Zendikar: In the Teeth of Akoum (24 page)

The smell in the small cell was overwhelming. The sloughed bodies of the elves were already in an advanced state of decay, and just looking at them caused Nissa a bit of unease.

“I thought it was to risky too use your rot talk among the crystals?” Nissa asked.

“I decided it was a risk worth taking. Now, goblin … Fetch.” Sorin pointed at where the head elf’s slate-plate armor lay crumpled and wet.

The goblin looked at Sorin for a long moment as though he had not fully understood the language he was speaking. For a moment Nissa thought he would say something, but instead he blinked once and then stood and proceeded to the bodies.

It took some mucking about in the bodies, but finally the goblin produced the key and held it out to Sorin. The human eyed the dripping key warily.

“Well,” Sorin gestured at the door. “Use it.”

The goblin walked to the door, inserted the key in the hole, turned it, and … nothing. The key did not click in the lock, and the door did not open to either pushes or pulls.

Sorin threw up his arms. “Wonderful,” he said.

The horns had grown louder. And Nissa thought she could hear something else: a deep growling, maybe. Like boulders dragged across a flat place.

Sorin took the key between two pinched fingers and tried it in the lock. It turned but would not open.

When it was Nissa’s turn, she stood before the door and looked closely. The basalt was worn smooth around the keyhole, and a similarly smooth area was visible where the elves put their hands to push the door closed. There were also two patches on the floor where the elves’ feet had worn it smooth. Nissa placed her sandaled feet in the smooth areas. She inserted the key and turned, and the door snapped open.

Sorin stood and moved to the door. He took a wary look out to make sure some of the scuffling feet they had been hearing in the hall were not passing. Smara was muttering under her breath behind Nissa as she slipped out of the cell. Sorin was standing in
the middle of the hall. The doors of four similar-sized cells were visible in the light of the torches that sputtered in the hall. Nissa opened them all and found them to be empty until the last. Anowon was waiting, and he brushed by Nissa when the door opened. Without stopping, he walked down the hall, sweeping past Sorin.

“You could at least thank the elf, Ghet,” Sorin said. “I would have left you.”

Nissa followed Anowon, and the others followed her. They passed empty rooms, some with plates of warm-looking food still in them.

“Wait,” Nissa said. She ducked into a room. Sorin’s great sword and Nissa’s staff were propped in a corner. She seized them and left.

The first attack involved something large hitting the tower. The tremor seemed at first like the Roil, until Nissa checked the vial of enchanted water hanging from her neck and saw it was not boiling. But the tower shook all the same. Anowon was some distance ahead, and they all ran to catch up. A brace of elves charged out of a room to Nissa’s right, and Sorin drew his sword and cut them down where they stood. Their bodies were withered husks when Nissa stepped over them, and Sorin’s sword pulsed deep and black. He sheathed its hungry blade, and they ran after Anowon.

Once free from the cells, they descended the stairs. On every level elves were among the plants shooting arrows out. Nissa saw forms flying through the night. On the level where the plants with mouths lived, Nissa watched as a plant snatched a flying brood lineage out of the air and chewed it down. She also saw eight elves pulled out of the bushes and dropped by flying brood.

Nissa stopped. “How are we going to get out of this tower?” she asked nobody in particular. But Anowon did not stop. He charged down the spiraling stairway. Soon they were at the second to last level—Nissa recognized the giant ferns—and she could see the assembled host. Their dark shapes extended far into the darkness. There were no torches and no battle cries—only the screams of elves pulled from their positions and the harmonic music of bowstrings released in
staccato
.

Nissa stopped again, taking Sorin’s shoulder. “We cannot win if we step out through those doors,” she said. Sorin nodded. Anowon was ahead, but Sorin ran after him and caught the vampire before he turned the spiral corner. Sorin spun Anowon around, and the look on Anowon’s face made Nissa start. His lips were stretched back and showed his fangs. His eyes were red and narrowed, and blood was coming out of the corners of his eyes. He was crying blood.

