Zendikar_ In The Teeth Of Akoum Part 3

"Ghet!" called Sorin.

Anowon started walking, keeping his eyes straight ahead. He pa.s.sed Nissa, and she watched his long braid sway slightly as he walked.

They went one behind the other along the narrow path though the forest. The way was fraught with boulders and thick, rank growth. Eventually the trail ended completely, as if the beings that had once walked it had ceased to exist in mid step. Nissa backtracked on her hands and knees until she was able to locate a track in the ground that was not too old and pointed west to their destination. Since the trail itself ended, they would have to follow the faint reminders of past travellers and hope they led to Graypelt. They followed signs for the rest of the day: a broken twig, a torn patch of moss. The forest echoed all around them. A little past when the sun was highest in the sky, they crossed a small river, and Nissa searched for a sign on the other side. She found it.

"We are close," Nissa said. She could see that the toe digs and heel divots of varying creatures had previous converged on their small path. There were the toe claws of goblins and tracks of at least six different hobnailed humans, as well as a barefoot kor and an elf. The footfalls were clearly visible to the eye. On the breeze she smelled sweat and wood smoke ... and something else she couldn't exactly place. The land had grown rockier, as she knew it was supposed to at the edge of the great mesa. "Just ahead somewhere," she said. "Prepare yourself."

They encountered the first ragged tent when the sun was low in the west. Many of the tents were gray and of different sizes and materials, but some were fire-blackened and abandoned. Others were flattened, as if stepped upon. Past the tents the forest dropped away, and Nissa could see the sun setting blood red behind rows of jagged peaks capped with snow.

Sorin looked about him with a bemused smile on his face. "Graypelt."

"So named because of the Turntimber warthog tents."

Sorin appraised the destroyed tents hugging the end of the mesa. "Since when are warthog skins called 'pelts?'"

A sudden gust sent a piece of burnt tent flapping. The wind caused some of the cook fires in front of the tents to blaze to life. Somewhere a dog whined. At least, Nissa hoped it was a dog.

Above the nearest fire pit, a carca.s.s was skewered over a pile of low coals. A human squatted back on his heels and turned the meat slowly. He looked up at them with crossed eyes. On his head he wore a helmet with the tip of a hedron affixed to the top.

Sorin pushed his jaw at the skewered meat. "What do you have there? Elf meat?"

The man spat and turned his eyes back to the fire.

"Warthog," Nissa said, her eyes scanning the tents. She found a tent larger than the rest and black in color and led them to it along the makes.h.i.+ft streets of mud. They pa.s.sed two men standing on either side of a horse. Both were wearing heavy armor fixed with strings, and on each string was tied a stone. Climbing hooks curled off their elbow couters and the tips of their sabatons. They were busy las.h.i.+ng a folded green tent and long poles to their horse. With each movement the tiny stones tinked against their armor.

"Power sellers," Nissa whispered. "Each of those stones is imbued with a bit of the Turntimber's special raw mana. They sell them."

Sorin looked back where the men stood, watching them. "How much do they cost?"

"Less than that," Nissa replied.

Sorin looked where she pointed. A bright red drake the size of a large dog sat on a roost in front of a gray, scale-skinned tent. The creature's bright eyes watched them as they pa.s.sed.

"They find those drakes in the Makindi Trench," Nissa said, approaching the black tent. She stopped and looked back the way they had come. Every eye in the camp was on them. She turned and said, "Keep your lips tight together, and don't look at it."

With a deep breath, Nissa pushed back the stiff hide hung over the hole and slipped into the tent. The others followed. It was almost totally dark inside. A strange smell filled their noses so that Sorin groaned and Nissa held her breath. Anowon shuffled his feet. Something was buzzing in the tent.

"Khalled?" Nissa said.

There was no sound except for the buzzing.

"Khalled?" Nissa repeated.

More buzzing. Then something stirred. "Yes?" called a voice.

"Khalled, it is Nissa."

"Nissa. Come closer, child." The voice sounded like it hadn't spoken for millennia.

She walked in the darkness, feeling ahead with her foot before each step. When she was nearer to the buzzing, a rough hand groped her face.

"Nissa Revane. My nectar."

She heard Sorin sniff.

"I am here with two friends."

"Friends? They don't smell like friends. Or rather, they smell like friends to each other but not to you."

"Nonetheless ..."

"Have you seen the beautiful flowers outside, Nissa?"

Flowers? "I saw no flowers." "I saw no flowers."

"What? No flowers?"

"I saw some destroyed tents, Khalled."

The hand left her face.

"Friends you say ... Light!" Suddenly light from many tiny points filled the room. What was amazing to Nissa was not that Khalled had hundreds of light beetles tethered with string in the corner of the tent. What amazed her was that he'd been able, with an enchantment of his devising, to have the beetles light at his command.

The sides of Khalled's tent were bookshelves, and each and every s.p.a.ce on the shelves was crammed with books, scrolls, and reed papers bound with string. Nissa even recognized writings from her people: flat pieces of pale nadi wood graven with pictographs. Nissa noticed that Anowon's eyes were on the books, and for the first time since she had allowed him to travel with them, his eyes were fully open. As he stared, he brought his bound hands up and scratched the side of his nose. She turned.

Khalled was looking at each of them carefully. Half of his face had been torn to the bone by a kraken, and he wore no adornment except a cloak thrown over his right shoulder and a loin cloth. Nissa noticed that the merfolk had started unbinding his wrist and ankle fins, and their translucent blue shone in the tent.

