The House of the Stag

by Kage Baker

  The brothers rocked and hugged themselves.

  “Oh, fortunate boy! Then no one knows, and there is no way you can be made a slave!”

  “They may chain you. They may beat you. But unless the masters know your true name, they may not own you.”

  “Even in this cell, you are free. Not like us. We must serve them. Poor old Grattur!”

  “Poor old Engrattur! They called us down into flesh with promises of pleasure.”

  “They gave us food. They made us drunk.”

  “We were unwise. We told our names.”

  “Now we are slaves. Now they own our wills.”

  “Naming calls; naming owns.”

  “But you they’ll never call. You they’ll never own!”

  “So you are Grattur and Engrattur?” said Gard, and they winced.

  “Two fools, Grattur and Engrattur. If you could see the spells that bind us round, you would wonder how we even breathe.”

  “Trapped down here to serve them forever, and we cannot even die.”

  “They would only body us again, call us back by our names.”

  “Body you?” Gard asked.

  “Make us bodies again, by craft, and lock us in them—,” said Grattur. They heard footsteps, and then Triphammer looked into the grotto.

  “What are you doing here? Icicle needs his rest. What is this, what is this? Are you making him drunk? Idiots!”

  Grattur showed his teeth. Engrattur took a wad of leaves from a pouch and tucked them into Gard’s mouth.

  “He’ll rest now, won’t you, brother? Remember us, remember our fates. We’re going, hothead!”

  They shouldered their way out into the corridor. Triphammer looked after them angrily, then turned to hook the medicine into Gard’s arm.

  “Stupid demons,” he muttered.

  Am I a demon? Gard wondered, biting gratefully into the quid. The numbness came again, and the black bliss.

  It was decided he would live, and so he was moved to a proper chamber; the grottoes, as Triphammer explained delicately, being more convenient to the Larder in case the seriously ill didn’t pull through.

  “But look what a fine cell you’ve been given!” said Triphammer, arranging the medicine rack above the new bed. “Dry as a bone. And look at all this fine bedstraw! Sweet as a summer meadow. I’ll tell you, the masters must think you have great potential. My other patients would envy you. You don’t often see slaves given such care, and that’s a fact.”

  “I’m not a slave,” said Gard.

  Triphammer grimaced. “No need to be ungrateful. Here you lie, alive, and wasn’t that their doing? And all your food and drink is their gift. You owe them service, really. After all. And it’s not as though your future is so bleak. See, here’s another gift for you!” Triphammer delved into a corner of the cell and held up two sticks, each with one end wrapped in rags. “Crutches! I’m to teach you to walk with them. Think of being able to get about on your own again, eh? Why, you might get a little wheeled cart, if you’re diligent at your tasks.

  “Perhaps even—” He dropped his voice. “There are special rewards for the best slaves, you know. Clever devices, all worked with spells. How’d you like a pair of silver legs, eh, to replace those poor withered ones? Set with gems, and strong enough to carry you across the world without tiring?”

  The burning child had a lot of hopping and gesturing to do before Gard took in all Triphammer’s meaning. But when he understood it at last, he looked scornful.

  “That’s a story for children. No men can make such things.”

  “Hai! And there you’re wrong, my friend,” said Triphammer, grinning. He pulled up a stool and sat. “I’ll tell you a story, and no children’s tale either, but the sacred truth, as I’m my mother’s son.

  “Long ago, when there were more gods than men, this black mountain rose up out of the earth. It was the tallest mountain in the world. It scraped the stars at night, raked up a plume of silver dust that trailed from its summit. Green lightnings crackled there, power hummed and danced there. And mages—who are drawn to the smell of power the way cats are drawn to stinking fish—went there and tried to find a way to take the power for their own and use it.

  “From all corners of the earth they came, a long procession of mages going up hopeful, with their servants and their baggage and beasts; coming down broken, with their fine robes in rags, and their rich goods lost to the ice and snow. Every one of them it defeated. The power could not be taken. It would not be owned.

  “And at last, the cleverest mage among them said, ‘No one man can defeat the mountain. Yet, if two or three or ten went together, it might be done.’

