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. Unfortunately, looking around my rather Spartan apartment, I think it's safe to say that I'm neither, or there would be a little bit more True Religion in my wardrobe. Don't sic the Trollocs on me.

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 4:

THE HARSH LIGHT OF DAY

"All right, thanks, Angel, you rock." Andrew Wells flipped the satellite phone closed, and Giles and several of the newly awakened Slayers clustered closer to hear the news. Everyone had been so surprised when he happened to have the phone in his luggage. It had turned into a lifesaver. Every cell tower within miles was out of commission, so the satellite phone was their only link to the outside world.

"What's the deal?" Rona asked eagerly. "We stayin'?"

"For a while," Andrew announced proudly, as if he had done everything himself. It had been his satellite phone that had enabled them to get in contact with Angel, after all. "Wolfram & Hart has a lobbying division that must have friends in really high places."

"Or really low," Xander observed dryly. He was standing just outside the circle of Slayers, pretending not to be as interested as he clearly was.

"Or really low," Andrew agreed, and continued. "Rather than FEMA coming to investigate themselves, they're outsourcing to Perihelion Partners, so we're good."

"Who? What?"

Andrew waved his hands to quiet the chatter. Everyone was so impatient! Well, I guess that made sense, but that didn't give them a right to be impatient with him. "It's a private company, big government contractor, and also one hundred percent owned by Wolfram & Hart's science division. Bottom line is this whole area is officially under Angel's control now, and he says we've got at least three months, as long as he can hold off Greenpeace and the Sierra Club."

"And since the Republicans are in power, that won't be a problem," Vi grinned.

"Yes, but even better, he convinced the California state legislature to dissolve the town officially—didn't take much convincing, really. They're going to auction off the town land, and since it's one big ruin, no one's really going to be bidding on it. Couldn't even use it as a park at this point. Angel's going to try to buy the whole area. Then we'll really have the place to ourselves, basically forever."

"So we're golden, then, is the bottom line."

"Well, we don't have to worry about the government, anyway," Andrew said. He hated to be a downer, but some things had to be said. "But we still do have to worry about that thing." He nodded down into the crater, in the general direction of the strange stone pillar where Buffy, Faith, and Willow had vanished. Dawn would be down there somewhere, with Kennedy and some of the other Slayers on duty. The Slayers had been sleeping in shifts of four on the white stone base surrounding the engraved monolith, just in case Dawn did somehow reactivate it; Andrew guessed that some were actually hoping that she would, that they would get a chance to go wherever it was Buffy and the others had gone. Or, in Kennedy's case, Willow and the others; there was no doubt who was first in her mind among the departed. It had been all for nothing so far. He sighed. Giles was no slouch with his books, but this kind of applied magic was more Willow's department. The rest of them were fumbling around in the dark like a band of blind men, even if none of them would admit it aloud. They were going to be here a while.

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Faith stood at the western edge of the city of tents, watching the sun set over the mountain of Chaendaer. If the light had been better, she might barely have been able to see the fifteen-foot pillar on its white stone base set there in the mountainside, the Portal Stone by which she, Buffy, and Willow had entered this world. She shook her head. They had been here for more than a day now. Had they remained on Earth, Faith would have been getting ready to go break a few hearts in West Hollywood right about now. She had planned on teaching Vi and Rona a thing or two about how to deal with the less intelligent sex, too. Now they were probably all camped out in that crater, trying to find some way to get Dawn to do again whatever it was she had done to send Buffy, Willow, and Faith to Rhuidean. That was assuming that the Army or National Guard hadn't shown up by now and booted them all from the area. Of course, more than likely, the girl had no clue what she'd done, and if she tried again, either nothing would happen, or they'd end up in yet another completely different world. According to Willow, those Portal Stones opened to more worlds than just Earth and this one. Dawn could end up in whatever hell the Turok-han had come from, just as Willow had feared the three of them would.

"There's nothing you can do for them, Faith." a soft voice said beside her. Faith turned to see Melainda, one of the Aiel women warriors, Far Dareis Mai—Maidens of the Spear—that had been her "companions" since yesterday. She assumed they had been set to watch and guard her, and yet they had been surprisingly friendly ever since the white-robed gai'shain had brought her and Buffy clothes in the morning. One would never have known that the two of them had been marched into the camp naked with their arms tied behind their backs less than a day earlier, or that their best friend had been unconscious and slung over the shoulder of the massive war-band leader, Daeric, like a sack of grain. Melainda herself was a smiling, tomboyish girl—most of the Maidens were—who could easily have passed for a typical American suburban girl, if taller and more athletic than average, if she weren't wearing the brown cadin'sor that all the Aiel warriors wore, and carrying three spears, a small shield, and a curved horn bow across her back.

