INTRODUCTION: Hello again, all! Rumors of my demise have been greatly exaggerated. Or at least slightly exaggerated. Anyway, this is the first chapter of my latest project; I have about five chapters written so far and I'll use the reviews I get here as a gauge of whether it's worth continuing to pursue it. It's a crossover between the Buffy-verse and the world of Robert Jordan's epic Wheel of Time series. Some familiarity with the WoT-verse is recommended, but I try to work in as much exposition as can be made natural.
DISCLAIMER: I own neither Buffy the Vampire Slayer nor the Wheel of Time; they are the property of their respective authors, publishers, and probably a half-dozen other entities woven together in a more complicated weave than the Age Lace. If I could figure that out, I'd be a good IP lawyer. If I were the author, I'd be making you pay to read this. As it is, I'm just a judgment-proof student who's likely to remain so because I keep writing fanfiction instead of studying.
SPOILERS/BACKGROUND: All Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel through Season 4 (no secondary sources, however); all main books of the Wheel of Time through Knife of Dreams. Of course, the WoT-verse is sufficiently complex that I'd be hard pressed to get everything right.
CHAPTER 1:
AMID THE RUINS
The Wheel of Time turns, and ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again. In one Age, its name long forgotten by even its own people, an Age yet to come, an Age long past, a wind rose above the vast crater that marked the tomb of the Hellmouth. The wind was not the beginning. There are neither beginnings nor endings to the turning of the Wheel of Time. But it was a beginning.
Northward the wind blew, across the vast emptiness where until only minutes ago had stood the placid-seeming town of Sunnydale, carrying dry dust that might have contained the powdered remains of a home, a school, a city sewer line, a car, or a hundred other keepsakes of the former inhabitants of the town, human and nonhuman alike. Most of those inhabitants, warned by that deeply buried, animalistic sense of danger sharpened by long years in the wilderness before the comforting blanket of modern civilization lulled it to sleep, had fled before the destruction, but the dust on the wind nevertheless held the remains of more than wood and steel and stone.
Northward still the wind blew, toward a small group of men and mostly young women on the southern lip of the crater, who stood still and silent as if unsure of both where they were and where they were going, or if they should even believe what their eyes had so recently beheld. Blood stained the garments of most, bruises marred the skin beneath, and the shoulders of more than one slumped as if weariness had taken form and mounted a pack of stones on them. A closer observer, however, would have seen the light of triumph burning in their eyes, a light too bright for even the power of injury and bone-deep exhaustion to cloud. Even the injured wore faces of relief rather than pain; a few of the less scathed even dared to smile.
Buffy Summers was one of those fortunate few. She had been injured worse than many in the recent battle, but she already showed less sign of it than any, her flesh knitting itself back together so quickly and adroitly that within another hour, there would be nothing but perfect skin. Not long ago, her torso had been pierced by the blade of a Turok-han, one of the ancient, deformed vampires that had formed the legion of the First Evil on the brink of breaking free of the Seal of Danthalzar and wreaking war upon an unsuspecting world. It would not be long now before the wound was as much a memory as the creature that had made it.
"Hard to believe, huh?" a soft voice asked next to her. Buffy turned to see the oldest of her sister Slayers, Faith, who had inched forward to stand with Buffy at the very lip of the newly riven crater. "Hundreds of other Slayers ... and no more Hellmouth. Well, except Cleveland. But who cares about the Mistake by the Lake, anyway?"
Buffy allowed herself a smile. Well, she was already smiling, but she allowed the soft hint of a laugh to pass through her teeth. It felt like years since she had done that. It might well have been years in truth, she reflected sadly.
Faith noted the look in her eyes. "It's all right, B," she said, and then, wonder of wonders, wrapped her arm around Buffy's shoulder in a sisterly hug. The world was changed, all right. Faith had been many things over the course of her tumultuous life, but soft and compassionate had never been one of them. Buffy made no move to push the other Slayer away, either, which surprised herself even more. She had forced herself to be so hard for so long. So long. She inhaled deeply, twice, then again, but left Faith's arm where it was until Faith gave her a tight squeeze and drew away. The sound of other feet approaching had reached their ears.
"You realize I have no idea what I'm going to do with my life now?" she asked. "All I've learned how to do for the last seven years is fight."
"Maybe I'll open a club somewhere, and you can be the bouncer."
Buffy chuckled, and cast a glance sideways as Willow drew alongside them. Buffy shook her head, this time in wonder. If she allowed her eyes to drift just right, as though trying to look through Willow and slightly off to a side, rather than looking straight at the redheaded Wiccan, Buffy could almost see tendrils of white energy still surrounding her, lingering effects of the ritual her friend had used to awaken the latent Slayer spirit in every girl born with the spark around the world. Many of those girls would probably be confused at what was happening to them, but she had faith that she and Willow and Giles and the rest of the Slayers she had already gathered would be able to seek out the rest of her new sisters around the world. She actually savored the prospect of that; her duties at the Hellmouth had left her precious little time for traveling over the past seven years, and the idea of traveling to perhaps every country in the world touched a deep longing in her.