  “They came together and worked out a spell they thought would mine power from the mountain, as men mine ore from rock. Twenty of them met, twenty, and do you know how hard it is for so many mages to gather in one place, for one purpose? They’re quarrelsome as cats. But the thought of so much power bound them to set aside their disputations, and one fine day they climbed the mountain, with their servants and their baggage and their beasts.

  “They pulled themselves over the top, wading in snow, complaining. They drew the circle. They lit the braziers and cast on incense. They spilled blood, whose I don’t know, and raised their chant. The power came at their call, it danced around them like green fire, and then—

  “It bound them!

  “It would not be bound, but bound them, all, with their servants and their baggage and their beasts, like a green bowl clamped down. They could not leave. They clawed and screamed at the wall that locked them in, till their fine robes were rags, and their rich goods were no use in the ice and snow. Miserable in the bitter weather they huddled there, and so at last to save their lives they dug into the mountain.

  “They made tunnels, with their arts; caves and galleries, grand chambers at last, deeper and deeper always, and so in time made a grand palace under the rock. We are down at the mountain’s roots, you and I, but if you went up, you’d see the fine rooms!

  “And so they made the best of a bad bargain. Devised clever ways of growing food, in chambers lit by witchlight. Cut doors in the lower slopes, through which they still could not go, but other folk could be summoned and lured in to … to bring them things they needed. You have to admire them, don’t you? Now they live like kings and queens, in this palace that might have been a prison. They are famed among mages.”

  Gard thought about this and could still not see so great a difference between mages and Riders. He saw clearly, though, that there was no use arguing with Triphammer. He said only, “And you came to serve them out of admiration, did you?”

  Triphammer winced and looked away. “I was traveling. I lost myself, just as you did. Their servants found me and … I made myself useful. All for the best.”

  “So you came from the place on the other side of the mountains?”

  “Long ago. Long ago. No use trying to go back now.”

  “Are there forests there?”

  “Eh?” Triphammer looked up at Gard. “Forests? Big trees? Not where we live. It was open and warm, with good rock, and the blue sea … who’d want to live back in the woods? Nobody there but demons. You might walk for days and never see a living soul, just green leaves. Brrrr!”

  10th day 5th week 4th month in the 231st year from the Ascent of the Mountain. This day, Slave 4372301 assigned to General Labor Pool, Class 3. Requisitioned by Magister Tagletsit.

  Magister Tagletsit regretted the loss of the sun. He had come from a far desert country, where the sun was worshiped as a harsh lord, unquestioned master, king of dunes and stones and serpents, who withdrew his presence by night only that his trembling and shivering subjects might the better appreciate his return by morning.

  So cruel a father must necessarily breed desperate love in his children. Magister Tagletsit, when he had found himself facing an eternity in stone-bound darkness, could not imagine life anywhere but under the blazing eye of his God. It nearly drove him to self-sacrifice;
but then he had devised a means by which his discomfort was eased.

  He lived in a great circular chamber, partitioned into rooms, the whole strictly aligned with the unseen points of the compass. All around its outer wall ran a tunnel. The tunnel wall was pierced through with many little windows into the rooms, through which shone the light and heat, at any given moment, of five hundred oil lamps.

  The tunnel contained five thousand lamps, ranged in brass along its length, from east to west. One slave’s duty was, each day, to consult the astronomical charts to determine at what precise spot on the horizon the unseen sun would rise, and when. He would enter the tunnel in felt slippers and move a golden peg to the corresponding point marked off on the tunnel wall.

  Then he would return to his bed, for he was a valued slave with advanced clerical skills. Gard, unskilled cripple, must turn an hourglass and begin the daylong task of lighting each bank of lamps, east to west, one after another, extinguishing the first when the last had been lit. Then he would turn the glass and repeat the process on the next bank of lamps, thus working his way around the tunnel.

