Psychomachia

Part One

A book bound in gilded leather and sewn with bands of scarlet, and stamped on the cover was the word Veritas.

Buffy found it in the Watchers' library in Naples, when she and Andrew arrived there. This city had housed a Hellmouth once--long, long ago--till Watcher-magicians closed the portal with a charm of brazen flies; then the Slayer of the day, Beatrice Dolomos, had gone away to Canterbury in pursuit of an Aurelian Master, and the rest was history. What was left behind was an old empty stone house on a bare cobbled street, which had once been Watcher headquarters for Europe. The library still remained. It had been secondary only to the library and archives in London, blown up by Caleb.

All the books on the library shelves were bound as a set, clasped with intricate gold clasps which, Buffy thought, would make super earrings; and so she had taken down this book, at random. She didn't bother opening it. It was probably in Latin (dull, dumb) just like all the other books, but while she was examining the clasp closely, the title caught her eye.

Veritas. She'd heard enough spells to know what that meant. Seems everyone wanted to capture it-- understand it and have power over it. Witches, magicians and conjurers tried to bend it to their will. It was one of the most powerful words in Willow's incantations. Truth.

Truth?

Giles was always going on about truth in the emails he sent to Andrew, and Andrew resisted the idea mightily. He had ranted about it to Buffy just the previous evening, and then played on his pipes and summoned up the shadows of demons, which he questioned for intelligence on the doings of the local underworld. Then he advised Buffy to do exactly the opposite of what his sources suggested. The scoop he dug up was pretty good, so Buffy let him do things his way. Truth was the business of magicians, not Slayers.

Intrigued now, she undid the clasp and let the book fall open.

It was lettered--not printed--in heavy black lines of writing, upon pages which were not paper, or if they were it was funny paper: parchment or vellum or whatever. They were buckling, thick, uneven, pale cream. There was serious warpage in the book-boards, too. And the whole thing was shiny with usage. Hundreds of hands before hers, maybe, had fondled these illegible pages?

Then just when she was about to slam the thing shut, a shimmer passed over the words and they became plain English. She read:

In a summer season when the sun was mild
I clad myself in clothes as I'd become a sheep

Buffy recoiled; she had been called Lamb once, and the memory still stung. Hastily, she flipped the pages over.

When all treasures are tested, Truth is the best
I do it on Deus caritas to deem the soothe
It is as dearworth a keepsake as dear god himself

She continued to read, through the delicate, winding words of different poems. She didn't understand them, but the sounds made a rhythm she understood in her bones, moving beyond the sentences and into something more like music. She turned a page; the capital on the next page was painted with a green hill and fields all around it, and sister nuns singing amidst grazing sheep, and the words were:

God made Nature, Mother Kynde, from eight transformations:
Strong stone, her bone
The earth, from her flesh
The seas, her blood
Her eyes, the sun
From her right hand the white angels, and from her left, the dark angels
The world's wind-gusts were her soul's breath
And clouds and weather and every shadow come from her thoughts
That pass unquiet across the face of the earth
When God, creating the world, bound Her as His sacrifice.

Lulled so into a quiet place in her own mind, she made the mistake of laying her hand on one of the pages--and fell headfirst, tumbling into the book.

The verse gave way before her in a jumble of delirious phrases, and Buffy tumbled head over heels amidst words in antique calligraphy. Stone. Bone. Flesh. The letters were bold black and big as eagles. Blood. Eyes. Hands. Far bigger than Buffy, and much more real. She was unable to stop herself, to catch their hands to break her fall; she plummeted straight through. And a strange thing happened. Her words fell out of her mouth and mind along with the others, spinning away from her--and she couldn't grasp them or keep hold, though she tried. They slid through her fingers like smoke, or imagination. Bits and pieces of her life, left behind in the plunge. By the time she landed, she remembered very little except her own name.

She landed on lawn. The impact should have hurt, the tumbling crash onto the grass. But she only felt the sunlight on her face.

She was in a valley of green lawns upon which fat sheep drifted, mirroring the fat white clouds grazing in the sky overhead. Little round hills rose, east and west; steep grey crags glowered, north and south; and there was nothing, up or down, that Buffy recognized. She wavered to her feet, touching her forehead. "Where am I?" The grazing sheep and the drifting clouds captivated her, and nonsensically, she began to count them. Maybe if she counted sheep long enough, she'd fall asleep and wake up to her proper place--which was--what? "Who am I?" The sheep literally mirrored the clouds, to her further bewilderment; there were exactly as many of one as the other, and when a fluffy wooly ewe trotted past, Buffy glanced up and saw a fluffy wooly cloud sailing overhead, perfectly reflecting the ewe below. So Buffy took a step and let out a yell, and when the ewe took fright and dashed away, the cloud raced off like a flying bird's shadow.