"For who?" Faith asked.

"Whoever it is in your thoughts that worries you."

"Am I that obvious?"

"I would not play tiles until you learn to school your features," she said with a grin.

Faith shook her head. "Can't help it," she said. "They're going to get themselves in all kinds of trouble trying to come after us. I know Xander and Giles—the, um, I guess the leaders, now that we're gone—they don't know when to quit. They'll keep hammering at that damn stone until they end up in the land of the dinosaurs or something."

"These dinosaurs—they are Shadowspawn?"

Faith chuckled. "No. Just, um, really big and really dangerous animals. Lizards. Only bigger than that tent. And some with teeth the size of swords."

"Truly? I might like to hunt a—a dinosaur—one day."

Faith threw back her head and laughed. On second thought, maybe the girl wouldn't fit in so well in California, after all. She was dead serious. Then again, from everything she had seen of these Aiel so far, at least the warrior societies, which seemed to include almost everyone of fighting age, they might well consider a dinosaur hunt to be good sport.

"Thanks," she said. "I needed that."

Melainda looked puzzled. "Needed what?"

"Nothing. Just—to laugh. Damn, I know they'll be all right, I just let myself get too wound up. Need to chill out a bit."

A glint that should have given Faith pause appeared in Melainda's eyes. "We may not be able to make you colder," she noted, "but if you want to take your mind off your worries, I think we might have something for that. Tell me, Faith, do you haveoosquai in California?"

Faith shook her head. "Not that I've heard of ... what is it?"

Melainda's grin only broadened.

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The sun had been gone behind the western wall of the valley of Rhuidean for just over two hours, but darkness fell quickly in the desert valley, sunken as it was deep in the shadow of Chaendaer. Buffy had been walking through the camp since late morning, partly out of sheer boredom and partly because she wanted to test the limits of her recently-regained freedom. Not that she was complaining, but it was somehow eerie to have such free rein of the camp one day after being hauled into the camp as a prisoner. Not a camp, she had discovered. More of a temporary city as the true city of Rhuidean was resettled. Apparently the place had been a kind of holy site until very recently, with the arrival of this Car'a'carn that Willow and the Wise Ones had spoken of the night before. Now that it was open to resettlement, and had more fresh water than the rest of the Aiel Waste combined, Aiel were trying to move in faster than the reconstruction of the city could move. She had not been wrong in her estimate of the size of the tent city in the dreamworld; twelve thousand Aiel had already gathered here, and another few thousand more had already moved into the city, always choosing the palaces nearest the lake first. Buffy would have been most attracted to the great tree and open square at the heart of the city that she had seen in the dream—she had yet to see it in the waking world—but if she had gone her entire life without seeing more water in one place than a child could step across, she admitted that she might have felt differently.

Late in the afternoon, she had discovered the first non-Aiel people of this world she had ever encountered. According to the Wise Ones, three kinds of people had been allowed to cross the Three-fold Land in safety: Tinkers, gleemen, and peddlers. She had yet to meet a Tinker or a gleeman, whatever those were, but a peddler's caravan had been crossing the Waste from Shara to Cairhien when news of Rhuidean's reopening had reached them, and they had turned their wagons here to see if there was trade to be done here. It had turned out that there was, and more than a little. The Aiel were surprisingly wealthy for a civilization that to all outward appearances seemed to live a subsistence life in the middle of a barren desert. They did not appear to have coins, but she had seen enough gold and jewelry change hands in the hour she had spent among the wagons to stock every jewelry store in a good-sized mall in California. Buffy, of course, had had nothing to offer, but she had spent more than a little time looking around the peddler's wagons, anyway, partly because it was more exciting than anything else going on in the camp and partly because, while she was more than grateful to have clothing once again, she wanted more than one single outfit of Aiel algode, the cotton-like material that was the fabric of choice for most Aiel garments—and the ropes that had bound her the previous night, she reflected dryly—to call her own. Nandrys had given her the outfit, a simple long-sleeved tunic, pants, and leather sandals. The craziest part about it was, she got the impression that the woman had given it in some kind of payment, or even a reward, for defeating her husband barehanded! Regardless, the peddlers had garments and bolts of silk and soft wool, and the silks in particular drew her eyes; they were lighter than algode. She hadn't exactly packed for interdimensional travel. Fortunately, the peddler, a short, swarthy man by the name of Maglor Egan, had said that he intended to remain at least another three days; Aiel gold would be more welcome in Cairhien and Andor than Sharan silk, though apparently a good deal of the gold might well have actually been plundered from Cairhien more than twenty years earlier.

