Dragon's Maze

ONE WAY

Jace’s back slammed against the wall of a sealed stone cell. He was trapped in an exitless Dimir prison, miles below the city with two vampires, the assassin Mirko Vosk and the recently-turned form of his compatriot Kavin. He was bait thrown into a shark tank. The two bloodsuckers approached him to drain him, first of the contents of his mind, and then of his veins.

Jace always had one escape open to him, as long as he had time to muster the will to travel. But it meant breaking his mental connection with Emmara. It meant abandoning her. And she was trapped as well.

“I have to leave you,” Jace projected into Emmara’s mind. “But I want you to listen to me very carefully.”

“Don’t you dare give me a moving final speech,” Emmara’s thoughts came back to him. “Whatever plight you’re in, fight it. I have no desire to be witness to your last words.”

The vampires advanced toward him, their faces painted the color of a garish bruise by his globe of blue light. Jace had a momentary thought that his attackers represented an escape of another kind. They would drain him, take away all the responsibility of handling this Ravnican disaster in progress. They would purge him of the knowledge of the maze again, the need to care, the need to persist or strive. He could slowly drown in oblivion, and let others solve the Implicit Maze, stop Lazav, handle Niv-Mizzet’s schemes … Maybe it didn’t all have to fall on him.

But if he did nothing, the consequences were plain. Jace saw it in flashes, as clearly as if it had already happened. Emmara would be imprisoned by the shapeshifter Lazav, and when she became too problematic, he would kill her. Niv-Mizzet would hold his public race through the maze, and teams from all ten guilds would cut as many throats as they needed to in order to win. Niv-Mizzet would have the advantage of the most information, but Dimir agents would steal what they needed to know, if they hadn’t already. Lazav would use the maze to claim power, and with no Guildpact to stop him, he would succeed.

He needed to concentrate. Emmara needed him. He found that was the simplest thought to focus on: Emmara needed him. Emmara was captured. Emmara would die.

“I am not planning on dying,” Jace thought to her. “Not yet. But I need you to do something. You have to run the maze for the Selesnya. You have to be selected. Do you understand?”

“What? Jace, that’s never going to happen. I’m a traitor to the Conclave.”

“You have to be chosen. It has to be you.”

“Calomir, Jace. Trostani is going to choose Calomir.”

“Under no circumstances should it be Calomir—or the one who’s taken Calomir’s form. No. Trostani’s going to choose you.”

“Why would she do that?”

“Because you will be the only one who knows the route.”

The fangs were bright as the vampires made their move. Vosk leaped forward and wrapped his claws around Jace’s neck, prying him from the wall. Kavin dashed around behind Jace’s back and seized his wrists, twisting with unnatural strength and hyperextending ligaments in his shoulders.

Jace struggled to continue his thoughts. “I’m going to show you what you need to know. Use it. Take his place. You’re the one, Emmara. You have to be the one.”

“You don’t understand. I can’t.”

“Here it comes. Use it. Just keep moving.”

Jace flashed through the maze route in his mind, skipping from landmark to landmark, projecting each location into Emmara’s mind. An intersection on the Transguild Promenade. A long bridge near the Golgari gate. A path up the wide steps to the Azorius gate. A passage through a tunnel that bent and exited near the hellish Rakdos gate. Every twist and turn of the maze. As he rushed through the route, he sent those images to Emmara. He showed her almost the entire path through the Implicit Maze, crystallizing the images in her own memories.

“Jace, I can’t—”

“Now you know most of the route. All but the end. It has to be you, do you understand? Don’t let it be Calomir.”

Fangs sank into Jace’s neck. The air caught in his throat in mid-breath, his muscles locked from panic. He had no trick up his sleeve, no illusionary shell game to play to avoid Vosk’s bite. Blood ebbed out of him, and he could feel the stabbing of Vosk’s teeth in his mind as well, tearing gashes in his memories and letting them begin to drain out. He could feel Vosk sensing inside him, perhaps even tasting his knowledge of the maze or his connection to Emmara.

Jace forced himself to breathe. He let his body go limp, and looked deep inside himself. He visualized a spiraling vortex inside his chest that drew his body inward. He could feel Emmara trying frantically to reach him, but her voice in his mind became faint, fading like sounds from a distant tunnel. He felt suction overwhelming him, pulling his muscles and skin inward to the center of his chest. He gave a final push with his will, and he collapsed in on himself, releasing himself from the plane of Ravnica.

