The House of the Stag

by Kage Baker

  In this way, what was broken will be made whole; what was evil will be turned to the purpose of compassion.

  I continue in my duty to you as I have always done, and will write again at my earliest opportunity for your further instruction.

  I am your mother and daughter.

  ___________

  She spent the balance of the day in Gard’s library, examining his books. When the illumination from the skylight waned, she sat quietly, praying, until Thrang opened the door and peered in. Dinner is served, Madam. Master awaits in the dining hall.

  “Thank you,” she said. He waited until she came to the door, then started down the hall, looking over his shoulder every few dozen paces to be certain she followed. He led her through another doorway into another high cavern, lit by torches. Its floor had been leveled and swept, a carpet set down, a rough trestle table placed in the middle. Gold and silver plate decked the cloth. Two massive chairs, nearly the size of thrones, faced each other across the table. For all the splendor there was little food: a joint of meat of some kind, a bowl of fruit, a loaf of bread. Four decanters of wine, and two golden goblets.

  Gard was pacing back and forth, looking ill at ease. He came to her at once and kissed her. “Good evening, wife.”

  “Good evening, husband.”

  “I, er, I suppose we’ll eat now.” Gard went to pull back her chair, but it seemed wedged under the trestle, and at last he simply picked her up and set her in it, before going around to his side. Thrang came to stand at her elbow, looking from one face to the other, wringing his hands. “Well. Yes. I—”

  Shall I carve for Master?

  “All right,” said Gard, and sat patiently as Thrang carved off slices of meat and set them on his plate.

  “Do you always eat in here?” inquired the Saint.

  “No. Usually I eat in the guardroom—”

  And for Madam?

  “I would rather not eat meat,” said the Saint.

  Thrang stiffened somewhat. I shall carve bread for Madam, then.

  “I’ll eat her portion of the roast,” Gard volunteered, looking at the paper-thin slices on his plate.

  Thrang did not reply, sawing away at the bread loaf. He set out four slices of bread on the Saint’s plate. Gard reached for the nearest wine decanter and Thrang grabbed it up, whisking it away to remove the stopper and fill the pair of goblets, which he then set before Gard and the Saint.

  “Thank you, Thrang,” said the Saint.

  Will Madam require anything else?

  “I don’t think so.”

  Gard rolled the slices of meat into a cylinder, stuffed it in his mouth, and reached for the knife to cut more. Thrang seized it first and again set about carving from the roast. Cautiously, the Saint took a slice of bread and nibbled it. Gard, scowling, took up his goblet and drained half its contents in one gulp.

  “The bread is very good,” said the Saint.

  I shall relay Madam’s compliment to Rakshagthreena in the kitchens.

  “Is he the baker?”

  She is, Madam.

  Gard emptied his goblet and reached for the decanter to refill it. Thrang dropped the carving knife and fork with a clatter and got to the decanter first. He refilled Gard’s goblet and presented it to him. “Thank you,” said Gard in a voice like distant thunder.

  “May I make a request, Thrang?”

  Thrang turned instantly, ears pointing straight up. Madam wishes the melon?

  “Not just yet. I wonder if you would make the arrangements for certain dishes, in the days to come? I have the baby’s health to consider.”

  Of course, Madam!

  “I realize there hasn’t been time to plant a garden yet, but if you have any lentils or olives—”

  We have!

  “And then later we might plant kale or some fresh peas.”

  I will see to it at once. Thrang ran from the room.

  Gard took the carving knife and hacked off a substantial slab of the roast. “Were you all right, on your own, today?” he asked, through a full mouth. She nodded. “Good.”

  She cleared her throat. “Thrang showed me his collection of celadon.”

  “Mm.”

  “It’s in a beautiful room. Very clean. I think it might be easier to keep the other rooms clean if they were like his room.”

  “Mm.”

  “So I would like to have our rooms paneled and plastered. And perhaps something might be done about the plumbing. The drain in the officers’ bathhouse on the second level is blocked.”

  “It is?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’d need the Children of the Sun for that,” said Gard. “They understand pipes and things. Plastering and tiles too. I’d have to get a whole army of workmen up here.”

