ALSO BY DOUG BEYER

A Planeswalker’s Guide to Alara

Alara Unbroken

Path of the Planeswalker

Path of the Planeswalker, volume 2

RETURN TO RAVNICA

The Secretist, Part One

©2012 Wizards of the Coast LLC.

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Contents

Cover

Other Books by This Author

Title Page

Copyright

Knocking on Doors

Inside the Firemind

Mind Sculpting

The Reach of the Law

The Rough Crowd

The Path Below

About the Author

KNOCKING ON DOORS

Jace Beleren held a sheet of parchment up to the window. Huddled between much taller towers of Ravnica’s Tenth District, the building only reached a few floors up from street level, but a cold, evening light reflected off brick and stone through the glass. Smudged with ink and magically marked with his own unique mage seal, the parchment was covered in notes about the code he’d found. His handwriting had gotten progressively less sane–looking lately. The walls of the sanctum were papered with pages like this. Jace wondered when he had last washed his hair or had a full night’s sleep. He hoped the other researcher, a vedalken man named Kavin, hadn’t noticed that he had been staying at the sanctum building, sleeping only when unable to keep his eyes open any longer, not even walking outside to the marketplaces or street vendors in the surrounding district. His bed was a stacked pile of notes, his furniture was odd pieces of broken architecture collected from around the Tenth, and his main nourishment was the gnawed end of his ink pen.

The discovery—Jace’s current obsession—had come gradually. He hadn’t recognized it as a code when he saw it initially, and in fact had not even recognized any connection at all until he saw it manifest itself a few times around the district.

He had almost tripped over it, the first time. It was not out of the ordinary to see a group of Izzet guildmages unearthing a layer of cobblestone from the street. Their guild was tasked with the maintenance of much of the city’s magical infrastructure, and when he happened past them working along a road in the Tenth, Jace had all but ignored their work. But Jace saw that the Izzet mages had dismantled an ancient chunk of stone from the curb, and as they toiled away at a length of exposed steam pipes and elemental conduits, Jace noticed that the discarded piece of stone had a pattern carved into its underside. It had been worn from age and half-covered with cobwebs, but Jace could see a series of curved impressions running along its length, like a procession of geometrically perfect parentheses.

It struck Jace as curious that such care had been taken to carve a pattern on the underside of the stonework, the side that wouldn’t even be visible from the street. But he didn’t think of it again until the code returned in a new form.

An old and battered neighborhood of the Tenth was being excavated. Jace stopped and watched one day as a burly cyclops in crackling mizzium gauntlets demolished the remains of a textile factory. The cyclops lifted great slabs of stone and hurled them onto a rubble heap, presumably making room for some new Izzet experiment. Jace saw that the discarded stone was carved with a sequence of triangles.

Recognizing it as the code, Jace had kept the details from Kavin, his confidant and fellow scholar who had been of great help in tracking down other instances of the geometric patterns, taking rubbings, mapping the locations of their sightings, and occasionally covering for Jace as he snuck into guild-restricted territories to fetch more pieces of the code. But Kavin was a logical, practical man—not given to obsessive impulses. If Jace let on how much this code had seeped into every moment of his waking consciousness, Kavin would abandon the project.

Jace’s eyes stung. He squeezed them shut for a moment and rubbed his eyelids. They had plenty of samples, but no answers. The pieces didn’t fit. There were regularities and patterns within the sinuous shapes set in stone, but no sequence, no message. Something was missing.

There was a knock at the door downstairs.

In a forgotten chamber of the undercity, several hours’ journey below street level, an ancient brick wall began to glow. Blue lightning danced along the edges of the bricks. The old mortar smoked and sizzled. The wall exploded into the chamber, bricks tumbling into a heap, leaving a rough, oval-shaped hole.

The planeswalker Ral Zarek stepped through the hole he had just made. Dust curled in the sodden, rotting air as the instruments on his gauntlet twittered and spun, the remaining mana from his spell flickering out.

Ral winced and put a hand over his nose. He kicked a brick with his boot and snorted. “Ugh. Skreeg, tell me this isn’t the place.”

A goblin in Izzet armor hopped into the chamber, looking around with his hands clasped. The goblin rummaged through his pack and produced a newly-constructed Izzet mana-sensing device that he waved around the chamber.

“Yes!” replied Skreeg. “The concentrations are higher in here! This must be it.”

A group of Izzet mages followed Ral and Skreeg into the chamber, where they began scrutinizing their surroundings with analytical spells and alchemical devices, lighting the chamber as magical energies shone through the damp haze.

Ral moved through the chamber, pushing aside curtains of hanging mosses and stepping over ancient, fallen columns. He knelt down to investigate something covered over with sickly roots. He pried a mossy tendril away from the lump and started backward. The gray face of a skull smiled through the foliage with a smattering of jagged teeth. Ral took a breath and let the fight-or-flight impulse fade.

He turned back to the others. “Are we ready?” he asked. “Skreeg, the mana coil. Charge it up, already.”

Skreeg placed a sculpture of spiraling bronze on the floor. The other Izzet wizard researchers surrounded the alchemical device and fussed over its operation. Gems of crimson and turquoise lit up along the artifact’s edge, and it began to hum quietly.

“Ready soon, sir,” said the goblin.

“Soon? Do you think the Great Firemind would be satisfied with soon?”

“I’m sorry, my colleague, but it takes some time for the coils to—”

“Connect it to a richer source,” Ral snapped. “If this chamber has one of the ley lines running through it, then there must be a font of mana underneath—an old source, probably unused for centuries.”

“There is indeed a deep source here,” said one of the other Izzet mages, her eyes closed.

“But the coils will overheat,” said Skreeg. “They’ll be plugged directly into the mana well. That much power—”

“Direct all of the mana into me,” said Ral. “I’ll be able to tell instantly if this is the line we’re meant to follow.”

An insectile chittering sound echoed from one of the ancient corridors that led into the chamber. The Izzet mages froze.

“Who’s there?” Ral called into the corridor.

He strained to see, but the light from their instruments couldn’t penetrate the dark. There was a sound of scraping, like eggshell against porcelain—and more chittering, this time accompanied by footsteps. Many footsteps.

“End your unnatural experiments,” hissed a voice from the gloom. “Forsake this place. The Guildmaster Jarad claims this territory for the Golgari Swarm.”

A small crowd of pale, dreadlocked elves and humans stepped into the light. Bits of bone and detritus woven into their matted hair clicked lightly. Their chitinous armor swarmed with tiny, riotous insects that moved in and out of the sheen of moss growing on their shoulders—a bed for sprouting fungi. Whether it was the Golgari themselves who had made the chittering sound or their bugs, Ral could not be sure. A few of them bore short blades, but most of them were unarmed: spellcasters.

The speaker, an elf woman, held forth a gnarled staff. She pointed the tip, which was decorated with a large rat skull, directly at Ral Zarek. “You. Vacate now.”

Ral swept his palm around him. “This is nothing but ruined, abandoned tunnel. No one owns this.”

“All that civilization discards, we own,” sneered the Golgari elf.

“Well, you’re going to have to scurry away to whatever crevices you crawled out of. The dragon Niv-Mizzet claims this area now—and any other scrap of unused turf he sees fit for the Izzet League.”

The Golgari’s complaints were subverbal, guttural. Ral thought he heard something that was almost a snarl.

“This kind of trespass would have been illegal under the Guildpact,” said the elf.

“Well, there’s no Guildpact now, is there? Run along. The dragon doesn’t like to wait for his discoveries.”

The elf shaman sneered again, but her face lowered, and she backed away. And with her, the rest of the Golgari retreated into the shadows. There was a final rattling sound as the shaman shook her rat-skull staff, then all was still.

Skreeg heaved a sigh into the silence. “Glad that’s over.”

Just as he said this, dark shapes jerked to life all around the Izzet expedition: skeletal remains shuddered to a standing position; heaps of refuse became fungal rot-horrors; decomposing moss wound with bits of bone to rise in multilegged form, uttering dark shrieks and brandishing claws of malice.

“Rot-dwelling sewer elves,” Ral cursed. He snapped his head to the other Izzet mages. “What are you waiting for? Destroy them!”

The Izzet rushed to conjure spells, but the Golgari refuse zombies sprang toward them with unnerving speed. The goblin Skreeg yelped as a zombie’s claws took hold of him and raised him toward a monstrous, devouring maw. Ral threw a bolt of lightning into the rotting creature, temporarily blasting it apart. Skreeg fell to the muck of the floor as the undead creature reassembled itself, inducing web-strewn remains to merge into its anatomy.

Ral grabbed the bronze cables from their experimental device and tried to use them as a weapon. He jabbed an undead horror with one, but the live cable barely singed its gray flesh. It would have stopped another creature’s heart, but of course the necromantic beast’s heart—if it even possessed one—was already stopped.

The zombie-things attacked in a swarm, cinching around the mages like a drawstring. Ral heard screams from his guild mates, and multiple tendrils began to lash onto his arms and neck.

“Hold on to something,” he said and jammed the mana cables directly into his gauntlet.

Ral’s eyelids began to flicker. A wind that had no source arose in the chamber, and all the hairs on Ral’s body stood on end. As zombified hands clamped onto him and began to drag his body toward the zombie horde, tiny arcs of storm energy crackled around his body. The air charged with hyperkinetic energies, and Ral felt himself float a few inches off the floor. He heard only the buzzing whine of power, like an overheating boiler. His vision went crackling white as he strained to absorb as much mana as he could. Like a newborn sun, every iota of Ral’s body exploded with power. All was noise and light, and then all was silence and darkness. He could hear nothing—see nothing.

Ral felt a strange pounding, and after a few moments he realized that it was his overcharged heart. In turn, he noted that he was breathing—evidence that he had somehow survived.

Someone lit a glow-lamp. Ral saw physical objects again, but through a thick fog. The scene appeared around him slowly. He realized that the chamber was a haze of dust and broken debris from the blast.

“Who’s hurt?” he coughed.

“I think we’re fine, sir,” said one Izzet mage, blackened and scorched but alive.

“Thanks to you,” said Skreeg, appearing out of the haze.

The Golgari undead were obliterated, having taken the brunt of the chaining energy surge. Pieces of brick dropped from the ceiling, exposing swaths of ancient masonry.

Ral felt more alive than he ever had before. His heart beat too fast, and he liked it.

“Skreeg,” said Ral. “The mana coils. Rev them up again. We’re finishing this experiment.”

“Sir?” said an Izzet researcher.

“What is it?”

The mage was looking up at the ceiling, at a bit of old stone exposed by the blast. “You’re going to want to have a look at this.”

Jace crept down the stairs to the main floor and approached the door. Kavin wouldn’t have knocked, and he didn’t expect any other visitors. He prepared a spell to sense the mind of whoever was outside. When he detected the thoughts of his old friend, he threw the door open wide.