"Hey," Willow greeted shyly. "Crazy to look at, isn't it?"
"Can say that again," Faith agreed. "But I'll be glad to put this joint in the rearview and ..."
"Wait ..." Willow cut her off, her usual dreamlike voice suddenly sharp and crisp. Her eyes had gone suddenly distant, and Buffy's fingers tightened on the Scythe in her hands. She could sense Faith's muscles tense next to her, as well. There was a short silence, then Willow spoke in a resigned voice, "there's something still down there. I'm sure."
Buffy snarled a curse, but was already moving. Faith was only a step behind her. Should have known better than to get my hopes up, Buffy berated herself. Her feet found sure footing where there should have been none as she leapt from stone to stone in the wall of the crater, bounding down the rock face in strides covering fifteen, twenty, twenty-five feet at a time. As the slope began to level off near the base of the hollow, she leapt atop a loose, flat stone and slid down another hundred yards before skidding to a stop, the Scythe already raised to ward off any attackers, though she knew that no Turok-han would be able to approach her here, exposed to the harsh light of day. Faith drew alongside a moment later. Buffy spared a glance back up the side of the crater. Several other Slayers had begun their descent as well, though all were picking their way much more cautiously than Buffy and Faith had. Looking at the distance Buffy and Faith had just covered, Buffy shook her head. It was amazing what blood of fire could make one do sometimes; she could hardly believe that she had just covered that distance in under a minute. It should have taken half an hour. It would take a sane person half an hour.
Faith was looking around warily. "All right, now what?" she wondered aloud.
"Search and destroy," Buffy answered grimly.
A thick wave of red and gold leaves whirled to a stop beside them, and Buffy and Faith both jumped back to give themselves room and settled into fighting stances before the column resolved back into the shape of Willow. Buffy shook her head. She had seen Willow use a similar trick when her friend had been temporarily consumed by the darkness of her grief over losing her lover, Tara, about a year ago now; then, however, Willow's wind-form had been motes of solid shadow.
"Warn us before you do that, will you?" Buffy grated exasperatedly.
"Warn me before you jump off a cliff!" Willow replied heatedly.
"Can we just give you a blanket warning that if there are cliffs nearby, we're probably going to end up jumping off of them at some point?" Faith asked. Willow shot her a withering look. Faith smiled, and Willow shook her head helplessly.
"That way," she nodded to the southwest. That was enough for Buffy, who set off immediately with a purposeful stride. If anything had survived the destruction of the Hellmouth, she was not going to let it get out of the area. This was going to be the final blow in her seven-year war with the font of malevolent energy that had lain beneath the town of Sunnydale for centuries. When she left today, she wanted to be certain that she would never need to return.
It did not take long to find what Willow had sensed, though it was not what Buffy had been expecting. She clambered up a short sandstone rise and beheld a tall cylinder of grey stone, still slightly buried in loose rock. It was perhaps thrice Buffy's height, and every exposed inch was covered with carved arcane symbols like nothing Buffy had ever seen before. Where it was not still buried under the rockfall behind, it rested on a base of white stone, with seven steps of colored stone leading up onto it: one each of red, yellow, white, grey, brown, green, and blue. Whatever path might once have led to the base of those stairs, however, was long since destroyed; the hillside around them was cracked and broken, and on one side the steps even ended a pace above the ground.
"Found something!" she called back over her shoulder. She hopped over the crest of the rise and down into the shallow depression that had shielded the pillar from view. She approached it cautiously, not sure of what might happen if she actually climbed onto the stairs, or the white stone base. She climbed around it, and even climbed above it on the rockfall and looked down on it from above, but it remained completely alien to her. It did not appear that there were any trails or tracks leading to or from it, but given its location, it was entirely possible that this pillar had lain somewhere in the catacombs beneath the Seal. That made it dangerous, in her book.
While she was up on the rockfall, nearly level with the top of the pillar, Faith and Willow arrived. Willow approached the colored stone steps with far less trepidation than Buffy herself had. In fact, she only gave them a cursory glance before hopping up onto them, before Buffy could do so much as shout at her to be careful. Nothing happened, however, so Buffy bit back a few choice words that she intended to hurl at her friend.
Willow looked up at her as though reading her thoughts. She can't read my thoughts, can she? That would be so unfair. "It doesn't feel evil," the redheaded Wiccan called up to her. Buffy shrugged and let herself slide down the loose rock and onto the white stone platform around the carved pillar.
"Hey guys, hold up!" a voice called, and Buffy turned to see Rona topping the rise. Rona was accounted one of the leaders of the new Slayers, a black girl of medium height bordering on tall, taller than Buffy or Faith, whose eyes still betrayed her youth and inexperience but whose body was rapidly filling out her frame. Unlike some of the other Slayers, she actually looked like someone who might be able to scale cliffs barehanded. A few paces behind her, breathing heavily and mopping his forehead, came Giles, supported by the arms of Vi, another of the captains by acclamation of the crop of Slayers that had so recently earned their first battle scars fighting off the army of the First. Vi was nearly as tall as Rona, but thinner of build, a dancer rather than a warrior, with red hair cut short and a face that still seemed soft no matter how battle-hardened everyone had become in the past few hours. She was among the oldest of those called, which had earned her some respect among the others, and had proven to be a determined and steadying hand off the field of battle and a fearless warrior on it, which had earned her far more.
