The House of the Stag

by Kage Baker

  “No,” said Gard. “They killed the women.”

  “He’s got a good point,” said Redeye, looking over his shoulder at the others. “They butchered the artillery girls. What d’you suppose they’d do to the lot of us? I don’t have my amulet anymore, either.”

  “Well, I’ve got mine,” said Stedrakh. “I’m for taking my chances. Anyone else want to come?”

  “We’re staying with him,” said Engrattur, pointing at Gard.

  “You go if you like,” said Redeye. “And good luck, brother.”

  Stedrakh said nothing more, but got to his feet and pushed out through the underbrush. They heard pebbles clattering as he climbed the hill behind them. Redeye sat crouched a moment, rubbing his chin thoughtfully.

  “We’d better get going again,” he said, when they could no longer hear Stedrakh’s footsteps. “Not safe to stop here long. We’ll go downstream, eh? It’ll be dark soon. Ready to move on, Arkholoth?

  “Arkholoth?”

  “He’s gone,” said Gard.

  “Ah. Just us, then.”

  Gard was helped to his feet. He staggered along between Grattur and Engrattur, as Redeye went ahead. They went a long way. It got dark. It got cold. They had to stop once, when Gard vomited. A fire was burning in his head, and a flare of light before his eyes every time he stumbled on the uneven ground.

  At some point they stood beside a roaring whiteness, and Redeye was saying, “Fuck. It’s a river.”

  Grattur said, “What do we do now?”

  “Look for a place to get across,” said Redeye.

  “There are some stones here,” said Engrattur.

  “I wouldn’t trust his balance. No offense, sir. That’s a long drop and I for one can’t swim. You lads stay here with him. I’ll follow the bank a ways and see if there’s a narrow place or a fallen log, eh?”

  “Yes, Sergeant,” said Grattur.

  Gard nodded between them, wondering if he could sleep standing up. Minutes passed.

  “What was that?” said Grattur and Engrattur together.

  Gard lifted his head. “Hush,” he said, listening hard. Fire crackling? Men pushing through bushes? Voices. Yes, voices, and then a firebird traveling upward that burst into a second sun and lit the river gorge bright as lurid red day.

  “Little brother, they’re coming, and we don’t know how to swim,” said Grattur.

  “But we have to get you across. Please don’t fall,” said Engrattur.

  They scrambled down the bank and splashed in, trying to wade, but the current ran swift and deep. The water was like ice. It tumbled them all three against the rocks they had thought to use as stepping-stones and effortlessly swept them over. The cataract dropped them a long way. There was nothing but noise, and cold, and darkness.

  Gard opened his eyes in the gray light of dawn to find himself lying half in and half out of the water, sprawled on wet stones, his fingers clenched so tightly around a willow root he could not open them. The whining in his ears was as though midges circled his head.

  He pulled himself out of the water and was at last able to release his grip. His hand fell like a dead weight. He turned himself over and sat up.

  There was mist in the river gorge, with the sky above it brightening for a white dawn. Mountains were on all sides. A little way downriver he could see Grattur floating, caught in wet branches and foaming mud. His eyes were open and sightless. There was no sign of Engrattur’s body.

  The whine in his ears resolved into pleading voices. She’ll catch us again, little brother, she’ll have us back, we don’t want to go to her! Help us!

  Blue clay was in the bank where the willow grew. Gard massaged life back into his unwounded hand and flexed the fingers, and dug a fistful of clay. He sculpted a little bird, awkwardly, giving it sticks for legs and tiny pebbles for eyes. He paid particular care to the wings, hoping they would work. The blood of his body oozed into the clay, for he had had to give up and use his wounded hand too.

  When he had finished it, he dug more blue clay and made another. “They aren’t very good,” he said aloud. “I’m sorry. I don’t have the strength for anything bigger.”

  He set them side by side and spoke the words to summon them into flesh. The white flash knocked him backward, and he passed out again.

