced himself to intercede. He had pleaded, in his halting use of the human Shen language, that they could not abandon the pilgrims to certain death at the hands of the militia. They had seen the corpses beside the road that spoke of the militiamen’s intolerance. How could they condemn these twelve people to die?
While Shifhuul did care what happened to the human pilgrims, with that part of him that cared at all for what befell humans in general, the larger part of him concerned itself with how to accomplish the ridiculous mission he had accepted as quickly as possible and return home.
“Bad him. Good us.” Shifhuul glanced behind to see that the column of dust representing the approach of the militia looked far closer than it had a few minutes prior. It would not be long before the militia overtook them.
“Ah. Yes. I see,” Yeth said. “Very cunning.”
“Yes,” Tarak added. “I should have seen your true purpose.”
His true purpose.
Shifhuul said nothing. The roagg’s words claimed hold of his mind and brought back thoughts he had hoped to bury like some ancestral relation entombed in the earth.
SIX MONTHS AGO
“YOU WILL do as requested.”
“It is not a request, and I will not obey.”
“You must regain your purpose.”
“You, Mother, of all people, should know I have never had a purpose.”
“Shahana and Whinara would disagree.”
Shifhuul said n
othing in reply to his mother. He glared at her, anger and anguish fighting in his chest. He turned away and looked out over the balcony to the forest town below them. Their family home, the largest in the seaside forest town of Withanaal, spread across the branches of several trees. Wyrins did not clear woodlands to build their settlements the way peoples of other realms did. They preferred to construct their dwellings and places of congregation in harmony with the forest. The scarcity of open plains in the Wood Realm made this manner of architecture a near necessity. Only a handful of valleys in the realm held grassland. While they might fell a tree to accommodate a roadway or a garden, they largely left them intact. They relied on fishing rather than herding to provide their meat, and cultivated groves and gardens for their fruits and vegetables.
Shifhuul looked at the town of treehouses clinging to the woodlands like a vast spider web draped across splintered branches. While the forest had a purpose gifted it by nature, the town seemed to complement that purpose and give it greater meaning. He had never felt himself to have a purpose, but the arrival of Shahana and Whinara in his life had blessed him with an ambition he had hitherto lacked and avoided discovering. Their loss left him bereft of any inclination to live, a forest consumed by flame, burned to ash, and turned desert in the wind. How could such a wyrin have a true purpose? Easier to find meaning in the sweet smoke of the loat seed. A pipe of mind-clouding seed oil offered no purpose, but it made a blissful, memory-numbing companion. He spent the vast portion of each day with that darkly seductive concubine of grief.
“You will go. There is no more to discuss.” His mother spoke from behind him. Shifhuul did not turn around.
“A convenient way to rid yourself of an inconvenient problem.” Shifhuul dug his claws into the stained wood of the balcony railing.
The Dragon Star (Realms of Shadow and Grace: Volume 1) Page 14
