Buffy the Vampire Slayer 3

by Nancy Holder

  Yet their leader, Chirayoju, seemed unconquerable. With its green, moldy face and taloned hands, it was a terrifying sight as it rose into the air and hurled volleys of fireballs into the castle courtyard.

  Sanno answered in kind, and the two pummeled each other with fire and blazing whirlwinds. Sanno stamped the earth in fury. The ground shook so hard that trees were uprooted, waterfalls sprayed upward, and dragons threatened to escape from the cracks and fissures. The castle itself began to disintegrate. Timbers crashed to the castle floors. Kammu’s favorite daughter was crushed to death, as were many others.

  In desperation, realizing that the powerful demon and the equally powerful kami would soon lay waste to all of Nara, Kammu prayed to his Divine Ancestors and all the Heaven People, and suddenly the sky lightened a few degrees as Amaterasu showed her face far earlier than expected.

  “Chirayoju!” Sanno called to his enemy. He pointed at the mountain range. “The sun will rise soon, and she will bring your death. Let us finish this. Surrender, and I will kill only you. Your vile followers may continue their miserable existence.”

  Sanno’s challenge confirmed the Emperor’s greatest fear about the Mountain God’s real intentions. The thought that the remaining oni and kappa and vampire eta would be free to prey on his subjects was insupportable.

  “Never!” Chirayoju shouted as it pounded the castle with more fire. More than two-thirds of the beautiful palace blazed, and Kammu’s second-oldest daughter was burned to death in her chambers.

  Emperor Kammu sat straight on his warhorse and lifted his hands. “Lord Chirayoju,” he said, “it is as Lord Sanno has said. The sky lightens. Soon you and your vampire warlords will burst into flame even as my palace and my child have burst into flame. I propose combat between the two of you. And I swear that I will offer my blood to you if you are the victor.”

  “What are you doing?” Sanno thundered at Kammu.

  The Emperor lowered his voice and said, “My Divine Ancestor has revealed to me how you may kill it. I will arm you with the knowledge.”

  As reassurance, he spoke of some of the rituals and incantations that Amaterasu-no-kami had shown him in her mirror. But the Emperor did not reveal that he knew how to defeat the Mountain God as well.

  Satisfied that he now held the upper hand, Sanno waved his banners and shouted to Chirayoju, “Demon lord, though you are a foul pestilence, yet are you powerful. I have pledged to the Emperor Kammu that I would protect his household. Yet with our combat, you and I are destroying his palace and killing his children. I, too, swear that if you defeat me, I will allow you to destroy me.”

  Chirayoju looked intrigued. As the monster hung in the air high above its followers, it looked toward the horizon. The mountaintops were dusted with the first purple washes of day. Perhaps it realized that if it did not defeat Sanno very soon, it would have to retreat, leaving its back vulnerable to every blow the Emperor and Sanno could deal.

  At length it said, “I accept your challenge. I will come alone.”

  • • •

  They met in the courtyard, the great Mountain God at one end, the fearsome vampire sorcerer at the other. The sky was still dark, but the divine light of the sun would soon lift the veils of night.

  The Emperor had chanted over Sanno’s sword, which was already an enchanted weapon, being the sword of a kami. But now it was even more powerful. If Sanno pierced Chirayoju straight through the heart, it would surely die.

  Chirayoju faced the Mountain God without fear. This was but one minor deity; it was capable of devouring all of Heaven itself!

  Mockingly, Chirayoju made an elaborate bow and thought, Soon, this fool will die. And then not only shall I drink the blood of the weak-minded Emperor, but I shall devour Kammu completely.

  Also armed with a sword, Chirayoju assumed a battle stance.

  Above them, in the parapets, the Emperor had donned clothes all of white. Around his head he wore a cloth inscribed with a character from the incantation the Goddess had taught him, the single word for the Life Force, which is ki.

  He stood on sacred tatami mats blessed by the priests, and he poured ritual sake—rice wine—on the woven straw.