  Two lumpy-looking, little blue birds were sitting on his chest, watching him sadly with silver eyes. Gard sat up in stages, and they fluttered awkwardly to the gravel beside him. He stood, swaying, clutching a low branch of the willow, groping in his boot tops to see if any of his knives were still there. He found one. “Better than nothing.”

  The little birds hopped and flopped, attempting to fly. He picked them up and they scrambled onto his shoulders and clung there.

  “Hold on. We have to keep moving. Can’t let you die again.”

  It was too bad about his books, he told the little birds. He really regretted losing Copperlimb’s travel essays again, because it was his favorite and it seemed to be out of print now, whereas Prince Firebow’s work was available all the time. He had seen a really nice omnibus edition in a shop window in Deliantiba. Had they had time to look in the shop windows in Deliantiba?

  The little birds could only cheep disconsolately in reply.

  “That’s too bad. It had some lovely shops,” said Gard, and fell on his face. The bird were thrown clear. They hopped back and peeped at him until he got up again and staggered on with them.

  He was lying on his back. It seemed to be twilight; he could see one star in an orchid-colored sky. The little birds were huddled under his chin, shivering.

  Something big and pale was moving nearby. A white stag, glimmering against the green mountainside. He watched as it walked close. It looked at him calmly. It stepped over him and walked on.

  He sat up, catching the little birds as they fell, and held them against his chest as he struggled to his feet. The stag had stopped a little distance on, not looking back, but he thought it might be waiting for him.

  “We have to follow,” he told the little birds. “Oh, doesn’t it shine? Just like a star. Ranwyr, look, it’s beautiful!”

  Gard hurried, not wanting to lose sight of the stag. It went down into a hollow under some trees. He could see it shining down there. He stumbled, caught his balance, kept going. He saw it clearly for a moment and then it winked out—

  Something rose up in front of him, something with skin that gleamed softly, like a thundercloud brooding lightnings. “My dear, whatever have you done to yourself?” said Balnshik, and caught him as he fell.

  He was warm. He was looking up at stars, through a latticework of firelit branches. Someone was talking. Something smelled good.

  “… glad you weren’t with us, lady, or you’d have been cut to pieces too.”

  “I might have surprised you.” That was Balnshik. Her laughter smelled like night-blooming flowers. Gard turned his head.

  Above a campfire, meat sizzled on a spit. Balnshik sat beside it, with the little birds nestling in her bosom. Across the fire sat Redeye, and be-side him—still clutching the sack in which he kept the celadon cup—was Thrang.

  Thrang looked over sharply as Gard turned his head. He set down the bag and came and knelt beside Gard, then prostrated himself further, whining softly.

  You saved the cup. You are a gentleman. I will be your servant and your children’s and all theirs to the ending of the world, I swear by the Blue Pit of Hazrakhin and the Void of Stars.

  Gard, with no idea what he ought to say, said, “I’m glad you didn’t die.”

  “How are you feeling, darling?” Balnshik inquired, rising. “I have some broth here for you, and you really ought to drink it.”

  “Can I have some of the meat?” Gard tried to rise on his elbows. Thrang drew back for Balnshik, who stepped close. The little birds lost their footing when she moved, but clung batlike to her shirt and pulled themselves up to her shoulders.

  “No,” she said. “I’d rather see how you keep the broth dow
n first. Don’t argue with nursie; you have a cracked skull. You’re really rather lucky to be alive.” She knelt beside him and set down what she had been carrying, which was Redeye’s helmet full of rabbit broth cooked with wild onions. Dipping in a wooden spoon, she fed him a little at a time.

  “Are we safe here?” he asked, between one spoonful and the next.

  “Safe enough,” said Redeye grimly. “Skalkin Salting’s called his men together and marched off to Deliantiba. Those bastards with the flares saw me; I led them away and we ended up circling back toward Penterkar Ridge. I got up in a tree and spent the night there. Come morning I had a good view of the whole damn army marching off up the road.” He spat. “His honor guard, I guess that’s who they were, marched in front of the whole lot, right behind his trumpeters. They carried poles with heads stuck on them. Most were too bashed up to tell whose they were, but one was the archduke’s, I’m pretty certain. And one head was Stedrakh’s.”

