Nissa looked from one to the other of them. A smile tickled the corners of her lips as the joke dawned on her.
I ate it, Nissa said. You have discovered me, human. She looked back at the map. More like the vampire did. He seems in a stupor.
The lines of the map were clear enough showing the jagged run of the trench. The problem came in finding just what part of the trench they had been in when the giants had found them and, thus, where they had climbed out of the canyon. She could see the shaded area marked
Piston Mountains. There was no sign of a palace on the map. A palace of that size should surely be there. Nissa looked up at the structure that had been sitting at the base of the mountains when they first topped the mesa.
But it was gone. From her distance, all that was evident was a huge crater where the palace had been. She located it far to the right floating in the air with the divot of earth it had been sitting on still underneath it. Even from far away she could see lines extending from the ground to the palace. This was Zendikar, and Nissa had seen plenty of floating objects in her life, including a whole lake suspended above the ground leaving a dry bed full of flopping fish. She d seen fields of hedrons numbering in the hundreds floating and banging together. But the palace was different. And judging from the lines of ropes, there were living things in that castle.
Something is wrong, she said.
You are coming to that realization just now? Sorin said.
She s right, said Anowon. He had come up behind her so silently that she jumped when he spoke. The flood, the refugee kor, and now the Palace of Zemgora floating loose in the air. Anowon s voice was soft, as always, and Nissa found herself leaning in to hear more. Did you notice how fresh the scars on those giants in the trench were? They were recently in a fight I fear they got the worst of.
That is true, Nissa found herself saying.
The Roils lately have become more severe. That last one near Graypelt was so sudden that my spirit-water vial barely boiled.
It is the brood lineage, Sorin said. They are wroth and throwing Zendikar out of balance. They must be put back into the earth.
Smara looked up from where she had been sitting. She rushed over to Sorin.
The gift is in the loam, she said. The gift is in the loam. Then she began talking in another language and soon was repeating the same words.
Anowon watched Smara closely, as did Sorin. At one point Anowon quickly drew a slip of parchment and a thin piece of charcoal out of an inner pocket and wrote something down on the slip.
Sorin smiled uncertainly as the kor s words degraded into raving. Then he glanced at Nissa to see what she thought of Smara s words. Nissa pretended not to notice Sorin s look. What is that one hiding? she wondered, turning her attention back to the floating palace. What is the gift is in the loam?
What did she say? she asked finally.
Some of it was classical Vampire, Anowon said.
The rest He looked at Sorin.
It was Eldrazi, but spattered with vampire, Sorin said. Look.
Nissa looked where Sorin pointed. The piece of earth the palace was perched atop moved slowly, pulling its tethers tight. Many tiny things were flying around the palace. As she watched, one of the ropes fell.
Suddenly there was a small tremor in the earth and a sharp creaking, and the fluid in the vial hanging from the leather thong around Nissa s neck began to boil so that she felt its heat all the way through her jerkin.
Roil! she yelled.
Nissa twisted her staff in two and drew the flexible stem blade from its sheath. With a snap of her wrist the blade stiffened enough for Nissa to jab it into the ground. She felt the green blade shoot roots out and anchor in the black dirt. And in the next moment the Roil was on them.
Before the shaking became too violent, Nissa was able to catch a glimpse of a grass bloom a wild and rapid groth of stalks that sometimes came with the Roil. A patch of earth jutted and tore out of the ground. Dirt sprayed, and Nissa closed her eyes and held onto the handle of the stem sword. The ground buckled and shook, and dirt sprayed down on her. Soon there was a massive tearing sound, and the ground heaved up and to the side. Nissa put her left hand over her eye, and through the slit between her fingers was able to see that the ground she was lying on was floating. If I roll off, I ll be at the mercy of the Roil, she thought. But staying would mean potentially floating high in the sky.
Nissa made the stem rigid, pulled it from the earth, and rolled off the ground she was on. She barely felt the fall. As soon as she hit the ground, the Roil bounced her back into the air, and she came down in a crater of some sort. She scrambled up, not wanting to sit in a low space if whatever had come out of the space slammed back in.
She was almost out of the crater when the Roil stopped abruptly. A shadow fell over Nissa. The land that had come from the crater was falling. She brought the stem sword back, and the blade lengthened and turned flexible as she snapped it out and wrapped it around a boulder that had not been there before the Roil.
Nissa was glad it was there. She pulled herself out of the crater and looked up, expecting the ground to slam back into the hole. But it stayed aloft.
The air seemed to shimmer after the Roil. She wiped the dirt from her eyes and looked around. The breath caught in her throat. Where there had been a plain of grass only moments before, there was an expanse filled with floating islands of ground. Nissa quickly counted seventeen of the islands, but more dotted the landscape. And the palace was not one of them. Where is the palace? she wondered.
She located the palace near the base of the mountains, lying on its side, perhaps a day s walk away if she judged the distance correctly. She heard a sound and turned. Anowon was standing near, looking out at the floating land. Smara was next to him somehow, talking to herself; or was she talking to Anowon? The vampire s face was impossible to read.
Behind them, Sorin was floating unconscious in the air, with his long white hair floating all around him like a shroud. As Nissa watched, he woke with a violent lurch that knocked him out of the air, and he fell with a grunt.
Sorin lay on the grass, which had shrunk again to the length of normal grass in the wake of the Roil. Many elves worshipped blooms, when plants and trees grew suddenly huge. And when the plants shrank back to their normal size after the fact, they saw that as divine as well. Not Nissa. Plant blooms did not seem natural. For the bloom to be holy, then the Roil would have to be holy, and that was something Nissa could not believe. Nothing holy could be that devastating. After a moment, Sorin stirred and rolled over. He put his hand to his forehead.
I m beginning to like Zendikar, Sorin said, sitting up. I really am. It feels like I ve been here for years, when it s been more like weeks.
When Sorin saw the floating islands of grassland, he shrugged.
Anowon was with Smara at the edge of the mesa, peering over the edge. He looked up at Nissa and showed his teeth. She walked over to where they stood. Anowon pointed down at the canyon floor far below.
How are your eyes? he asked.
She detected the movement on the canyon floor almost immediately.
Nissa doublechecked before speaking. Brood, she said finally.
What are they doing? Sorin said, standing next to her.
It s hard to tell, but some of them seem to be eating the ground.
Nobody said anything for a time.
Eating it? Anowon finally said.
There are some large ones with tentacles for back legs and long muzzles
Sorin moaned. Are their muzzles blue? he asked.
I can t tell, Nissa said. But, yes, it is possible, now that you put words to it.
Trackers, Sorin said.
But why would they
They are probably tracking the kor refugees, Sorin said. But they will find us in the process if we don t move.
How do you know these things? Nissa said.
The blue muzzles? The words were out of her mouth before she knew it.