The House of the Stag

by Kage Baker

  “But … why? They have breasts,” said Gard.

  “To be sure, they do. Nonetheless, there are those amongst our masters who find the sight of women fighting one another intensely exciting, on some emotional level I do not care to examine in much detail,” said Silverpoint, his condescension shading into irony. “Furthermore, there are those amongst our masters who enjoy being soundly beaten by a woman. I did mention they were a decadent collection of inbred cretins, did I not? In any case, you needn’t worry about breaking any tribal taboos. In this godforsaken place, all women capable of bearing children are, in fact, forbidden to do much else.

  “For the purpose of what I shall refer to as violent delights, however, our masters keep a stable of demonesses in suitable bodies. I think you would benefit from making the acquaintance of Madame Balnshik.”

  “… But she has a womb,” said Gard.

  “In fact, she has not. She was bodied forth to be decorative; her original master was not concerned with breeding her,” said Silverpoint. “Here comes the lady now.”

  Gard looked up in panic as a demoness entered the hall.

  Decorative indeed. He had half-hoped she would be hideous, or spotted, or tusked. She was not. Dangerous-looking, yes. Tall and lithe and powerful, and she might have no womb, but she certainly had breasts. Silken skin the color of a thundercloud, and an easy, arrogant upright grace. She wore a fighting harness. And boots.

  “Oh,” said Gard.

  Silverpoint inclined toward her. “Madame, how kind of you to come.”

  “My lord duke.” She acknowledged him with a nod of her head. She swept Gard with a glance and smiled. “This would be your student?”

  “It would,” said Silverpoint. “I would like him to learn to fight women.”

  “I can’t!” said Gard. “I can’t … do any harm, to one so beautiful,” he added, hoping that was the sort of thing she would like to hear. She smiled. Her hand flashed up and slapped him across the face.

  “Don’t talk nonsense, child. What makes you imagine you can harm me?”

  “I shall leave him in your care, madame,” said Silverpoint, and exited the hall.

  “I am no child,” said Gard, glaring at her.

  “I have seen seven thousand summers come and go,” replied Balnshik serenely. “To me, you are a child. Though a talented one, apparently. We in the Convent have heard of you, young Icicle; our people praise your strength. Come and prove it true.” She went to the wall and selected a pair of blades.

  “Couldn’t I prove it in another way?” said Gard, trying to remember how men had spoken on the dancing green, when they were wooing a mate.

  “Certainly not,” said Balnshik, making an experimental cut through the air with one blade. “Those services are reserved for my owner, Magister Pread.”

  “What’s he doing keeping you in fighting harness, then?” said Gard, watching the way her breasts moved as she swung the blades to and fro. “If you were mine, I’d—I’d make you a bed in the long grass and strew it with flowers.”

  “What a charming thought.” Balnshik smiled, showing perfect white teeth. “However, my owner’s pleasure is to watch me kill in the arena and then attend on him in his chamber, with whips. Not really very romantic, all things considered, but we do not choose our masters.”

  Gard blushed. “I would kill him for you.”

  “If you made any such attempt, I would be obliged to eat your liver,” said Balnshik, with a sigh. “Do come on! Positions One through Ten, if you please. Now!”

  And so they moved together, and sparks flew from their blades. From the first Gard experienced certain difficulties that made his footwork stiff and gravely impaired his concentration. Balnshik’s eyes flashed, her full lips parted in a snarl with each succeeding point she scored; at last she stood back. “Well, really!” she said in exasperation. “Can’t you think about anything else?”

  “No,” said Gard sadly.

  “We won’t accomplish anything with you in that state, you know.”

  “That’s true,” said Gard, daring to hope.

  The lady lowered her blades and bowed her head a moment. She seemed to ripple like an image seen in water, and when she raised her eyes to his, they were eyes of flame in an horrific countenance. She bared long fangs, her tongue protruding between, and advanced on him with the speed and hungry purpose of a snake.

