Dragon's Maze

UNSAFE PASSAGE

The decision was guilty, and the sentence was freedom. Guards escorted Jace to the Azorius guildgate and dispelled his shackles. He needed to catch up to Emmara, and fast.

Jace followed the route through a stretch of Azorius territory, cutting through an alleyway when the route demanded it. He had to climb an old metal ladder up the side of an abandoned building, trying to follow the path as best he could. The route was established thousands of years before; the architecture of the city must have changed around it since then. He climbed through a hole that was once a window frame. It looked like beings much larger than him had already passed through here.

He reached out to feel the reassuring touch of Emmara’s mind again, but she was nowhere to be found. Without Emmara nearby, it would take him hours to reach out to her mind again. He could only move to the next landmark of the maze, and hope she was making progress through the gates.

The next gate was Dimir.

Jace passed out of Azorius territory. With his magical senses he could perceive the flow of mana that marked the maze’s path, channeling like a midair stream down the center of the Azorius zone. In the Azorius area, the stream of mana followed the shape of the streets closely, and Jace was able to move quickly to follow its path. Up ahead the path led out of Azorius territory through an elaborate checkpoint. Some two dozen people were backed up at the checkpoint as the Azorius guards tried to verify permits. Jace cloaked himself in a blending spell, silently thanking the Azorius for employing guardians who had minds he could easily affect, and slipped through the checkpoint.

The stretch in between was rougher going. The other guild teams had already come this way, and the street quality showed it. The path took a strange diagonal up through empty air, connecting with a raised walkway supported by sturdy stone columns.

The passageway seemed to stretch on to the horizon, darkening as it went.

The path ended in a drab, unmarked brick wall. Jace touched it. Solid, rather like a wall.

Footprints in the dust indicated that the other maze-runners had probably been here recently. But there were no signs of destruction of the wall, or of a way that a secret door could move. Jace patted the wall with his hand again. He thought back to the way Lazav and his Dimir agents used a spell to push him through solid stone and drop him in that subterranean cell. He could use something like that now.

But somehow Jace doubted that the other teams of mages had spontaneously managed to come up with a Dimir spell on the spot. There had to be another answer.

The Dimir guild thrived on deception and manipulation. They relied on illusion magic and mind-altering magic just as Jace did. Perhaps this wall wasn’t as solid as it seemed. Perhaps it took a measure of disbelief to see through the illusion.

He steeled himself, then walked purposefully right at the wall in the spirit of discovery. His nose bent painfully as he flattened himself against the wall’s solidity.

He heard the sound of someone snickering at him. He turned around. An old viashino stood nearby.

“What’s the matter, door doesn’t have enough handles for you?” asked the viashino.

He looked to be the same wry lizardfolk that he had seen when he first headed down into the undercity to pursue Emmara.

“I really thought that would be it,” Jace said.

Jace checked the flow of mana again. It went directly through here.

“The trick with Dimir entrances,” said the viashino, “is that you have to feel what the Dimir feel.”

“What do they feel?”

“What do you think they feel?”

Jace thought for a moment. “Anger.”

The viashino gave a snort through his nostrils. “Rarely.”

“Arrogance.”

“That’s closer. But the arrogant don’t believe they’re arrogant. Think about how they would characterize it.”

“Superiority.”

“Now you’re on to something.”

“I have to feel superior to this wall?”

The viashino shrugged. “Or you could remain strictly inferior to it.”

Jace turned back to the wall. From the bent shape of his nose, he knew he didn’t feel any superiority over this nemesis of brick.

He walked toward it again, belittling the magic of this wall with all his thoughts, scoffing internally at whatever mage bothered to try to keep him out, conjuring up a derisive one-syllable laugh toward the very idea of attempting to negate his will to pass.

He passed.

On the other side of the wall, Jace was somehow much deeper under the ground than his senses told him he should be. The dank echoes of the undercity were becoming familiar music to him, but these tunnels carried unpleasant, whispering voices, half-heard and incomprehensible in meaning, like the stuttered ravings of faraway madmen. These passages were maintained by House Dimir, meant to hide the missions of Dimir agents; Jace traveled where assassins and thieves made their routes under the district. Patterns on Jace’s cloak flared to life. His boots splashed down a flight of stairs.

