The House of the Stag

by Kage Baker

  “This is unclean,” said Ran, clutching his wounded arm. “Come away from this unclean thing. Let it lie! And wash yourself. Its blood stinks.”

  No word but reproach. Gard took the rebuke across his shoulders, looked down.

  “Father,” said Ranwyr, “there might be others—and they’ll see the body and know—”

  “I’ll stay behind,” said Gard. “I’ll hide it. You go home; I’ll wash before I come back.”

  Alone in the night, Gard looked at the weapon in his hand. It was the first spear he had ever seen, bronze-pointed, the haft wound around with strips of skin. But it balanced light in the hand and had seemed to think for him as it had struck, finding the places to stab out the Rider’s life.

  Gard set it aside and searched the body. The Rider had had knives, bronze leaf-blades with a good edge, and he took those too. The other things he left alone, the stinking harnesses and hair, the matted stuff that it had worn on its thighs. Its beast stood there still, as though afraid to move. Gard rose and looked at it, saw the tight-pulled straps that bound and cut it. These he sliced away with the knife, and pulled them off and let them drop. The beast started and raised its neck.

  It leaped away, staggering a little, as though it had forgotten how to run. It tossed its head, spiking the stars with its antlers, feeling no cruel pull in its mouth. Now it took a few tentative steps and now it trotted, gathering speed. It stretched its legs and ran at last, it bounded, it soared! Up it went toward the mountains and vanished on the high slopes.

  Gard stared after it, wondering, his mind full of new things. He bent and dragged away the stinking body of his enemy.

  Ran’s wound healed, but the arm withered. He lay in fevers a long time, became querulous, became thin. Gard and Ranwyr bore it all on their shoulders now, hunting, watching by the dark stream that dried in the summer heat. Yellow muck over stones, unwholesome, and even the river low in its bed.

  One night Ranwyr and Gard took water gourds and climbed the hills, hoping to find water running from the mountains. In a high place they found the white torrent leaping out of the rocks. There they drank and filled the gourds; there they heard the voice and lifted their heads and listened.

  “Someone’s singing,” murmured Ranwyr. They took the gourds and crept in search of what they’d heard. In a high place where the stones reared against the stars, they found the singer. Under glowing stars, with starlight in his hair, he sang stars down the sky. His face was young. Silver ran from his eyes.

  He stopped singing and regarded them.

  “Who are you, singing in this high place? Come down! The Riders will hear,” said Ranwyr.

  The man replied:

  I was their quarry, and I am not found.

  Their swift steeds cannot run me down.

  Their long lances cannot pierce my flesh.

  I am not slain. And I sing.

  “No singing now, not in this sorry world; the songs are whispered, and we hurry in the dark. Come down, poor fool, before they catch you there,” said Gard.

  “No Riders can catch me. I came to this high place to sing; a thousand stars fell, and two burned out my eyes, as I sang. I was blinded, but I knew a thousand new Songs, and with them saw better than with my eyes.

  “I went down this mountain to sing to my love, but she was taken, she was taken, while I sang in my high place. I went heedless to the slave pits, climbed those black walls to free her.

  “But she was dead. She was dead, and I am not dead. I wept in the dark places; the guards did not hear me. A child wept near me; he had fetter sores on his skin. To comfort him, I sang the first Song. His sores were healed.

  “I walked among them all: bred mothers and children, broken men, all, and healed them all. Sores, the wound of the ax and plowshares, the stripes of the lash, I healed. Fevers I took away, and the galling of chains. When day came, I walked out unseen, unstopped. In my arms I carried a child. ‘My sister lived by the waterfall,’ said her mother. ‘Oh, Healer, take her my girl!’ And so I freed that child.

  “Now I go and come to them all, in the pens, in the fields. I am never slain, though Riders hunt me. I am never slain.”

  Gard shook his head. “Friend, come down; the sorrow has made you sick! Come shelter with us. We have a safe place; your mind will heal.”

