A weapon of victory 2 – Buffy in Isengard
Buffy had been ready to die. She had been iexpecting /i to die. And as her dreadful last few years had taught her enough about injury and physical agony, she had had a very clear idea of what her last few seconds before death would bring: the bones shattering inside her, the skin and muscle tearing horribly while they were being squashed by weight and impact, the blood spurting till she choked on it. She knew it, and she had accepted it, because that way her sister would live and her world would not die. Buffy had seen too many others die, often die twice, because she had not been strong enough, fast enough, quick-witted enough. This time it was not going to happen. At the cost of her death, at the cost of her agony, it was not going to happen.
Except she didn't die. A split-second before the impact there was a twisting and a bending – and suddenly she was somewhere else, on marble rather than concrete, hitting so softly she almost did not feel it. But bewilderment was immediately overwhelmed by fear – by terror. If she hadn't died, did that mean that her sister was still being murdered? That her world was still being overwhelmed by monsters? Sick with terror and a strange, unsettling disappointment, Buffy rose and started looking around herself.
Magic. Of course it was magic. The room was so filled with it that one could hardly see for the lights, and at the centre of it stood the most obvious magician she had ever seen.
Buffy's impulse was to charge. She was still seething with adrenaline from her battle, and from steeling herself for death. Her instinct was to assume that the wizard was in cahoots with Glory; to ask, none too kindly, who he was and what he thought he was doing, and then demand to be sent back. But she silenced that instinct. She knew nothing of where she was, who or what her host was, how and whether she could get home. And nothing she saw suggested Glory or war. The only thing she knew is that he had some sort of power… of great power, to rip her from her time and space like that. So she got up slowly, keeping her hands well in sight, and raised her right hand in what she hoped would be seen as a greeting.
Saruman kept a poker face and a hieratic stance. If the Power to whom he had vowed his soul had sent this tiny creature, looking for all the world as fragile as a blade of grass, then there was a reason. He would welcome her, weaving around her the spell of his speaking voice; he would at once try to find out about her and talk her into loyalty and support. But then the little blonde spoke.
Saruman was struck with horror, so much that the composure of his face, for a second, shattered. He immediately recovered himself; but his guest, anxious to take in and understand anything she could, had not missed it. She did not know what had so horrified him, but it happened when she spoke. He had intended her to be there; her appearance had not surprised him; but her words had. It only lasted for a second, maybe for a fraction of a second, but it reflected astonishment and horror such as Saruman had never felt before; such as, indeed, he had not imagined he could feel. It wasas though his doom had been spoken, a doom he had never expected. iHe could not understand a word she said.i/.
So this was what he had done wrong in the sequence of spells. He had not correctly managed the enchantments that would allow him to communicate. His attention had dropped, in part – but he would never admit it – because it did not occur to him that a communication spell would be necessary in dealing with a… weapon. Which, and again he would not admit it, showed lack of imagination. After all, many weapons in lore had had voices. The last words of the Black Blade to Turin Turambar were known to every man, elf and dwarf in the West. And this failure of imagination now meant that his own mightiest weapon – the power of his voice – was almost certainly useless.
His loss of control only lasted a heartbeat, and then his face went back to his normal solemn, sacerdotal expression. He raised his pale right hand, holding his white staff, to return the Weapon's greeting, and gravely said: "Welcome to my halls, my lady. I am Saruman the White, king of Isengard." Then, as she did not react, he pointed at himself and said "Saruman." He waved his hand around, and said: "Isengard".
The Weapon smiled, bowed, and said: "Buffy."
Well, at least she is not stupid or barbarous, thought Saruman to himself. As for "Baffy"… he had heard many strange names in his years of wandering long ago, and, while "Baffy" did not sound like any language he knew, he would have been more surprised if she had had a Quenya or Sindarin or Westron name.
He made a gesture to invite her to follow him.
Buffy was all too glad to leave that room. It was not only about that magic, but that it was bewildering, seeming to raise things at the edge of vision which then vanished, disappointingly and even a bit frighteningly. There was a sense of constant, unsettling change, driven by reasons that could not be perceived or understood. And her sense and experience of demons told her that the things she just barely felt with the very limits of her senses were not benevolent.
As she went out, she realized that she was in something like a palace. She followed her host through a high, deserted corridor, paved with marble, with frescoed walls spanned by pillars of granite and basalt. She was rather surprised. Her experience of wizards did not suggest any interest in large-scale display of this kind. Sure, those she had known lived rather well, but this was more like a Hollywood mansion or a millionaire's residence. Buffy, of course, had not understood Saruman when had called himself a king. But looking around, she began to have a feeling that this guy was perhaps something more, or something else, than a sage.
