Zendikar: In the Teeth of Akoum (20 page)

The Moon Kraken harrumphed. “An apology will not save you.”

“What will save us, great Brinelin?” Nissa said.

“Nothing will save you.”

Nissa remembered the rumor she’d heard about Speaker Sutina and the Moon Kraken. The rumor of a secret friendship.

Anowon stepped up beside Nissa. “Do you have a riddle for us, great Brinelin?”

The kraken regarded Anowon through round unblinking eyes. “Riddle?” it said. “Riddles are a sphinx’s folly.” It raised one tentacle to its mouth. “Brinelin demands red sacrifice!” The kraken swam to a small rock sticking out of the ocean, and hoisted itself up into a sitting position.

“Will you take this offering?” Sorin said. He casually took one of the goblins by the scruff of the neck and tossed it screeching into the water, where it thrashed wildly.

The Moon Kraken regarded the panicking goblin for a moment before sighing and falling off the rock. It hit the water with a large splash and slipped under the surface. The goblin, showing the whites of its eyes, scratched desperately at the side of the ship, looking for a handhold. It did not cry out, but whimpered in a way that made Nissa’s stomach turn. The other two goblins stared down at their feet while Smara sang what sounded like a song under her breath, oblivious to the goblins’ whimpers. Sorin chuckled. Anowon watched Brinelin’s air bubbles approaching the goblin with a blank expression.

And then the goblin was simply gone, pulled under with a sudden jerk. The Moon Kraken surfaced a moment later.

Brinelin brought its huge shell out of the water and slammed it down on the water. The wave from the impact of the shell hit the hull and washed over the deck, drenching everyone on it.

“You will do me further tribute,” the Moon Kraken said. One of the goblin’s arms was sticking sideways out of the kraken’s beaked maw, and as they watched, a tentacle swept it away and into the water.

The two remaining goblins looked at each other out of the corner of their eyes.

The shore was not far away. Nissa could see the long crystals jutting out of the water. They would never make it through them without being guided. A narrow beach of white sand started behind the crystals, and a high cliff of black basalt extended almost vertically from the white sand. Nissa thought she saw movement among the crystals at the water’s edge.

“If you have nothing better to offer me,” the kraken mused aloud. “I will crush your skulls and suck out your brains and make tributes of you all.”

“You will not be eating anyone’s brains today,” Sorin said. “Surely you know that?”

The kraken regarded Sorin. “I am Brinelin, the Moon Kraken,” he said. “I know nothing of the sort.”

“And I am Sorin Markov. If you do not stand aside this very instant you will be destroyed, and we will leave your body for your subjects the fish to devour at their leisure.”

Sorin’s voice had taken on a different tone as he spoke. It was both deeper and sharper. It hurt Nissa’s head to hear it.

But the kraken did not move. Instead it stood up to its full height and pushed out its white breast. “Your magician’s tricks will not work on the Moon Kraken, little wizard,” it said. “I have battled other, greater magic users than you.”

Sorin uttered no words. He spoke no incantations. His eyes simply went black, and his hands began to glow with a smoky light. The kraken noticed it, too.
It dropped down into the ocean so that only its top gills showed above the surf.

“Do you not remember me, fishmaster?” Sorin boomed.

Nissa had to crouch down on the deck of the ship. Something about Sorin’s voice made the parts inside her stomach and chest vibrate, and she suddenly felt nauseous.

The kraken looked closer at Sorin. “You?” it said after its examination. “You have returned?”

“Stand aside, or you will be disposed of,” Sorin boomed. “Stand aside, now!”

The timbre and volume of his voice was so great that Nissa had to clap her hands over her ears.

The kraken moved out of the way of the ship, and the behemoth started paddling again.

“Why have you returned?” the kraken said.

Sorin frowned, and his voice returned to normal, as did his eyes. “Be a good little fishy and guide us through the crystal fields,” he said.

