__The Bird Bone Flute__part 11
By Blackmare



"Good morning, Father," Giles said, leaning into the abbot's sunlit room. Joseph's face brightened with a wide smile.

"Good morning to you, too, Rupert. Can you come in and sit a while?"

"That's what I'm here for," Giles stepped into the room and settled his long frame into one of the chairs drawn up beside the abbot's bed. "I wanted to see how you were doing trapped inside the maelstrom."

"Apart from the noise, it's been quite a novelty to sit idly by while so many others sweat and slave and solicit my wise opinions."

"Ooh, Absolute Power. Doesn't that come with a warning label, though?"

"Ahem. I believe that I read all the fine print on the box and saw nothing that a spiritually enlightened person such as myself can't handle with ease. Did you know that Mephistopheles has a freephone number now? I was shocked at first, but I can't say I'm really surprised. It was printed right under the very brief instructions." Joseph said this with a calm, beatific face, but the effort was belied by the wicked glee sparkling in his eyes.

Giles grinned at him, even as he noted that the wet rattles from the abbot's laboring lungs were louder than he'd remembered. The dust from salvage and packing could not be helping his condition. It struck him that this man understood courage and acceptance from a very personal perspective. Giles' grin eased back to a smile, then he found himself sobering completely as he slammed a heavy lid on the seething fears that had brought him here. He looked back over at Joseph and saw that the abbot had followed his emotional trajectory exactly, and knew what was coming.

"Actually, I wanted to take you up on your earlier offer of some of those wise opinions and assistance with taxing spiritual work," Giles admitted softly.

"I was hoping you would. I know this is difficult for you, Rupert." Giles attempted a wry smile and failed completely so he just nodded.

"I'm grateful that you're here," Giles said very quietly, "this particular kind of introspection isn't something I've practiced very often." Joseph leaned over and put his cool, knobby hand over Giles' clenched ones.

"It isn't easy country to cross. But I hope that I can help you with cartography and navigation." Giles laid one of his hands on top of Joseph's and gave it a gentle squeeze.

"Thanks. I'll try to be a worthy student."

"Rupert, your worthiness has never, ever been a question for me. What pains me is to see how often and how deeply it is a question for you."

Giles flinched at that, turned his head away toward the window, his eyes stinging. Joseph gave his hand another squeeze.

"The issue of your worthiness has a great deal to do with what you are experiencing with Herself. It is, perhaps, the crux of the matter," Joseph said. He saw the younger man's eyes close hard, saw his jaw muscles flex.

"Rupert, I won't tell you not to be afraid of this process. Fear is everyone's right, and privilege. It's one of our most important teachers if we'll pay attention to it. Fear keeps us from charging headlong into dangerous things. But sometimes we do have to plunge right through fear into the thick of the threat in order to make things right. Justice lies on the far side of fear, and so does mercy. And without them, you seldom find what you need. Rupert, look at me -," Giles turned and met the abbot's kind eyes, "what you need most, I think, is forgiveness. But I'm not the one that can give it to you. All I can do is help you discover who can, and help you accept it when it's offered."

Giles settled back, studied his clasped hands. His scholarly skepticism offered to assist him but he swatted it back into its alcove. What he was experiencing was just too real, too powerful, and much too personal to be addressed with anything less than credulity. Less than faith, actually. This was no time for dissembling or defenses. He felt Joseph watching him.

"I don't know if I can do this," Giles croaked around the tightness in his chest.

"I believe you're strong enough. And so does she. She's a much better judge of your character than I am for reasons that we'll get into in a moment." He paused then, giving Giles the chance to collect himself.

"It's the dreams," he began, "and other things - I can't decide if she's actually doing something to me or if something in me is just reacting to who she is, to what she is."

"I think I can assure you that it's a bit of both."

"Is that because it's happened to all of you, too?"

"Some of it has, but much of what's happening to you is unique to you, although there are aspects of it that would've happened to several members of your family line under similar circumstances. We three don't share that particular element with you."

"What does my family have to do with this?"

