""Now, Lady Baffy, let me be clear about what you said. You were a weapon of victory in your world… and that the condition for that victory was your death?"
"My lord… The reason you… or whatever power you called upon… were able to reach into my world, is that I was fighting something horrible, worse than anything I had ever met before. An omnipotent monster who called herself a goddess, and who was tearing the borders between the worlds. What reached for me, reached across the rip between universes. And that was the rip that she made with the blood of my sister, my lord… my innocent sister. I was going to die then, because if I did, the rip between the worlds would have sealed, and my sister would have been saved."
She said all this in a quiet way, as if it was something obvious, natural. The sadness she showed was not at the fate she seemed to have chosen, but at the thought that she might have failed to save her sister.
Even Saruman's wizened soul was startled. This fresh-faced young woman spoke of war and horror, of her own death, in a way that shook even him, who had seen many wars fought and many heroes fall. Corrupt though he was, something awoke in him, that wished to reach out, to comfort her like a father. He silenced it, and kept listening.
"But there's more. I am what you see. A pretty ordinary young woman of nineteen. What I do have is a kind of curse. Some supernatural power, I don't know how or why, gave me great strength and speed and very keen senses, to be able to fight some monsters that hide in my world. Monsters that would be devouring human beings if I wasn't there. I became one when another girl died. That is the way, my lord Saruman. I am one of a line; when one of us dies, another is called, with the same strength and powers./span span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"I'm supposed to die fighting. And then the power is passed to some other poor girl, usually way too young to be fighting anything. And when she dies in turn, to another. And another. And another.
"So you see, my powers are connected with death. My death, the death of all the Slayers who came before me, the death of the Slayers who will follow. And I don't know what effect being removed from my world will have on the sequence."
"Oh," said the wizard, and was silent for a moment. When he started again, he changed the subject, however slightly.
"These monsters you speak about, are they orcs? Or trolls?"
"No, my lord. I don't think you have them here… at least, I felt nothing like them within any reach. The only familiar thing I felt is a smell kind of like werewolf. Kind of like, but not exactly. Some sort of supernatural wolf."
"Ah, that must be the Wargs. Gigantic wolves that Orcs use as riding animals."
Before Buffy had the opportunity to comment, Saruman asked: "I think I can guess, but what is a werewolf exactly?"
"Oh. A man with a curse that makes him change at regular intervals into a man-eating monster like a wolf."
"That is what I thought. We don't have anything exactly like that. We do have wolves that have a touch of the human, and they can turn into humans at times. They are more cruel than natural wolves, and they tend to serve the Dark Lord."
Buffy's explanation was followed by a series of shrewd, detailed questions. The young woman had nothing to hide – for once – but still, her long habit of keeping Slayer affairs private kept tugging at her, and she had to keep reminding herself that there was no danger in telling this man from another world about her life.
"So the power that seized you and took you here was not this Glory?"
"Pretty sure not… I mean, I am almost certain that she was down then. And why should she? She wouldn't want to remove me, she would just want to… to bludgeon me to death."
"Besides," she started again, "I'm pretty sure I'd beaten her down by then. I think she'd turned back into her host, Ben, and I think he'd be powerless."
"I'm trying to understand the limits of this goddess, as you call her."
"Well, her limits are… I think… that she's pretty stupid. She's easy to trick, and she doesn't deal well with surprises. We think being exiled from her world took a lot out of her – I mean, out of her mental capacity. She is feeding on the minds of ordinary people, and I think she needs in the same way that vampires need blood. But other than that, well, I don't think she's got a lot of physical limits."
p class="Standard"span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"Saruman listened and did not answer. He was aware that his mental powers had diminished since the far days when he dwelled in the light of the Valar; and this story did not come unwelcome to him. In his mind, he was adapting it to himself. His decline in wisdom and insight was not due to anything wrong he had done – no, like Glory, it was due to his long exile from his true home. It was a comforting belief.
