Nissa looked. The kor s odd crystal was tucked into the waistband that bound her rags to her body.
It is not in her hand, Anowon said.
Just so, Nissa said. It is not directly contacting her skin.
A rock rolled down from above. Nissa followed its descent as it plummeted by them and far to the right.
The trail might continue like this for a long time, Nissa said. She leaned against the cool wall. A warm breeze rustled her hair. If she could just close her eyes Sleep was about to take her when Anowon coughed.
We must continue, he said. She heard his metal cylinders clink off each other as he began climbing again. It took some effort, but Nissa leaned out from the wall and started climbing too. He was right. For one, they were as exposed as babies out here on the face. If a drake decided to sweep in for a snack, they would have little way to defend themselves. And the giants. Better to not wonder if the two giants were still shadowing them.
She listened for Sorin to begin climbing. Why had his destructive singing not worked on the giants?
She asked him.
They must be composed, he said, breathing hard as he climbed. Must be composed of stone. I am only able to rot the living.
Nissa turned back to climbing. Rot the living, she thought. She tried to speed up so Sorin was not so close behind her.
The first reddening of the sky found them still climbing, though slowly. Nissa found that if she stopped thinking about anything, her hands found their own handhold, and her progress was more satisfactory. Sorin must have found the same thing. The rhythm of his steps sounded more regular, and his breathing had steadied.
Farther down, the goblins followed behind Smara, pushing and heading her up the trail, making good progress. They lived in rocky crevices and could clearly move in high, precarious places easily.
They attained the lip of the mesa when the sun was low in the sky. Panting, Nissa clambered onto the grassy veldt. To the right, a river poured over the edge of the mesa and cascaded the heights into the dark mist of the canyon. Nissa crawled to the river and had a drink. Her hands were cut and raw, and she put them into the cold water and cried out with the sting. Soon Sorin and Anowon were at the river. Sorin put his whole head in. Anowon put only his lips in the clear water and sucked peacefully. After he was filled, he walked up the stream with his eyes on the stream bed as he walked.
What are you looking for? Nissa said.
Signs.
As she watched, he fell to his knees next to the water and plunged his hands into the rocks and pebbles at the bottom of the stream. His hands came out holding something.
What is that? Nissa asked. Her soreness made kneeling difficult, but she did it anyway.
The palms of Anowon s hands were filled with many small pebbles and a couple of rocks. Something about the scratches on the rocks set her curiosity on edge, and she bent to look closer at a green one. Soon a brow became apparent. Then slit eyes. The rock was crudely carved into the likeness of a head with an expression of anger. She looked up at Anowon.
Each is similarly carved, he said.
She looked still closer at the pebbles in his hands. He was right each of them, no matter how small, was carved to look like an earless head. Some had tentacles for mouths and some did not.
She looked at Anowon again.
I have heard of these streams near the Binding Circle, he said. All the streams around are filled thusly.
Suddenly Nissa had the feeling she was being attacked something was running toward her. But when she spun, the mesa behind her was covered only with dense grass that spread away into foothills. There was no enemy. Even in the slanted morning light she could see the gaps in the mountains where the ancient ones had sheared off the tops and put their magic in between so they rose and crashed down at irregular intervals. The foothills extended into blunt mountains capped with snow, and dark, purple rain clouds sat on the horizon. On either side of the stream, twin statues of grotesque, tentacled statues stood in massive repose. One was missing a head, and the other s body was floating slightly above its pedestal.
She turned back to Anowon, bewildered.
I feel it too, he said. We must be on guard.
She nodded.
Did you see it? asked Anowon.
No, Nissa said.
Anowon pointed. It was no more than a dot at the base of the mountains: a palace. It was in a sunless lee of the mountains and clearly crumbled, but it had obviously once been huge.
Is this the Binding Circle? Nissa said to Anowon.
I don t know, he replied.
