Zendikar: In the Teeth of Akoum (magic:the gathering)

by Robert B. Wintermute

  Each of the onlookers, Nissa noticed, acted as if they were in the presence of a miracle. One merfolk with his ankle fins unbound and his beard a scraggly mess fell to his knees and planted his face in the dust.

  Nissa turned back to the strange forest a monument to something that had once been alive and teeming, but was dead, cold, and no more than a sad memory. It was certainly nothing compared with the beauty of a true green growing place. The Roil had created it. And if she was to trust both Sorin s and Anowon s hints, Roils had more to do with a perversion of Zendikar s nature and more to do with Zendikar s desperate attempt to contain the Eldrazi in their restless slumber.

  How could humans and merfolk find the garden beautiful? she asked herself. Beautiful? It was an abomination.

  If the Eldrazi kept spreading like an alien plant, like the choking linnestrop Khalled had mentioned, they might devastate the wilderness to such a degree that such a garden would be the only nature many ever saw. The thought made Nissa s stomach twist and her nostrils flair.

  She walked forward into the glen and started swinging her staff, hitting the fossilized remains of the plants and shattering them. They were more brittle than she could have hoped. In a matter of minutes the whole grove was reduced to shreds. A mermen rushed forward and seized her.

  Robert B. Wintermute

  Zendikar: In the Teeth of Akoum

  The crowd yelled and cursed at Nissa as she was dragged out past the wagons and thrown down on the flatness. One of the mermen spit at her before he turned.

  I will never understand elves, Sorin said, evaluating his fingernails. Such a confabulation of dirt worshipping notions.

  The caravan began moving again and slowly went past. Nissa, Anowon, Sorin, Smara, and Mudheel squatted in the dust, with the hot wind snapping at their clothes. They had three skins half full of water, no food, and the red mountains on the horizon.

  How far might those be? Sorin said. Like the others, he d taken to wearing his hood up as protection from the sun and lashing a headband around it to keep the wind from gusting it off.

  Two days? Nissa said.

  Mudheel coughed and said, Those are the Teeth of Akoum, and they are three days journey, I should say. The goblin put its hand above its eyes and peered at the mountains, which appeared to float above the ground on a pillow of air. Or four. Yes, four days, it added.

  And we possess how much water? Sorin asked.

  Three skins, Anowon said. Half empty.

  Every member of the expedition figured how much water they would need for a four day walk in the wastes. Each put that number against how much water they actually had. The silence that followed left nobody in doubt about the findings of their grim calculus.

  We should all perish, Sorin said.

  Nissa started walking. Then let us fall dead as we walk.

  After the first day they moved only at night. During the day they slept face down with their cloaks and hoods wrapped around their bodies, so that anybody who saw them lined up on the wastes would think they were a line of corpses shrouded for the grave.

  By the end of the second day their water skins were empty, and they threw them away. They rose at dusk on the third day and stumbled toward the high mountains. Suddenly to their right, a huge dark form moved. In her weakness Nissa tried to pivot and raise her staff, but instead she lost her balance and fell. Sorin managed to pull his sword, but dropped it when it proved too heated by a week of desert air to hold.

  The form floated in the sky. At first Nissa s thirst-addled mind saw a huge baloth with claws forward in mid pounce. But she shook her head and looked again. A tremendous congregation of boulders floated above the flatness, banging together. She watched the rocks float until she saw one rock with lines cut in it. Upon closer inspection she recognized stairs and a turret thrown together and chipped to almost nothing. The ruins had once been a palace.

  They stood and watched as the rocks passed over their heads and moved out to the wastes from which they had come.

  Nissa would have liked to ask Anowon about the huge palace, but she was too weak. There had been no water for a day, and her tongue filled her mouth completely again. Her lips were cracked to scabs. She could barely see, and her whole body hurt. Stepping was agony where the hard pack had burned the bottoms of her feet right through her worn boots.

