The House of the Stag Read online

  BOOKS BY KAGE BAKER

  THE COMPANY SERIES

  In the Garden of Iden

  Sky Coyote

  Mendoza in Hollywood

  The Graveyard Game

  Black Projects, White Knights: The Company Dossiers

  The Life of the World to Come

  The Children of the Company

  The Machine’s Child

  Gods and Pawns

  The Sons of Heaven

  ALSO BY KAGE BAKER

  The Anvil of the World

  Dark Mondays

  Mother Aegypt and Other Stories

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  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  THE HOUSE OF THE STAG

  Copyright © 2008 by Kage Baker

  All rights reserved.

  A Tor Book

  Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

  175 Fifth Avenue

  New York, NY 10010

  www.tor-forge.com

  Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7653-1745-2

  ISBN-10: 0-7653-1745-1

  First Edition: September 2008

  Printed in the United States of America

  0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  In loving memory of

  MARQUE SIEBENTHAL

  Actor—Acrobat—Fool

  Gone where the oaks are green

  PROLOGUE

  The speaking Rock

  There are figures painted on the rock. They are hard to see, because time has faded them with rainfall and sunlight. Stick figures with spears, things that seem to be both beasts and men, geometric shapes, spirals, rayed stars. This stick figure with its innocent male appendage, this other beside it depicted as female, with its two little globes and outdomed belly: they are lovers, clearly. Their voices have been lost to time.

  But watch them: they will come to life. Some echo of the chanted words will come back, and the little figures will move.

  The girl was pregnant by the boy. Their names were Ran and Teliva; they belonged to a tribe of forest people.

  It was hot under the orchid canopy, it was thunder weather and the sky was leaden. With the baby crowding under her heart, Teliva couldn’t breathe. Ran led her along the green trail, an easy-climbing path, up to the bare, high, cooler, open places on the mountain. Where water came down like a white veil into a pool, they swam and drank spray. But above the thunder of the falls they heard another noise, and ventured forth dripping and timid to see who cried so in the twilight.

  They found the boy, only minutes old, howling and striking with fists at the empty air. He lay alone on the bare rock, in blood, with no footprint to show who had dropped him there.

  Teliva took him up in her arms, and as she did, she felt the first sharp pain of her own deliverance. When she came down the trail again by morning light, she carried two little boys, with Ran walking beside to steady her.

  They called their own son Ranwyr, and they called the foundling Gard, which meant “big” in their language.

  Nobody knew who had left him there on the mountain; there were no other people in the world, except for the demons. Demons came out of rock and light and air, born of the elements as people were born from wombs. Sometimes they took the shape of people. Sometimes they came down to the dances and lay with women and men. Still, no one had ever seen a child made that way.

  The people made a song about it, one of their long songs of complicated melodies, though the words were always simple. A song might say only I love you and want you, or The river runs very high today. The song they made about Gard ran, Where did the boy come from?

  They put the desolate cries of the abandoned baby in it, and the cries of Teliva in her labor, and the wailing of Ranwyr as he drew his first breath. And the refrain, repeated 555 times was Where did the boy come from?

  But no one ever found out.

  Despite there being no fire, nor clothes or possessions, the people lived in a complicated world. Gard and Ranwyr must learn, as they grew, all the different names for weather, and the colors of the river and what they meant, and the smells of the forest and what they meant too. And they must learn right and wrong.

  It was wrong to pull green fruit from a tree, or to interrupt a singer. It was wrong to be angry, wrong to grab for what you wanted or stare angrily into another’s eyes. Two people can walk one trail, if they are patient, was the rule.

  It was right to help Ran when he gathered fruit, and to be a big strong son carrying it back. It was right to shade the little new girl from the sun with big leaves, when Teliva set her down in a nest of grass; and, later, it was right to keep the little girl from going near the white angry river.

  They had just begun to learn the names of the stars when the strangers came.

  One night, Gard and Ranwyr lay at the edge of the dancing green, keeping watch over their sister. The dancers moved in their two lines on the wide lawn, which was starred with white flowers. Pairs of lovers had crept away into the bowers, all around, and now and then through the music Gard could hear the noises they made as they coupled.

  “We’re almost old enough to do that,” he said, sitting up to peer out across the green.

  “No, we’re not,” said Ranwyr. “Pyelume only danced this year for the first time, and she’s three years older than we are.”

  “I wasn’t talking about dancing,” said Gard, with exaggerated patience.

  “Neither was I.”

  Gard scowled, trying to see through the moving thicket of adult legs. “Boys are ready first, though. Ran told me so. It’s already standing up on its own, sometimes.”

  “That’s nothing. Mine does too,” said Ranwyr.

  “Oh, it does not.”

  “It did! You just didn’t see. But we have to be older. Three more summers, and then I’m going into the bowers with Melilissu,” announced Ranwyr.