Emmara looked as youthful as ever, but as she was an elf, her age tended not to show. She wore a white gown embroidered with a creeping ivy pattern that wound around her sleeves, branching into rich brown threading at the cuffs that resembled the roots of great trees. Jace knew she possessed a wisdom and quiet power that belied her youthful appearance.

“Good evening, old friend,” she said with a partial smile.

“Emmara! It’s been a while. Come in.”

As soon as he said it, he regretted it. Jace’s sanctum was not exactly fit for visitors. As soon as she stepped through the door, he had to guide her apologetically through the detritus of his research. He shoved some pieces of stonework out of the way and they sat down on the floor by an old, unused fireplace, where the threadbare carpet gave way to a wide hearth.

Emmara scanned the place. “You’ve taken up archaeology?”

“It’s a new project, I guess you could say. A colleague and I are studying patterns in old stonework. I’ve seen the same patterns used in dozens of different sites around the district. They’re geometric carvings with repeating elements. I’m fascinated. Did you know that almost every building on this street has stone sourced from the same salvage yard?”

“I didn’t.” Her face was placid, but from the way she clasped her hands in her lap, Jace knew this wasn’t a social call.

“What brings you from Ovitzia?”

“I live here now, in the Tenth,” said Emmara. She offered a small object to Jace, holding it delicately in her fingers: a wooden broach in the shape of an intricately-veined leaf. It was too detailed to have been carved even by a master artisan; it must have been molded by magic.

“What is this?”

“A gift. From my guildmaster.”

Jace took the fragile wooden leaf in two hands. “Guildmaster?” He glanced at the small tree-shaped pin at her shoulder. “You’ve joined a guild?”

“I’ve returned to one. The Selesnya Conclave. I was with the Conclave years ago—before you were born, in fact, human boy. And now that they’re rebuilding, they’ve summoned me back. You must have seen how the guilds have come back in force.”

“To be honest, I haven’t seen much beyond this building lately,” Jace said with a shrug. He realized that his hair was probably sticking out in every direction, and that Emmara had dramatically upped the cleanliness ante by her visit.

Emmara focused on him intently. “Jace, what do you know of the Guildpact?”

It was a delicate question. Jace had never been fully honest with Emmara—he had never told her he was a planeswalker, a mage capable of traveling between planes of existence. Most people had no idea there were planes beyond their own, and those who were bound to a single plane didn’t enjoy hearing that their familiar home was only one of a potentially infinite array of worlds.

Jace tended to keep his planeswalker nature a secret. That meant that sometimes Jace had to put on a bit of an act, to display enough knowledge that he could seem like a native, such as in conversations like this. He knew about the history of the city-world Ravnica only through what he had gleaned from his research—and from seeing into other people’s minds.

He considered trying to poke around in Emmara’s mind to see if he could learn more about the Guildpact. His magical specialty was a shortcut, but sometimes a necessary one. However, Emmara was a skilled mage in her own right and tended to be able to detect his mind magic when he used it around her.

“Politics was never my best subject,” he said.

“We shouldn’t be surprised that the guilds are on the rise again,” said Emmara. “The guilds are the pillars of history. The backbone of our entire civilization for thousands of years, and no matter what anyone said, the Guildpact was what held them together. But the Guildpact is gone. Dissolved. No magical enforcement of any of the treaties or laws. The guild leaders aren’t bound by the old strictures anymore.”

Jace thought of those he had known who sought power—Liliana, Tezzeret, Nicol Bolas. He thought of how they always used their power to gain more of it. “Any center of power is going to test its boundaries.”

Emmara nodded. “And without those boundaries …”

“You think they’re going to try to exceed them.”

Emmara looked at the brittle woodcarving in Jace’s hands. “They’ve already begun to.”

“Who? The Rakdos?” Jace guessed. He had never understood why Ravnicans had allowed a murderous, demon-venerating cult to remain one of the ten official guilds—it just seemed too dangerous. The going theory was that the Rakdos guild provided well-sought services of mayhem and perverse entertainment to those who possessed wealth and power, and that this was enough for them to be kept around.

“No,” Emmara said. “It’s the Izzet. Izzet mages have made illegal incursions into other guilds’ territories.” The Izzet League—the same guild of magical experimenters that had often been present when Jace had uncovered stone artifacts carved with the code.

“But isn’t that an issue for the lawmages? Shouldn’t the Azorius maintain those borders?”

“They’re trying. The Azorius Senate has been issuing injunctions and rulings against the Izzet day after day, at the request of the other guilds. But without the Guildpact, the Azorius have become toothless bureaucrats. Their legislation is just words on paper. Niv-Mizzet doesn’t seem to care.”

Niv-Mizzet was the guildmaster and founder of the Izzet League, an inquisitive and profoundly ingenious archmage who also happened to be an ancient dragon. If the Izzet had a new scheme, Niv-Mizzet was sure to be its source.

“What has the dragon said?”

“Nothing. Whatever the Izzet are undertaking, they’re keeping it secret.”

“And you want to find out what their project is about.” You want me to find out what it’s about, he thought.

“Trostani, my guildmaster, thinks it’s urgent for the Izzet to be open about what they’re planning. But if they won’t cooperate, suspicions will grow among the guilds. Tensions will rise. It could lead to a conflict that could tear the guilds apart.” She spread her hands, and clasped them again. “We need the Izzet to cooperate.”

Jace sat back and took a breath, examining Emmara’s face. She was trying not to plead with him, but he could see the urgency behind her expression. There was an edge to her manner that he hadn’t seen in her before. It wasn’t fear. She had no concern for any threat to her own safety. He sensed that she spoke out of an obligation—something deeply felt, a concern over and above loyalty to her guild. He wondered if there was someone else whom she was protecting.

“How can I help?”

Her smile glowed. “Join us,” she said. “Help us. Help us to understand what the Izzet might be doing, so we can maintain peace in this district, and all the districts.”

“You want me to join your guild?”

“You’d be welcome in the Conclave. The Selesnya believe in bringing people together, in building ways for all of us to coexist. Jace, with your talents—you’d have such potential for connecting with people. We could use you.”

“I don’t know.” A guild would mean tying himself to a set of values, to one point of view. Most of all, it meant tying himself to the plane of Ravnica. And he wasn’t sure, even if he were to select one of Ravnica’s guilds, that he would choose the Selesnya. Jace looked around the sanctum, indicating the research around them with a vague gesture. “I have a lot of projects going on … I can’t commit to that right now.”

“But you’d be able to help so many people. I’m influential in the guild, Jace. Trostani has selected me as a kind of dignitary. And you could be such a natural at bonding with people. We could work toward the same ends. We could learn the truth. Together.”

Jace hesitated. Not many people had ever looked at him the way Emmara was looking at him in that moment. He wanted to say something that would make her look at him that way for a lot longer. He imagined the way her face would brighten even more if he told her yes—how he could touch her hand and tell her that nothing was more important to him than joining her, helping her. He wished he could go through with it, for her sake.

But he couldn’t.

“I’m sorry. I just can’t join the Selesnya. But maybe I could help in another way.”

Emmara’s smile melted. “Oh. I’m too late, then. You’re part of another guild already?”

“No. That’s not it.” He thought of all the time he spent on other planes. He thought of all the mysteries that drew him from one side of the Multiverse to the other. “I’m just not … someone who likes to get too attached.”

That struck her. “I see,” she said and stood. Her demeanor reverted to formality and etiquette. “Well, I should be going. I have a lot of guild matters to attend to. Thank you for your time, Jace. It was good to see you.”

“No, Emmara, I’m sorry,” he said, standing with her. “I just meant I can’t afford to get mixed up in any of the … guild politics right now. I’m researching something important, and it’s taking up all of my time. I’d love to help you after I solve this.”

She nodded. “We’d love to have you,” she said. When she was at Jace’s door, she turned. “That leaf I gave you is a Selesnya artifact, made by a woodshaper. You can use it to contact me, if you want. Just say the activating words into it, and I’ll be able to hear you.”

Jace looked at her gift in his hand. “What are the words?”

“ ‘I need you.’ ”

The streetlamps had begun to glow by the time the Selesnya elf woman left the building. Mirko Vosk stood on the building’s flat rooftop, near the ledge, watching her walk off into the night. Following the woman had paid off, and not in the way he had expected.

Vosk’s eyes reflected the light of the streetlamps like a cat’s, and he was nearly bare-chested despite the cool evening. He walked over to the chimney opening again, where he had listened at it with his sharp ears, but he heard no more from the man she had visited. She had shown clear interest in this man, an acquaintance of hers she called Jace. She believed in his talents—likely some kind of mage. And this Jace had mentioned that he had been conducting research about some sort of pattern or code.

That was exactly the kind of information Mirko Vosk’s master would want to possess. The Selesnya woman smelled appetizing, and her direct access to Trostani was valuable. But Vosk sensed that he had more than one target now.

Mirko Vosk stepped off the ledge of the building. Instead of falling, he floated into the night sky with a casual, upright elegance. It was time to seek an audience with his hidden master.

The Izzet mages weren’t hard to find. After a couple of days of observation, Jace heard an explosion and saw a startled a flight of birds from across the district. The plume of blue smoke was a telltale sign of one of the Izzet’s pyrotechnic experiments. Jace tracked the source of the blast and spied two mages, a human and a goblin, outfitted with alchemical gadgetry and mizzium gauntlets. They emerged from a disused tunnel, leaving behind charred bricks and a haze of smoke, and their instruments crackled with energy. From what Jace had gathered, this was the Izzet style of research: keep adding energy until something blows up, then observe the results.

Jace stayed hidden at the mouth of the tunnel, letting the two of them pass by. He opened his mind to briefly skim their thoughts. The goblin, Skreeg, appeared to be an assistant to the human, or possibly an apprentice. The human went by Ral Zarek.

“No sign of any gate there even though the energies were promising,” said Skreeg. “What will we tell the Great Firemind?”

“You let me worry about that,” said Zarek.

Skreeg and Zarek were on the move, turning onto a main thoroughfare and chatting quickly, so Jace couldn’t delve deeply into their minds to learn all that they knew. Instead he shadowed them, trying to stay close without being seen.

“Could it be that the Dimir just don’t have their own gate?” asked Skreeg.

“Impossible,” said Zarek. “It’s here. It’s waiting somewhere for us. We’ll just have to look deeper.”

“How do we know that? How do we know we’re even going to find what we’re looking for?”

“This path was built for us by the ancients, Skreeg. A parun set all this up, do you understand? A founder of one of the guilds built this puzzle across this whole district so that we could find it.”

“Of course,” said Skreeg. He scratched his ear. “But why do we think it’s for us?”

Zarek snorted. “Because we found it first.”

The two Izzet mages walked fast and spoke in low tones, and Jace couldn’t walk closely enough to them without seeming suspicious. He had to find a way to stay closer to them. He knew blending spells that would mask his presence to the minds of onlookers, but he didn’t think he could maintain such a spell, read their thoughts, and keep up with their pace all at the same time. Perhaps he could get closer without staying on street level.