"G!" Faith called. "Didn't know you were such a climber!"
"Um ..." Rona's voice was suddenly hesitant. "He's kind of not. We kind of just passed him down between us." Buffy suddenly understood the sickly cast on her Watcher's face, but she was grateful to have him there, and to whoever had had the presence of mind to speed his descent. Probably Rona or Vi, maybe both. Or maybe it had been his own fool idea. It didn't matter at the moment.
"Never mind!" she called. "Giles! Some Watcherriffic words of wisdom would be welcome!"
"Ooh ... ugh ..."
"In English, maybe?"
"English?" he suddenly lifted himself and straightened his glasses. "I haven't heard that language since I came to this bloody country." Faith chuckled, and even Buffy had to smile.
By this time, Giles had reached the rough floor of the depression, and Vi let him go, stepping away a moment later when she was satisfied that he could stand on his own. He was still breathing heavily, but looked all right other than that. She turned to Buffy a moment later. "We gonna be here a while?" she asked hesitantly.
Buffy looked at the stone, then at Giles, then to Willow and back to Giles. This wasn't something they were going to be able to figure out in minutes. She knew that look in their eyes. It was the look that only surfaced when they were faced with an intriguing puzzle that they knew was going to be a challenge even for them. She groaned inwardly. So much for waking up in L.A. tomorrow. "Looks that way," she called back to the red-haired Slayer.
Vi nodded. "I'll go tell the others to go back for the camping gear." She turned and vaulted lightly up the smooth sandstone face of the rise, Rona on her heels. They had packed the back seats of the school bus that had been their getaway vehicle with as much survival gear as they could piece together, though there would never be enough for the more than twenty Slayers and the rest of the Scooby Gang that had survived the battle.
Buffy turned back to Giles, who by this time had ascended the stairs and was circling the pillar, his brow furrowed in concentration. "Anything familiar?" she asked, not entirely sure she wanted the answer.
"It's no demonic language I've ever seen," he answered thoughtfully. "Not any Native American tribal signs, either, though. Or any human culture I've ever seen, either. But for some reason, it looks more human than demonic."
"I agree," Willow added. "But the First was here. I can feel it." Her eyes were distant again, as though she were looking at something faraway that no one else could see.
Buffy tensed. That was definitely not what she wanted to hear. Nearby, Faith growled a string of curses.
"I can feel it ..." Willow whispered, "its feelings are mixed ... excited, frustrated ... I need to study this more." Without another word, she sat down, cross-legged, facing the pillar and closed her eyes. Her breathing deepened and steadied, and the air around her seemed to ripple slightly, like a mirage.
Buffy opened her mouth to say something, but Faith's hand on her arm stopped her. "Let the girl work," she said. "Red knows what she's doing here more than us." Buffy gritted her teeth, and not least because Faith was right. Willow was far more than the doe-eyed computer nerd that Buffy had befriended in her first year at Sunnydale High. She was a sorceress with an international reputation now, even an interdimensional one; a vengeance demon had once actually tried to recruit her. She had been the most gifted student in a generation at Sunnydale High, and had turned her mind to the study of the mystical arts with a vengeance ever since their graduation, even when they had been freshmen together at UC-Sunnydale. She had even dropped out of college to concentrate on her arcane learning full-time, despite the fact that, quite unlike Buffy, she had been sporting a perfect four-point grade point average at the time. And, of course, Buffy had called on her to perform one of the most powerful eldritch rites ever successfully worked by a single woman in the history of the world.
"Tch. Fine," she grated a moment later. She turned back to Giles. "All right, what makes you think it's human?"
"I'm not entirely sure," the older man admitted. "But I think it's those symbols, more than anything. They look vaguely Sumerian, vaguely Egyptian, like they could be a common ancestor somehow. Older than either."
"Which would make them what? Six thousand years old?" Faith asked.
"More than eight thousand," Giles corrected her. "But yes. They look much closer to that than any demonic script, and I've at least seen most of those."
Buffy shook her head. "All right, I'm going to go scout and see if there's anything else like this lying around." She started off to the south without another word. In truth, she was merely eager to be doing something, anything, and it was increasingly obvious that there was nothing to be done here at the moment. Out of a corner of her eye, she saw Faith heading off to the east, likely thinking the same thing.
The crater was immense, larger than the whole town of Sunnydale had been, but there were several hours of daylight left, and Buffy doggedly used every one of them. She glimpsed Faith at a distance more than once, leaping from rock to rock, scaling smooth surfaces as easily as if she had had a rope to grasp. The woman was going to get herself killed, Buffy thought with a grimace as she vaulted up another slippery rock slope, driving her feet from stone to stone before it ever had a chance to start sliding beneath her. Aside from Faith, she saw nothing moving for the rest of the day, nor any other strange artifacts poking out of the ground.