  But the singer smiled at him. “I never will be healed, until the people are free. Though I will come soon to all your safe places, I never will be sheltered. Go down, and tell them to come up to me. I will heal all our poor race, here on this mountain of stars, down in the blackness of the pit. Go down and tell them!”

  His voice was strange and wild, the crying of birds, far up on an autumn sky. He resumed his song. With one last long troubled stare, Gard took up his water gourd and left. Ranwyr followed after, joyful.

  “Now he’s come, the bright one, the beloved! He’ll heal the world!”

  “No man can do that,” said Gard.

  “But he wore a crown of stars,” said Ranwyr. “You saw that he was holy, you heard the stars burning silver in his voice!”

  “I saw a poor mad fool in pain. They will be kind spears, that get him,” said Gard.

  Soon the stories began.

  There had been a little girl, screaming, her foot pierced through by thorns of bronze in a spring-jawed trap. Somehow she’d been freed beneath the Riders’ very noses, and carried back to her father’s shelter. A smiling stranger had blessed her. Her wounds closed without scar.

  In dark security a family stifled and burned with fever, mother and children, father. A star-eyed stranger brought them bitter herbs in water; they drank and were healed.

  A brother and sister had been tracked by Riders, but heard a voice singing to call them on. Just ahead of the spear points they ran, following the voice, hearts beating loud, the hooves behind them beating louder. Then, a miracle: the trees themselves had closed behind them, hiding the hunted, bewildering the hunters.

  So the stories ran, and on the speaking rock the Star appears here: a figure drawn with rayed stars for eyes, silvery ash used to make a cloud of light about him. His raised hands bless. He is in many places.

  Ranwyr told the stories over in the dark, all he heard, to give them hope. The little girl listened wide-eyed, Teliva listened and wrung her hands in longing; Ran listened and shook his head. Gard sat apart, arms folded, impatient.

  “Let’s go out and look for him then, your Star,” he said. “We know where to find him to see if he’s still singing up there, waving his blind hands. You’ll see the truth!”

  So they climbed the hills, Gard and Ranwyr, when the smoke of the Riders’ halls was carried up past them on high wind. Under bright stars burning, they climbed and met others climbing the trail: men and women they had not seen in years, many they had supposed were dead. Their hearts were high to see so many together, though the people moved like ghosts through the night, and many hobbled or crawled.

  “Where are you going?” Gard asked a woman.

  “To find the Star!” she answered.

  “You’ve heard the stories too?” asked Ranwyr.

  “Everyone has heard them,” said a man who passed them on the trail.

  “So many of us!” said Ranwyr, with his eyes shining. He stared upward as he climbed, looking for the line of stones against the stars that marked where they had met the man. Gard turned often as he climbed to look back, uneasy, mindful of the Riders. From so high he could look out on the world they had taken with their spears, where they sat planted now at their ease; and the displaced people floated up toward the stars like bubbles or smoke, chasing a fantasy. It made his heart wild, white like the wild river.

  Then he heard the singer again, the voice in the night. All around him people moaned and rushed forward. He saw the wave of them break around the high stone where the singer was, and on all sides they stretched up their arms to him.

  Smiling, the Star held out his hands. “Welcome.”

  “Help us,” cried the people, th
eir voices braided out of longing and despair. “Oh, Star, help us, heal us! Make my leg straight again. Make my baby strong. Bring my father out of the pit. Take away this fever. Sing to us, Bright One, and make the old days come again! Give us our youth back, before we knew what evil was! Oh, let everything be as it used to be.”

  The Star shook his head. “Your old ways are lost. I can never sing back the child into the womb, the leaf into the bud. I cannot take this stain from the face of the sun. But, my people, I can ease your pain!

  “Listen and be comforted, no more scattered in lurking isolation, no more slaves slaughtered and forsaken. Learn what I have learned! Come and let me teach you, and you will walk, as I walk, unfearing in the light. With a song, I close wounds; I know the songs of the flowers of the field, and all their properties. I know songs to clean poisoned waters, songs to hear the speech of beasts and all birds of the air.