Jace ducked into an alleyway as the two Izzet mages walked on ahead. He climbed a fence and pulled himself up onto the rooftop of a tavern. He crept across the roof, staying low, until he could see over the opposite edge to look down at Skreeg and Zarek. He listened in on their surface thoughts again. Unfortunately, he had missed some of their conversation.

“That’s only the first step,” Zarek was saying. “According to Niv-Mizzet, the code tells us something more. It’s not enough just to find the gates. We have to know the path before we can uncover what’s behind it.”

Skreeg clasped his hands together and beamed up at Zarek. “Oh! Tell me what’s behind it!”

“He’s a discourteous old lizard, Skreeg. He doesn’t share with me all the secrets he knows. But I think I know what it is we seek.”

They were again moving away from Jace. He had to leap across a gulf to the next building, dash to the edge the sloping roof, and crawl along the edge directly above the mages to listen in on them. They were speaking even lower now, and even with his inner senses active, Jace had to strain to comprehend what they were saying.

“I believe it’s a great weapon, Skreeg,” said Zarek. “Hidden here, in the Tenth. The ancient guild founders knew that the Guildpact might not last. And I think one of them knew that if the pact was broken, a single guild would have to rise to rule all the others. That’s why they left us a weapon, Skreeg, and hid it in such a way that only the one worthy of wielding it could find it. And we are the worthy ones, aren’t we? That’s why Ravnica will be ours.”

A weapon, Jace thought. The code, the gates, the path—all of this concealed some kind of weapon. At least, Zarek believed it did.

Jace could no longer follow them by rooftop, and had to watch as they crossed the street away from him. The mages had arrived at the beginning of Izzet-controlled territory, walled off with tall, stark barricades covered in steaming metal pipes. Skreeg and Zarek climbed a wide set of stairs up to a large, round gateway, crowned with a huge signet that resembled the outline of the dragon himself. A squad of Izzet guards nodded to them, and the gate slid open to admit them.

As the gate opened, Jace was surprised to see the silhouette of a dragon’s head, looking through from the other side. It was Niv-Mizzet himself, waiting for their return.

“What have you found for me?” asked Niv-Mizzet.

The dragon’s voice boomed such that Jace could hear it from his hiding place. But he couldn’t hear the reply, and the Izzet mages would soon be sealed behind the gateway.

He felt he was close to finding out what lay underneath all the secrets, but he was sure that he would be caught if he tried to slip through the well-guarded Izzet gate. He was already losing the connection with the mages’ minds. Still, Skreeg and Zarek didn’t have all the information he craved, anyway.

The dragon, however, did. He had one chance: He would have to look into the dragon’s mind before the gate closed, if he dared.

He dared.

INSIDE THE FIREMIND

Jace gathered his mana and fired his mind magic like an arrow. The spell sailed invisibly through the air to Niv-Mizzet and punched into the dragon’s mind. Jace knew he wouldn’t have time to root around through the lore that undoubtedly filled the ancient dragon’s memories, so he focused on one task: finding what Niv-Mizzet knew about the maze.

It was like falling into an inferno. Incomprehensible thoughts blazed past him. Wild theories, impossible experiments, and mad diatribes roiled like a storm around him, all set against the backdrop of thousands of years’ worth of memories. Niv-Mizzet had no surface thoughts. It was as if he had whirlwinds of competing ideas at all times, storm fronts of the mind crashing into each other, yet somehow all converging into coherent thoughts.

But as Jace’s spell took him through the dragon’s mind, he was able to recognize a pattern, like a single crackle of lightning that branched throughout the chaos. It was the dragon’s obsession with his project. In his mind, he called it the Implicit Maze, a puzzle carved into the face of Ravnica itself, a mystery he believed led to untold power.

Jace was consumed with the dragon’s fervor for the Implicit Maze. A thousand possible solutions churned through Niv-Mizzet’s mind. Endless routes sizzled and broke apart across his mental landscape. But Jace knew, as the dragon knew, that none of them were quite right.

And then Jace saw what he hoped to see. The dragon knew the prize behind the Implicit Maze. Jace saw it too, and realized the power of it. And then he understood why Niv-Mizzet had set his entire guild to the cause of solving it.

As the Izzet gate closed and Jace’s contact with the dragon dissipated, Jace sensed that his intrusion had been noticed. The attention of the dragon surrounded him for that moment, like a predator’s gaze latching onto its prey, curious and unsettlingly patient.

“Jace, it’s good that you’re back,” said Kavin.

Jace had returned to his sanctum and slammed the door behind him. He huffed inadequate breaths and tried to calm himself. His vedalken compatriot Kavin was there, presumably still working on the fragments of the code they had found, still agonizingly piecing together what Jace had learned all in one blazing moment.

“Kavin, we have to talk.”

Kavin waved a sheaf of papers, covered in his neat hand in fresh ink. “Yes, you’re correct. Because you’ll want to hear this. I have discovered something.”

“So have I.”

“Excellent. Now, then. I’ve been researching all the samples we’ve collected. The stonework, the rubbings, the artifacts. And I’ve found a pattern.”

“Kavin.”

“The code. It’s a version of an antiquated Azorius legal script, dating back hundreds, maybe thousands of years. We’ll have to find someone who can decipher it, naturally. But in fact, I happen to have some facility with Azorius runes. Call it an old hobby—”

“Kavin, listen.”

“I wasn’t seeing it before, because we weren’t arranging them right, and our samples are incomplete and worn by time. But I’ve been able to surmise some of the terms and concepts to which it refers.”

“Kavin, I know what the code means.”

Kavin blinked. “You do?”

“I’ve done some … surveillance. The Izzet are investigating the same mystery that we are.”

Kavin cocked his head an inch. “You were following Izzet guild members?”

“They’ve unlocked something related to the code.”

“Wait. You used magic to invade their minds?”

“I gained some of their knowledge, yes.”

“Jace, interfering in guild business can be very dangerous.”

“A path. They have begun to piece together a particular path.”

Kavin held up his notes. “That’s what I’ve learned, as well. There are repeated mentions in the stonework about a ‘path that winds through civilization,’ a ‘path leading to great promise.’ ”

Jace nodded. “The Izzet think of it as a maze.”

“A maze, yes, that’s a better translation. So, you’ve learned where this maze is?”

“It doesn’t seem to be a maze in the traditional sense. The maze seems to lead from landmark to landmark—it’s built into the very structure of the existing districts. An implicit maze. That’s why we’ve seen the Izzet showing up repeatedly, doing experiments around the Tenth—they’re uncovering the route through this maze. All this time you and I have been finding the breadcrumbs of the same trail they’ve been following.”

Jace watched Kavin absorb these revelations. The vedalken’s face rarely showed emotion the way humans did, but Jace could tell that he was struggling. This mystery was a thrill to his own curious mind, but Jace could tell that his compatriot had grave doubts about whether to pursue it.

“Jace, the Izzet are not just scholarly rivals. Their guildmaster does not take kindly to competition.”

“I know. But it’s not the competition that concerns me. It’s what lies at the end of the maze. I think it’s something that could prove very, very dangerous. It’s something that could alter the balance of the guilds. Something that could impact our entire world.”

“What is it?”

Jace wondered whether even to tell Kavin what he had grasped from Niv-Mizzet’s mind. But this was the end of their research. This was the answer they had sought. “Power. The Izzet believe this maze leads to some form of great power. Perhaps even a weapon. I don’t know exactly what it is yet, and I don’t think Niv-Mizzet does, either.”

Kavin’s eyes widened at the mention of the dragon’s name, but Jace went on.

“But this maze, this code, all of this—it’s old. It’s something that was built into the districts long, long ago. If it’s something that inspires such obsession in a dragon, if it’s something he thinks is worthy of his time, then it’s probably something that shouldn’t fall into his hands. We have to chase this, Kavin. We need to learn what’s at the end of this maze before the dragon does. But there’s an even more pressing problem.”

“Jace, who exactly provided you with this information?”

Jace picked at the seam of his cloak. “That’s the problem.”

“Who was it?”

“The dragon, Niv-Mizzet himself. I saw it, all of this, in his mind. And he may have seen me, too.”

“Jace …” Kavin squeezed his eyes shut. He pressed his fingers to his blue-skinned forehead until purplish blotches formed around his fingertips, and drew several deep breaths. When he opened his eyes again, his words came slow with forced patience. “The answer is no.”

“I know there are risks. But maybe we can stay ahead of him. Maybe we can get to the bottom of this before they do.”

“You misunderstand. I’m not just refusing. I’m telling you no. You can’t proceed with this. Neither of us can. It’s suicide.”

Jace remembered the sensation of the dragon’s eyes, the dragon’s mind, turning toward him, just for that instant. It brought to mind a soul-chilling encounter with the dragon Nicol Bolas. His newfound knowledge about the Izzet’s discovery had come with a troubling cost—the possibility that yet another dragon knew his name.

“Jace, we’re done with this. Do I need to remind you what happens when the guilds want something? They ruin lives. They use people. We get involved, and we expose ourselves to the worst they’re capable of.”

“But doesn’t that mean we should get involved? Don’t you think this is important?”

“Of course it’s important. From what you’re saying, it’s gravely serious. Which is why we’re going to shut down this project, destroy all traces of our research, and leave this district.”

Jace wanted to contradict him. He wanted to rebel, to forge ahead without Kavin’s help. He knew investigating this maze would put him in danger, and had accepted that. But he thought of his time with the Infinite Consortium, and how he had learned that when he went up against powerful men, those he cared about were the ones who were hurt. He thought of his friend Kallist, who even Jace himself had manipulated in the end. He thought of Kavin—a talented man but no match for the ruthlessness of Ravnica’s guildmasters.

And he thought of Emmara, who had brought Jace back from the brink of death time and again, and who asked for nothing in return. She had been nothing but a friend to him, and he had brought nothing but harm to her. She had survived an assassination attempt brought on because of him. The more he chased his curiosity, the more she bore the consequences.

Perhaps all this was nothing. Perhaps this was simply the wild fancy of a capricious dragon—Jace had found nothing in his research to suggest that the maze led to a weapon or something else that would endanger Ravnica.. Perhaps Jace was needlessly endangering himself and his allies by yet again sticking his nose where it didn’t belong. He wished he could immerse himself in the layers of secrets, but he couldn’t see any way around the grave risks.

“So?” Kavin asked.

Mirko Vosk walked briskly, scanning the night for witnesses. When he arrived at the chosen intersection, the streets were abandoned. So he approached a brick wall and walked straight through it.

The wall softened into mist for a moment, allowing his passage, and reverted to solid brick after he was through. The abandoned corridors of the undercity branched out before him. He descended a half-ruined staircase, passed under a series of archways, and wove his way through unmarked side passages. Even in the gloom, his eyes reflected like mirrors.

The corridor widened into a haphazard catacomb. Vosk was surrounded by a ring of crude stone shelves where the skeletal remains of forgotten Ravnicans were interred. He knew he had reached the right meeting place because his fangs descended involuntarily. He could feel his master’s presence like a breath on his neck.