The sun had dipped low behind the western wall of the crater by the time she returned to the mysterious stone pillar, and the little basin where the stone lay was already nearly as dark as night. By this time, Giles had been joined by Buffy's sister, Dawn, as well as Robin Wood, erstwhile principal of the vanished Sunnydale High and Faith's boyfriend. Or perhaps he wasn't her boyfriend, but they were certainly more than just friends, whatever the two of them claimed. Another half-dozen Slayers had set up camp there as well, Rona, Vi, and four more. Buffy saw that they had been somewhat resourceful in finding themselves camping gear; they had torn enough seats out of the bus that everyone would have a cushion to sleep on, at least. A single cooler held bottles of water, and a handful of backpacks, clearly meant for school rather than camping, held enough food to get them through the night. There were no blankets, but given that it was late May in southern California and the sky was cloudless, that would hardly be a terrible inconvenience. Willow still sat where Buffy had left her, the air rippling faintly around her.
"Hey there," Dawn greeted her as she approached.
"Hey you," Buffy answered. "Xander not make it?"
"Couldn't see well enough to make it down the cliff. Besides, I think he's kinda tired."
"Not surprising," Buffy mused. It would have been foolish to bring the entire party down into the crater, anyway. If she'd had her way, Dawn wouldn't have come, either; if there were more demons lurking around down here, the last thing she wanted to do was have Dawn nearby. The girl had picked up a thing or two from watching Buffy over the course of the years, and Buffy secretly guessed that she had seeds of deeper magical powers in her—she was an artificial creation of interdimensional energy, after all, despite the fact that she was also very much human—but she was no Slayer, and whatever powers might lie locked within her remained just that, locked.
The clacking sound of rocks dislodged from the far hillside announced Faith's return. Robin's eyes found her immediately, and he was the first to greet her. Right. Nothing between them at all, Buffy thought wryly. It would be the height of all irony, even insanity, if the first thing Faith, of all people, did with their newfound freedom was settle down, yet the signs were there, though Buffy still wondered whether she could possibly be reading them right. Faith claimed that she saw Robin as just a good lay, but he clearly had deeper designs than that, and from the warm way Faith returned Robin's embrace, she might not be as opposed to the idea as she said. Something had clearly changed between them even between two days ago and now.
"See anything?" Faith asked, when she finally drew herself away from Robin and approached Buffy.
"Nothing," Buffy replied with a shrug. "Didn't really expect I would."
"Me neither," Faith agreed.
Buffy nodded, and looked around for Dawn again. Her breath caught when she saw her sister ascending the stairs onto the stone platform, though she herself had stood on it without any noticeable effect. She still didn't want Dawn going any closer to it than necessary, however. The fact that Buffy herself hadn't been burned to a crisp just by going near it did not change the fact that none of them had any idea yet what the stone column actually did. She headed for the platform, Faith trailing her.
"Dawn, you shouldn't be up here," she said as she approached her sister. Her sister was standing close enough to touch the pillar now, craning her neck to peer upwards at its crown.
"Buffy, it's weird," Dawn said, completely ignoring the warning. "This thing, I can sense it ... it's like ... I don't know ... I can't explain it."
Buffy felt Faith tense next to her, and realized that she herself was standing on the balls of her feet, as though expecting to have to move suddenly. "Dawn ..." she said warningly, more forcefully than before.
Suddenly, movement off to one side diverted her attention. Willow was on her feet, the aura around her vanished. Her eyes were wide. "Dawn, NO!" she shouted, suddenly launching herself forward. Buffy and Faith swung back just in time to see Dawn reaching forward with one hand, hesitantly, her fingers coming to rest lightly on one symbol in the stone, one of a set of eight circles within a larger rectangle.
Everything seemed to happen at once. A white mist swept upward from the white surface of the platform, swallowing everything beyond. Dawn's eyes went wide, and she threw herself away from the pillar with a panicked cry. As she did, her form dissolved into mist as well, which dissipated and vanished. Buffy got the impression that Dawn was somehow falling backward, away from them, in some incomprehensible way.
"Dawn!" she screamed, jumping through the empty space in the air where her sister had stood only moments earlier. She wheeled on Willow. "What happened?!"
Willow was still staring at the stone column, her eyes wide. "Oh, dear Goddess," she murmured. "Did anyone see which symbol she touched?"
"One of these," Faith answered quickly, pointing at the cluster of symbols within the rectangle. Each was a perfect circle inscribed with an arrow pointing left, up, right, or down, four piercing their respective circles, four not. "I think it was this one," she added, pointing at the one where the arrow pointed down and pierced the circle.
"I think she's right," Buffy added, trying to recreate the last few seconds in her head. It was all a jumbled heap of images in her mind, but she thought Faith had the right of it.
Willow nodded, and put her hand on the circle. Her eyes went distant, and she took several tense breaths. "Nothing," she said resignedly after a moment. "I can't make it work."
