The House of the Stag

by Kage Baker

  “Kingfisher was a proud and reckless bird. He prided himself on what a great hunter he was,

  and a fighter too, for he could catch fish and lizards, and beat them on the stones until he killed them.

  But for all his courage, he was a dirty, slovenly lord in his own nest,

  littered as it was

  with fish scales and spoiled food. And he thought his appearance did not quite suit so great a lord among birds;

  for he was rather small, and his garment was only a dusty black color.

  How he envied Rook, who wore elegant feathers!

  “Oh, Rook’s garments were striped in blue and white, he had a fine standing crest, and was tall,

  and had great wisdom besides, being able to speak

  and travel between life and death. It happened one day that the weather was very hot.

  All the birds of the air panted in the shadows. Rook slipped out of his garment, and went to bathe in the river.

  Kingfisher saw Rook’s shed garment on the river bank, and wanted it; so he stole the fair garment, and pulled off his own, and left his there

  for Rook to find.

  “But when Kingfisher dressed himself, he found the stolen garment was too big for him. The standing crest

  flopped over loosely, and the long tail broke off short the first time he went into his muddy den.

  And when Rook found his own garment stolen, he pulled on Kingfisher’s,

  for lack of anything better;

  but it was too small, so that his face was left bare around the beak,

  it fit him so tightly his walk was stiff and mincing.

  “Now when the other birds of the air laughed at Rook, he was wise enough to pay them no mind;

  but when they laughed at Kingfisher, in his rumpled feathers

  he was bitterly angry,

  and dove beneath the water to hide himself. And so it is now: the Rook’s serene

  in his journey, and the souls he guides between life and death

  do not mock his appearance. They are only grateful he is there

  to lead them to the place of all rebirth. Lord Kingfisher

  (for so he calls himself now)

  wears his grand garment carelessly, and has stained his white breast with food.

  His dark den still stinks for all the titles he gives himself.

  Remember, then, children, the lesson, since I have given you garments:

  you do not change your nature

  with your robe.”

  Lendreth raised his hands and praised the Beloved; we all gave thanks. Then some of them leaned forward eagerly, as they always did, to dispute what the story meant.

  “Are we the Rooks then, Beloved, and the Riders are the Kingfishers?” said Jish.

  “No, no, sister, the Beloved is more subtle than that,” said Lendreth. “And in any case the birds of the air are part of the natural world, as we are, rooks and kingfishers both. The Riders are outside of nature, no part of its shaping.”

  “I would have said the story is a warning against pride,” said Shafwyr. “And that we must perfect ourselves, before we presume to wear the white robe.”

  “Or then again, perhaps the Rook is meant to be the Blessed Ranwyr, and in that case the Kingfisher—,” began Lendreth, then realized his discourtesy: for Luma was present. How could anyone want to bring pain to poor Luma, by reminding her of Cursed Gard? Lendreth was clever and powerful, but seldom compassionate.

  He coughed. “In that case, the Kingfisher represents the forces of ignorance and violence,” he finished.

  The Beloved only smiled, and taking Luma’s hand, he kissed it. “Am I such a subtle man? Let’s ask little Meli. What did the lesson mean, Meli, fair one?”

  “That we do not change our natures with our robes,” she said.

  “And there you have it,” said the Beloved.

  I never understood why they made everything so complicated, the disciples. So many nights I would have been content to lie still and listen to the Beloved sing, under the stars; but there was always Lendreth or one of the others wanting to ask him questions.

  “What is the nature of evil?” they wanted to know. I would have thought it was plain enough; evil was what the Riders did to us, hunting us and killing us, making us slaves. They burned the forests. They fouled the river. That was evil. Always the Star answered them simply, and plainly, and yet they could never seem to understand on one hearing.

  Once, they disputed for months over whether it was right or wrong to plant things in the earth, since that was something the Riders had made us do. Were we not forcing the earth to give us something, rather than accepting the gifts she gave of her own accord? Was a scythe a wicked thing, since it did violence to the grain?

