She speaks to me, the goblin said as he stopped walking for a moment. In my head.
What did she hear? asked Nissa.
She was bothered by the Sorin vampire s plan.
Was she?
Her ghost tells her to release the Eldrazi, Mudheel said. He tells her to kill you all. He tells her to burn things.
The hairs on the back of Nissa s neck stood. Really?
Yes, the goblin said. Kill you in the fire of the Eye of Ugin.
I see.
The gift in the loam must be released.
You want to free them?
It is not I, the goblin said. It is the desire of my mistress s ghost.
And who is this ghost?
The knower of all things, the goblin said.
The predictor of everything.
And it says free the Eldrazi?
From the back, Nissa saw the goblin look left and right at the mention of the word Eldrazi. It says: free those who shall not be named.
Once again the hairs on the back of Nissa s neck went up. Smara began to thrash violently and to scream words Nissa did not know. Nissa watched the goblin wrestling with the kor. The kor had been cast out of her tribe and given to the wilderness and somehow lived. She had grown up apart from her people through no fault of her own, and after all that a crystal that spoke to her, telling her to burn things and free the Eldrazi.
Smara kept screaming. She thrashed out of the goblin s arms and staggered around as Mudheel spoke in a low voice trying to calm her. The inhabitants of Affa turned and watched the kor. Soon a small crowd had formed outside of a small dry-stack stone building with a flagon of wine painted above the door. Mudheel began shoving Smara none too gently down the lane, and soon they were out of the center of the settlement and hurrying between the tents.
The tents and rough stone shacks started to thin as they reached the far side of the settlement and the boulders started. The huge rocks had been in the settlement, of course people had leaned wood and bones against them as a roofs. One could not hope to move boulders of that size without true magical talent, and from what she saw in the camps as they walked, there was not a great deal of that to go around. The inhabitants were mostly petty peril seekers.
The real power seekers would be excavating other locations like Tal Terig, the tower they had passed that lay under brood siege, or the Hagra Cistern. A real adventurer would not be hovering around at the base of the Teeth of Akoum like an eeka bird. Affa was a place where goblins brought the small relics and Eldrazi charms they had found and could not make work.
As she walked, a form appeared out of the deep shadows that lay far from the fires. Smara kept screaming as hard as her lungs could.
What is that lovely sound? Sorin said. Oh, it is the kor, of course.
Smara reacted to Sorin s sudden voice in the darkness. She struggled and pulled free from the goblin s hands, turned on Sorin, and let loose a string of words Nissa could not understand. Smara sputtered as she spoke. To Nissa they sounded more like complete sentences than the ravings of a mad person, and Sorin listened with a smirk forming at the corner of his lips.
And then Sorin did something that Nissa could never have predicted. He spoke back to Smara in the same tongue she had been speaking to him. They were talking back and forth, arguing really.
From behind, Nissa detected movement and smelled the dusty smell of Anowon. But the vampire stood still, listening.
The arguing continued, with Smara becoming more and more aggravated. At one point the kor stepped forward and swung at Sorin, who stepped back and let the blow pass harmlessly in front of his face.
Nissa remembered how long she had gone without food or drink. She suddenly felt too weak to go any further, and she sat down on the ground. The stars were bright, and the fires of Affa were behind them. They had no coin and no hope of finding any. They would need to steal, and after that they would need to flee. She was tired enough at the thought.
The screaming continued until Smara began spitting. Sorin laughed, and Smara turned and wandered away into the darkness with Mudheel trailing after her. They did not see her again.
Nissa forced herself to stand, and they kept walking. Ahead the dark shapes of the long mountains loomed. Nissa walked up behind Anowon.
We need supplies, she said. Rope and food and water. We will all die without water.
The vampire stopped. Then you had best get some.
We still have no coin, Nissa said. Nothing has changed there.
Sorin stepped up behind her in the dark. It looks like a bit of theft might be just the thing.
I do not want to do that, Nissa said. But I will.
It just so happens I would like to make a stop, Sorin said. I will see what is lying around unattended.
When Sorin had left, Nissa caught up to Anowon.
I should have known Sorin was one of you.
He is not one of me, Anowon snapped. He is an outlander a barong, as you elves say. He is an enslaver, from out there. My people do not enslave their own.
Not so sure of that, Nissa thought, but she swallowed the words. Instead she said, What was Sorin saying to Smara?
They were arguing over what to do at the Eye. Smara wants to free the vile ones and let them live among us, and share their wisdom with us.
That did not sound like a good idea to Nissa, if the Eldrazi titans were anything like their children, the brood lineage.
Do they suck the mana from holes in the earth like the brood? Nissa said.
The ancient texts say different things. Some say they lived off the blood of their vampires. Others say that they drank the land.
Nissa sniffed in the cold breeze blowing down out of the mountains. That does not sound very good, she said.
If they are large I would reason they could drink plenty of land.
Anowon kept walking with Nissa next to him. How long had they been walking? Nissa wondered. She had lost count. It felt like months. Every step was slow and heavy. She stopped and plopped down on the ground for a rest. The fires of Affa were well behind them now.
Anowon stopped and turned to look at Nissa sitting on the ground.
Anyway, Anowon said. The Eldrazi will not tarry here. The mad kor wishes in vain. They would flee into the sky.
How do you know?
All the texts agree they came from there, Anowon said. Why stay here?
You yourself said they eat mana. Why not stay here and enslave us all?
If what you said before is correct, then there are many other places, Anowon said as he raised his hand to the dark mountain. Out there.
Nissa looked up at the star-strewn sky. She recognized the constellations she had seen her whole life: the scute bug and the vorpal weed, the dragon s claw and the hedron. And there were the other vast planes separated by gray areas in space. Would the Eldrazi prefer these places to Zendikar?
Nissa, Anowon said. We must rid Zendikar of this parasite.
Nissa turned and regarded Anowon. What did you see at the Eye before the brood took you prisoner?
The vampire s voice appeared very close suddenly in the dark. I was there looking at the strange crystal formations and the even stranger writing on some of the crystals. Writing I could not read. Writing that is utterly unknown to Zendikar. I imagine it is writing from Sorin s place, but I was unaware that the Mortifier was more than myth.
Nissa nodded.
I was studied these unusual writings before I found two strange beings, perhaps one like you and Sorin not from Zendikar?
I am from Zendikar, Nissa said. I have always been from Zendikar.
Well, the female had fire for hair. I wanted to feed on them both, to be truthful. But before I could, I was waylaid. By whom, I do not know. She moved on without me, but I met a mind mage on the trail who was pursuing the fire mage. I led him to the Eye of Ugin. I was locked out of the chamber, though. I don t know what happened, or how they released the scourge.