Disclaimer, disclaimer, disclaimer. I bow in the direction of California, where Joss lives. Mutant Evils rules! Selat.

Psychomachia

Part Two

"Buffy?"

It was getting very dark now. Before shadows obscured the words of the book, she saw them from the corner of her eye and it seemed they swarmed on the page like flies. What they spelled became different, and then she could no longer read it. Buffy groped toward Angel. "Are you still there? I think I'm going blind, where is the sun?"

"What's that?" Angel drew her into the circle of his arms, letting her lean against him. "I can see perfectly well. Buffy, how did you get here? I thought I was alone."

"Master," said the knight who stood at his right shoulder, in a strange echoing voice, "that woman is unlawful, forbidden to you."

"Shut up." Angel waved the man off. "I've been here for weeks now," he told Buffy, "I can't find a way out, but the clue seems to be in the books here, the poetry in the library. I don't really know how I got here. But I'm sure the poetry is to blame."

"There was a pair of earrings, I think," said Buffy doubtfully, "in a house in, uh, Naples. Maybe they were evil earrings? Cursed?" She thought about this, shrugged. "No, they were just earrings, I think, but . . . Then there was a boy."

"Your boyfriend?"

"N-no, someone else is my boyfriend, but— No. I just don't remember."

"Master!" said another knight. "We waste time." He said it in a snarl, mailed fists clenching on his sword.

"Don't question the Master," said a third, instantly, "remember the Master knows best."

They stood at Angel's shoulders, leaning on their weapons: the Black Knights. Three knights, identical. Each wore full plate, covering them from their heads to their pointed steel toes, and for helms they had armets which hid their entire faces; even the slits from which they looked were needle-thin, giving nothing away, and it was impossible to guess at the men behind the armor. They could have been just empty shells, voices echoing deep and gloomy from the hollows of their helms. Each one was just like the other two, even their voices were alike; maybe only one had spoken, and he had shuffled places with the others like a quick shell-game. Except that, after a moment, Buffy did notice one jarring detail. They were differently armed. One hefted an immense battle-axe. One leaned on a notched and blunted broadsword. But the third knight wore a chain-saw on a dagged and tattered black-velvet baldric, and the weapon was of hand- forged ironmongery, the dull steel incised with inscriptions, dire graffiti in Gothic script, dreadfully reeking of oil.

"Who are you guys?" she asked.

They paid her no attention, their polished armets oriented toward Angel so that his image alone was reflected where their faces should have been. His armored figure was repeated on their breastplates, and the curving cops at their shoulders and elbows: an army of Angels, mirrored over and over. "Master," said one, "time is short with us, but our duty is clear. Let us go forth, suffer and bleed, die horribly, weltering in our wounds--so long as we do our duty."

"Master!" said another, snarling his words. "Let us go forth, smite and swipe, wallop and whinge, and grind the foe like filth beneath our heels."

"Master," said the last one, "let us go forth and visit on Anomie a slow and lingering doom, bedecked with screams."

"Shut up," Angel ordered again, "the lot of you."

They all bowed, jerking forward, steel puppets with lethal weapons.

"Master," said the first (or the second, or the third), "your word is our command. Stay no more, we must away. Forget the wench, and come!"

"No," said Angel. "Buffy?" His hand closed on the crook of her arm. "You come with us."

But once the first rush of recognition was over, she wasn't so sure about him. Who had he been to her? Couldn't quite remember-- His knights, now, she had definite opinions of those knights. And it didn't help to see how her mansion had changed.

It had filled with shadows that fell like ink through the high windows, as with the setting of the sun: all darkened now. Shadows pooled underfoot. The tapestries seemed featureless, black; the rushes they trod on had withered. Her nuns were gone.

All the women were gone. Men had replaced them, and not just a few but dozens. Men-at-arms ran down the formerly empty halls, halberds rattling on their shoulders, faces shadowed by broad- brimmed iron hats. There were more Black Knights to command them. All inclined their heads as Angel strode past, and spoke in hollow soulless tones: "Master, we are yours." But some of them had swarms of flies buzzing round their brows like crowns of thorns, and some of them had wings, Buffy saw that distinctly, though they hung back in the shadows and did not approach. All wrong there. Some small boys scurried past once. Also, she saw wastrels lurching through doorways, tankards in their lax hands--men who made Buffy go inwardly, "Huh!" because she had definite opinions about their kind too, and they weren't favorable.

She didn't have that much time to think, because Angel hurried her so. But it was when they reached the convent doors that Buffy stared.

