The House of the Stag

by Kage Baker

  “Yes.”

  “Did he teach you the Second Mind?”

  Silverpoint swirled his wine in its goblet and tilted it up to drink deep. He set the empty goblet down. “At this moment, I must ask myself two questions. The first is, do you truly need to know?”

  “I think I do. What’s the second question?”

  “Do I truly need for you to know?”

  Gard looked into Silverpoint’s eyes, then spoke to him in the language of the Children of the Sun, in the archaic form used for coded speech. “Thou hast prepared a weapon, all these years. Art thou now prepared to draw it and kill with it?”

  Silverpoint smiled. “My son, it is thine hour. I have one last lesson for thee.”

  There at the table, he taught Gard the discipline of the Second Mind.

  On the day he was to perform the Great Spell, Gard was awakened by a torrent of spiced fortified wine, dashed in his face. He sat bolt upright, sputtering, wiping his eyes.

  “You clumsy fool!” he heard Grattur wailing.

  “My lord Icicle, I’m sorry!” cried Engrattur.

  “Wake him with a nice drink, our lady told you!”

  “And here I’ve gone and drowned you with it! Oh, I’m sorry!”

  “Jackass, fetch him a basin of water!”

  “Here’s water, my lord, here’s soap and a towel!”

  “It’s all right,” Gard told them. He felt curiously lighthearted, even disposed to laugh as he rose and washed sugared wine from his hair and beard. Grattur and Engrattur hovered close, wringing their hands.

  “May we lay out your robes?”

  “May we change your sheets and pillowcase?”

  “I wouldn’t bother about the bed,” Gard said. “This is the day we go free, remember?”

  “Oh! Never to sweep these floors again!” said Grattur joyously.

  “Never to make these beds!” said Engrattur, recovering a little from his mortification.

  “But you might lay out my clothes.” Gard shivered as he dried himself. “Strange! I’m chilled through. Is something the matter with the hypocaust, do you think?”

  Grattur and Engrattur looked at each other. “It seems all right to us.”

  “The Pumping Station crew are hard at work.”

  “Here are warm clothes in your wardrobe, my lord, trousers and boots.”

  “Here’s a long shirt and a jerkin with a hood.”

  “He can’t wear those under his robe, dolt, he’ll be too warm!”

  “He said he was chilled through, didn’t he?”

  “I’ll wear them,” said Gard. “The robe is light stuff, only made for show. Lay them out.”

  They dressed him, solicitous and ceremonial, and their fussing did not dispel his good mood. “Madame Balnshik sends her love, my lord.”

  “She told us to wish you luck.”

  “She isn’t coming to watch?” Gard felt wistful a moment, before the sun of his happiness shone out again.

  “She sends her regrets, but she has duties,” said Grattur.

  “Says she has to see to her master’s goods,” added Engrattur, and snorted with laughter.

  “I’m sure I’ll see her afterward,” said Gard.

  “Yes, she said you would.”

  “You’re our hero, after all, you’re our boy!”

  He let them drape him in the magister’s robe, to which he had been given only provisional right; but Gard felt confident of success. “What’s the stick for, my lord?”

  “What’s the bag for? It’s heavy!”

  “The stick’s for the spell,” said Gard, taking it from Grattur. He tilted it down and showed them the lump of chalk at its end, bound there with leather strips. “See? I won’t have to crouch on the floor to inscribe the circles and lines.”

  “Clever!”

  “You always were a bright lad.”

  “And the bag is heavy with my casting apparatus, and the book of the Great Spell.”

  “Oh, that was a heavy book, I remember!”

  “Shall we carry it for you?”

  “No, no,” said Gard, though as he took the bag, it was heavier than he had thought it would be. He shouldered it anyway, and took the chalking stick with his free hand. “Now, in the cupboard there you’ll find eight bottles of good Sulemian wine. That’s my gift, for faithful friends. Go drink to my success.”

