Author's Note - Point of clarification for those who are wondering. The characters from MI5 are indeed my own creation. The character of Peregine Lovat who appeared in "Confirmations" was lifted from the Adpet series along with his abilities. The character of Sir John Grahm who will be making an appearence in a short while is also lifted from those books.
Chapter Ten – Wars Past
Faye enjoyed an afternoon nap. She and Eric spent the past three days in Germany working with the Slayers guarding the Hellmouth straddling the German-Austrian border. Giles thought it was a good idea for them to familiarize themselves with European operations and Eric agreed. Germany was the least active of the four Hellmouths but it still drew a far larger demon population than any other spot on Earth with exception of its three siblings.
Faye hadn't slept in nearly forty-eight hours. She spent the time working with one the local teams tracking a particularly nasty pack of vampires. She and Eric had then caught the first flight to London in morning. She never could sleep on an airplane so she commandeered one of the dorm rooms for a quick nap the moment they got back.
She dreamed.
She stood in front of a wall. It stretched away from her in both directions and seemed to curve off in the distance. She looked up straining to see the top, but it was too high. She turned to examine her environment. She saw a field of lush green. In the distance she saw a forest. She took a few steps forward and breathed deep. She smelled flowers, new grass the unmistakable scent of spring. She was surrounded by beauty.
She turned back to wall. As she walked towards it she noticed that something seemed to be leaching out from beneath. The grass nearest the wall was dying.
Suddenly she found herself flying. She sped upward. She reached the top of wall and kept going higher. As she reached the zenith of her ascent she gazed down and discovered the wall formed a giant ring cutting off a part of the world.
Then she swooped down over the wall into the enclave. As she dropped the world around her grew dark. The enormous wall created a shadow that seemed to cover everything inside. The ground approached and what she saw there shocked her to the core.
A dying land. The shadow from wall cut off the sun. The plants could barely grow. Patches of green could be seen here and there. But only a few and far between. From the distance came the sound of laughter. Faye flew towards the source and saw a man. He seemed to be moving between the few patches of green spreading poison. Killing the remaining bastions of growth in this land.
Faye's eyes opened at the sound of knocking on her door.
She got up from the bed and tossed on a robe. "Come in."
Robert opened the door and poked his head inside. "Ms Haughton."
"Faye."
"Excuse me."
"I've told you before Robert, my name is Faye."
"Yes of course," Robert flashed a quick smile. "There's a meeting in the main conference room in," he glimpsed at his watch, "fifteen minutes. Mr. Travers is already there. I believe Ms Summers has finally decided to share her theory about those magic walls you discovered."
The images from her dream danced through her mind. She looked up at Robert and nodded her head. "Give me a minute to get dressed and I'll be right down. I think I may have something to contribute.
Dawn felt a little nervous. She knew her theory sound but large chunks were still speculation with only a small amount of evidence to back it up. But Giles was right. The discovery of how far those behind the walls would go to protect their secrets meant the time for her coyness was past.
She looked up from scanning her notes to see if everyone had arrived yet. Giles sat at the end of table. Willow to his right and Xander to his left. Xander was spending a couple of days in London to work on the problems with the Indonesian facilities with Giles. Kennedy and Faye represented the active Slayers. Eric sat next to his Slayer. Linda along with another member of the research staff sat opposite them.
She got up from her chair stood at the podium at the head of the room. She quickly arranged her notes.
"Looks like the gangs all here," she said. "So let's get this started."
Everyone stopped talking and turned their attention to her.
"As you all know this investigation began with a murder and theft in Wales," Dawn spoke clearly. "We determined that the item stolen was the Dagger of D'Karsh. Investigating that murder led to discovery of a series of similar thefts and murders covering a seven-year period starting twenty years ago. The common thread in all of these cases was what was stolen. Each item had a connection either to the wizard D'Karsh or the group of mages he belonged to."
"At first I couldn't find any mention of the group beyond the name of one of D'Karsh's students," she continued. "I thought that was because the old Council had moved those records into their restricted archives. I no longer believe that's the case. While I could find no virtually no mention of D'Karsh's group in the historical records after the mid ninth century, I did find quite a few prior to that period."
"Are you saying D'Karsh and his followers were destroyed during the ninth century?" asked Giles.
"I'm getting to that," Dawn answered. "What I mean by no reference, is that the group seems to have literally dropped off the face of Earth sometime between 830 and 850 AD. The only things I could find were mentions of the some of their artifacts, like the Dagger and Orb, that popped up from time to time."