  Nissa started to fall the next morning. They had decided to not sleep during the day, knowing that if they did not attain the mountains soon, they would all die. So they continued. By midday the sun was so intense that Nissa felt as if she were made of fire.

  And she fell. The first time she felt her legs weakening, and she pitched forward onto her knees. Mudheel helped her up, and she started walking again. The second time she did not remember falling. She simply blinked, and she was sprawled out in the dust. She struggled to her feet and walked a couple of steps and fell again. Nissa looked for the others, but she could not see anything but the sun glaring in her face.

  Through the brilliance a figure appeared. At first she thought it was Anowon with everything that was hanging from his belt, but then Nissa saw the two dulam beasts yoked together following behind the figure. He was wearing a huge cloak with a hood and a piece of wood strapped over his eyes in which there was carved a thin slot. He reached down and took Nissa under the armpits and lifted her onto her feet. He took a cup from the folds of his cloak and poured it full from a small earthen jar. The water he offered her smelled of sulfur, but she drank it and the next cup he offered.

  Sorin had made it a bit farther before collapsing. Nissa helped the man in the huge cloak hoist Sorin to his feet and give him water. Anowon was still stumbling after the goblin who was carrying Smara on his back.

  The man collected each of them and gave them water. Soon they were staggering along behind a brace of snorting and bellowing dulam that pulled a huge wagon with an even larger tank strapped to it, water sloshing back and forth in the tank as the beasts lumbered on. The man was tiny, Nissa noted, if indeed he was a human at all. His clothes were too billowing for her to see his body. He held a crop as long as himself which Nissa never saw him use on the dulam beasts, to her great relief.

  With the water, Nissa s tongue returned to a manageable size and stopped throbbing. After a time spent sitting on the back of the wagon she walked to where the tiny man moved ahead of his beasts.

  We cannot repay you, Nissa said. Even those few words sent stabs of pain down her tongue and throat.

  The little man nodded and kept walking.

  Where are you traveling? Nissa asked.

  The man pointed at the mountains, red and looming high ahead.

  Do you live there?

  The man nodded and made a guttural choke in response, a sound that brought the hairs up on the back of Nissa s neck. No tongue, Nissa thought. His tongue has been cut out.

  Over the next day, as the man guided his wagon up and over the gentle hills, Nissa developed the strong feeling that something was watching them from the foothills they passed into. Suddenly the man jerked the rope that controlled the dulam beasts, and they bellowed and came to a stop. He ran back to the wagon and yanked out a leather bag.

  He then ran back past the dulam beasts, and Nissa saw what was causing him so much excitement. A small pond of crystal water was floating two of Nissa s foot s lengths high in the air. The man approached the shimmering glob and scooped a cup from it. He took some small bottles from his bag and began mixing powders into the water.

  Sorin stepped up next to her. Imagine what kind of magnet this water is to every creature for two leagues in any direction. It is too dangerous to stay here.

  Nissa looked down at the ground, knowing he was right. There were the tracks of many creatures scratched into the dirt, only some of which she knew. She recognized the hydra s claw scrapes, the drake s two footed hop, and the scute bug s scrabbling sign. But of the tracks she did not recognize were many humanoid ones. Nissa got down onto one knee and traced the outline of two particular track
s with the tip of her first finger. The first did not cause her as much concern as the second. The first was a made by a very heavy creature. Even in the hard land the splayed, three-toed footprint was stamped deeply. It was about double the size of a man s footprint, but not nearly the size of, say, a mountain troll s.

  The second track was actually many tracks. Whatever had made them had come in a sizeable group. The tracks were thin and of average depth not disconcerting in themselves. Nor were there claw digs at the tips of the toes. The problem came in how much she could see in the track everything. She could see virtually every bone in the creature s foot. Whatever had made those tracks either had no skin or no fat under their skin.

  We need to leave this place, Nissa said, standing.

  Ghet! Sorin yelled. His voice traveled over the low hills.

  Nissa cringed at the loudness of his voice, and the thought of what could have heard it in the hills.

