"Why have they not attacked us then?"

"I have been watching them for many days. They do not act as I thought they would. They seem to consider things more than I had thought."

Nissa looked at the goblin queerly.

"So you want us to travel a different path to avoid the brood?"

"Yes, please."

"I will tell you what I think," Nissa said. "I think you are trying to direct us down an incorrect trail by telling me that the brood are tracking us. I have not smelled brood or seen any sign in the dust."

The goblin sighed. "On the morrow you will come to a split in the trail," he said. "See if you do not. Take the right trail. It is the smallest trail."

"And it ends at a sheer cliff?"

"No," the goblin said. "It ends at the Eye of Ugin."

"a.s.suming this trail does lead to the Eye," Nissa said. "You know that Sorin will fortify the prison of the Eldrazi, correct?"

The wind picked up suddenly and howled past Nissa's long ears at the mention of the ancient ones.

"I know the Mortifier intends to do that. But you and the reading vampire have decided to release the gift in the loam," Mudheel said. "My mistress will do the same thing. But ..."

"But what? Why should we come along if that is what she is doing?"

"I am unsure she can control whatever comes out of that hole."

Nissa thought for a quick moment.

"And you want us there if the Eldrazi do not do what she says ... if they decide that Zendikar is as good a place as any to dwell?"

The goblin nodded slowly before bowing and stepping back into the shadows.

Nissa slept that night on the hard rock. The next day she and the others ascended higher and higher into the mountains. The clouds flicked by so close overhead that Nissa felt she could reach out and touch them.

The trail entered into a series of switchbacks that took them until the sun was past its zenith in the sky to complete. Then the trail split. The main trail continued forward, but two small offshoots extended right and left and disappeared behind the rock. Of the two splits, the right one was the smallest path by far, composed of gravel and dust that had not been disturbed in days. How had the trail not been disturbed? How had the trail not been disturbed?

"Let us take this smaller trail," Nissa said.

"Why would we do that?" Sorin said. "It does not lead anywhere."

"And this large trail does?" Nissa said.

"It looks more like a trail that leads somewhere than the small one."

Nissa paused. What could she say to convince them? "I'm telling you we should take this one," Nissa said.

Anowon stopped and c.o.c.ked his head at Nissa.

At that moment Sorin pointed, and two ma.s.s-of-tentacles brood floated into view ahead. Each of them was different and larger than any the group had seen before. They had very large and thick looking obsidian-like rock mantles that floated around their writhing bodies.

At the same time, three brood with large bone heads and no faces scrawled their ways onto the large trail, pulling themselves on thick tentacles.

Both groups advanced on the party.

Sorin immediately began to sing. His voice boomed forth, knocking both of the large brood on the ground into heaps of blood. The wind blew the smell of putrefaction toward them. Nissa fanned out to the right to get away from it. The flying brood drifted closer. They seemed ponderously large to Nissa, incapable of quickness. But her thoughts were shattered moments later when one of the flying brood shot out a tentacle and caught Sorin around the neck.

Nissa twisted her staff and snapped her stem sword out, severing the creature's tentacle and freeing Sorin. Sorin pulled off the severed tentacle and flung it aside. He spoke two words and raised his right hand to the creature. The air around them went icy cold, and motes of power bloomed around Sorin's hand. The brood missing one tentacle trembled. The next moment a piece popped free from the brood's body and fell beating to the ground. The creature had no face that Nissa could see, but she had the distinct feeling that the brood was looking down at the beating thing on the ground, which could only have been its heart. In the next moment it crumpled and fell to the ground and lay like an empty wineskin on the red rocks.

The last creature flew at her.

Nissa put her staff on the rock of the mountain. When she took a deep breath her deepest fears were confirmed: only trickles of power were reaching her from the various mana tributaries she depended on. Nissa closed her eyes and took another deep breath. She seemed to be unable to catch her mana bonds. It was Zendikar herself that was hindering her, almost as if she wanted Nissa to fall here on this rocky spot. It had happened to Nissa before, of course-it was part of the unpredictably of Zendikar-but never at such a vital time. There was mana here, gouts of it. But it seemed to flutter around her, like a mothling around a lantern.

To make matters worse, two more brood appeared at that instant. One was the bone-headed variety-the other, floating. As Nissa watched they both began moving toward her at an alarming speed. The floating brood tucked its tentacles close to its body, and charged.

Nissa had only a moment. She channeled what little mana she could and formed an image in her mind of an eeka bird-a large, pest bird with a long beak. Nissa brought the bird to her and sent it hurling, beak-first at the brood.

The eeka flew straight and buried its beak deep in the brood's ma.s.s of concentrated tentacles. The brood stopped its charge and used one tentacle to find the bird and throw it aside. By that time Nissa had drawn her stem sword as rigid as a spike and was charging forward. She pushed off from a boulder and jumped high into the air where she executed a flip and hurled downwards. She plunged the spike into the center of the ma.s.s of squirming tentacles, burying it all the way to her fists. Nissa knew that once inside a body, the stem would put out rhizomes and use the blood vessels and arteries to travel through the body. Eventually the roots would fill it.

