Zendikar: In the Teeth of Akoum (8 page)

“Makindi Trench,” Nissa said. “Our way lies there, unfortunately.”

Sorin and Anowon sat with their backs propped against the boles of the few young Jaddi able to eke out a living at the edge of the mesa where the soil was exposed and infertile. Watches were decided upon, and Nissa took a spot in the notch of a tree. A Gryphon screamed in the darkness over the trench as it hunted nighthawks. And then she was asleep.

Nissa heard the rain drumming long before it hit them, then the storm was on them with huge raindrops that hurt. Even the hood of her warthog cloak could not fend off the rain. She was soaked and shivering all night. But with morning the rain had ceased, and the giant drum toads croaked their booming dialect from the trench below.

Nissa woke the others when the first light tinged the night sky, and by dawn they were standing on the trail in the moist chill, blowing into their hands. The Makindi Trench was still dark below. Far down the trench a fire lit the canyon. Sorin blew into his hands and stamped his cold feet. Nissa gnawed on a square of hard waybread wondering what creature Anowon had eaten last, and which would be next. The archaeomancer hoisted the provisions pack onto his back and tied the waist and chest straps before offering his hands to be bound.

They made their way down a steep trail composed of wet stones. Twice Anowon lost his footing and slipped. Once he tripped and would have fallen forward if Nissa hadn’t taken hold of his pack and swung him back.

At one point the trail became so steep that Nissa stopped and took rope from the pack. As she was taking it out, she glanced down at the charm Khalled gave her when she had first come to the Turntimber. It was a small vial of enchanted water taken from the ruins of Ior at the bottom of Glasspool. The only significant source of fresh water on Akoum was sacred to the kor.

As she watched, the water in the vial bubbled to life, a warning of what was to come. “Roil!” she yelled. “Hold on.”

Still clutching the coil of rope, Nissa dashed for a small tree and just reached it when the first tremors began. She dove into the cage of exposed roots and fumbled her harness’s belay line out, snapping its clamp onto the nearest root.

She watched Anowon scuttling for his own tree, and then the Roil hit in force, and Nissa could not see anything. She watched the trench below them buckle
like a great rug, and the needles of the dwarfed pines writhe and whip. The ground began to jolt violently, and she was thrown against the roots. Nissa put her hands over her head, but the thrashing continued while the sudden wind howled and boulders crashed. She could hear the stone groaning and snapping all around her, and then the Roil stopped as suddenly as it had started. One moment the air was rushing; the next moment the stones that had been suspended in mid-air fell crashing down, and many of them rolled down the side of the mesa and into the trench.

Soon the rumbling stopped, and so did the ringing in her ears. Nissa unfastened herself and crawled out. The breeze smelled like raw sap. She peered around. The trees had grown. But the new growth was either snapped off or twisted into strange corkscrews that reminded her with a dark shudder of brood lineage tentacles.

Nissa had been through many Roils, but lately every one seemed worse than the last. That one had been fairly minor. Once in the Turntimber she’d found herself in the top canopy of a tree after the Roil.

But not this time. The trail was gone, and the rocks that had been stacked up in cairns to mark the switchbacks scattered. It took her a moment to understand what had happened: the Roil had torn a chunk out of the ground, and it floated high above the ground. Every so often a rock rolled off and came tumbling down.

The vampire and Sorin
, she thought. They were nowhere to be seen. She looked around at the heaps of newly piled stones.
They’re lost if they are under those
. She looked up at the floating land. They could be on that. She looked down. Far below she could see two black dots on the trench floor. She had to move fast.

Using her staff, she managed to scramble down the rest of the way to the bottom of the trench, but it still took the better part of an hour. It was fast work, yet still she was not the first to reach them. A creature with six legs was clambering over the rocks, its long curved tail tipped with a savage-looking stinger. It had pincer mouth parts and a curled proboscis tucked between the pincers. Crevice miners always seemed attracted to Roils. They were nothing more than scavengers, but still … She was lucky there were not more. She stepped closer to the two unconscious forms. The crevice miner stopped, its pincers, each half as long as her arm, opening and closing. One more step, and she would be forced into action. Crevice miners were some of the most succulent bush meat to be found. Many said they tasted like crab, but Nissa had never eaten crab, preferring to not to eat things that fed upon the dead and decaying.

