Zendikar: In the Teeth of Akoum (6 page)

She had fought one soon after her rite of passage, of course …
but three
. The lead stalker groaned and leaned to the side before pouncing, and she stood and swung her staff, catching it on the chin. Its head jerked to the side, as it fell and rolled. Nissa whispered and reached out with her mind and a turntimber branch swung down on the stalker and pinned it to the duff.

The two remaining creatures jumped at Nissa. She felt movement next to her and smelled Sorin. Out of the corner of her eye she saw him jump forward, and for a moment the lead stalker shied as it flew through the air. With a word from Sorin the creature fell into a stinking pile on the ground, leaving one of its eyes bouncing away through the leafy duff.

The first creature’s paws hit her, shoved her backward, and knocked her staff out of her hand. Suddenly the stalker was on her chest, digging in its claws and crushing the air from her lungs. She gasped and tried to roll out from under it, but the creature was four times her weight and bore down on her, opening its wide mouth to her face. She heard a high whine and felt the creature shudder, and something heavy cracked out of the stalker’s chest. She could feel the
heat from the object on her right cheek as the creature’s legs buckled, and it fell with an audible thump on the ground next to her head. Nissa twisted as it started to fall, but the creature’s head fell on her back, slamming her into the leaf mold.

Nissa lay on the forest floor looking up at the trees. It felt as if she were floating on a cloud of air. She was dimly aware of movements and sounds all around her, but she couldn’t move her arms. Then she blinked and took a breath. She managed to tip the stalker’s head off her. There was no sound except the rushing of blood in her ears, and no feeling except the pain in her chest. Soon the swish in her ears subsided, and she could hear the stalker trapped under the tree branch struggle and moan against the leaves.

She sat up and was immediately greeted with a jab of pain in her chest. Wincing, she stood. She went closer to the fallen creature and saw the ragged folds of the heart, where it had exploded under the body like a melon. In the raw dawn light, the stalker’s fur seemed as soft as a blanket. Nissa reached out to touch it.

“Perhaps a cloak?”

Nissa turned. Sorin was standing against the hedron looking like he hadn’t slept on the ground with his hip in a hole. Anowon was standing next to him with his hands bound in front, watching Nissa with an expression that she could not read.

“Why did you kill them?” she asked Sorin.

Sorin laughed. Anowon did not.

“You would have had it bite your face off?”

She turned back to the dead stalker where it lay sideways with its legs straight out. “My death would have been the way of things.”

Sorin laughed again. “I have a sneaking suspicion there will be plenty of possibilities for you to lose your
life.” He put his shoulders back. “Now, which direction is it to Graypelt?

“You really don’t know?” Nissa asked.

“How would I?”

“You seem to know a great deal about Zendikar. You know how to walk the branchways. You know to avoid the cut fungus. You knew to lunge at the tree stalker to make it shy before attacking.”

Sorin watched her.

“Is that all?” he asked. “I hope I know more than that.” He started to walk north toward Graypelt, and then he stopped and turned back.

“You fought well against those creatures, for an elf,” Sorin said. “Not as well as me, of course, but perhaps you will be useful for more than scouting.” He turned and began walking. Without a glance, Anowon followed.

If he knew the way to Graypelt, then why was she involved?
Nissa wonderded. She walked over to where her staff had been flung and picked it up. The stalker under the branch struggled. Its red eyes followed her as she walked. She stopped. She swept her hand through the air, and the branch snapped up to where it had been. The creature sniffed the air, glanced at her, and bounded up the nearest turntimber and away.

Sorin watched it go. “We’ll walk on the ground from here.”

Once again he had the right of it
, Nissa thought. From the edge of the great mesa, Graypelt was best reached on foot. Soon they would descend to the ladders and perhaps even the zip line the Tajuru had strung years before, when the treasure hunters that flocked to Graypelt were considered friends. They had since become
barong
, interlopers. She would not be surprised in the least to find the zip line broken by vandals.