"Let's start with something simpler first, namely what she tends to do to anyone she interacts with on a regular basis. It's like she's an extremely powerful magnet that draws all the scattered and displaced parts of you into astonishing alignment. The first time it happens it knocks you right on your arse. James told me that it happened to you, as it did to me." He paused, remembering. "It didn't happen to Amos. He came to us with such a pure and orderly heart that it didn't need to."

"Yes, she certainly did have that effect on me. She still does; when she's near, something in me swings toward her like a compass needle."

"I don't think she does it deliberately. I think it's just the nature of what she is. Her angelic heritage kind of overrides our intrinsic chaos and transforms it into order."

"I've never felt the kind of rightness she showed me that first night. That kind of clarity and potency."

"That really is the right word. power. And potential: the ability to do what can be done, what must be done," Joseph said. "I do think she knows how hard this can be for us, how painful. I genuinely believe that she tries to help us through it when she can. In your case the changes probably run very deep, and I'll wager they are profoundly disturbing."

"My chequered past certainly isn't making it easier."

"That's the sort of thing that you, and I, and James all have in common. He and I both had a great deal of spiritual and personal house cleaning to do once she'd shown us the extent of our respective messes."

"Really?" Giles asked. "Somehow I find that surprising." Joseph smiled brightly at him.

"Well, I can't speak for James - the seal of the confessional and so on - but I was quite the arrogant bastard as a young man, and pursuing my vocation just changed the venue for my baser political urges without exorcising them. I was not a nice person, Rupert. And I genuinely believe that if I hadn't been sent up here, if I hadn't ever met her, I would have become one of those bitter, withered men with petty agendas who destroy any institution from the inside out just because they can. True meanness is rare, thank God, but I was growing quite a nice crop of my very own when she found me."

Giles sat back, incredulous.

"I have trouble believing you were as bad as you say."

"Probably because there's just shy of sixty years of hard work between that Machiavellian novice and this old husk. She made it very clear to me what I could be if I wanted to, and that potential was so compelling that I had to try to fulfill it."

"I think you have, Father," Giles said gently. Joseph smiled and looked down, plucking a bit at the quilts.

"Well, it'll always be a work in progress. This kind of life has helped, though. She showed me how to purge my vocation of the destructive, predatory traits I brought to it, and the results have carried me these long years now." The abbot reached for his water glass and took a long drink. He looked over at his guest. "It's not just your chequered past that makes this so difficult, Rupert. There's an aspect of who you are, not what you've done, that you'll have to deal with."

"You said my Thorne connection is somehow involved."

"It is indeed. It's time you knew that she asked specifically for you, my boy. She asked us to find you and bring you here. I requested you by name when I wrote to the Council, and - thank the Lord - they suspected nothing and let you come."

Giles sat up sharply.

"Me? Why - and how - could she know to ask for me?"

"Well, it took us a while to figure it all out. First she came to James in that evanescent human form she has sometimes worn when she needs to speak to us. That's how we learned that she needed someone to help her get west across the water. But we had no idea who. James summoned the wolf and asked that question and we waited. She came to me in a dream a few days later. She said she needed me to find the goat boy, "the stolen child who has become the heartlame warrior" were her words. From my own memory she plucked an image of you all those years ago, laughing among our kids, trying to offer the milk bottle to all of them at once. It was James who remembered the Latin word aegidius --,"

"It means 'young goat'."

"And it is the origin of the surname Giles."

"There are lots of Gileses out there."

"But only one who was stolen from the Thorne lands and lineage as a child, has been trained the way you are, and bears such a haunted heart."

"Stolen? I guess I never thought of it that way."

"Roderick and your mother certainly did. When you were called by the Council they knew they could never bring you back up here to stay even though you truly belonged here."

"Why? What makes me belong here more than Bath, or anywhere else, for that matter?"

"The Thorne lineage was fundamentally tied to this place and to its guardian a very long time ago. When your grandfather left, only a few distant relatives remained, and none in that generation showed the key traits. Then your mother and Rod were born in Bath, and another boy, Bran, was born here, so we knew the connection still existed. But in the next generation, only you showed the --,"

"Key traits?"

