← A Fate Tied by a Single Thread
Chapter 1
It was a gloomy day.
The rain that had been falling fitfully since the middle of the night continued into the early dawn. The harsh, heavy rain seemed ill suited to greeting a guest coming from a thousand li away.
At the hour when the dim dawn sky had not yet receded, a small palanquin arrived at the imperial palace, where everyone was still asleep. The unadorned, shabby wooden palanquin looked closer to a conveyance for transporting a lowly prisoner than to one for bearing a noble person.
Judging only by the two mute palanquin bearers and the old, shabby palanquin, they might have looked like the party of a criminal on his way to exile, but General Kang Shin, the emperor’s guard warrior standing beside them, made such a hasty guess seem doubtful.
The emperor’s own guard warrior was personally providing the escort. For the person riding in that wretched palanquin, no less. Who on earth could the person under General Kang Shin’s escort be?
Yet the only watcher of the shabby palanquin was a scops owl that had not yet slept. The party, a suspicious combination by any measure, stopped at a side gate in the northeast to avoid even unseen eyes.
Not a sign of anyone could be found around the gate used by the palace servants. General Kang Shin, dismounting from his horse, spoke gruffly.
“Inside the palace, no one may ride a palanquin unless permitted.” As if obeying the general’s words, one of the mute palanquin bearers drew back the curtain. From the old, shabby palanquin emerged a man whose face was wrapped tight in black gauze.
General Kang Shin, watching the man who kept hesitating with cold eyes, gestured to the bearers. The two mute palanquin bearers bowed politely to the general and then vanished without a sound.
The man, wearing a thick padded coat unsuited to the year-round mild weather of the Won Empire, stared blankly up at the imperial palace. The palace, vast, intricate, and splendid, exerted a majesty that overwhelmed the beholder by itself.
It was the first time since birth that the man had seen such a luxurious building. Even though he was a man who had wept until the corners of his eyes were raw all the way along the thousand-li road, he could not help but be dumbfounded before the tall pavilions that seemed to pierce the sky.
How long did he gaze up at the palace? The color of the sky gradually turned violet. General Kang Shin, who had seemed to wait in silence until the man came to his senses, had no choice but to speak words of urging.
“Your Highness the Prince, please observe the courtesies.”
The general used polite speech, but in rank he was the superior. Even at words that were clearly a command, the man timidly nodded his head.
The man’s jeogori, for he wore no raincoat, grew soaked in the harsh rain. Yet as if he did not feel it, he only bowed politely toward the palace, which had fallen silent.
The bow, with his back bent until his head nearly touched the ground, was abject to the point of servility. But no matter that he was a prince, he was from a vassal state. Before the august emperor of the great empire, it was the proper courtesy. General Kang Shin watched with observing eyes as the man bent his back three times.
As a guest from a foreign land, as a tribute for the grand future of the empire, and as a prince from a vassal state, the man, having observed every courtesy toward the august emperor, gave a start with a gasp, “Hik,” at the bell announcing dawn.
It was a sound barely audible, but the general could easily imagine the frightened eyes hidden behind the black gauze. The timid appearance he had seen when he went a thousand li away by the emperor’s order to fetch him was still vivid.
The prince, about half a span shorter than General Kang Shin, who was a towering man of eight cheok, could not be called small in stature, but with a youthful face that made one wonder if he had even reached twenty, hunched shoulders, skin as pale as blank paper as if he had lived his whole life shut in a back room, and large eyes that looked as if tears might drop at any moment, he looked all the weaker.
Hiding his wholly private true thought, that on the whole he had the look of one who would only weep without a single act of resistance even if used and then discarded, General Kang Shin quietly raised his hand like a blade at the sound of familiar footsteps coming from far off.
“……!”
The hand-blade, cutting fiercely through the air, struck the back of the man’s neck. The prince lost consciousness without even managing a single cry. No sooner had General Kang Shin caught the collapsing prince than the side gate opened a crack.
“Old Head Eunuch.”
The identity of the other guest was the head eunuch, whose arrival was already beginning to show. The old head eunuch, returning a nod of greeting to the general, who greeted him with a light dip of the head, shifted his gaze to the prince held in his arms.