It wasn't just the building's size and show, but the number of people – and other things – that seemed to be busy around the place. Several times, Saruman's progress was interrupted by someone having to report something; and on one occasion, the person reporting was definitely not human. Not to mention amazingly ugly.
That was Gashluargk, one of Saruman's orc commanders. Saruman noticed, with some surprise, the Weapon's evident revulsion. Surely a Weapon of Victory would not be so… squeamish? Victory was victory, after all. But he instructed Gashluargk to order all Orcs within Isengard to stay out of his guest's sight for as long as she was there.
Buffy, of course, did not understand that, but she did notice that that was the only monster she had seen. And yet he seemed quite at home with Saruman. The place seemed very populated, and it came to her that if monsters like that were there at all, she would expect to see more than one.
Her life had made Buffy, if not paranoid, at least ready to notice, and to put a bad construction on what she noticed. And she noticed that Saruman was leading her fairly clearly in one direction, not allowing her to look in the side corridors and the rooms whose doors were not closed. There was nothing obvious about it, just a firm forward step, and an ignoring of questions that, at any rate, he could not have understood clearly or answered. All very acceptable. But once or twice, Buffy had shown clear interest in side rooms as they walked by them, and she had simply been ignored.
Suddenly he spoke to her. "You… speak. You speak… I… magic… You learn. More you speak… more we know. You and I. And others. Magic."
She understood. Indeed, she had hoped that he had such a spell. Otherwise, even if she was lucky, it would take her months simply to learn to speak enough to communicate, and much more to understand this world and find out whether there was any way to go back to her own – and complete her job.
Her terror had not gone away. It was the background to everything else, even as she looked and listened and tried to understand. Until she could communicate with this Saruman sorcerer, she could do nothing. So she sat on her anger and her fear, and went along with whatever happened.
And as she realized that she could possibly be here for a long time – days, weeks, months – she realized that there was something else that could happen to ruin things. She knew she had to die to save her sister. Such a decision was not easily reached. If she was kept in this world long enough, she was afraid that if she ever returned to her own, her resolution to die to win would be gone. And this, of course, did not even touch what would happen if she came back too late, and ended up in a world devastated by a demon invasion and perhaps ruled by Glory.
Suddenly the corridor opened out into a balcony, and Buffy realized, to her astonishment, that she was not in a mansion, but in a tower. And not just any tower: she was hundreds of metres above the ground. A whole land was open before her. The mountains rose on three sides of the tower, rank on rank of evergreen trees shading off above her into grey gravel and white snow. There was not much wind, but what there was was keen and cold, with the tang of the resin of firs and pines. It was a glorious day, and the blue of the sky stood out against the shining green and grey and white and the colours of the birds that could be seen flying in the distance, and the tapestries that shaded part of the walkway. Below her there was a valley, narrow, but clearly fertile, broken by green, irregular fields, that seemed here and there to cut into the forest. Streams came from several places, to merge above the walls of the town below her – yes, it was a town, with a wall around it. Buffy saw roads and streets and buildings, and here and there plumes of smoke; people were living and working there, though she was too far above them to see them.
Buffy was nearly overwhelmed. And another thought came: this was how her host lived, how he saw his land. If it was hers, she would never waste the chance of stopping to look at it. But she saw that he was becoming impatient, and wanted her to follow him. And when she had been following him, she had seen that he turned neither left nor right, ignoring the awesome thing around him.
Saruman, meanwhile, was thinking. His plans had been disrupted by two surprises in quick succession: the nature of the Weapon, and his error in conjuring. And because of this, his attention in the last half-hour had been focused on the lady Baffy. But he had other things to do. He had not intended to spend the day showing a visitor around his residence; in fact, these days he tended to discourage visitors. His labours around Isengard, let alone the presence of Orcs among his servants, would have given visitors a message he did not want. The lady Baffy had not noticed, or not realized the significance, of all the plumes of smoke rising from the walled village below, but someone like Gandalf or Théoden would. In fact, he was nearly at the point when he would send Gandalf one last invitation. After that, whatever Gandalf chose, anyone who came to Isengard would come in chains.
He needed to get back to his work.
He looked around for someone to take the Weapon off his hands, not, of course, in such a way as to offend or anger her. His eyes set upon Goldhair, a young and lively servant from a Rohirrim background. She was, he judged, the same age as the Weapon seemed to be, or perhaps a bit older; they could bind. Goldhair was a chatterbox, like many young women of her age, and the more they talked, the quicker the language spell would work, to let the Weapon be able to speak with him, and him with her.
He summoned the young woman to his side, and Buffy did not miss the flash of fear that was Goldhair's immediate reaction to a call by the Lord of Isengard. But, to her surprise, he had nothing to reproach her with, and no heavy task. He only wanted her tokeep company to the Lady Buffy, and show her around the permitted parts of Isengard. He even took a paternal, gentle tone to which the young Horse-woman was certainly not used.