Something was odd about the atmosphere. It seemed to shimmer with silver puckers and reflections.

The sun stood directly overhead, with rainbows around it.

She kicked her shadow. The green lawn humped itself, here and there, in little circular hillocks furrowed round with what looked like shallow terraces. A plough (she vaguely recognized it as such) had been left unhitched and unattended near the top of one. But when Buffy went closer she found that the plough-furrow made a labyrinth curling round the hillock, long lines cut deep in the chalk turf. The exposed chalk winked white in the sunshine. The plough looked older than all California. What was this place she'd come to?

A voice called over the hill. Young and girlish and full of laughing humor.

"What have you been doing, Mother, you're rumpled so!"

Buffy turned, and a woman in a habit appeared beside the sheep. As she walked nearer, they seem to follow her, content and happy in her presence. The reflecting clouds wandered overhead, a whole flock of them, and where the woman's shadow ought to be, a dove flew over like a painting from a book. "Mother? Have you been rolling on the ground?" The nun covered her mouth and burst out in very un-nun-like giggles. "You know that's against the Rule."

Buffy almost--not quite--recognized her face. Memories lifted out of her mind but their context was lost and she didn't entirely understand them. Who was this woman, dressed like a nun, and a very old-fashioned nun at that? Buffy pushed her own veil back from her hot forehead, perplexed. "Potential," she said, the word oddly-flavored in her mouth. What was a . . . Potential? Somehow she knew that she was facing a Potential, not yet a Slayer-- one who had fallen before growing to know her strength. A name came to mind. Buffy said it in surprise: "M--Molly?"

But Molly only laughed and shook her head, as if she had known Buffy all her life and had always found her rather silly.

"What? No, I'm Fair Price, as I always have been... Have you hit your head? You've grass in your veil." Fair Price let out a shocked cry. "Heaven help us, what have you done with yourself! Your whole forehead can be seen, oh the scandal!"

Buffy reached up and the sprinkle of crushed grass fell from her hair. It was then that she realized what she was wearing, a nun's veil that fell in heavy folds down her back. She looked down, and said, "What happened to my jeans?"

Her body was covered in folds of cloth. Black and scarlet red. Hot, cumbersome, clumsy fabric that she thought was some kind of thick serge. Around her neck was a heavy medal, intricately carved. She lifted it in her hand, peering at it. It was inscribed with an A in bold curliques and flourishes, and a Latin phrase she didn't understand: Amor vincit omnia.

Fair Price stood by her, puzzled, a frown creasing her fresh face.

"Er, what does this say?" Buffy asked.

"It's your motto, Mother," said the nun. "A most powerful talisman, a prayer and a spell." She crossed herself, reverently. "Now come, come swiftly. Most swiftly. You're needed. Sister Dies Drear has broke the Rule--she spoke aloud over breakfast for all to hear, and she said, 'Give me more beer and make it strong, for by Saint Loy, this dry bread chokes me!'"

She took Buffy's hand firmly and led her away, and Buffy (vaguely shocked) allowed it. Down a dirt path, past fruit orchards and a quiet mill with its turning wheels. "This is Crawford Street," Fair Price told Buffy, at her inquiring look. But it didn't look like a street, though at the turnings of the path the dirt was worn away from a gleam of round cobblestones, brown and glossy. Beyond the mill, beyond two tilled fields and two drystone walls which Buffy and Fair Price crossed by way of wooden stiles, was a convent.

"Don't you remember your home?" Fair Price asked. All Buffy could think of was The Sound of Music. High walls fenced the convent in, far higher than the simple drystone walls round the surrounding fields; these walls were mortared brick. The buildings enclosed in them were boxy and strangely art deco, much more modern than Buffy expected. There had been women laboring in the fields, backs bent over rakes and hoes. All the women had looked strangely young--fresh-faced striplings of girls, unsuited to their labor. She had seen no men whatsoever. There were peasant women here too, working in kitchen gardens within the walls. They touched their foreheads when Buffy passed. Nuns were working alongside them, singing softly over their task.