  Ghet, Sorin said when Anowon came limping over to them. We are about to depart. Do whatever disgusting thing that you will.

  Nissa looked from one to the other of them. Anowon turned and walked away. The little man had extended a long hose from the back of his wagon and affixed it to the tank. The other end he was about to stick into the globule of water.

  Nobody will miss one water scout, Sorin said.

  Wait, Nissa said. She took a step toward the wagon.

  Anowon walked up behind the small human, and in one fluid motion he swept down, sweeping his hood back. But Nissa was ready. She lunged and jabbed quickly with her staff. The end of the staff caught Anowon in the middle of the chest and knocked him off balance, and he stumbled backward and onto one knee. When she charged, the vampire seized a handful of sand and hurled it in her eyes. Nissa stopped dead in her tracks and swung her staff where she thought Anowon was, but she swung through empty air.

  A moment later Nissa heard a snap followed by a rhythmic slurping. She sat down hard and moistened a corner of her jerkin with saliva from her mouth, what little there was. As she cleaned the sand and dust from her eyes, Nissa had to listen to the cracking of the water scout s ribs as, presumably, Anowon squeezed the body to drain it fully of blood.

  When her eyes were clear enough to see, she glared at Anowon. The vampire was standing above her smiling contentedly. The body of the water scout was off to the side. Two razor-thin lines ran vertically along each of the big veins in his neck. Nissa understood immediately why Anowon kept long fingernails.

  Next time it will not go so easily for you, Anowon said.

  Nissa looked out at the flatness they had just crossed and swallowed hard. She was not sure what angered her more that Anowon had killed the scout that had saved their lives, or that Anowon had out maneauvered her.

  Why not the witch vessel. Why not her? she asked, pointing at Smara.

  The kor woman repulses me, he replied.

  When she turned, Sorin was looking down at her with no recognizable expression on his long face. Nissa went over to where the goblin was sitting in the shade of the wagon trying to act as though it had not seen Anowon kill the water scout.

  We should go, Nissa said.

  The goblin nodded and rose, then helped Smara to her feet.

  We ll take the wagon, Nissa said.

  And they did. The terrain became more and more rugged as they traveled. Surprisingly there was a trail of sorts that led upward, and the dulam beasts pulled the water tank easily. They had not bothered to fill the tanks from the floating water, but even without filling they could hear that the tank was perhaps a quarter full.

  By daybreak of the following day they passed the first plant Nissa had seen in weeks: a foul-smelling shrub that began to dot the draws between the foothills. The path turned to the east, and the shoulders of the mountains became noticeably steeper for the next two days.

  The strange signs of the skeletal feet that Nissa had seen criss-crossed the trail, but never quite followed it. Whatever the creatures were, they seemed to move as a pack of maybe twenty and seemed to always be barefoot. Others traveled with them. But the beings that traveled with them wore boots and had tracks of average length, depth, and stride. Nissa suspected that whatever was making the tracks was probably aware of their presence, and was in all likelihood shadowing them. Who could know for what reason?

  Anowon noted the signs with a grunt. When he did not think we was being watched, Anowon scanned the hilltops around. Once she found him taking big gulps of air and deep breaths through his nose, hoping to get a scent from the surrounding air. Whatever he detected in the air made him edgy and even worse tempered than before.

  At one point the vampire stopped suddenly and closed his eyes for some moments. The rest of the group also halted. After a short time Anowon opened his eyes and kept walking as though he had not stopped.

  Ghet, Sorin said, after Anowon had stopped twice.

  What foolery are you engaged in?

  But Anowon said nothing. That night he insisted on taking first watch, and he pushed Nissa away when she tried to relieve him later. In the middle of the night they were woken to the sound of a bellowing echo in the mountains and hills. It continued for some time then stopped abruptly.

  The next day was no better. They walked higher, and the hills became taller and taller until the mountains seemed to loom no more than a day s travel away. Anowon became more agitated as the trail became steeper. At one point he stopped the party.

  We cannot go that way, he said, nodding to a rather level way that turned sharply behind a swelled outcropping.