  Each day he labored so, naked in the tunnel, while the sweat ran from his body, while the muscles in his arms screamed for hatred of his weight, and hatred of his useless legs that dangled between the crutches. Unthinkable to stop; for at each hour-mark a little cistern was mounted in the wall that would only discharge its drinking water for him if all the lamps to that point had been lit, and in the proper sequence too. The sweat of his body kept him faithful. The leather of his tongue in his dry mouth kept him faithful.

  And if he was tempted, still, to die and never sweat or thirst again, one thought kept him still faithful: that there really were green forests beyond the mountains, and if he lived to escape, he might go there one day, even as Ranwyr might have gone. He might find a pass through the mountains into the valley and lead a weary people to freedom, even as Ranwyr might have led them.

  And Magister Tagletsit was happy within his rooms, watching the angled light change with the passage of hours, basking in the warmth, and was able to pray in praise, “How great thou art, O Sun, whose eye pierces even into the depths of the earth! Truly thou art great, and none can hide from thee.”

  “Not so bad, after all, is it?” said Triphammer, when he would come in to tend to Gard’s legs at the end of every shift. “You’ve got a soft job, eh? Just you think about what they rescued you from. Just you remember that ice, and those banks of snow. That’s what I do, when I get to feeling sorry for myself. There I was, lost in drifts over my head, and wasn’t I grateful to be let inside here!”

  Triphammer said the same thing always, reliable as the circling sun.

  “Why weren’t your legs frozen, like mine?” Gard asked him, one night.

  “Because I had a proper pair of boots on when I ran away, didn’t I? Wasn’t a naked jungle-boy like you,” said Triphammer, not unkindly. He took Gard’s foot and bent his leg at the knee. “Here, now: push with your foot, try to straighten out your leg. Hard as you can. Good! Good boy!”

  A rumble of wheels came from the corridor outside, the tramp of heavy feet approaching slowly. “Good boy!” a voice mocked them, high and shrill. “Isn’t he just the best little cripple that ever was?”

  A long-nosed, blind face came around the edge of the doorway, as though peering in. It was followed by the rest of the speaker, bulky body, big long arms, four small thick legs. It pulled a wagon that supported a pair of immense jars.

  “Catering,” the shrill voice announced. “Where’s your bowl, cripple? Where’s your pitcher? Going to make me hunt for them?”

  “They’re right by the door, where they’re supposed to be!” said Triphammer in annoyance. “If you’d used your ugly nose instead of eavesdropping on people, you’d have found them straightaway.”

  “Ugly, is it?” Big leathery hands groped, found Gard’s meal dish and water pitcher. “Think I’ll leave a big lump of something special in your bowl, hothead.” Catering swung his arm backward and dipped the pitcher in one jar. He lifted it out and pretended to urinate in it.

  “Just ignore him,” said Triphammer to Gard.

  Gard leaned up on his elbow to stare a threat, but saw Catering’s empty eye-sockets. “Who put out your eyes, slave?”

  The blind face grimaced, the head swung to and fro on its long neck.

  “I was made without any,” said Catering. He dipped Gard’s bowl into the other jar and withdrew it brimming with dinner, into which he pretended to spit. “Here’s your meal, cripple. May it poison you.”

  He slammed the bowl and the pitcher down and trudged on down the corridor. “He talks like that to everyone,” said Triphammer. “All talk, though. Never you mind him.”

  Gard wondered what would frighten a creature so immense that it took refuge in threatening like a nasty-minded child.

  Sometimes, as he struggled along the tunnel of the sun’s path, Gard looked through the windows into Magister Tagletsit’s rooms. At any hour he might see plump Magister Tagletsit in placid contemplation of a roll of paper covered in tiny black markings, or reclining on a bed covered in rich woven stuff trimmed in gold, or pouring a bloodred drink for himself from a pitcher. The pitcher fascinated Gard. It seemed to be made of clear ice, cut and faceted in patterns, perilous beauty, and yet it never melted in the heat of the lamps. He wondered what it would feel like if he touched it.

  One day, when Magister Tagletsit was away and the pitcher had been left on a table near a window, Gard reached through the window and touched it. He was surprised; it was no cooler than anything else in the room.

