Zendikar: In the Teeth of Akoum (31 page)

Soon each of them had more than they could carry. Sorin stepped out of the tent, and without even looking at the sleeping figure, began strapping all they had on one of the dulam beasts. He used a length of rope to strap on two large panniers and filled these large baskets with goods. The rest, long tent posts and odds and ends, he strapped lengthways along the beast’s back.

Sorin took the beast’s halter rope and led it away into the darkness. Nissa looked back at the sleeping figure before following. If stealing from that poor man would allow her to save Zendikar, then that was how it had to be. The man would probably be glad if she told him the full story. As she reasoned with herself, Nissa fumbled for an earthenware canteen of water Sorin had placed in the left pannier, and helped herself to a long draught of warm, sulfurous water.

They walked into the darkness for a time before Nissa felt comfortable speaking.

“We must have the stealth of a baloth.” Nissa said.

Nobody said anything.

“Did you drug the man?” Nissa asked. “He could have woken at any moment.”

“End this charade of innocence,” Sorin said. “He will not ever wake. I slaked my thirst on him. I even supped on his heart.”

She walked in silence holding the dead man’s water jug. They had not slept in days, and suddenly Nissa felt very tired.
Yes, it was time to end the charade
.

They stopped to sleep at the base of the mountains. The Teeth of Akoum jutted straight off the plateau. It would be a hard climb, she knew. To compound the difficulties they would encounter, they had lost Mudheel when Smara left. Goblins could be unbearable, but they always knew a good path and how to proceed along it. And Mudheel had been easier to live around than any goblin Nissa had ever met.

Each of them stooped and kicked hip grooves in the dirt before falling on the ground and asleep.

“Do you know the way?” Nissa asked Anowon. She was beginning to wonder if Anowon had fallen asleep when the vampire spoke.

“More, or less,” he said.

“That
is
reassuring,” Sorin said.

“I know the general path,” Anowon said. “My camp had been here in the Teeth, but it was raised in the wake of the brood. I can get us to the Eye.”

“Perhaps,” Nissa said. She fixed her eyes on the tall mountains above her.

Later, in the dark, things seemed unusually quiet. Nothing moved. A lizard croaked somewhere far off, and then another closer by, and suddenly Nissa was wide awake. She rolled onto her stomach and took hold of her staff, waiting for the next lizard call to signal an attack.

But none came. She heard no more lizard calls. The stars blinked above in the empty sky, and in a moment her eyes felt heavy again.

She woke in the dawn darkness as Sorin jostled her shoulder with his boot.

“Up now,” the vampire said.

Nissa rubbed her eyes and looked around.
What had happened to the ambush?
She wondered. When the light was good enough she got on her hands and knees to look for signs among the scrubby grasses. But she found only that of a nurm rat.

There was not time to look further. Anowon began to walk.

The climb up the mountains started out hard and never stopped. After just three hours, Nissa was breathing as hard as she ever had. The well worn trail was riven with runoff channels and switched back and forth on an ascent so steep that she felt like roping in. But that would have slowed her down. Nissa knew she could not afford to be slow—when the man was found dead beside his fire, there was a high likelihood that someone from Affa would send out a search party.

There was also the issue of last night. Nissa was sure someone had been in the darkness watching them. The lizard calls had been too uniform and their distance too staggered. But Anowon had been on watch, and he had not mentioned anything about the strange calls. Perhaps Affa had sent their party out sooner than she thought, and they were watching for a chance to attack?

Below them Affa was an unmemorable scrabble of huts and tents, and above them the peaks appeared to go on forever. The mountain was constructed of the same red, gritty sandstone as the other mountains in the area, with one large difference: the Teeth of Akoum were as smooth as incisors. Where the earlier mountains had been bulbous and rounded, the Teeth were buffed smooth by the winds which blew continuously and hard. It blew so hard that whoever had created the trail had been forced to cut it into the very rock to allow feet purchase. Without the trail’s lip the group would have been blown off the side of the mountain and away within two hours of starting their ascent.

The wind howled so that Nissa finally had to tie a piece of her cloak around her head and ears to protect them and keep her brain from feeling like it would explode.

And exploding was a distinct possibility. The Roil occurred frequently. Nissa could feel them erupting, echoing off the mountains. As they staggered along the trail, the Roil rent the rock above them, and lava gurgled forth from the cracks. The very mountain seemed to rock on some axis before straightening and settling. Another Roil was so severe that Nissa had to fall to the ground and brace her arms and legs against the rock.

Sorin, on the other hand, had begun to float away, pulled by the Roil. But Nissa managed to whip out her stem sword and catch his ankle before the crackling mana drew him far out into the chasm.

After the last Roil they all agreed to use the rope they had stolen in Affa. Nissa was the only one with a harness. She rigged a harness for Sorin out of the rope, which Anowon sneered at as he tied his own.

“Vampire style,” he said. The harness Anowon tied on himself looked strange to Nissa, constructed as it was with long pieces of rope that wrapped around the hip
and
shoulders, a style she had never seen. Elf harnesses, and human ones for that matter, looped around the legs, hips, and abdomen. The strangest harness she’d ever seen was surely the merfolk’s—little more than two pieces of rope strung through the crotch and around the shoulders in a figure eight. Anowon’s harness took more rope, but appeared, she had to admit, very stable.

The trail became steep enough that they had to use their hands to half-climb, half-walk along the rough scree.

Their end rope was belayed crossways around Anowon’s shoulder, so the vampire could with his weight act as the anchor. Nissa had counseled Anowon against the idea.
What if he fell, or was carried away by the Roil?
But Anowon was leading the ascent, and that meant he chose the rope system. Their climb would be in the vampire style. Nissa sighed and started climbing again.

