Buffy the Vampire Slayer 1

by John Vorholt;Arthur Byron Cover;Alice Henderson

  As the four drew nearer, the city wall loomed up before them. Soon Buffy saw a great opening, a doorway that she could have slid her entire high school through, if she were in the mood to drag huge buildings around. No bars or metal blocked their way. As they got even closer, Buffy saw that the gates had the ability to close—two massive doors inlaid with copper stood on either side. But right now they hung wide open. On either side, above the doors, rose two matching towers. And pacing in those towers, staring down at them, were frowning guards. Buffy gave a little wave before Giles stilled her hand. “That might not be the best idea,” he counseled her.

  “I thought you said we’d look just like traders.”

  “Well, I certainly hope that’s how we’ll look,” he muttered, passing through the massive doors. When no arrows rained down on him, Buffy and the others followed.

  On the other side of the doorway, Buffy stopped in her tracks, bending her head back to take it all in. All around her stood tremendous buildings of golden mud bricks, elaborately painted and glistening with copper inlay. In the center of the city, some distance away, loomed a massive ziggurat. Greenery and blossoms draped down the sides of the pyramid-shaped structure, creating one of the most striking scenes she’d laid eyes on.

  “Are those the Hanging Gardens?” Xander asked, staring as well.

  “No, those were built later. But these are clearly a striking predecessor. Fascinating!”

  Entire orchards stretched out between buildings, the city fragrant and green and teeming with inviting fruit.

  As they passed under the thick shadow of the gate, Buffy heard a voice calling out to them. She didn’t recognize the language, but that didn’t surprise her. As long as Giles could talk to the locals and not get them killed, she was cool with that.

  Just inside the gate stood a young man, probably not much older than Buffy. He was lean, tanned, and muscular, wearing a linen tunic decorated with silver thread around the cuffs. He was no commoner.

  Giles told them, “I’m going to try to have a conversation.”

  “Good luck,” Xander said without much conviction.

  The young man spoke to them again, repeating what he’d said before in a practiced tone. He wore a satchel over one shoulder and clutched a wooden stylus in his hand. He spoke the same line again, and Buffy realized he was some sort of vendor, like a guy selling popcorn at a baseball game. Giles smiled, waved, and approached him. Buffy looked out over the vast city, which stretched far to the horizon, a maze of mud-brick houses, temples, lush greenery, and narrow passageways. Maybe the guy was selling a map. They needed one.

  Giles exchanged halting words with the young man, then shook his head. Her Watcher returned, grinning.

  “Well?” Buffy asked. “What was he selling?”

  Giles chuckled, then stopped. “It’s really rather ironic,” he said, laughing again. “He thought we were illiterates who needed his help in recording any transactions we undertook while trading in the city. He’s a scribe for hire.”

  “And he thought you were illiterate?” Xander asked, now laughing too. “Did you show him how it’s done?”

  Giles, clearly amused, pursed his lips. “I resisted. He’s just gotten out of school, and selling his ability is one way young scribes earn a reputation for themselves. His satchel,” Giles went on, pointing politely in the scribe’s direction, “is full of wet clay tablets that he can write on with that stylus. Then he fires the tablets and returns to collect his fee before we depart the city.”

  “Wow!” Willow said, looking at the scribe with new interest. The young man smiled at her, and she blushed in return. Buffy smirked. It figured that her friend would find him more attractive after learning he was a third-millennium-B.C.E. book-worm.

  “Did you ask him about the Slayer?” Xander asked.

  “I did indeed,” Giles said, “though I didn’t call her that. I asked about warriors in the city. He regarded me blankly.” He turned his eyes to the numerous avenues and houses before them. “The population of this city must be staggering. Locating the Sumerian Slayer will not prove as easy as it was on Anglesey.”

  The four friends stepped away from the gate, moving toward the interior of the city.

  “I want to go to that huge ziggurat!” Willow said, pointing toward the tremendous step pyramid rising in the center of the city.

  “We’re not here to sightsee,” Giles reminded her mirthlessly.