  The Saint took up another slice of bread. “I will live with you in a cave, my lord, if that is your desire, but do you really propose to raise your child in one?”

  Gard frowned. He drank more wine. “I lived in a hole under some tree roots until I was fifteen,” he said at last. “Didn’t do me any harm. But you’ll have your wish.”

  “Thank you,” said the Saint. “I wrote a letter today. Will you send it down to my people?”

  Gard’s frown grew deeper. “What’d you say to them?”

  “I told them I am all right and stay with you of my own free will. It’s on your desk.”

  “Good.” Gard’s expression lightened. “I’ll have it sent.”

  Thrang ran back into the room, clutching a jar of olives. He set them at the Saint’s right hand and looked at her hopefully. Will Madam require the lid opened?

  There was another mountain, far away. Whereas Gard’s mountain had been wilderness and was slowly having comfort and cleanliness forced on it, the other mountain had once been all elegance, all refinement, and was now a cracked and broken ruin. Yet not an empty one; some fitful life moved through it still.

  The man watched his cup filling, drop by drop, from the snowmelt trickling through the crack in the ceiling. His jaws moved ceaselessly, munching away at the last of the tallow candles.

  On the day the mountain had been broken, he had survived because a great block of stone had fallen from the ceiling and jammed in place on a plinth, a hand’s breadth above him. The other prisoners in the pen of sacrifice had been crushed; so had the chain coupling that bound him to them. When he had felt brave enough to move, he had crawled as far as he could and emerged into the outer passageway. Faint gray gleams of sunlight were filtering down through tons of rubble, enough to see his way.

  He had lived for a little while on the bodies of the dead, until they were beyond what even a starving man could face, and on the melted snow that dripped in here and there. Then he had found a storeroom and lived on its contents for a long while, as he explored what remained of the lower galleries.

  He lived in hope. Sooner or later he would find a corpse with boots, or a coat. Sooner or later he could dress himself warmly enough to dig through into the outer world, and then he would be free.

  It had been a bad hour for him when he had discovered that the upper halls were still inhabited. Fleering torchlight, shouted orders, a woman’s high voice raised in anger; sometimes a distant boom, perhaps something being opened, or more of the mountain falling in. Gradually, however, he had dared to venture upward and found the upper storerooms. He had crept in, cleverly working his way to the back for the crates farthest from the light, and carried out as many boxes as he was able, pushing them down his access tunnel. Most of their contents were edible, one way or another.

  He had survived on them for months, but now he would have to go up again.

  The cup was full at last. He drank the water, replaced the cup, and wiped his hands on his long beard before venturing out.

  Poking his head up through the hole in the floor, he sniffed the air. It was warmer, these days; they must have found a way to get the central fires burning again. The dead still feeling was gone from the place, the tomblike atmosphere
of the early days after the mountain had fallen. He wondered who else had survived.

  They had been clearing debris from this passageway, at any rate. He squeezed through and hurried up the black corridor by memory, thirty paces, sixty paces, and the storeroom ought to be here—

  He collided with something soft. It felt like a blanket hung across the passageway, but as he fought with it, it became viscous, adhered to his limbs. He struggled frantically, flinging himself backward, but it only sent him farther into the obstruction on the recoil. The obstruction began to glow too, with a pink light.

  He floated now in a solid cloud, keeping his nose and mouth clear with difficulty. Gasping for breath, he hung there. The grip on his limbs tightened. He couldn’t draw in enough air to scream.

  Not long afterward, torches flared, high up the passage; there were voices and laughter. With infinite effort, he turned his head to see who was coming for him.

  Demons in livery, trooping along sullenly. A smaller figure in the midst of them, swathed in furs.

  “I told you!” The voice was a woman’s, triumphant. “I told you we’d catch our rat, and there he is. You’ve fattened on our stores, rat; shall we fatten on you, now?”

  “It’s a Child of the Sun,” said one of the demons.

  “Is it?” The woman drew close and looked at him, though she kept well clear of the pink cloud. “Why, it is. He was so filthy I couldn’t tell, at first.”