Nissa wondered how Smara and Mudheel would have made their way up the trail
Would the goblin have led? Was theirs even the trail the two would have taken?
There were other trails; Nissa had seen them branching off. They were mostly small trails, more than likely used by animals, but Mudheel had been the
only one among them that actually knew the way to the Eye of Ugin. Anowon had, by his own admission, only the roughest idea of where the Eye lay. In fact, as Nissa watched the vampire take each of his toe-holds, she wondered more and more if he had
any
ideas at all where the Eye was.

Nissa wondered where the kor and her goblin minder were. Surely they did not give up their quest to get to the Eye just because Smara argued with Sorin? What if they reached the Eye first and managed to free the Eldrazi?

Nissa had never seen Sorin with so little to say and with such a serious look on his face. Every time the switchback turned back on itself, Sorin stopped and closed his eyes and did not move. Whatever magic the vampire was utilizing was not giving him the answers he desired, for he was frowning when he opened his eyes again and scrambled over the rock.

The way became steeper. and at the same time the switchbacks stopped and the trail steepened. It clung to the side of a cliff that fell away below and spanned above past all their abilities to see. The trail was just wide enough for the dulam to move through. Nissa led the beast as it inched along.

Twice Nissa heard a loud crack and looked up to see a boulder bouncing off the cliff with great bounds as it plummeted toward them. One crashed past, knocking a divot out of part of the trail, which Nissa guessed happened fairly often judging from the chewed-upon state of the trail.

The second rock that fell was larger than the first, and Nissa knew the moment she looked up that it was falling directly at her. She waited until the rock was almost upon her before jumping to the side. She slipped in her haste, and tumbled off the trail.

The wind blasted past her ears. The thought flashed through her head that her rope had not held, but it took up the slack, and her harness jerked her to a jarring stop. She hung leagues above the ground swinging in the gusts.

Nissa has fallen before, of course. Falling was nothing new. Even zeem monkeys fell from trees, after all. But hanging so far above the ground—where Nissa had to squint at the ground to make out even a boulder—was something new. With shaking hands she hoisted herself up and continued to climb.

By late afternoon the group was higher than the clouds, and the air had turned cold. The crystals that stuck out of the red sandstone were red themselves and as sharp as sword blades. Sorin cut his arm as he passed one, and when he turned to look at the cut he tripped and teetered. Nissa reached out and caught him just before he fell off the side and onto one of the many tipped crystals jutting out of the cliff.

The light of the setting sun shone directly in their eyes as they walked, making stepping even more dangerous. Nissa’s breath was a cloud in the high air as she stopped. At that moment the dulam beast missed its footing and struggled desperately as it slipped off the edge and fell soundlessly into the void below with all their supplies. Nissa waited for a sickening thud.

There was no sound. Finally Nissa turned and began walking again.

The night was frigid. The wind had mostly disappeared, but still the air was icy and bit hard at their shoulders and faces. Twice Nissa thought she heard the lizard call that had woken her out of a dead sleep days before echoing through the peaks.

“Do you smell smoke?” Nissa whispered. Any sound
echoed off the crystals, sounding deceptively close or far away.

Anowon shook his head, but Nissa was sure she smelled smoke. And when she stood first watch, the smell drove her to stand and go for a look around. Nissa knew it was not a good idea to walk in the mountains in the dark, especially
those
mountains, but she could not stand smelling wood smoke without trying to find where it was coming from. It could be some travelers that knew where they were going, after all.

As good as her eyes were in the dark Nissa still tripped. The land around was red from the sandstone and stretched out and down in long jags. She stepped around an outcropping of crystals and stopped. She could tell something was standing against the rock. She wished she had thought to bring her staff and cursed herself for making such an unwise mistake.

“Come out,” she said.

A figure emerged from against the rock. Mudheel pieced his way to her walking carefully in the dark.

“You?” Nissa said.

The goblin bowed slightly.

N
issa watched as the goblin approached. She’d last seen him some days before, following Smara as she stormed away after hearing Sorin’s plan to refortify the Eldrazi’s prison.

“Are you following us?” Nissa asked.

“It is you who should be following us,” Mudheel said.

“Why?”

“You are on the wrong path.”

“How do I know you are not trying to mislead?”

“You do not know this,” The goblin said. “Except why would I, young elf?”

He was right, Nissa thought. The goblin and Smara had left, not the other way around.

“Why are you telling me this?”

The goblin smiled, showing lines of teeth like stones in a graveyard. He hesitated a moment before speaking.

“I miss you,” he said.

Wonderful
, Nissa thought.

“And I did not want to push the rock.”

“You pushed that boulder down on us?”

The goblin nodded slowly. “Twice.”

“Both times?”

The goblin nodded again. “But I did not want to. She made me.”

“Where is she now?”

“Sleeping.” Mudheel said. “She has been sleeping more and more the closer we get to …
them.”

“Why are you here?” Nissa said. “To finish the job?”

The goblin frowned. “It was not you I was trying to knock off the mountain. It was the vampire. The one who wants to put the ancient ones deeper into their mountain. My mistress decreed it.”

“Then why are you here?”

“I want you to take the true path. Your days are few if you do not.”

“Why?”

“These mountains contain a protector. You have not seen it yet, but it has detected you. It stalks you.”

“And you have evaded detection?”

Once again the goblin bowed slightly. Nissa wished he would stop doing that.

“What is the nature of this enemy?”