Vosk turned in a slow circle, addressing the air around him. “I have news, Master.”

“Of Beleren … Yes, I see,” came the voice—an omni-directional, croaking rasp that echoed throughout the passages.

“He knows something—something that may be of value to the guild.”

“Yes,” said the voice. “He may prove to be the instrument we require.”

Vosk turned, speaking to the walls all around him. “Shall I drain him for you, Master?”

“Enlighten me on the other one, Vosk. What do your senses tell you about the Selesnya girl?”

“Trostani favors her, as you foresaw, Master. Her import grows. I can smell it on her.”

“And what does one call two paths that cross and become one?”

“Synchronicity?”

“Opportunity,” rasped the voice. “By applying pressure in one place, we divert attention away from another, do we not?”

“Yes, Master.”

“And so we may achieve the elf by means of the Cult, and Beleren by means of the elf.”

“As you wish.”

“You are my most promising agent, Vosk.”

Vosk nodded solemnly. “Thank you, Master.”

“But if you fail me,” said the voice, “I shall have your ribs replaced with shards of wood, so that every breath you take threatens to pierce your heart.”

“I understand,” said Vosk.

There was no further response.

In a sacred grove in the Tenth District, Emmara bowed before Trostani, a being composed of three dryads merged into one. Each of Trostani’s three upper bodies moved and spoke independently, each one a beautiful, foliage-haired woman, each one a powerful voice of the Selesnya Conclave. But their lower bodies converged into a single sinuous trunk, like a mighty tree. Trostani was the leader of the Selesnya, but Emmara knew she was more than that. Trostani was a living symbol of her guild’s belief in unity, the embodiment of the power of the masses bound into one.

“The wild beings of the world are open to you, Emmara Tandris,” said Trostani. As the guildmaster spoke, the three different dryads wove their speech together, not actually speaking in unison, but blending their words into a single voice. “Your talents as a healer are great, but we desire to see you weave greater magic still. Call on the mighty elementals of nature. They still answer when we summon them, so long as we continue to believe in the world as a single entity, as they do. You are their ambassador now, and they are your guide.”

Emmara bowed again. “My deepest thanks, Guildmaster.”

“Your gratitude is well-meaning, but premature. The time of peril approaches. Gather together all that you hold dear, for the day nears that our unity shall be tested.”

Emmara thought of the Izzet’s secretive project, and of the paranoia among the other guilds. “Guildmaster, is there a way to preserve the guilds without the Guildpact?”

“Only if we become one,” said Trostani, the words flowing gracefully from the three dryads. “The guilds are an expression of the beliefs of this world, and we cannot survive without them any more than we can survive without belief. But remember, the individual means nothing. Boundaries are an illusion. If you are to mend us, healer, you must dispel barriers. You must not allow the ten to splinter, or we shall all come to ruin.”

Emmara felt unworthy of this charge. She bowed to Trostani, and the three dryads bowed to her in turn, their trunk-body bending like a graceful willow. Emmara turned to leave the grove, and she knew who she had to convince to help her, whether he was willing to join her guild or not.

Before she had even left the Selesnya grove a courier ran up to her, clearly seeking her out. “Emmara Tandris?” he asked. When she affirmed, he handed her a rolled-up letter. “I’m told the sender was someone named Berrim.”

“Thank you.”

Berrim was the alias Jace had used when he and Emmara first met. She unfurled the letter and read it.

Emmara,

I apologize. I understand now why you tried to convince me to join you in reaching out to the guilds. I understand now why the guilds feel afraid and hostile toward the Izzet, and why you and your guild are seeking all the help you can find for the times ahead. But I am afraid I cannot be the one to aid you.

My compatriot Kavin and I have discovered clues that led us to the source of the Izzet’s plans. But unfortunately this must be the end of our investigation. I have brought grave danger upon us, and Kavin has convinced me that the best route for us is to abandon our research completely. In fact, I intend to go one step further: I will soon destroy our memories of ever having learned of these matters. If you ask me about any of this at any future meeting, I will not recall these events, including this letter, and I will not understand what you ask. This letter is to inform you of the reason for my future behavior, and to seek your pardon for my reluctance.

I am sorry. I know this will come as a disappointment to you. I hope in time you will understand my reasons. In the meantime, my friend, I hope you will consider your own safety, and consider abandoning your concerns with the actions of the Izzet.

Yours,

Jace

She crumpled the letter in her fist and whirled on the courier. “When was this sent?”

“This morning, madam.”

“Can you call for transportation? I need the fastest thing you can find me.”

MIND SCULPTING

Jace looked out the window of a cheap tower hostel, the Cobblestand Inn, just a block away from the unremarkable brick building that had been his sanctum. He had requested a room that was on one of the upper floors, in view of the sanctum building, and had led Kavin up the stairs, coaxed him into the room, and shut the door.

Kavin ran a hand over his smooth bald head. Kavin had the nearly hairless blue skin, blunted features, and lucid mind typical of his vedalken race, but little of their characteristic patience—for which Jace liked him all the more. “Now you’ll tell me what we’re doing here?” he asked.

“You’ve brought no documents with you, right?” asked Jace. “No stashed notes? No diagrams or translations of the code?”

“What? No. I left them all in the sanctum, just as you requested.”

“Good,” said Jace.

With that, Jace delivered a mental command to the mercenary he had hired, a champion warrior of the Gruul—a guild of brutish, anarchic outcasts. Jace had chosen a two-headed ogre named Ruric Thar, the most belligerent-looking and least intellectually curious warrior he could find, to demolish the sanctum.

You may proceed, he thought to his hireling, and the only response he heard was a pair of wordless mental roars.

Outside, sounds of smashing glass and splintering wood came from the sanctum building.

“What is going on?” asked Kavin.

“I’ve seen to it that all our research will be destroyed,” said Jace.

“I thought you and I would take care of that.”

“I’m not sure we would have done a thorough enough job. I know at least I would have been tempted to spare some of my notes, and that I would be drawn into the project again. Couldn’t take that chance.”

Kavin nodded slowly. “But then who’s destroying the work? Should we just be leaving it there?”

“I’ve hired someone to destroy our work for us. And the building with it.”

“But shouldn’t we get out of here? I expected to get far from the Tenth—certainly farther than the Cobblestand Inn.”

“After today, you can still flee the Tenth if you’d prefer. But after today, we won’t need to.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You know that even when all our research is destroyed, it still won’t be gone. There will still be remnants of it left, remnants that could be taken from us and used against us—in our memories.”

Kavin’s hands rose slowly, almost of their own accord, into a defensive position. “Wait, Jace. What exactly are you suggesting?”

“You’re right that it’s too dangerous to pursue this research. But as long as we know what we know, we’re at risk, and everyone we know is at risk. I won’t have us dragged into a dragon’s conspiracy just from what’s in our minds. I won’t be a pawn, or have you used as a pawn, by those with more power than conscience. Not while I have the power to fix it.”

“You never told me you could do that. I don’t know if I want to be fixed.”

“I won’t have those I care about be used. Believe me, I know how that feels. You think Ravnica is a big place. But even if you left home now, and left the Tenth District behind you forever, those who crave power would find you. You’d be part of their game, simply because you showed curiosity in something, simply because you cared enough to explore a secret. They would use your thoughts against you, and track you down using them.”

“Is that even possible? Could anyone actually even do that?”

Jace didn’t meet Kavin’s eyes. “I could.”

Kavin was quiet for a long time. In the near distance, through the window, they both watched smoke rise from the sanctum building. Flames flickered inside the building. Jace thought he could make out the shadow of a large, two-headed figure thrashing around inside.

“If I give up my knowledge of the code,” said Kavin. “I’ll be giving away my only weapon. Surrendering my only advantage.”

“No,” said Jace. “You’ll be refusing to be a weapon.”

There was a screeching cry outside. Jace and Kavin turned to see a griffin bearing two riders flap its way to a landing in the middle of the street. The rider in the front kept hold of the reins, controlling of the unruly griffin, while the rider on the back slid off the creature’s back. The griffin took off again, pumping its wings and heaving into the sky.

Jace recognized the figure immediately. It was Emmara. She was pacing back and forth in front of the smoke-plumed sanctum building. “Jace!” she screamed into the blazing front door. “Jace!”

“Oh, no. No, no, no. Not now.” Jace threw open the window. “Emmara!” he called, waving. “Emmara, up here!”

Emmara turned to look back at them and came running toward the Cobblestand Inn.

“Don’t do this,” said Emamra, breathless from bounding up the stairs to the room. “Don’t you dare.”

“Kavin, this is my friend Emmara,” said Jace with mock etiquette. “Emmara, we have to. You are not stopping this. I won’t wander into a guild conflict just to satisfy my own curiosity. And I won’t let Kavin be used as a pawn in a dragon’s game. You remember my previous employer, Tezzeret. You should understand why.”

“You’re crucial to this effort, Jace,” she said. “You’re the only one who can help me. Please don’t turn your back on me. Not after all the times I stitched you together, not after all the trouble you got yourself—and me—wrapped up in. You can’t abandon me when I need you. When we all need you.”

“I’m not getting involved because of all the trouble I caused you. Tezzeret sent his men to kill you. I can’t let something like that happen again. I won’t let it.”

“Excuse me,” said Kavin, “but you’re Selesnya, correct? What stake does your guild have in this? How does this affect the Conclave?”

“It affects all of us,” said Emmara. “Or it will, soon enough. Whatever the Izzet are planning, it comes at a time when the guilds are especially distrustful of each other. Niv-Mizzet is very old and very covetous. The dragon could be planning something dire. He could be making a play for power that could never have been possible—not until the Guildpact dissolved.”

Kavin’s eyes widened. “A coup. You’re talking about a coup.”

“Even if he isn’t planning it, don’t you think the other guilds will be expecting it? They’ll arm for a guild war. We have to pull together. This is the time for us to reach out to everyone. And I need your help.”

“No. I won’t be part of it.” Jace shook his head. He could see where this was going. He would be recruited into a fight with the promise of enforcing the peace, then be used as a tool by powerful individuals to wage their private war. The more he knew, the more value he had to the dragon, and perhaps to others. And as long as he was valuable to them, he could envision how those powerful individuals would see his friends. Kavin and Emmara would be no better than bargaining chips, commodities bound to what was between Jace’s ears. He didn’t like to surrender to the whims of this dragon, or to abandon his research. But that’s not what he was doing, he told himself. The last thing he wanted to do was to destroy information, to erase hard-won knowledge—but he had no choice. It was better for no one to know it at all.

“Talk some sense into him, Kavin,” she said, making a frustrated gesture toward Jace. “Tell him that this is going to boil over and hurt many, many people. Tell him that this isn’t the time to back away.”

“I can’t, Emmara,” said Jace. “I can’t. Not this time. Kavin, please sit.”

And with that, he began the spell to destroy memories.

Jace was at home inside another man’s mind.