  Why not, Ghet? Sorin said.

  Nissa looked at the turn he was talking about. He s right, she said. It s the perfect place for an ambush.

  We must leave the wagon here and travel rougher, Anowon said. If we can.

  Are you going to tell us what you know? Nissa said.

  No, Anowon said.

  Why? Nissa asked.

  Because I might be wrong, the vampire replied.

  Vampires are wily trackers, Sorin said.

  Nissa could not be sure if he was saying that Anowon was a good tracker, or that they were being tracked well by other vampires. She turned to check Sorin s expression, but it did not reveal his true meaning. The possibility that vampires were tracking them made her skin tingle with fear and excitement. Vampires were one of the two creatures she actually enjoyed killing.

  Are we being tracked by vampires, or is Anowon a good tracker? Nissa said.

  Yes, Sorin said. We will see just how good a tracker our pale friend is.

  Nissa shook her head. A straight answer would be nice just once. Just once.

  The group left the wagon and started on foot. They moved slowly over the boulders, staying away from possible ambush sites. They avoided blind angles, swinging wide around corners so as not to be surprised. Before they left the tank they drank as much water as they could, wishing very much that they had not thrown away their skins on the flat plain.

  But by dusk they were thirsty. They had just moved up a steep alluvial fan of loose rock, a hard scramble but one with no blind spots, no possibility of ambush, when Anowon stopped suddenly.

  There is something ahead, he hissed.

  Where? Nissa said.

  There, Sorin said, without pointing. At the base of that rock formation that looks like a cascade of blood.

  Nissa saw where he meant. In front of an undulated red stone formation was what looked like a statue of a very tall, stout human with no face. What struck Nissa was the fact that the statue was not constructed of red stone It was light brown, almost a mud color.

  It is a statue, Nissa said.

  It moved, Anowon said.

  Nissa looked back at the strange statue. It did have a face of sorts: its nose was a hole, as were its eyes and mouth. She noticed that rock cairns were piled up on either side of it. She watched the statue for long enough that her knees started to sting as she squatted in the loose rock. She was just about to stand when the statue moved.

&nbs
p; I saw it too, Sorin said.

  The goblin was standing very still with one of its large ears cocked up and a worried expression on its face.

  Nissa took a long, slow look around. The Teeth of Akoum were different from any other mountains she had ever seen. The steep sides of the high foothills were strangely bare and featured steep faces of rounded, almost bubble-shaped rock. There was no soil to speak of, only rock crushed to various degrees. Natural rock bridges formed by the wind joined canyon walls. Fingers of rock jutted high in the air, topped sometimes with boulders that floated and bobbed above their tips.

  Clear crystals shot through everything, making walking difficult in the daytime, where rays of heat were concentrated through the crystals and had to be avoided if one wanted to keep from being badly singed.

  Nissa s green lands were very far away indeed, she felt. But when she closed her eyes, she could sense the roots that extended out of the bottom of her feet and led all the way back to her forests.

  They could not be taken by surprise on the wide fan, where a high canyon above deposited all the small debris carried by runoff from the high peaks. Nissa knew if the party left the scree fan they would leave the protection of the open and again enter into the maze of boulder ways, where every turn could be an ambush. They had to continue up the fan, and that meant passing the statue.

  Sorin had been watching her. You go first, he said. I ll cover your flank. Ghet, go with her.

  You are too kind, Nissa said.

  Think nothing of it, Sorin replied, chuckling.

  Nissa walked forward, her staff at her side. There was no point in sneaking. If something was following them, it had clearly watched their progress. It must have figured out that their way would bottleneck at the strange outcropping.

  On closer inspection the statue appeared to be made of clay, which struck her as odd. Odder still was its position; it was standing with its arms out straight on each side. The cairns of stone that she had struggled to see clearly from farther down the fan now turned out to be the sides of a rock window. Like the rock bridges, the windows were formed by the wind blowing away a middle portion of the red stone. The statue stood arms wide in the middle of this.