"Those green eyes, and the gift she gave your line two thousand years ago."

Giles' suddenly recalled his conversation with James.

"The green-eyed daughter."

"Yes."

"Her daughter."

"And her daughter's children, and several of their children, and a few in each generation of that lineage up to now."

Giles slumped back in the chair, his hands suddenly limp and his eyes glazed. Words abandoned him as he felt the golden green power roll over deep within him, offering itself up to its host now that he knew it for what it was.

"The wildfire."

"Yes."

"It's mine. And it's hers."

"You are an extremely gifted man, Rupert, in every sense of the word."

"I never knew."

"You never knew to look for it, either, because you were taken away from the ones who could have explained it all to you when it manifested. I think you would have been about seventeen when it revealed itself."

"That's definitely when I started to run off the rails. Took off for long weekends in the city looking for trouble. Found quite a bit of it. I did manage to keep it together long enough to finish school, matriculate at Oxford. By my second year I was dabbling in some pretty nasty stuff and only my exam marks and some fast talking on the part of two of my tutors kept them from sending me down right then. But it just got worse."

"The rage. God, Joseph, the rage was so huge, and wild, and hungry, and violent. My magic fed on all of that, and just kept burning hotter and stronger. At twenty-one I bolted, went out and found a way to feed the fire. It was viscious, predatory, gleefully destructive. Surely that cannot be what she gave us?" Giles voice cracked.

"No, the Thorne magic isn't intrinsically that way at all," Joseph answered, "not when it's anchored here where it was created. It's a warrior's magic, though, meant to help her defend this place against the things that came through the gate. Without that crucial connection to shape and channel it, I think that gift would have been like a power surge with nowhere to ground. The magic was obligated to seek its origin and purpose; that tremendous longing would have festered into truly poisonous frustration without losing one bit of its potency. Not a good thing to combine with your native intelligence, your independence, and several years of Council authoritarianism."

"And let's not forget raging hormones. Lord, I wouldn't be a that age again for all the money in the world, with or without bizarre mystical abilities," Giles sighed. "But the worst thing was the high I got from using it-well, abusing it, actually. It was a brutal addiction. Nothing else ever compared. Not drugs, or alcohol, or sex, although I certainly combined it with all of those because then I could share it more easily, and for a few hours I could fool myself into feeling a little less alone."

"But it didn't work, did it?"

"No. It certainly didn't. Those were the most horrific hangovers-not only waking up to crippling nausea, torrential nosebleeds, and thundering headaches, but also to the most appalling isolation and despair. So much shame. Eventually it was so bad I tried to stay pissed pretty much all the time, preferably stoned and pissed. And ultimately, even that wasn't enough to fill the emptiness. I think that's why Ethan and I raised Eyghon. Demons certainly do take up all the available space if you let them." He paused, his face pale and bleak. "They take up everything else, too, whether you let them or not."

"Rod and your mother had just enough of the fire themselves to know what'd happened. They tried so hard to find you, to help you understand, to bring you back up here so you could have some relief from that hunger."

"I never knew. I can't hold it against them, really. The Council was looking for me and eluding from them took both ingenuity and magic - I don't think Scotland Yard trains their detectives that well."

"No, they don't. The fact that a man of Rod's skill and talent couldn't find you was one of the things that convinced him the gift was stronger in you than it had been in anyone for generations. Does the Giles line have any of its own magic?"

"Yes, it does. Not like this, though. Very different, more cerebral, nothing combative. The Giles' are unusually good at finding hidden things, at languages and elusive, mystical information. I think that's why they have been so closely bound to the Council, and why so many of them have been chosen as Watchers."

"So imagine the potential of combining the Thorne gift with the Giles magic. You have both in spades, Rupert."

"Hmm."

"Exactly."

"So that's why I could fuck up on a truly colossal scale."

"Yes, you did. But you also did something else, something considerably more important and very much harder. Do you have any idea what it was?"