But that did not happen to the brood beneath her. Instead it found her and began winding tentacles around her neck and body, squeezing until she could not breathe. Nissa clawed at the tentacles and pulled, but the brood's tentacles wrapped around her wrists and ankles and squeezed. She struggled, and the brood's grip tightened. Soon the red rocks and blue sky went black and white, and spots began to appear before her eyes. Nissa felt the strength pa.s.s from her.

Anowon ran to the brood and swiped a swath out of its tentacles. Another tentacle swept down at him, and he caught it and bit out a sizable chunk before flinging it aside. But before he could climb any closer to Nissa, another tentacle seized his ankle and threw him back and away.

The blackness was taking over Nissa's view when she felt something on her hands and ankles and neck-the tickle of the rhizomes peeking out from the tentacles. An instant later the brood's hold loosened, and Nissa fell to the rock, gasping.

She looked up to see Sorin and Anowon fighting the last two brood. As she watched, Sorin touched the blade of his sword. It pulsed black, and the Mortifier swung and swiped off one of the bifurcated arms reaching for him. The rot from the cut spread like a blue shadow through the rest of the brood's body. The creature's bony head, void of any semblance of a face, inclined sideways at an inquisitive angle as its body suddenly withered to the texture of an autumn leaf and fell to the ground with a dry crack.

Anowon had a bampha stick he had taken from the vampire Biss, and its obsidian edges whirred through the air in a sudden and complex array of attacks so fast that Nissa could not see it clearly.

Nissa turned and looked at the brood that had almost strangled her. The rhizomes from her stem sword had turned into thick roots and tunneled into the rocks. In rich soil those roots would keep growing, she knew, and eventually a blood briar would grow.

But blood briar or not, she had to get her sword out. Nissa searched until she found the stem sword, buried almost past the pommel. She grasped its slimy grip and pulled and pulled. Eventually she was able to rip the sword from the wet body of the dead brood. Thick roots extended off the stem like a brush; she would pare them off with a small knife later. She watched as Sorin a.s.sisted Anowon in destroying the last brood. After Sorin jabbed the creature and it lay still on the rock, she walked to them.

Nissa watched Sorin tuck his white hair back behind his ears and smile an impish smile at her. "Do you have any more shortcut ideas?" he said to Nissa, motioning to the smallest trail.

"We had better take it before more brood appear," Anowon said, out of breath. "I could not do that again if my very blood depended on it."

With her knife Nissa cut the roots off the stem before sliding it back into its sheath. She tapped her staff on the mountain and started walking down the small trail, which narrowed as they walked. Soon the rocks began to shut them in. They were walking through a deeply cloven gully, silent and dim, with high, ridged headwalls of red sandstone on either side. Crystals with bases as thick and as gnarled as old jaddi trees hung out over the cliffs above, and more crystals bunched into inclines of glinting tips. But Nissa's eyes were on the ground before them.

"What do you observe?" Sorin said.

"Nothing," Nissa said.

"Nothing?"

"No tracks or any sign of recent disturbance," Nissa said, trying to sound more positive than she felt. She wondered how a trail could have no no sign of any kind, not even animal tracks. But her throat hurt from the brood's tentacle, and she did not want to explain to Sorin why a trail without sign of any kind, not even animal tracks. But her throat hurt from the brood's tentacle, and she did not want to explain to Sorin why a trail without any any sign was more dangerous somehow than a trail with a sign. As it was, she was going to have a hard time convincing the ancient vampire to release the very creatures he was on Zendikar to imprison. She would save her breath for that debate. sign was more dangerous somehow than a trail with a sign. As it was, she was going to have a hard time convincing the ancient vampire to release the very creatures he was on Zendikar to imprison. She would save her breath for that debate.

Sorin looked up and around. "This place is familiar to me," he said. "We are closer."

They walked up the long gulley. Above their heads the high alpine wind howled through the crystals, which stood virtually shoulder to shoulder. But in the gulley there was no wind. There had never been any There had never been any, Nissa thought as she ran her finger across the top of a nearby crystal and saw it covered with dust.

At the top of the gulley they stopped and surveyed. Ahead the small canyon dipped and narrowed, so the talus and scree channeled down into the black maw of a large erosion hole.

"This is the very entrance," Sorin said. "This is where I stood long ago, dreaming this prison to life with the others."

Anowon spit into the rocks at his feet. "After you meted out pain and anguish to my people, abuse that has lasted for generations, then you imprisoned the very empire you helped?"

Sorin turned to Anowon. "I was charged with containing them. And I only gave your people what they deserved tenfold."

Anowon rose up, a snarl curling the corner of his lip. Sorin took a step back and dropped one hand to the pommel of his great sword, his own lips curled back off his fangs.

"Stop," Nissa said. Something about her voice stopped the two vampires in their places. She pointed upwards.

Anowon followed Nissa's line of sight. He whistled when his eyes fell on them. There were at least ten lava drakes, each perched on the tip of a huge crystal.