They walked all day, ducking the branches and dense undergrowth that grew at the edge of the mesa. They passed abandoned camps, where signs of struggle were everywhere, but nothing else remained. Sometimes the remains of a site were no more than stones piled in a rough circle. Once they cut a wide arc around what had been a large camp, erected around the floating remains of a huge statue with tentacles for legs and symbols and words engraved into its crumbled base. A massive turntimber had grown up under the figure, and its trunk and branches had wrapped around the strange effigy. Patches of the tree’s bark had been peeled away, and a broken box was strapped to each patch. Nissa stopped and spat into the loam. It took deleterious magic to keep the turntimber from healing itself.

“Blood suckers,” she said, glancing at the boxes strapped to the trees. “Sucking the land’s energy. The
barong
put quartz in those boxes to absorb the energy of the turntimber. They sell the stones to other fools in Graypelt who think it will cure their ills.”

Sorin walked closer to the abandoned sap boxes. Anowon followed. Sorin looked at the box for a moment before inserting his hand into the back of it. A smile spread across his face.

“Yes,” he said. “Yes. Very pure.” He turned to Nissa. “Why would this place have been abandoned?”

She pointed to a place on the trunk above his head. A small scuff.

“An arrow hit there,” she said. “Or I am much fooled.”

“An elf arrow,” Anowon said. He had been quiet for so long that both Sorin and Nissa turned when he spoke.

“Just so,” Nissa said turning back to the tree. “This forest is stewarded by the Tajuru.”

“But not you,” Sorin said.

“I am Joraga.”

“You are a fool to not utilize this power,” he said, removing his hand from the box.

“All elves receive power from the land. We do not need to cut and hack and burn as humans do.” She looked from Sorin to Anowon. “You are all, human and vampire, suckers of life. You are the same in our eyes.”

“Are we?” Sorin asked, smiling and raising an eyebrow. “The same?”

“In a manner of speaking.”

The smile stayed on Sorin’s face. He started walking. “In that case, let us continue to Graypelt and see what we see.”

“Why Graypelt?” Nissa asked, walking after him.

“Because it lies between us and our destination in the west.”

“The Teeth of Akoum?”

“The Eye of Ugin.”

She stopped and looked over her shoulder. Anowon stood next to a box strapped to the tree, watching as Sorin began walking the footpath that led west from the camp. His hands were bound, but still she stopped.

“He walks in front of me,” she yelled to Sorin, keeping her eyes on Anowon.

“Ghet!” called Sorin.

Anowon started walking, keeping his eyes straight ahead. He passed Nissa, and she watched his long braid sway slightly as he walked.

They went one behind the other along the narrow path though the forest. The way was fraught with boulders and thick, rank growth. Eventually the trail ended completely, as if the beings that had once walked it had ceased to exist in mid step. Nissa backtracked
on her hands and knees until she was able to locate a track in the ground that was not too old and pointed west to their destination. Since the trail itself ended, they would have to follow the faint reminders of past travellers and hope they led to Graypelt. They followed signs for the rest of the day: a broken twig, a torn patch of moss. The forest echoed all around them. A little past when the sun was highest in the sky, they crossed a small river, and Nissa searched for a sign on the other side. She found it.

“We are close,” Nissa said. She could see that the toe digs and heel divots of varying creatures had previous converged on their small path. There were the toe claws of goblins and tracks of at least six different hobnailed humans, as well as a barefoot kor and an elf. The footfalls were clearly visible to the eye. On the breeze she smelled sweat and wood smoke … and something else she couldn’t exactly place. The land had grown rockier, as she knew it was supposed to at the edge of the great mesa. “Just ahead somewhere,” she said. “Prepare yourself.”

T
hey encountered the first ragged tent when the sun was low in the west. Many of the tents were gray and of different sizes and materials, but some were fire-blackened and abandoned. Others were flattened, as if stepped upon. Past the tents the forest dropped away, and Nissa could see the sun setting blood red behind rows of jagged peaks capped with snow.