Abruptly, the sound of singing caught her ears. That surprised her. That was something new. She had not heard any of the Aiel sing at all. There had been some finely worked musical instruments on the peddler's wagons, packed away in the back as though he knew full well that no one here would be interested in them. Even if the Aiel did sing, there was no way that they would be singing that! Setting her teeth, she quickened her steps in the direction of her sister Slayer's voice—which she admitted, in a distant corner of her mind, was a good deal better than her own, if her memory of her confrontation with the demon Sweet served. The Aiel had no instruments, but they were able to make a rumbling, percussive accompaniment with their spears and shields.

"Passion or coincidence once prompted you to say
Pride will tear us both apart;
Well, now pride's gone out the window cross the rooftops, run away—
Left me in the vacuum of my heart.
What is happening to me?
Crazy, some'd say.
Where is my friend when I need you most?
Gone away..."

Buffy had reached the circle now, and to her chagrin, saw that Faith had attracted herself more than a small audience. At least two dozen Aiel, mostly Maidens of the Spear, but more than a few men and other women as well, had gathered for her friend's impromptu karaoke night. In Faith's left hand was a small, bowl-shaped glass tumbler, and Buffy had a feeling that that cup had been refilled more than once. Faith noticed Buffy immediately, and only let her voice rise into a swelling crescendo for one final chorus.

"But I wont cry for yesterday, there's an ordinary world
Somehow I have to find,
And as I try to make my way to the ordinary world,
I will learn to survive!"

I'm never going to listen to that one the same way again, Buffy thought to herself, but the Maidens and other fighters gathered around her actually rattled their shields in approbation. Apparently they weren't as averse to others singing as they were themselves. Now that she looked around, she also saw that Faith's was not the only cup in evidence, and one of the men was refilling his own from a large ceramic vat, nearly the size of a trash can. Buffy noted that he had to dip nearly halfway down into the vat to do so.

"Another tale! Another tale!" one of the Maidens closest to Faith—Melainda, had her name been?—called, clapping her hands loudly, which she could do because she had passed her cup to someone else near the vat to refill.

Faith laughed, which became a snort—a snort!—and held up a hand for silence to let her begin. Apparently it was not the first time, either, since the crowd was clamoring for "another," and they already had the look of a practiced audience, one into the act.

"So we have these creatures in our world, called alligators, right ..."

Buffy shook her head helplessly as Faith launched into another one of her wild tales. She wanted to jump across the gathering and punch the younger woman, but that would only give away that she thought Faith was being too free with her tongue. In addition, these people already knew that she and Faith were no ordinary fighters, and for all she knew, Willow had already told the Wise Ones all there was to know about Slayers—maybe even more than Buffy knew herself, she added with a grimace. Then again, she would not put it past the Wise Ones to tell some of their Maidens of the Spear to get drunk together with Faith in order to loosen information out of her, maybe to get her to reveal something they had been trying to keep hidden. If the Maidens had simply been assigned this as a task, however, they were nevertheless embracing it with gusto.

"How much has she had?" she dared asking the nearest Aiel she knew, a massive, heavyset man named Waric, who had walked with her for half an hour or so earlier that day.

Waric grinned, the smile twisting an old scar that crossed his lips in an odd shape like a snake. "I haven't the faintest idea, Buffy Summers."

Buffy shook her head. She wished there were some way she could figure out exactly how much Faith had already said, but then again, there would be nothing she could do about it, anyway. Come to think of it, Faith might actually have been helping the Aiel believe their story. They had not agreed not to reveal anything, either; after all, it was increasingly obvious that these people had no connection to the Turok-han whatsoever, and were hardly going to be sending word through the Portal Stone somehow that Earth was without its two most powerful defenders. Its three most powerful defenders, she reflected a moment later. Willow had more than earned her stripes by now. Granted, with hundreds of new Slayers active around the world, the planet was probably safer than it had ever been in its entire history, but that didn't stop Buffy worrying. Even Vi and Rona and the others that the rest looked up to weren't really ready to take on leadership roles yet, and the Council had been destroyed. Well, not that she would have wanted the Council in charge of hundreds of Slayers, anyway, but Giles could never handle that many by himself, either.