Sorin sniffed. "No," he whispered. "What energy I have left must be kept for the containment spell."

Nissa turned to Anowon.

"I cannot sup on a drake's blood," Anowon said. "Even if I was able to slay one of them."

"You were both more than ready to fight each other a moment ago," Nissa said.

Nissa looked back at the drakes. "We cannot match them," she conceded. "But we can run into the hole before they reach us." She turned to the others.

"We will drop the gear here and run for the hole," Nissa said.

"But they will reach us before we reach the hole," Anowon said.

Nissa cast the vampire a sidelong glace. "If we run like vampires they will reach us. Run like elves." Nissa turned back to the drakes and the hole. "Ready?" she called.

The drakes saw them almost immediately, and they took to the air a second later. Nissa clutched her staff and ran as hard and as fast as she ever had, skipping between the larger boulders and trying not to slip on the gravel. She'd seen drakes before but always been careful to avoid them, knowing that in their way there were more dangerous that a dragon. A Zendikar dragon would not normally bother itself with two or three beings, but preferred lazy activities like sleeping in a deep hole or sitting in Gla.s.spool soaking its scales.

Drakes were different. Aside from the obvious difference-drakes had no arms, only legs and wings-there was the large difference in bearing and disposition. Drakes were mean and dim. Their love of hunting in packs made them extremely difficult to fight, and their appet.i.te was prodigious.

The drakes were on them before they reached the hill. Nissa had her stem sword out and managed to lop the leg off a drake that was extending its claw for her. She dodged another who had landed in her path and attempted to bite her.

A third drake swooped down and seized her in its claws and bore her up, at the same time it bit down at her head. But when it opened its mouth for the lethal bite, it received a thrust from Nissa's stem sword which traveled through the top of its palate and into its brain. Mana from the sword pulsed through the drake's body. Nissa had a flash image of rhizomes spreading out from the stem and constricting around the drake's brain and spine.

Nissa was able to land first with her feet and roll out with no injury, except for the deep gashes in her shoulder where the drake's claws had been.

A moment later she was charging over the rocks to the gaping maw of the cave. She reached the cave just as another drake was sweeping down on her. But the flying beast decided against following her into the darkness of the cave, preferring instead to land on the rocks outside and peer inside cautiously, screeching uneasily.

Nissa took a rock from her feet and threw it at the drake, hitting it in the eye and driving it away. Soon Anowon was in the cave having found a way to avoid attack completely. Sorin was soon to follow, with two drakes hounding his progress, and three bodies quivering on the rock, fallen to his sword.

Soon the drakes gave up and flew back to their perch, where they screeched and nipped at each other and began to fight.

Nissa turned and peered into the darkness of the cave. "Have we another tooth, Anowon?" she said.

The vampire pulled a tooth from his cloak. He whispered to it, and it burst to light. Outside the cave the drakes were screaming. Holding the tooth between his fingers, Anowon looked around the cave. Markings covered the walls, lines and lines of writing executed in a script so twisted and long that Nissa could not tell where one word stopped and the next began.

Anowon held out the tooth further and looked closely at the etchings. "These are utterly foreign to me," he said at last. "I cannot decipher even one word."

"We left these lines," Sorin said. "When we imprisoned the Eldrazi for the second time. They talk about the crimes committed against the planes."

Anowon blinked as he considered what Sorin had said. "The Eldrazi were imprisoned more than once?"

"They were imprisoned on another occasion, before my time," Sorin said. "Even I am not that old."

Anowon spit on the ground.

"And these are the t.i.tans?" Nissa said, pointing at the pictures in the rock. Three grotesque images looked hauntingly like the brood lineage, but different. She could not pull her eyes off the strange creatures, which looked a strange combination of insect, brain, and kraken. None had faces of any sort. And despite herself, Nissa shivered.

"They are-" Nissa began.

"Very terrible," said a screechy voice from behind. Mudheel stepped out of the shadows.

Nissa jumped. "Mudheel!" she said. It was all she could think to say, and she immediately regretted saying it as the word echoed down the cavern.

"Where is your kor mistress?" Sorin said.

The goblin's eyes cast down and then around the darkness. Mudheel shrugged his shoulders.

They stood in the near dark of the cave looking at one another. The drakes screamed outside as they fought over the meat still clinging to the bones of their fallen comrades.

"How did you get past the drakes?" Sorin asked, after a time.

"I crept through at night," the goblin said. "Little dragons see like humans in the dark."

"Well," Nissa said. "Should we continue to Ugin, whatever it is?"

The goblin stared at her.

"Which way is it?" Nissa said, finally.

"Oh," Mudheel said. "There." The goblin lifted one hand and pointed away, where the cave continued into blackness. "But we cannot go there."

"Why?" Anowon snapped. "Why not?"

"Because my mistress is surely there."

"That does not concern us," Sorin said, brushing past the goblin. "Even now I feel the containment spell weakening. I must reach it."

"She will be vexed," Mudheel said.