  Oh, come on, Giles!” she argued. “After we save the Slayer, we’ve got to walk around here. This place is amazing! Just think—right now, someone is writing the Epic of Gilgamesh. Think of the parallel of flood stories. We could see that in action! Right now Gilgamesh himself is somewhere here in this city. Imagine all the amazing archaeological finds housed in the British Museum. We could see them now, in their original condition!”

  Giles began to crack. As beautiful as this place was, Buffy would have been happier to lounge in the temple gardens than traipse around seeing museumy things. She remembered the last time she’d gone to a museum, dragging herself along from exhibit to exhibit, reading countless placards that faded out of her memory mere seconds after reading them. Things had picked up after one of the Incan mummies she saw came to life and tried to kill her friends. But the museum itself was utter dullsville. Buffy didn’t relish the thought of seeing an endless stream of “fascinating Sumerian artifacts in their original form.”

  “We really should go find the Slayer,” she said. “It may take us longer than we expected. The population of the city is, as Giles just said, staggering.” There. She’d cast her vote. Give her some vamps to fight. A few bruises. A knock on the head. Anything was better than museums.

  They nodded assent and continued forward, discussing where to begin. “Oh, I hadn’t thought of this before,” Giles said, “but what if the Sumerians themselves have museums? Ancient, puzzling artifacts that are long lost or destroyed by our time?” He slapped his hand to his forehead, stopping abruptly. “We could finally understand the gap between nomadic culture and civilization. It’s always puzzled archaeologists why humanity jumped from living in scattered villages to full-blown avenues, temples, pyramids, and multitiered societies. Perhaps these Sumerian museums would have evidence of cultures that directly preceded the Sumerians.”

  “We’ve got to find out!” Willow said enthusiastically, obligingly becoming Giles’s confederate. The betrayal stung deeply. So much for having a best friend. Buffy was going to have to stare at mud bricks until her brain dribbled out of her ear.

  Buffy gently took Giles’s arm and steered him down the wide avenue. He emerged from his reverie. “This must be the main thoroughfare. Sumerian cities usually contained one main street where a bazaar was held and people hawked their wares. This must be it!”

  “So what’s the plan?” Buffy asked him. “Do we seek out the Slayer or the vamps?”

  Giles stuck his chin out slightly in thought. “In a city of warriors, the Slayer may not stand out as easily. And finding the vamps will prove difficult. I imagine they’ll take measures to blend in again. Perhaps finding the Watcher is the way to go in this instance.”

  “The Watcher?” Buffy asked. “Is this just another chance for you to geek out?”

  “I will not ‘geek out,’ as you put it. At times it is useful to confer with another Watcher. Usually I must do this after a Slayer has died, and they aren’t as willing to discuss their experiences. The chance to speak with another active Watcher could prove quite helpful, and I’m considerably more well-versed in Sumerian than I am in Old Welsh.”

  Xander moved alongside them, listening. “Okay. How do we go about finding the Watcher? Ask around for a stuffy, overeducated person who hangs out with a mouthy, smart-ass, butt-kicking girl?”

  “Hey!” Giles and Buffy chorused in protest.

  Giles added, “Not all Slayers are like Buffy. In fact, most of them have been quite well-behaved.”

  “Not appreciated!” Buffy said, pulling ahead of them.
Willow caught up to her, still staring around in wonder.

  “So we’re going the Watcher route?” she asked.

  “Apparently so.”

  “At least we’ll have a head start on those vamps with the sun still up.”

  “Let’s hope,” Buffy said.

  They walked the wide avenue for several more blocks and began to hear a gaggle of voices rising in volume as they continued. Buffy saw a cluster of people in bright and earthy tones milling around one another. Awnings and huge umbrellas shielded tables full of wares, from fruit to cloth to musical instruments. People haggled and examined merchandise, and sellers barked out a litany of phrases, enticing buyers to their stands.

  “It’s the bazaar,” Willow said. “This is where most of the socialization goes on.”

  “Like the Bronze?” Buffy asked. A lyre player on one corner belted out a lively tune. The music wasn’t that bad, but it wasn’t Dingoes Ate My Baby.

