Anowon was not running as fast. In fact, the vampire was midway between Nissa and the goblins that were, after all, carrying a mad kor. She had little doubt that it had been Anowon who had disposed of one of Smara s goblins. If that were the case, then Anowon should be quite fit and able to run. Nissa found it strange.
They ran past more huts hunched next to the fallow fields, then topped a low rise. The palace loomed ahead. In its course it had floated away and then back again to its original crater, only to fall hugely canted to the right. There were three lines of smoke rising sideways from the ground around the palace.
Then Nissa saw the first hole. Soon she saw more dotting the landscape ahead. She stopped running. Each was about a man s length across and just as deep. Many of the holes were stuffed with what looked like crops. Others were empty. Brood holes, she muttered.
When Nissa saw a hole with a pair of bare legs jutting straight out, she jumped behind a nearby hut and crouched. When Sorin and Anowon joined her, she leaned over.
Brood, Sorin said before she could even open her mouth.
Anowon nodded.
Ahead the ground was flat and grassy with small undulating ridges. The huts were more common along the foot-trod path they had been following. Each hut was made of thatch and turf bricks, and as Nissa crouched behind one, she could smell cooking grease from within. A gust of wind blew her hair in her eyes, and with the hooked finger of her right hand she pushed it behind her long ear.
There were people cooking in this one earlier today, she said.
The brood holes that dotted the landscape were fresh, and as she looked, Nissa saw plenty more legs sticking out of them.
Why do they stuff the corpses in the holes? Nissa said.
Sorin and Anowon said nothing, but Nissa had the distinct impression that one or both of them knew why.
What s that? Anowon whispered. He pointed.
A large column of dust far to the right in the grassland. The point from which it emanated was hidden behind one of the rises.
That, friends, is the dust thrown up by a great host, Sorin said. He stood and began walking forward to a high point occupied by another hut.
When he reached the hut, he stopped and stared down. Nissa stared too. It was a group of something walking along the ridge between the grassland and the mountains.
Sizable, Sorin said.
The tentacled scourge, Nissa said. She could not make out the individual forms, but she could see that some were taller than others, and that some of them moved in strange ways.
I suppose we should count ourselves lucky to be seeing their backs, Sorin said as he turned and began walking toward the palace.
Nissa had never seen anything like it. The populations of Zendikar did not have the discipline to form ranks. Plus, there was never enough of anyone, other than the wild creatures and trees, to form any kind of organized fighting force. And even though the brood were not formed in anything like ranks, they were traveling in a group. Where had they learned to walk together in lines? she wondered. She did not know enough about the brood to answer the question. But she would find out, she promised herself.
Behind the brood, the grasslands swept up in a smooth transition to the Piston Mountains. As she watched, the top of one mountain came hammering down on the base, and the ground shook.
If we are very lucky, Sorin yelled over his shoulder as he walked, The brood that did this he kicked at a leg poking out of one of the holes will meet and join forces with the brood advancing on us even now from behind.
Nissa looked back the way they had come. There, far away, was a smaller dust cloud.
Should not be long now, Sorin said.
Robert B. Wintermute
Zendikar: In the Teeth of Akoum
The holes became more common as they neared the palace, which, itself, had bodies hanging from their riggings heavy humans, dead in their armor with strange fighting devices strapped to their arms. Plumes of smoke spiraled from within somewhere. The huge tethers Nissa had seen from across the plain lay strewn on the grass, as thick as a man s torso.
Soon they were past the last hut and near the roots of the mountains. Ahead, a huge rock stood on its end, balanced precariously next to the trail. Nissa stopped and took out her map. The trail wound into the foothills and then skirted to the right. They would be moving parallel to the brood lineage that were beating their way around the base of the mountains. Will they cut into the mountains when they find our path? she asked herself as she rolled up the maps.
The stone balancing next to the trail appeared to wobble in the gusting wind. Nissa had seen other teetering stones, as they were called. She had never known one to fall. On the other hand, she had never known creatures to kill whole villages and stuff the corpses in holes.
They passed around the teetering stone and kept running along the path.
Nissa stopped suddenly and crouched, putting her finger into a small depression. She always ran looking at the ground, watching for signs.
An odd track, she said. I have never seen it before.
Sorin and Anowon stopped for a look. Nissa traced the deep divots and deep knuckle grooves; it was as if something had dragged itself across the ground, but uphill. Nissa looked up at the treeless mountains ahead. There were small boulders and low clumps of grass, but nothing that appeared large enough for even a goblin to hide behind. And whatever had made the sign was larger than a goblin, by plenty. Each finger groove was longer than her shin.
Well? Sorin said.
Nissa shrugged. It is large, she replied.
But I do not see any indication of tentacles.
From behind, a drum boomed over the plains. Anowon and Nissa looked back. The dust plume from the brood that had come up out of the trench was nearly at the palace.
They have become musical, Sorin said. Perhaps I will sing them a song of my own when we meet.
Nissa did not feel as confident. With each passing league they drifted farther away from the forest. She took a deep breath. The grasslands were rich with a different kind of energy, a kind she did not know how to utilize very well. If she had the proper rest, she could recuperate and draw mana from the land But there was no rest to be had.
Sorin turned away from his view of the grasslands below and cast a wary eye at the tracks in the rocky dirt of the trail ahead. So, we are being advanced upon from the rear by a prevailing force he made a sweeping gesture with one hand and something of unknown potency is waiting in ambush somewhere ahead?
After some moments Nissa nodded.
Sorin unbuckled the belt that held his great sword in place over his right shoulder. He moved the belt to his waist and cinched it tight again. It is good to know these things, he said.
Nissa watched Anowon investigate the tracks in the dirt. He pushed his fingers around the deep indentations, nodding some secret confirmation.
Soon they were walking higher and higher into the foothills with the sun low in the western sky.
The first face they found was half buried in the sandy soil. Nissa knew such stone heads were called Faduun, and that one in particular was huge. It was so large, in fact, that Nissa suspected that fifty elves holding wrists could barely encircle it. Its nose was large, and its stern brow and angry eyes were set in a spiteful scowl. It was exactly the same face as she d seen carved in the river pebbles that Anowon had found.
They found a smaller face an hour later, cut into the side of an outcropping. Each of the eye sockets had something shoved inside it. Nissa reached for whatever was in the right one.
Do you really want to know what is in there? Sorin said.