The House of the Stag

by Kage Baker

  “I know.”

  “And you need to send a messenger to pay off your mistresses, because there’ll be no more of that, ever,” said Balnshik sternly. “And I hope you know you can’t just climb into my bed whenever she’s indisposed. I won’t have that.”

  “I know.”

  “Oh, gods, you didn’t even wash the smoke out of your hair before you went to her, did you? What on earth were you thinking? Listen to me. Go bathe. Now. Put on clean clothes.”

  “I don’t know where any are.”

  In your wardrobe, sir! Thrang bared his teeth and snarled, with his ears laid back. Where I hung them up after I had them ironed!

  “Oh.” Momentarily chastened, Gard looked around at the sky, the sunlight, the distant sea. His grin came back and widened. “Have the black wine served out, in the mess hall.” It seemed like the sort of thing a Dark Lord would command.

  They took their vows in a high courtyard with a dizzying view of the world. The Saint could just see the green forests she had lost, far to the south and east, in brief glimpses between the spears and garlanded flowers on the honor guard. The waving pennants bore white stars and a white stag on a black field.

  She had refused to wear the elaborate (though inexpensive, being stolen) gown that had been offered her, preferring to wear her plain white robe instead. He wore black armor, with a great deal of barbaric jewelry in the worst of taste.

  She watched Gard as he spoke his vows to her. She looked into his heart and saw his desires, and they seemed pitifully simple: remaining alive. Having a wife and child. Nothing so complicated as Lendreth’s need for power and order, or Seni’s aching desire for a lost golden age.

  He is innocent as a beast is innocent, she thought. And with a beast’s innocence, he must have killed Blessed Ranwyr. I must not be unkind to him.

  She spoke her vows then. They did not ask for love; they asked for fidelity, honesty, duty to spouse and children. She resolved to keep them.

  The cup was filled. They drank together. The hideous old creature with the wolf’s head stepped forward and carefully bound their wrists together with the silk cord. She was surprised; he had fine hands, though they were gnarled with age. The knot was tied. The demons beat their spears upon the ground and roared and howled their congratulations.

  High on the wind above, a cloud drifted. It had the shape of a face. The eyes watched what was going on below. They were unfriendly.

  Gard and the Saint were escorted through his black halls by a cheering crowd, already half-drunk. She looked about her in wonder as she walked along on her husband’s arm. The place had a massive splendor, but also a curiously unfinished quality. The doors and windows had all manner of ornamentation, grimacing demon heads, skulls; yet in places rubble still lay in heaps, and in one spot what appeared to be a hot spring trickled down the wall and flowed across the floor, running along the hall for several yards until it seeped under a doorway.

  The bedroom, when they arrived at last, was in a similar style. Black, hung with black draperies, rich worked carpets the color of blood on the living rock of the floor, and an immense gloomy bed hung all in black. The bedposts had silver skull finials. Someone had hastily cleaned, for a few cobwebs had been missed, and the top of the bedside table bore several sticky ring-marks from someone’s having been drinking in bed. The upper reaches of the canopy were furred with dust.

  The door closed, leaving them alone together as the tide of revelers drew away down the hall.

  “Would you prefer to undress by yourself?” said Gard, stammering a little.

  “Thank you, but no,” she said. “We are husband and wife now.”

  “Would you like me to undress you?”

  “If you wish.”

  Hands shaking, he lifted her robe, slipped it off over her head, and let it drop. She stood naked before him in the light of the torches, looking at him with defiance. He stared at her, rapt. When he did not pick up her robe, she bent and retrieved it, folded it, and laid it on a chest.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, fumbling with the catches of his cuirass. They stuck. She helped him, and a moment later the armor came clattering off. The jewelry followed. Now he couldn’t move fast enough; he spilled his mail shirt on the floor and hopped on one foot as he yanked off first one boot and then the other, peeling off the arming clothes he had worn underneath, and then the breechclout. He stood before her, breathing hard, heavily male.

