Zendikar: In the Teeth of Akoum (10 page)

“Perhaps,” Sorin said. His mocking smile visited his lips again.

“This main panel tells the story of the Mortifier,” Anowon said, pointing.

Sorin stopped smiling.

“Who is that?” Nissa asked.

Anowon’s fingers traced the image of a pictograph of a figure daubed with black. He used both of his fingers to trace the line. The figure daubed with black pigment stood with three huge, monsterlike creatures, but appeared to be a simple being. It did not have the tentacles of the other three. Before the figure were other beings, attached to it with long lines.

“These are ropes,” Anowon said, tracing the lines. “These figures are vampires, and they are slaves to the Mortifier, who is one of these Eldrazi it appears.

“He is not,” Sorin said, his voice a jot higher than Anowon’s. “Does he look like those Eldrazi?”

Nissa considered the picture. “No,” she agreed. “But those three Eldrazi don’t look very much like the ones we’ve seen.”

“These large Eldrazi are the ones that we see as statues around Zendikar,” Anowon said. “Many scholars think they are deities.”

“Gods with slaves?” Nissa said.

“Perhaps,” Anowon said. “Why not? If this had been an aqueduct, then who dug it? Who built the fabulous palaces? And those slaves are not human.”

“No?”

“They are vampires.”

“Yes, Yes,” Sorin said.

Nissa turned to Sorin. “Do you know about these Eldrazi?”

Sorin’s eyes did not blink. “I know that Zendikar is at risk,” he said.

Nissa turned to Anowon. “And why do you not question him further on this topic which so interests you?” she asked. “He is clearly hiding information.”

Sorin kicked at a loose rock. “What I know is not for you or the vampire’s ears. He knows not to overstep his place.” Sorin said, staring at Nissa.

Nissa ignored Sorin’s glare. “What force does he have over you?” Nissa asked Anowon.

Anowon looked up at the canyon wall.

Somewhere down the canyon a boulder crashed into rock.

Sorin coughed. “Can we keep moving before we are caught by another stinking troop of kor? I do not think my nose can handle another onslaught.”

Anowon stood and rolled up his scroll. “As you wish,” he said. As he was sliding the scroll back into its metal cylinder, Sorin came near Nissa.

“We must go now,” he said.

“Bind the vampire and we’ll go.” she replied.

But he did not answer her. Instead Sorin started walking—leaving Nissa to it. They walked until they were stumbling in darkness, at which point they stopped next to what looked like a huge crumbled stone grate lying on its side and half buried in the sand.

Sorin insisted on a fire, and Nissa and Anowon were able to find some debris to make a small blaze. In the flickering firelight Anowon investigated the disintegrating grate, covered as it was with intricate line tracing and glyphs.

The fire was no more than coals when Nissa heard speaking echoing off the canyon walls behind them.
She had drawn first watch. She quickly stoked the fire and woke the others. They moved away and hid behind a boulder to see who came to the fire.

Soon a small group of goblins leading a female kor came around the corner. The goblins had small swords on their belts. One had a staff with a pathway stone floating at its tip.

The kor was strange looking and not at all like the refugees passing up the trench toward Graypelt and the Binding Circle. This kor’s hair was wild and unkempt, and her clothes were nothing more than rags. Glass beads were knotted into her hair, and they flickered slightly in the firelight. She was wearing small bells somewhere, and they chimed lightly as she stumbled. As Nissa watched she tripped, and two goblins gently caught her and pushed her upright.

Most telling was that the creature wore no ropes or hooks, unlike all other kor. In fact, the only attribute that gave away her race was her long, thin skull and the pale skin stretched taught over it.

The kor’s mouth was continually moving like some merfolk lull-mage engaged in his daily intonations. But when she saw the fire, she stopped cold. Then she saw the ancient grate and rushed to it, stamping one foot in the corner of the fire in her haste. The goblins rushed to catch up, but the kor paid them no mind. She fell to her knees before the grate and began chanting.