In fact, for many reasons, a girl of the Rohirrim would not have been Saruman's choice. But he had seen Buffy's disgust with the Orc, and did not want to risk her getting a sense of his more committed and capable servants. The lady Baffy, in his view, wore her heart on her life, and it was clear that she would react badly to some of the things he was forced to do to build his kingdom. It would be difficult enough to convince her to enter his service; it would take the fullest use of his powers of convinction; he did not need to have to work his way around some unfortunate impression left by, say, one of his investigators.
So he left her with Goldhair, who was taking in the elaborate formal courtesy with which the Lord (he never used the title King in the presence of Rohirrim servants) treated this odd little woman, and the air of independence she seemed to carry. This was clearly someone the Lord valued. Perhaps if they got along, she might gain more of his appreciation. There was little enough of that these days, though the old women said that things used to be different in their youth.
Meanwhile Saruman turned and vanished into a side room. This was one of the paths to the chamber of the Palantir, the secret of his wisdom. He climbed up a long winding stair, and emerged into the highest chamber in the tower. It was entirely bare, its walls whitewashed. They had once been covered in frescoes, but once Saruman had placed the Palantìr there, he had chosen to have them covered over; he wanted nothing to distract him from the work of watching the sphere. For it was work, hard work. He had to drive the sight in the directions he wished, make it as subtle – or as broad – as he needed, and follow events, sometimes for hours at a time. Even just managing the sphere demanded mental exertion, and he would do it, sometimes, for whole days at a time. And there were those dreadful times when he broke into the Enemy's own keep and spoke with him face to face. That took almost more strength than he had, and always left him in a state of exhaustion; and he did not often learn much from it. Nonetheless, he kept going back to it, every few days. It was something like an addiction. He had to prove to himself that he was able to confront and challenge the mightiest being on Middle-Earth. And he did not realize to what extent these long, fruitless confrontations were affecting his mood and his attitude.
But he would not do so today. First, he spent almost an hour tracking the Weapon and Goldhair. He was pleased to see that they seemed to be getting along famously. Goldhair was chattering nineteen to the dozen, and on the few occasions when Baffy broke in, she seemed to say things that would crack the young Horse-woman up. Then his eye roved across his small kingdom, watching his various groups of servants at work. He kept a constant eye on all the work that was going on within the bounds of Isengard, every day without fail, and he also inspected the unmarked but well known borders of his land. It was not as hard as it seemed; his reign, as he thought of it, was still small and looked like nothing on the map. But he was working for swift expansion, setting up an alliance with the disaffected Dunlending chieftains west of the mountain, and growing Orcs like cattle within the dungeons he kept digging.
Before he turned his eye to Rohan, where his plans were at an advanced but delicate stage, he gave one passing look at the Weapon. It was in the workers' mess hall, at lunchtime, and she was sitting with Goldhair and a bunch of her Rohirrim friends. Saruman observed with pleasure that the Weapon seemed to be doing a great deal of talking. His spell was working: the more she talked, the more easy she would find it to speak in Westron, and even in the Elven languages. Later today he would be able to speak with her, and finally be able to use his powers. And then… suddenly a nasty spat between Rohirrim and Dunlending workers was exploding. Even Saruman had not seen how it had started; not that he cared. But he might need to take a hand,
Except… the Weapon. One moment she was sitting at a bench with a group of Rohirrim; the next she was in the middle of the fight. One man went reeling back. Another found himself sitting on a bench with no idea how it had happened. Two or three staggered out with incomprehensibly aching jaws, and another few were simply forced back by their own fleeing friends. Within a minute, the brawl had been stopped by main force. And then, apparently, she just stood there and read them the riot act.
Saruman had seen many things in his long life, but he had never seen anything like this. The swiftest and deadliest Elven warrior of old could not have done it. So this was what the Weapon of Victory was: a fighter beyond compare, a fighter to stop an army – and whom nobody would fear until she was unleashed, for nothing could have looked more harmless.
He was not pleased that she had made peace by force between his Rohirrim and his Dunlendings. He had been working for weeks at setting them against each other in subtle ways. And on the whole, whatever ascendancy the Weapon might have established on them, he felt sure that events could only go that way. The ancient hate between Dunlendings and Rohirrim was only waiting
to be stoked into a great flame, and he would add more to it in a short while, as soon as the Weapon was not so closely concerned. But still, that is why it was good to keep constant control over everything. His many plans could cross each other, unexpectedly, and constant control had often prevented unfortunate clashes and undesirable revelations.
Which led him to the royal court of Rohan. It was about time he took a good look at how his work there was proceeding.