Zendikar: In the Teeth of Akoum
The hardest part was hiding the body. Anowon had the sense to grab the merfolk and drag him between two carts to do what he did there, while the rest of them kept a look out. Nissa felt the bitter gorge rise in her throat as the merfolk thrashed. Amazingly, nobody in the caravan had seemed to notice. At least nobody had said anything. An if someone had seen Anowon drain the merfolk, they had not raised an alarm. It was the time of the day when people eat before the night comes, Nissa guessed, and the occupants of the caravans were inside.
Anowon disposed of the body by hoisting it and propping it against the side of a smooth adobe house built atop a wagon. The merfolk s legs hung over the side of the platform.
They walked into the midst caravan, where it was shady and strangely cool. A wagon with an immense tower built on a steel bed lumbered by. Two carts on a dray rocked and bobbed, each carrying a small crop of grain planted in straight rows. They wandered deeper into the caravan, hopping over the steaming dung piles left by the dulam beasts.
It appeared that the caravan never stopped moving. Beings tossed their privy pots from high windows. Even a huge wagon, three of its steel-shod wheels turning and squeaking, was being repaired on the move a wheeled jack held the corner up as a human hammered a new wheel onto its axle.
Soon they were in in the middle of what was a small village. Many small carts, each pulled by a male and a female human, traveled together, virtually touching edges as they rocked. On each cart was a small wattle hut, each identical to the one next to it. There were even guards. At four corners sentries stood, naked except for turntimber-bark armor. Each grasped the shellacked stalk of a vorpal weed.
Past the moving village, a strange beast with long white fur and twirled horns plodded with a group of humans and mermen surrounding it. There were two immense copper tanks strapped to its back. Two of the men wore various sized metal disks that clinked against each other as they walked. Each of the men had a cup on a lanyard around his neck.
Water, one cried. We have water.
Nissa looked down at her feet. Her boots were not worth much anymore, and she would need them. Still, if she did not have water soon She turned to Anowon, who drew back the white hood of the cloak he d taken from the merfolk. He held up his hand. Pinched between his fingers was a glowing tooth.
Is it fresh? Sorin croaked, through cracked lips.
Anowon smiled. The teeth in that merfolk s mouth were not fit for magic. This is one of the original teeth.
Whose are they? Sorin said. I ve been curious all this time.
Anowon did not look at Sorin. You will never know, Mortifier.
Sorin had been grinning, but when Anowon called him Mortifier, his smile disappeared.
In exchange for the tooth, the water vendors let them drink all the water they could from their cups. Then they turned a spigot on one of the tanks and shot a glistening stream of cool water into three new skins and gave them those. The water was piney tasting, flavored with Jaddi sap. It tasted like the finest thing Nissa had ever had in her life. Even better than a roasted thrak toad.
Nissa looked ahead, but could not see the end of the caravan. Buildings lumbered, and whips snapped. The smell was that of sweat and dung. The spicy dust blowing in between the wagons off the barren land mingled with the smoke from fires. Overhead a small creature, perhaps a young kor, was flying, being towed on a rope, with a pair of hide-and-wood wings strapped to its back. In the hard desert wind the winged creature dipped and soared, and the sun flashed off the reflective objects it wore.
Nissa took another deep drink and wiped her lips with the back of her hand.
What did you mean by Mortifier? Nissa said to Anowon. Anowon was watching Sorin walk some paces ahead.
He knows what I mean, replied the vampire.
He knows. Did you see the expression on his face?
Knows what?
That I know he speaks the ancient dialect of the vampires.
Oh, Nissa said.
Yes, Anowon said. His rot talk. It sounded strange at first, and then I consulted the cylinders. He rot talks in a language that appeared suddenly during the reign of the third Eldrazi titan. It did not evolve as most languages do. It had no precedent in other, earlier languages. It simply appeared in texts at exactly one time.
So, where did it come from? Nissa said.
Anowon smiled and shrugged. Ask the Eldrazi, he said.
Nissa took another gulp of her excellent water. With each drink she felt more like herself. You ask the Eldrazi, she said, smiling.
I leave that to you, Nissa the elf, the vampire replied.
I will tell them if you will answer this one question, Anowon of Ghet?
Anowon held up his water skin and squeezed it, sending a concentrated stream of water into his open mouth.
Why do the Eldrazi Titans have to be kept in the Eye of Ugin? Nissa asked. Perhaps they would flee if released, and this place would stop being so dangerous. Perhaps they would flee to another plane.
Nissa closed her mouth. She s said too much. She d assumed that because of his knowledge he d figured that bit of fact out, but apparently not.
But Anowon just continued walking, seeming to consider her words.
I just meant Sejiri, in the north, Nissa said.
They could go there and leave the rest of Zendikar.
But Anowon was looking at the dry ground as he walked, keeping up with the rest of the caravan. His fingers moved down to one of the metal cylinders hanging from his belt.
I just meant Sejiri, Nissa repeated. You know. The region in the north?
Still Anowon did not speak, but walked with his eyes on the ground and his fingers reading the ancient scripts copied on the cylinders that hung from his belt.
I am aware that there are other planes of existence, he said, turning to her as he walked. That certain creatures can travel between here and there.
Nissa felt the blood rush to her face. But Anowon was not done talking, and he began again before she could speak.
The Eldrazi are clearly these types of beings. All the texts claim they came from nowhere. That they simply snapped into existence. Obviously they came from another plane.
Obviously, Nissa repeated.
Over the next days, Anowon walked with the hood of his white robe pulled down low and his fingers moving slowly over a different cylinder. The caravan moved like a lumbering city over the dry pan. Nissa could see the fringe of a mountain range rising out of the haze at the horizon. As they had no coin, and Anowon simply did not answer questions leveled at him, they had no choice but to sleep where they could. One night Nissa slept in the window of a building pulled by dulam beasts. The next night she curled up in the fig grove as it shook and swayed in the starlight. On the fourth day they saw a dulam beast die. The large wheeled tent it had been pulling slowed a bit until another younger beast was led from the trailing herd trail and harnessed in. The other wagons simply turned to avoid the beast s carcass as a human bent and butchered it, slopping the meat and vital organs into a wheeled barrel.
One night Nissa was able to steal some grilled dulam sausage from a seller the next day she found two loaves of bread rolling in the dust near the communal oven. The goblin took whatever she offered it, breaking the food in half and feeding part to Smara, who stared into the goblin s eyes as he fed her.
What does she see in your eyes? Nissa finally asked.
The oracle sees the ghost she channels in my face, Mudheel said. And she is content.
Teeth of the dragon! Smara blurted out.
Mudheel stroked the kor s hand. Yes, we are going there. We are going.
But the caravan stopped later that day. Every cart, wagon, and dray slowed and then stopped. Nissa and Sorin walked past the wagons until they found the front of the caravan. The front wagon was stopped just behind an area of what looked like plants made of rock. The rock garden had maybe sixty plants, and some trees and each one was black and stone.