Her thoughts were distracted by something she couldn't quite put her finger on, but it returned her attention to the real world. At first she thought it must have been something Faith had done, but the raven-haired Slayer had fallen surprisingly quiet on the far side of the fire pit. She had set down her glass of whatever liquor the Aiel were serving, still half full. Buffy looked around, and the sense of something wrong grew in the back of her mind, though she still couldn't put her finger on what was causing it. It felt like a foul stench from some fetid creature approaching, but there were no fumes in the air. She noticed that some of the older and more watchful Aiel had begun casting their gazes from side to side as well, not nervously, merely watchfully, and the hands of one or two had drifted toward their spear hafts.

Abruptly, something dark sprang up and seized Buffy by the throat. Noise erupted from everywhere at once, stools overturned, spears and shields drawn. Buffy gave a choked cough as a breath was strangled out of her, then threw whatever it was away from her with a mighty heave. She had no idea what it was that her flailing arms had hit; it let go of her throat, but it didn't feel like anything she had ever hit before, as if it were somehow only half there.

"Up spears! Wake and up spears!" the shouts rang out from the Aiel gathered around the fire, and more from nearby. The sound of running boots filled the night, and Buffy realized that every face nearby other than hers and Faith's was suddenly veiled. A brazen horn sounded somewhere out among the tents. Their attackers commanded Buffy's attention more than anything else, however. Her eyes bulged.

Her own shadow had tried to kill her.

Around the fire, she watched Aiel wrestling, kicking, stabbing at shadows that had taken on lives, and apparently murderous wills, of their own, and were apparently very much capable of striking out at their owners. Several Aiel were already down.

A blow to her stomach staggered her, and she threw up an arm to take the next, but the force of that was enough to throw her backward as well. Her shadow struck as hard as she did! She threw a kick back, but it was hard to see where exactly she was supposed to hit to hit the shadow attacking her, and what was simply striking at thin air. The shadow seemed to change shape depending on how it was exposed to the firelight, just as a real shadow would, meaning its head wasn't quite where it should be even if you could identify where its arms or legs were.

With a snarl, she gave up trying to find the thing's throat—would crushing a shadow's windpipe even do any good, anyway?—and seized the thing's arm the next time it leveled a blow at her own throat. Her arms closed around something—it was not as solid as flesh, but it was solid enough to grab, and that was all Buffy needed. She gave a ferocious twist, lifting the shadow off its immaterial feet, spun the thing around twice, and hurled it away into the dark. It left her hands as if launched from a catapult; how much did shadows weigh, anyway?

"Go for their arms!" she shouted the instant she recovered enough breath to do so. "Whatever they're hitting you with, hit that!"

Faith was the quickest to pick up what she had meant. Her shadow had done exactly what Buffy's had, wrapped its hands around her throat and tried to choke the life out of her, and she had been trying to return the favor, but couldn't find anything to grapple. Hearing Buffy, she seized the thing's wrists and crushed inward; Faith could grind an eight-ball into powder with that grip, and even her shadow's hands, which seemed to have all the strength Faith herself did, couldn't maintain their grip against that pressure. Faith refused to let go there, either, displaying presence of mind no matter how much of that Aiel liquor she had drunk; she wrestled the shadow off its immaterial feet, then dove to stretch the shadow over the blazing coals of the fire pit. There was a soundless shriek, and the shadow writhed and jerked away like a terrified animal, pulling free of Faith's grip in the process.

Doesn't matter, Buffy though, a renewed light of battle entering her eyes. If they're scared, they can be killed.

"Light!" she called. "Pull them close to bright ...urgh!" her warning was cut off as two more shadows caught up with her, their own owners already lying on the ground, unconscious or worse. Some of the Aiel had clearly caught her warning, however, as she saw some definitely change the direction of their fighting, alternatively dragging or trying to lure their shadows toward the fire pit.

Faith was a step ahead of even them, however. There was a large box of extra coal for the fire sitting a few feet away from the fire, and she had bought herself a few seconds of extra time in her fight with her own shadow. She seized the box and threw it over the coals already on the fire.

"No!" one of the other Aiel called, and Buffy realized why a moment later; the new coals, despite being high-quality coal that would burn brightly, would take time to heat, and Faith had just covered the brighter coals beneath.

Faith affected not to notice. "Everyone grab your dance partner!" she shouted. Faith saw her close one hand around the calf of her own shadow, which had finally managed to come at her again. Only one hand, however. She twisted around to throw her shadow off balance, but also to work her way over to the great vat of liquor. Seizing it with her free hand by one massive handle, she catapulted herself into the air. Eyes wide, Buffy realized what she was doing. She twisted around to get beneath her two shadowy assailants; they were both unprepared for this move, as it was typically a very bad idea to let your enemy get on top of you, so they had not set themselves to prevent her doing so. Buffy seized each shadow, one in each hand, and held it upward so that as much of it as possible was exposed to the fire.

