Transitions - Ch. 44

Giles wondered what had become of his capacity for terror--perhaps one could only feel, after all, a certain amount of fear in one's life before being left with only a weary numbness where once the emotion had resided. Or perhaps it was only that he saw the outlines of the terror-spell clearly, and it was like one of those places--sites, did they call them?--to which Willow traveled on her computer. She'd shown him, once, that to look on the surface gave one an image of colour, sound, motion--but when viewed another way, that same place showed only what lay beneath, a meaningless series of brackets, scattered words and symbols.

And so was Mermorgan Hall, ancient home of the LeFayes. He rather liked the quirkiness of the building itself, the sense it left of centuries having been built upon centuries. The art of the LeFayes' magical symbols and brackets impressed him--in much the way, he assumed, Willow would be impressed by a computer program cleverly executed. The oldest of the visible spells had to date back to Norman times, contemporary with the French he and Briony St. Ives had spoken to one another, though he'd an inkling, as well, of magic even older.

But if the house did not frighten him, the LeFaye women made him nervous. They'd the look of people who'd studied too hard, laughed too little, loved even less. Briony, Moira had told him, had been sent up to Oxford for her education, and had been miserable, cast adrift amongst those not of her kind. She'd been scarcely able to handle a world so free of taboo and ritual (and for her to consider Oxford such gave true indication of the quality of life in her family home), a world in which music was intended for pleasure, rather than as a strict discipline meant to increase one's magical control, a world in which people loved, and touched and, at times, fought bitterly with one another. A world in which everyone one looked at was not a red-haired, green-eyed LeFaye.

Giles sympathized. He'd lived too long in his own isolated world, one of dead languages and low-voiced men in tweed. In many ways his own life had scarcely been different: filled with an overriding sense of duty and destiny, an existence in which one worked, kept one's reserve, shied away from close attachments. God, he despised that life--and yet, after so many years, he still experienced a certain difficulty in living any other way.

He felt Buffy's face burrow against his shoulder from behind, and the others draw closer to him, their bodies pressing to his in a half-conscious need for comfort, for security. Willow trembled in his arms.

"It's all right," Giles told them quietly, "Don't be afraid."

Not of the house, at any rate, he thought.

"Why do you say that to them?" Briony St. Ives asked angrily, again using Norman French as a grudging alternative to the ancient Cornish she'd have spoken by preference, a language Giles could not understand. Like Moira, she'd not have been taught English until late in childhood, long after she'd already learnt her Latin and her Greek.

"Because they are young," Giles answered, "And they look to me. Also because I hope to appeal to your better nature, Miss LeFaye. Your Morgana shall know, after all, how you behave toward us." He felt odd calling Moira by that title, but such was how she'd be known amongst her own people--as The Morgana, the chief sorceress of House LeFaye. His sense of having left modern England behind increased.

The young woman shook her head angrily. "She is not one of us now."

Giles gazed, steadily, into her eyes. "Deny her as you like, whilst she's away, Briony. She remains your leader. She will know what's become of us--and then I pity you."

Briony moved as if to strike him again, but at the end, stayed her hand. "We can make you do whatever we like," she told him, in a low, furious voice.

"No," Giles answered, feeling her LeFaye glamour wash over him, and then disperse. He gazed down upon his captor, and felt only pity--she'd chosen this life, but what else did she know? She, and her relations, might as well have been an ant colony, or a hive, for all the emotion in their eyes--and like ants, or bees, they were highly defensive of their home, and utterly alien to his understanding.

"We could kill you," Briony muttered.

But, instead, the LeFayes locked them up inside the Norman tower.

Hours had passed, and Giles suffered an ever-increasing headache. He'd tried to pick the relatively simple lock of the tower door, only to find it warded in ways he could not hope to break without the proper equipment for his rituals. He discovered, as well, that an unpleasant side effect of his meddling was that it brought all the wards, greater and lesser, to life, and they now hummed in a way that set his teeth on edge. It was like being forced to listen, over and over, to the dreadful music--if one could truly call it that--which Buffy inflicted upon him whilst involved in what she termed her "aerobicizing."