The morning sun was bright and warm on her neck. Anowon went off to lie in the grass with the pebbles in his open palms. Sorin was already asleep, snoring loudly. As she watched, Smara clambered over the edge of the Mesa, pushed forward by her goblins. She was muttering again, with her crystal firmly clamped in her right hand. But as soon as the goblins had situated her in the grass, she clutched her crystal to her chest and quieted a bit.
Nissa stretched out in the grass and felt her muscles loosen. She believed that vampires liked to cut their prey before feeding. Their teeth were not overly sharp. Anowon had no bladed tool.
A low rumbling sound drifted somewhere far off in the mountains. The floating parts of the statues next to the river cast long shadows. And Nissa fell asleep, without setting a watch.
Robert B. Wintermute
Zendikar: In the Teeth of Akoum
Nissa awoke suddenly, shivering in the darkness, listening for whatever had woken her. But she was unable to hear anything except the gusting wind shaking the grass fronds around her. There were no stars or moon overhead, and Nissa could not hear Smara s incessant babbling. Her staff was by her side, and she very slowly reached out and put her hand around its smooth shaft. She waited and listened, but nothing came and she drifted off again.
She next opened her eyes to bright daylight. Her staff was still clutched in her hand. She sat up. Smara was speaking somewhere, and the wind had disappeared, but not the feeling of foreboding. Anowon was sitting in the grass watching her, with his bound hands wrapped around his legs. Sorin was standing with his back to her, looking at the mountains. The goblins and Smara were grouped together near the river.
Are you ready? Sorin asked, turning. He looked surprisingly fit. His face was full as he smiled. Anowon wanted to feed on you but I kept him from it
Nissa stood.
But you have something in your blood, he tells me, Sorin finished.
Nissa turned and adjusted the climbing harness she always wore.
I take the Joraga tincture, Nissa said. Once a month. She took Khalled s map from the tube strapped to her belt.
Where do you get that? Sorin said. Are you not a Tajuru, after all?
Nissa stopped. What did he say? she thought. She bristled at the taunt. Watch your tongue, human.
Sorin laughed.
Still, Anowon watched her.
I have fought many vampires in my time, Nissa said. And our tincture makes our blood poison to one. Now, if you are done? She unrolled the map and considered its ink lines. What had gotten into Sorin and Anowon? she wondered.
Did you sleep well? Sorin asked.
She looked up from the map.
One of Smara s goblins is gone. Sorin said.
She looked over at the group of goblins surrounding Smara. One, two, three yes, there were only nine.
Yes, and? she said.
We are wondering what happened to it, Sorin said, a smug smile on his face as he turned to Anowon. Aren t we?
She looked up in surprise. Why would I have knowledge of this?
Anowon didn t move.
Nissa looked from one to the other of them. A smile tickled the corners of her lips as the joke dawned on her.
I ate it, Nissa said. You have discovered me, human. She looked back at the map. More like the vampire did. He seems in a stupor.
The lines of the map were clear enough showing the jagged run of the trench. The probl
em came in finding just what part of the trench they had been in when the giants had found them and, thus, where they had climbed out of the canyon. She could see the shaded area marked
Piston Mountains. There was no sign of a palace on the map. A palace of that size should surely be there. Nissa looked up at the structure that had been sitting at the base of the mountains when they first topped the mesa.
But it was gone. From her distance, all that was evident was a huge crater where the palace had been. She located it far to the right floating in the air with the divot of earth it had been sitting on still underneath it. Even from far away she could see lines extending from the ground to the palace. This was Zendikar, and Nissa had seen plenty of floating objects in her life, including a whole lake suspended above the ground leaving a dry bed full of flopping fish. She d seen fields of hedrons numbering in the hundreds floating and banging together. But the palace was different. And judging from the lines of ropes, there were living things in that castle.
Something is wrong, she said.
You are coming to that realization just now? Sorin said.