He had been a mind mage for as long as he had wielded magic. He had explored the contours of consciousness and plumbed the murky depths of memory. He even had some experience in destroying minds entirely. When he worked for Tezzeret’s Infinite Consortium, an interplanar cartel of planeswalkers and thugs, he had reduced multiple men to drooling, mindless simpletons, on the justification that it was better than killing them. He wasn’t proud of the psychic harm he had caused. But the fact was that he was good at inflicting it when he needed to.

He assessed Kavin’s mind, his inner eye soaring over the vedalken’s mental realm like an eagle at sea. He peered into his compatriot’s memories, tracking glimpses of those weeks during which he and Kavin had worked on the code. Jace used his own consciousness as a scalpel, slicing through those pieces of the past, tearing them free of their bindings like glittering cobwebs. The memories took time to dissolve completely; as he passed through Kavin’s mind. Jace set off specialized tremors of mental destruction, letting his efforts ripple into all the associations, metaphors, and mental juxtapositions that might have led Kavin back to those thoughts again.

After a time that felt like days, Jace pulled back from Kavin’s thoughts. He could not locate any other scrap of memory that pertained to the code, their research, or the maze. The obliteration was complete. Kavin’s mind was intact, but it contained no trace of knowledge that could bring him harm. Jace let his consciousness slide back to his own mind.

He awoke, lying sideways on the bed in the room at the Cobblestand, drained and sweating with effort. He pushed himself up to a sitting position. Emmara was there, concern written on her face. Kavin, though, was gone.

“Where …” Jace wiped the perspiration from his face. “Where did he go?”

Emmara couldn’t hide her horror. “Jace. He could feel it. He could feel you doing it to him. At first he was calm, sitting there with you, but then he stumbled out of here. He ran, mumbling. What did you do to him?”

Jace wiped his brow, rubbing the hair that was matted against his scalp. “I did what I had to do. He won’t remember anything that will involve him in this.”

Tears brimmed in her eyes, but her voice was stern. “I’ve never seen you do that.”

Jace took a heavy breath. He still had more to do. “Stay with me,” he said. “Please.”

“Don’t,” she said.

“Please. I know it’s hard to watch.” Jace didn’t like the way she was looking at him now.

“It’s not about watching you do it. It’s not even about you choosing not to help me, or about being present while you destroy part of yourself. It’s about the mistake you’re making. That’s what impossible to watch.”

He wondered if their friendship was breaking apart, but decided it was worth it to protect her.

“I can’t help you.”

“You have to. Just think about it for a moment.”

“I have,” he said. “Please stay.” And then he cast a spell he never thought he would use on himself.

THE REACH OF THE LAW

Jace jerked awake on the floorboards of an unfamiliar room. He had an ugly throb in his skull and a hole in his memory. It didn’t make sense to him that he was prone, or why he was on the floor, although he did not remember why he shouldn’t be. He had the sensation of the passage of time, but couldn’t remember why.

He realized someone was speaking to him.

“Sir,” said a hesitant male voice. “Sir, are you all right?”

As Jace pushed himself partway up, using the wall to brace himself, he felt stab of pain near his hairline. By reflex he put his hand to his head, and when he drew it back, there was blood on his fingers. A man was standing over him, hands folded. Jace tried to recognize his face. It felt strange to apply effort to a task that had always come automatically before, like simply recognizing a face.

“They took your friend, I’m afraid,” the man said. “Very sorry for your loss.”

“I’m sorry, what’s your name again?” Jace asked. His voice cracked as he spoke, as if he hadn’t spoken for hours.

“Andrek. I’m the innkeeper.”

Innkeeper. “The Cobblestand,” Jace said.

“That’s right, sir.”

Jace rose to a standing position, regretting the action when he felt his mind roiling with pain. He lurched to the window. He was on a high floor in the building, overlooking a street at night. He recognized that he was across the street from his sanctum building, which was, alarmingly, on fire.

That was not how Jace remembered leaving it.

“You’ll be charged for the damages, I’m afraid,” said Andrek the innkeeper.

Scanning the room, Jace realized the place was a wreck. The bed was upside-down and broken against the wall, a chair lay splintered, and angry knife marks were torn across the wainscoting. Flakes of ash from some unknown pyromantic spell littered the floor like black confetti. Jace noticed a dirty coin on the floor—not a piece of the usual currency used in the Tenth. It looked like a cheap novelty token. One side had a picture of a leering demonic face, and the other bore the words RUN WITH THE ROUGH CROWD.

Jace absently pocketed the token. “What happened here?”

“As I said, sir. They took your friend. The elf woman.”

Emmara. He remembered she had been with him, although he couldn’t remember why. “Who took her?”

“They were Rakdos, sir. A whole mob of them. I’m very sorry.”

Jace took the innkeeper’s shirt in his fists. His next four words were deliberately delivered, nose to nose. “Where did they go?”

“I couldn’t say, sir. Also, there are some Azorius officers downstairs, asking questions. Do you know anything about that burning building across the street?”

Jace only got to the stairway before he ran into the Azorius officers coming up from the bottom floor of the inn.

“Sir, are you Jace Beleren, the man who lives at the building across the street?” asked the officer, a tall woman in shining plate armor. The signet on her cape was a runic circle inside an equilateral triangle, the sign of the Azorius guild. Behind her, two knights blocked the stairwell, their hands on their scabbards.

“There’s been a kidnapping,” said Jace. “A gang of Rakdos cultists has abducted my friend from this hotel.”

“The innkeeper informed us of that incident, and a claim has been filed with the minister of investigation,” said the officer. “You are Jace Beleren?”

“My building is burning, yes, and I don’t know why. I’ve … I’ve been attacked, I think. I can try to answer your questions about that place later. Right now I need your help finding my friend.”

Jace’s head throbbed, and a trickle of blood ran down his forehead and reached his brow.

“I am not authorized to investigate that at this time, sir. An officer will be assigned, in accordance with all applicable laws and statutes. Could you come with us?”

Jace wondered how the officers had found him, how they knew his name, and how long it had been since the building caught fire. Usually it took weeks for the Azorius to steer the proper forms through their baffling system of permits and regulations. Yet here they were, intent on questioning him. He squeezed his fists, wishing he could remember what events brought him here.

“If you’re not going to find her, then I will,” said Jace.

Jace lashed out with magic that would incapacitate the Azorius officers, but they only frowned their stern frowns at him. His spell had failed. One of them must be a lawmage, and they must have dampened spells in the area already—exactly what he would have done if he thought a mind mage would be here.

“Suspect Jace Beleren,” said the Azorius officer, bringing her hands together to form a tight spiral of glowing magical runes. “Your actions meet a reasonable definition of resistance, and the use of magical force has become authorized. Come with us, now.” She stepped toward Jace. “Your compliance is obligatory.”

Jace was out of time and out of options. It was time to give himself up. But instead he found himself dashing for a window on the opposite end of the hallway of the inn. He launched himself against the pane, breaking through onto an upper-story rooftop. He rolled down a length of sloping roof, dropped onto a lower platform, rolled down another shingled slope, and fell half a story into a stand of bushes. He stumbled out, spitting out a mouthful of brambles.

Jace expected to see Azorius officers already in the back of the inn, but instead he saw huge feet. As he scanned upwards, the feet turned out to be connected to muscular, tree-trunk legs, which were in turn attached to a massive body that blocked his path. The ogre that stared down at him did so from two angles, due to the fact that it possessed two heads. One of the two-headed ogre’s forearms had been replaced by, or possibly upgraded with, a massive prosthetic axe, and crude clan tattoos ran up and down his limbs.

“It’s you,” said one of the ogre’s heads, with a guttural grunt.

“It’s him,” agreed the other head, the words rumbling through his tusks.

Jace did not have time to process this. He scanned for exits, but the Azorius caught up with him, streaming around the building and closing in on his position. Their numbers had increased, but when they caught sight of the two-headed ogre, they hesitated. Each of the brute’s heads looked back and forth with a pair of sneers, a deep growl rumbling in their chest.

“I am Officer Lavinia of the Tenth,” said the Azorius officer, the same woman who had confronted him upstairs. “Jace Beleren, you are under arrest by the authority of Supreme Judge Isperia and of the governorship of New Prahv. You, citizen,” she added, indicating the ogre, “will stand back at this time and not interfere.”

Jace scanned the ring of armored Azorius officers and lawmages. None of this was helping him find Emmara, but he could see no way out. He walked forward, wrists out, and the leader Lavinia took him into custody simply by putting her hand on his shoulder. Her touch was cold through the material of his cloak, and made him feel instantly sluggish and compliant. If he had had any fight left, it was leaving him quickly.

At this, the ogre strode right up to Lavinia and headbutted her with both of his heads simultaneously, clanging against her helmet from two directions.

As Lavinia collapsed, he Azorius lawmages hurled their restraining spells at the massive ogre, but they barely slowed the brute down. Soldiers moved in to engage the double ogre with sword and spear, but one swing of his axe cut them down, sending their armored bodies clattering like tin cans.

With the Azorius leader down and the entire unit distracted, Jace took a tentative step to the side, angling for a way out of the fray. The ogre roared with both heads, and slammed another Azorius soldier against the wall. Jace gave a momentary thought to helping this fortuitous ogre warrior, but thought the better of it, and slipped away in the confusion of the melee.

Jace put the Cobblestand Inn and the wrecked shell of the building that had been his sanctum behind him, and struck out into the Tenth. As he walked, he played out the scene in his mind, trying to retrace his steps and recover what happened before he awoke. He watched himself awaken on the floor, touch the wound on his head, and look up to see the innkeeper standing over him. The moments before that were black, empty—just a roaring nothingness. It was as if a sheaf of days had been ripped out of him by force.

Jace found an empty alleyway and staggered into it. He made his way into a kind of an urban cave, walled by tall brick buildings and wooden bins of refuse. He slammed his back against the brick and let himself slide to the ground. He brought his hood up over his head and brought his knees in toward him, as if to bring every part of him as close as possible to his own center of gravity. If he could become small, he thought, he could fall through the cracks somehow. Everyone could ignore him, and he could believe that none of this was real.

He stared at his knees. The seams of his pants were worn. A rough scrape was visible through a hole in the knee, from his wandering through the district. He gathered himself up and tried to think his way through the glutinous murk of his memory. But the blankness persisted. He could recall a year ago, and several months ago—and then his mind slipped over patches of uncertain time. He could barely remember a day he had spent in that sanctum, or what had happened in the moments before Emmara’s apparent disappearance.

Jace pressed his palms into his eye sockets. He fought for breath, but could only find air in short gasps.

He opened his eyes and scanned around him. He could sense people walking across sky bridges in the towers of the Tenth, hear them shuffling past the alleyway, see them glancing his way. This place was not his adoptive home anymore, not a sanctuary against the vastness of the Multiverse. It was a labyrinth of accusing eyes. It struck him that he should simply leave the plane and cast himself into some other existence. For a planeswalker, retreat was almost always an option.