None of that seemed to bother Sorin, who dragged Anowon back up the stairs as though he were a toy. Nissa threw down any elves they met with her staff. There was a tremendous collision, and the tower shuddered. Elf screams erupted from below.

“They’ve broken through,” Nissa yelled.

The stairs ended, and Nissa and the others found themselves on a wide platform. Kolya trees grew in raised beds. Three brood were standing next to the stairway entrance, and Nissa charged through, tripping on the body of an elf and falling. She twisted her stem sword free and connected with the verdant energy of the Turntimber.

Mana moved through her and she camouflaged herself to a patch of basalt. The brood that had been descending on her pulled up and hovered above the
entrance. The brood’s head moved back and forth, searching for Nissa’s form.

But the creature did not have long to look, for Anowon came through the doorway behind her and grabbed one of the brood’s hanging tentacles. The creature tried to pull away, but the vampire punched the tentacle with his fist, and the creature fell dead. A glyph glowed red on the tentacle where Anowon had struck.

Sorin was next. The two remaining brood took a look at Sorin, tall and pale with his great sword unsheathed and glowing like the starry night sky, and they turned to fly. But a keening song came to Sorin’s lips, and the brood froze midair and fell as lumps of flesh into the darkness below.

They turned to Anowon. In a moment the dead brood stirred and moved slowly back into the air. The Glyph glowed softly on the tentacle as it moved.

“Come,” Anowon said. “This will fly us down.”

Nissa’s skin itched seeing the effects of Anowon’s vampire-rapture.

Another tremendous impact shook the tower. That was enough to dispel any unease Nissa had about the zombie brood. At Anowon’s command, the creature wrapped one tentacle around her waist and stepped off the edge of the tower. The flying brood lineage could not fly normally while holding all five of them in its tentacles, but it controlled itself enough and glided fast toward the ground in a sort of controlled freefall. As they passed, Nissa could see that each of the tower’s ledges held hundreds of roosting brood. In the starlight Nissa could see the land around the base of the tower. Six massive brood had planted their shoulders against the tower and were pushing it back and forth.

The zombie brood held them tightly as it glided far out into the night on wings of flesh. It finally
skidded to a landing in the dusty flats half a league from the tower.

Anowon took a deep breath, and his jaw tightened as he gnashed his teeth. The veins in his neck stood out, and the muscles in his cheeks and arms clenched. A series of grunts emanated from deep in the vampire’s throat, and when he opened his eyes they were red and without pupils. He looked at the null brood, and the creature dropped dead.

In a normal situation, Nissa would have felt a bit of pity for the dead brood. Nothing deserved what a vampire gave. But there was no time for pity. The night spread on all sides. Nissa turned and realized her pathwaystone was back in the tower, as was the pack that Khalled had given her.

“I do not know what direction we should travel,” Nissa said.

Anowon was in a similar quandary, Nissa could tell. The vampire was looking at the stars, trying to gain his direction. His blood tears had dried on his cheeks and flecked off. But the curl to his lip had not disappeared. He jerked his hand up and pointed. “That way is west,” he said. “It is somewhere there.”

“Ghet?” Sorin said. “You told me you were at the Eye of Ugin. How can you be unsure how to travel to the Teeth of Akoum, Ghet?”

Anowon looked hard at the smiling Sorin. Both sides of his mouth curled back, and he spoke in a voice as menacing as any Nissa had ever heard. “Having visited a location is different than knowing the way there,” the vampire said.

“Ghet,” Sorin said, his face clearly showing his mock disapproval. “You have lied to us, and we demand an apology.”

Smara’s goblin looked from one to the other of them, then at Smara. “I know the way,” he said.

Nobody said anything. Smara cocked her head and stared at the goblin as though she’d only just noticed him for the first time.

“You?” Sorin said. “Again?”