  Below him, the two supernatural beings rushed at each other, brandishing their swords above their heads. The blades clanged, and sparks shot into the heavens like the lament-laden death songs of ancient dragons.

  On the tatami before the Emperor lay his own sword. If he failed to stop them both, he planned to offer his own life to the gods, in the hope that they would protect his poor nation. As the Goddess had foretold, he would die an excruciating death, for he would slice open his own abdomen as atonement for his incompetence. The blood that gushed from his mortal wound would be the only blood of his that Chirayoju would enjoy.

  But he prayed that this would not be his fate. He prayed that, instead, he would see Sanno victorious, and thus betrayed. He could not allow Sanno to walk the earth, for the Mountain God had become an evil thing, much like the demon he fought. Kammu’s Divine Ancestor had assured him of this. And so she had revealed to him the sacred incantation, which would bind not only Chirayoju into the sword, but Lord Sanno as well.

  “Chirayoju!” Sanno shouted. “I offer you an honorable death. Commit suicide with your blade, and I shall write a death poem for you.”

  Chirayoju sneered at Sanno and flew high into the air. “If your poetry sings like your sword, I would writhe in the spirit world to hear its discordant verses.”

  And so, as they charged each other in the courtyard below, Emperor Kammu prepared his tatami mat with salt and sake, and ran though his mind the phrases he must utter to bind them both into the steel.

  As their swords clashed, the wind rose violently. The earth shook, rolled, and trembled. Around Kammu, his castle blazed. Though he would surely burn with it, he would not move from this place until all was accomplished.

  Softly, he whispered a poem of his own:

  “Weep now, earth, air, fire,

  Tears for Kammu’s dead children,

  Water, Earth’s fourth soul.”

  The Emperor Kammu would not falter.

  He would bind them—or die.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  There was no way anyone was sending Xander home, and that was that.

  Now, that settled, he asked in a whisper, “Has it occurred to anyone that part of hanging out with the Slayer means getting a whole new education in petty crime?”

  They watched as Cordelia approached the front door, nervously glancing back at them. Giles and Xander both urged her on. Finally, she began to pound on the door, screeching for help as loudly as she dared. They wanted the night watchman to come running, but they would rather not draw the attention of anyone working security at any nearby buildings. Not that there were many that could be deemed “nearby.”

  “Help me!” Cordelia cried. “Oh, please help!”

  “For someone whose life has been in jeopardy several times, she’s truly horrible at maintaining any kind of pretense,” Giles whispered.

  “Which is, y’know, a really, really bad thing,” Xander replied with very little conviction.

  They heard the locks ratcheting back. The door swung open and the night watchman appeared, a rather rotund individual in an ill-fitting dark blue uniform, holding a long nightstick in one hand.

  “Miss, what is it?” he asked with genuine concern.

  “Oh my God, help me, they’re after me!” Cordelia said desperately, throwing herself at him more as if she were the first customer in line at the Macy’s after-Thanksgiving sale than if her life were in danger. “Please! Two men were chasing me, I think they wanted … I don’t know what they wanted, but you’ve got to help me! Really!”

  “We’re dead,” Xander whispered. “This is never going to work. I’ve seen better acting on canceled daytime soaps.”

  Giles turned to regard him with one eyebrow raised.

  “Which I never watch, and only ever saw while I was channel surfing, s
earching for the college squash … um, no, basketball games,” Xander quickly corrected.

  “Whatever we may think of her skills as a thespian, Cordelia’s performance seems to be having the desired effect,” Giles replied quietly.

  Xander watched in awe as the night watchman patted Cordelia’s shoulder. She poured on the boo-hoo a little too thick, particularly since she had insisted she not be required to actually cry, as tears would ruin her newly applied mascara. Still, the guard seemed to be falling for it.

  “Where’d these lowlifes come after you, darlin’?” the watchman asked.

  “Over …” Sniff.“… over there,” Cordelia said, and pointed off in the other direction, where a stand of trees separated the museum gate from the lawn.

  Xander rolled his eyes. It was a sure bet the guy would wonder what she’d been doing over in a far dark corner of the grounds to begin with.