"All right, breathe," Faith growled. "What happened? You knew this was going to happen before Dawn touched that symbol, you can at least clue us in before something jumps at us out here. Where are we? What's up with this?"
Willow straightened, and breathed. "They were the same, Buffy," she said. "The resonance of this stone, and the magical side of Dawn. It's a portal, Buffy. The stone's somehow a connection between worlds, just like your sister, that's why she was able to trigger it so easily, without even knowing." She took another breath. "I think the Turok-han army actually came from this stone," she said. "Think about it. There's no way that that many vampires were created from normal people over the last couple of months. They had to have come from somewhere else. I think the First managed to use this to bring them to those catacombs, from some other dimension. Another world. We could end up wherever they came from, or somewhere completely different, I don't know. I think the First tried to use it to summon more, but couldn't, and that's why it was frustrated. Maybe it emptied whatever realm they came from, maybe it just couldn't reestablish the connection—maybe it got this thing to work once just by accident."
"Look, skip ahead," Buffy interrupted, though she really did want to hear everything Willow had to say. She just had more important concerns at the moment. "Where did Dawn go?"
"I think she went back," Willow said. "The moment before she vanished, she felt a lot like the outside of this mist just before it sealed us in. She ... I don't know how to explain it ... if this platform is like a raft taking us to somewhere else, she basically threw herself backward onto the dock as it was leaving."
Faith suddenly interrupted. "You know, Buffy, I think she's right. I can't explain it, but it felt like that was just what Dawn was doing when she vanished." Buffy nodded quickly to say she agreed. That almost made sense. If any of this could make sense. At least she made herself believe that; that meant Dawn was safe. Which meant that she just had the three of them to worry about now.
A moment later, the mist rippled and vanished. They were clearly not back in the crater that had once been Sunnydale, unless it had somehow been turned inside out in their absence. They were next to a pillar on a platform just like the one they had just been beside in the Sunnydale crater, but this one was on the high slopes of a massive, dry mountain. The fierce sunlight beating down on them made the southern California summer heat seem mild. Buffy walked to the edge of the white stone platform and looked out over the land beneath them.
In a wide valley beneath them, a great city unlike anything they had ever seen, unlike anything Buffy had ever even heard described on Earth, lay on one shore of a large lake. From the pavement on the streets to the heights of its tallest buildings, it was crafted entirely of stone, by some art or power that Buffy could not even guess. Every building was a palace, many stories tall, though many sat unfinished and many more showed unmistakable signs of battle, as though they had been bombarded with artillery, or sliced open by giants wielding swords the size of full-grown oaks. Yet in the middle of the city, taller than any of the buildings, stood a great tree unlike anything Buffy had ever laid eyes on, taller than the tallest redwoods, many of its branches blackened as if burned, yet the remainder glowing with life as though daring the desert to do its worst. There were people moving down there, too, though not so many as would be needed to populate a city even a tenth the size of the one before them, and it looked as though most of those people lived in a small village of tents, small in comparison to the great stone city beyond them, at any rate. The place managed to give the impressions of simultaneously being abandoned and bustling with activity.
"Wow," Faith breathed. "I get the feeling we're not in Kansas anymore."
Buffy nodded, then something else, nearer, caught her eye. "Wow," she grated under her breath, trying to disguise the movement of her lips. "I get the feeling we're not alone anymore, either!" She had detected movement in the rocks not thirty paces from the stone, so small and silent that even her eyes had difficulty seeing it, but her Slayer-senses were in full battle mode once again, and when she saw something, she knew her eyes were not deceiving her.
Willow had not seen whatever it was, but turned and pulled the two Slayers together. Buffy was confused for a split second, but then Willow began to chant. "Cloak of the Shadows, Cloak of the Night, shelter us now from threatening sight." A ripple in the air fanned outward from her body, rippling up and down the bodies of the three of them, and where it passed over Willow and Faith, they vanished from Buffy's view. She could still feel Willow's arm around her shoulders, but she might as well have been held by the empty air.
"Neat trick," Faith whispered from the far side of Willow.
"Don't let go yet!" Willow whispered urgently. "We'll never find one another. Walk to the base of the stairs with me." They did, slowly, and then Buffy felt Willow let go and bend down, taking three small stones off the ground. There was a brief golden flash around each for a moment, then Willow was handing a stone to each of them. "OK, these will help us find one another," she said. Buffy understood; when she touched the stone, a she could have pointed in a straight line to where Faith and Willow stood as surely as if they were sending up smoke signals for her.
"Nice job, Red!" Faith was clearly impressed.
"All right," Willow said. "Listen, the Cloak of the Shadows will vanish if you hit something—or someone—really hard, or if you get hit really hard. We just need to find out where we are, if we can. Don't start Slaying without good reason."
"I won't," Buffy replied. "Those are humans down there, not demons, anyway. But they saw us. Or one of their scouts did, anyway. I saw him slipping away."
"Then we best get out of here," Faith answered. "Willow, can you make these things into walkie-talkies, too?"