  He hung there staring back at her. Her long skirt was of the costliest brocade, though it trailed in the dirt and the hem was ragged and soiled. Her rich furs were rank with the smell of beasts. She glittered with jewels, rings on each finger, rings that were too large for her little hands threaded on chains around her neck, bracelets, necklaces, earrings, a coronet set with red stones. Her eyes flashed at him, her smile of contempt revealed missing teeth.

  And then all at once her expression changed utterly.

  “Why, it’s Quickfire!” she said, and in a changed voice too. “Quickfire the champion! Oh, I remember you. Poor, poor Quickfire, what are you doing here?”

  He couldn’t answer her. She waved her hand and the cloud dispersed, let him sag to the ground. He collapsed, unable to feel his limbs.

  She squatted beside him. “You were always a brave fighter in the arena,” she crooned, stroking back his hair to look into his eyes. “They sent you down after Gard defeated you, I heard. I thought you were dead long ago, or I’d have had you rescued. You were a favorite of mine, did you know? So handsome. Why, I used to keep your likeness in my chamber, when I was quite a little girl.”

  “Please—”

  “Oh, don’t be afraid! I wouldn’t have you harmed, not now I’ve found you again. Traq! Have your men fetch a litter. Poor Quickfire’s too weak to walk. Don’t worry, dear Quickfire, the effect will wear off in a few hours. By then you’ll be bathed, and shaved, and dressed in some really nice garments, Lord Vergoin’s own in fact. Much nicer than anything you could ever have owned. And then you’ll have lovely hot food and drink. And then I’ll have a proposition for you.” She stroked his cheek.

  The litter was brought. He was loaded into it and carried to the upper levels. Lady Pirihine walked beside him, holding his hand the whole way.

  Quickfire was borne through halls so ruined he would not have known them, had he not here and there recognized a bit of wall frieze or a surviving section of mosaic floor. The great central cavern around which the Grand Concourse had run was still standing, though it too had changed almost beyond recognition. The shops full of costly wares had been gutted; folk were living in them now, to all appearances, and a great fire burned in the center area where flowers had once bloomed with the aid of sorcery.

  Some few of the gentry sat near the fire, in gilt-iron chairs, attended by demons. They turned listless faces to watch as the Narcissus of the Void came up the side tunnel. She progressed with her servants into what had been a jeweler’s shop and was now, apparently, private apartments.

  All Lady Pirihine had promised was indeed done. She undressed Quickfire and bathed him with her own hands, smiling to see the effect her intimate caress had on him. She shaved him and combed out his hair. She helped him into fine garments. He recognized Lord Vergoin’s colors and wondered what had become of Vergoin until he glimpsed the figure lying in an alcove, in a humming fog of spells.

  “Vergoin, dear,” said Lady Pirihine, going to the alcove and looking down. “Look what I’ve found, in the cellars! It’s the great champion Quickfire. We prayed for a hero and, poof! One appears. Isn’t it extraordinary?”

  Vergoin made a sound.

  Quickfire looked closely at him, then looked away. “What happened to him?” he asked, and that was the longest sentence he’d spoken in seven years.

  “The rock fell on him,” said Lady Pirihine. “I suppose I ought to have let him die, but there are so few of us left, nowadays. And he has his uses. He’s a great listener, for one thing. Sometimes a girl needs someone to listen to her troubles. Don’t I, Vergoin dear? Oh, don’t look like that; you’re really too ungrateful, looking at me like that, and just when our luck has taken the most extraordinary turn!

  “Come along, Quickfire. The slaves have prepared us a little feast. We have much to discuss.”

  The Saint sat alone in Gard’s study, working at a loom he had brought in for her, singing as she worked.

  She was happy in her marriage. It was as though she had managed to push her little boat out into the river at last and been carried away all alone, into a new world of discovery. The sense of freedom was intoxicating.

  It was true that she was constantly watched; it was true that the Black Halls were cold and barbarous. She had walked out with Gard to survey the site of the promised garden and found it acres of rock-strewn mountaintop, with scarcely a blade of grass growing there. Her attendants were fearful-looking creatures, some of them.