"Prior to that period however I found several interesting pieces of information," Dawn again scanned the room. "The group that D'Karsh belonged to was very secretive. From the material I could find, most of it from the new stuff we've brought in during the restructuring and some I've borrowed from groups we've allied with over the last five years, I learned there was a shadow war between D'Karsh's group and several other groups of mages that lasted for over two hundred years."
"A magic war," Willow sounded shock. "How is that possible? I mean, I know there are a lot of philosophical differences between different groups and occasional conflicts, but you seem to be hinting at something a lot bigger than that."
"You're right Willow. A lot bigger," Dawn replied. "Bare in mind, a lot of this is guesswork on my part. I'm reading between the lines. I don't know what started the war, but it seems the magic practiced by our mystery group differs in a few ways from most of the magic we've encountered. One big difference is all of their members need to use an external focusing element to control their magic. If I'm translating right, they all use wands."
"You're kidding," Xander spoke for the first time. "Little clichéd isn't it."
"Clichés have to come from somewhere," Faye replied. In her dream Faye remembered the strange man waving what could have been a wand.
"Can we get back to the point," Giles glanced at Xander that then motioned to Dawn. "Continue."
"Thanks Giles. As I was saying, I don't know what started it, but it seems the group, lets call them wand-wielders, started attacking other groups of mages and magic users. For the first few years they had the upper hand. But it turns out their magic has a few rather severe limitations."
Dawn paused and took a sip of water. "The first and most obvious is the dependence on their wands. Take those away and they become just ordinary humans. The second is what Willow has already discovered. Their magic is virtually impossible to conceal. To magic users and others sensitive to magic it sticks out like a sore thumb. Within a few years, the hunters became the hunted. Basically, they were getting slaughtered."
Kennedy spoke up, "I still don't understand how none of this was in the Council's records or why the Slayers weren't involved."
"Not burst any bubbles or crush anybody's ego, but the Slayers are not the end-all-be-all of the supernatural universe. Up until a few years ago there was only one Slayer at a time. She, and by extension the Council, focused her attention on vampires and demons. This was a war fought between humans. One fought in the shadows. There was no reason for the Slayer to get involved. It was outside her and the Council's usual jurisdiction. In other words, they neither noticed or cared."
Kennedy looked a little put out. Willow reached out and patted her hand and then turned her attention back to Dawn, "So these wand wielders as you call them were losing?"
"Yes and badly," Dawn took a moment to glance at her notes. "One estimate I read put the number of dead on both sides at over five thousand over a fifty year period. Almost all of them wand wielders."
"Goddess, that's horrible. What happened to end it?"
"Like I said the war went on for nearly two hundreds years. The wand wielders kept trying to hide, but their numbers were declining and they didn't have the knowledge to hide their strongholds from the outside world. Eventually D'Karsh led the remains of his people to England to find a new sanctuary. He seemed to want to find a way to end the war and," she scanned through her notes, "quote 'find the means to link the sundered traditions.'"
"So DK worked out a truce. Good for him," Xander jumped in.
"He might have tried," Dawn replied, "but he didn't succeed. I think he was trying to find a way to link the differing types of magic. But that is a flat out guess on my part. Whatever he was trying to do he either failed or died before he could complete his work. His student, Rowena Ravenclaw, along with three others, whose names I still don't know, decided to go a different route."
"The enclave and Covenant you mentioned when all this started." Willow said.
"Exactly. My guess is they found a way to isolate their people from the rest of the world and hide their magic from everyone else."
"But it appears from Willow's findings that their magic is just a visible now as it was during the war," Giles joined in. "How do reconcile that fact with the obvious skill needed to construct the barriers we've encountered?"
"Easy," Dawn smiled. "They didn't create the barriers."
"Now you've got my attention," Eric said. "If these wand wielders were at war with everyone, who would agree to construct the wall for them?"
"The Crown," Dawn answered.
"A pointy hat created the barriers?"
Dawn let out a little chuckle. "Not a crown, Xander, The Crown. Actually Robert figured it out."
Robert looked surprised. "While I thank you for the compliment Ms Summers, I don't honestly recall coming up with a solution to who created the barriers."
"Indirectly you did," Dawn responded. "During your meeting with Lady Aydin you asked if the murder involved one of the groups MI5 monitors. She replied yes and that they had an agreement that prevented her from telling you about them. That got me thinking," Dawn looked directly at Giles. "What does Lady Aydin represent?"