The kraken’s tentacles casually slipped out of the water and wrapped loops around the small ship; Nissa had to jump back to avoid being caught up in the sudden lassoing. Soon the ship was entirely covered with tentacles. Nissa pinched her nose.
How
had
Speaker Sutina endured this smell?

“I will squeeze your ship to splinters before you end my days. Then you can make your sad way to shore with your tiny feet and hands,” The kraken said. “And there are things in these depths that do not slumber.”

Nissa looked again at the shore. She did not see the movement she’d seen before. The glitter of white sand looked terribly far away.

Sorin must have noticed it, too. That, or he realized that his power was at such ebb that he dared not call
the kraken’s bluff. The smoke wafting off his fingertips blew away.

Brinelin chuckled, and bubbles broke the sea’s surface. The Moon Kraken began to squeeze and Nissa felt the ship buckle and crack.

Nissa stepped forward.

“Moon Kraken,” she said, fingering something in her pocket. “I have an offering greater than blood sacrifice.”

The Moon Kraken twisted its beaked mouth into a terrible smirk. It squeezed harder. Now Nissa was sure she could hear water shooting into the hull.

“It concerns Speaker Sutina,” Nissa said. “Important news of her welfare.”

The kraken’s smirk fell away.

“What of the Speaker?” the Moon Kraken blurted.

Nissa could feel his tentacles loosen.

“Release the ship,” Nissa said.

It did. The kraken pulled its tentacles back under the surface of the water.

“I will tell you what I know,” Nissa said. “But you must promise to guide us to shore.”

“If it pleases Brinelin,” the kraken said.

Nissa thought about this. He might not be in the best mood after he hears that Speaker Sutina is dead.

“Take us to shore first,” Nissa said.

The kraken thrust its fleshy chin out. “Tell me now.”

“Do you promise to take us to shore after I tell you?”

“The Moon Kraken makes no promises.”

“Then it saddens me to tell you that Speaker Sutina is no more.”

The expression on the kraken’s face fell. Nissa felt a twinge of pity for it. The creature sank deeper into the water, before floating higher again.

“You lie!” the kraken spouted water from its gills. All of its tentacles shot straight out of the water and into the air. “You are lying to save your barnacles. Your falseness will not save you.”

“I am not lying. She died in an attack made by the new scourge that plagues Zendikar, the very scourge we are on a journey to stop.” Nissa said. From her pocket she drew the pearl Speaker Sutina had dropped the day she died. Nissa held the pearl up. “Behold the pearl you gave her.” The assumption was a gamble, but it was all she had. The kraken’s eyes squeezed together when it saw the gift. A small tentacle lifted out of the water and came close to the pearl. With a gentleness that surprised Nissa, the tentacle caressed the pearl before taking it carefully. The kraken brought the pearl to the front of its face, and examined it through sad eyes.

“Tell me everything,” the Moon Kraken said softly, without looking away from the pearl.

Nissa told the creature the story of Speaker Sutina’s death and of their quest to imprison the brood lineage. When she had finished the only sound she heard was the not-so-distant sound of waves breaking on the white shore.

“What did she say before she fell away?” the kraken said.

Nissa cast her mind for a good lie. “She spoke of the ocean,” Nissa said.

“That is not true. Sutina hated the water,” the kraken said, softly. “But I will let you pass.”

The kraken moved out of the way of the ship, and the behemoth started paddling again.

The kraken’s white face crumpled as it slipped under the water. Soon it broke the surface of the ocean and waved them forward. The creature guided
them through the deadheads lurking just below the surface of the water, and crystals as long as three of their ships, one of which had at its tip a human skull pierced through the brain pan and clacking in the wind.

Soon they were near the shore. The Moon Kraken moved to the side and let the behemoth clamber onto the shore, dragging the ship through the sand. The ship tilted right off its keel and onto its hull, and Nissa had to grab a railing to keep from sliding off into the sand. She dismissed the behemouth and immediately felt stronger.

