Sorin kept talking. and they will eat this plane.
But how. Why?
Sorin didn t reply. He was looking up at the star-spattered sky. Nissa waited. Soon a particular sound, a rustle, issued from the forest. She listened for a time, expecting against expectation a red-eyed baloth to come bounding out of the trees. Or a troupe of tree stalkers, the baloth s smaller relative. They were almost as bad as baloth. Some said they were worse, because their size allowed them to sneak better than a baloth. One thing was sure: they had all the ferocity and cunning of their larger cousin.
With baloth, and tree stalkers for that matter, it was wisest to be on the ground when they attacked. In the branches, an individual was vulnerable from all sides and from above and below. On the ground and with somewhere to put your back, you had only one area to guard.
Sorin took first watch.
Nissa kicked a depression in the moss on the forest floor for her hip and lay on her side with her back against the hedron stone. It gave off a curious heat.
In the dark she listened to the waja lizards tearing the bark of the trees while the screamer bugs split their shells in the high branches. The trees knocked together in the breeze, and in a moment Nissa fell asleep. She dreamt for a time that she was floating in the deep, black space above her head. She screamed down at the green forest below, but still she floated higher and higher.
Suddenly she started awake. Sorin was standing above her in the dark. As she watched, he bent down over her. Her staff was beside her, and she knew she could have her stem out in a split second. What is it? she said.
Sorin froze.
It s your watch, he said, after a time.
She rose in the cold dark and stretched, feeling the kink in her back loosen. The stars overhead had the quality of the finest velvet and a certain depth that Nissa had always liked. Anowon was back. She could smell him sleeping someplace nearby and even hear his slow breaths. He must have been as stealthy to not have woken her. She pulled her cloak around her bare neck and drew her knees up. She sat with her arms holding her knees and her back to the hedron and listened.
Sorin was awake, she could hear. The breaths he drew were less even than Anowon s. He sat back against the hedron watching her. She imagined she could hear him scheming in the dark. Who was he really? She had intended to ask him, but the right time hadn t presented itself. Well, if he slept tonight, if he ever slept, she would know. It was all fine to creep into camp and breathe quietly, but nobody could be stealthier than a Joraga, and she intended to prove it. But first Sorin had to fall asleep.
And he did. But by the time his breathing became steady and long, the stars had moved in their nightly rotations past the jaddi tree s top branch, and the sky to the east was starting toward gray. She stood and stole as quietly as dust to where Sorin slept next to the hedron. She d seen him draw his handkerchief out of an inner pocket of some sort. She carefully put her fingers to finding the pocket. But she couldn t. He was wearing a black leather jerkin with plates affixed to it. There were no pockets in his cloak that she could find. It seemed that no part of his attire involved pockets, but the one pocket she could find in his pants contained only a common gray stone..
Nissa crept back to her lookout. No pockets. How no pockets? A human appears in the Turntimber Forest, widely known on Zendikar as an extraordinarily dangerous place, with naught gear but a smooth gray stone? And he is lost. How did he find his way into the forest without knowing his way out? It is as though he appeared in the middle of the forest. Strange, unless he is a planeswalker. She backed against the warm rock and looked out at the dark shadows in the forest. When the hedron she was leaning against had fallen long ago, it crushed flat the trees that had been growing. Tajuru popular legend named the huge hedron the sudkin, and many believed that one could hear the trees pushing and scratching underneath. And that the trees will try but never move the stone. There was even a saying about it: That will happen when the sudkin moves. Meaning never.
A form moved in the darkness. Nissa blinked and leaned forward. She stared until her eyes went dry, and she had to blink again. Anowon and Sorin were asleep to her left. Their breathing was the only sound in the forest. The only sound. A stiffness began to radiate from the back of Nissa s neck, and her stomach turned suddenly. The only sound. The forest was never quiet, yet it was, and so suddenly. It had very recently been teeming with the sounds of spiral beetles foraging in the spent leaves on the floor of snail, and the claw birds scrapping at the crotches of the turntimber and jaddi trees nearby, looking for bugs and frogs. But there was nothing anymore.
She rose quietly, holding her staff with both hands. Nothing moved in the shadows. She stood and watched, unmoving. She stood for so long that a snake slithered across her foot, and she looked down for a split second to see if it was poisonous. But it was only a nectar snake, with dark circles on its back. When she looked up again a shadow had moved. A normal eye would not have noticed it, but Nissa s eyes weren t normal. The change was slight: what looked like the shadow of leaf was curved ever so slightly, whereas previously it had been straight. Nissa bent and took hold of the jaddi nut that she d placed next to her when she took watch. She brought the nut to her lips, whispering a spell, kissed it, and tossed it into the shadows. A green mottle arced up, following the nut s path as it flew through the air. It is almost time to wake up anyway, she thought.
The nut hit the ground with a sudden flash of light. The tree stalkers three, in fact were caught standing, blinking their eyes in the flare. One was young probably the one that had moved enough for her to detect it but even in the blinding light it did not move again. She had precious seconds. Unlike the baloth, the stalkers fur was white. They were lean. Their teeth-crammed mouths hung open tasting the air, and as was their way, each was standing on its hind legs with its two over-sized front legs dangling so their purple claws almost touched the ground.
