Zendikar: In the Teeth of Akoum (17 page)

M
any of the brood were of the tentacle-and-bone variety, Nissa noticed, but at least one of them was the large kind with the many blue eyes. Its tentacles were as thick as a man’s chest as they churned up the dirt while running at her. The creature’s squat front tentacles dug for purchase as lines of muscle rippled. Behind, four more brood with bone heads ran, followed by three of the kind that flew.

Nissa had a matter of moments before the flying ones were on her. She fell and put her forehead and palms on the ground and took a deep breath. In a moment, the vigor of life pulsed up through the dirt and shot up her veins and arteries and into her head.

And she was not the only one. Anowon charged forward and slashed savagely at one of the flying brood with his long-nailed hands. He bit and tore a head-sized chunk out of its tentacle.

Nissa formed an image in her mind. A moment later a shrill cry split the air and a huge, six-legged basilisk was blinking its oily black eyes in the sun. It swung its head and caught one of the flying brood by a tentacle and flipped it into a nearby hedron. The other brood fell on the lizard like a stone. The lizard hit the brood hard on the top of the head and
threw it off into the weeds. From the way it hit the ground, Nissa could tell the brood was dead. The basilisk shook its head, tripped, and almost fell. But it did not, and a second later the brood on foot reached it.

One of the winged ones had snuck past her basilisk. Nissa looked up just as the brood threw one of its long tentacle-arms out to catch her around the neck. Nissa caught the tentacle in her hand and gave it a tug, and the brood had to pull wildly to stay aloft. But stay aloft it did. It snapped its other tentacle out, and with a deft movement Nissa sheared it off with her stem. Still the brood did not cry out. Nissa marveled at that. Perhaps it did not have a mouth.

Another of the creature’s tentacles came out and struck her on the forehead. Nissa fell back and pulled her feet up over her head and flipped as best she could. She landed face down, and the brood was on her. She rolled to the right, but the brood grasped her neck and pulled her up and threw her. Nissa flew through the air and was able to easily flip and land lightly on her feet.

To her left the basilisk she had summoned was making wide sweeps with its head. The two horns protruding from its forehead were already blood-spattered, and as she watched, the huge brood rammed into the basilisk’s haunch. The lizard screamed and turned for a bite, but its fangs snapped on air—the brood-bull had backed away.

Nissa eyed her stem where it lay in the grass between her and the flying brood. The stump of the brood’s tentacle was dripping blood, she saw, but the creature regarded her as mildly as if she had waved hello to it. She gauged the distance and guessed she could reach the weapon before the brood reached her.

Nissa had always been a fast runner, even for an elf. Joraga prided themselves on sprinting, and she had won most of her tree’s weekly races while still only a juvenile. But she had never seen speed like the brood produced. It was past her stem and coming directly for her before she was halfway.

Nissa used her last step to jump up and over the brood. She put her hands before her and snatched her stem before tucking her head, rolling along the turf, and popping up on her feet. The brood was too far away, otherwise she would have snapped it while its back was still turned. Why should she, a Joraga, be concerned with the formality of honor when these plagues were running roughshod over Zendikar?

She started running at the brood again. The creature turned and, seeing her running, attempted to fly, but Nissa snapped its right, split arm off with her stem.

Nissa firmed the stem into a spike, tucked its handle under her armpit, and ran its tip into the middle of the brood. She drove it all the way in until it rested against its chest.

The brood stopped moving as Nissa drew the stem back out. Its tentacles and arm went limp, and its body pitched foreword.

The basilisk had destroyed almost all of the brood. The large brood lay on the ground gasping for air with a horn-puncture through its chest and brown foam at its mouth. She walked past the fray, toward the building where Sorin was wiping the blade of his great sword on a clump of grass. A juvenile broodling lay hacked in two pieces not far away.

Sorin looked up at Nissa’s frowning face. Sorin glanced at the dead brood juvenile and smiled.

“Would you have rather taken him home?” Sorin asked.

She was about to respond. But when she opened her mouth, nothing came out. Perhaps he was right. What was wrong with killing the young of such creatures? Were they not brutes? They wanted Zendikar. They wanted to clear the trees and dig holes and suck on rocks.