Sorin looked about him with a bemused smile on his face. “Graypelt.”

“So named because of the Turntimber warthog tents.”

Sorin appraised the destroyed tents hugging the end of the mesa. “Since when are warthog skins called ‘pelts?’”

A sudden gust sent a piece of burnt tent flapping. The wind caused some of the cook fires in front of the tents to blaze to life. Somewhere a dog whined. At least, Nissa hoped it was a dog.

Above the nearest fire pit, a carcass was skewered over a pile of low coals. A human squatted back on his heels and turned the meat slowly. He looked up at them with crossed eyes. On his head he wore a helmet with the tip of a hedron affixed to the top.

Sorin pushed his jaw at the skewered meat. “What do you have there? Elf meat?”

The man spat and turned his eyes back to the fire.

“Warthog,” Nissa said, her eyes scanning the tents. She found a tent larger than the rest and black in color and led them to it along the makeshift streets of mud. They passed two men standing on either side of a horse. Both were wearing heavy armor fixed with strings, and on each string was tied a stone. Climbing hooks curled off their elbow couters and the tips of their sabatons. They were busy lashing a folded green tent and long poles to their horse. With each movement the tiny stones tinked against their armor.

“Power sellers,” Nissa whispered. “Each of those stones is imbued with a bit of the Turntimber’s special raw mana. They sell them.”

Sorin looked back where the men stood, watching them. “How much do they cost?”

“Less than that,” Nissa replied.

Sorin looked where she pointed. A bright red drake the size of a large dog sat on a roost in front of a gray, scale-skinned tent. The creature’s bright eyes watched them as they passed.

“They find those drakes in the Makindi Trench,” Nissa said, approaching the black tent. She stopped and looked back the way they had come. Every eye in the camp was on them. She turned and said, “Keep your lips tight together, and don’t look at it.”

With a deep breath, Nissa pushed back the stiff hide hung over the hole and slipped into the tent. The others followed. It was almost totally dark inside. A strange smell filled their noses so that Sorin groaned and Nissa held her breath. Anowon shuffled his feet. Something was buzzing in the tent.

“Khalled?” Nissa said.

There was no sound except for the buzzing.

“Khalled?” Nissa repeated.

More buzzing. Then something stirred. “Yes?” called a voice.

“Khalled, it is Nissa.”

“Nissa. Come closer, child.” The voice sounded like it hadn’t spoken for millennia.

She walked in the darkness, feeling ahead with her foot before each step. When she was nearer to the buzzing, a rough hand groped her face.

“Nissa Revane. My nectar.”

She heard Sorin sniff.

“I am here with two friends.”

“Friends? They don’t smell like friends. Or rather, they smell like friends to each other but not to you.”

“Nonetheless …”

“Have you seen the beautiful flowers outside, Nissa?”

Flowers?
“I saw no flowers.”

“What? No flowers?”

“I saw some destroyed tents, Khalled.”

The hand left her face.

“Friends you say … Light!” Suddenly light from many tiny points filled the room. What was amazing to Nissa was not that Khalled had hundreds of light beetles tethered with string in the corner of the tent. What amazed her was that he’d been able, with an enchantment of his devising, to have the beetles light at his command.

The sides of Khalled’s tent were bookshelves, and each and every space on the shelves was crammed with books, scrolls, and reed papers bound with string. Nissa even recognized writings from her people: flat pieces of pale nadi wood graven with pictographs.
Nissa noticed that Anowon’s eyes were on the books, and for the first time since she had allowed him to travel with them, his eyes were fully open. As he stared, he brought his bound hands up and scratched the side of his nose. She turned.

Khalled was looking at each of them carefully. Half of his face had been torn to the bone by a kraken, and he wore no adornment except a cloak thrown over his right shoulder and a loin cloth. Nissa noticed that the merfolk had started unbinding his wrist and ankle fins, and their translucent blue shone in the tent.