Dragon's Maze

THE PARUN’S PROXY

Jace materialized with his feet on worn stone, a quiet arrival. The spires and skywalks of Ravnica’s Tenth District soared above him, and pedestrians flowed around him. No one noticed his sudden appearance. The morning sun rose over a wide stone courtyard before him, an unusually open space in the middle of the district. Nine ancient obelisks surrounded the courtyard, each one marked with one of the guild signets—all but Dimir, which had once been an unacknowledged guild. At the base of each guild pillar was a kiosk where guild representatives handed out information about the guilds, and at the center of the courtyard, floating a few feet off the ground, was a massive stone dais. This place was the Forum of Azor, named after the founder of the Azorius guild, and Jace knew it was the endpoint of the maze, the finish line of the race that would soon be run.

Jace sensed the power contained here as a feeling of expectation, like waiting for a glacier to crack in the warmth of spring. The forum was the prize at the end of the labyrinth, an explosion of ancient power frozen in architecture and hidden in plain sight. The recruiters and guild hopefuls who lingered here didn’t seem to feel the power of the place. They treated it like any other public square in the Tenth, but the significance and concentrated mana of forum made the hairs on Jace’s neck stand on end. This was the center of all the lore that Jace had studied, forgotten, and relearned again, and this was the site of the ultimate prize that all the guilds sought. This was the place Jace had to understand, deeply and entirely, in order to make Emmara win.

For Emmara was the obvious choice. If any of the guilds had to take possession of the power embedded in this ancient place, the safest, least corruptible choice would be the Selesnya, the guild of life and unity. And if any of the Selesnya had to represent that winning guild, then Emmara should be the one to accept the prize. He knew she would do the right thing with the power contained here. He knew her victory was his purpose. All Jace had to do was give her all the advantages he could in the race to come. She would prevail, and perhaps the guilds wouldn’t resort to destroying each other.

Jace walked into the courtyard and beheld the floating monolith of rock that formed the dais. A staircase had been built to approach the dais, a blocky spiral around the rough slab of rock, so that the dais could be used for speeches or announcements. Jace climbed the staircase and stood on the dais. Prickling sensations spidered over his skin. The dais was like a bell that rang so low it couldn’t be heard, only felt. Jace reached his senses inside the monolith, trying to understand the source of the power. He needed to know what he would be handing to the Selesnya, to Emmara.

Jace couldn’t see into the interior of the floating slab of rock, but he sensed patterns within it—thoughtlike patterns. Mana flowed throughout the stone. Jace projected his mind into the space inside the rock and sensed a presence, a consciousness. The monolith was inhabited somehow. As Jace reached his senses into it, he perceived the shape of a human man in his mind’s eye. He wore layered robes in the Azorius style, like a guildmage or judge, but his skin was composed of coursing streaks of light. This man who somehow dwelled within the stone at the Forum of Azor had no eyes, as Jace perceived him. In place of eyes there were only empty holes in his face, and Jace had the sense that he could see through the empty eyeholes into the man’s hollow interior.

But the being had some kind of life to it. In Jace’s mind’s eye, he saw the man turn and regard him. Jace could sense intelligence of a kind coming from this being, so he reached out his mind to it.

“Pardon me,” Jace thought to the being.

“Greetings,” the being said. The voice felt soft, but with a feeling of force behind it. “I am the bailiff. I can provide information.”

“The bailiff?” Jace thought to it. “Are you Azor?”

“No. I am the executor of the bidding of Azor. I was created by him to enact his will.”

“You’re a magically-created intelligence. A homunculus.”

“I have not been furnished with the definition of that term. But you are correct that I am a being created by magic.”

“But you’re just a mind. You have no physical form. You’re bound here, to the Forum of Azor.”

The luminous being put his hands out in a symmetrical gesture, then folded them inside the sleeves of his robes. “I am exempt from physical form, yes. I am a being made of law. I am the regulations and specifications of the Assessment, and I am the mechanism by which it shall be conducted. And when I have made the Assessment, I shall be the one to deliver its verdict.”

When the bailiff said the last word, Jace felt the word crackling with constrained energy. Jace had the sense that this being was connected directly to Azor’s maze somehow, that he was its symbol, or its manifestation.

“You are the maze,” thought Jace. “You’re the agent of the maze itself.”

“The Implicit Maze is the form of the Assessment, and I am its executor.”

“So you’re using the maze to assess the guilds. From your perspective, the guilds are … on trial, in a way. You’re the judge.”

“It is not my judgment, but Azor’s. The Implicit Maze is the form of the Assessment, and I am its executor,” the bailiff repeated.