“Look at this.” It was Anowon’s voice, and it came from near the structure. Nissa and Sorin followed his voice around a corner. A brood with a crushed skull lay slumped against the half-built wall. Nissa looked at Anowon and then up to see the vampire slaves fleeing through the hedrons to the mountains, with their harness ropes untied and trailing behind them. There was no sign of Smara and her goblins.

Anowon, however, was peering at the rocks used in a finished part of the structure. He had a small sliver of glass which he held before one of his eyes as he looked closely at some carvings.

A thought immediately occurred to her: how had the brood carved that? She looked around. There was no sign of any tools. How had they cut the blocks? Where had they quarried them?

Anowon waved them closer. “Look at this,” he repeated. The stones he gestured at had strange glyphlike patterns chiseled into them like many of the other structures and hedrons that floated in crumbled glory across Zendikar.

Nissa looked up at Anowon.

“Do you see anything different?” he asked. He pointed at one of the hedrons floating nearby. “Look at that first.”

Nissa looked at the floating stele, which was bobbing an arm’s width away. Anowon was right. The design on the new structure was similar to what was on the hedron, but not the same. The structure’s design was …
rougher somehow. The lines were neither as symmetrical, nor as clearly graven.

“Why would that be?” Nissa said.

The vampire gave a knowing curl to his lip. “Well, the designs are similar at first, but very different on closer inspection.”

Sorin rolled his eyes.

“They are very different,” Anowon continued. He pointed to the nearby hedron. “The big brood pushed that stone this close. It was what it was doing when we attacked.”

“Why would it push it that close?” Nissa asked.

“To copy the design,” replied Anowon.

Nissa was silent for a moment. “I would have thought those designs are a language, or some known part of the brood’s life. A story perhaps?”

“They are language,” Anowon said. “Power glyphs in ancient Eldrazi. This one says, ‘There is no power but our power.’” The vampire pointed at a panel of glyphic lettering on the stele, then pointed to a similar marking on the building. “But this means nothing. This is not even close in shape.”

Sorin sniffed.

Nissa bent for another look at the hedron glyph and then the glyph on the structure. They looked the same to her.

“Do you not see?” Anowon said, pointing to the hedron. “The words on this are copied imperfectly on this,” he pointed to the structure. “Copied to meaningless gibberish.”

“Why would they have to copy?” Nissa said.

“A good question,” Sorin said. “Sharp as jurworrel thorns you are.”

Nissa ignored him and turned to Anowon, who regarded her as he stroked his chin.

“They must be unable to write ancient Eldrazi,” he said. “They are copying something that they have forgotten how to produce. They either have forgotten or they never knew.”

“But who wrote them, then?” Nissa said. “And why are the brood copying them?”

“The brood idolize the authors, obviously,” Anowon said.

“Gods?” Nissa said.

“Perhaps.”

Sorin smiled. “As interesting as this little lesson of archaeosophy is, do you not think we should arrive at Zulaport? I am not feeling my best.”

Nissa could hear the distaste in Sorin’s voice, and she suddenly realized that she hated him for it. But it was true that Sorin did not look like he had when had they set out from Graypelt. He was noticeably thinner, and papery somehow. After rot-talking during the attack on the brood, he looked positively stricken, like he was possessed by a horrible disease that made his eye sockets deepen and his skin look like dead leaves.

Anowon paid no attention. He was staring at the building. A moment later a strange look crossed over his face. He muttered something to himself and began fumbling in the leather pouch on his belt. Soon he drew out his scraps of parchment and scraped something on one with a piece of charcoal. He stopped and felt for one of the metal cylinders hanging from his belt. He pulled the cylinder up and read the letters on it, holding it very close to his face, turning it slowly as he read.

Sorin watched with a bemused look on his face. “I suddenly feel like I am intruding,” he said. “Do you want to be alone, Ghet?”

Anowon looked up and blinked. “What do you want?” he asked.

“Are you ready to visit beautiful Zulaport?”

“Zulaport?”

“You know?” Sorin pointed down to the sea. “The town that lies there … where we will hire a craft to take us over the water to Akoum? That Zulaport.”

“Yes, of course. I am ready, master.”