  Gard shouted and leaped back. He fought for his life. His flesh gave over entirely its fond ambition. Three times Balnshik drove him up and down the hall, pursuing him relentless; she landed blows, but not so many as before. He scored killing points in his desperate defense before she fell back at last and resumed her more pleasing appearance.

  “Much better,” she said.

  “Is that what you really look like?” said Gard, gasping for breath.

  “This? Or the other?” said Balnshik. “It depends on what my master requires of me. No accounting for tastes, is there? This is the image I much prefer, of course.”

  Gard staggered to a bench and sat down. “But … what did you look like before?”

  “Before I was bound? Ah.” She came and sat beside him. “I would look, to your eyes, like a trail of blue smoke in the air. Or a banner in a high wind. Or possibly you’d perceive me as sound instead, and I might seem a run of notes on a harp, high to low. Or I might seem a trace of perfume, something between violets and ripe grapes, I’m told.

  “If you were fully a demon, you would perceive more. You’re a lost child, though; or so I hear. You were born to this shape, were you not?”

  Gard nodded. “Grattur and Engrattur told you that?”

  “My dear, we all talk amongst ourselves. They think very highly of you, you’ll be pleased to know.”

  “That’s nice,” said Gard, daring to look at her sidelong. “Were you tricked into service, like them?”

  “I? No! I’m quite old; it would take more than a few barrels of wine to lure me. No, my master’s a diviner and got my name by arcane means. It took him years, I’m told.” She shrugged. “He’s persistent, even if he is a nasty little prick. Speaking of persistence, let us address your flaws in technique.”

  Gard scowled at the floor.

  She was, in all, a kinder teacher than Silverpoint.

  After the first month of training, Gard no longer flinched or delayed his killing strokes when sparring with her, nor with any other of the demonesses she brought down to assist in her efforts. He found he had but to summon the memory of the way her face had changed to drive any concern for her safety from his mind. He told her as much, one afternoon as they walked from the Training Hall.

  “Oh, my dear,” she said, looking at him with affection. “How very fortunate for you we’re not lovers. You have no idea how one speaks to a woman, have you?”

  “But I meant it as a compliment,” said Gard. “It’s the truth.”

  “The truth. I see. You haven’t known many women, have you?”

  “I had a mother. A foster mother, I mean. And a foster sister.”

  She was silent, staring at him, and he stammered, “And I knew Lady Pirihine, she that was condemned to work down in the Pumping Station when I was there.”

  Balnshik nodded. An unreadable expression crossed her face. “Yes, I knew about Lady Pirihine. But are you really telling me that before you came to this place, you had no mate? No lady companion of any kind?”

  “I suppose I didn’t, no,” said Gard, irritable.

  “The Blue Pit and the Red Dog,” said Balnshik. “And his Little Green Tail too! How I wish you were mine to teach.”

  “But you are teaching me,” said Gard, wishing she’d change the subject.

  “Not in the way I’d like. This much I can teach you, lost child: truth is a fine wood, but no one appreciates being battered with a club made from it. Lies properly made are charming and wear well; kind lies will open locks and hearts. Illusion is more important still. It will serve you well to seem bigger than you are.”

  �
��What do you mean?”

  “I’ll give you an example,” said Balnshik, tossing back her raven hair. “You are not weak; neither am I. But those who are weak love the appearance of power. How they worship it in others! When my lamentable master comes before me, he wishes to see a mistress of iron. If I wore silks and wept for love of him, he’d grumble and grow cold; but, oh, his eyes shine when my boot is on his throat, when I spit on him and flourish the scourge.

  “You have amused them for a while, in the role they gave you: naked slave with a broken spear, defeating the pride of the warriors. But you will need to show them you are more than a dumb brute, my dear.”

  “I can do that, easily. I can kill any champion they send against me.”

  “And how modest and diffident you are! Yes, I know you can; but it will take more than skill at arms. You need an appearance that exceeds your truth.”

  “Should I wear painted armor, then, and boast?” said Gard, scornful.

  Her eyes sparkled. “No, no,” she said softly, looking him up and down. “Something simpler, and understated. That blank stare of yours has such potential; make the calm of your face suggest to them still water, dark water in which they will drown. They haven’t noticed the grace of your body, though I have; let it suggest to them an animal striking in silence, among the buffoons in the arena.