“You’re aware that the maze-runners are about to embark on the Implicit Maze?”

“Yes.”

“So, the maze-runners—they will receive something if they succeed?”

“I do not understand this query.”

Why didn’t the bailiff understand? Jace wondered. Wasn’t the whole purpose of the maze to hide its prize?

“Those who’ve been selected to stand trial for their guilds—the maze-runners,” Jace thought at the bailiff. “What are the conditions under which one of them will win?”

“There is no condition under which one shall win,” said the bailiff. “All shall succeed, or I shall deliver the Supreme Verdict. The success or failure of all of the guilds is at stake.”

Jace had learned that the maze’s purpose was to encourage cooperation between the guilds. But he had to know what that would mean for Emmara in particular, if he was going to send her into the danger of running the maze. “What do the guilds earn if they all succeed?”

“If they prove themselves equal to the task, then the most worthy shall actualize the Guildpact.”

“The Guildpact.” It was the magically-binding agreement that, until recently, had governed the guilds for thousands of years. “When the Guildpact was broken, that’s when you came alive, isn’t it?”

“The Assessment was initiated by the dissolution of the Guildpact.”

“So there will be a Guildpact again, like before?”

“If all succeed, then there shall be a Guildpact. But not like before.”

“What do you mean?”

“The most worthy shall actualize the Guildpact.”

The bailiff’s body swirled with light, which Jace felt as a pressure in his mind. Jace felt great power behind the bailiff’s presence, and fatigue crept over him as he kept his mind connected to it.

“All right, so the winner will rekindle the Guildpact somehow. Good. That’s good. But what happens if the guilds do not succeed?”

The bailiff shimmered. He blinked, but his eyes were still empty holes. “Then I shall deliver the verdict.”

“What is the verdict?”

“It is the Supreme Verdict of Azor.”

“But what does that entail?”

“If, in the course of the Assessment, one or more of the guilds’ chosen do not appear for the final sentencing, then the Guildpact cannot be actualized.”

“Wait. They all have to appear? They all have to make it here, to the Forum of Azor?”

“That is the Assessment. That is what is meant by the success of all.”

“And if they don’t? No Guildpact?”

“All will have failed the Assessment. The will of Azor will be to deliver the verdict.”

“And you can’t tell me anything more about the verdict? Is it dangerous?”

“The Supreme Verdict of Azor always fits the crime.”

Jace took a breath. The bailiff’s words whirled through his thoughts. He turned and scanned around the forum. Guild representatives worked the recruiting kiosks around the forum’s outer ring, calling out to passersby who looked mostly disinterested. They were real, flesh-and-blood people, totally unlike the magically-constructed bailiff. Communicating with the bailiff felt like interacting with an extremely logical ghost, a presence made of logic, the embodiment of a strict rule.

Except that this embodiment didn’t seem particularly forthcoming about specifics. This verdict was still a mystery. Jace had thought that by learning the maze’s route, he knew how to ensure Emmara’s victory—but now it seemed that something could go horribly wrong if the maze-runners did not successfully advance all the way to the end of the maze. Jace tried to think like the mage Azor. What use was it to create a bailiff to carry out your supreme verdict, if you didn’t give it the ability to explain what that was? What use was it to create all of these conditions and potentially dire consequences, if no one could know what they were?

Azor must have had his reasons. The Guildpact was a force for stability on Ravnica, the mortar that kept its bricks fused together, and he must have feared its loss terribly. He was the founder of the guild of prudence and law—the thought of the senseless chaos of ten short-sighted, clashing guilds would have weighed on him more than any other.

“Thank you,” Jace thought to the being in the rock.

He let his communion with the bailiff fade, but he could still sense the being’s presence there in the stone, waiting. The bailiff, or the magic behind it, felt immensely powerful, like a massive quantity of mana crushed into a singularity and contained there. Maybe it was just his unanswered questions about the verdict, but he felt a sense of dread, as if he were standing on a bomb.

Whatever the nature of this power stored at the Forum of Azor, it was profound, primordial, and plane-altering. If the power of the bailiff was any indication, the verdict was something to be avoided at all costs. Jace needed to find Emmara, but even before that, he needed to know more about what he was getting her into. He thought he knew someone he could ask.

As Jace left the floating stone in the center of the Forum of Azor, a figure who appeared as an elderly woman watched him go. The figure was not a woman, nor truly a man, but a being who could take the shape of either. Wearing the form of the old woman, Lazav climbed the stairs up to the top of the floating stone, and with a spell he contacted the intelligence within.

“Greetings,” said the being within the stone. “I am the bailiff. I can provide information.”

“Tell me everything,” Lazav replied.