Jace took turn after twisting turn. The tunnel constricted to a crawlspace for a time, and widened again into a rubble-strewn chamber, then became unfinished cavern drowned with a bone-chilling river, then rejoined a masonry-lined tunnel again. Jace heard nonsensical voices that often sounded as close as his ear, and tried not to think about whether it was the acoustics of the undercity or the nearness of haunting denizens.

When he emerged, he let the subtle gloom of the undercity cling to him. He had several more gates to go to catch up, and he would need all the stealth he could muster.

The plaza around the Orzhov gate looked like it had been hit by a tornado. Stained glass crunched under his feet. Bodies of diminutive, gray-skinned creatures, which Jace knew to be thrulls, littered the streets. Larger-than-life statues of saints or tycoons—Jace had a hard time telling the difference when it came to the Orzhov Syndicate, a guild that was part crime family and part religion—lay toppled and broken.

When he heard the arguing voices, including Emmara’s, Jace approached quickly but quietly, dodging around the rubble and staying hidden.

The Orzhov delegation accosted Emmara. Tall, masked knights, gold-laden priests, and more of the gray-skinned thrulls surrounded her, blocking her exits. The thrulls licked their chops, and Jace could see their vicious little teeth.

“You don’t have to agree to our little business arrangement,” said a woman in an elegant, high-collared dress. She was Teysa Karlov, the maze-runner for the Orzhov guild, a high-ranking aristocrat who spoke for their council of ruling ghosts. “But my servants don’t understand the civilized world of business transactions. They only understand a more primitive form of debt. They’ll take payment in toes, fingers … anything with knuckles.” Around her crawled her thrulls, the gray-skinned servitors, whose upper faces were covered with hammered brass masks, their scowls frozen in metal. The thrulls made clicking noises and licked their teeth. “So. Shall we discuss terms?”

There were too many of them to confront directly. Jace kept the advantage of stealth for the time being.

“Emmara,” he thought into Emmara’s mind.

“You!” she thought back to him. “I’d begun to wonder. How did you slip out?”

“I was sentenced. Slap on the wrist.”

“Really?”

“In a manner of speaking. I’m here now. I’m going to try something to get you out of this. Try to keep them talking.”

Emmara cleared her throat. “If you think I’d help the Orzhov win the maze,” she said aloud, “then you don’t know me, or think much of me, either.”

One of the masked knights took a huge axe from his back and began testing its weight in his hands. The thrulls jeered and snapped at Emmara’s ankles.

Teysa Karlov leaned on a cane as she paced back and forth, rapping it against the pavement. She studied Emmara. “I understand,” she said. “You’re not one of the rabble. Those like us do not respond well to the stick. Very well. Let us discuss rewards instead. The Orzhov Syndicate is prepared to offer a very handsome compensation to you, should you aid us. You would be assured a quite envious place among the Syndicate hierarchy, complete with a chance at a very long and lucrative afterlife.”

“Not interested.”

“Gaggle of thrull servants? Fawning attendants? What about a favor from one of our cartels? One word from me, and you could have anything you desired.”

Jace prepared a spell to seep into the mind of the axe-wielding Orzhov knight. If he could slip in quickly enough, he could encourage the knight to bring the axe to bear on the next-largest knight before any of the thrulls had the chance to sink their tiny teeth into Emmara.

“Was this how you planned to navigate the maze?” Emmara asked. “By shaking down the better-informed competitors? It’s a wonder your guild still exists after all these years. You fool no one into thinking you’re a religion. You’re nothing more than petty criminals.”

Teysa Karlov laughed mirthlessly, squeezing the knob on her cane.

Jace found the part of the axe-wielder’s mind that governed the man’s thoughts and opinions of his fellow Orzhov compatriots. Jace created an urge, laid the urge over the Orzhov knight’s mind, and pushed the thought in as far as it would go, deep down into the subconscious. He could sense the knight’s views changing, like a dark stain spreading through silk cloth.

But he could tell immediately that attacking the mind of just one of the Orzhov wouldn’t be enough. He would have to disarm or distract them all.