A window slid open in the wall four stories above him. A pair of hands reached out and dumped the slop from someone’s dinner—he hoped it was dinner—out of a pot. Muck dropped through the air and slapped against the pavement near him, close enough to splash his cloak. It was a bit of meat and tuber stew, cold but home-cooked—a sign of life and normalcy. He looked up to the window, where light shone out, the shadows of moving figures passing every so often.

Jace sent his senses up to that window, feeling out the shapes of the minds inside the building. Details flooded into his mind. He sensed two people, unguilded humans. They were a couple who owned a nearby bakery. The two of them worked different shifts. Jace couldn’t hear their voices with his ears, but he could read their words in his mind as they spoke them.

“You haven’t even said how it was,” one was saying.

“I don’t know,” said the other. “Long and dull, just like any other day. Business is better now that the guilds are back. But still not as many customers as I’d like if we’re going to pay off the new oven.”

“I meant the stew. You said nothing about it.”

Jace clung to their words, balancing the two minds in his consciousness, huddling around the warmth of their conversation.

“Well, it was cold. And the beef was stringy.”

“You were home late.”

“The streets were crazy. The guilds were out in force again tonight. Boros enforcers, Rakdos rioters … I could barely get home.”

Jace snapped his consciousness back to his own mind. He pitied this couple, two of the countless innocents whose lives were impacted every day by the activities of Ravnica’s guilds. His mind flashed with imagery of Rakdos freaks bursting into his room at the inn, with Emmara standing defiant before them. Were these actual memories or fabrications—his imaginings of an event for which he had only seen the aftermath? Jace put his fingertips to his temples and pressed, as if he could wring the thoughts out of his head, or as if he could plug the gaping holes in his memory. He stared forward at nothing, trying to ignore that the edge of his cloak was lying in an unidentifiable puddle.

He shoved his hands in his cloak, and felt something in his pocket. He took out the finely crafted wooden leaf that Emmara had given him. It had the faintest fragrance of Emmara’s skin. She had told him it was a way to contact her, but he didn’t know if she would be able to respond. He didn’t even know if it would tell him if his message had reached its target—whether Emmara was alive or dead.

He let the artifact balance on his palm. It was so delicate that it moved slightly with his pulse.

“I need you,” he whispered.

The artifact blazed with white light for a moment, the intricately carved veins shining like white-hot wires, and Jace felt a tingling on his skin. Then the artifact faded, the veins attenuating to threads as fragile as ash, and it crumbled in his hand.

He hoped she could hear it, wherever she was. He hoped that if she had heard it, she knew that it meant he would find her. At least if she heard it, he thought, it meant that he had said the words.

Then he reached into his other pocket for the novelty coin he had found in his ruined room at the inn. It might have been dropped by the attackers. He examined the smirking demon’s face on the token—probably a sign of the Rakdos, considering their association with demonic forces. He read the other side: RUN WITH THE ROUGH CROWD. Maybe it was a kind of rallying cry for the Cult of Rakdos, he thought, or a recruitment slogan. Or something else.

He stood abruptly. Suddenly, he knew where to look.

Officer Lavinia stood before the enormous double doors that led into the highest spire of New Prahv, the lair of the guildmaster. To look at her, nothing would seem out of place: her cape spilled elegantly from her officer’s armor, her sword shone like a decorative piece one would hang above a mantel, and her three-sided medals displayed her district-spanning rank. But her brow trembled, more with frustration than with fear. And she clutched at a folded note in her hand, worrying it with her fingers. It read “Her Honor the Supreme Judge would have words with you.”

When the hussars opened the doors for her, she stepped up onto the azure-carpeted dais and gave the traditional nod of respect. Under the enormous Azorius signet, with its mazelike runes bounded within a perfect triangle, was her guildmaster, the Supreme Judge herself: the sphinx Isperia. A robed scribe who had almost more gray eyebrows than face stood nearby, holding a quill ready over a long roll of paper.

“Your Honor,” said Lavinia.

The scribe wrote on his paper, making a sharp scratching sound, and stopped again.

Isperia’s huge feathered wings were folded against her lionlike flanks, and she sat with her back arched nobly. Her paws flexed, pricking bits of the carpet with her claws.

The sphinx’s eyes focused directly on Lavinia. Some said the guildmaster never blinked, and Lavinia found no evidence to the contrary.

“You have returned from investigating the suspect,” said Isperia.

“Yes, Your Honor,” said Lavinia. “And yet Jace Beleren is not here before me now. Why is this?”

The scribe continued scratching. Lavinia couldn’t help flicking her eyes to him in annoyance.

“He has eluded our patrols. We need more hussars, more lawmages.”

The sphinx ruffled her great wings. “I do not foresee you succeeding with more resources.”

Lavinia’s teeth clenched. It did not do to contradict a sphinx, let alone her guildmaster.

“You’ve learned what you can from the scene?”

“The evidence appears clear, Your Honor. We have witnesses who’ll testify that the suspect fled the scene after attempting to use magic on our officers.”

“This man sounds dangerous, Officer Lavinia. How did you pursue?”

“Our pursuit was delayed by an altercation with an unrelated party. By the time we were extricated from that situation, the suspect had escaped. But we will find him.”

“One person delayed your entire investigation?”

“It was an ogre, Your Honor. One of the Gruul. A fearsome warrior.”

“And he, of course, was apprehended in accordance with protocols?”

“Yes, Your Honor. We confined him temporarily.”

“Temporarily?”

“He broke the detention spells.”

“By unweaving your law-runes?”

“By … punching them, Your Honor. He, too, remains at large.”

Isperia glowered. “Officer Lavinia,” she snapped, “when I ask you a question, you will volunteer nothing less than the perfect, most transparent truth. Do you understand?”

It took all of Lavinia’s will not to take a half-step backward. The scribe wrote, his quill wiggling back and forth, and he murmured softly to himself.

Lavinia kept her shoulders straight. “Yes, Your Honor.”

“What information led you to this building?”

“We received a tip from a courier. The message was sent anonymously. No investigation has yet been performed of the origin of the tip, but I will see to that next.”

“Officer Lavinia, are you aware that Beleren’s acquaintance, Emmara Tandris, was reported kidnapped that same night?”

“I am.”

“Are you aware that she is—or was—a dignitary of the Selesnya Conclave?”

“I—I was not, Your Honor.”

“Are you aware that some among the Selesnya are blaming this elf’s disappearance on inadequacies of security in the Tenth District?”

Lavinia sputtered, trying to form protesting words. The sphinx sat back on her haunches and adjusted her wings. Her unblinking eyes wandered away, taking in the rest of the chamber. Lavinia felt that she had lost the guildmaster’s interest in that moment.

“What of the Boros in this situation?” Isperia asked.

“Soon after we regrouped, the Boros Legion sent investigators of their own. As usual they demand control of the investigation, and as usual they have not submitted their request through the proper channels.”

“Let them handle the apprehension of Beleren.”

Lavinia froze. “Your Honor, I don’t understand.”

“My words were clear and true.”

“You’re—you’re giving this to the Boros? But they’ll just bungle this job. They’ll turn this into a street war, and they’ll never find the truth.”

“They may, however, find Beleren.”

Lavinia’s composure was lost. She looked around the chamber, trying to find some bell to ring, some door to slam. The scribe glanced up at her, without any more dialogue to transcribe, but when he saw her face he quickly turned his eyes back to his paper.

“I formally request to extend this investigation,” said Lavinia. “I will file the necessary writs.”

“Remind me,” said the sphinx. “Your jurisdiction covers?”

“The whole of the Tenth, Your Honor, and some portion of the outlying districts.”

“Your jurisdiction is now the care and guardianship of these spires. You are to provide all documents and materials pertaining to Beleren to the presiding investigator of the Boros Legion.”

Lavinia’s chin dropped to her breastplate. “I’ll be a glorified house guard.”

The sphinx didn’t blink. “I see no glory in it.”

THE ROUGH CROWD

As Jace stood before the door, he felt a hot blast of air from below him. He stood on an iron grating in the street. Before him was the notorious nightclub he sought, where all manner of strange desires could be satisfied by the Cult of Rakdos. Sulfurous fumes and flickering firelight rose from the grating below, as did echoes of cackling, screaming laughter and inhuman snarls. The sign above the entrance displayed the name of the club: THE ROUGH CROWD.

He knocked.

A creature opened the upper half of the door. He was the size of a child, but with stumpy tusks and a sloping cranium. He wore a collar decorated with something that looked like teeth. He leaned his pasty forearms on the sill of the door and looked him up and down, tonguing his tusks. “Pain or pleasure?”

“I have business here.”

“Come on now, sunshine,” the creature said. “You know that ain’t an option. You wanna get hurt? Or you wanna stay outside?”

“It’s an urgent matter that involves your cultists.”

“Run along.”

The doorman sneered and slammed the door shut. Jace readied a spell, and knocked again.

The creature opened the door again and sighed. “I believe I told you—”

“Your shift’s over.”

Jace let loose his spell, and the doorman fell into a sudden and total sleep before dropping to the floor. Jace leaned over and opened the door from the inside. Instead of legs, as it turned out, the creature had a rusty unicycle as his lower half.

Jace walked into the Rakdos club, pushing into a wall of scents and sounds. The ceilings were surprisingly high inside, draped with banners and spiked chains. An impish creature hooted as it dangled from a high wire while a man in leather chaps swallowed orbs of fire and breathed them back out through his snaggly teeth. Scarred, black-scaled drakes fought viciously in cages that swung from the ceiling, and the stink of sweat and singed flesh wafted from adjoining alcoves.

Against the wall stood an enormous sentry, somewhere along the spectrum between rotund man and compact giant, dressed in what looked like the motley of a harlequin jester crossed with barbed wire. He was a Rakdos spiker. Jace knew spikers were fierce in battle, largely because they didn’t care whether more harm came to them or their foes. The spiker eyed Jace as he came in, squeezing the handle of a spike-topped mace the size of a cart axle.

Jace wanted to stand on a table and challenge the entire club. He wanted to threaten everyone he saw, demanding to know where Emmara was. But if he got himself killed, he would never find her. He had to find a way to locate those who took her. He couldn’t very well ask the patrons of a Rakdos club whether they knew any kidnappers. But he had to act before anyone noticed that he had knocked the doorman unconscious.

All around him, people of all shapes and sizes drank and danced and indulged. He didn’t see any who looked like Rakdos leaders here—these were clients and patrons, here to satisfy wanton desires. Nearby, a snake-tongued woman whispered into the ear of an Orzhov cleric. A viashino competed in a drinking contest with a goblin—from the bleeding arm of a well-dressed man. Jace stepped through a doorway hung with a beaded curtain, but he didn’t look too closely at what may or may not have been beads.

The back room was full of harder-looking characters lit by flickering torches. Horned warriors stared at him and sadistic imps snickered. Laughter and screams emanated in equal measure from private alcoves at the edges of the room. And through thin slits in the alcove doors, Jace could glimpse hints of glistening flesh. There was a small platform in the middle of the room, currently empty, but stained with dark, dried blood. Jace felt even more out of place in this room, like an actor stepping onto the stage without knowing his lines—or worse, knowing that it was a career-ending performance.