  She looked in wonder at his body. “So many scars.”

  He looked down at himself. “Yes. I’m sorry, I know they’re ugly. I used to have to fight for my masters’ amusement. Would you like me to put the lights out?”

  “You needn’t. What masters?”

  “I was a slave. For a long time. May we get into bed now?”

  “If you like.”

  He lifted her into the bed and, climbing up beside her, knelt.

  “I know this is strange,” he said. “The skulls and things, and everything black. You mustn’t mind it. It’s just a costume. If I’d known it was you … If I’d known what I was doing … it would have been different. Would you like to see what it would have been like? I can make it what it should have been. Watch.”

  He lowered his head. His eyes burned with a green light like the air before a thunderstorm. She felt the surge of power, felt her hair rising with the electricity in the room. There came the music of drums, from out in the hall, she supposed; but when she glanced that way, she saw a forest under starlight, and the wide green starred with little white flowers. They had a perfume like mown hay. She looked up, glimpsing white stars through interlaced branches and blossoms.

  He began to sing to her. His bass voice seemed to rumble up out of the earth. He was singing the song for virgins.

  The stars blurred, and the Saint realized she was seeing them through tears. She meant to tell him how well he sang, when it ended; but she hadn’t time. His mouth was on hers and her arms went around him, and she felt the scars of an old beating under her fingertips.

  The stag and the doe find each other, the little birds make their nests together. There were no words spoken, no tortured consideration of whether it was right or wrong, indeed no thought at all. There was only sensation, exhilarating as though she soared on wings.

  She woke smiling, before memory and guilt descended on her. She looked up into his eyes. He was leaning down, speaking gravely: “… duties to perform. My steward will come to you and show you the house. He will see to anything you require.”

  “I must write to my disciples,” she said, clutching his arm. “I must let them know what has become of me.”

  He scowled, but said, “If you must. Thrang will fetch you something to write with.”

  He turned away and dressed himself by lamplight. She watched. “What time is it?”

  “The second hour after sunrise.”

  “I wish we had a window in this room.”

  He turned to her. “Would you promise not to try to climb out, if we had one?”

  “I’m your wife,” she said reproachfully. “I will not leave you now.”

  “I’ll put in a window, then.” He turned away to hide his smile. “I meant to anyway; I hadn’t had time to get around to it.”

  He pulled on his boots and was halfway to the door before he turned back, leaned down, and kissed her again, roughly.

  She put on what she had worn the previous day, for lack of anything else, and was looking in vain for a basin and water when a discreet knock came at the door. It took her a moment to realize what a knock signified, and another moment to work out how the door’s latch worked.

  She opened it and managed not to scream at the werewolf standing on the other side, waiting patiently between the two armed guards. He bent down, in something between a bow and a submissive crouch. Madam, said a voice in her inner ear, will it please you to see your house?

  “Yes, thank you,” she said. “Are you Thrang?”

  Yes, Madam. He rose and walked a little way down
the corridor, turning back to see whether she was following. The guards remained behind, for which she was grateful. She hurried after him.

  I must apologize to Madam for the state of the halls. We had very little warning of your arrival.

  “I, too.”

  The Master has been preoccupied with his business. It has been a little difficult to get things done properly.

  “Has it?”

  Yes, Madam. The werewolf looked at her sidelong and made a noise that sounded like an impatient sigh. Madam will forgive me for asking, but has Madam any other garments?

  “I’m afraid I haven’t. Not of my own.”

  White linen, I believe, Madam? There are several bolts of linen in the storeroom. I will have a seamstress take Madam’s measurements and make up a wardrobe for daily wear. And if Madam will leave the present robe by her chamber door tonight, I will see that it is laundered and pressed for tomorrow morning.

  “I would be very grateful.”

  I will show Madam the household service now.