  “The battlers, the big clowns, wear scarlet and gold, they lime their hair into spikes, they scream and thunder and stamp. You be the unspoken threat, the never-raised voice, untouched, unmoved and implacable. The masters won’t know what to make of you. They will fear you, without quite being aware they are afraid. Then they will admire you. Then they will desperately love you.”

  “I don’t want their love,” said Gard.

  “Perfect!” said Balnshik, with a wry smile. “That’s the way, my dear. Never need them. But you really do need a new costume. Something in black, I think.”

  She had a robe made for him, a plain garment of black, without the ornamentation he would have liked; dearly he wished he still had his collar of silver skulls. But when next the masters gathered for their fun, he stepped into the arena plain as a stroke of ink on a page, unarmored, with his two swords on his back.

  There was applause at his entrance, with a buzz of excited muttering, presumably at his new appearance. He heard the massed intake of breath as one, and all in the seats leaned forward to stare at him, hungrily noting the robe, the two swords.

  Gard looked up at them, unable to quite believe anything so trivial could hold their attention that way. For a moment the old anger, the white anger, rose in his heart; then it faded to a kind of impersonal sadness. There they were in their ranks above him, the ancient and the wise, powerful and learned mages all. What a bunch of idiots.

  But he kept his face impassive, as Balnshik had advised; stood still as a stone and waited patiently for his opponent to enter the ring.

  “Where is this slave? Where is this sand cleaner?” shouted someone from deep in the entry tunnel. With thundering steps he bounded out, a Repeater named Trathegost. His armor was steel enameled in purple, decorated all over with crimson skulls. It was painful to look upon; and for the first time Gard had an inkling of why Balnshik had pursed her lips and shaken her head when he had asked for some skulls, or perhaps a pattern of flames, on his fighting costume.

  Trathegost smote the floor of the arena with a spiked mace and pointed his war-gauntleted hand at Gard. “You! Pathetic scavenger! Where’s your broken stick? Who will scramble for your corpse when I scatter your entrails across these walls? Come and be punished for your insolence, onetimer!”

  Gard said nothing in reply, but drew his blades. Poor old battler, he thought. What kind of life is this? To feed their boredom, and then feed them again.

  Trathegost turned his face up to the audience. He roared as in fury, until the foam ran from the corners of his jaws, but desperation was in his eyes as he cried, “Now, do you see his disrespect? You see how he disdains to answer his betters? This is disrespect to you, my masters. Don’t you long to see him punished?”

  A few shouts of “Punish him!” came from the audience.

  He is hungry for their attention, thought Gard. They are hungry for the spectacle. I must not be hungry too.

  Trathegost lifted his mace and rushed Gard. Gard, calm, with pity in his heart, stepped up and sliced Trathegost’s head from his shoulders, so quickly the blades were hardly seen to move.

  “I never heard such cheering,” said Triphammer, gleeful as he pounded Gard’s back. “And, see what comes of giving them a good show? Look at all those presents! They sent those down because they’re in love with you, be sure!”

  Gard considered the basket of dainties, the bottles of wine, the blanket of purple worked with gold thread, the gold dish. “But they’d been yelling for me to be punished,” he said.

  “Well, so they were. Nobody loves you until you win, you see? But you’re a good slave. You play along, Icicle, and there’s nothing you can’t have from them.”

  “Will they set me free?”

  “Well, no, of course not! But, you know, women and all—well met, my lord,” Triphammer concluded, hastily changing his tone.

  Silverpoint surveyed the presents, with a curl of his lip. “Wine. And drugs. You can take those, Triphammer. You’re not to touch them, Gard.”

  “Oh, my lord, that’s a bit hard, isn’t it? Let him enjoy what he’s earned,” said Triphammer.

  “They’ll weaken you, Gard,” said Silverpoint. “Keep the blanket and the dish, if you like, but nothing else. You are in training.”

  “But he’s trained now,” said Triphammer.