Jace slanted his way through the murky crowd and let his magical senses slip outward. He concentrated on the thought of Emmara, trying to find a mind that had any kind of connection to her.

Something caught in his mind like a hook. Someone in this room held a connection to Jace in some way. He couldn’t see Emmara exactly—but it was as if he were hearing echoes of a familiar voice bouncing back at him in shreds of memory. It was all he had to go on. Jace walked toward the back of the room on instinct, seeking the farthest wall from the exit, and the impression of connection grew stronger. There a woman sat at a table alone. She wore a dark leather outfit decorated with barbed hooks. Jace could see vertical lines slicing down across eyes the color of fire—whether they were makeup or scars, he couldn’t tell. She grinned wickedly as Jace approached.

“You look lost, sugar beet,” she said.

“I’m looking for someone,” said Jace. “A friend of mine. An elf woman of the Selesnya guild. What do you know about that?”

“We’re all looking for something, pet. Look around you. All tastes can be indulged here. Why don’t you stop searching and enjoy yourself?”

“I’m not in the mood to play.”

“Such a shame. You’re in the wrong place. Why don’t you go and let the rest of us have a good time.”

Jace slammed his fist on the table. At the same moment, he flashed an image of Emmara into the woman’s mind. “You’ve seen her, haven’t you?” he demanded.

The Rakdos woman blinked in surprise, and then the surprise became anger. “Who let you in here?”

Jace opened himself to the woman’s mind, letting her emotions wash over him, reading her reaction to seeing Emmara’s face. The woman recognized her; that much was clear. For the briefest moment, he saw a flash of the woman leading a group of Rakdos warriors to the Cobblestand Inn. He saw them rush into the building, hooting and brandishing weapons. If Jace had just a little more time, he could look deeper and find out more, maybe even learn where they took Emmara. But the woman sensed his magic. She stood, knocking over her chair, and grabbed a gnarled staff from behind the table. Her eyes blazed and her lips curled into something like a smile. “You’re out of your depth, boy. You think you can make demands in here? Do you know who I am?”

With that, she shrieked, and the shriek became shrill, insane laughter. All heads in the club turned toward them as the beaded curtain parted, and the enormous spiker appeared, ready with his mace.

“I was hoping you’d start something,” grunted the spiker.

With that, a spotlight shone down on the platform in the center of the room. The giant Rakdos warrior picked up Jace and heaved him into the spotlight, where grim-looking guild performers encircled the stage, aiming spears and jagged blades at him.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” crooned the flame-eyed woman, swinging her staff around to all assembled.

“Exava!” cheered the crowd of gathered assassins, cultists, and jovial drunks.

“We’d now like to direct your attention to the main stage!”

All eyes were on Jace. The crowd welcomed the new volunteer act with a chorus of cheers and raised glasses. Exava moved toward him, expertly working the crowd with her booming voice. She was a blood witch, Jace realized. She wasn’t just a bar server or even a guild ringleader. She was a high sorcerer of the Cult of Rakdos.

“Our star is a young mage with dreams of fame, who came to the Rough Crowd looking for his big break!”

The audience laughed. Jace didn’t like the way she said “break.”

“What do you say, folks?” yelled the blood witch Exava, gesturing animatedly. “Shall we give him what’s coming to him?”

Cheers and hoots, including some lurid suggestions on what his act should entail.

“Run him through with a loxodon’s tusk!” Laughter.

“Make him eat his own feet!” More laughter.

In all the chaos, Jace couldn’t concentrate to scan Exava’s mind for information. Instead he scanned for exits. He would have to leap clear of the ring of Rakdos freaks around him, then get to the rear door, which was currently blocked by the spiker brute. Or he could try to get back to the beaded curtain, but it was blocked by onlookers.

“What’s your name, boy?” Exava asked him.

“I go by Berrim,” he said.

“I go by Berrim,” she mimicked, eliciting more crowd approval.

This was going badly. Jace had little time. He knew that the Rakdos were impulsive and dangerous, as sudden and unpredictable as crocodiles. It wouldn’t do to out-think them. He had to out-impulse them.

“Well, I-Go-by-Berrim, it’s our tradition here at Rough Crowd to let the audience choose the nature of the star’s performance.”

“I’ll save you all the trouble.”

With a whirl, Jace threw illusions of exploding pyrotechnics up around the stage as columns of curling smoke enveloped Jace in bluish fumes. The Rakdos guards around the stage reached in to feel for where he had been. Their hands grabbed at ankles, and they dragged a figure out.

To everyone’s surprise, it appeared that Exava herself emerged from the fumes, furious and kicking. But Jace’s illusion had given him Exava’s form. He kicked and yelped, acting in character, trying to seem as furious as Exava would have at being caught by her own minions. He pointed a finger back to where Exava had been standing and summoned up his best impression of her, yelling, “Kill him!”

The spotlight swung to where Exava had stood, and the woman had been replaced with the blue-cloaked form of Jace.

Exava, wearing Jace’s appearance, tumbled backward as the guards advanced on her. Over her protests, the Rakdos guards seized her. But the enraged Rakdos warriors didn’t stop there.

“Show’s over early, little man,” said the enormous spiker, and he ran the blood witch clean through the gut with a spike at the end of his weapon. Blood catapulted out of her mouth.

The crowd at Rough Crowd cheered lustily, believing the tricky Jace had been the one skewered. In the smoky haze they did not notice Jace, in the guise of Exava, edging toward the back door.

“You be sure to check him,” he said to an axe-wielding warrior at the back door, pointing his thumb back at the wounded Exava. Then he slipped out.

As soon as he was outside, Jace dispelled the illusion over himself. He hoped that in doing so the illusion he had cast over the blood witch would last long enough for him to get a moment to breathe. Then maybe he could find a moment to delve into the blood witch’s mind again, if she was even still alive. But the back of the Rough Crowd burst open, the architecture of the club wholly unable to withstand the frenzy and bloodlust of a crowd of enraged Rakdos cultists. A flurry of howling, winged imps swarmed around Jace, converging and blocking his path.

“Where exactly did you think you were going,” said the blood witch.

The illusion had been broken, and Exava was back to her own appearance again. With one hand she clutched at a pumping wound in her stomach. The other cultists encircled them both, but gave her a wide swath.

“Don’t do this. All I need to know is where they took her,” said Jace.

The blood witch laughed a slow, rolling laugh that grew, breath by breath, to become a mad cackle. “Boy, haven’t you learned? You never say don’t to a Rakdos girl.”

She unleashed a torrent of pain magic from her fingers, slicing through the night and stabbing into Jace like claws made of lightning. Jace fell to his knees, every muscle in his body locked in the rigidity of pain, his teeth ground against each other as the pain spell speared into his body from every direction. Finally, the blood witch relented and let the spell end. Jace fell onto his hands and knees, his head sagging, sweat beading on his forehead. Arcane smoke wafted from his body.

Exava’s heels clicked against the cobblestones as she approached. Jace’s breaths heaved. Stretching the pain out of his muscles, he strained to put one foot on the ground, and push himself up to a standing position.

“Stop this now,” he said. “Tell me where she is, and I’ll be on my way.”

“Oh, honey, no,” she said. “You can’t leave without this.”

The Rakdos mage let loose another torrent of agony that crashed into Jace. He arched his back and fell sideways, slamming against the street. As the spell lasted moment after moment, he forced his lungs to breathe through the pain. He wheezed spittle through his teeth.

Exava’s spell ended, and he panted.

“All right,” he whispered. “That’s enough. We’re even now.”

Exava laughed his words. “Even? Enough? What are these words you’re saying, little man? I’m starting to think this is your first Rakdos party.”

Exava gathered power again. She made a cage of her long-nailed fingers, dripping blood from her own wound. She clenched her hands in toward each other, forming a sphere of anguish that flickered like the fire in her eyes. Her shoes clacked their way closer and closer to Jace’s prone form. Finally she raised her hands high above her head and brought the spell down like a hammer, but Jace’s hand whipped up, and the sphere of pain froze between them, halted halfway along its path, swiveling and hanging, weightless in the air. Jace turned and rose, keeping his hand out toward the Rakdos spell, fingers clawed to keep it immobile in space. He gathered himself up to his full height, stretching his stiff muscles. With the clench of a fist, he focused his countermagic, and the pain-spell evaporated.

Exava gave a derisive snort. She launched a barrage of arcane attacks, each one like a rocket made of electric death homing in on Jace. But Jace moved swiftly, parrying each spell with negating magic of his own, and the full force of the Exava’s malice never quite reached him. He walked toward her bombardment, and she took a few matching steps backward as she threw more spells at him, pushed back by his deft defense. In a lightning quick movement, she threw a tri-bladed dagger, an unexpected physical attack. The dagger spun through the air and caught Jace’s cheek as it whizzed by. The other Rakdos cultists roared with laughter, and encircled the two of them.

Jace counterattacked the blood witch with mind magic. He hurled his consciousness into hers, holding nothing back. He became her, let himself be absorbed by her, shared her mind and saw through her senses. He felt the power in her, the fierce freedom untainted by law or morality or restraint.

Finally, Jace saw a series of images, wordless sense impressions unfettered by rational thought. He saw a dank chamber down in the undercity, found only by a twisting course through torch-lit tunnels. It was an area claimed by the Golgari, but was a place where the Rakdos occasionally made covert deals with other guilds. He saw a cloaked figure there in that mossy-draped chamber, hiring her to procure a certain Selesnya dignitary. He saw her traveling back to the Rough Crowd, selecting a gang of Rakdos ruffians, and leading them to the Cobblestand to acquire the Selesnya elf. He saw her instruct them to return her to that underground chamber. And he saw her reminding them that the elf woman should remain unharmed.

Thank you, he said inside her mind.

Jace separated their two minds, returning to himself again. The two of them stood there opposite one another, chests heaving from the effort of their magical duel, still in poses of battle.

With the last of his effort, Jace summoned the simplest but most far-reaching illusion he could muster: the voices of Azorius officers.

“By order and authority of the Azorius Senate, I order you all to halt,” came the booming voice, as strongly as Jace could project it into all the Rakdos warriors’ minds. “Cease all action forthwith, and prepare to be detained in accordance with all governing laws and statutes.”

It wasn’t much, and he was pretty sure he was getting the legal wording wrong, but it was enough. There was a moment of confusion as the Rakdos swiveled around, looking for the Azorius officers and hissing with bloodlust. Jace shoved aside a couple of the Rakdos warriors, blended into the night, and disappeared.

THE PATH BELOW

An elderly viashino with whited-over eyes stood slumped against a streetlamp. His scales had once been burnished red, but were pale and chipped by age.

“Evening,” said Jace.

The viashino turned his head toward the sound. His eyes stared ahead. “I can’t help but agree,” grunted the viashino. “All the evidence does point that way.”