Nissa twisted her staff and slid the stem sword into the daylight. The miner sensed her threat and rose up on its two back legs. It skittered forward a few steps, hoping to drive its spikelike pincers down on her, but Nissa sidestepped and let the pincers dive down on blank rock. The creature rose up and came down again, but Nissa stepped the other way, and its pincers crashed into the rock again. After three more tries the crevice miner turned and scurried away.

Nissa rushed over to where Sorin and Anowon were lying at the base of the scree. They were much bruised and covered with abrasions, but Anowon was awake. He watched her approach but did not try to move. She noticed with a start that his hands were unbound. Why was she helping these two? She could turn and go back home. There was nothing holding her.

“Are you hurt?” Nissa said.

Anowon’s strange eyes regarded her coolly.

“Are you hurt?” she repeated.

“This one has not woken yet,” Anowon said, regarding Sorin with the most casual of glances.

“Is he …?” She could suddenly feel Hiba lying still in her arms.

“Dead? I don’t think so.”

Nissa approached, keeping one eye on the unbound vampire. She placed her hand over Sorin’s mouth and felt a tiny puff of breath.

“He lives,” she said. She raised her hand and brought it across Sorin’s face with a loud slap. His eyes snapped open, and his upper lip drew back across his thin incisors. His eyes were narrowed, and Nissa took an involuntary step back. Then recognition spread over his face.

“An elf,” he said. His gold-flecked pupils were wildly different in size, and the sweat was popping out on his forehead. When he turned his head, the knot above his ear was clearly visible. “Only an elf.”

Nissa nodded.
Only the elf who saved your life
.

Sorin grabbed a handful of Nissa’s sleeve and drew her to him. “I know about you,” he said, slurring his words. “I can tell you have left this place before.” He tapped his forehead. “I can tell.”

Nissa yanked her sleeve out of his surprisingly strong grip. “I am sure I do not know what you mean,” Nissa said. But she did.
Planeswalking
. She turned her head so Sorin could not see her face.

“Where is Lysene?” Sorin said.

“There is no Lysene here.” Nissa said. She turned and eyed him critically. It would be hard to move him should he prove unable to walk. “Can you walk?” she asked.

Sorin looked blankly at her and blinked.

“Look,” said Anowon in his reedy voice.

She turned. Four more crevice miners were mincing through the scree piles behind them. She knew that they would become more interested if she attacked them. And she could easily kill them, but more would be attracted by the blood.

“He must move,” Nissa said. “I am not sure he should, but he must or we die here.”

Anowon nodded. He casually took his long braid and brought it over his shoulder. The braid was as thick as Nissa’s arm. Anowon parted some of the black hair and opened the small metal door of a box buried within. From the box he carefully pinched out something white and shiny with a symbol on it.

“Is that a tooth?” Nissa asked. The crevice miners were standing just out of a stone’s throw’s range, opening and closing their pincers.

“It is.” Anowon said. “A molar imbued with a merfolk’s phantasm.” He made a fist around the tooth and threw it at Sorin. Immediately the outlander began to float. When his body reached shoulder height, Anowon took hold of him. “Without tethering, he will float away. And that would be such a shame.”

Nissa shuddered at the thought of the tooth. One of the crevice miners stepped closer, and she had to throw a rock. It stepped back again.

“That will work once, maybe twice,” Nissa said. She did not know if Khalled’s map said they should walk down the Makindi Trench, but she did know that it was the only direction open to them. “Walk,” she said. “Quickly and without turning. Miners are eaters of the dead; they like their meat bloated and tender. They do not favor attack, but the sight of wet eye balls can excite them into a frenzy. If they see us moving quickly, they
may just give up and consider us too much work.” Still, the crevice miners followed behind.

The floor of the trench was wide enough for one hundred to walk abreast, but boulders and large rocks of various sizes were strewn across it. The field of boulders created a maze of tight passages which Nissa led them through. She heard the crevice miners’ carapaces clacking against each other as they struggled through. Soon the passages became so tight in places that even Nissa had to squeeze to pass. It was perhaps their only chance to out maneuver the beasts, and Nissa seized it.