Giles paced, unable to stop himself, the hopeful stares of his kids, and of his son and daughter-in-law following his progress. They expected him to do something amazing, but he could not, for the life of him, think what that might be. The stares unnerved him. He'd no idea what he ought to do, how he ought to save them.

The tower seemed to loom around him. The second floor room that imprisoned them was one tall, round space beneath bare rafters, rafters in which a barn owl nested. Now and then the bird of ill-omen let loose an unnerving, "tu-whoo," making Giles startle irrationally each time the owl voiced its cry.

He wasn't the first to have paced there. Giles could make out grooves where other feet had worn paths in the wooden floor. They'd been given no food, no blankets, only a small jug of water, from which they'd all agreed Celeste must drink as much as she could. Sebastian had removed his stained pullover, insisting that she put it on in his stead. The rest of them shivered. Summer it might be, but the thick stone walls of the tower shed a wintry chill.

Giles rubbed his temples. Bloody LeFayes. Bloody Ethan. And bloody Sebastian too, if it came to that. He'd never been so angry with his son, and yet Giles knew his fury to be unreasonable. How could Sebastian have known, really? Moira had told their son the bits and pieces of her family history, taught him this and that from the realm of LeFaye magic--all of which Seb had filtered through his own experience, that of being the beloved only son of doting parents. He was a lovable young man and, in his heart, most likely could not imagine being otherwise than valued and cared for. Besides which, in her tales, Moira had omitted two truths: what had become, always, of the LeFaye boys, and what, ultimately, happened to the unfortunate men lost in their forest.

To him, however, Moira had once told a story of a field filled with bones.

Giles chided himself. He ought to have known, at once, where they'd gone to, the very moment he and Seb left Whitechapel. He did, in fact, tend to forget at times that Sebastian was not his son only, that he'd not only the Wild Wood in his blood, but also Moira's dark wildness, the wildness of Mermorgan. That Seb was not merely a Giles, but a LeFaye as well. His version of the Wild Magic, rather than creating a forest of its own, had brought him to this place.

He sighed, peering through the deep-silled narrow window of their tower prison. Outside, in the vicinity of the house, summer had returned once more, and from this view the surrounding forest, although dark and mist-shrouded, appeared no wider than seven miles or so--certainly not an expanse one could wander through, lost, for days, battling monsters of the sort that belonged only in one's most fearsome dreams. Beyond, he could clearly make out rocky crags, fields, even villages--and he knew, were he to cross to the tower's other side, that window would reveal the crumpled grey-green expanse of the sea.

It all looked quaint, the kind of country through which one might take a pleasant walking-tour. Giles rubbed his forehead again, and decided to add to his worries by considering the fate of the Ripper demon, in the person of his old enemy, Mr. Stanley. Was it yet adrift in the--for want of a better term--enchanted forest? Or had it found its way out into the wider world? One or the other, he knew that, given the chance, it would fall to him to hunt that evil being down. He must put an end to its predations once and for all.

Giles drew off his glasses entirely, tucking them into the breast pocket of Xander's hideous shirt. God, his head! Blast the LeFayes and their magic anyway. He feared, more than anything, the sound of their footsteps on the stairs.

"Hey."

Giles started violently as a hand touched his back. "Oh. Buffy."

"Yup, it's me, Mr. Jumpy. Who did you expect?" She smiled up at him bravely, though her eyes still held a look of apprehension. The Mermorgan fear-spell, he knew, had troubled her badly.

"Sorry." Giles restored his glasses to their proper position. "Miles away, I'm afraid."

He ought not to have been woolgathering, he knew. They needed him. Needed his reassurance, his attention. Needed his explanations.

"Sorry," he repeated.

"You should get some rest," Buffy told him.

"Bit difficult, really, with this infernal noise."

His true love's look seemed to say she thought him mad. "Uh--what noise would that be, Giles?"