"Sorry," Willow answered sadly. "I was researching that, but not finished yet."
"No problem," Buffy answered. "All right, Faith and I are going into town. Willow, you stick around here and see if you can figure out a way to take us home." Looking at the distance down the mountain to the city, she grimaced. It was farther than it initially looked, though she could cover it quickly if she had to. She didn't want to, however; she had not slept since the battle with the Turok-han, and there was no telling when their next meal might come from.
Abruptly, another soft sound reached her ears, and she mouthed a quick "Shh!" to Willow and Faith. They were not alone. "Split up. Hide," she whispered to the others curtly. Thankfully, neither of them asked questions. Perhaps Faith had heard the same thing, and Willow knew better than to argue with Buffy's senses. Willow retreated onto the platform, next to the stone. Faith darted back and leapt over the back of the white stone base, onto the upward slopes of the mountain, her steps noiseless. Buffy glided forward and off to one side, off the path leading to the stairs, and mounted a small mound of boulders that gave her the best vantage point she could get, trusting Willow's invisibility spell to keep her hidden.
Less than a minute later, shapes began to appear, brown-clad men and women seeming to materialize from within the rocks. Black veils hid their faces. Each carried a short spear and a horn buckler, and two more spears apiece on their backs. Buffy shook her head. These were no amateurs. There were eight of them, and all moved alertly and silently, and they held their spears as if more than comfortable using them.
"What did you see, Mandein?" a woman's voice called out.
"Three people. Women, in strange clothes, even stranger than the wetlanders with the Car'a'carn. One of them might have seen me."
"It would not surprise me, Stone Dog," another woman's voice replied. "We certainly all did." There was scattered laughter at that.
"They were unarmed," the man named Mandein added, almost as an afterthought. Buffy grimaced. She had set down the Scythe before approaching the platform to get Dawn.
"If they were Aes Sedai, that would not matter," one of the others who had not spoken yet answered. This man's voice was deeper and sounded older, and seemed to carry weight with the others, as they fell silent briefly. "They would not hide if they were Aes Sedai with the Car'a'carn, and they could not hide if they were not Aes Sedai, or some new kind of Shadowspawn. None looked Aiel."
"There are tracks here, Daeric!" called another, and Buffy turned down to see one of the black-veiled figures at the base of the slope up to where Buffy crouched. Buffy's eyes widened. The face of the slope was solid rock! How on Earth or whatever world this was could she have left tracks anyone could follow?
"Comalin is right, Daeric," the first woman who had spoken said a moment later. "And like none I've ever seen. No Aiel boot made that, and no wetlander footwear I've ever seen, either."
"Sharan?" the one named Daeric asked, uncertainly.
"No," Mandein replied firmly. "The three I saw all had fair skin." Murmurs of assent from one or two of the others followed. Buffy tensed. Three of the brown-garbed fighters were already ascending the boulders toward her. It was a sheer drop on three sides of at least fifteen feet, but there was no other way out, unless she wanted to try slipping past the three climbers as they approached, at least one of whom could read tracks that couldn't possibly exist.
She grabbed the edge of the boulders with both hands at the best spot she could find and swung down. There was a small crag several feet below, which she used as a springboard to vault down another five feet, and from there slid a few more feet before vaulting onto the main slope of the mountain below. A loud clacking sound let her know she had not gotten away cleanly, however; the slide had dislodged a few loose stones, which went skittering away down the slope. The Cloak of Shadows held, for the moment, but there was no way the others could have missed that.
"There!" a shout came, and boots approached from many directions at a run. Buffy ran to get away from where she had been standing, and seconds later, three of the five who had remained near the base of the stone pillar came running around the edge of the outcropping Buffy had just descended in such a hurry, spears in their hands. Fortunately, Buffy had more room to maneuver down here, and quickly darted away, out to one side and then back up the slope. She looked down at her feet as she did so, and could not see any disturbance in the ground as she moved. There was barely so much as a grain of sand to be seen on the rock surface.
"What sand-cursed madness is this?" one of the women called, plainly disgusted. "I see nothing but sun, rock, and wind."
The other two had stayed near the steps leading to the pillar. One of them was Daeric, the man the others seemed to respect, perhaps regard as their leader. She did not recognize the others; it was hard to get a sense of who was who when they all wore the same brown clothes and black veils. Daeric was easily recognizable as the tallest of the group, standing a good six and a half feet. He also carried himself slightly differently than the rest, seeming more relaxed, though Buffy didn't believe him complacent for a moment.
"Get back to Rhuidean," he ordered the one standing next to him. "Warn Alsera."
Buffy grated her teeth as the other man nodded curtly and loped off down the rough path towards the city; Buffy doubted he could maintain that pace for long, but if he could, he would make it there not long after nightfall, if her estimate of the sun's position were correct. And if days in this forsaken hole were still a normal twenty-four hours. She wanted to go after him and do something to stop him from summoning help, but there was no way to do that and maintain the cloak. She could feel Faith moving now, but the younger Slayer was still some distance up the slope, on the far side of the platform. Willow was moving, too; if she had to guess, her Wiccan friend was standing not far from the top of the stairs now, less than three strides from Daeric.