  “Oh,” said Gard. “Oh, I’m sorry.”

  Redeye shrugged. “He oughtn’t to have trusted them to do the sensible thing, that’s all. There’s nobody as spiteful as a hothead, when he’s got a feud going.”

  “Almost nobody,” said Balnshik. “We need to discuss your future, darling.”

  “Mine?”

  “Yours?” She widened her eyes at him. “Yes, yours. You were a hunted man long before you fell foul of petty warlords, you know. Grattur and Engrattur told me about the Bitch Princess. And, by the way, darling, you need to make new bodies for them as soon as you’re able. They’re adorable like this but absolutely helpless, and you’ll want every able-bodied ally you can summon against the mountain.”

  “How did you get out of there?”

  “Well, you did kill my master with your clever spell,” said Balnshik, tilting Redeye’s helmet to get the last of the broth. “As well as cave in half the black halls. I was with Duke Silverpoint when the Training Hall began to collapse. A wall fell out and sunlight poured in, and I ran for my life with an avalanche of rock and snow after me.”

  “The duke …?”

  “Died,” said Balnshik matter-of-factly. “When the first tremor came, he began to laugh. The last I saw of him he was looking up at the roof as it fell in on him, and he was still laughing. I never saw such a look of triumph on any man’s face, as he had in that hour.”

  “Hotheads,” said Redeye, nodding. “They’re crazy, all of them.”

  “But ultimately rather trivial, as enemies go,” said Balnshik. “Compared with the Narcissus of the Void. Now, listen to me, my dear: it sounds as though you’ve had a jolly time masquerading as a Child of the Sun, and I wish I’d seen you at the height of your acting career, I really do, but all this nonsense must stop.

  “You are a mage. You can’t pretend you aren’t one, especially not when you have the likes of Pirihine hunting for you. She wants your heart’s blood on her face and hands, and the little viper has a way of getting what she wants. You have the power to deny her that particular treat, but only if you use the power.”

  “What can I do?”

  “With respect, sir, you could do a lot worse than set up shop in your own fortress,” said Redeye.

  “Exactly. You need some sort of lair and you need an army. Might I respectfully suggest summoning up demon servitors?”

  “I don’t want slaves,” said Gard, scowling.

  “You wouldn’t need ‘em,” said Redeye. “Every man in your platoon would come back and work for you, if you offered them bodies. Those boys adored you, sir. There’s never been anybody like you, see? You’re one of us, only you’re not …”

  “A drunkard, a glutton, or a fool,” said Balnshik crisply. “As so many of our people are.”

  “Right, you’re, er, organized, you see, sir? And a mage and all too. It’s perfect. It’s like in those stories other people have, about a prophecy that somebody special will be sent by the gods to be their savior, or their long-lost king or whatever.”

  “Though we have no such prophecies,” said Balnshik.

  “No. Nobody ever makes any prophecies about the likes of us,” said Redeye, with a bitter chuckle. “We’re always the hordes getting slaughtered by the hero, or the monsters in the mountain passes the hero has to defeat. Or at best we get to be the minions and henchmen of some sort of, I don’t know, some sorcerer or other.”

  “A Dark Lord,” said Gard meditatively.

  “Right! That,” said Redeye.

  Gard stood on the top of the mountain, looking down.

  He had come a long way to find this place. It rose out of great dense oak forests, and it was as formidable as the mountain of his captivity. That lay far behind him, over the edge of the world, lost in its glaciers and mists. Before him here he saw the curve of the earth in the blue sea, and, nearer in, the river-crossed plains where the Children of the Sun lived and quarreled, and nearer in still the green lands that were henceforth his own.

  Nearer in still—but far down all the same, just barely visible—he made out the tents of his camp. Many tents were there, and he knew a crowd stood looking up, watching hopefully.

  He closed his eyes, breathed deeply, and went out of himself.

