Zendikar: In the Teeth of Akoum (9 page)

“This,” Sorin shouted. He pointed up and around in an exasperated sweep. “And this.”

She felt it too. The rain was falling hard. It drummed at her skull and made thinking all but impossible. It hurt. He head was numb with it. If the rain turned to hail they would be pummeled to death. Their time was fading. She put her hand over her eyes again and peered around. The shadow of the canyon wall was close, and slowly she made her way to it, sloshing through the rising water. The others followed.

There was no cave, only the steep incline of the canyon wall. Still, being so close to the wall of the canyon stopped some of the rain, and they hunched against it.

Nissa looked closely at the canyon wall. He eyes traced upward from between her fingers until she saw, some three heights up, a stunted tree clinging to the bare cliff face. A small rick of branches and dead grass had been swept into the bend of the tree’s trunk. A small shelf jutted above the tree. Her eyes stayed on the small tree, and the wedge of plant material swept as if it was moving downward.

“Rope” she screamed at Anowon. “Hurry.” The vampire shrugged off his pack and hurried to free the rope. The water in the trench was already up to their shins. If the torrent continued further up in the trench, there would soon be a wall of water pitched down their part of the rock chute. As Anowon worked, Nissa glanced up once again at the dwarfed tree, where the terrific force of the surging water had wedged what it
carried between the rock and the trunk. As he uncoiled the rope, she fumbled through the bag.
It must be here
, she thought.
There must be one here
.

She found the grappling hook and would have yelled for joy if the rumbling hadn’t started. It was low, but as she snatched the end of the rope from Anowon, the low growl increased in volume. Her numb fingers slipped the rope through the eyelet of the hook and fastened it with a quick hitch. In one fluid motion she stepped back and threw the hook with every bit of strength she had. The hook fell short of the shelf above the tree. She tried again, and the same thing happened. The sound from up the canyon was a roar now.
Not like this
, she thought.
Not this way
.

Anowon took the hook and leaned back and threw. It fell short.

When Sorin took it and threw, the hook traveled far up but tumbled back down not catching the rock. Nissa had to jump out of the way. On his second throw, the hook’s tines caught a bit of rock, and they each scrambled up in turn.

Nissa was the last to climb the rope. When she was half way up, she stopped and turned. With the raindrops stinging her eyes, she watched as a wall of green water crashed by, so high that for a moment it lapped around her ankles.

The wall of water was gone almost as soon as it had passed. They stayed on the shelf, and Nissa wondered if what she’d seen had been real. The rain was still falling hard. Perhaps she’d only imagined the water touching her feet.

Soon the downpour lessened, then stopped altogether.

Nissa waited until the cloudy sky above their head broke up and patches of pink sunset showed in the
clouds of the swatch above their heads. Then she climbed back down.

“Well,” said Sorin, once he was standing on the soggy sand. “I suspect we have heard the last of those scorpions. Surely they—” Sorin stopped in mid-sentence. He cocked his head to the side. “Do you hear that?”

Nissa listened. The faint sound of movement echoed off the canyon walls. She could hear something kicking rocks as it moved up the canyon. She glanced at the ledge.

Then the noise stopped. Nothing moved. The very canyon itself seemed to be holding its breath. Sorin sniffed. “Well,” he said.

“Hush.” Nissa said, putting up her hand.

After a time she swept her hand down, and they crept forward through the rocks. They moved quietly and passed around a boulder to the left and came face to face with a host of three hundred kor, their strange hooked weapons at the ready.

T
he kor hookmaster was missing an eye. The socket wept yellow globules down the hookmaster’s long and thin face, and he wiped the discharge away with the back of a slender hand. The fleshy barbels typical of the kor hung under his chin and almost to his belt. He was crisscrossed with harness works of pockets and loops. His clothes were tanned skins. And tethered with chains to various parts of his body were no fewer than four hooked and bladed climbing tools that Nissa was sure could double as weapons. In his left hand, he held a long, notched sword with a small hook dangling on a chain off its pommel.

All the other kor, males, females, and children, were similarly out fitted. None moved or spoke. In the silence, a rock skittered down the trench wall behind. A snail falcon cried overhead.

Nissa had seen kor fight before. They could be savage, if threatened. The Joraga had always been friendlier with the kor than other elf tribes—they respected the kor’s avoidance of speech.

Nissa knew the kor to be nomadic, but from the packs they carried on their backs, they looked to be fleeing, their caravan reduced to the things they
carried. She noted the signs of battle: Many were bandaged, and some were using jurworrel-wood branches for crutches. And some of their weapons were missing blades, or had only half a blade. They were tired, clearly. Some were stooped so badly with exhaustion that she feared they might fall.
How had they survived the flood?
she wondered.

Nissa opened her hands and put them palms up—the kor greeting.

The lead kor’s eye moved from her to Sorin and then to Anowon, where it stayed for a longer time. The vampire stared back. Nissa could almost see him lick his lips. It occurred to her that she didn’t know how long it had been since Anowon had fed.

“Well, savages?” Sorin said. “Going for a stroll?”

Nissa cringed inwardly. “They’re refugees. Or are you blind as well as rude?”

Sorin said nothing.

Nissa kept her palms out. “May we speak?” she asked.

The old kor regarded her for a time. In the failing light of the canyon, the quietness of the kor was unnerving. Nissa found herself shifting her weight from foot to foot as she waited for the kor to decide whether or not they would speak.

Finally he nodded.

Nissa waited.

“Oh, this
is
thrilling,” Sorin said.

She shot him a glance before turning back to the kor. “Please,” she said. “From where do you come?”

When the kor spoke, his voice was unusually deep. It echoed off the near canyon wall. “We come from the west,” the kor said.

“I’m glad we’ve figured that out,” Sorin said. “Can we go now?”