  They wept their gratitude and prostrated themselves. As Gard strode forth, he heard the first of the bottles being opened.

  He saw no one in the corridors, all the way to the great casting chamber, and when he entered it by the lower door, he saw why: half the population of the mountain was ranked upon the high seats above. All the surviving council, every scion of the great houses, the very cream of the mountain’s society were all there, dressed in their heraldic colors. There was applause at his entrance, and he slung down his heavy bag and bowed to them all.

  Their eyes glittered like diamonds. Gard remembered his time in the arena, when they had watched him like this. He felt proud, and happy, to think that he had progressed so far, risen so high.

  He lit the braziers. He opened his bag. There on top was the box of incense, and just under it the book. He drew them forth. The incense to the braziers, the book to the lectern. He opened the book, noted well the necessary circles and inscriptions, and, taking up his chalk stick, marked them out on the floor.

  A thoughtful mutter came from the galleries above. This inlaid floor was the very same where he had been deflowered, where the Narcissus of the Void had delighted in the power it had generated. He marveled, now, that it had so embittered him at the time. He looked up sidelong and spotted her, seated next to Vergoin. She gave him a nervous little smile. He smiled back.

  Setting the chalk stick by the bag, Gard turned to the lectern and read for the preliminary incantation.

  At once a green light appeared around him, ran from him like syrup and spread out across the floor. His audience gasped in admiration, leaned forward to see more clearly. With the first of the invocations, a spiral of red light came slowly down from the ceiling, a vortex of blood and fire, and hummed slowly as it spun above the floor.

  One or two of those present applauded. They were struck to silence by their elders. Magister Paglatha had clenched his fists into boxes of bone; Magister Naryath was sweating again, so much his silent attendant took a kerchief and tucked it into his collar to catch the drops. He waved her away unseeing, intent on what was happening below.

  With the second invocation a second vortex was formed, golden as the painful light of dawn, rotating about the other. There were no sounds in the chamber, now, but their droning song, and Gard’s resonant voice as he read from his book.

  He turned the page and saw at its top the four words he had written there:

  You will awaken now.

  His pleasant fog vanished instantly. He glanced up and saw what he had done so far; saw the massed gaze of his audience fixed on the whirling lights. With a cold and black satisfaction in his heart, he read aloud the next invocation, the one that he himself had written.

  At first it seemed that nothing followed his words. There were little, flickering shadows high up; then they came streaming down, snakelike, and darkened. The droning noise changed. It took on a note of menace, of hunger.

  “No, no,” said Magister Tagletsit aloud. “That’s wrong, surely—”

  He was drowned out by the other mages, who began to shout.

  “Idiot! You mispronounced something!”

  “It’s going wrong!”

  “Gard! Break it off! Karrabant’s Third Dismissal spell, quickly!”

  Gard read on, only raising his voice as the howling began, and the bright colors faded and the vortex became a black wind full of knives. There were screams. Green lightning shot up from the floor and struck Magister Paglatha, and Magister Pread, and Magister Hoptriot, and last of all Magister Naryath, flicking aside his slave. Her flesh it ripped away, and a plume of rose-colored light sped forth from t
he shell, shouting for joy that it was free.

  The four mages could not shout, as their lives were devoured by the spell. There was plenty of noise from everyone else, but Gard outcried them all.

  “My masters all, pray keep your seats! You all knew it would take blood to break the mountain!”

  And this was the last they heard, for there was an explosion then. Light streamed into the chamber, blinding bright. The roar of the black wind faded, but a thunder swelled louder still, made up all of the sound of stone cracking, tunnels falling in, galleries and chambers collapsing, and in a moment more nothing could be seen for the roiling cloud of black dust.

  By that time Gard was gone, having grabbed up his chalk stick and his bag in the moment the chamber had broken open. He sprinted for the broken wall, leaped through, and kept running.