  “Come and learn from me! I can teach you to endure, as the earth endures, until we may be free. I can give you strength.”

  “Good!” said Gard, standing up among them all. “Give us strength, then, Star. For every wound you close, the Riders open a new one; for every snare you loose, the Riders set another. Do you know songs to drive them out? Teach them to me! Help us make spears, to open wounds! Help us weave snares, to catch the strangers!”

  But the Star held up his hands. “I have no songs that kill, no power to wound. Listen well, all you who have despaired: the snare you make for another will catch your own feet. The Riders can’t kill us all, unless we become what they are. That way we lose ourselves, beyond hope.”

  Gard spoke in anger then, drawing his brows together. “You lost your mate to the Riders! Who are you to say we shouldn’t fight? Once we were like flowers, and we were trampled down. I won’t be trampled anymore!”

  The Star replied, “I tell you that a flower will be our deliverance! That flower will lead us from this valley; but let us go in innocence. I would not walk to freedom with blood upon my feet, over the bodies of the dead!”

  “Then others will walk over your body,” said Gard, and in white anger he turned and strode away down the mountain. Ranwyr watched him go, hesitant to speak. Resolved, he raised his voice:

  “Holiest of men, I know you have the power to do wonders. Is there no song to open a way through the mountains? We all know there are fair groves far away, where no Riders can follow. Sing to make the stones crack, the earth shift, and where it opens, lead us through! There we’ll live in innocence, ourselves and free.”

  But the Star answered, “I have no song to break the mountains. Until the deliverer comes to us, we must endure, Ranwyr, as the mountains endure.”

  Ranwyr bowed his head, and in his heart hope fell low like a spring of water receding; but still he said. “Teach me, then, Bright One, that I may teach others. Let me walk in your path.”

  Now others crowded up, begging to be taught too. They sat at the Star’s feet, and he taught them the first of the Songs. He promised a way to step from time as a man steps from a trail. He promised a way to open eyes, that they might see the truth of light and matter. He promised a way to weave light and matter like a net, the pattern in control, seen all perfect from outside of time.

  Some listened and understood. Some listened and thought they understood.

  Soon there were disciples. Ranwyr was the first, but, eager as he was, he could not learn the tricks that cloaked the others in stars and night. He could not safely walk in the Riders’ pens and carry out the children of slaves, though others did, nor walk unseen among the fields and leave no track. He learned the names of herbs and their properties, what cooled a fever or eased pain; but he could not save Ran or heal his withered arm.

  Ran would not believe in the Star, though Teliva sat beside him pleading. His heart dried in him like the dark stream, and one night he turned his face down to the earth and listened for its heartbeat. Then Ran slept and never woke again, though Teliva sat beside him weeping.

  “Will you never open your eyes to me again? Once you walked with me in the long grass, where little lilies poked through and opened their bright throats, and the white mist was on the hillsides and concealed us when we lay down; and your eyes looked into mine.

  “Will you never speak to me again? Once you lay with me in the summer groves, and the blossoms drifted over us and the branches bowed with fruit down to my lips, and the long red sunlight of summer dappled the forest floor; and you sang all night long.

  “Will you never lift your head again? Once you rose, you moved without tiring, and on the dancing green under stars you were light-footed, and through the red and yellow leaves that drifted you were the swiftest in the chase, and brought me down, best of all the young men; and you rose above me high and strong.

  “Will you never hear my call again? Once I sang like a bird, no heartbroken note, once I sang and you heard me over meadows, over valleys, over mountains and groves; once you came to my voice, dropping down swift from where you soared. You heard if I turned in my sleep, you woke if I murmured in my dreams.

  “But you have been unfaithful, you have listened to the earth’s voice, you have despaired, gone down into sleep and left me to my grief. How will I go after you and leave your children unprotected? Who will care for us now, Ran?”

  Gard and Ranwyr gave Ran to the earth. Afterward they spoke together, debating what they ought to do; for Ran’s stream was dry, and Ran’s refuge no longer was a safe home. The Riders’ fields now stretched to the edges of his grove.

