"UNWISE."
The word rang and reverberated in the wood-paneled walls of the council chamber. Kao-Rhee watched from the far end of the long, well-polished poda wood table as High Tahn Tin-Tsu let the sound die before making his reply.
"How is patience unwise?"
Ten men sat around the table, the future zhan and his nine councilors. Nine to match the number of holy prophets. Kao-Rhee now wished he had limited the number to himself and Tigan Rhog-Kan. His thought had been to introduce the high tahn to the men charged with advising him when he assumed the ascendancy a few hours hence. He had intended the morning meeting to proceed into a discussion on state policy. He preferred, when possible, to limit such decisions to himself alone. Or at the least, present his desired course of action in private to the zhan. Tin-Tsu's brother had been largely interested in the prosecution of the war with the Tanshen Dominion, the purview of Tigan Rhog-Kan, and so left the majority of domestic matters in Kao-Rhee's hands, hands that had been carving the statue of state from the stone of adversity since before either brother's birth.
Tigan Rhog-Kan clenched his jaw, seeming to swallow his initial, preferred response before making one tinged with even more guttural tones than his previous utterance.
"What may seem like patience to you, my tahn, will be taken as weakness by our enemies and perceived as an opportunity for further action."
"We are not discussing our enemies meeting us on the battlefield; we are speaking of the people of our own dominion, my soon-to-be subjects, who have lost their way in darkness and need guidance to return to the path of light." High Tahn Tin-Tsu folded his hands on the table.
"If I may, my tahn." Kao-Rhee nodded toward the tigan. "I believe the tigan's concerns are valid. While they may be your subjects by sunset, these so-called pilgrims have abandoned the faith that governs our land and turned to some heretic vision that infects their dreams. Without the militias to curtail them, they will upset, and quite possibly overturn, the balance of the dominion."
"How weak is our argument for the path of Ni-Kam-Djen if we must enforce it with blades and the threat of death?" High Tahn Tin-Tsu stared across his fingertips at Kao-Rhee.
"I do not doubt, my tahn, that were you able to speak with them, you would convince them of their error and return them to the temples." Kao-Rhee always found a bit of flattery helped in persuading those reluctant to see things properly. "However, you cannot address them all, and they renounce their allegiance to the faith and the dominion with their actions."
"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 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 intentions, 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.