Nissa ignored him.

“What have you found?”

“We have found those that have woken.”

Nissa put her hand in front of her mouth and wiggled her fingers like tentacles.

The kor nodded.

“Brood lineage,” Nissa said. “Is that why you are traveling?”

The kor leader looked back at the other kor and gave a signal to move on.

Nissa turned and caught Sorin yawning. Behind Sorin, Anowon stood staring at her. The vampire was always staring at her, she realized with a chill.

“The kor are the lost creatures of Zendikar,” Anowon said, with a strange twist to his lips, as if his comment should remind her of other lost creatures. “They believe they are followed by the ghosts of their ancestors. Because of this they never stop moving. The mothers bear their young while suspended in a harness, and their fathers curse the ground nightly while imploring the sky. Both sexes use the bones of their ancestors in their daily rituals. Some go so far as to prop the dessicated corpses of their dead ancestors at the eating table. I like that last bit. A nice touch.”

“Why are you telling
me
this?” asked Nissa.

“I am fascinated with the kor,” Anowon hissed, moving closer. Nissa inched back. “I think you are fascinated with them, as well. Did you know they walk so much that the nursing mothers keep vessels of their milk on their hips, which are turned to cheese by week’s end?”

Nissa stared at Anowon. He had never said so many words to her, and on such an odd topic. She was not sure she liked it. In fact, she was sure she did not.

The kor left as silently as they had come. The only sound as they walked was the muted clink of the hooks hanging from their shoulder harnesses.

When they were gone, Nissa began looking for a place to sleep. The light in the sky was gone, and already the damp of the trench’s floor was turning to a fine fog. The sand was wet, and they spent an uncomfortable night on the ground.

Nissa watched Anowon as they stood shivering in the predawn gray. How was the vampire feeding? She’d been eating hardtack and dried warthog for the last two days.

Anowon caught her looking at him.

“What are you eating?” she asked.

The vampire stamped his feet and rubbed his hands together. His breath came out of his mouth in a puff. “I eat when I am hungry,” he replied.

“He eats when I tell him,” Sorin said, who also seemed well fed to Nissa. He stood in the cold as pink and as warm looking as if he’d been traveling in the jungles of Bala Ged.

They walked between boulders large and small. The sand was wet under their feet, and that made the walking harder still. The crested sedge that grew on the sunless canyon floor brushed against their hands as they passed. At one point they stopped to drink from a rock pool. A huge boulder stood at the far side.

The water appeared as crystal clear as one might expect in a Bala Ged oracle pool, Nissa thought. Sorin was the first to near it. When one of the stones at the bottom of the pool moved, Nissa looked closer.
Why was there a pool like this at the bottom of the trench?
Nissa wondered.
And after a flood
. “Stop,” Nissa said.

Sorin turned with a scowl on his face.

“That is no pool,” Nissa said. “Step back.”

Sorin peered closely at the pool. Tiny fish were swimming in the clear water.

“Step back slowly.”

After a couple of heartbeats Sorin did as Nissa told him. Nissa glanced at Anowon, who was watching the proceedings with an impassive face. But for just a second, Nissa thought she saw the side of his mouth rise in the barest glint of a smile at Sorin’s predicament. Then it was gone, and Sorin was back by their side.

“Watch,” Nissa said as she took a stick from the ground and tossed it into the pool. In a flash, a lip appeared from behind the boulder on the far side and snapped down over the entire pool with an audible snap that shook the ground slightly. Some black and green birds sitting in a nearby shrub took sudden flight.

“Ah, Zendikar,” Sorin said, shaking his head. He turned back to the trail, chuckling. But Nissa saw he wasn’t smiling.

They saw other groups of kor who passed without word or gesture in the day and night, looking like they had been resoundingly beaten by more than one enemy. The trench became deeper as they walked. The line of sky above grew more and more narrow. And as they walked, the rock changed. Where there had been red walls of crumbly sedimentary rock, there were sheer, sweeping walls of steel gray granite. Nissa did not like the look of it.
No toe holds
, she thought.
No boulders on the canyon floor to shelter behind
.

At midday they came to a fork in the trench. A massive statue, half the height of the canyon, was carved into the stone wall. It was a being Nissa had seen in statues in other parts of Zendikar, and although it
was crumbled and missing limbs, she could tell what it had been: a creature with a large head, four arms, and tentacles that started at its waist—brood lineage. But who had carved the statue, and how long before? She thought of Anowon’s words before the rainstorm that had created the flood:
There has to be something more to them
. As she looked up at the strange creature, she wondered if he wasn’t right.

Nissa took the leather tube containing Khalled’s map from her pack and consulted it. There were many lines extending from the trench. She found the tiny picture of the statue and realized they could follow the canyon branch that angled toward the sun, or the other which traveled but wound back in the same direction. She showed the map to Sorin, who eyed it suspiciously. He put one long, thin white finger on a landmass that lay on the other side of the sea.

“Akoum,” he said. Both trench ways moved them in that direction. “If it wasn’t for this plane’s volatile energy, I would walk in the air and be there in seconds. I wouldn’t need you or the Ghet.” He waved a dismissive hand at them.

Nissa chose the left fork. The sun was half past mid-sky and the shadows were deep when Anowon stopped them. The canyon wall next to them was filled with images engraved into the smooth stone.

“Illuminated pictographs,” Anowon said as he unscrewed one of his metal cylinders and slipped a piece of paper out of the hollow place within. He went to the pictographs and squatted before them. He consulted the piece of paper as he deciphered the writing.

“These are old,” Anowon said. “It is unknown to me why they are written here in this wilderness.” He kept reading, speaking as he did. “Perhaps this trench was
not always as it appears now. Perhaps this trench was once an aqueduct used by the ancient Eldrazi for power creation.”