Zendikar: In the Teeth of Akoum (4 page)

Nissa stopped at the edge of the forest. Once her eyes had become accustomed to the sunshine, she saw the swath of land dotted with what forest plants the creatures had not stripped and stuffed in their holes, dug in irregular intervals throughout the cleared land. The bodies of MossCrack’s Tajuru were strewn about between the holes. The nearest was only thirty paces away, lying on its side with a crushed skull. A handful of vampires on hands and knees were bent over the corpses almost tenderly. They were wearing rags, and their matted hair was dull in the bright sun. She wasn’t sure if the rank smell was the dead Tajuru or the vampires. Or was it the tentacled creatures standing behind each vampire, sucking vampire ichor through the proboscuses under their armpits? Nissa swallowed the lump rising in her throat.

Suddenly, there was a chirping sound behind her, and Nissa turned with her staff at the ready. She expected to see the Tajuru and Hiba running toward her with a handful of creatures following. She closed her eyes and felt the nearly inexhaustible power of the forests of Zendikar rise in her blood and pull in from the vines around and the soil under her feet. She would show the beasts, those killers of trees, how the Joraga of Bala Ged dealt with interlopers, with
barong
outsiders. And it would not be pampering, Tajuru justice—but the savagery of the jungle meted out with plenty of hate.

She opened her eyes and nearly dropped her staff in shock. Where were her rangers? Where was Hiba? Instead, at least two hundred creatures of different
sizes and shapes stood at the tree line they had created, staring at her. They were alike in only one way: they all had tentacles. One had a harnessed, growling vampire on a long lead.

But none, not even the four or five specimens larger than the one she’d killed in the forest, seemed angry with her. They simply stared at her. One cocked its head as it studied her. Some were spattered with blood, she noticed with a pang of regret, and many were festooned with short Tajuru arrows. She knew at that moment that her squad and Hiba were dead. She looked down to see her scarred hands, white and shaking, as they squeezed her staff.

The creatures ambled forward, their tentacles writhing and touching one another as they moved. When they were about forty feet away one stopped, and they all stopped. There was no speaking; there were no hand signs—only squirming tentacles. Where had she seen that behavior? It was like some insect. Like … Ants!

There were close to two hundred creatures grimly arrayed before her. The odds were not good. Her eyes wandered to the blue sky above the approaching host. A gentle breeze stirred her hair. Far away a lone stele floated over a high mesa. Beyond that, dark storm clouds promised a good rain by nightfall. It was a beautiful day.

Nissa twisted her staff. The stem sword she had gained the day of her coming-of-age-reckoning back home in Bala Ged slid easily out of its scabbard. She held the rigid green shaft before her eyes.

Where had her life left her? She was standing in a clearing in the Turntimber Forest, outnumbered and about to perish. Yes, she had traveled to a couple of filthy planes that had neither the beauty, nor the
power of Zendikar, and were full of big-nosed humans and beings as nasty as any she could imagine. She glanced at the creatures ambling forward. “Beings like those outlanders,” she said to herself.

She could planeswalk away, at that moment, and nobody would be the wiser for it. Her squad was dead—Hiba included. But if she ran, she would be running for the rest of her life, alone and wandering—a shadow out of the jungles of Bala Ged. Nissa drew a deep breath and released it slowly. She was a Joraga, and she would die as such. She scanned the ranks of the creatures, close enough for her to smell their mushroomy skin. She could take perhaps forty of them with her. She raised her sword and prepared to charge.

Suddenly, something caught the creatures’ attention, and they all turned to the right to look. Nissa turned as well.

A lone figure stepped out of the forest: a human, by his height, dressed in black leathers, with shiny silver plates on his shoulder and a small silver breast plate. His hair was white and brushed back long off his forehead. A great sword on his belt clattered as he walked forward and clapped his hands together.

“What have we here,” the stranger said in an accent that she’d never heard before.
Yet another barong
, Nissa thought.

“Have you all slipped your chains already?” the strange man asked as he walked. “I am lost and looking for the Eye of Ugin.”

The creatures stood stock still, only their tentacles writhed back and forth between Nissa and the strange new addition. The man walked toward their side and flank. She could sense the creatures’ dilemma. What they didn’t want was to be flanked.
I’d attack if I were them
, Nissa thought.
Attack
.