Giles paused in thought and then slowly nodded his head. "Her family has served as the primary blood surrogate in mystical matters for the rulers of the British Isles almost since they were first settled. You're saying these wand wielders made a mystical pact with the British Crown for protection. They did not create the barriers, Lady Aydin's family did, backed up by the power and blood of the British Crown."
"Got it one Giles," Dawn smiled. "They've been hiding behind those barriers for twelve hundred years. And it's obvious they're still scared of what's out here because it would seem they mind wipe anybody who gets too close."
Linda looked up. "These enclaves we've found in London hardly seem big enough to support an entire population for twelve hundred years."
"You're assuming London is the only place they are," Dawn replied.
"Just how big is this thing Dawn?" Willow asked.
"Well, the reference I came across to the founding of D'Karsh's sanctuary in England indicated that he built an entire village up in Scotland. It's safe to assume that's the location of the first enclave. Who knows how many have been created since then. I'd say we're dealing with a population of several thousand," Dawn again stared at Giles.
"Yes?" he said.
"This is usually the part where you say 'dear Lord' or 'bloody hell.'"
Giles smiled, "I rather think neither of those phrases quite covers the magnitude of what you have uncovered. The question is how we proceed from here."
"In all honesty Giles, I don't know," Dawn replied. "We have no way of knowing what would happen if we breached the barriers. It could collapse the entire spell, revealing everything or it could do nothing. It might also depend on who breaches the barrier."
"We do know there is a killer hiding behind those walls," Kennedy said.
"True," Robert replied. "But Lady Aydin did say this group has the means the control him. There hasn't been another incident like the one up in Wales in a couple months. Perhaps they stopped him."
"No they didn't," Faye spoke in quiet voice.
"What do mean Faye?" Eric asked.
"I had a Slayer dream," that got everyone's attention. She proceeded to relate the details from her dream.
"Goddess, they've so isolated themselves from the outside world they're killing themselves," Willow was stunned.
"And the mystery man is hastening their demise," Giles added. "We need information. Blindly charging in is not an answer."
"MI5 has the answers we need," Eric said.
"So its break into top-secret government building time," Xander said.
"No," Giles replied. "We have excellent relations with British government. Jeopardizing them is not an option. Robert, you've worked with Lady Aydin's people the longest. Your thoughts."
Robert leaned back is chair. "Lady Aydin has always been willing to share information with us to stop a threat. Even if it violated some agreement they may have had. That incident in Yorkshire last year is a good example. She's also been very clear when can't share information."
"And she did say her agreement prevented her from telling us anything," Dawn added.
Robert nodded, "Yes, beyond anything we already ....," He stopped short, "we already know."
"Robert?"
"She said she couldn't reveal more than we already know."
"So."
"You don't understand," Robert continued to think. "I've been working with Lady Aydin for four years. She's very precise with her language. She doesn't add qualifiers unless she means it. Granted, I'm going out on a limb. But I believe she may be under some kind of mystical compulsion that prevents her from telling us anything about these people."
"That's real thin Robert," Willow said.
"Think about it," Robert replied. "If Dawn's right, these people are terrified of discovery. That would most likely have been even more true when the enclaves were first founded and they were negotiating for protection. They would have insisted on some kind of control over who could learn of their existence. A compulsion spell limiting who the Crown's representatives can tell makes sense."
"Can't argue that logic," Dawn added. "Leaves us in a bit of dilemma. The people best equipped to help us and who would be willing to work with us can't tell us anything even if they wanted to."
"So we're back to breaking into government buildings?" Xander asked.
"No," Giles began to think. "It seems from Faye's dream that the Powers that Be want us to intervene. Willow, begin researching ways to break a compulsion spell. Given its source assume we're dealing with a very powerful spell. Dawn give her whatever assistance she requires and look up any information you can find on how to combat these wand wielders. Robert, schedule a meeting with Lady Aydin and see if you can confirm she is under a compulsion spell."
"How much do I tell her about what we already know?"
"We'll work that out later. It would appear we have a duty to save these people from themselves."
Dawn nodded. "Alright folks you heard the man. Lets get to work."
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Author's note – I'm so glad that's done. This was easily the hardest chapter to write so far. I apologize if it came across as too info dump. But I needed to get past this point to get to the meat of the story.