There was a roar and a rush of wind, and a great column of red flame blasted skyward from the fire pit. The sudden light caught both of the shadows in Buffy's grip like leaves in a wind, as with dark flashes, they shattered into nothingness. Several others, whose flesh-and-blood Aiel opponents had managed to position themselves well, met the same fate; others, however, were shielded from the light by the very Aiel they were fighting. Faith was on the far side of the roaring column of flame; Buffy had lost sight of her.

Another shadow lunged at Buffy, faster than either of the two that had just been obliterated by the flare, and she realized that her own shadow had returned from wherever she had hurled it and rejoined the party. She ducked and weaved, but the thing was as fast as she was, and its blows were all but invisible. One blow to her solar plexus nearly knocked all the wind from her lungs, and she staggered and had to leap backward, away from the fire, to avoid the thing leveling a blow at her throat.

The shadow came at her again, and from this angle, Buffy noticed something else. The two shadows that had just been obliterated were not actually gone. They had returned to their owners, who currently lay prostrate near the fire, normal shadows once again. And her shadow clearly stepped over them to come at her! A desperate hope flared in her mind. She swept around with a back roundhouse kick, stepped forward with two more quick kicks in rapid succession with her other foot, then dove and rolled under her shadow's counterattack and grabbed one of the spears dropped by the fallen Aiel. She swept it up and slashed with it, but this time not straight at her shadow. This time, she stepped out to one side, letting the light of the roaring fire cast the shadow of the spear into the space where her own shadow stretched out along the nearest tent face. To all appearances, she was swinging the spear through thin air, but the jolt of impact ran up her arm, as though she had hit something with the haft, and her own shadow clearly staggered backward.

"All right, B!!" a familiar voice cried. Faith had worked her way out to one side of the fire and had witnessed what Buffy had done. Buffy winced. The scraps of Faith's tunic lay burning to ashes a few paces away, leaving her bare to the waist; she had to have thrown the liquor on the fire at point blank range. Her sister Slayer's pale skin was riddled with bruises and burns, but she was still on her feet, and her eyes were defiant still amid the smoke and tumult.

Faith ducked and slid, grabbing another spear from one of the fallen. Her own shadow was nowhere in sight—Buffy wished it had been destroyed in the sudden flare, but Faith herself was still casting no shadow on the ground, so it must have survived somehow—but several nearby Aiel still wrestled or stabbed wildly at their own shadows, and she lay into them with abandon, seeming to dance around the fire with the spear, but every move using the blazing firelight to cast the shadow of the spear into one of the possessed shadows of the Aiel. Few of the Aiel still remained in fighting condition, but those who did began to see what Buffy and Faith were doing. It was still awkward, trying to hit a shadow with the shadow of your own weapon, flickering and dancing as those were in the firelight along the uneven surface of the nearby tents and ground, but for those who until moments earlier could do nothing but try to stay alive, it at least gave hope enough to stoke new fires in exhausted limbs.

Suddenly, Buffy's Slayer-sense tingled, and on top of that, her hair crackled. Lightning flashed overhead in a cloudless sky, scattering some shadows. Buffy turned to see Alsera and Nandrys striding through the tents. Brilliant balls of white fire like stars plucked from the sky were in their hands, and the shadows shied away from them.

Buffy's breath of relief was short-lived, however. The shadows were not destroyed by the light. They vanished from the ring around the campfire, but they were not gone; she could see them still moving in the shadows behind the tents, and in fact some had somehow grown, the stark, steady light of the Wise Ones' lights stretching some of the remaining shadows to four or five times the size of their original owners, as if projected against a massive, sheer surface at a distance. Buffy cursed. She didn't see her shadow among the new, giant ones, but she had little time to worry about that; she had larger problems, literally, at the moment. The Wise Ones' lights kept the giant shadows at bay, and she, Faith, and the Aiel clustered near them, thankful for the gift of a small area where the shadows could not come at them, but there was no way out of the circle without walking right into the shadows again. There was no end to this!

Abruptly, there was a rough wind, and a whirl of leaves converged on a spot near the fire, coming from everywhere at once, resolving into the form of Willow.

"What took you so long?" Buffy shouted.

"This!" Willow replied. Argent light erupted around her, and a stiff wind arose from nowhere, sending Willow's hair rippling out behind her in a radiant stream that seemed more like a wild, waving plume of energy than human hair.