  “This would be an excellent place to ask about the Watcher,” Giles suggested. As they entered the sea of buyers and sellers, mingling families, young people, and old men walking with canes, they scanned the tables. Buffy couldn’t believe how vibrant the whole place was. She imagined much of the ancient world as dusty relics in museums, or as stagnant images in history textbooks. But this place was so real. Something about seeing it in the bright daylight hit her more powerfully than Anglesey. On Anglesey they’d arrived on the island in the heart of darkness. Firelight was the only source of illumination, which made it hard to see faces clearly. But here, swarming in the daylight, the Sumerian culture was alive: ruddy faces wreathed in copper and lapis lazuli headdresses, elaborate beaded necklaces hanging from tanned necks—these millennia-old people were living beings. It hit her hard, and she stopped, staring around at the scene before her. In their costumes, they blended in completely, and people took little notice of them. Only the sellers directed attention their way, as they did to everyone who passed by. Buffy watched one woman in a blue linen dress stroll by. Her black hair was pulled back and fixed in place by an elaborate silver headdress with three large metal flowers protruding from the back. She wore makeup. She’d painted her eyelids robin’s-egg blue and highlighted her cheekbones subtly with rouge. She was beautiful, Buffy thought. Not some two-dimensional stone carving she’d seen in a textbook photo. Suddenly all the people around her, some hurrying, some strolling, became nearly overwhelming. She stepped off to the side, next to a peddler’s cart.

  He asked her something she didn’t understand.

  Giles turned to search for her, spotted her there, and said, “Oh, Buffy! Good show!” He came to her quickly. Turning, she realized she’d stopped at a scribe’s cart. Tablets of fresh wet clay, a number of wooden styluses, and baked tablets filled the attractive young man’s table.

  Giles spoke to him at length, and the young man pointed in the distance to the northeast. He talked further, gesturing with his hands, presumably describing a dwelling.

  Willow listened with rapt attention. “If I had anything to trade, I’d get one of these tablets and a stylus. Can you imagine what a cool souvenir that would be of our trip?” she asked.

  Buffy looked around at the neighboring carts full of gold and silver beadwork, elaborate necklaces, and earrings. “Yeah. A clay tablet. What more could you want?”

  Buffy realized Xander wasn’t with them, and she scanned the nearby crowd for him. At last she found him, engrossed in listening to a gorgeous woman reading from a stone tablet. Somehow, even though he didn’t speak the language, Xander found the recitation fascinating.

  Giles pulled the girls aside. “The scribe knows a man who is well versed in tales of the gods and history. And he has a young woman as a ward who is an unparalleled warrior.”

  Buffy nodded her thanks to the scribe. “Sounds like our guy.”

  “Where in the dickens is Xander?” Giles asked, noticing his absence. Willow pointed dejectedly out into the street, where Xander still listened in rapture.

  “Ah,” Giles said, catching a few words. “She’s a poet.”

  “Great,” Willow murmured, glancing that way. “Looks and talent. Who wants to listen to some crummy poet? She probably has Mesopotamian cooties.” She’d had a crush on Xander since time immemorial, but he didn’t seem to notice. Willow was too shy to tell him, and Buffy suspected Xander didn’t see her like that. In fact, he made more passes at Buffy herself than anyone else, though he occasionally branched out to fall in love with killer praying mantises and homicidal Incan mummies come to life. The Incan mummy had actually seemed quite sweet, until they realized she looked so pretty due to sucking the life out of hapless victims. That kind of ruined her image.

  “Xander!” Giles called. “We need to go.”

  Willow turned around sulkily.

  When Xander didn’t pull away, Giles strode to him and tapped him on the shoulder. Now Xander turned away sulkily.

  They met up again in the center of the wide avenue. “The Watcher lives in a mud-brick house to the northeast of here. We’ll have to take back streets to get there.”

  As they veered off the main path toward a narrow alleyway, a bell rang loudly four times.

  “What does that mean? They’re calling for the sacrifices of the day?”

  “Xander, you have sacrificing on the brain,” Buffy said accusingly.

  “Only because I’ve almost been one more times than I can count.”

  “Touché,” she conceded.

  “No, Xander,” Giles said. “It’s four o’clock.”