  “All right, missy, don’t you worry ’bout a thing,” the middle-aged, potbellied watchman comforted her. “You go on inside now and call the police. I’m gonna have a look around. You lock up and wait by the door here for me to come back. Don’t let anyone in but ol’ Eddie, you hear?”

  Cordelia whimpered in agreement and allowed Eddie to usher her into the museum, where she promptly slammed and locked the door. Xander stared in disbelief as the watchman started across the lawn as if the Mission: Impossible theme were playing in his head.

  After a moment, he and Giles moved around the corner—Xander very gingerly—and tapped lightly on the door. Cordelia opened up quickly, they ducked in, and then she was twisting and sliding all the locks shut behind her.

  “Well, that buys us about three minutes,” Cordelia said archly. “Now what?”

  “Hmm?” Giles asked, and glanced up innocently, with that I’m-sorry-was-planning-this-caper-supposed-to-be-my-idea? face.

  “Oh, no,” Xander said, wagging his finger at the Watcher. “Uh-uh. There’ll be no hmms, do you understand, Giles? No hmms! Now. What do we do when he comes back?”

  “Oh, well.” Giles nodded, glanced away distractedly. “I suppose Cordelia should merely pretend to be too frightened to open the door. Cordelia, you might tell him he’ll have to wait outside until the police arrive, just so that you can be sure of your safety.”

  “That’s your plan?” Cordy asked. “For me to act like a stupid ditz?”

  “What there is of it, yes.” Giles lifted his chin as if daring them to call it a bad plan.

  “That’s a bad plan,” Xander said. Cordelia looked pleased. “Not that you can’t act like a stupid ditz, Cor. In fact, I’ve seen you do it.”

  Giles blinked, apparently surprised that the old lifting-the-chin-trick hadn’t intimidated them.

  “Yes, well, when you’ve developed a better plan, please do inform me,” he said tartly, and turned to walk deeper into the museum toward the Japanese exhibits.

  “See,” Xander began, as he followed Giles, “my plan would have included making sure we didn’t go to jail, which, in case you didn’t know, is not some kind of modern slang for ‘tropical paradise.’” He paused and caught his breath. “Are you getting this, Giles? Jail, bad!”

  “Xander.”

  “Coming!”

  A short time later, they stood staring at the Sword of Sanno.

  “Fascinating.”

  “What is it, Mr. Spock?”

  Giles sighed and glanced at Xander. He was not without a sense of humor himself, of course, but the boy did choose the oddest times to exercise his peculiar brand of levity.

  “Take a look at this.” Giles pointed at the large sword on the wall. “This is the sword that Willow cut herself on. The Sword of Sanno. There appear to be Oriental characters engraved in the guard.”

  With a pen, he indicated the metal plate that separated the blade from the hilt of the sword. “I wish I knew what these meant.”

  Then he looked a bit closer. The hilt itself was wound with braids of silk in a crisscross pattern that seemed to hold in place several small disks on either side.

  “Look here,” he said, more to himself than to Xander. Absently he listened for Cordelia’s high-pitched cries, which would signal the return of Eddie the large watchman, but she was silent. In the silence, he fervently prayed that she had not forgotten her job.

  “What am I looking at?” Xander asked.

  “Well,” Giles said, pointing at the hilt, “notice the silk braiding here, which seems designed to both hold and expose these round plates.”

  “Yeah,” Xander said. “And I notice the same thing on just about all the other swords in here.”

  “Indeed,” Giles admitted. “But those swords are katana or other, similar swords, all from a later period. Something this ancient would never have been treated in this way. It is a style that wasn’t developed until much later. Also, the plates have markings similar to those on the guard.”

  Xander was silent. Giles turned to look at him.

  “I thought you said you didn’t know anything about Japanese history or culture or whatever,” Xander said.

  “Well, I recall very little from my schooling, but I did come to the exhibit. As did you.” Xander just shrugged. “I’ve just finished reading Claire Silver’s journals. In fact, we learned the most fascinating thing on the way over here. It seems that Sanno the Mountain God was also bound inside the sword.”