The coals in the fire flared brighter than ever before, and lifted into the air, drawn into the whirlwind screaming in the air around Willow. Buffy ducked and rolled out of the way, pulling three Aiel with her, including Nandrys. Buffy vaulted to her feet a heartbeat later, and saw that the coals had been ground to powder around Willow, tens of thousands of tiny particles circling the blazing form of Willow Rosenberg like a sea of stars circling the heart of a galaxy.

Then, with a sharp, powerful cry, Willow sent the sparks radiating outward from her in a furious storm of blazing white flecks, each speeding faster than the eye could follow, rending tents and shadows alike. A ripple of dark flashes signaled the living shadows disintegrating left and right, and Buffy looked around to see shadows appearing again beneath the Aiel fighters, both those still on their feet and those who lay dangerously still in the harsh white light. She saw Faith's reappear, too, just before the wind faded and the last of the silver missiles was flying away from the corona around Willow.

The silence was deafening when it returned. All the sparks around Willow were gone, though the soft light continued to shine about her.

"Everyone's shadow back where it belongs?" Willow called, looking around.

"Oh, crap," Faith groaned.

Buffy turned again. Faith's shadow was back where it belonged. At first she thought that the raven-haired Slayer's injuries, and her half-nudity, might finally be catching up with her, but Faith wasn't looking at herself.

"Oh, crap," Buffy echoed, and looked down at herself, already knowing what she would see. Willow's light shone around Buffy, in front and behind her, as though there were nothing where Buffy stood but empty air. Buffy's shadow was nowhere to be seen.

"Hey, there it goes!" Faith cried, pointing at something over Buffy's shoulder. Buffy swung around to see a familiar silhouette slipping away through one of the farthest visible rows of tents, a row only visible now because Willow's barrage had collapsed two tents that had stood in the intervening space until heartbeats ago.

Without thinking, Buffy launched herself into a full sprint, her feet barely touching the ground as she hurtled over the pockmarked ground towards her fleeing shadow. Where was it going? Every other shadow had simply mindlessly attacked its owner; this one was running, as if it knew something. Was it just her mind, or did it seem just a hair more solid, not just a blank shape on the walls of the tents it passed? It was making a beeline for the stone city of Rhuidean, and Buffy swore an oath. It would have an endless number of places to hide amid all those towering palaces of stone, but there was no way she could catch it before it made it there. It was every bit as fast as she was, and it had a head start.

She passed the first row of palaces into the stone city, slowing her pace reluctantly. There was still enough scattered light for her eyes, but there were massive patches of shadows—normal shadows—that would have provided her own possessed shadow perfect cover. Nevertheless, she glimpsed traces of movement in the weak light that told her that her shadow had reached the edge of Rhuidean and kept right on running. She bounded after it. Her eyes narrowed as she ran; the thing didn't appear to be looking for a place to lay an ambush. It was making a beeline for the heart of the city, where the great stone tree and the forest of crystal columns lay, where she had glimpsed the odd assortment of items scattered around the vast square. She redoubled her speed towards the square; even if that weren't her shadow's ultimate destination, the extra light there would make it a better place for a battle than here on the dim streets. Fortunately, there were plazas with massive fountains and other open areas in the route to the square, so she never needed to run down any truly dark alleys.

She reached the square and cast her eyes about, quickly settling on her target. A lone, detached shadow moved over the relics scattered around the square. The relics! Her eyes bulged. There were even more of them here than had been in her dream, many more, twenty, thirty, a hundred times as many more. There had only been a handful in her dream, and she realized now that they had not been arranged throughout the square in some pattern that had eluded her. They had simply been where they were in the waking world, hidden among hundreds of other items ranging from massive stone and metal frames the size of small cottages to rings meant for a the little finger of a child, or a very small woman.

There was no time for gaping, however, as her shadow suddenly straightened. Apparently it had come here looking for something, as if drawn to it somehow, and whatever it was, it had found it. As Buffy darted across the square, there was a rushing sound, and a whirlwind of dark energy swept up and around her shadow. It cleared a moment later, just as Buffy was closing with the thing, and Buffy saw that it had found the wide, thin jade bracelet inlaid with silver stones, near the base of the building where Buffy had hid in the dream the night before. The bracelet on its wrist, it turned to face her.

Its wrist?!