“Go forth from here,” the kraken said, glumly. “Brinelin will do his part to rid Zendikar of this scourge.” With that, he slipped below the surface and was not seen again.

A
shaft of sunlight broke through the clouds overhead and sparkled on the white sand made of crystals ground to grains. The beach extended to a sheer cliff. Nissa’s heart sank as her eyes followed the cliff up. It was a league high if it was an arm’s length, rising in one uninterrupted sweep so high that Nissa could see clouds moving at the top. Crystals protruded at irregular intervals from the cliff’s sheer face.

Anowon brushed past her to evaluate the cliff, suddenly the guide on the continent she had never visited. “The creatures that have adapted to live here are as hard and as spiny as this land,” the vampire said. “And tougher by far.”

“We cannot scale this cliff,” Nissa said, suddenly understanding the kraken’s malicious smile before it submerged.

Anowon looked up from the cliff’s base.

“For one,” Nissa continued. “We lack rope enough for even one ascent. Second, none of my pegs will penetrate that crystal.”

Anowon turned as though he had not heard Nissa. He walked back to the shore, pushing through the goblins that drew back from him as he passed. Even
Smara stopped mumbling to watch what he was doing. When Anowon reached the shoreline he began to dig. He soon unearthed the badly rotted wooden mast of a ship.

“I saw another ship broken and scattered in the shallows there,” Anowon said, pointing just off shore to a massive crystal as thick as their whole ship. “And now this one.”

The vampire looked up from the hole he’d dug and peered at the top of the cliff, where clouds skittered by. “I wonder …”

Nissa waited for Anowon to explain what he was thinking. He walked a bit up the shore and began to dig again. Sure enough, he uncovered a broken piece of hull.

“This place is a graveyard for water vessels,” Anowon said.

Nissa waited, but the vampire said nothing more. A moment later he knelt and closed his eyes. He stayed in the position for long enough that Nissa thought he might have fallen asleep, but then she saw his fingers moving like spiders over one of the metal cylinders dangling from his belt.

“Ghet,” Sorin said. “Oh, Ghet.”

Anowon opened one of his eyes and curled his lip at Sorin.

Sorin chuckled. “You were only just about to explain your hypothesis to us.”

“We cannot scale that cliff,” Anowon said.

“The elf said that already.”

Anowon opened both of his eyes with a sigh. “If ships ruin here commonly, then there must be something taking advantage of it. On Akoum nothing is wasted.”

The waves broke on the beach. The wind blew hard
across Nissa’s ear. “So we wait?” Nissa said.

“Yes,” Sorin said. “For imminent attack.”

They waited the rest of the day and into the night. Brightness, Nissa learned, was never much of an issue on Akoum, where the ever-present crystals magnified even the dimmest light.

So it was easy for Nissa to see almost as clearly as day when figures slowly rappelled down the side of the cliff later that night. They rappelled in a way she had never seen before—face forward with their harness at their belly, belaying the rope that way. The figures were short and lightly armed. When ten were on the sand, they branched out and drew small knives.

Nissa waited to give the signal until the men were almost on top of them. Then she whistled, and they jumped up, Nissa with her stem sword drawn and limp next to her. Anowon’s eyes glowed pale in the starlight and Sorin’s silhouette, as black and as deep as velvet, drew in the surrounding light.

The beach combers looked from Nissa to Sorin to Anowon to Smara and to the two goblins, then to Sorin’s parasite sword, which seemed to pulse darker than the night around it. They were clearly weighing their chances. The combers had obviously been counting on surprising them, and with that gone, they wondered if they had the numbers to carry the fight. The decision was made when the lead scavenger dropped his dagger. The others soon followed.

“Stop,” one said, stepping forward and holding his hand with the palm facing out. “We are not your enemy. We have come to help.”

“That
is
a relief,” Sorin said. “Because I thought you wanted to cut our throats in our sleep and then plunder whatever goods we might have.”

“We saw your ship from above,” the head man said. He was a human, without a doubt.