  Power was flowing in the rock. Latent thunder was in the sky. It was thunder weather and the sky was leaden, no breath of air in the silent tree halls, and he had come into being in this weather, on just such a mountain. This time was his. This place was his. He claimed the power in the rock for his own. He drew it upward into himself. He drew it down from the gathering storm clouds.

  It surged. It crackled. He reached out and sculpted the mountain with it and called up his desire. Rooms, corridors, windows, doors, high balconies viewing the sea, open places that might be gardens later, or might not. Deep pools and twisting stairs. Chamber upon chamber, storerooms, dungeons, halls, a palace to make the mountain of the mages look like the delvings of blind moles. Hypocausts and baths warmed by subterranean fires artfully directed, no labor of grinding slaves, and ventilation through apertures in rock that pulled in the west wind.

  Now, the theatrical elements: the frowning battlements of black stone, carefully calculated to daunt, by their very appearance, any would-be hero hoping to scale them. Gutters and drain spouts in grotesque shapes. Cupolas whose arrangements of windows suggested skulls. A dozen needlelike spires of no architectural function whatsoever, unless as lightning rods. A weather vane featuring another bat-winged grotesque. Black stone, black slate, black-enameled steel everywhere. A quarter mile down the slope, a death zone of bare rock, scattered and tumbled black boulders ringing the mountaintop.

  It was finished in a flare of light, white radiating into indigo, and with a thunderclap the Children of the Sun heard as far away as Silverhaven.

  Gard came to himself as the first big hot drops fell. He inhaled the fragrances of stone and rain, and smiled to see what he had made.

  He found his way out through one of the lower postern doors. He was picking his way down the slope below when he saw the death zone before him, and was momentarily disconcerted to discover that he had left no pathway through. Luckily, he was able to summon a little residual power and, with a wave of his fist, opened a mazy trackway there, impossible to find by uninvited travelers. As an afterthought, he added a few spikes surmounted by silver skulls, just for decoration.

  They were coming up the mountain already when he emerged at the front gate, Grattur and Engrattur, Balnshik and Thrang, Redeye and all those bodied demons he had called to his service over the past three months. They were cheering. He grinned and waved his hand at his great house. “Welcome home,” he told them.

  “It’s magnificent!” cried Grattur.

  “Stupendous!” cried Engrattur.

  Balnshik craned her head back to study it. “Skulls? Oh, really, darling, isn’t that a little much?”

  “Well, it’s supposed to be frightening,” said Gard.

  “I hope you remembered the plumbing?”

  “There’s
some plumbing,” he said carelessly. “Of course.”

  “I see.”

  “There won’t be an army on earth that can touch us,” said Redeye, grinning. “We could hold off a siege up here until Grell cracks the Moon-Egg at the end of the world. Well done, my lord.”

  “And I’ll thank you to observe that red road down there.” Gard pointed down the mountain. “That’s the main route used by the freight caravans. Duke Salting owns the freight company. They go through once a week. Won’t that be convenient?”

  “Very, my lord,” said Stedrakh, glaring down at the road. “We’re going to be demon bandits!” cried Cheller happily. “But we’re only going to prey on the rich,” said Gard. “Well, of course we are, sir,” said Redeye. “The poor haven’t got any money!”

  They all laughed heartily at that.

  The masked figure stands atop his black mountain, and carefully directed lights make his eyes seem to blaze with triumph. The audience shivers, and applauds, though some wrooch about on their stone seats and look around to see if a cushion vendor is anywhere near. Some use this pause as an opportunity to refill their wine cups.

  But the poet Wiregold, or at least his masked representation, is walking out once more to center stage. He clears his throat, and waits until cushions are tucked into place and wine jugs are tucked back in baskets before speaking.

  Now what offense walks boldly under heaven!

  The Master of the Mountain here begins

  His reign of infamy. No caravan’s safe

  Between Troon and Salesh, no virgin travels

  Unravished, no righteous man

  His path may take along our roads without challenge.

  The Dark One, the Black-a-vised, fearless walks

  Even in our cities, where he will.

  Monstrous his lusts: six women, terrified,

  Our own pure girls, he keeps as mistresses,

  Visiting when he will. They dare not protest.