Anowon watched the kor intently as the goblins brushed her hair from her eyes and kneeled down next to her in the sand. They also began chanting.

Sorin drew his long sword from its dark sheath. To Nissa the sword seemed part of the dark. The coals did not reflect their red off it. It seemed to suck what light there was into it.

“I will slay the first goblin, and we can enslave the others,” he said. The saliva in his mouth made his words slur.

Anowon nodded vigorously.

“No,” Nissa said. “They are barely armed. We will not kill them now. Let us see what they know.”

“But they are goblins,” Sorin said.

Anowon nodded enthusiastically.

What is this all about?
Nissa wondered.
Why are they so keen to enslave the goblins?
She stood from behind the rock and walked forward. “If you want to find your way to Akoum then stay your sword for the time being,” she said. “Kor are some of the best guides.”

The goblins did not sense Nissa until she was directly behind them, at which point they hissed and turned toward her. They struggled to yank out their small stone swords. One goblin ended up holding his dull blade and threatening her with the sword’s wooden handle.

All the swords’ handles were wood. With a word from Nissa the wood in the handles shot out roots and grew solidly into the sand.

The kor continued to chant—ignorant of the events around her. The goblins stood blinking, unsure of themselves in the firelight.

Sorin came out from behind the rock, his sword in his hand. Anowon stood.

“They should travel with us,” Anowon said.

Sorin turned to the vampire, then back to Nissa.

“What is that kor babbling?” Sorin said.

“It is not kor,” Anowon said. “But it is a language.”

“I can tell that. What language?”

Anowon shook his head.

Sorin leaned forward to listen, cocking his ear to the chant. Before long a look of recognition spread across his face. Nissa squinted in the dim light. No
sooner had she seen the look on his face than it was gone. Sorin stood up straight.

“This kor interests me,” he pronounced. She and her entourage will come with me.”

“You recognized the language,” Nissa said.

“Yes I did.”

Nissa waited. But it was Anowon who spoke first. “Well?” he said.

“As a matter of fact,” Sorin said, “It is ancient Eldrazi the animal speaks.”

Nissa felt herself blinking. She could not figure out what was stranger: that the kor was speaking ancient Eldrazi, or that Sorin recognized it as such.

“How could you know?” Anowon said, awed. “It has not been spoken in more than a thousand years.”

Sorin sniffed and turned. “What does it have in its hand?” Sorin said, pointing to the kor.

Nissa looked. It was a rock as big as the kor’s fist but longer. The creature passed it from one hand to the other as she chanted.

The goblins glanced at each other.

“A crystal,” Anowon said.

Sorin leaned forward for a closer look. “She will be able to help us. Yes.”

Nissa turned. “Why?”

Sorin shrugged.

“Who is this kor?” Nissa asked.

The kor stopped chanting suddenly, as if she had heard. She slowly turned. Her corneas were red. Nissa couldn’t be sure if it was the fire’s reflection.

The kor began chanting again.

“Take the goblins,” Anowon said.

“Why do you want the goblins so very much?” Nissa said.

“Are you jealous?”

Nissa opened her mouth to reply, but Anowon stopped her words with a held up hand.

They listened to the kor chant.

“Now
it is the old vampire tongue,” Anowon said. “Or I am a fool.”

Sorin leaned closer. “How can you tell?” he asked. “The words are so muddled.”

“You know the ancient language of vampires, too?” asked Nissa.

Sorin smiled. “A person like me picks up many languages in his travels,” he said.

It was Anowon’s turn to smile knowingly. “I am sure,” he said. “This language is one of those that is not spoken anymore, but lives only in books and is known only for the purposes of translation. A dead language.”

“What is she saying?” Nissa asked.

Anowon listened to the chanting. “She’s simply repeating ‘The gift is in the loam’ I believe.”

“‘The gift is in the loam’?” Nissa said. “What could it mean?”

“We should leave this creature,” Anowon said.

“And take the goblins,” Nissa said. “I think you’ve already said that.”