As he planeswalked, everything faded: the fangs in his skin, the stone cell under his feet, the vast city around him, the sound of Emmara’s thoughts. The darkness of the cell was replaced by the nonsensical, roaring dark of the Blind Eternities. There was no sensation of motion, and yet he could feel Ravnica receding behind him, diminishing in importance like a toy he had outgrown. He pulled his consciousness in the direction of another plane and willed himself there. The mad energies of the Blind Eternities tore at him, tried to unmake him as he traveled, but he kept his mind focused, his consciousness whole, and he sizzled through its timeless friction.

From Mirko Vosk’s perspective, Jace Beleren had done the impossible. When the blue-cloaked mage vanished, Vosk assumed it was one of his tricks or illusions, and the new agent Kavin suggested as much. Together they searched the stone cell for all signs and scents of Beleren. But the mage hadn’t concealed himself. He hadn’t used mind magic to alter Vosk’s senses, so that his presence couldn’t be detected. The mage was actually gone. He had escaped the inescapable prison.

Vosk knew that this would somehow be blamed on him.

So hours later, when Lazav slipped down through the ceiling like a shadow, emerging into the cell, Vosk was already madly thinking of reasons he shouldn’t be killed.

“Where is he?” demanded Lazav.

“He’s gone,” was all Vosk could think to say.

Lazav’s face boiled under his hood. He snapped his glance to every corner of the tiny chamber, as if Vosk had hidden him somehow. “What did you do?”

“Nothing, Master. I bit him, and I was taking his memories, as you instructed. He had what you wanted this time. But he …” Vosk glanced at Kavin. “He performed some sort of magic, and he was gone.”

“It’s true, Master,” said Kavin, but Lazav’s snarl cut his corroboration short.

“Enough. What did you learn before the mind mage managed to humiliate you?”

“He knew the route, Master.” Vosk tilted his head, like a snake that had taken interest in a potential kill. “He knew what you wanted to know. I couldn’t drain it from him, but I saw it. I saw enough.”

Vosk felt Lazav’s presence pressing against him, but he saw a spark of interest in his eyes.

“You saw enough,” said the guildmaster to himself. “You have the route.” Lazav let his hood drop forward as he considered this, covering his eyes in shadow.

Kavin looked enthralled to be in the presence of Lazav. The vedalken made a move to step forward and speak up, but Vosk put a hand out to stop him. The idiot didn’t know enough not to provoke his own guildmaster.

Lazav looked up. “Vosk, you will run the maze.”

Vosk ran his tongue along his fangs. He nodded with exaggerated gratitude.

“You’ll use the route you learned from Beleren, and you will participate along with the other guilds. You will not kill any of the others—in fact, you will help them.”

“Master?”

“The maze-runners must live. Any of the others you may kill at will.”

Vosk nodded again.

Lazav hissed a breath out his nostrils and frowned at the floor. “It is not perfect,” he said, “but it will do. Every being not loyal to me shall die, and this city shall be shaken to its knees.”

Kavin pressed past Vosk and bowed. “And what shall I do, Master?”

Lazav cast a withering look at Vosk. “Kill your pet,” said Lazav. “He did not get us what we needed.”

Kavin’s eyes went wide.

“He may yet be useful to you, Master,” said Vosk hastily. “I drained much from him as I fed. It’s true that he knew little of the maze, thanks to Beleren. But he has contacts that might be valuable.”

“So?”

“He was Azorius once. He has the ear of the sphinx.”

Lazav regarded Kavin with new eyes. “Well, then,” he said. “Is that so?”

Kavin bowed, blinking, not knowing where to look.

“She trusts you?” Lazav asked.

“At one time, I advised her on Azorius scholarship, Master,” said Kavin.

“Then it’s time you fulfilled your purpose.” Lazav reached out his hand, and the hand became a liquid tentacle, extending toward Kavin. The tentacle spread into webbing, stretching and warping. The webbing wrapped itself around Kavin’s face and chest, slithering around his body, cloaking him in a cocoon made of Lazav’s own fluid body. Kavin made a muffled, urgent sound, and Vosk saw the man’s hands clench into fists. Then Lazav smiled, and it was a horrible smile. Lazav flexed his body, twitching his warped muscles, and the netting contracted. He crushed Kavin’s upper body with a muffled scream and a splatter of vampiric blood.

Lazav retracted his limb, and Kavin’s remains slumped to the ground. Lazav’s features became fluid for a moment, and when they solidified again, he had taken the form of Kavin.