Buffy barely had time to think before her shadow turned toward her at last and leveled a vicious punch into her abdomen; Buffy twisted aside at the last instant and threw out her arm, but her shadow still scored a bruising blow on Buffy's forearm. Buffy backed away, and her shadow flowed after her. More than just her shadow now, she realized. It was solid enough to actually have a wrist capable of wearing a bracelet; it was no longer just a flat shape stretching itself off the nearest surface. The light no longer affected it the way it previously had, stretching the thing's arms out or suddenly causing it to be standing differently, the way it had against the fire. That meant that it was not suddenly going to become ten times its current size, but there was no mistaking that it had taken a step further into the living world. It was still colorless, featureless, and noiseless, but it was no longer shapeless.

Back and forth across the square their battle raged, though it was eerily silent save for the pant of Buffy's own breathing and the scrape of her sandals across the stone. At least the thing could be hit now! On the other hand, it also had a much easier time hitting back, and it still hit every bit as hard as she did.

She feinted towards her shadow's head, then ducked and stepped in low, leveling two quick punches to her assailant's stomach, the first one a quick jab that she knew would be blocked, the second a much harder blow, a rising driver punch that sent the shadow flying backward through the air. It vanished behind an artifact that looked like a large trunk in the shape of a giant oyster, but reappeared a moment later. Buffy's eyes widened, and she jerked aside wildly as a spinning plate flew right through where she had been standing an instant earlier. She rose to see her shadow descending upon her from above; it had sprang from the ground to a tall fluted pillar to the wall of the nearest palace and down at Buffy's head, its foot spinning forward to catch Buffy hard across the jaw. Stars flashed before Buffy's eyes, but she twisted backward quickly enough to get a high roundhouse kick of her own in while the thing was still in the air, and it spun out of its flight, catching itself awkwardly, bent backwards so that both its feet and one of its hands were on the ground. Buffy took the opportunity to drive her fist down, straight through where she guessed the bridge of its nose would be, knocking it flat on its back.

Her shadow took blows to the head as easily as Buffy herself, however, and when she tried to follow up her blow by stamping her foot onto the thing's throat, it seized her leg around the ankle, twisting to throw Buffy off her feet. Before she landed, she felt her shadow grab her ankle again, and this time it swung her up into the air, spinning furiously once, twice, like a hammer thrower, eventually sending Buffy flying towards the stone wall of the palace twenty feet away.

She caught herself softly on the wall, ten feet off the city floor, as if it were solid ground. For a split second she hung there, balanced on the wall, looking down at her opponent, which looked as surprised as a shadow could look. Then she sprang forward off the wall, reaching for her opponent. The thing knocked her arms aside, but she was ready for that and followed with the rest of her body in a shoulder bash, throwing them to the stone. The impact of the ground against her assailant's back while Buffy herself landed squarely on her chest added another blow, and she skidded several paces across the stone with her shadow pinned beneath her as well.

A soft but penetrating crackle broke the silence of the fight, and a white beam of light swept across the square from Willow's upraised hand. It struck both Buffy and her shadow at the same instant; the shadow flinched away, but was not broken apart like the others had been.

The beam had been enough to get the shadow's attention, however, and it turned to launch itself across the courtyard at Willow, whose eyes were wide in shock that her ray had had so little effect.

Fear welled up in Buffy's throat, of the kind that she had never felt for just herself. Willow! "No!" she cried, grabbing the first thing that came to hand, a midnight blue crystal orb the size of a softball, and hurled it at her shadow's back. Her aim was true, catching the shadow where the base of its spine would be and sending it sprawling, not two strides from where Willow had been trying vainly to back up and get out of the way. Buffy was on top of it an instant later. She wasn't entirely sure how it was that the shadow had managed to resist that light, but there was definitely one obvious answer. She drove her shoulder once into the back of her shadow's skull, crushing the lightless figure's head to the flagstones, then wrapped one hand around the jade bracelet and rolled away, tearing with all of her might. The bracelet ripped loose; the shadow-made-flesh seemed to lose corporeality as it did so, so that the moment the bracelet was slightly dislodged, it tore free as if passing through no more than smoke.

"Now, Willow, now!" Buffy cried. Now that the thing was just a shape on the nearest surfaces again, there could be only instants before it vanished into the infinite shadows of Rhuidean.

Willow needed no second encouragement, and neither did Alsera, Nandrya, or Dainya, who had all arrived in the intervening few seconds. Brilliant white light burst forth from them like stars, and not just from them, but from every surface within fifty paces, banishing all shadows in the area for a brief instant. Buffy's shadow stood outlined darkly in the middle of the brightness for a split second longer, then shattered into a thousand motes of darkness. When the light faded and Buffy's vision returned, she looked down to see her shadow back where it belonged.