  His boots were well-made, caravanner’s boots that gripped the rocks and ice as he scrambled on. When he could no longer hear the sound of the mountain collapsing, he stopped long enough to open his bag. There, where he had hidden them away, were heavy gauntlets and a pair of snow goggles. Below was a warm cloak. At the bottom of the bag were packets of bread and dried meat.

  Gard drew the clothing on, closed up the bag. Tilting the stick, he unwound the leather strip and the lump of chalk fell away, revealing the spear point glinting underneath.

  Shouldering the bag once more, he ran on.

  Low gray stubble in the fields of the strangers, raw earth littered with dead yellow leaves, a greening sickle hanging on a fence; birdcall, the lines of marshfowl streaming off slowly, deserting.

  It was thunder weather and the sky was lead, no breath of air in the silent valley when he came down, the man; cloak as dark as a thundercloud, eyes as dark as death or stone. Retribution and death he brought with him, a gift in either hand, as he came though fields grown high with weeds.

  No sound now, even the birdcry fallen silent. Beneath his boot a white skull turned. He kicked it from his path, to shatter on the steps of what had once seemed so high a hall; he saw it now for a miserable hut of piled stones. The great black door was standing open wide.

  He mounted the steps, he looked in through the door, and there he saw the strangers fallen in their revelry. Bones, white bones lay in the banquet hall, still clutching cups. There upon a sagging couch bones coupled, the ribs a puzzle made of ivory.

  He stepped over one who lay across the threshold, one whose skull was broken open by a mattock still in the hole, corroding and green. He descended the stairway to the pit and found it empty. Nothing was in the dark but dust, and smells. He left it by the gate where slaves went out to labor in the fields. No one labored there now. Only the wind cried there.

  He crossed the fields, he walked across the land, and all he saw was sere and crumbling, derelict and old, empty, echoing; even the mountain caves. No bones there, nothing at all to reproach him or welcome him home.

  Gard stood alone there, a long while.

  The Voice

  She wears rags and feathers, with beads and bits of seashell braided in. Flowers are in her hair. Time has hunted her, caught her, torn her, and cast her away; but her voice, when she speaks to you, is still that of the young girl she once was….

  I was there that day, beside him. I saw what happened, that day in the wheat field, that day by the river. I saw his miracles. People tell so many lies now! But Meli was there too and we both loved him, and we saw everything.

  I don’t remember a time before the Beloved. We used to go up the mountain to listen to him teach when I was little, and even then I thought he was the most beautiful man I’d ever seen. His eyes were like silver rain and stars. He was gentle and kind, and his voice made you feel as though everything would be all right, even through the most terrible times.

  He gave us fire. He taught us to make pots from clay, knives from flint. He, the Star, taught us to take the white fiber from the burst seedpod and spin it into thread, and he made the loom for us to weave on. He made ink, and brushes, teaching us how to keep our voices in the marks they made.

  He came to us, once, when my mother had the fever, and he cured her with a kiss. He kissed her so sweetly, and she opened her eyes. She said afterward it was as though she’d been dying of thirst in cruel summer heat, when suddenly someone gave her spring rain to drink, and washed her soul clean with it too. For hours afterward, the hole we lived in smelled like a night in spring. I loved him then, I wanted to go with him and be with him always.

  He saved Meli. She was born in the slave pits, the Riders had been cruel to her there; I think she saw her mother and father killed, but she’d never talk about that. She only said that one night she was crying, alone and afraid in the dark, when starlight and moonlight both came into the slave pit and he was there.

  The Beloved sang and her chains dropped away. He took her in his arms and walked out with her, right through a wall. The overseers didn’t see, they didn’t hear. He carried her up the mountain to her mother’s sister. They had a hiding place near ours.

  Meli and I played together. We grew up together, we became sisters. All we wanted to do with our lives was follow the Star.

  And so that was what we did, the year we were both fourteen. We climbed to the high place, up by the stars, where he met with his disciples to teach them. It was a long way to go, far past Teliva’s Pool and along the ridge, but we could hear the Star singing and it guided us. We came at last out into that open place, where the Beloved sat among his disciples.