They were twice the size that they had been, barred with great drop-beams that looked as heavy as iron. Those doors could have withstood the attack of an army. But where were the knights now, the men-at-arms? No one stood guard. No one, except-- Angel and the Black Knights had slowed drastically, and actually seemed to be jostling to get behind Buffy--to put her between them and the man at the door, who sat on an upturned bucket, a blade of straw in the corner of his mouth, playing with the baby he dandled on his knee.

He wore a farmer's smock, a grey wool hood. "Lady Mede, at last," he said, inclining his head to Buffy, "good day, Mistress Kynde. So this great blockhead--" here he pointed to Angel and chuckled in his beard, "--has finally fetched you along! Good for him. He and I are at loggerheads and have been for many a year. I could do him good, but he won't have it. So it's glad I am to see you."

"Who are you?" asked Buffy.

"That's for me to know and you to guess at, young quean. But leave off, leave off--you've got a better question to ask me now."

"What's happening?"

"Shrewdly shot, mistress! Yes, that's my question. That is always my question, myself being (saving your ladyship's presence) somewhat of an authority on the subject. The trouble is with Master Liam over there." Here he jabbed his thumb, again, in Angel's direction, and Buffy turned and looked that way in confusion. "He says he was promised a pardon, but hasn't got one. His will has gone. He can't follow the poet's road. Has been going in circles for months on end, and never any daylight seen, never any advance. So there you see it, the problem bounded in a nutshell?" Buffy opened her mouth, and then shut it with a snap. And the man shook his head in high good humor. "Child, don't fear. All you have to do is--" He set down the babe, jumped off the bucket, dealt the immense doors a kick in one corner. The bars snapped up, the hinges screamed, the right-hand door swung open a bare inch. "Go out there," the man concluded. "The monster Anomie awaits."

"There's a monster?" Buffy perked up.

"There's a dragon," said Angel.

A whole different world lay beyond the convent walls.

There were no gardens, no fields, no meadows: all was dead now, paved with broken flags of stone. The hills had lengthened like grinning teeth, sliding up to bite at the sky. It was night up there, in a luminous sky thick with stars. The night sky was the brightest thing around, Buffy thought. Two castles stood against it, on the heights at either end of the valley--immensely high above her, so that they seemed to be leaning, about to topple. Two falling towers, silhouetted against that moonlit sky. However the atmosphere was crystal clear. She looked east, west, upward eagerly, but didn't see monsters anywhere.

"So where's the dragon?"

"Alas, the dread beast Anomie," said one of the knights unexpectedly in her ear, making her jump and shoot him a dirty look, "it blocks our road, we cannot proceed. There's no going onward until we kill the thing."

"So why don't you go some other way?" Buffy asked, but the knight just shook his massive helm.

"Not that simple," Angel said.

"Why not?" she asked--but none of them answered.

She glanced at the towers again: the whole sky had clotted with clouds in the blink of an eye, and now rain came down in long streaks and ribbons. Buffy turned back toward the convent doors, but they were shut. And locked. Around her, Angel and his fellow knights clunked down to kneel on the stone steps, their knees giving way. Metal groaned like rusty hinges as their shoulders bowed dolefully. "B-b-buffy," Angel managed to say, "don't you see it?"

She stood alone now, the only one left on her feet. Rain streamed over her shoulders and face. Her elbows stuck out sharp, hands clenched into fists on the heavy woolen stuff of her nun's habit. Gargoyles were above the convent vestibule, decorating its arch; they stuck out their long leering twists of tongues, and rainwater arched in silver ribbons down, splattering on the stones at Buffy's feet. Threads of water snaked tin-bright between the stones, and they wrote in long squiggling words. She looked down, brow knitting as she struggled to read the words; then she focused on the stones themselves and her body slowly stiffened.

"Uh, Angel? Why do you call that a dragon? Cause, more like pavement art from this—angle-- "

"Because of its voice, damn thy daft wit!" the knight with the broadsword grated, his voice furious.

It was only a crazed pattern, the cracks between the stones, but it was alive, shifting. In a slow whirlpool it swirled around Buffy's feet, the cobbles moving like wet paint. Running in the rain, till she saw teeth where there had been no teeth, and glimpsed the design of scales diamond- quilted down the long gentle curve of the road. Even then, she disbelieved. Then it flexed. The length of the road stirred, humped itself like a backbone. And on either side, the hills spread, like lifting wings--and touched the sky.