She s right, said Anowon. He had come up behind her so silently that she jumped when he spoke. The flood, the refugee kor, and now the Palace of Zemgora floating loose in the air. Anowon s voice was soft, as always, and Nissa found herself leaning in to hear more. Did you notice how fresh the scars on those giants in the trench were? They were recently in a fight I fear they got the worst of.
That is true, Nissa found herself saying.
The Roils lately have become more severe. That last one near Graypelt was so sudden that my spirit-water vial barely boiled.
It is the brood lineage, Sorin said. They are wroth and throwing Zendikar out of balance. They must be put back into the earth.
Smara looked up from where she had been sitting. She rushed over to Sorin.
The gift is in the loam, she said. The gift is in the loam. Then she began talking in another language and soon was repeating the same words.
Anowon watched Smara closely, as did Sorin. At one point Anowon quickly drew a slip of parchment and a thin piece of charcoal out of an inner pocket and wrote something down on the slip.
Sorin smiled uncertainly as the kor s words degraded into raving. Then he glanced at Nissa to see what she thought of Smara s words. Nissa pretended not to notice Sorin s look. What is that one hiding? she wondered, turning her attention back to the floating palace. What is the gift is in the loam?
What did she say? she asked finally.
Some of it was classical Vampire, Anowon said.
The rest He looked at Sorin.
It was Eldrazi, but spattered with vampire, Sorin said. Look.
Nissa looked where Sorin pointed. The piece of earth the palace was perched atop moved slowly, pulling its tethers tight. Many tiny things were flying around the palace. As she watched, one of the ropes fell.
Suddenly there was a small tremor in the earth and a sharp creaking, and the fluid in the vial hanging from the leather thong around Nissa s neck began to boil so that she felt its heat all the way through her jerkin.
Roil! she yelled.
Nissa twisted her staff in two and drew the flexible stem blade from its sheath. With a snap of her wrist the blade stiffened enough for Nissa to jab it into the ground. She felt the green blade shoot roots out and anchor in the black dirt. And in the next moment the Roil was on them.
Before the shaking became too violent, Nissa was able to catch a glimpse of a grass bloom a wild and rapid groth of stalks that sometimes came with the Roil. A patch of earth jutted and tore out of the ground. Dirt sprayed, and Nissa closed her eyes and held onto the handle of the stem sword. The ground buckled and shook, and dirt sprayed down on her. Soon there was a massive tearing sound, and the ground heaved up and to the side. Nissa put her left hand over her eye, and through the slit between her fingers was able to see that the ground she was lying on was floating. If I roll off, I ll be at the mercy of the Roil, she thought. But staying would mean potentially floating high in the sky.
Nissa made the stem rigid, pulled it from the earth, and rolled off the ground she was on. She barely felt the fall. As soon as she hit the ground, the Roil bounced her back into the air, and she came down in a crater of some sort. She scrambled up, not wanting to sit in a low space if whatever had come out of the space slammed back in.
She was almost out of the crater when the Roil stopped abruptly. A shadow fell over Nissa. The land that had come from the crater was falling. She brought the stem sword back, and the blade lengthened and turned flexible as she snapped it out and wrapped it around a boulder that had not been there before the Roil.
Nissa was glad it was there. She pulled herself out of the crater and looked up, expecting the ground to slam back into the hole. But it stayed aloft.
The air seemed to shimmer after the Roil. She wiped the dirt from her eyes and looked around. The breath caught in her throat. Where there had been a plain of grass only moments before, there was an expanse filled with floating islands of ground. Nissa quickly counted seventeen of the islands, but more dotted the landscape. And the palace was not one of them. Where is the palace? she wondered.
She located the palace near the base of the mountains, lying on its side, perhaps a day s walk away if she judged the distance correctly. She heard a sound and turned. Anowon was standing near, looking out at the floating land. Smara was next to him somehow, talking to herself; or was she talking to Anowon? The vampire s face was impossible to read.
Behind them, Sorin was floating unconscious in the air, with his long white hair floating all around him like a shroud. As Nissa watched, he woke with a violent lurch that knocked him out of the air, and he fell with a grunt.