And they did. With no obvious signal, the creatures began to charge. Nissa looked at the man. He raised his arms, and in a moment she could feel the air rushing past her ears, drawn toward him. Rivulets of dim energy condensed on the orbs suddenly blooming around each of his hands. And then he began to speak in the most booming, deep voice she had ever heard, but in a language she had
never
heard. The air between the stranger and the charging horde refracted and bent, and then each of the creatures fell to the ground in a lump, simply falling into a rotted mass.

As amazing as that spell was—and it was one of the most amazing and disturbing things Nissa had ever seen—still more startling was the reaction by the remaining creatures. Perhaps six of them were, apparently, out of the range of the man’s spell. With their compatriots lying at their feet, the creatures continued charging at the dark-clad man. He said a few more grim words, and the remaining creatures fell.

Nissa wasted no time. She turned and started running back into the forest … to the tree. Once there, she glanced up and confirmed her worst fear. She climbed the trunk in seconds.

Her wall of vines was still in one piece, and it was with no small amount of pride that she counted nineteen dead creatures hanging from it, with arrows bristling out of them. But when she looked behind the wall, her heart caught in her throat. Some of the bodies of her raiding party were still there, torn into parts in the dappled light. Naarl flies the size of Nissa’s fingers buzzed over the bright red meat. More parts were thrown into the branches around her. The buzz of the flies was suddenly too loud in her ears. When she turned to leave, the face of a decapitated elf was
lodged in the crotch of a branch, looking out at her with fixed eyes.

She found him on the forest floor. His right arm was crushed flat, and both his legs too, but he was breathing. His left hand still held the grip of his bow, and she could not pry it free from his fingers, no matter what she did.

“Hiba,” she whispered in his ear. “Hiba, I thought you were dead. Take a deep breath.” She put her arms under his neck and under his buttocks and brought him, screaming, into the clearing. She put him down as carefully as she could.

The stranger was walking among the dead creatures shaking his head. He turned when Nissa approached and he watched her put the stricken elf down. The way he stared made her uneasy, but she busied herself by making Hiba as comfortable as she could. She tried to forget the spell she’d just seen the stranger cast as she cupped her hands around her mouth and turned to him.

“Do you have water?” she yelled. She made the drinking gesture. “Water?”

He walked over to where she sat. Up close he was taller than she’d thought and his gold-flecked eyes gave his pale face a curious intensity. He took only a casual glance at Hiba. His eyes sat on her.

“This one will die shortly,” he said without looking down at Hiba, in a voice that echoed from deep in his throat. “This one is already dead.”

She couldn’t be absolutely sure if the stranger was talking about Hiba, or one of the creatures on the ground.

“Who are you?” she asked.

He looked out over the clearing. “I am called Sorin.”

Sorin turned back and settled his golden eyes on Nissa again. Hiba moaned.

“And you are a Joraga elf, I should think,” he said.

“Nissa Revane,” she said, placing her right hand on her heart and bowing slightly, as was the elf custom.

Something moved in the middle of the clearing. An arm flopped. Sorin followed her eyes. “A vampire slave apparently lives,” he said.

“Vampires,” Nissa said. She had not meant to, but her lip curled.

The strangers watched her for an extra second before a slow smile stretched his pale lips. “Yes,” he said. “Quite.”

Sorin turned and walked to the middle of the clearing. He bent down and seized the vampire and lifted him by the wrist as easily as he might lift a water skin. He dragged the creature back to where Nissa was standing and dumped him unceremoniously next to Hiba. Nissa inadvertently took a step back.

Sorin chuckled. “Your home of Bala Ged is near Guul Draz. Is it not?”

“It is,” she said. “And we fight to keep these from our borders.”

The creature at her feet was different from the other vampires she’d fought. His hair was not in his eyes, for one. It was pulled into a tight, long braid. His skin was just as pale and bluish, however; and he was painted: a red line extended up his bare chest to his chin, then continued from his forehead to the top of his head through a shaved channel. He had the same vestigial horns extending in black curls from his shoulders and elbows.

“Where’s his
bampha?”
she asked.

Sorin’s face remained blank. “Oh,” he said. “You mean its weapon. The brood lineage took it, I suspect.”