"I don't remember anything," said Buffy mournfully.

Fair Price put a hand on her forehead. "Dear Mother, ill-days are upon us if you, too, have been touched by this eclipse. We must all pray for deliverance."

"From what? What 'eclipse'?"

The nun shivered. "We'll protect you, Mother," she promised Buffy.

Sister Dies Drear, she of the bizarre name, proved to have a strong likeness to a Potential named Eve. She was in the convent chapel, kneeling in front of the altar and praying. Other nuns surrounded her. One of them hurried over as soon as Buffy entered: "Mother, the saints be thanked. Our sister must do penance. Has Sister Play told you her offense? What will be her punishment?"

"Who are you?" said Buffy.

The nuns all uttered soft cries of woe. "Oh no! Oh! She doesn't know Sister Duty? Mother Kynde must be under a spell!"

"Mother what?"

"Why, that's you," said the nuns, helpfully. They crowded round Buffy, and Sister Dies Drear, her penance forgotten, flung herself at Buffy's feet and chafed her hands. "Here, see how the Bishop, upon his last visit, has writ your name large and affirms your place, our prioress and spiritual mother." And three nuns hustled up with an immense ledger, flinging it open ceremoniously.

Buffy looked therein and read, in illuminated capitals: Veritas is the Work of the Watchers. The Work of Slayers is to be Kynde.

She found herself pleased, even though mystified. She had been called a lot of things in her life, but nobody before had ever said she was kind.

She was the Prioress here. Her nuns were an odd lot with ill-assorted names: Punning Wordplay, Lewd Dance, Blank Face were among the ones she found funniest. Most officious was Sister Duty, whom Buffy remembered under a foreign name, Kennedy. Sister Duty was the instructress of novitiates, but she went beyond her duties and supervised all the nuns. Not to mention the peasant women who worked in the convent. She organized the farmer dames of the village, she bossed around the shepherdesses of the hills. No one dared to contradict Sister Duty. She even bossed the sheep.

There wasn't a single man to be seen anywhere, but the girls Buffy met were all strangely reminiscent of other girls she thought she had known. In another place, another life. But the details slipped away from her, like words slipping out of her mouth too soft for even her to hear.

She wandered the halls; days wandered by.

The convent was mostly empty, the bare rooms dark and musty. Night-blooming jasmine covered the walls, separating the stones from their mortar. The women walked to and fro in the halls, seeming to hide under their veils, and they looked lost to Buffy--lost and alone, in an abandoned manor. This place had surely not always been a convent. It was as big as a fortress, but some parts of it suggested a prison, and some parts were unexpectedly luxurious. The walls of these chambers were tiled with wood panels the bright-bay color of sunshine, their arched ceilings gay with frescoes--cherubs, cupids, angels dancing on vaults of blue heaven--and full of windows, delicate stonework, light and air. All empty long since. There was even what Buffy swore was a ballroom. Other rooms were darker, rushes thick on the stone floors, heavy chests pushed up against stone walls; when she opened the chests, the echoes of shouts and fighting seemed to burst out, rushing up at her face.

When she ventured outside the convent, she didn't go far. There was a strange quality to the outside air that baffled her. It was a flitting quality, but as real as fireflies, or candlelight: a glassiness that came and went, a silvery look. Sometimes it took the form of colorless rainbows dancing at the corners of the eye, and sometimes the air itself took on a sheen like a lens. A tricksy twilightsome mirror effect. Wavering and hazy, and when it was at its strongest, the familiar faces of the nuns all looked strange to Buffy, and her own image was reflected back at her in shears of the breeze--as if she could see the wind--or in the rufflings of tall grass, or in leaves, or stones. Then what was distant looked very close, and things close-by became distant, distorted. Behind gauze. Glazed. It kept her going in circles when she explored, always ending up back at the convent doors. Going in straight lines was no use; the hills seemed beyond her reach.

It was always noon, always, whenever she stepped out-of-doors; she didn't know why this seemed wrong.

But one day, after much searching, she found the center of the great house. It was a great dark room, quiet and cold with drafts. In the middle of the space was an empty floor of stones, with a charred outline of a man burned on them. The brown rushes had been blown into the corners, as if by a great blast of wind. Beside the burned image, a silver ring rested on the floor; its shape was a pair of hands that grasped a heart. It burned something familiar in her mind.

"That's William's," a voice called out from behind Buffy, and Fair Price was standing there, looking sadly at the marred stone.