  “No kidding.” Xander looked askance at the weapon. “He’s in there now?”

  “I’m not certain.” Giles looked at him. “But I think so.”

  “Maybe those little disk things were added when he was, um, bound in. Maybe it happened later, so that’s why all that extra stuff is from a later period.”

  “Perhaps,” Giles said. “But if the enchantments were that powerful, Willow’s simply cutting herself should not have been enough to allow Chirayoju to be set free. Though certainly, her blood would have been a partial catalyst, and Buffy did say that her state of mind was rather vulnerable. Still, if there was a binding spell, in fact, more than one, I don’t understand how …”

  “Hey, check this out,” Xander said, and moved past Giles to point to the hilt. “It looks like one of the disks is missing. Here.”

  Giles stared at the spot where a disk had been. “Thank you, Xander, I believe you’ve just answered my question.”

  Xander blinked. “I have?”

  “Now I’ve got to figure out how to remove that spirit from Willow and bind it again. We’ll have to lure her here somehow,” he said absently, deep in contemplation.

  “Or we could just take the sword.”

  “No, wait!” Giles cried.

  But it was too late. Xander had already reached for the sword on the wall, grabbed it by the hilt, and lifted it down.

  “We’re—,” Xander began to say, but the sentence ended there, and the smile disappeared from his face. His eyes narrowed, his nostrils flared, he thrust his chest out as though he were trying to impress the girls. He lifted his chin with an arrogant flair, and for a moment Giles thought Xander was mocking him again.

  Then he spoke.

  “Free,” he said.

  But it wasn’t Xander’s voice. Not at all. It was deep and resonant, as though it came from all around the room. It was filled with a power and a pride that made Giles want to drop his eyes to the floor in deference. He fought that urge, and instead stared right at Xander’s face.

  Xander’s face. But Xander Harris was gone.

  “Ahem,” Giles cleared his throat nervously. “Sanno, I presume?”

  Eyes that once were Xander’s locked on Giles’s face, and the Watcher felt his spine melt. If it wasn’t for his memory of Xander’s particularly foolish sense of humor, he might have shrunk from those eyes.

  “I am Sanno, King of the Mountain,” the spirit wearing Xander’s flesh spoke to him. “Where is the vampire?”

  “Well, I’m not quite sure, but you should know that …”

  “No matter. I can smell it. Once and for all time, I w
ill destroy it,” Sanno thundered, and began to walk toward the back of the museum, toward a pair of French doors and away from the front, where Cordelia was now trying to hold off Eddie the watchman with her damsel-in-distress routine. In the shock of Xander’s transformation, Giles had missed the watchman’s return.

  “Cordelia, a small change of plans. We’ve got to go!” Giles cried urgently. “Quickly!”

  Giles heard her running down the hall, and turned to see her appear in the doorway. “Well, it’s about ti—,” she began, but didn’t finish the sentence. Instead, she stood next to Giles and watched Xander, bearing in his right hand a sword Giles could barely have wielded with two, striding toward the French doors.

  “The eternal war ends tonight!” Sanno declared, and crashed through the French doors, setting off numerous ear-shattering alarms.

  Giles thought of Willow. “Yes,” he whispered to himself. “That’s precisely what I’m afraid of.”

  “We must hurry,” Giles said at a trot. Cordelia fought to keep up. “We don’t know where Willow is, and if we lose sight of Xander, we may never know. We’ll be too late to do anything.”

  “Okay, yeah, but you aren’t wearing heels!” Cordelia snapped as she watched the distant figure stride across the museum lawn. In the background, the security alarm had fallen silent. Eddie the watchman must have decided she was a psycho and told the police to go home.

  The figure seemed to shimmer as it walked. It seemed bigger and taller than Xander, and yet, if she squinted, Xander was the only thing there. It was Xander they were following, but it wasn’t.

  She caught up to Giles and glommed on to him, trying like anything to step out of her shoes. With each step they took, her too-high heels sank about two inches into the lawn.