“Yes.”

Nissa eyed the kor as she babbled. As she watched, a bug the size of Nissa’s thumbnail ran out of the kor’s hair.

“She will travel with us to the Teeth of Akoum?” Nissa said.

Both Sorin and Anowon were listening intently to the kor as she babbled. Again, she stopped speaking when she heard Nissa’s words, and a moment later her body seized up tight. She stood straight with her arms at her sides, as her head began to wobble on her neck. Then she began to scream.

“What is happening?” Nissa said, above the kor’s strange keening.

“A fit,” Anowon said, without looking away from the kor. “But she is speaking.”

The goblins rushed to the kor and began stroking her hands as they chanted.

Sorin was listening intently to the kor. “She says she is an Eldrazi, if you can believe that. She says, ‘the key is requested.’ And ‘freedom is nigh.’” Sorin looked closely at the crystal clutched in the kor’s white hand. “That could be the key she speaks of.”

“Then seize and break it,” Nissa said.

“She could gain us paths we cannot know,” Sorin said. “She could allow us entry to the Eye.”

The kor’s screaming was hurting Nissa’s ears. Something about the kor, perhaps her acidic smell, made Nissa extremely wary. “That is assuming she is telling the truth and not raving at the moon,” Nissa said.

Sorin’s eyes never left the kor as she screamed out her words. “Rather. But I do not think this one is fabricating … That crystal seems familiar somehow.”

The goblins had been whispering among themselves. When Sorin mentioned the crystal, one of the goblins stepped forward. He was dressed in a much-used robe of thick worsted fabric, dyed red. “Crystal of the Ancients held by Smara, Chosen of the Ancients,” it said.

“And that is Smara?” Nissa said, pointing at the kor.

The goblin bowed its head.

“And are you all allowed to speak?”

The goblin shook its head.

“Only now, me,” the goblin said. “And I stop speaking now. Here I am stopping. I have stopped.”

Nissa watched the goblin purse its gray lips together, trying not to speak. The other goblins watched with clear admiration on their faces.
Did they admire his discipline or his ability to speak—many times a challenge for a goblin?
she wondered. The goblin stood before her with his chin up a bit.
His discipline
, Nissa decided.
They all want to speak but are terrified by something
.

“I have stopped speaking,” the goblin whispered. “Now.”

Smara suddenly lurched forward, kicking the sand as she jerked a step. She was repeating words as she turned and began stumbling forward in the darkness with the chants on her lips. The goblins were on her in a second. But instead of bringing her to the fire, as Nissa expected, they led her forward, continuing down the trench and away into the darkness.

Sorin watched them go, as did Anowon. The vampire’s face told a tale of loss and sorrow that Nissa could not help but chuckle at.

“We must follow,” Sorin said. He began walking after Smara. Anowon almost tripped in his haste to follow.

“Why must we follow?” Nissa said.

“That one is somehow channeling an Eldrazi ancient,” Sorin said, over his shoulder. “We have in a strange way gained access to the enemy’s camp.”

Nissa looked up at the early evening as sling-tail nighthawks swept the skies clear of lion flies.

They trailed behind the goblins all that night and into the morning. It didn’t matter if they wanted the kor and the goblins to travel with them or not. Smara was walking in the same direction they were; and the goblins, having no food that Nissa could see—no provisions of any sort in fact—kept close. They looked so forlorn that Nissa gave them hard tack biscuits.

But neither Anowon nor Sorin would eat her dry tack. They looked drawn in the early morning light. Nissa watched Anowon as he followed the goblins, who looked over their shoulders nervously at him.

They walked for the rest of the morning and stopped for a rest next to a spring. The sun was shining, and above the canyon large, dark birds circled. Then a roar split the air, and the attack was launched.

O
ne moment they were sitting on rocks around the spring, and the next moment the creature was upon them. It rushed forward with great simian lopes that shook the ground and knocked Nissa and Sorin back with the sweep of a powerful hand.