Giles turned haunted eyes to Joseph. The depth of despair and self-loathing there made the abbot cringe. Heartlame, indeed, he thought.

"No."

"She's probably shown it to you. That's how those dreams work."

"She's shown me some things that I very much didn't want to see again. Ever."

"Yet the answers you need are probably there, if you can bear to sift through it all."

"I really prefer picking through midden heaps that are at least a thousand years old, where the shit and rubbish belong to other people who are long gone."

"I'm sorry this isn't simple archaeology, Rupert. But try a different metaphor: you are lancing and draining a very old wound that you've lived with for so long you don't realize how much it's altered the way you move, how it limits the things you can do. Because it hurts so much you avoid it. By now you've completely distorted your natural posture to accommodate the damage and to keep anything from touching it."

"Indeed," Giles breathed, staring hard at his hands.

"The poison from that wound seeps out, you know. Eventually it will contaminate everything you do."

"The anger."

"Yes."

"The restlessness. The only time I can almost be still is when I'm buried in some kind of research work, or on the training floor."

"I think that instinctively you've used the Giles magic to cope with the Thorne gift. And it helps that you've developed your fighting skills and the discipline they demand. But I think you know it's only a temporary solution. In the end, that Thorne fire will erupt again."

"But if I leave the Council and move up here I'll be foresworn-not just in a way that threatens my conscience, but in a way that has serious, possibly fatal, mystical consequences."

"Surely the Watcher's oath isn't a geas?" Joseph said, suddenly alarmed.

"No, it isn't, at least not generally."

"But they did something different for you, didn't they?" the abbot hissed, his eyes flashing.

"Yes. When I came back they made my return conditional on my consent to a binding."

"What kind of shape were you in that you would agree to such a thing, Rupert?"

"Well, six hours earlier a man had found me washed up on the beach in Kent. And for three days and nights before that I'd been walking away from London. And behind me in London there was a building burning with two bodies in it, one killed by a demon I had raised and the other killed by my hand to lay that demon down again."

Joseph sat staring at him. Giles looked up to meet his shock and anger.

"I thought Rod had told you everything already," he said very quietly, resigned to yet another round of condemnation and rejection. This time he knew it would hurt more than it usually did because he genuinely cared for this man and valued his good opinion. Joseph reached over and took Giles' hands in both of his own, squeezed them.

"Oh, my dear boy," he choked out. "Of course he did. Don't you see? It isn't you that makes me furious, it's them," he spat the word out. "How dare they extort your service in that way! To force that on you when you were in such a state is beyond vile. It is an act of the utmost cowardice. Has it ever occurred to you that they were so terrified of you and your abilities that they exploited that moment to get some kind of muzzle and leash on you so they could control your tremendous potential? Surely they realized they would never, ever get another opportunity."

Giles' eyebrows indicated that this hadn't, in fact, ever occurred to him. Joseph could see the realization trickling down through the years of reticence and barbed, furious self discipline.

"Rupert," he said very softly, "the only way they could contain you was to turn you against yourself. They leashed you with the one thing strong enough to withstand your wild magic."

"My honor," he breathed.

"And then they spent years convincing you that they had done it for your own good." Giles nodded, barely breathing under the pressures shifting in him.

"I see that the irony of dressing such an unethical act in a cloak of ethics and beneficence isn't lost on you," Joseph continued.

"No, it's not," Giles whispered. "Unfortunately, I don't think their questionable motives negate the power of the binding. I did consent. It's not like a legal contract, where deception of one party by the other renders the agreement moot."

"But it's possible that you can find a way to fulfill the oath that isn't so eviscerating to you. What happened after that? I don't know much about the structure of Council training, and I understand that you can probably only discuss it in a general way."

Giles settled back in his chair, shifting to relieve some of the tension in his back and legs. Somehow the way Joseph framed the situation implied that he should reconsider and perhaps even discard several huge stockpiles of guilt and recrimination. Giles had no hope of absolution as such, but he was beginning to hope for some smaller kind of ease.