The world cupped itself around her, a globe of shadow and haze. Its mouth spread in a fanged grin underfoot. The convent doors were its upper jaw, and the night valley curved up and around, caging her in its wings, rain drifting down like falling feathers from the soft underplumage of grey mist.

Something laughed; she felt it as a vibration in the soles of her feet.

Kneeling at her side, Angel moaned.

She said, "Angel! We have to fight!" but he seemed paralyzed. Buffy kicked him in frustration, then grabbed at the huge sword sheathed across his back. As she did, a voice spoke behind her eyes, or maybe words wrote themselves out of nothing, laughing wicked in her ear:

"I, Anomie
Thy enemy
Lie under thee:
Why endure me?
Fear me."

"Screw you!" yelled Buffy, bringing the sword up in a great arc and stabbing it into the mist. It cut nothing. Then the full weight of what was above her came down upon her shoulders.

It was the weight that had humbled Angel and his knights, bowed them down like slaves. It bent Buffy's back. The whole world pressed down on her, making her stumble; she barely managed to cling by instinct to the sword, barely managed to stay upright. But she was held paralyzed, pinned like an insect beneath the immensity of . . . Her will began to crumble, her thoughts to swim in pointless circles. What had she been about to . . . ? What use to fight?

Her head bowed, her neck bent, the sword dropped till its point touched the stones between her feet. Buffy sighed. A tear slid down her chin, fell and struck the sword-blade; it ran down the blade to the ground, and a quicksilver light danced there, or maybe it was silver bells, but it was words:

"Fear me
For my
Doors lie
Dire, sly
In wordskill may
No swords kill me!"

Angel's sword weighed impossibly heavy, dragging down her arms. She managed somehow to raise it and reel through a few more swipes, but what could she hit? The fog held no targets. And the ground was nothing but stones and earth. But the stones grinned up at her, and the stones bit her feet, and the windows above the convent entrance glittered darkly at her, like baleful eyes. Buffy staggered in a small, helpless circle, with the knights lying on their faces around her; they had fallen prone while she was otherwise occupied.

Angel pawed weakly at her ankle. "You can't defeat it," he whispered. "My monster--only I can . . ." There seemed to be a medallion round his throat, which he tried feebly to hold up to Buffy. "I've lost my will," he said, nonsensically. "Without will, how . . . how can I fight . . . ?"

The air looked down on him and laughed:

"Fool who will
Follow will,
End in sorrow
And ensure woe:
Damned,
Doomed,
Fall, fail."

There had been some kind of funny writing on his medallion.

But she could barely see anything, certainly couldn't make out the engraved script, and anyway what was the point? The mist had come down like a living thing, flowing in coils around her. There wasn't even any rain anymore; there was only the cold, clammy, choking dampness. She looked down, and her feet had vanished in it. Angel and the knights were completely gone. There was only the mist, and the prickling like tears on the insides of her eyelids, which was the dragon's voice:

"Lovers lust in woe:
All verse lost now."

Everything was gone now. Nothing left but the numbing, endless, pointless greyness. Her grip weakened and the sword fell, invisible; she did not hear it land. She could no longer even feel the steps she stood on, she couldn't feel her own limbs. She shouted but there was no sound. And she couldn't fight fog and stone, what use was even trying? This thing was Angel's demon. Why even bother fighting?

But she had been made to defeat demons.

Buffy grabbed with numb fingers at her own medallion, the one that still hung around her neck. The instant her thumb grazed across the inscription--omni vincit amor--feelings flooded back into her. She knew just what to do. "Like I even care!" Buffy shouted, and she whipped off the medallion, dropped to one knee, and flailed with the chain. Her medallion struck the stones with a crack like the end of the world.

She could see again, she was warm again, she straightened with a gasp of revelation--astonished by her own former fears. It was still night but the dragon was gone. Or not quite gone. Something was falling, light as a dry leaf, sideslipping and teetering past Buffy's upturned face. Before it could drift to the wet ground, she caught it. It lay on the palm of her hand, almost without substance: no more than a twist of wadded paper, tied with dirty string. "Ha! Gotcha," said Buffy. "Some dragon you are!"

At the touch of her fingers, it all but crumbled to nothing. She started to crush it, then reconsidered. "Angel? I think this is for you," she said, and held it out. "And it looks like a map."

It was still a dragon, but oh-so-small, and it rustled in the cage of her fingers and spoke in a minute hissing snap, like popping campfire sparks: "Master, I live to serve you!" and spread its papery wings. There was writing on them, a inked design.

It was a map.

It gave her hope.

To be continued.