  Or, which was the holier pastime, while we waited for the Promised Child to free us all: meditating and perfecting mastery of the Songs, or simply washing the sores of the sick, healing the wounded, caring for the orphans?

  Or, had the Riders come among us as a secret gift, since by their cruelty we had been forced to a higher understanding of the world, whereas if they had never come, we might have continued in our ignorance of the Songs?

  There was no truth but they could not cut it into tiny pieces, looking for hidden meanings.

  Meli and I grew older, we grew tall, and at last the Star went to the bowers with us and we shared the cup of delight. I have had other lovers since, but none like my Beloved; and yet he was not mine only, but Meli’s and Luma’s and all the sisters’. Some of the brothers thought the less of us, that we so shared the Beloved’s body. Yet I never knew such perfect peace as in his arms, I never felt so strong as when I walked out after having been with him.

  And I needed strength. You weren’t there, you don’t know what it was like then; I walked in the slave pits beside him and saw the children born to women in chains. I walked beside him in the fields, unseen by the grace of his power, when we labored with our people to plant, to harvest, so the overseers would not flog them to death in the furrows where they worked.

  Meli couldn’t go down there at all. She tried once, she wanted to be brave. But when we came within sight of the Riders’ high hall, black and squalid with its smoke going up pale in the starlight, she halted, trembled, could not bring herself to move or speak. I went back for her, but she looked at me with wild eyes and seemed to have taken root in the earth. The Beloved himself came and led her back up the mountain, and consoled her when she wept for shame at her fear.

  I have heard some fools say the Star judged our poor people, that he only brought rescue to the innocent, the virtuous, and those who had sinned he left in their shackles. Oh, that’s a wicked lie! He would have saved them all, if he had had the power. But there were limits to his strength, and he poured it out for us unselfishly.

  I saw that, as the years went on. His back was bowed when he came up the mountain from the fields; the Star was tired when he lay down among us. Lendreth and the others would never let him rest, they wanted him to listen to their arguments, to answer their endless questions, though his eyes dimmed to hear them.

  Perhaps that was how it started, when the others saw his limits too. I think it must have been around that time that Lendreth, and one or two others who had become masters and mistresses of the Songs, began to wonder whether they might not even surpass the Star in their power.

  They never schemed against him. That would have been unthinkable. For all the horror of our days, we were a more innocent people then. But they did begin to think in terms of becoming his successors, should he ever leave us. They grew impatient when the Beloved dallied with us, or when he sang the songs meant only to make us laugh. How could we wreathe his hair with flowers, they wanted to know, when there was so much work to do? How could he tell us jokes when there was so much more to teach us that was important?

  And Lendreth, who had a mind that moved in straight lines, came to him and proposed plans: how to better harvest and store the herbs we used, how to organ
ize into shifts so that those who went down the mountain might get enough rest between times.

  These changes were for the better, but there were other plans: Lendreth wanted to gather all the free people together and make a single place to live, one great cave or mountain field ringed around with sharpened sticks, so the Riders couldn’t get in. He argued that the people would be safer in such places. The Beloved said only that the people would be no better kept in a pit on the mountain than they were kept in a pit in the valley.

  Yet Lendreth went around talking to the free families, and some he persuaded to follow his plan. They left the tree hollows and caves and came up, and settled in a field above Teliva’s Pool. Lendreth harangued others to come. They came, and stared awhile at the field in its ring of sharpened sticks, with its brushwood shelters under the open sun. Some stayed, unwilling to be impolite. Others faded back into the trees, in ones and twos, and did not come up again.

  The next idea Lendreth had was that he, with the great power he had attained, might be able to find a way over the mountains. So he set off on the journey. The Beloved gave him a blessing, and Falena and Jish cut him a staff to help him where the way was rough. When you see all the wise trevanion now, these traveling teachers each with a staff, that was where it started. The Star never carried a staff, except at the end, when he needed one to walk.