"Sorry," he said, automatically, yet again. "I'm surprised everyone can't hear it."

"I can," Willow said in a small voice.

Sebastian nodded as well.

"Giles, what is it?" Willow asked. She appeared terribly despondent--head bowed, eyes fixed upon the scarred floor.

Giles went to her at once, crouching down to be closer to her level. "They're only wards, Willow," he told her, attempting to keep his voice as reassuring as he possibly might, for all their sakes. "But they do make an unholy din, don't they?"

Willow gave a feeble nod, and Giles put a hand beneath her chin, raising her face to his.

"You aren't to be downcast, Willow. Yours was a brave attempt. It was brave of all of you--" He glanced up, catching Xander's eye, giving him a bit of a smile, too, to which the boy responded faintly. "If not for you, Seb and I should long since be what Buffy might term 'demon-chow.'"

Giles regarded his would-be saviors, noting what a battered lot they were: Buffy, with a nasty cut on her brow and a scrape on her arm, had gotten off lightest. Willow, on the other hand, having channeled a magic far beyond her current capabilities, appeared utterly drained. She was like someone who'd trained diligently for a hundred-metre dash, then been forced to run an entire marathon. Xander appeared to have come out on the wrong side of a face-to-face encounter with a tree, whilst Sebastian still had a wide-eyed shocky look and, quite unlike his normal self, had scarcely spoken since they'd been locked inside the tower. He sat with his back against the wall, Celeste's head on his lap, one hand absently stroking her hair.

And poor Celeste. Giles moved to her. He felt her pulse, which was a little fast, though not unduly so. Her skin felt cool, but not icy, and her dark eyes regarded him steadily enough, only a bit shadowed by pain. Still, it unnerved Giles to see her so quiet, stripped of her usual bountiful energy. He didn't dare lift the wadded, blood-stained shirt to check the wound in her side, afraid of what he might find there.

Giles touched her shoulder as gently as he could. "Celeste, my dear, how are you?"

"Bloody cold and uncomfortable," she responded, a little wearily, but with much her usual tone. One did not, with impunity, imprison the Perfect Hostess, and Celeste had never been one to wallow in despair. "Will they ever let us go, do you think?"

"One should hope so," Giles answered.

"Is he dead?" she asked, indicating Ethan with a nod, as he lay motionless just to the left of the door.

"I shouldn't imagine that I'd be so fortunate," Giles answered, to which his daughter-in-law smiled, but his son's eyes flickered.

"Dad," Sebastian admonished.

"Oh, very well." Giles almost pitied the young man, at times--convinced, as Seb was, of humanity's essential goodness, his belief in the possibility of any man's redemption. It had often been a topic of debate between them, one that would, perhaps, never be resolved. He crossed the room, and knelt beside his old enemy, rolling Ethan over without notable care.

Giles was punished, rather than rewarded, by the sight of the sorcerer's eyes moving beneath their bruised lids.

"Disappointed, Ripper dear?" He read the barest movement on Ethan's lips.

"Dreadfully," Giles answered, and meant it. "What in bloody hell did you think you were playing at, Ethan?"

"We might say I was jealous, Ripper." Ethan attempted to haul himself upright to a sitting position, seeming to expect Giles to help--which Giles did not supply. "After all, you had a Hellmouth to play with, and I didn't. I wanted one too. The power of one, at any rate."

Even battered almost beyond recognition, Giles thought, Ethan tended toward the loquacious.

"For your information, Ethan, the power of the Hellmouth is that it creates a gateway for evil beings into this world, and then people die. Perhaps it might provide a bit of power for the unscrupulous, such as yourself--but even you are just as likely to fall victim to whatever comes through. You must surely, by now, have used up your nine lives."

Ethan grinned at him with his ravaged mouth, the expression, somehow, even more full of unholy glee than usual. "A bit of power? Ripper, you've always thought small. Remember what we accomplished living there, even though the Hellmouth was closed to only a scar? Imagine what we might have done, and might still do."