"Well, I was twenty-four when I returned. My schooling had been interrupted, so I had a great deal of work to make up, exams, that sort of thing. Oddly enough, I retained most of what I'd learned-almost certainly because of the Giles gift-so they let me move directly into the fourth year of the BA. Whatever time I had apart from my academics went to training in combat, esoterics, Council history, and so forth. The physical stuff was the hardest because I hadn't been kind to my body during those years. Malnutrition, damage from alcohol and drugs, and a lingering toxicity from the kind of magic I'd been practicing."

"I can just imagine. Did they give you time to mend before they laid into you?"

"Oh, please," Giles snorted venomously, "they took every opportunity they could to thrash me, assuring me all the while that this was for my own good, part of the healing process, and the only way to purge the poison."

"You know, that's a standard technique used to keep someone in an abusive relationship. It's a type of mind control."

"Yes, I suppose it is."

"How bad did it get?"

"Some broken ribs, a broken wrist, several sets of stitches, miscellaneous soft tissue damage." Joseph inhaled sharply, made a strangled noise. "Then something changed. Along about the second year, starting with quarterstaff and then saber, and finally in hand-to-hand."

"The Thorne gift found a way out again, I think. It is a fighting magic, after all."

"That makes sense. All I know is that I stopped losing as badly, and then I stopped losing at all. And now I'm really, really dangerous if I lose my temper. They don't let me spar much anymore. I'm told it's demoralizing to my peers to be paired with me, but they won't let me teach, either. So I do what I can to train myself." He paused, then added shyly, "I took a BFA silver medal in saber that second year." Giles smiled suddenly, his face brighter for a moment. The contrast, and its brevity, pained Joseph. "They sent me to a fencing master since I was more than a match for the Council's best. I was only in the one tournament."

"You took a national-level silver your first time out?" Joseph sounded inordinately proud.

"Yes." Giles' face fell. "Then they decided my time could be put to better use and that was that." Joseph sighed.

"They probably knew their hold on you was tenuous at best. Keeping you off balance and overworked seemed to be their best strategy."

"And I was willing to cooperate. Remember that I did get a kind of solace in the scholarly work. I finished by BA, did an MA in ancient languages, then started the PhD in archeology. By then my Council research obligations had grown to the point where it was almost a parallel degree course and that slowed me down. I did get to go on some fantastic digs, though," again there was a brief flash of pleasure that faded as quickly as it had appeared.

"Putting your particular intellectual abilities aside for a moment, is this kind of academic rigor the standard requirement?"

"Well, that depends on where they think you'd do best."

"You mean on where they want to use any given person," Joseph corrected firmly. "I am not convinced they actually have any individual's best interests in mind when they dictate their program."

"I'm beginning to see that. I think I'd always suspected it, but who was I going to discuss that kind of suspicion with, really?" Giles paused, and Joseph could see the younger man was still busily extrapolating from his profoundly changed initial conditions.

"Anyway," Giles continued a bit absently, "there are two fundamental tracks a Watcher can take. One is field-oriented, the other is analytic and investigative. Both get a certain common grounding in combat and research, but early on one faces a series of detailed evaluations and they sort you into one or the other and your training starts to specialize more in that direction. You take your initial oath at that time, and it's tailored to that kind of obligation. There are periodic examinations after that and you accumulate credits, as it were. Once you have enough to fulfill the requirements for your track, you take your final oath and are ordained."

"Where did they put you?"

"That's kind of a tricky question to answer. The short version is that they assigned me to analytic but I continued to test and pass in every requirement for the field course. They wanted to forbid me from taking the evaluations, but the process is governed by outside faculty -- ordained senior Watchers from other Council branches around the world -- who are obligated to assess anyone who comes forward and asks to participate. The London board challenged my right to do so, and in the end they got the evaluators to compromise and say that my results would have no bearing on my official status or assignment. London thought if they removed any possible reward that I would stop."

"I gather you didn't."

"Every year I enter the list and pass."

"But you don't just pass, do you Rupert?" Joseph said gently. "Where exactly do you land in the rating?"