Bampha
. Nissa shuddered at the thought of their long, two-handed weapons of sharpened bone. Long elegant weapons left long elegant slashes. She had the scars to prove it.

“What did you call these things?” Nissa asked, toeing a dead creature’s tentacle.

“These are brood lineage.”

“Brood lineage,” she said, licking her lips. “Lineage of what?”

Her words hung in the air.

“They have been slumbering all these years,” the slave vampire said suddenly. “Abed in the stones of Akoum.”

A bellowing growl echoed across the clearing. Sorin seemed not to notice the sound. He was looking down at the vampire, who was looking up at him with wide, unblinking eyes.
Those eyes
, Nissa thought.
Those black, iridescent eyes
.

“How do you know of the lineage?” Sorin barked.

Sorin’s voice had a certain sharpness to it. The slave vampire winced with each word as he struggled up and carefully stood. There were numerous metal cylinders dangling from his belt. His hair braid, as thick as a man’s forearm, reached almost to the ground. He wasn’t nearly as tall as Sorin, but just as slim and lithe. He felt for each of the metal cylinders before continuing.

“I was present for their release,” the vampire said. “In the Teeth of Akoum.”

“Is that so,” Sorin said. “At the Eye of Ugin?”

“The same.”

Another growl, louder that time, cut through the trees. Nissa bent down and put her arms under Hiba. “We must go,” she said. “If that brace of baloth should catch us in the open like this …”

But Sorin seemed not to hear. His eyes were on the vampire. “Who are you?” he asked.

“Anowon,” he said. “Formerly of Family Ghet. I was taken prisoner at the eye.”

“Well,” Sorin said. “Do you know where I am now, Anowon, formerly of Family Ghet?”

The vampire’s eyes fell on Nissa as she hoisted Hiba. “Somewhere in the Turntimber,” he said. When Sorin said nothing, Anowon continued. “On Ondu.” Still Sorin said nothing. “Zendikar?” Anowon ventured.

“And I don’t suppose you know the way to the Eye of Ugin?” Sorin asked.

“It’s on Akoum,” Anowon said.

Sorin chuckled. “That’s not what I asked. And if you want to bandy cute words, I will tear your heart out of your chest and have the elf eat it.”

Nissa shifted uncomfortably from one leg to the other.

“I know the way to Akoum,” Nissa said, glancing casually at the dead brood laid out in the clearing. “At least I can start you on the way.”
Anything to get you out of my forest
.

“Excellent,” Sorin said. “Finally, a bit of good news. You know this land. You will be our guide, yes. You will show us the way.” He turned to Nissa. “That,” he pointed at Hiba, “is dead. You are guiding us through this morass to Akoum. I knew the way once, you see. But I cast a forgetting spell on the place so it might be lost for all time. A forgotten blight.”

“Why would I help you,” Nissa asked, “when I could go back to into the turntimber and leave you two to be shredded by those baloth howling in the forest?”

“Because, dear savage,” Sorin said, “what you saw here is just the vanguard of the true army. The rest
are bearing down on this and every other location on this backwards plane even as we speak. If you want to have any hope of saving your people, you will assist me in containing this sickness, and in putting these broodlings back into their prison, which will not be easy. But it seems to fall to me to accomplish.”

Nissa looked down at Hiba and felt a lump rising in her throat. He was dead. She swallowed and started to speak.

But Sorin continued. “Only I can cast the Eldrazi back into the crypt from whence they came. Only I can send them back into their forever sleep.”

Nissa seemed to consider his words before speaking. “These are my terms: You both will help me bury my friend in the forest,” she said. “And I will not travel with an unbound vampire. He must be bound and gagged, or you will have to navigate the teetering stones without me.”

Anowon’s mouth went to a sneer. “Joraga moon slug,” he said. “I would not deign to touch lips to the likes of you. Your people taste of dirt and moss. Mushroom eaters.”

Nissa smiled, despite herself. She hadn’t heard that insult in quite some time. Strangely, it reminded her of home. Part of the reckoning ritual involved eating cut fungus. Invariably the young warrior died from it. Most lay dead for some minutes before blinking awake and sitting up gasping. If you survived, you survived. If you died, then you weren’t meant to be a Joraga warrior, and your body was tossed into the Great Hollow Tree.