  Relief spread across Xander’s face.

  Willow spoke up, pointing to the bell tower, which they could see rising above the shorter buildings around them. “The Sumerians were the first ones to chime the bells on the hour and half hour. They divided the hour and minute into sixty segments. We adopted that from them.”

  “Indeed,” Giles said, appraising Willow with a smile. “Their entire math system was based on sixty because it was divisible by so many numbers. Of course, our math system is based on ten, and—”

  Buffy zoned out, staring at the buildings around her. Like the walls of the city, many of them sported colored brickwork depicting scenes. Bulls, the strange goat-fish creatures, and what looked like a hybrid of a snake, dragon, and wolf filled the murals, as did kings and hordes of people carrying a vast assortment of bushels, boxes, and plants.

  While Giles lectured, they covered more distance. The sun dipped below the horizon. The shadowed light of gloaming filled the alleyways. Now in the residential section, they passed more modest domiciles, though many of them were still two stories and bigger than her house in Sunnydale. All of them opened to courtyards in the back, where fruit trees grew plentifully and provided shade. If she lived in the ancient world, this place might not be so bad.

  “Here it is!” Giles said excitedly, pointing up. It was now completely dark. Buffy followed his gaze to a two-story mud-brick house. A painted banner hung down, emblazoned with a bull, two stars, and what looked like a vase full of dried flowers. “It’s the seal he described.”

  Giles walked to the entrance of the house, a graceful archway leading inside. He peered in. No one sat in the front rooms. “I’m quite unsure as to Sumerian etiquette at this point,” he admitted.

  Willow leaned forward. “Hello?” she called, then realized that the word meant nothing here.

  Giles followed suit, calling out in Sumerian. No one answered. Tentatively he stepped inside, glancing around the domicile.

  Elaborately furnished, the house was rich with color. Several wooden chairs sat around a table draped with deep red fabric. A reclining couch lay in one corner, clumped with blue and purple pillows. Buffy looked up the stairs. Precipitously narrow, they rose to a loft above, presumably for sleeping. A small light glimmered up there.

  “Could he be napping?” Willow asked, voicing Buffy’s thoughts.

  Giles called out again, but got no response. “Normally I would not be one to enter a house so rude
ly. But time is of the essence.”

  “I’ll see if anyone’s up there,” Buffy offered. She climbed the stairs carefully, somewhat worried they’d topple over under her weight. Somehow the word “mud-brick,” despite appearing quite sturdy, didn’t sound that strong.

  At the top of the stairs, she glanced around. A bed stood in the loft, with a small oil lamp burning next to it. And on the bed lay a man in his forties. His open eyes stared up at the ceiling. His jaw hung slack.

  He was dead.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Giles!” Buffy called. “You need to come up here!”

  In a few seconds, all four Scoobies gathered at the top of the stairs. Giles moved to the dead Watcher, taking his pulse. He pulled aside part of the man’s garb. Two bloody puncture holes bit deeply into his neck. Vamps had killed him but had not shared their own blood. At least, Buffy hoped they hadn’t.

  “He hasn’t been dead long,” Giles told them.

  “Is he going to come back?” Xander asked worriedly.

  “One way to be sure,” Buffy said. Against one wall leaned a gleaming sword. The edge glinted in the light, clearly sharp. She picked it up, strode to the body, and got ready to bring the blade down hard across the neck.

  “Wait!” Giles called out, grabbing her arm. “We can’t interfere with the time line. If this man ultimately became a vampire, then we must let him become one again.”

  Buffy didn’t like this. “What if he was killed by the assassin vamps?”

  Giles paused. “We need to find out for sure before we take any action.”

  “I don’t see signs of a struggle,” Xander said. “They must have killed him while he was sleeping.” After a pause, he added nervously, “Do you think they could still be here?”

  Buffy slowly turned around. Near where she’d grabbed the sword stood a curtain covering the entrance to another room. Deeper darkness gathered beneath the fabric. While the open doors and courtyard still let in the dying rays of dusk, that room clearly had no windows. She crept to it quietly, signaling for the others to keep up the chitchat.