All eyes were on the goblin, and he swallowed hard before speaking. “I was in the Teeth for my mistress,” the goblin said, motioning at Smara. She had suddenly become quiet, listening to the goblin speak. “My mistress sent me through the Cypher of Flames to find the Eye of Ugin and return with a path to it. We were traveling to the eye when the fates of the ancient ones put us in your path.”

“The ancient ones?” Sorin said. “Do you mean to think that the Eldrazi sent us to you?”

The goblin clapped its clawed hands over its ears. It peered at the dark sky from under a furrowed brow. “You must not speak the ancients’ name,” it said.

“The gift is in the loam,” Smara said, her pupilless eyes staring up at the sky.

“Yes, the gift in the wherever,” Sorin said. He turned to the goblin. “Well, lead on then,” he said.

“Wait,” Anowon said. The vampire had advanced on the goblin and was not less than an arm’s length away. “I did not see you. I did not smell you,” he said.

“But I saw you, vampire,” the goblin said. “I saw you held outside the doors as the magic wielders fought. And the dragon. And I saw you …”

“That is enough,” Anowon said, holding up his hand.

A sly smile spread across the goblin’s dry, cracked lips. “The vampire does not want me to speak of what I saw?”

“You will remain quiet, or you will sleep with your friends.”

The goblin bowed, turned on the ball of its right foot, and pointed into the darkness. “The Teeth of Akoum lie there.”

They walked all that night. The wind that blew across the flats was cold, and soon Nissa’s teeth were chattering. But when the sun rose, the flats heated quickly. By the time the sun fell shining in their eyes, the ground was so hot that none dared stop, for fear that their sandals might start ablaze. The goblin was the exception—its feet were the color of rock and seemed as thick and as hoary as dulam hide.

For three days they walked. At the goblin’s request they traveled at night until the land split into shallow canyons with long-dried stream beds at their bottom.

Anowon remained in a dark mood. He traveled far behind the others and began to lose weight. There was nothing for him to eat, as Sorin slept next to Smara and the goblin, knowing that if they lost the goblin they would all be lost and at the mercy of the crystal flats.

To make matters worse, there had been no water since they had found a hedron plant, a low gray plant covered with thorns and roughly shaped like a hedron. They’d found it in a low draw, and without a moment’s hesitation, Nissa had cut the top off. They had scooped out the pith and sucked the water from it. That had been the day before. At that moment, Nissa’s tongue felt so large from lack of water that she could barely close her mouth.

Nissa and the goblin topped the bank of an arroyo and saw shapes moving on the flat before them. Nissa squinted at the moving shapes, but the sun was in her eyes, and she could not see well.

“Brood?” Nissa said. “Goblin, is it them?”

The goblin looked at the movement. “Mudheel,” it said. “I have told you. My name is Mudheel. Or will you not like to speak the name of a goblin? I am not some Saltskull. I have a brain and a tongue, and I know how to use them.”

“You are certainly the most unusual goblin I have ever met,” Nissa said.

“Mudheel, my name is Mudheel,” the goblin said, bowing mockingly. “If it pleases my lady.”

“Mudheel,” Nissa said. “What I said before.”

Mudheel looked to the flats. “It is the City that Walks. The Goma Fada Caravan.”

“Does it have water?”

“I do think,” Mudheel said. “If not they would die in this waste. A body needs water.”

“Thank you, Mudheel. I’ll keep that in mind,” Nissa said, struggling forward. Speaking hurt as much as walking, and her throat burned from talking to the goblin … to Mudheel. Still there was one question that was burning her as much as it had before, as much as the scorching air around them. Nissa turned to Mudheel.

“Why do you stay with this party as the other goblins have slowly disappeared?” Nissa asked. “Are you not afraid that you are next? Why have you not fled in the night?”

Mudheel turned to Smara. “She needs me.”

Nissa waited for more.

“She is like a wife to me,” Mudheel said.

A wife?
Nissa thought. Of all the responses the goblin could have given, that was the one that Nissa had least expected.