Giles squirmed and looked away. He sensed Joseph settle back to wait as long as necessary for a complete answer.

"For the last four years I have led the list, and before that I was in the top five every year from the first year that I assayed the test," he said very quietly.

"How many people have ever done that?" Joseph asked.

"I don't know. I never thought about it. Hell, I've lost track of the credits I might have won because they were so far in excess of what was needed. It was just something that I had to do." He looked up and met the abbot's kind eyes. "All I have ever wanted since I submitted to their damned binding was to be in the field, to work with a Slayer. I can't explain it, but it's the only vision I have ever been able to see of my future, the only path that is truly the right path for me. I apologize for being so vague, but I just can't explain it very well."

"Has it ever occurred to you that you have a genuine vocation, Rupert, a true mystical calling to be companion to a hero?"

"The Council throws that word around a lot -- vocation, I mean. It underlies all the oaths, frames all their ceremonies and pomp."

"Do you really believe, in your heart, that they understand the phenomenon? Anyone can use the word, you know, and it's very effective when you want to enforce obligations and to manipulate commitments. But I think that when they're faced with the real animal they are terrified right down to their hidebound toenails."

"I'm not following you."

"A true vocation is a very powerful force. It has the energy to shape and order an entire life, the power to make possible in the world a great vision, or action, or service. Do you think that kind of thing would be biddable, would be even mildly obedient to the machinations of something as extraneous to it as an ancient and august institution?"

"Like the Council? Or," he realized suddenly, looking up at Joseph, "the church?" The abbot rewarded him with a grin.

"Exactly."

"And what makes you think I have such a thing?"

"Herself. Think about what happened the first time she met you. If you could express what you felt in the simplest possible terms, what would you say?"

Giles thought about it. He stilled himself and carefully sought out the memory of those moments just before he blacked out. He remembered fearing the bright fire rising in his core, knowing now that it was his gift responding to the giver. He remembered that profound shift in his sense of himself.

"Coherent. Alive. Able. Those three things. For the first time in my life everything I am and can do fit perfectly together. I have never felt so strong, so vital."

"That, my boy, is what a true vocation feels like. That's what it can do for you and with you. All you have to do to make it happen is acknowledge it and accept it."

"I see." Giles digested this for a long moment. "So you're saying that I have a vocation as a Watcher or what?"

"I'm saying you have a true vocation--empowered by magnificent magical gifts and your rare intelligence--to be a companion for a hero. In your case, that could be as Watcher to a Slayer. An extraordinary Watcher, Rupert. Given your abilities, I would speculate that you might even be destined for a particularly crucial place and/or a very significant battle."

"Oh," he said. After a much longer silence he asked, "A vocation to be a companion? What on earth does that entail?"

"Not a 'companion', Rupert: a hero-companion. There's a huge difference. And yes, it is an ancient vocation."

"Like a squire, or a sidekick?" he smiled wryly, but it didn't last.

"No. Think about Jonathon and David, Simon Peter and Jesus, Wiglaf and Beowulf, Lancelot and Arthur, Charles and Joan d'Arc. The difficulty is that history usually misses them because they aren't as flashy as the heroes they support and they just don't leave much evidence. They are, as it were, backstage or in the shadows. Yet they have lived and served in their thousands, throughout the centuries in all the cultures of the world, and you will find them if you go looking."

"So it's not about polishing the armor and keeping the sword sharp," he asked, carefully neutral. Joseph chuckled.

"If you take up this calling you will come to wish it could be so simple. No, it's about anchoring the hero in the world long enough for them to accomplish what they were sent here to do. It's about friendship, loyalty, logistical assistance, watching each other's backs, keeping the home fire burning, providing rest and sanctuary. It's about keeping the hero grounded and reminding them why they're fighting, often against impossible odds.

"It occurs to me," Joseph continued, "that the best descriptions of hero-companions come from the poets and storytellers, the ones with enough imagination and empathy to see beyond the superficial statistics of the struggle. J.R.R. Tolkien got it. Think about this: did Gandalf send Samwise Gamgee with Frodo Baggins because the Ringbearer needed a cook? Of course not."