  “Training has only begun.” Silverpoint looked into Gard’s eyes. “You can’t read, can you?”

  “No,” said Gard.

  “Then you must learn. Two hours a day with Madame Balnshik.”

  “She teaches reading?” said Triphammer.

  “Why?” said Gard.

  “Because there are books I want you to study,” said Silverpoint. “The masters will want to see if they can break you, now. Do you wish to be broken?”

  “Not for them,” said Gard.

  “Then you won’t be.” Silverpoint left the room.

  “Hardly seems fair,” grumbled Triphammer. “Why shouldn’t you enjoy a treat or two? That’s good stuff they sent you. A cup of wine or a little dream won’t do you any harm, I’m sure. I won’t tell, if you’d like just a taste before I take it all away.”

  Gard shook his head. “This is no place to be weak.”

  So Gard met with Balnshik two hours each day, seated beside her at a table in Duke Silverpoint’s own rooms, and she taught him the language of the Children of the Sun. Thigh to thigh they sat, and if her nearness and the pressure of her body tormented him with longing, that pain was soon eased by another kind of excitement entirely.

  On his day of comprehension, when the little black characters suddenly spoke to him from the parchment, Gard learned that time and space could be stepped around.

  He first read from a collection of travel essays by the scholar Copperlimb. The scholar was long dead, and the cities of the Children of the Sun an unimaginable distance away. Yet Gard left his body and walked there, in forgotten sunlight, beside the pleasant elder who opened his dead mouth and spoke with a living voice to describe for him the granaries of Troon, and the great houses of Mount Flame, and the barges moving slow on the river Baranyi. Best of all, he spoke of immense and ancient forests, though he had only seen a little way into their green darkness, for no roads ran through them.

  The dead spoke, and Gard knew all these places, though he had never seen a city or any kind of watercraft; he saw them now stored in the characters on the page. To learn that such things were possible filled his heart with delight, surging higher than his old anger had ever risen.

  He was given next a history of certain noble families among the Children of the Sun, who had slaughtered one another in great numbers over some
deep insult. Gard was unable to understand just who had been insulted, or how, no matter how closely he read and reread the text; but valiant heroes had fought on both sides, and sometimes switched sides after being insulted by their own kinsmen. It was a great epic, full of song and sorrow. Still, the main thing Gard learned from it was that the Children of the Sun were quick to take offense.

  After this he was given a book of poems that praised love, occasionally, but more often were about the joys of copulation. In particular the act of lying with another man’s mate, without his knowledge or consent, was celebrated. To Gard this seemed shameful and rather silly. Moreover the detailed and repeated descriptions of the act of coupling made it difficult for him to read the poems with any composure, particularly with Balnshik sitting beside him.

  He was therefore glad when they progressed to the next book, which was titled The Perfect Warrior. With keen pleasure he read through the chapters on attack and defense by sword and spear and staff, by warhammer and ax and mace. The diagrams were especially interesting. When he came to the second half of the book, however, Gard read in growing confusion, and then in bafflement, and finally in anger.

  “This word, what’s this word?” He pushed the open book across to Balnshik and pointed at it.

  “That word is meditation,” said Balnshik, and the Translator danced and fidgeted until it found a matching concept in Gard’s understanding.

  Gard drew his black brows together. “Then this part is stupid. Meditation is what fools and cowards do. They sit with their knees drawn up and mutter nonsense and pretend they can’t hear you when you ask them to do some work. There’s no magicking an enemy away by meditation. You’ll end up with your head split.”

  “How strange, then, that so great an arms master as Prince Firebow devoted half his book to meditation,” said Balnshik. “What a pity he didn’t have your wisdom. I think you had better read on, all the same. It is just remotely possible the late prince knew a little more than you do.”

  With an ill grace Gard read on. At first he scowled and made scornful noises, but in time he grew silent and absorbed. Still frowning, he read, and more slowly. At last he closed the book and said, “I still think it’s useless. What good will it do me to step outside myself as I fight? And pretending my fist can go through rock won’t make it happen.”