"You did not say why your sister was the one person who should be sacrificed for the portal to open. What we call human sacrifice most often requires particular kinds of humans, but I know of no case where a single individual was required. And having to bleed for as long as possible… it sounds not like sacrifice. It sounds like...like they had to bring about changes in her being, and keep those changes active for as long as possible. It sounds as if the death were a secondary result… inevitable, but not central. Maybe they would even have avoided it if they could."
Buffy hated that sort of consideration. She wanted to yell at Saruman that it was her sister they were talking about. But that would have made no difference. Maybe, she thought, it was just natural for the wizard to think like that. Maybe even Giles or Willow would have, but they knew it would upset her.
"Hunh. Well, you're the wizard. All I can say is that it could be either way. Glory enjoyed killing things, but she also loved watching them suffer. She'd want the pain to go on for as long as she could."
"Your world seems…" Saruman was suddenly seized by a train of ideas. He was himself a Maia, an immortal, and like all Maiar and Valar he had never thought of reproducing or having progeny. Eru's creation was their child, in every way worth having. But it occurred to him that the demons Buffy described, though clearly descended from spiritual beings like Maiar, were clearly born of sexual congress. At some point in Buffy's world's past, some spiritual being had not only become incarnate as he did, but had borne children and children's children. That must have increased their power: to judge by the Weapon's account, the power of demons was far greater in her world than that of Melkor and his servants in his. Their multiplication had increased their overall impact on reality, though to judge from the tale of Glory and her exile, it had also led to much internal strife and hatred. If there had ever been a Melkor or a Sauron on her world, his supremacy would long since have been challenged.
"I must reflect about this. We shall talk again, my lady."
Buffy bowed, and watched the aged figure move away. She, too, intended to think about what she had heard.
For a while, she forgot about Saruman himself. The beauty of the wooded slopes on one side, the awe-inspiring antiquity of the tower on the other, made this the most inspiring moment she had yet had on this world. She imagined that there must be places like that in the old world on her own Earth, but she had never seen anything like that – either mountains so high, or a monument so noble and ancient.
But her moment of pleasure vanished when she noticed Saruman, far away among the mean buildings and smoking furnaces of Isengard village. There was one thing about Buffy that Saruman did not know: her senses. Buffy could hear, see and smell with incredible keenness, and by the same token she could do so at a distance no normal man could have without a telescope and a long-range microphone. And so it was that she saw three monsters approach him, having clearly been waiting for him to come. She remembered seeing one such monster on the previous style="mso-spacerun: yes;" /spanSaruman did not look at all discomposed; in fact, his motion and body language suggested that he had been expecting them to show up. They were immediately in deep talk. Frustratingly, wind and background noise made it impossible even for her to hear what they were saying, and even if she had learned to lip-read (and she often kicked herself that she never had), their backs were turned to her.
Buffy did not immediately jump to conclusions. After all, there could be any amount of reasons why three monsters had been waiting to speak to the lord of the place. And she knew as well as anyone that monstrous looks do not make a being evil. But as she was thinking this, something else came to her. When she had seen that monster from close up, yesterday, she had got a good whiff of its smell. She knew what they smelled like. And she now realized that she had repeatedly smelled that same smell, a smell unlike that of any man or animal she knew, all over the tower. It seems that there were many monsters… dozens of monsters. It seems that they were all over the place. So why was she not seeing any?
Her thoughts were interrupted by Goldhair. She had come back, and had brought four friends, all armed with bows, arrows and hunting knives.
"Hello, Goldhair. And friends. Are you going hunting?"
They smiled at each other. "Good guess, Lady Baffy. We got permission to try to bag a deer or two for the cooks. We thought you'd like to come."
Buffy had guessed that this would come. She understood that this world was different from her own. She understood that people lived in a much more earthy way. And she was a huntress by nature. But she had never killed an animal before – not so much as got a vet to put a dog to sleep – and the thought of skinning and butchering a beautiful wild creature with revulsion. She had killed enough demons to have an idea what it would feel like. But damn it, she told herself, these people live like this. Goldhair's home was in "the hunters' village." She had to get used to this, and the sooner the better. She squared her shoulders and smiled, and walked off with them, leaving thoughts of monsters and mysteries behind.