"Stay," she growled, shaking her head in wonder and bewilderment. The fire of adrenalin was beginning to fade from her veins, and the enormity of what had just happened was beginning to sink in.

She wheeled on the Wise Ones. "Tell me this kind of thing doesn't happen all the time here." She was furious, and trying to make herself sound furious, but she couldn't keep a distinct note of pleading out of her voice.

Alsera's shoulders sagged, no more than an inch, but for her, that was saying something. "Until three years ago, never. Since then—more and more often, I am afraid. 'Bubbles of evil,' an Aes Sedai traveling with the Car'a'carn once called them, drifting free of the frayed edges of Sightblinder's prison until they burst upon the Pattern. These are just portents of what is to come if the last seals are broken and Soulcrusher is loosed upon the world again."

Buffy turned to Willow. "Any of that make sense to you?"

Willow's expression was helpless. "Bad things happen here, and worse is coming."

"Well why didn't she just say so?"

"She did say so."

"No, she said something about bubbles. Evil bubbles."

"I simplified."

"All right, whatever. Where's Faith?"

"Your friend is safe," Alsera finally managed to assert her presence. "Gai'shain are seeing to her injuries. She should not even have been able to walk, but she still nearly ran down here after you. I imagine you'll see her in the sweat tent, if not before."

"Sweat tent?" Buffy asked, puzzled. And why was Willow suddenly blushing to the roots of her hair?

"It's—um—how the Aiel take baths," the redheaded Wiccan replied.

That only reminded Buffy that she did in fact need a bath, and in the worst way. She still had not bathed since before fighting the Turok-han, more than a day ago now, not to mention three battles and a lot of walking. She must have smelled worse than the boys' locker room after Sunnydale High football games.

"Alsera, that bracelet—what is it?" Willow asked, and if Buffy hadn't known better, she would have thought that Willow was trying to change the subject more than to get information.

"A good question," Alsera answered. "It has some connection to Tel'aran'rhiod, but more than that, I cannot say."

"Tele-what?"

Alsera fixed Buffy with a surprisingly sharp look, and Buffy felt a flash of anger. Did she actually expect her to know what the woman was talking about? Then Alsera continued. "Tel'aran'rhiod. The World of Dreams."

Buffy froze, her mind racing. If Alsera clearly thought Buffy knew something of the World of Dreams, that had to mean that the woman had seen through their disguises somehow on the previous night. Then again, perhaps the woman had just found the two of them lying asleep in their tent in the dreamworld, when she and Faith had made no attempt to hide their natural forms. "Like I'd really know it was called that," she replied. "But I think I get the point."

"You what?" Willow said. "OK, now I'm lost."

"I'll explain later," Buffy said. "Right now, that bath sounds like a really good idea." There was that blush creeping up Willow's face again!



Author's Notes:
Thanks again so much to everyone who reviewed the last chapter, and who's been giving me feedback the whole time! You know who you are.

Tombadgerlock: I'm pretty sure the 12th and final book will still come out; RJ finished the manuscript before he passed away, and I think it had already been sent in for proofreading and editing. I could be wrong, but I heard it through the grapevine. Won't bring the master back, of course, but I think we'll get to see the end of his magnum opus. I certainly hope so, anyway.

Jen: Give books 7-11 a go. 7 and 8 are worth it. 9 and 10 are slow ... just slog through them. (If you decide to skim, you'll miss a few big events but not as much as you might think, actually.) 11 is a treat. RJ was back on form, IMHO.

Joe: I know, I don't think I've found a completed BtVS/WoT crossover that wasn't a one-off or really short fic, and the Wot-verse doesn't really lend itself to "short," not with the main series topping 4,000 pages and the spinoffs adding more.

Janusi: Sorry, already too many characters to work in without the Cheeseman making an appearance ... :-(

era: Amen.

Coming Soon: Chapter 5, "Accommodations." The Earth trio are exposed to a few more unconventional customs of the Aiel, and the Wheelverse unleashes a few more surprises for our interdimensional heroines. A few more canon WoT characters begin to appear as news of the newcomers spreads on the whispers of dreams and rumors.

Sneak Preview: This is the worst night of my life, Faith seethed ... She wondered if they were always this harsh, or whether they were just getting frustrated and taking it out on her in order not to show anything. The Wise Ones had even admitted that it would do no good to shock her or frighten her out of the dreamworld, since that wouldn't be a very reliable way for Faith to do it on her own in the future—it was purely to ensure "proper diligence," in their words. Diligence?! Like I'm not trying?!

"Trying is good," Bair intoned sagely. "Succeeding is better."