The spell to warp the Orzhov knight’s mind was taking effect. Jace expanded the reach of his mind, letting the spell spread to the minds of the others in the area—to a sweaty priest with a dark sun pattern on his robe, to a spindly, elderly guildmage whose face was covered with a hood, and to a shifty-eyed Orzhov enforcer with a cluster of knives sheathed at her belt. All of them had been devoted to the Orzhov for years, but Jace put a twist in their minds to make them question their allegiance.

Jace felt a twinge of pain as he connected to the Orzhov’s minds, just as he had with the family on Zendikar. But he didn’t need to become the bridge, to let them all see into each other’s thoughts—he only needed to plant a thought in them.

Teysa Karlov nodded sharply to her entourage. “Get her wrists. You, with the axe, get ready to take her hand off.”

“Enough orders from you!” shouted the knight. He lifted his axe high over his head, his body squared directly in front of Teysa Karlov.

The words of the bailiff flashed in Jace’s mind. “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.” Teysa Karlov was the Orzhov maze-runner. If she died—if Jace induced this man to kill her—then the verdict would be inevitable.

“No!” Jace dashed from his hiding place and shoved Teysa Karlov out of the way. The knight swung the axe down and the blade smashed into the cobblestones. Jace and Teysa fell sprawled in a heap.

The other Orzhov attendants encircled Teysa and Jace. Their ire was focused on Teysa Karlov. Without their drilled-in sense of obedience, these devotees to the guild were turning on the symbol of authority, the one who occupied a position much higher than their own in the hierarchy of the Orzhov Syndicate.

“What in blazes is going on,” demanded Teysa. She was oblivious to the change of heart of her attendants, and hurled all her indignation at Jace. “Who are you?”

“You’re in danger,” said Jace, looking around at the oncoming Orzhov gang. “We have to get to the next gate.”

“Jace,” said Emmara, backing toward the guildgate. “Let’s get out of here.”

“What is this?” demanded Teysa, standing and brushing off her aristocrat’s raiment. “Seize them. I command it.”

“They’re not going to obey you,” said Jace. “I’ve made a mistake. We have to go. Miss Karlov, come with us, now.”

“We can’t just leave her, can we?” Emmara thought to him with a note of resignation.

“Unfortunately not,” he responded. “She has to make it to the end.”

The Orzhov attendants brandished their weapons and closed in on Teysa Karlov. Her facade of indignation became a sneer of dark fury. “You dare betray me?” She held up her hand to the sky, and a sphere of blackness appeared in the air above her, swelling and swirling with spectral howls. Spears of dark magic exploded out from her spell, lancing through the bodies of her associates. They fell, each of them with an ugly, black hole punched through their chests. Unnaturally dark smoke floated out of their wounds.

“Now,” said Teysa Karlov, eyeing Jace and Emmara, still maintaining the dark sphere of spectral energy over her head. “Tell me why I shouldn’t do the same to you.”

“Let me tell you what you’re going to do,” said Jace. “You are going to watch us walk through that gate, and you are going to wait here for exactly one hour. Then you are going to proceed through the last gates in this order: Simic, then Izzet, then Rakdos. Then you will join us at the Forum of Azor.”

“That’s the rest of the maze route?” asked Teysa.

“Yes,” said Jace.

“Then you are no longer required.”

Teysa sliced the air with her hand, directing bolts of darkness toward Jace and Emmara. With his own slicing motion, Jace counteracted the spells, never breaking eye contact with Teysa.

“You’ll do as I told you,” said Jace. “Or I could counter all your spells, pierce your mind, flip your allegiance as I did with your subordinates, and alter you to be a willing servant of Emmara and the cause of the Selesnya forever.”

“I’ll wait here,” said Teysa Karlov, letting her dark sun spell evaporate.

As they turned to head through the gate, Emmara grabbed Jace’s hand. As brief as it was, the touch felt peculiarly complex, at once breathlessly electric and yet the most natural thing Jace could ever conceive. She released his hand after a moment, and her eyes shone into his. As the two of them hurried under the archway, a thought came to Jace unbidden. It was the thought that, out of all the worlds he had visited, Ravnica might be one he could call a certain word, a word he believed only other people would ever use: “home.”