She had fought one soon after her rite of passage, of course but three. The lead stalker groaned and leaned to the side before pouncing, and she stood and swung her staff, catching it on the chin. Its head jerked to the side, as it fell and rolled. Nissa whispered and reached out with her mind and a turntimber branch swung down on the stalker and pinned it to the duff.
The two remaining creatures jumped at Nissa. She felt movement next to her and smelled Sorin. Out of the corner of her eye she saw him jump forward, and for a moment the lead stalker shied as it flew through the air. With a word from Sorin the creature fell into a stinking pile on the ground, leaving one of its eyes bouncing away through the leafy duff.
The first creature s paws hit her, shoved her backward, and knocked her staff out of her hand. Suddenly the stalker was on her chest, digging in its claws and crushing the air from her lungs. She gasped and tried to roll out from under it, but the creature was four times her weight and bore down on her, opening its wide mouth to her face. She heard a high whine and felt the creature shudder, and something heavy cracked out of the stalker s chest. She could feel the heat from the object on her right cheek as the creature s legs buckled, and it fell with an audible thump on the ground next to her head. Nissa twisted as it started to fall, but the creature s head fell on her back, slamming her into the leaf mold.
Nissa lay on the forest floor looking up at the trees. It felt as if she were floating on a cloud of air. She was dimly aware of movements and sounds all around her, but she couldn t move her arms. Then she blinked and took a breath. She managed to tip the stalker s head off her. There was no sound except the rushing of blood in her ears, and no feeling except the pain in her chest. Soon the swish in her ears subsided, and she could hear the stalker trapped under the tree branch struggle and moan against the leaves.
She sat up and was immediately greeted with a jab of pain in her chest. Wincing, she stood. She went closer to the fallen creature and saw the ragged folds of the heart, where it had exploded under the body like a melon. In the raw dawn light, the stalker s fur seemed as soft as a blanket. Nissa reached out to touch it.
Perhaps a cloak?
Nissa turned. Sorin was standing against the hedron looking like he hadn t slept on the ground with his hip in a hole. Anowon was standing next to him with his hands bound in front, watching Nissa with an expression that she could not read.
Why did you kill them? she asked Sorin.
Sorin laughed. Anowon did not.
You would have had it bite your face off?
She turned back to the dead stalker where it lay sideways with its legs straight out. My death would have been the way of things.
Sorin laughed again. I have a sneaking suspicion there will be plenty of possibilities for you to lose your life. He put his shoulders back. Now, which direction is it to Graypelt?
You really don t know? Nissa asked.
How would I?
You seem to know a great deal about Zendikar. You know how to walk the branchways. You know to avoid the cut fungus. You knew to lunge at the tree stalker to make it shy before attacking.
Sorin watched her.
Is that all? he asked. I hope I know more than that. He started to walk north toward Graypelt, and then he stopped and turned back.
You fought well against those creatures, for an elf, Sorin said. Not as well as me, of course, but perhaps you will be useful for more than scouting. He turned and began walking. Without a glance, Anowon followed.
If he knew the way to Graypelt, then why was she involved? Nissa wonderded. She walked over to where her staff had been flung and picked it up. The stalker under the branch struggled. Its red eyes followed her as she walked. She stopped. She swept her hand through the air, and the branch snapped up to where it had been. The creature sniffed the air, glanced at her, and bounded up the nearest turntimber and away.
Sorin watched it go. We ll walk on the ground from here.
Once again he had the right of it, Nissa thought. From the edge of the great mesa, Graypelt was best reached on foot. Soon they would descend to the ladders and perhaps even the zip line the Tajuru had strung years before, when the treasure hunters that flocked to Graypelt were considered friends. They had since become barong, interlopers. She would not be surprised in the least to find the zip line broken by vandals.
They walked all day, ducking the branches and dense undergrowth that grew at the edge of the mesa. They passed abandoned camps, where signs of struggle were everywhere, but nothing else remained. Sometimes the remains of a site were no more than stones piled in a rough circle. Once they cut a wide arc around what had been a large camp, erected around the floating remains of a huge statue with tentacles for legs and symbols and words engraved into its crumbled base. A massive turntimber had grown up under the figure, and its trunk and branches had wrapped around the strange effigy. Patches of the tree s bark had been peeled away, and a broken box was strapped to each patch. Nissa stopped and spat into the loam. It took deleterious magic to keep the turntimber from healing itself.
Blood suckers, she said, glancing at the boxes strapped to the trees. Sucking the land s energy. The barong put quartz in those boxes to absorb the energy of the turntimber. They sell the stones to other fools in Graypelt who think it will cure their ills.
Sorin walked closer to the abandoned sap boxes. Anowon followed. Sorin looked at the box for a moment before inserting his hand into the back of it. A smile spread across his face.
Yes, he said. Yes. Very pure. He turned to Nissa. Why would this place have been abandoned?
She pointed to a place on the trunk above his head. A small scuff.
An arrow hit there, she said. Or I am much fooled.
An elf arrow, Anowon said. He had been quiet for so long that both Sorin and Nissa turned when he spoke.
Just so, Nissa said turning back to the tree.
This forest is stewarded by the Tajuru.
But not you, Sorin said.
I am Joraga.