  “Melilissu already went into the bowers with Nole,” Gard informed him. “And they made a baby.”

  “Oh,” said Ranwyr, crestfallen. “Did they? Where is it?”

  “Hasn’t bloomed yet,” said Gard. “Remember how long it took before Luma came out?”

  “I don’t want to make a baby yet anyway,” said Ranwyr.

  “I could,” said Gard. “I’d like to be one of the fathers.” He looked out at the bowers again. “I wonder why Ran and Teliva still go there. They already have us. And Luma.”

  “Oh, look! The moon is rising,” said Ranwyr. They watched it rise, full and silver, and heard the singer’s voice saluting the light in silver notes. The black shadows of the dancers were long and sharp-edged now.

  At first they thought the drummers had been joined by new men and were starting a new cadence; they had no idea what hoofbeats were. But then there were new black shadows against the moon, moving fast, and there was screaming. The singer fell silent. Gard and Ranwyr cowered together, and behind them the little girl woke in her nest and began to wail.

  The riders were
circling, circling and screaming. The people milled together, frightened, and one man broke and ran for the edge of the trees; but a rider rose in the saddle and whirled something over his head. It screamed too, and spun out across the night air and tangled the man’s legs. He fell heavily.

  Teliva came running. Ran was close behind her, and close behind them came a rider in pursuit, silhouetted so high up on his mount! His eyes gleamed, his teeth gleamed. He was still screaming, but Gard realized he was laughing too. The rider raised his arm. He clutched a tangle of—vines? Round and round he swung them—

  Gard felt anger like a white river in his whole body. He jumped up shouting right under the beast’s hooves, and it reared back. The rider slid off and fell. Ran and Teliva passed him, flying into the darkness under the trees, stopping only to scoop up the little girl. The boys followed them. They ran a long way into the darkness, until the screams were distant.

  “What was that?” cried Ranwyr. “What just happened?”

  But Ran only shook his head, taking the baby from Teliva’s arms. “I don’t know.”

  The strangers did not look like the people, nor did they look like demons. The pictures on the rock won’t tell you what they looked like: stick figures sketched in and then cut across with vicious lines, circled each with a black nimbus. Does it symbolize their strangeness, or is it an attempt to enclose their power, shut it away like a layer of pearl around a lump of grit? Their eyes stare. Their teeth are bared.

  No one knew where they had come from, either. One day they were just there, building shells of stone in the wide plain east of the river, where lightning had struck fire and opened square miles to the sky. Between the black stumps pointing up they piled stones, or dug square-sided holes, or tore the earth up in long stripes.

  The old life was broken, and nothing could be understood anymore. The strangers rode through the forest, slaughtering or kidnapping anyone they could catch.

  The older people died first. Some of them stubbornly behaved as though the world hadn’t changed, and walked into danger. Some children died, too young to know better or too old to listen to warnings. Some fathers died, not quiet or careful enough when they crept out to pick fruit. Some mothers died, taking too long to dig out roots.

  The ones who were taken alive were later seen in the strangers’ fields, tethered together, weeping as they pulled the plows, and the strangers beat them. At night they were herded back into pits under the walls and made to build more walls. When they died, their bones were thrown out to the edges of the fields they made.

  Ran and Teliva found a hole under the roots of a tree, in the bank above a stream. It was as dark inside as the pits where the slaves were kept, but from its mouth there was a good view of the open meadows on the other side of the stream. Above it, the forest was so dense no riders could get through without making a lot of noise.

  The children grew up in that place, learning to be quiet. Gard was broad-chested and tall; Ranwyr was thin, with bright eyes and clever hands. Gard learned well, but it was Ranwyr who discovered how to make bowls from gourds, who discovered how to weave reeds into baskets. The girl Luma was pale and small. She couldn’t remember a time when things had been any different.

  One night in winter the wind howled across the open fields, funneling like ice water into the hole under the tree. Ran and Teliva huddled together, and their children with them, looking out at the blue night and white stars. Suddenly a dark shape was against the stars, a body scrambling through. Gard threw himself forward, got his strong arms around the shape and wrestled it to the ground.

  The other gnashed his teeth, struggled in silence. Ran crawled forward and peered at him. “Let go! Let go, he’s one of us.”

  Gard released the man, who sat upright and gulped breath. “I know you. Ran from by the River. Aren’t you?”

  “I was,” said Ran. “By the dark stream, now. Forgive my son. Here’s a drink for you.”

  “That’s all right.” The other accepted the water gourd, looked at it in surprise a moment before tilting it to drink. He spilled a little and sat turning the gourd in his hands. “Do you remember me? Shaff from the pear trees. I was; no trees there anymore. These times we live in! Eh?”

  “This isn’t time,” said Ran. “Time’s broken. What are you doing here?”