The smile dropped off Sorin’s face. He glanced at Nissa before smiling again.
“Master
you say? What foolishness you speak? Let us walk.”

And Sorin began walking.

Master
, Nissa thought.
Interesting. That would explain many things. But why?

The grassland swept several leagues until it ended abruptly at the blue ocean. The trail was clearly marked, and they followed it until the sun buried itself in the jagged pink and yellow surf. Soon the lights of Zulaport showed bright in the dusk.

They entered the town at total dark, greeted by the barking of feral Onduan hounds that howled around them on their three legs. Sorin fetched one a kick in the ribs and sent it yelping away, and the rest melted into the darkness.

Nissa frowned. She could hear Anowon sniffing the air next to her, smelling the many beings in the small settlement. At one point he closed his eyes, and his head bobbed to a rhythm only he could hear. Vampires could hear and feel the blood of prey. If a vampire let it, the pulse, as it was called, could be strong enough to whip one into a frenzy. But as Nissa watched, Anowon opened his eyes and took a deep breath.

Yet Sorin took Anowon by the scruff of the neck, and when the vampire turned, shoved him forward
so he almost went sprawling on the ground. “Keep your fangs in your mouth,” Sorin said. “Shed blood here, and I’ll exact a toll on your flesh tonight.”

Nissa stepped back from Sorin. Any vampire she’d ever encountered in Bala Ged would have attacked at such a provocation. But Anowon skulked ahead and did not even turn.

Sorin leaned in. “Anowon has wanted to feed on you, but I have kept him at bay.”

Nissa did not know what to say to that. “Let him come,” she said finally.

“Indeed,” Sorin said, and moved away into the darkness.

The town itself seemed composed of small shacks of thatch and sod as was typical in a Zendikar settlement. The rush of the ocean surf punctuated the darkness as Nissa walked. The wind off the ocean was humid and cold, and the acrid smoke from the animal dung fires stung Nissa’s eyes. Ahead a large fire burned, and they walked toward that light like moths.

A group of larger shacks were grouped around the large fire. It blazed huge and sideways with each gust of wind. One shack was larger than the rest. In the wild flicker of the bonfire a sign made from a piece of driftwood swung in the wind above its door.

Anowon drew the hood of his cloak up over his head. Nissa watched the reflection of the flames dance on his eyes for a second, and then Sorin spoke.

“What is that supposed to be?” Sorin said. He reached up and took hold of the swinging sign, stilling it.

“A kraken,” Nissa said. “But what is it doing to that cuttlefish?”

Sorin, tilting his head sideways, looked at the
sign. “I do not … uh”—he righted his head—“I see now.”

“The
Way of Things,”
said a voice from within the door. Eyes were looking out from the peat hole. The door opened to reveal a short human, hunkered as though by deformity. Or perhaps it was the man’s heavy armaments—he was wearing a contraption strapped over his left arm. To Nissa it looked to be a mechanism that fed one of the many knives lined up along his arm into his hand. Humans loved such devices. And he was wearing armor—plenty of armor—another human weakness. Only his bald head and huge red beard were free from rusted plates fit together with only a small seam. Even though elves loathed armor, she could tell the suit he was wearing had once been quite expensive.

“Welcome to Zulaport. You will be wanting to speak to Indorel at your earliest possible convenience. He runs this place.”

“And you are the welcoming committee?” Sorin said.

“In a manner of speaking, yes,” the man said. “I keep this small inn here.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder at the large shack, an action that caused a multitude of squeaks and creaks to issue from his armor. “I watch. For Indorel.”

When the man turned, Nissa noticed a great sword covered with runic etchings at his side. His armor was accented with various hooks, and riveted with small loops for affixing ropes and rope systems. And his hands were covered with what looked like tattoos of fire. Flames over every bit of exposed skin on his hands.

“Do you have coin?” the man said.

Nobody said anything.

“There are two places to sleep in Zulaport: Here or there.” He pointed into the dark where the ocean crashed, and Nissa could just make out the outline of a small lighthouse on a hill. “And you are not getting in there without fins on your ankles.” He held out his hand. “I take coin or trade.” He looked them over carefully. “In your case I can see it will be coin.”