  She followed him, wondering what “household service” might be. Thrang turned off down a narrow corridor, somewhat better swept and lit than the main one, and paused outside an immense ironbound door. Taking a ring of keys from his belt, he opened the door and bowed her inside. He lifted a torch from its sconce by the lintel, that she might see. She looked around in wonder.

  This room was paneled, carpeted, and spotlessly clean. Ranged in cabinets along the walls were dishes and vessels of every size, of gold, of silver, of porcelain and crystal. Covered tureens and ewers had armorial bearings on them, though they did not feature a stag or stars. There were massive silver candlesticks. Some things were clearly meant to go on a table, but their function she could only guess.

  Madam will observe the particularly fine collection of celadon ware. The voiceless voice sounded proud.

  “It’s beautiful,” said the Saint. “I have—I had a pitcher and a set of cups like that, in a dragonfly pattern.”

  Ah! Thrang’s eyes burned with a yellow light. The Dragonfly by Ironbrace! In Spring Mist, Jade, Moss, Emerald, and Melon. First fired in Mount Flame City in the twelfth year of Drence the Dictator. Still being produced. He went to a particular shelf, hunted among the cups stacked there, and took down a cup in the Dragonfly pattern, which he brought to her eagerly. Would Madam like a drink of water? Or perhaps some tea? We have a matching teapot.

  “Thank you, I would like that very much,” she said, a little bewildered, “but I had hoped to bathe first. And I wanted to write letters—”

  Of course. Madam will excuse me, I hope; this will all go more smoothly when we have established a daily routine. I will lead Madam to the baths and take a breakfast tray into the Master’s study. What is Madam’s customary preference?

  “Preference? … I used to boil straj meal. And make a pot of tea.”

  Very good, Madam. Thrang set the cup back on its shelf and took up the torch again. As he bowed her out of the room, she glimpsed a low bed in one corner, tidily made up, and realized that he slept here.

  Back in the main corridor, they proceeded to the door under which water was still running. Growling to himself, Thrang opened it and splashed over the threshold.

  The baths, Madam. He halted a few paces in, with his ears laid back, and she nearly collided with him as she stepped cautiously into the room.

  It was an immense vaulted chamber, as unfinished-looking as the corridors outside, dim with steam; not so dim as to hide the pool in the rock, into which the stream ran and in which lolled some dozen of the household guard, uniform only in their nudity. They looked up, aghast.

  Thrang’s growl became a threat as he bared his teeth at them. They grabbed frantically for towels as they scrambled from the water, and one creature with a tentacled head wept inky tears of embarrassment as he sidled toward the door, webbed hands spread modestly over his groin.

  How dare you? This is the Master’s private bath! You belong in the officers’ bathhouse on the second level! howled Thrang.

  “The drains are plugged up there again,” said a slate-blue demon with silver eyes.

  “We’ve been using this one for a month and nobody complained,” said a demon who seemed to be his twin brother.

  “Please,” said the Saint, “it’s not necessary—tell them they can stay—”

  This did not have its intended effect. They looked at her in horror and stampeded from the room, not even bothering to retrieve their discarded armor from the heap where it lay. One alone remained in the pool, lounging back against its far edge, a demoness, watching the drama with a lazy amused look.

  This is inexcusable. Thrang was snapping the air in his wrath, tossing pieces of armor out the door. Madam ought to have privacy—Madam ought to have proper attendants—we ought to have a proper tiled bath. I’ve served in houses where people had proper tiled baths, I’ve begged and begged to have some decent plumbing put in—

  “Please, it’s all right—”

  “Thrang,” said the demoness, “fetch her a clean towel and soap.”

  The werewolf turned, distracted. Yes! Madam must have clean towels and soap. One moment, please, Madam. He hurried out the door.

  “If you can give him tasks to fulfill, he’s much happier,” the demoness explained.

  “Thank you.” The Saint slipped out of her robe, lay it over a boulder—there being no furniture in the room—and waded into the pool. The warmth of the water took her by surprise, but it was fresh-circulating, and after a moment she was able to enjoy it. The demoness slid down from the edge and swam toward her, cutting through the water like a snake.