  “I’ve been trying to get out,” said Shaff.

  “Out?” said Ranwyr. “Out where?”

  Shaff turned and looked in his direction. “How many of you are there?”

  “All of us,” said Ran. “Where’s your family?”

  “Gone.”

  They were silent for a moment. Then, Ranwyr asked, “Have you found a way out?”

  “Not yet,” said Shaff hoarsely. “I went up the mountain to get away, but I couldn’t go far. It’s too cold, up high, and I couldn’t breathe. I looked down on the world and saw the Riders’ places, all their houses and fields, where we used to live. I saw the mountains stretching all the way around the round world.

  “I saw the River going away, and I thought I’d go that way too. I went down and followed the River by night, swimming, hiding in the reeds by day.

  “At last the River went under a mountain, and I couldn’t go under with it. So I turned around and followed it back in the other direction. At last I couldn’t go any higher, but I saw where the River came from, tears running from a green cold eye in a white mountain. The cold burned my feet; I was lame for three days and three nights.

  “But I met a demon as I lay up there. He told me there are places on the other side of the mountains.”

  “Places on the other side?” said Teliva.

  “Who’s that?” Shaff leaned forward, staring into the dark. “Oh, a woman—I haven’t seen a woman since—”

  He stopped.

  “How can there be other places?” said Ranwyr at last.

  Shaff licked his dry lips. “The demon said, if you could get over the mountains, you’d see everything like it used to be. The green trees and the dancing greens. No Riders! No houses or pits. It’s warm, and rains more. Every tree bears fruit! That’s what he told me.

  “So I’m going back, to see if I can find a way through the mountains.”

  “Did the demon know how to go there?” asked Gard.

  “He only laughed at me,” said Shaff. “Demons can fly. Demons can walk in the high places where we’d die. They’re not even afraid of the Riders! He told me, he’s eaten one.”

  Shocked silence greeted this news. “What are you doing here?” said Ran at last.

  “Looking for a place to sleep tonight,” said Shaff. He turned longing eyes to Teliva.

  He stayed with them that night. Out of politeness, and pity too, Teliva lay down with him. In the morning he went on, to search for a way through the edge of the world. They never saw him again.

  Ranwyr grew tall. Gard grew taller. They were good sons, silent when they walked out, careful at spotting snares and hiding their tracks. Now and then they met others of their people, hurrying through the night. They heard that the rumor had spread, that there was a safe place outside the world.

  There was a song made, the first new one since the strangers had come, about the stars that sailed above the smoke of the Riders’ houses. It was never sung aloud, but only passed in whispers from one night walker to another. The song told how the stars crossed the fields of the sky and left no tracks; the stars crossed behind the mountains at night, escaping into the sweet green place where everything was just as it had used to be. The refrain was Oh, that we were stars.

  Ranwyr and Gard sat in the doorway, keeping watch when Ran slept. They turned their faces to the mountains always, wondering how to get out.

  Life became harder, as the seasons rolled. The strangers cut down the trees, pushed their fields closer, so Ran must lead his sons farther and farther from the door to find food. There was plenty growing in the fields, and some of the people took it; but they left tracks, and the Riders came hunting and killed them or captured
them.

  One night Ran and his sons went gathering melons. On their way home they crossed a meadow open to the sky, taking a short way because the melons were heavy. Gard heard the hoofbeats first, as the Rider spurred toward them by starlight. He heard the whirling of the net in the air, and dropped what he carried and ran for his life.

  From the corner of his eye he saw Ranwyr running too and heard Ran, not so swift, running behind. He heard the cry, the impact of the weighted stones that dropped the net; heard Ran crying out for him to run.

  But Gard disobeyed, he spun and stopped, saw the Rider’s beast rearing up and the Rider’s weapon striking down at Ran, who lay sprawled in the net. And then, not knowing how he’d crossed the ground between, Gard was by the Rider and wrenching the weapon away, and the Rider fell from its beast’s back and struck at him as it fell. Gard hit it with the weapon, battered it to the ground again, and again, and at last it stopped trying to rise.

  Gard stood there gasping, with the weapon in his hand. Ranwyr was beside him, though he hadn’t seen him come back, crouched over Ran and pulling the net free. Ran’s arm bled, its sinews cut. The beast stood and stamped, with mad frightened eyes, and foam dripped from its jaws.

  They bound Ran’s arm up with leaves, gripped it tight, wound with cord cut from the net.

  “Run home,” said Ran, “run home, before it wakes!”

  “It won’t wake,” said Gard. He kicked it, and its head lolled.

  Ranwyr looked on it in horror. “You killed it.”

  “It was easy,” said Gard, in wonder. “Look how weak its arms are! Look how the point went through, just like through a rotten apple. Why should they kill us?”