“Run,” she hissed.

The crevice miners heard the sudden movement, and sensing that their meal might be leaving, they surged forward. But the lead creature became trapped, and the others crammed against it in a desperate rush, entangling their long, hairy legs. Sensing their predicament the miners struggled and became utterly entwined and stuck in a space between the boulders.

Nissa and Anowon scrambled to the top of the boulders with Sorin in tow, and hopped from one to the other until they had put a good distance between the scavengers and themselves. But the effort was great. By the time Nissa stopped, her breath was coming out in rasps.

The miners were far behind, clattering their hard shells against one another and making a high keening cry that drove the hairs on the back of Nissa’s neck rigid.

Some time later, the boulders gave way to sand and rocks, and eventually they were splashing through a small river of sluggish water meandering downhill. The sun had passed its zenith, and the darkness in the trench was almost total again. Nissa stopped to listen,
putting her hand on Anowon’s chest to stop him. He looked down at her hand and then at Nissa.

“No frowning,” Nissa whispered. She listened for scratching echoing from behind, and, hearing none, took her hand off Anowon’s chest.

They walked in the shade of the trench. The swath of sky overhead was an overcast purple. Soon the first rumble of thunder tumbled down the canyon, and Sorin spoke.

“Ghet, you will lower me now,” he said.

Anowon pulled Sorin down. When his feet were firmly on the sand, Sorin brushed off his sleeves and shiny shoulder plates before clipping his scabbard back onto his belt. He turned and marched ahead, and did not turn to look back at them. Anowon followed at a distance. Soon Nissa was walking next to Anowon.

“Where did you get those—?”

“Teeth?” Anowon said.

“Yes.”

“They are from sacrifices at the Tal Terig,” Anowon said. He waited a moment before continuing. “The Puzzle Tower.”

Nissa knew of the place: a gigantic tower on Akoum assembled of dissimilar shapes. An ancient site. She could see it: the assembled vampires in a circle, all with their dirty hair blowing in their eyes and arms raised, watching a priest tearing a merfolk’s teeth out. She felt the gorge rising in her throat.

Nissa cast a long look around as she walked. Ahead, Sorin’s unusually loose gait had him weaving unsteadily as he walked.
At least he can be hurt like the rest of us
, she thought. She found herself not caring particularly if he went to sleep tonight and did not wake. She watched Sorin walk, strangely comforted by his obvious vulnerability, before turning back to Anowon.

“And these Eldrazi lived there?” she said.

Anowon nodded. “I have always studied them. Their monuments. Their writings. The Hagra Cistern where they generated their power from waste. The crumbled temple under the smooth water of Glasspool. Their remains were”—he looked up at the darkening clouds—“compelling.”

“Were? What are they now?”

“You have met them.”

Nissa frowned. How could the beings she fought have constructed the palaces she had seen? They seemed incapable even of picking up eating utensils.

Anowon glanced at Nissa’s face before speaking. “Yes,” he said. “How could
they
have made
that.”
He swept his hand forward in a grand gesture. Nissa had not noticed the thing ahead. It loomed large in the exposed strip of sky: a floating palace, mostly in pieces. As she stared, a jag of lightning traced the sky behind it, and a boom of thunder shook the canyon walls. She felt the fine hairs on her arms vibrate with the noise. A gust of wind swept down the trench.

“There must be something more to them,” Anowon said.

And then the sky opened, and it started to rain.

Had it been a quick downpour, everything would have been fine. Nissa would have kept them walking and pulled up the hood of her warthog cloak. The rain would have soaked them through, and they could have made a fire to dry. They could have continued on their way with little or no disturbance. But this was Zendikar, Nissa was careful to remind herself as the fat raindrops fell in arcing sheets. Soon the rain obscured their vision, and the sand beneath their feet turned swampy.

“In what direction are we walking?” Sorin yelled over the hammering raindrops.

Nissa could not tell. She put her hands over her eyes, and through a tiny slot between her first and index finger she could see the barest image of the sky, which was still dark with rain that showed no sign of abating.