  He paid a price to learn that much. Hobbling back to his cell when lamp-night had fallen, he was overtaken by Triphammer, who was scowling.

  “What’d you want to go lose a good job for, eh? Stupid icicle! Now we’ve both got to go report to Hodrash. No, not that way! Down this turning.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you went and intruded, didn’t you? Stuck your big, dirty jungle-paw through the window and left handprints all over the poor magister’s nice pitcher!”

  “But no one saw me,” said Gard, astounded.

  “You big fool, the magister’s spirits saw you! These are mages. Didn’t you know, they’ve got spirits you can’t see, watching over all that belongs to them? But I suppose you didn’t know, how could you know? I don’t seem to have told you. The more blame to me. This way. Hurry! Don’t make it worse for us.”

  Triphammer led him along an unfamiliar corridor in the rock. They turned in at last through a doorway. The chamber beyond was high-ceilinged, and to one side benches rose in stepped ranks, where a hundred might have sat without crowding. No one sat there now but three of the masters, in their fine robes, with a fourth entering in some haste. He bowed to the others, took his seat, and turned, all expectant, to watch.

  On the floor of the chamber crouched a demon, golden-skinned, whose arms were great with muscle. He was amusing himself with a piece of intricately carved wood, a puzzle whose interlinking sections could be shifted to form different pictures. He set it aside when Gard and Triphammer entered and rose to his feet with a sigh. “Malefactors,” he intoned in a bored kind of way.

  “Reporting,” said Triphammer briskly. “We acknowledge our sins and submit ourselves for discipline.”

  Gard, looking up, saw the masters lean forward in their seats. The demon went to the wall, where scourges of different sizes were hung, and looked over his shoulder at Triphammer. “Which of you is it to be first?”

  “Me,” said Triphammer, divesting himself of his tunic and hanging it neatly on a hook provided for that purpose. “My fault really, I should have explained better. And it’s the boy’s first time, Hodrash.”

  Hodrash nodded and selected a scourge. Triphammer went meanwhile to a post in the center of the floor. He stood on tiptoe to grasp hold of a bar at the top of the post. Gard watched, unbelieving, as Hodrash advanced and swung his big arm, and the scourge bit deep into Tripham
mer’s back.

  Triphammer grunted and set his face against the post. Crack, crack, crack, in quick succession the blows fell, businesslike. Gard remembered crouching hidden at the edge of a field, watching as an overseer had beaten a poor failing slave. White anger in his heart, then, and the resolve to die before he might ever be taken as a slave. And now—

  “Hai,” panted Triphammer, letting go of the bar and stepping back. Bright blood oozed from the stripes on his back. “Over and done, thank all the gods. Come on then, icicle. Your turn.”

  Icicle indeed; Gard stood frozen in his tracks. Hodrash looked at him in contempt, but there was pity in his face too, and he came to Gard saying loudly, “Not easy to move on those sticks, is it? Come along, boy.” He hissed into Gard’s ear, “Don’t shame old Triphammer. If he endured, you should, a big lout like you.”

  So Gard let himself be led to the post, as though it were a nightmare and he had no power to resist, and let Hodrash help him to the bar, and Triphammer collected his crutches when they fell clattering to the floor.

  “You didn’t have to bellow like that,” said Triphammer aggrievedly, as he washed Gard’s back. “Though I suppose if it was your first time, it must have been a nasty surprise. You’ll have a bit more self-respect next time, I hope.”

  “I will never be beaten for their amusement again,” said Gard.

  “That’s the spirit! Resolve to be a better boy.”

  Gard opened one eye to look over his shoulder at Triphammer. He wanted to strike him; but Triphammer’s own back was still bleeding, untended, and the same pain must still be throbbing in his skin.

  “I never thought you’d do a stupid thing like that, else I’d have warned you,” Triphammer went on, rubbing salve into Gard’s cuts. It burned, though not so badly as the scourge. “But I did tell you they were mages, didn’t I?”

  “I didn’t think they had any real power,” said Gard.

  “Ah! Thought they were street conjurors, did you? The kind who pull colored scarves out of their fists? No, no, boy.”