It was an interesting experience, and not as bad as she had been afraid. The group had walked together, chattering and laughing, clearly enjoying their outing as an out-of-school fun time. But as soon as they were under the eaves of the forest, they fell silent and started moving differently, making less noise, and checking the wind direction over and over again. She had expected to be the outstanding huntress among them, but she soon realized that these guys had been doing it all their lives and were nearly as good as her. They did not have to tell each other anything; keeping cover, keeping leeward, stalking the prey, came natural to them all, even though, she noticed, each of them had something of a style of his or her own. And Goldhair was nearly as good as the men, which was nice.
Above all, there was no skinning or butchering. Killing deers and a couple of hares with arrows was bad enough, but it was quick, with the hunting knives putting an end to the suffering of any that had not been killed instantly. But as the hunters told her, they were not expected to do anything else. It was the cooks and the skinners who would turn the bodies into steaks and leather hose.
They came home with five deer and a brace of hares; and by then, nobody was surprised that Buffy had killed two deer, the other hunters accounting for one each, or that, tiny as she was, she was capable of bearing two of them on her back (she would have taken more, but the carcasses were clumsy to carry).
And the stench struck her immediately. Even though her nose was full of the smell of raw venison and hare, of the sweat and breath of her fellow hunters, of the resin and flowers of the forest, the odor of the monsters was there as soon as she re-entered the circle of Isengard. She noticed that a fortification wall was beginning to go up around the inhabited area, showing that Saruamn saw no good in the future. But over and above, there was the smell of monster. And it was not only one, or in one place. It came from there – from there – from here. And while it was the same smell, she felt different shades or varieties, just as she knew that every human and every vampire had a different smell. There were many monsters, not just one. And they had been all over the place. And the smells were fresh. She felt increasingly certain that the monsters were there normally, among the human workers. But she could not see one now. They were hiding. Almost certainly, they were hiding from her.
Why would they? They certainly had no way to know that she was the Slayer. Everyone, including Saruman, had been astonished at her strength and speed. On the other hand… both times she had seen them, they had been deep in talk with Saruman. Taking orders, surely? So... perhaps they were hiding from her on Saruman's orders.
Buffy went to bed that night with her world on her mind. Her time with Goldhair and friends had distracted her, and the beauty of the tower and the forests beyond had given her relief. But her world was never far from her thoughts, and from painful dreams.
...
Ben had stopped struggling, but Giles did not intend to run any risks. He kept his hand on the man's mouth and nose for almost one more minute, focusing on him to the exclusion of all else. He had to make sure.
Then he raised his head –
- and looked straight into the eyes of Hell.
A thing like a dragon, but with a feel of degeneration and rot, dripping liquid grease through many orifices on its face, was coming through a tear in reality, that stretched from Dawn's bleeding hand to the pool of thick red blood that was forming twenty feet beneath her. And behind the dragon, hosts of featureless things could be seen, squeezing and squashing and tearing and scuttling their way into the world. Across this horror, for a second, he saw Buffy's body, falling… but it never reached the ground. Somehow, first it was there, and then it wasn't. Dawn, Spike, Anya, he himself… they all gasped. And the things were still in forward motion, unchecked, untroubled.
Ben's murder – something for which he had had to steel himself, silencing his conscience and all his habits of mind – had been in vain. Blood was flowing from Dawn's hand… and it was making something terrible, something worse than terrible.
"Giles caught Spike's eye. They both knew they were looking at destruction and death on an inconceivable scale. Diving straight into the mob of obscenities, for a quick and possibly fighting death, seemed by far the best option.
Then a shriek like ten thousand screaming birds. "No! HELL, NO!" Willow Rosenberg - and to everyone who knew her, the use a profane word was not the least startling thing about that cry./p