"I guess I never thought about Watchers in quite those terms. I don't think that's what they actually do."

"What's the job description for a Watcher who's been assigned to a Slayer?" Joseph asked.

"Well, there's physical training, of course, giving the Slayer the exact fighting skills she'll need to use her strength, agility, and speed to the best advantage against the enemy. There's mental and mystical training as well, things like strategy and heightened sensory awareness. And the watcher provides crucial information about what she's fighting and how to fight it."

"That's all?"

"Well, depending on the culture, the Watcher often houses and feeds the Slayer from the time she's called until she dies, so that's a kind of support, I suppose." Giles looked up at the abbot and saw these answers weren't enough.

"Is that all you feel called to do? Would you be satisfied with that list?" Joseph asked. Giles' eyebrows quirked as he considered this.

"No, I wouldn't. That doesn't feel right, doesn't feel like enough. Not just enough for me; not enough for the Slayer, either. The Council teaches us that she's just one of many, a powerful, perishable weapon that we deploy and support for as long as she lasts and then the next one appears to replace her." He paused. "I have always felt -- privately, of course -- that theSlayer is really something more complex than that. And, oddly, something simpler: she's a girl. A very young girl. I've thought about that part a lot, in terms of sacred virginity, the blood of the innocent lamb, and so forth, but that isn't it at all." He looked up at Joseph and continued.

"The Council never speaks of the Slayer as a person, an individual. The only place where you find her described in those terms is in the diaries of Watchers who've been assigned to one. But in the writings of the analysts that sort of personification is usually dismissed as a frivolous aspect of the mythical Watcher-Slayer bond." Giles saw a smile begin in Joseph's eyes.

"But you think it's more than that, don't you?" the abbot asked.

"Yes. I think the Slayer could not do what she must do, could not even try, much less prevail, unless she were a very special kind of person, quite apart from her enhanced abilities."

"And, in your experience, how does the Council handle 'special' people?" Giles snorted.

"Exactly."

"Has it ever occurred to you that the Slayer could be so much more, might even live much longer, if she had a different kind of support?"

"Yes, it has, though not in such clear terms. I've only reached the 'this feels wrong and inadequate' part."

"Do you know if anyone else feels this way?"

"No. This train of thought is, by Council standards, profoundly heretical. I certainly haven't discussed it with anyone, and I'm sure if anyone else felt this way they wouldn't ever discuss it with me."

"Not even as the resident loose cannon?"

"Especially not as the resident loose cannon. I suspect that being acquainted with me is not an approved behavior for the aspiring candidate in either branch of our service."

"Rupert, if that binding was broken, would you leave them?"

"Where else would I go?"

"Answer the question," Joseph pressed gently.

"Hmm. Well, before this conversation I would have said no, because of the terrible longing I have to be assigned a Slayer."

"And now?"

"Now I would say no because of the terrible longing I have to serve a Slayer the way she deserves to be served, although I'm seeing that this has very little to do with Council tradition, training, protocol, and strategy."

"What if you never succeed in convincing them that you have earned a field assignment?"

"I'll give it a few more years, then I'll leave. I think they'd release me at that point. There are other ways to serve the light and fight the darkness. I'll figure something out." Giles rubbed his eyes, then took off his glasses and cleaned them very carefully.

"May I ask you a personal question?" he looked up at the abbot.

"Certainly. I may even answer it," he smiled kindly.

"Joseph, how is it that you've thought so much about all this? I understand that you had a long correspondence with Uncle Rod, but that doesn't explain it. I never expected to find this here, and in a person in your position in life and in the church."

"Rupert, my position as an abbot in this monastery doesn't really cover who I am or what I do. Like you, I have a true vocation; this is just the mundane framework where I serve it. Understand, I'm not a hero-companion, this place doesn't need one right now, and hasn't for almost two hundred years. But within these walls and out in the village there have been so many who've carried that title through the centuries. Here, in this place, we are keeping company with the oldest living Slayer on earth."

* * *