Sorin lay on the grass, which had shrunk again to the length of normal grass in the wake of the Roil. Many elves worshipped blooms, when plants and trees grew suddenly huge. And when the plants shrank back to their normal size after the fact, they saw that as divine as well. Not Nissa. Plant blooms did not seem natural. For the bloom to be holy, then the Roil would have to be holy, and that was something Nissa could not believe. Nothing holy could be that devastating. After a moment, Sorin stirred and rolled over. He put his hand to his forehead.
I m beginning to like Zendikar, Sorin said, sitting up. I really am. It feels like I ve been here for years, when it s been more like weeks.
When Sorin saw the floating islands of grassland, he shrugged.
Anowon was with Smara at the edge of the mesa, peering over the edge. He looked up at Nissa and showed his teeth. She walked over to where they stood. Anowon pointed down at the canyon floor far below.
How are your eyes? he asked.
She detected the movement on the canyon floor almost immediately.
Nissa doublechecked before speaking. Brood, she said finally.
What are they doing? Sorin said, standing next to her.
It s hard to tell, but some of them seem to be eating the ground.
Nobody said anything for a time.
Eating it? Anowon finally said.
There are some large ones with tentacles for back legs and long muzzles
Sorin moaned. Are their muzzles blue? he asked.
I can t tell, Nissa said. But, yes, it is possible, now that you put words to it.
Trackers, Sorin said.
But why would they
They are probably tracking the kor refugees, Sorin said. But they will find us in the process if we don t move.
How do you know these things? Nissa said.
The blue muzzles? The words were out of her mouth before she knew it.
Sorin said nothing, but looked over the edge and squinted. For a moment Nissa wished he d just step right off the edge. Then the feeling left her, and she wondered what his weak human eyes could see.
There must be four hundred of them, he said.
The floor of the trench is covered with them. Wonderful.
Nissa looked over the edge.
The giants are down there, Sorin said. Their bodies are being dismembered right now. He was quiet for a moment. Rather interesting entrails.
Nissa turned. They will find our sign and ascend to us by day s end.
Oh, undoubtedly, Sorin said.
But we will not be here, Nissa said. She began walking toward the mountains, along the trail on Khalled s map. The trail would take them past the tipped castle. We should run.
And they did. They ran, holding what gear they had against themselves to keep it from bouncing. The goblins managed to carry Smara. One held each limb, and a fifth ran in the middle, while others scampered behind.
Nissa felt the mana from the grass course around her ankles as she ran. With this mana she spun a camouflage spell around the whole party, hoping to make them appear as a patch of grass on the expanse to any prying eyes that might be watching. Nissa dropped back a bit and squinted at her companions. But it was hard to tell if her spell had worked. She was too close to gauge its effectiveness. Nissa sped up.
The party ran through the shadows of the floating islands of land, which dropped clods of dirt from bare roots as they passed. Nissa saw a small rodent poke its head out of a hole and almost plummet the distance into the massive crater where the other side of its hole continued.
The wind picked up and began to blow in their faces as they ran. Soon they were sweating with exertion. Nissa couldn t help but think about how the wind in their faces would help spread their scent for the brood tracking them. She ran faster, and the others picked up their speed as well.
The sun was half-past zenith when they fell to the ground panting. Nissa laid her face down and breathed the rich smell of dirt and grass. Her tongue was swollen, and her cracked lips hurt. She needed water.
There might be water at that palace, she said.
The palace was closer, but it still lay tipped with its many tethers strewn around it. Nissa had watched for movement as they approached, but she had not seen any. It must have been inhabited by humans. They had begun to pass fields of grain, but what huts there were had been abandoned long ago. She was no judge of crops, but the stunted plants in the ground did not look like the most prosperous bounty she had ever seen.
Zendikar: In the Teeth of Akoum (magic:the gathering) Page 9