"I dreamed of an angel with a halo running across its eye line," he said, his eyes moving between Anowon and Sorin. "With a pulsing, tentacled heart in its hand."

Sorin smiled uncertainly.

"Ahhh," Khalled said. He reached out and touched the vial of water he had given Nissa, which she kept on a lanyard around her neck. "You still possess this. Wonderful."

"It is always my companion," Nissa said.

"That one," Khalled said, pointing at Anowon, "is a vampire."

"He is bound, Khalled."

The ancient merfolk shuffled closer. "What do you have hanging from your belt?" he asked Anowon.

Anowon moved his eyes from the books to the merfolk. He looked down at the metal cylinders hanging from his belt.

"Are those text imprinters?" Khalled asked. "For clay?"

Anowon nodded. The merfolk leaned over and took one of the cylinders in his hand and looked closely at it. After a minute, he let the cylinder go, and it bounced against Anowon's thigh.

Khalled straightened and looked at Anowon. "An archaeophile?" Khalled asked with an inflection to his voice that said he approved. "How do you come here?"

"He was-" Sorin started.

"-I was not speaking to you, friend," Khalled said.

Sorin's smile disappeared.

Khalled put his iridescent green eyes back on Anowon.

"I was enslaved by the Eldrazi brood lineage," Anowon replied, "and brought on their forage raids into the Turntimber Forest."

Nissa spoke. "MossCrack is no more. The Tajuru home tree was attacked, and Speaker Sutina is buried."

Khalled blinked like he'd been slapped. He looked up at the ceiling of the tent where the bugs buzzed and t.i.ttered.

"They attacked here some days ago," he said. "Many have fled. Some were killed."

"Yet you stay?"

"The Turntimber is not yet mapped," Khalled said. "And with the increasing Roil, it becomes ever more difficult."

"But surely, my friend, you would rather travel back to Tazeem," Nissa pressed. "To your lighthouse?"

"Yes, I can see where you might think that. But no." Khalled said, sighing. "Speaker Sutina. She was an unusual elf. I've told you what I knew about her and that kraken?"

"Yes," Nissa said. "But Khalled, these two need to get to the Teeth of Akoum. It is found on-"

"I know where the Teeth of Akoum are, dear child."

"Would you have a map?"

"I might," Khalled said. He looked at Sorin for a while. "What is it worth to you, and why do you want to go to that place? It is dangerous, and these creatures, these brood as you call them, are everywhere. I have received a speaking hawk from The Lighthouse at Sea Gate telling news of great hordes in the lands to the west."

The news seemed to trouble Sorin. He pursed his lips. "I have my own reasons, old map maker," he said. "But maybe I can make it worth your time." He put his hand into his jerkin, and it came out holding something.

Nissa watched him open his hand. A small black ball, the size of an acorn, rolled in his palm.

How? Nissa thought, leaning closer for a better look. Nissa thought, leaning closer for a better look. That wasn't in his pockets when I went through them this morning. There was nothing in those pockets. Where did he get it? That wasn't in his pockets when I went through them this morning. There was nothing in those pockets. Where did he get it?

"What is that?" Khalled asked. One of the beetles landed on his hand. He stroked it gently, and it glowed brighter.

"It is magic from far away."

"How far away?"

"Far."

The Jah-creed merfolk eyed the ball in Sorin's palm.

Sorin pushed it toward him. "It sees sees. Would you like to see what it sees?"

"No," Khalled said, after a long pause. "This smells dark to me. And as much as I love the dark, it tends to have too large an allure for me."

Sorin's hand closed over the ball. His faced showed no emotion, but Nissa could smell his metallic embarra.s.sment in the air.

Perhaps Khalled could too, for he shuffled forward. "These two will have their map, Nissa. But why do you help them?"

"Sorin saved my life," she said.

"Twice," Sorin said.

"Twice," Nissa said.

Khalled nodded and turned to Anowon. "You will make me copies of your books. That is payment for the map"-Khalled turned-"Raspin!" he called. "Oh Raspin?"

A young human boy poked his head into the tent.

"Would you fetch clay? You will find it in the supply tent in the box marked 'Glyphs.'"

The boy pulled his head out.

"And Raspin?"

The boy put his head back in.

"Check with Margen and find out if we've spotted the enemy today in the west."

Khalled turned back to the group. "We see them almost daily. But they seem to be pa.s.sing around us. They are odd. First they seem brutes, but then sometimes they do things with extreme forethought. Like the ambushes they have caught us in."

Sorin said nothing, but Nissa knew he possessed secrets of the brood that he had yet to reveal. "They're like ants," Nissa said. "It's like they talk with their tentacles like ants do with their antennae."

Khalled nodded as he thought about this. Then nodded. His eyes turned to Anowon. "You say these are the Eldrazi of myth? These are the ones who build the palaces and places of power ... the ones who were put down in the uprising?"

Anowon glanced at Sorin, who was smirking again.

"I am not sure," Anowon continued. "I know they came from the Eye of Ugin, which in some of the research I have done is a.s.sociated with the last resting place of the ancient ones."

"What family do you hail from?" Khalled said.

Anowon looked at the merfolk for an extra heart beat before replying. "My family was Ghet. I have been formally cast out."

Khalled raised his eyebrows. He turned and walked to one of his packed and drooping bookshelves. He drew out a slim but wide book and opened it. As they all watched, he licked his finger and began turning pages. "Ah ... Ghet." He was quiet as he read.

Sorin yawned.

"Yes," Khalled said as he read. "An old family, but of minor designation. Disciplined in past conflicts." Khalled looked up. "Your seat is not in Guul Draz?"