  But she was learning the way their minds worked: some were all simple emotions in bright primary colors, nearly untouched by any sense of good or evil. A few older ones, such as Balnshik, were serene and wise, though she found their sense of humor bewildering at times. Some, such as Thrang, were obsessives with minds like maze patterns, fabulously spiraled and knotted. She had learned that Gard was like none of them.

  He had begun to tell her a little about himself, as they undressed for bed, as she lay in his arms before or after the act of love. She watched his face as he spoke, hesitantly, of grinding slave labor, or of fighting for his life in the arena, or on the battlefield. One night he astonished her by declaiming poetry, in the style of the Children of the Sun.

  He was not innocent as a beast is innocent, she saw now; he had an outer layer of simplicity like leaves in sunlight, but shadows were beneath, and a somber, thoughtful soul watched her from them.

  She was aware she was infatuated with him. She was aware his body acted on hers like a drug, in the long hours of the night, in his high black bed. She was aware she felt a selfish happiness at being a wife at last, at being a mother soon.

  But who could reproach her? Had she not sacrificed herself for the good of her people?

  “Lady.”

  She looked up from her loom. The sergeant of the guard, the one with red eyes, bowed to her. “Sergeant?”

  “Lady, we have the workmen for you. The Children of the Sun you wanted. With all their tools and gear. Himself says come and see.”

  “Thank you, Sergeant.” She rose, smiling. “Where are they?”

  “Got ‘em in the lower courtyard.”

  He escorted her down through the corridors. Hideous monsters saluted shyly as she passed them. She stepped out into the courtyard and beheld red men, kneeling in a long row. They were blindfolded, their hands bound before them, and some wept and prayed to their gods. Piled in a heap to one side of them were chests and trays of tools. Gard stood to the other side of them, in his full black armor. When he spoke, it was not to her but to the prisoners, in a voice full of rolling thunder
.

  “Now, Children of the Sun, if you die tomorrow, you will still have seen the fairest sight of your lives, and you’d not see anything fairer if you lived on a thousand years. Free their eyes!”

  His guards stepped forward and pulled off the blindfolds, one by one. One by one the red men blinked, stared around, then gasped as they saw the Saint. Some of them fell prostrate before her, bound hands outstretched. “Oh, Lady, save us!”

  “Have mercy on us!”

  “Don’t let him kill us!”

  She looked on them in horror and looked white rage at Gard. “What have you done?”

  “Brought you workmen, as I promised,” he said in that same theatrical tone, meeting her eyes without flinching. She saw amusement there, and a covert purpose. “Why, madam, are you displeased? Shall I have them hanged?”

  “No!” she cried. “You will have them released at once!” The red men crowded forward on their knees, weeping, thanking her, imploring her, praising her.

  “Then I will spare your lives,” said Gard to the Children of the Sun. “But you will slave for me nonetheless, to make fair the rooms in which my lady lives.”

  “They will not slave!” said the Saint. “If they choose to work, you will pay them in gold, and then you’ll let them go!”

  “Lady, is it fine work you want?” said one of the prisoners. “By all the gods, I swear you’ll have rooms finer than a duchess’s!”

  “Wife, I will defer to your wishes,” said Gard. “For I am your slave in all things. Should one of them displease you, however, his head shall look down sadly from a pike.”

  “May I speak with you alone a moment?” said the Saint to Gard.

  He bowed her to the door, and she pulled him within the hall after her. “Now they will do anything you ask them,” said Gard smugly.

  “How dare you!” The Saint looked him full in the eyes with all the force of her anger, and he rocked back a little on his heels but did not look away.

  “Wife, this is the way a Dark Lord accomplishes his affairs. And I had to bring them up here blindfolded, you know, that’s elementary security. They haven’t been hurt. They haven’t been robbed. If they do a good job for you, by all means pay them what you will. They’ll have to be taken down the mountain blindfolded too, but you have my word they’ll be released alive and unharmed. That’s fair, isn’t it?”