Daeric waited until the other man was safely some distance down the slope. Then he turned to face straight at where Willow was standing. "Your clothes rustle too much, young one," he said gently, but in a voice meant to be heard at some distance. "You can show yourself now."
Buffy tensed, measuring the distance between herself and the older man. She could cover it in five seconds at a pinch, but the other man could cover the distance between himself and Willow in two, maybe three if he weren't quite as fast as he looked, but Buffy wasn't going to put anything past him. He was tall, and his legs looked more than used to action. A tense moment passed. Then, with a slight shimmer in the air, Willow faded back into view.
"Um ... hi?" she ventured hesitantly.
Daeric sized Willow up for a long moment. Buffy began to creep nearer, then turned to her right to see the three who had initially clambered up the outcropping after her returning down the slope. She also noted that Daeric displayed no particular surprise at a woman turning invisible and visible before his eyes. She could feel Faith circling around the platform now, drawing nearer as quickly as she dared. Daeric spoke again. "Forgive me, wetlander, but may I see your hands?"
A puzzled expression crossed Willow's features, and had her own been visible, Buffy would have guessed that the same could have been seen on her own. Her hands? Nevertheless, Willow held up both hands, palm outward at first, then turned them quickly, once each direction, apparently to show that she was holding no weapons.
"You don't wear the ring," Daeric observed. "What is your purpose here?"
"We ... we didn't mean to come here," Willow replied, uncertainly.
"We," Daeric noted, as if that had reminded him that Willow was not the only one who had arrived so unexpectedly. "Call your companions."
"I ... I can't," Willow said. "We split up."
"They're not far," one of the women interjected. "In fact, my guess is that they have a very good view of us right now."
Willow did not answer that. There was no good way to do so. Instead, she asked a question that was very much on Buffy's mind, and probably on Faith's as well. "Please," she asked. "Do you know how to work this?" She gestured at the engraved pillar behind her. "We didn't mean to come here. We don't even know where 'here' is. Please. Our friends are going to be really worried about us."
Daeric was silent a moment, as if digesting what she said, and when he spoke again, his voice was perhaps a shade softer, though he lowered neither his veil nor his spear. "Not even the Wise Ones understand the Portal Stones, I'm told. From where did you come?"
"California," Willow answered immediately, as if she had been expecting the question. She looked from face to face as she said it, and her eyes fell at the dull expressions she was getting in return. Buffy realized what she was doing. Of course. If they'd ever heard of California, they might have given some sign. Apparently Willow did not like what she had seen. It appeared that, wherever they were, California was definitely not. No one had even heard of it.
"Um ... the closest big city would be Los Angeles?" Willow continued questioningly. "In the United States of America?" She shook her head. "Not in Kansas anymore, no kidding," she murmured.
Daeric looked from one of his comrades to the next before turning back. "None of us have ever heard of these lands," he admitted. "But then again, I have only left the Three-fold land once, and none of these others."
"The Three-fold land?" Willow asked. "Is that this place?"
"Perhaps you know it as the Aiel Waste?" Daeric asked. Buffy suddenly realized that Daeric was doing to Willow exactly what she had done to him. The uncomprehending look Willow returned was both completely honest and the perfect response.
"Enough, Daeric," Mandein said. "How much longer will we bandy words here? Her comrades are still out there."
"Mandein speaks truly," Daeric responded, directing his gaze at Willow. "Wherever this California is, you are in Aiel lands now. Tell your comrades to reveal themselves. We do not allow strangers to roam free in Rhuidean."
"I told you," Willow answered. "I can't just make them ..." She cut off quickly. Nearly quicker than the eye could follow, Daeric had crossed the distance between himself and Willow, and his spear was pointed menacingly at her throat. Buffy swore that she'd stake herself if it had taken him much more than a second. He was even faster than her highest estimates. No amateurs at all. Now up the stairs and level with Willow, he towered over her.
"Strangers!" he called out a loud voice. "If you don't want your friend's blood on the rocks here today, show yourselves."
Suddenly, Buffy realized that Daeric and Willow were not the only ones on the platform, not if the sense from the stone in her pocket was any guide. She barely had time to register Faith's presence before an unseen hand jerked Daeric's spear aside, tearing it free from his grip. Faith's Cloak shredded like glimmering fabric rent by razor claws as she stepped forward and planted a boot squarely in Daeric's abdomen. She twisted into the air faster than a striking snake, her other foot spinning into the taller man's solar plexus and sending him tumbling back down the stairs. Then she was pulling Willow to the ground and rolling as a half-dozen spears flew through where the two of them had been standing a heartbeat earlier.