  “You mustn’t mind our little peculiarities, Lady,” she said. “We’re a diverse lot, up here, and some of us haven’t the most polished manners.”

  “Are you one of my husband’s mistresses?” said the Saint, slightly narrowing her eyes.

  “He has no mistresses. Not now. And never again, Lady, be sure.”

  “Those weren’t your things left behind in the …”

  “The Jewel Box, we call it. Gracious, no! I’d never wear rouge that color. No, those were relics of a brief infatuation. She’s long gone back to her people. You have no rivals, now. You are the mother of his child, after all.”

  The werewolf entered the cavern again, bearing towels and soap. “Good, Thrang,” said the demoness, raising her voice. “Now, take her robe and have it laundered and pressed. Bring one of the Master’s dressing gowns for her.”

  Dressing gown, yes, of course, Captain Balnshik! Madam shall have her gown back after breakfast.

  “You see?” said the demoness, when he had gone. “He’s an obsessive. Even more so than is usual in a demon. If you know how to keep him busy, you can get a great deal accomplished.”

  The Saint looked at her thoughtfully. “Is he a slave?”

  “No, Lady, he is not. We are all freed slaves here. Even Gard himself was a slave. We serve him, willingly, because to us he is the Good Master. He has made it impossible for anyone to force us into slavery again. This is our refuge. Unfortunately, it must be a fortified stronghold.”

  “Captain Balnshik, he called you.”

  “I am, Lady. Those were my men taking the liberty of bathing here, after we’d come off the night watch. We’re hoping you can prevail on your husband to have something done about the drains.”

  “Is that why there’s a stream running down the hall?”

  “Oh, no, that was always there. You must excuse Gard; he summoned the whole fortress up by sorcery, all of a piece, and unfortunately his knowledge of plumbing was rudimentary. We have lived with the inconvenience. Of course, that must change now, with the Heir to the Black Halls on the way. They needn’t be literally black, but I’m afraid some places have gotten rather filthy. You have the chance to be a civilizing influence on your lord.”

  “Is he likely to do what I ask?”

  Balnshik laughed. “You have power over him, Lady. The other women were pleasant diversi
ons, but I have never seen such a look on his face as when he came to tell me what he’d done to you. ‘What shall I do now?’ he cried. ‘I have pulled the fairest rose in the world, and my heart is run through with the thorns.’ “

  The Saint looked into her eyes. Balnshik endured it a long moment before turning her head, smiling ruefully. “Oh, yes, you have power. I hope you love him in return.”

  “You love him too.”

  “Of course I love him. I have known him since he was very young, and he is a good man. But you are his wife and bear his son.”

  “Has he no other children?”

  “None.”

  Later, wrapped in an immense black robe, the Saint sat at an immense black desk in an immense black room, staring around her. A skylight above her admitted one shaft of brilliant light, by which she saw that the walls were lined with bookshelves. Books were everywhere, the bound volumes printed in their thousands by the Children of the Sun.

  To one side was a tray containing the empty celadon vessels in which her breakfast had been served. Before her was a stack of writing paper and a bottle that had proven, on examination, to contain ink. She was turning a pen in her hands, uncertain how to use it. At last she dipped the pen point in the ink, on general principles, and drew a few hesitant lines on the paper by way of experiment. When she thought she had had enough practice, she took a fresh sheet and wrote:

  To my most beloved disciples, greetings.

  I write to console and assure you I am alive and well, nor am I in any danger. It is my earnest wish that you continue as though I were there among you. I hope Feldash was able to continue on to Karkateen and minister to the sick there among the Children of the Sun. Seni, please care for the little ones. I may have located their fathers.

  Do not fear for me. It is true that I was abducted by he who has been known among us as Cursed Gard. However, I have bound him to an agreement and he will no longer raid our villages nor harm our people in any way. The price of this is that I have become his honorably wedded wife and will bear his child.