  Anyway Lendreth was gone a year and a season. He found his way back to us at last, thin and ragged, with a desperate look in his eyes. He spoke alone with the Star a long time. I heard Lendreth weeping, and I heard the Beloved speaking low, comforting him.

  But I think Lendreth couldn’t be comforted. An anger was in him, after that, a lack of patience. He studied harder, he meditated and fasted, he declined to lie with any of us. He presented the Beloved with new Songs. They were fine and useful Songs, except for the one that broke walls apart. The Beloved rebuked him, gently, over that Song. Why should we wish to break walls, when we could walk through them? The Riders were the ones who broke things.

  There were long nights of discussion when Lendreth’s voice got louder than anyone else’s, and some among the brothers and sisters agreed with the things he said. Now he had disciples of his own, and they thought in straight lines.

  But when the Child came to us, she did not come in a straight line.

  A man of our people, named Kdwyr, was a prisoner in the slave pits. One summer day he was led out in his shackles to break the ground in a fallow field. The overseers chained him to a plow with two other men. They started them forward across the field.

  It had been a dry summer. The earth was baked hard like stone. The two other men were ill with the fever of the pits, and they sweated and gasped as they struggled along. The overseers beat them. Kdwyr was a strong and compassionate man; he begged the overseers to uncouple the sick men from the plow, saying that he would plow the field himself.

  The overseers jeered at him, but they let the sick men loose, to lie moaning in the heat of the sun. The overseers stood watching, meaning to laugh as Kdwyr strained to pull the plow.

  Now this was the first miracle: the earth broke soft as though it were full of spring rain, and Kdwyr went ahead far down the field.

  And this was the second miracle: though it had been hot clear weather, no cloud in the hard blue sky, no breath of wind, yet a sudden fog came up out of the river. It rolled over the field, it hid one man from another, and Kdwyr found himself alone.

  And this was the third miracle: as Kdwyr stood looking about him, unable even to hear the overseers shout, his chains fell away from him and he stood free.

  And this was the fourth miracle: before him on the ground appeared the shadow of a raven, though neither sun nor raven was to be seen. It was Blessed Ranwyr. The shadow moved away across the field and Kdwyr followed, a long way, crossing fields and meadows.

  And the fifth miracle was the greatest, for the shadow of the raven led Kdwyr to a high meadow where lilies grew. In the midst of them was one great lily, with its petals just opened, and a fragrance that was all delight.

  And in the lily lay the Child, the little girl newborn, the deliverance sent to us.

  She was tiny, perfect, fairer than my poor words can tell. Serene, with the memory of the place from which she had come; but already the weight of the world was settling on her, with the petals bowing down to the earth.

  Kdwyr put out his hands in wonder and caught her, before she fell. He put her to his shoulder and she did not cry, though he knew she would soon need milk. As he stood there wondering what to do, the raven’s shadow floated on before him, leading him up the mountain.

  Kdwyr followed, carrying the Child.

  Now on that day the Beloved had not gone down the mountain to the slave pits, because the little blue lilies had just finished blooming, which is the best time to gather their bulbs for salve. He went with us to teach the younger sisters and brothers where to find them. Meli and I went too, and Luma, though Lendreth shook his head; he thought we were only going to take our pleasure with the Beloved.

  We on the mountain saw the white mist filling the valley, sudden and haunted. The Beloved put up his hands, and said:

  Someone else has found a lily today,

  The flower we have longed for.

  Little sisters, little brothers, watch now;

  Who comes up the mountain, carrying light?

  Luma saw first the raven’s shadow, emerging from the mist, coming black and distinct across the summer grass. She knelt, weeping. The insubstantial shade hovered before her a moment. She said afterward she felt a kiss on her brow.