"He came to us in the dotage of the year, when all the fruits had been eaten and the grain has been ground and snow settled against our windows like a long expanse of night. William--called Liam by us who knew him, when he came."

It was then that Buffy found that the word "William" had the power to make her heart hammer and her breath come short.

"But he was accursed," Fair Price continued, "before he came. Cursed with many curses, and they flew about him, and were wasps and wild creatures. Black Knights and wild monsters followed after. Eaters of carrion and dying flesh. And as Liam was dead as he walked among us, they feasted from him, until he ran from them in his blood and ruin. But they chased forever behind, and I fear he has run so far he won't ever find his way back."

She came very close to Buffy, looked about, then whispered in Buffy's ear.

"I saw him just before he vanished. Mother, he was a corpse riddled by maggots, and blowflies were nesting in the wounds that had been his eyes."

Buffy ran through the deserted halls.

Fair Price's words dinned in her ears. But who was William? Why did the thought of a stranger's fate wring her heart so? A cobweb barred her path, spun across the whole of a doorway in festoons of sagging dust, and she burst through it as if it wasn't there, then staggered to a halt, coughing dust. Then she raised her fingers to her cheeks, and found them wet with tears.

She had become thoroughly lost; nothing in the rooms around her was familiar. Buffy walked on, more slowly, smoothing her veil back till the pins fell plinking behind her like breadcrumbs. The veil itself fell, and she rescued it distractedly, carried it with its folds trailing. Then, bored with that, she wound it between her fists, twisting it. When she looked at it again, she held a garotte. She knew exactly how to use one, but . . . why?

At a sound, she halted. Then she saw a door with a mirror on it, and walked through. "This is the library. I-- Andrew? Where are you, Andrew?" A faint voice spoke her name, Buffy. Echoes caught the word and whispered it from every direction Buffy - Buffy - Buffy . . . Kynde - Kynde - Kynde. "Who's there?" She followed the echoes to their source.

"Sister Duty? And Sister, uh, Dance?!"

They were pressed together in the farthermost corner--Duty and Lewd Dance--and they turned to look at Buffy slowly, so slowly, with blank identical faces; they looked like sisters. The air puckered and rippled around them, so that she saw them as if under water. Merwomen floating in rare aether, lost in the oceans of a spiritual other-world. A reflection of the pair suddenly glimmered from the rough stone of the floor at their feet; other reflections flashed in the mortar between the cracks in the walls, in the shadows around them, in a cobweb spun over a niche. At first she thought they were making love, because their habits were in such disarray. Then it seemed that they were growing into each other, like Siamese twins--they were intertwined so closely. They were still alive, their chests moved with slow breaths and the one closest to Buffy blinked. It was Duty. She had her hands round Lewd Dance's throat, strangling her, and Lewd Dance was smothering Duty, holding folds of Duty's heavy habit over her mouth and nose. The light went out of their eyes simultaneously, as Buffy watched, and they slumped over.

The air cleared, the reflections blew out. Both were dead.

This was the library in Naples from which she had set out; she recognized it suddenly and completely, remembering everything. Directly overhead, a circular window framed the yellow blaze of the sun, shining down in a haze of light: sunbeams fell like a curtain round Buffy where she stood, her hands on a round table inlaid with the zodiac. Surrounding her were curved bookshelves, spiraling up the ceiling far above, groaning with books. A single book lay on the table before her. It was bound in scarlet leather with a lock in the shape of a sun, moon and star, and the legend upon the cover was Do-Well.

She opened it and read:

Before the moon ruled over night,
or the sun became so bright,
or the sky was ever painted
thick with stars, as he commanded,
The Word was with him constantly,
with him wrought all that was to be:
whatever they created
They both had contemplated.

By the time she reached the end of the verse, the world had changed.

Through the skylight above was no sun, but midnight with a full moon shining. A knight stood opposite Buffy, his position mirroring hers, fingertips almost touching hers on the cover of the book. He wore armor of steel, so blue that it gleamed dark as midnight, and it was inlaid with niello and sable enamel and engraved cameos of jet, black, black, black; his visor was shut, enigmatic in the moonlight. He had evidently just taken off his right-hand gauntlet, for it was tucked into his belt, and it was his right hand that rested on the book.

She knew that hand. Instantly, naturally, Buffy folded it in hers and cradled it to her cheek.

"Angel?" she said.

To be continued.