  We knelt down at the edge, just happy to be there so close to him and listening. We didn’t make a sound, but he saw us and smiled at us. I was crying, his song was so beautiful. It was only about the river and the wind, but hidden words in it took away sorrow.

  When he stopped singing, all the disciples began to talk, asking him questions about the way some parts of the song went. One by one they went off to sit by themselves and practice it. When we thought it would be polite, we went to him, holding hands. We told him our names and said we’d like to be disciples.

  Before he could answer, a disciple turned to us and said, “Little girls, the Star needs his rest. Go home to your mothers.”

  “No, no,” said the Beloved, reaching out to us. “I know them, Lendreth. Come and be with me, Meli. Come and be with me, Seni. Let us talk awhile.”

  We were so thrilled! He sat with us, and we opened our hearts to him. I told him I’d be happy to do anything, whether it was wash the sores of the sick or walk down into the blackest of the slave pits, so long as I was allowed to wear the white robe. And Meli said the same, which was brave of her.

  He told us those were no places for young girls, but he would teach us to care for our people; because, he said, that was what it meant to wear the white robe. We must love them as though they were our children, because we were all one family. We must help one another so that we would still be a strong and good people when the Child came to deliver us from our long sorrow.

  We said we’d learn anything he cared to teach us, and hoped that he would take us as lovers too. He smiled and said we were his lovers even now, but still a little young for the cup of delight. Who knew, he said, but that before that cup filled we might not wish to share it with some other lover? And Meli said, and I said too, that we wanted no lover, ever, but only him.

  He kissed us welcome, then. He asked whether we had told our families where we had gone. I was ashamed, because we hadn’t. So he sent Lendreth down the hill to tell them we were safe. He told us that was our first lesson: that we must love everyone, and so we would never make sorrow for anyone. There was sorrow enough in the world.

  We were all brothers and sisters together in the high place. No one was afraid, no one was angry, when the Beloved was there. Terrible things happened down in the world below, where the Riders were, and every night our brothers and sisters went down there with the Beloved to ease the poor slaves. They came back sometimes with orphans. We minded the little ones and played with them, just as we had done at
home. We learned the songs to make them laugh, to make them forget the things they’d seen.

  It was easy for me to learn the songs. It was a little harder for Meli, I don’t know why. Power and violent force made her afraid; perhaps they made her remember her old life. Sometimes she woke at night weeping, heartbroken. When the Star came and spoke gently to her, only then were her nightmares banished.

  Some of our brothers and sisters had learned to sing all the songs, had even made new ones of their own, and were proud that the Beloved had praised their skill and their power. Some brothers and sisters were better at finding the flowers of ease, the roots that took away fever, and the Beloved praised them too. Everyone had a gift, and no one—then—ever said one gift was better than another.

  Every night, when the Beloved came back up to us, we brought water to wash him and kissed away his weariness; for he was only one man, and sometimes our sorrows were heavy enough to bend him down. Luma herself brewed his tea and brought it to him—yes, that one, Luma, who had been sister to Blessed Ranwyr. She was our sister now. I knew her. She had beautiful sad eyes, she was as graceful as a willow tree, and when the Beloved lay down with her, I longed to be her, but I was never jealous.

  It was joyous when the Beloved sat in his high place under the stars, and all the people came up to listen to him. It was simple happiness when he’d take his rest among us and lie with his head in Luma’s lap and tell us stories to make us laugh. You wouldn’t have thought he was anyone then but our father, or our older brother, and we his loving family. Those are the times I remember best, those are the times I miss the most, when I think of how things are now.

  One night, under the great tree, he leaned back in Luma’s arms and smiled at us. “Time for a tale,” he said. “Will you hear a story, my steadfast ones?”

  “Please!” I cried, and the others gathered around and they cried too, “Please, Bright One, tell us a story.”

  “Then I’ll tell you something from the old days of the world,” he said.