"What we accomplished...?" For a strange, dead expanse of time, Giles no longer heard the pulse of the LeFaye wards. He thought of Ripper's voice in his head, the terrible things Ripper had wanted him to do, so far even beyond the fighting, the dark magic, the indiscriminate...acts. Ripper, whom Ethan had summoned into him, whom Ethan had tried to inflict upon his son.

The weight of the past fell upon Giles, and for long moments he could hear nothing but Randall's voice, screaming his name as he tried and tried to batter his way out against Ripper's invading presence. For decades he'd blamed himself for that night--and could still not, in entire honesty, admit that he was entirely blameless. He'd enjoyed, at first, both the challenge and the incredible high of summoning Eyghon--even though he'd hated the aftermath. As a youth, he'd been vain, and he'd been stupid, but the greater, the more deliberate part, of that evil had been, in fact, Ethan's doing. Giles had never intended for anyone to be injured, least of all his Randall.

And he's forgiven me, Giles told himself. Randall's forgiven me.

The image of the small, silvery ghost flickered across his memory, Randall's kind, familiar face, his words of healing--an opportunity, at last, to close the book on decades of guilt and grief.

Giles remembered something Ethan told him once, in the fallout of that terrible night of death and fire. He'd done it for jealousy, Ethan had said, summoned Ripper during the spellcasting, brought about Randall's death--all because he didn't like to share.

Giles felt the chilly sensation of his eyes turning colour. "I understand that the Council paid for your sorcery, for you to--ah--awaken the demon, and to tear open the Hellmouth--but why have you involved the children, Ethan? I expect an honest answer."

"Or what?" Ethan replied. "You'll beat me, as you did that Halloween? Coals to Newcastle, my dear." His own reddened eyes sought Giles's. "And besides, your lovely, sweet babies involved me in this little adventure, not I, them--and they asked me so nicely, I just had to include them."

Ethan coughed, then wiped blood from his mouth with the back of one hand. "I'd always so wanted to meet the famous LeFayes. Can't say I think much of their hospitality, though I suppose this means the Rayne family line won't dwindle to an end."

"Ethan--"

"Ripper," Ethan mocked, and then his voice lowered. He sounded, for nearly the first time since Giles met him, entirely sincere. "By all the dark gods, it wasn't the money. It's never the money, or even the power. It's the same reason it's always been." His long fingered hand rested on Giles's thigh; Giles glanced down, then up again.

"Ethan--" he repeated. Footsteps had begun to sound on the stairs; soon the tower door would open.

"That huge brain of yours, Rupert, and you never sussed it, did you? It's not so very hard to understand." Ethan caught hold of Giles's shirt with both hands, drawing him closer with an unbreakable grip. He nodded in the direction of the others, huddled together on the other side of the tower. "They don't know who you are. They don't appreciate you."

"And you do? Come now, Ethan."

"I only ever wanted one of two things from you, Rupert: for you to love me, or for you to kill me, and you'd never bleeding well do either, would you?" Ethan released him, staggering upward to his feet, supporting himself with one shoulder against the wall. "Let's not lie to one another now--we both know what these ginger-headed cows will do to me."

"I--I don't know what to say." Giles also rose. He stared at the bowed back of his old enemy. Yes, the door would open any moment now, and the LeFayes would be on the other side. "Ethan, I--" His head whirled, hatred and sorrow and the beating of the wards all intermingled.

"Is that all you can say?" Ethan's voice sounded, now, tender--caressing. "What's the good of you, Rupert, you great, useless berk?"

"Nothing," Giles answered, his throat tight. The tower door swung, and there were the sorceresses, the whole of House LeFaye lined up on the stairs. "Farewell, Ethan."

Ethan turned, presenting him with, somehow, the full force of the Rayne evil grin. "Cheers, Ripper. Ta for the memories."

The first of the LeFayes caught hold of him, tugging Ethan from the room. The last Giles heard was his voice, floating backward, sardonic and carefree, "Well, ladies, what have you planned for this evening?"

The door slammed shut.