Buffy was already moving as Faith knocked Daeric out of the fight, driving forward, no longer caring about stealth. She grabbed a stone about the size of a shot put from the ground in front of her as she did, hurling it at the foremost of these Aiel fighters—she thought it was a woman—who had begun bounding up the stairs onto the stone platform around the Portal Stone. The impact caught the woman on her behind and threw her spinning to the ground with a grunt, but she was somehow on her feet again a second later, albeit gingerly. Buffy shook her head, amazed. She had put nowhere near her full strength behind that throw, but it should have been enough to take any normal human woman out of the fight. She had little time to spare for such thoughts, however, since three of the other fighters had turned to face her, more spears already in their hands. She could feel the Cloak of Shadows part around her the way it did Faith, an instant before she made contact with the first of the veiled Aiel.
She twisted aside the spear-thrust of the closest Aiel, who was still recovering from seeing her shimmer out of the air in front of him. In that time, she grabbed the spear just below the point, turned, and swung her other hand in a knife hand chop through the wooden haft of the spear, shattering it down the middle. The tipped end of the spear came away in her hands, and she used it as a club to deflect the leading blow of the next attacker, twisting him aside just enough for Buffy to sweep her leg up behind his knee and upend him, sending him crashing to the ground. She did not wait for the onset of the third attacker, one of the women, but jumped forward through the space the woman's comrade had occupied a moment earlier. The woman recovered enough to throw her spear up crosswise to block Buffy's kick, but the force of the blow was such that both combatants toppled, Buffy forward, the woman backward. Buffy kept her balance, however, and since she had been sideways in her kick, toppling forward merely righted her once again. She kicked through the woman's spear just as the woman hit the ground, the wood splintering at the impact, and planted her foot squarely on the woman's chest to propel herself forward and at the back of the others.
Faith had already downed a second Aiel, and as Buffy approached, Faith slid inside the thrust of a third, grabbed the man's hand, and hurled him forward to crash roughly into the face of the Portal Stone. That still left three that had reached the platform by now and were still standing. Willow had retreated around the far side of the Portal Stone, and the Aiel were circling it in opposite directions, apparently trying to get at her. One sensed Buffy's approach just in time to turn and receive her foot between his eyes; his head flew backward as though struck by a club, and he crumpled in a heap. Another made a lunge at Faith that might have extended his spear just an inch too far; Faith's hand blurred as it moved forward, grabbing the spear, and then her other hand blurred forward as well, moving even faster to grab a fold of the man's robe and catapult him over the side of the platform.
"Willow, get us out of here!" Buffy called, bounding around the Portal Stone to jump in between Willow and the last of the Aiel, though from this vantage, she could see some of the others that she had counted out completely lurching unsteadily to their feet. Man, these people were tough! Complicating matters was the fact that she really wasn't sure that she wanted to kill them.
The last Aielman darted forward, then back as Buffy tried to grab his spear, then forward again, this time forcing Buffy herself to dodge back to avoid the spear. Faith was there, however, spinning up into the air and balancing herself parallel to the ground against the carved surface of the Portal Stone before diving to tackle the man to the ground. Buffy shook her head. Where had she learned that? She turned back to Willow, and a gasp of horror caught her throat.
Willow was folding to the ground, a rough purple patch already spreading on her temple, where a rough stone little smaller than the one Buffy had hurled at the Aiel woman moments earlier had grazed it. Straightening from his position behind the back edge of the platform was Daeric, who must have circled around the raised base on which the Stone stood.
"Enough!" he called. "Look around you!"
Buffy did so, feeling Faith do likewise, and a hiss escaped her teeth. Up on the slope behind them, and on the outcropping not far from the Portal Stone, and along a low crest some distance down the slope to their right, more Aiel had climbed into view, all holding short curved bows with arrows nocked and ready to loose. There had to be thirty of them all told, maybe forty, and Willow was already down for the count.
"Bastards," Faith grated beside her.
"I didn't aim to kill," Daeric said, climbing up onto the white stone platform and giving a curt nod at Willow's prone form. "They will."
Buffy swallowed hard. She was already calculating ways that she could avoid that first volley, throwing herself to the ground, or doing what Faith had done and launching herself up the side of the Portal Stone ... she felt surprisingly confident that she could do that, somehow, despite the fact that she couldn't remember doing anything quite like that before. It would do nothing to protect Willow, however, and even if she dodged the first wave of arrows, there would be another, and another, from at least three sides, and it was possible there were even more archers in hiding that had not revealed themselves. These people were thick on surprises, after all.
She caught Faith looking at her, as if waiting for a signal. Abruptly, Buffy sighed, and the battle fire faded from her veins. She walked over and leaned against the Portal Stone in resignation. She hoped she had not just sentenced the three of them to certain death, but it was too late to think about that when Daeric began winding cords about her wrists.
AUTHOR'S NOTES: Let me know what you think! I'm facing writer's block in the middle of chapter six, so there's a chance I might decide to pick up one of the other projects on my drawing board rather than try to make this continue, since the general plot outline of this could put it in the length range of The Summer of Our Discontent, and I'd like to know if people are interested in reading this before I make that kind of time commitment. There are only so many hours a week one can devote to writing fanfiction and maintain a day job, and I seem to have picked up one of those somewhere along the wandering years since my last post here.