Clicking his tongue with a “Tsk, tsk,” whose meaning was unclear, and furrowing his brow, the old head eunuch took the reins of a horse that was snorting.
“Has it been ten days?”
“Yes. It has been a long time since I saw you.”
“You must have had a hard time….”
Having briefly conveyed his sentiments, the old head eunuch opened the side gate wide enough for two people to enter. General Kang Shin, carrying the prince in his arms, followed the head eunuch.
The dawn of the imperial palace was quiet. It seemed all the quieter because not even the smallest sound of breathing existed between the two.
The old head eunuch, having tied General Kang Shin’s horse in the stable beside the side gate, gestured with his chin.
“This way.”
Since the bell announcing dawn had rung, the people inside the palace would soon wake one by one. The general, carrying the unconscious prince, and the head eunuch quickened their steps.
It was the secret entry of the Thousand-Li Bride.
***
The Won Empire is a vast great empire ruled by an emperor who is the descendant of heaven and who has inherited heaven’s will.
The emperor of the Won Empire was a noble ruler who governed all things, and a father of the land who benevolently cared even for the vassal states that had knelt before his might.
The present master of the great empire was a young emperor of thirty. Having ascended to the Son of Heaven’s seat in the prime of life, he received the praise of all the people for his gentle and benevolent rule.
The Retired Emperor had brought great peace with a powerful military, and the present emperor cared for all the people with a benevolent nature, so in the Won Empire every day was a time of great peace, and laughter never ceased.
Thanks to that, the Won Empire was enjoying a peaceful time, but there was exactly one worry. That the empress’s seat was vacant.
Not long after his enthronement, the emperor lost, one after another, the two wives with whom he had been bound since his crown prince days.
The first was the Crown Princess, and after the Crown Princess lost her life, it was Concubine Yeon. The two women died having contracted the same illness.
Yet there was something strange about it to be seen as a sudden illness. A person who had not even caught the common cold would one day waste away, then suffer a high fever so severe he could scarcely swallow a mouthful of water, and then wither like an old dead tree and die.
Even the court physicians could find no cause, so it was truly an illness to make a ghost weep.
Words of curse and sorcery crept, ominous, among the court officials. Moreover, because he had ascended to the emperor’s seat at a relatively young age, some impure persons entertained the frightening rumor, too dreadful to speak aloud, that perhaps the present emperor had angered heaven by going against the natural order, against the Retired Emperor….
They would not dare voice an irreverent opinion to the emperor, but if the rumors were left as they were, they would in many ways damage the emperor’s dignity.
But there was no way the emperor did not know the rumors about himself. Using as an excuse that it would be discourteous to those with whom he had once shared a marital bond to take a new empress right after losing two wives, the emperor, who had put off a third marriage, quietly made contact with an oracle priest and tried to grasp the cause of the sudden deaths.
One hundred days after the emperor ascended to the Son of Heaven’s seat, the Crown Princess died. And a little over one hundred days after the Crown Princess lost her life, Concubine Yeon also died of the same illness.
In a situation where even the court physicians were cautiously bringing up wicked sorcery, the only place the emperor could seek an answer was heaven.
The oracle priest, who conveys heaven’s will to the Son of Heaven, secretly performed rites from that day. He rang bells, performed sword dances, and set fire to grain, praying for three days and nights.
“The vanished king of the south completed a curse aimed at the son of the Retired Emperor with his own life and the lives of his people. By the curse, you were to receive the calamity, but by heaven’s arrangement the Son of Heaven is protected, so the sorcery, having lost its way, turned toward your wives, the next most noble in the empire.”
The “vanished south” was the kingdom of Je, once a vassal state of the Won Empire. The reason it is in the past tense is that, having accepted as a vassal a beast-like people who had no roots to speak of and who plundered and blindly believed in uncanny sorcery, they dared to challenge imperial authority in the Retired Emperor’s reign, and so were destroyed.
The Retired Emperor showed no more mercy. He erased the very existence of Je with a mighty army. Men and women, young and old, anyone with Je blood was beheaded and left as food for wild birds. For a time, the smell of blood in the south did not fade.
That was twenty years ago. And yet the ruler of Je had performed wicked sorcery even at the moment his life ended.
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