  “There are high caves in the rock,” said Ranwyr, “and He and His disciples keep safe places there for widows, for orphans. It’s cold, no flowers bloom there; but the water is fresh and clean, and no Riders climb so high.”

  Gard bent his black brows, grumbling, “Who is He, has He become a god? If He’s so high, let Him free us all.”

  But Gard looked narrowly at the girl Luma, saw that she was growing breasts; saw the lines that marked Teliva’s face, and how she thirsted for any kind of hope, and so he agreed. Teliva went one last time to gather flowers, blooms of late summer, all she could find, blowing to feather and seed, to lay in the old place. They moved on. The Star welcomed the women, granted them shelter in his high places.

  Gard would not stay with them on the mountain, to look down on the wide land where his people had lived. His anger ran like the white torrent, and so he went down again, into the trees beyond the Riders’ fields.

  Now those who were dark rumor in the past were themselves haunted by darker rumors still. Something stalked and slaughtered in the wood beyond their fields. Lone hunters, overseers wandering too far from the plowed edge, travelers, vanished without trace. Now among the sheep, a bull; now among the roses, one black thorn to shed the Riders’ blood.

  Gard had watched his enemy and learned well. He dug pits, deeper than the strangers ever made, more cunningly hidden than theirs. He set snares, lined with sharpened stakes, tempered in slow fire struck from flint, to bite deep and hold fast. He did more than his enemies could do: walked unseen on the trail behind to catch, rose from the running water to drown, dropped from the high tree branch to strike in silence.

  And Gard plundered the Riders he struck down. He stored up what he took: long knives and daggers, spears with barbed heads, coiled black whips and heavy-weighted nets, jewelry in heaps. Now openly he wore an arm ring made of bronze, a silver collar worked with grinning skulls, taken from a Rider. The bodies he sank in the wide marsh; the heads he kept, a pyramid of bone, the best of all his treasures.

  One night Gard saw a fire burning, so tall it licked the underside of the clouds. He crept as close as he could to the Riders’ halls, lying flat in the plowed furrow, and watched one of their houses burn. Before the sun rose he had retreated to the trees, but still he watched; and at sunrise saw a procession coming out, four Riders together. Before them they drove one of their own, prodding his old back with spears. When he stumbled and fell, they laughed; when he struggled to rise,
pushing himself up with bound hands, they spit on him and struck him with the butts of their weapons.

  Amazed, Gard fell back and watched from a hiding place as they came on into the trees. Where the woods were thickest, they halted, dismounting. One took a rope and threw it over a tree branch, tied it tight; he looped it through the binding on the old one’s wrists and hauled him up. The old one hung there, feet just barely touching the earth. His escorts laughed at him and rode away, back to their houses, while he screamed after them. He was bloodied, had been stripped naked of the hides the Riders wore.

  Gard sat watching a long while after they had gone, as the old one’s cries faded to mutters of outrage. At last Gard climbed a tree and looked from that high vantage, to see whether the Riders had doubled back; but they had abandoned their victim.

  He scrambled down and vaulted from the low branch, landing before the old Rider. The man screamed again and spat at Gard. He hissed long words in the Riders’ speech, venomous sounds.

  Gard hefted his spear. “I wonder why they left you, old piece of filth.”

  “Eeh?” The old Rider broke off cursing and peered at him. “You speak slave?”

  Gard was astonished. None he had ever killed had spoken to him in his own tongue. “I’m not a slave.”

  “No,” the old Rider agreed. “You not them. You have hair-face; the sire slaves, they smooth-face same as dams. You too big. What you be, monster?”

  Gard touched his beard a little self-consciously. Ranwyr had no beard; none of the men among the people had them either. “You speak our language badly.”

  “Only slave language,” said the old Rider, looking contemptuous. “Not worth learn better. Listen, monster: you cut me loose, I give you many presents. Eeh? Many dam slaves to fuck.”

  “I won’t cut you down,” said Gard, with white anger rising high. “You Riders killed my father! And I’ll kill you. I’ve killed a lot of you!