  The rest of us watched as the man Kdwyr stepped out from the mist, blinking in the light of the sun. He knew no Songs. He had suffered in the darkness all his life. He was dirty with the filth of the pit, his shoulders were bowed with his labor; but he had found the Child, and in his hands she shone like a little star.

  He came to us. Without a word he laid the Child in the waiting hands of the Beloved. Then he sat down and wept.

  We did not see when the shadow passed, or where it went.

  Of all the days of my life, that day was the best. I held her, these two arms of mine held the little Saint when she wasn’t an hour old. We passed her from hand to hand and we wept for happiness, that she had come to us at last. When she woke from her first sleep and looked at us, her eyes were like the Beloved’s, full of light; but where his ran with silver like tears, shimmered like the river, her eyes were clear and steady.

  “What will happen now, Beloved?” asked Meli. Some of us had looked down into the valley, where the mist was all gone, half expecting the houses of the Riders would have vanished by now. But there they still stood, in the summer sunlight, sending up their smoke and reek.

  “Now we will take her to the others,” said the Beloved. “Let the free families see her and know that she is with us at last. Bring our brother Kdwyr.”

  “But my brothers are down there in the fields,” said Kdwyr.

  “They will soon be free men,” said the Beloved. “Come and wash away your sorrows in Teliva’s Pool.”

  We went back to the caves. I will always remember my Beloved as he walked that day in the sunlight, carrying the Child. I have seen statues since, of his smiling figure upright with the little one on his arm, her tiny hand raised in blessing. They never looked like that; on that bright day she was too little to sit up, let alone bless, and by the time she was old enough, he no longer stood so straight and tall.

  But that was later. That day, that bright day, there was no sorrow.

  The free women with milk in their breasts fed her, our Saint. We wrapped her in songs of praise. The little brothers ran to take the news to the disciples coming up the mountain. Lendreth came up, leading his shift, and when he saw the Child, he fell to his knees and wept, and rejoiced in the promised day.

  And then he had questions. “What would she have us do now? How will we free ourselves?”

  “I don’t know,” said the Star.


  Lendreth started as though he had been struck in the face. “Don’t know?” he repeated. “But you are the Star, and the Promised Child has come.”

  “She has come to us, yes,” said my Beloved, looking down on the little girl where she slept in his arms. “Now it is her time to lead you. I cannot see, any more than you can, what her will is yet. We must wait and find out.”

  “But she is only a baby,” said Lendreth. “Are we to wait until she can speak, to tell us what to do? I thought there would be miracles.”

  “And so there have been,” said the Star. “And shall be. Trust her, Lendreth. Be patient. She has come a long way; let her rest awhile.”

  Lendreth fell silent, though I could tell from his face that he was disappointed. He wanted facts, he wanted dates and times precise, and he could not have them, because such things are only imaginary. So he sat and ate his heart out of vexation, in the midst of all our joy.

  We sang under the sky that night, Meli and Luma and I holding hands together, and all the free people came up and joined us. The Beloved sang too. Our voices rose up to the stars; our voices ran down the mountain like springwater, like silver fire, and the earth throbbed with the power of it. The Child awoke and lay listening to us, and never cried.

  In the gray light of morning the Star rose, with the little Saint in his arms. I was already awake. I shook Meli, who woke at once. Luma and the other disciples woke, sitting up one by one to hear what the Beloved would say.

  “She is restless,” he said quietly. “She knows they are suffering, down there. Lendreth, go ahead; tell them she is coming.”

  Lendreth jumped up and ran, his heart glad at last.

  “Which of us will go with you, Beloved?” asked Luma.

  “All are welcome to come with us,” he said. “But it will be a long day. You will be weary by the end.”

  My heart was so light, I didn’t see how I would ever be weary again, now that she was with us. We went down the mountain and the free people came too, leaving their caves and hiding places at last. Even Meli found the courage to come with us, now. Down through the forests, across the meadows, as the last stars faded, went my people.