The encounter with Exava at the Rough Crowd had led Jace here, to the gloomy, Golgari-controlled part of town. The décor matched what Jace had seen in the shreds of the blood witch’s memory. Somewhere near here, he could enter the undercity and find the chamber where the Rakdos had taken Emmara.

Jace blinked at the viashino man. “You wouldn’t happen to know—where’s the nearest entrance to the undercity?”

“I would happen to know,” the lizardfolk said. “Yes.”

“Am I close?”

“A better question would be—are you alone? Not a place to go out seeking without a good entourage. The shadows down there are alive, you know. They’ll call your name. Spiders you can’t even see will crawl all over your skin. Biting things will eat your mind.”

“I can handle myself alone.”

“Can you? Well, then. I am honored to be the last living thing you’ll ever see. Are there any last words you’d like me to remember?”

“That’s all right.”

“That’s what you’re going with?” The viashino turned his chin vaguely back and forth, his reptilian lips pursed. “Suit yourself. Not that it matters. I wasn’t going to remember them anyway.” He shifted his weight against the streetlamp. His eyes stared at nothing.

“So, please, sir, the entrance?”

“I expect you’re standing on it.”

Jace looked down. He was standing in the middle of the street, but the zigzagging pattern of the cobblestones changed to a subtle spiral just where he stood. Jace could now sense an enchantment on the road, a mystical trigger mechanism that could be activated by any mage. What exactly it triggered was unclear.

Jace prepared himself. It was time to put up stiffer defenses. He summoned up a spell and let it wash over his body. He watched his multiple shadows under the streetlights vanish, and then his own body along with them.

“You’re going to want to get yourself ready before you go down there,” the viashino man offered.

“I’m currently invisible to the senses,” said Jace. “A mind-cloaking spell.”

The viashino coughed. “Lotta stuff down under’s like me,” he said. “They don’t need eyes to find you. And certainly not a mind.”

“It’ll have to do.”

Jace directed a wisp of mana toward the spiraling pattern in the street. Stone scraped against stone, and the street uncoiled downwards, forming a kind of spiral staircase that descended into darkness. The undercity emitted a gasp of foul air.

“Well … evening,” said Jace.

The old viashino nodded, and Jace walked down the steps, leaving the surface behind.

Invisibility or no, Jace felt naked. His feet were transparent to his own senses, a trick of his spell, but they still made spreading concentric rings in the large, stagnant puddles that blanketed the tunnel floors. His body reflected no light, but his surface area still tore body-shaped outlines in the curtains of spider webs. His breath still warmed the chill air, leaving footprints of fog in the air.

He could sense the Golgari magic in the undercity lurking like a persistent spore. He looked to be moving through the fungus-overtaken ruins of some great library, broken white marble columns overcome with shelf fungus like fallen logs, slabs of shelving heaped into nests to shelter who knows what, brackish pools collecting in the pits and hollows of the chamber as the remains of a hundred thousand tomes decomposed into sludge.

The undercity teemed with black, chitinous insects the size of Jace’s fist, clambering over the ruins. Some of them unsheathed multiple pairs of scissoring wings and buzzed around Jace’s head, flicking their antennae. Shadows moved with too-heavy sounds, attached to unseen anatomies in the darkness. Bioluminescent plant-creatures crawled from puddle to puddle, stopping to nurse from the muck. Somewhere, the rungs of a metal ladder clanked, the sound echoing like drops of water through the tunnels.

It was odd, navigating like this. He used the fleeting details from Exava’s memory as a kind of map, but it was a poor one. He had to backtrack several times as he grew more and more lost. But when he found himself in a huge dank chamber lit by a few bouncing rays from overhead gratings, a sense of déjà vu embraced him. The water inside the crazily angled bronze pipes whispered like hushed voices. Jace recalled the musty smell of the flooded chamber through the blood witch’s memory, but experiencing it in person had a dreadful immediacy. This was the place where the Rakdos warriors were to bring Emmara. But there was no sign of her. He walked on.

Jace stepped from one raised stone to another, avoiding the dark puddles of water. Despite the clear Golgari influence, the presence of the Izzet guild was just as strong down here. The half-mad inventors of the Izzet League had threaded miles of pipework under the city, providing essential elements to the districts. Somewhere there were enormous thrumming generators, the pumping organs of the plane, where task teams of mages and elementals plied practical magic to maintain Ravnica’s infrastructure.

Much of the pipework, bolted over lichen-covered masonry with shiny brass, looked new. Jace thought about the rising strife between the guilds, and here it was: Izzet engineering running through Golgari tunnels, a physical manifestation of the guilds’ struggle for dominance. Jace followed the pipes into adjoining tunnels, listening to the liquid inside as it murmured and gurgled like voices.

Beetles crawled over Jace’s invisible body. It wasn’t clear whether his invisibility spell, which relied on manipulating the mind, worked on them, or if they simply didn’t care, and were perfectly happy to clamber over invisible surfaces, such as his legs. His wet cloak clung to his body, visible or no, and the stench of this place was overpowering.

Jace traced his transparent hand along the new Izzet pipes that traced along the tunnel. It wasn’t just water that flowed inside the pipeline. He could sense mana, raw and strong, flowing through them as well, perceptible only to his faculties as a mage. More accurately, he sensed that the mana was flowing parallel with the pipes—the magical energy was not tamed by the metal conduits. The pipes had been built around the flow of mana. The mana was not just a simple directional current, but a complex braid of magical potential that wound through the tunnel and into the next chamber, carving its own path.

As the chamber opened up again, the mana current rose to the ceiling, tracing along an archway that was crowned by an ancient stonecarving of the Golgari guild symbol. Jace wondered if Ravnica had always had such odd mana currents running through it, and how many mages knew of it.

That’s when he saw the bodies.

Judging by their horned masks and spiked, harlequin-painted armor, they were Rakdos warriors. One was crumpled against the wall of the chamber. Another was face-down in a mound of decomposing rubble. Another had been torn in two at the waist and tossed in different directions. They couldn’t have died more than an hour ago; blood still oozed from their wounds, and their flesh had not begun to decompose.

The bodies held his attention so completely that he didn’t notice the huge sewer troll that almost walked over him.

Ral Zarek stood in the middle of the busy plaza, scowling at the scroll he held between two mizzium metal rods. Around him, other Izzet researchers conducted experiments, chattering among one another, drawing some strange looks from passersby. Ral looked over the scrawled figures on the scroll. They were a series of demands from his guildmaster, but the dragon’s words often seemed like riddles. Communicating with the draconic genius was never easy. Niv-Mizzet wasn’t a mentor or a role model for Ral—he was a nuisance. It forced Ral to expand his thinking, but he knew more than Niv-Mizzet ever could: he knew of the existence of other planes.

“Excuse me, Guildmage Zarek?”

One of the researchers, a woman with a multi-lensed contraption on her head, was indicating her gauntlet. The gauntlet was made of the alchemical metal mizzium, and crackled with energy, making her white-streaked hair stand on end.

“Yes? What did you find?”

“The mana braid is interrupted near here,” she said.

“Where does it go?” Ral asked. “Into the sewer?”

“No, we already checked. Skreeg explored three levels down. This one just seems to disappear.”

Ral scowled. “Can’t just disappear,” he said.

They had tracked the twisting thread of mana through half the district. This was a new development. This invisible cord of mana seemed to be a way to discern the route of the Implicit Maze. The phenomenon had traced its way down main thoroughfares, then zigzagged away in apparently random fashion, cutting through buildings, up over the foliage of an urban park, through smog-choked industrial districts, and down into the tunnels of the undercity. But now the trail had run cold.

Ral looked at the riddles on the directive again. The obsessed dragon clearly thought this was an important area to search. The way the scrawls swooped and turned across the scroll, vertically and horizontally and every direction at once, looked to Ral like a knowing smirk. He wadded up the scroll and shoved it into his sleeve.

Ral paced across the brick pavers, peering into the patterns, half-hoping that some message would be spelled out in the street. It was not. The other mages watched.

Ral blinked. He squinted up into the sun, which ringed a tall spire like a halo. Birdlike shapes soared in loops against the sky. “Check the tower,” he said.

The other mages all looked up, covering their eyes with their hands. They murmured.

“The mana braid may indeed go vertical here,” said the researcher whom he had been questioning, looking into her gauntlet. “But Guildmage Zarek, we’re unable to proceed.”

“It’s just—” He took a breath. “It’s just ‘Zarek.’ Not ‘Guildmage.’ Are we clear? And I’m sorry, but did I just hear an Izzet mage say tell me he was unable to attempt something?”

“It’s just that … that’s an Azorius aerie. They rear griffins for the sky hussars up there.”

Ral shrugged. “Conjure a detonation device. Hurl it into the upper tower. Does that sound like an experiment worth running to you, Guildmage?”

The researcher looked at the other mages, then up at the tower, then back to Ral.

“I’ve talked to the Firemind directly. This project is his top priority. Do you know that that means? It means it’s yours, as well. We solve this maze, and the Izzet will control one of the greatest—” He stopped and lowered his voice. “We’ll control everything.”

“But sir,” another mage spoke up. “It’s not just the Azorius. It’s the griffins.”

Clouds swarmed the sky, blotting out the sun. Ral’s face fell into shadow.

“Nevermind. Leave this to me.”

Ral held out his hands and gritted his teeth. Within moments, azure lightning sizzled through the clouds. A bolt broke apart and branched down from the thunderheads, striking the steeples of four buildings across four different neighborhoods at once. The lightning rebounded off the steeples, converging at a point in the air above the skyline, producing a deafening crack of thunder. At the point where the lightning bolts came together, a being emerged—a being made of storm. Its body was dense gray cloud and its eyes and mouth were lightning.

Ral reached out to the elemental, from blocks away, and it responded. Its voice was a hurricane roar and its limbs were tornadic winds. Ral sliced his arm across the sky, pointing to the Azorius aerie. The storm elemental responded again, acknowledging the command with a peal of thunder. It rumbled down out of the sky toward the Azorius building. Gales chopped the air. Ral could see young griffins taking wing into the storm, and tumbling away like flung toys.

The other Izzet mages yelled to Ral, but he couldn’t hear them over the rushing winds.

At Ral’s command, the storm elemental descended on the spire. The creature snapped open its jaws, releasing a bolt of lightning that snaked down to the building with a flash. The top of the structure exploded with a blossom of sparks. Over the thunder and wind, Ral could hear the shrieks of griffins.

The side of the tower blew out, hurling chunks of masonry out into the plaza. People ran, covering their heads from the falling wreckage.

A phalanx of hussars appeared, gleaming weapons at the ready. They flanked an administrator, some sort of subminister or legislatocrat, who began reading a list of grievances and bylaws which they claimed Ral had broken. This struck Ral as extraordinarily funny.

Above them, the storm elemental raked at the tower with claws of lightning, leaving slashes in the stone and scattering all the remaining griffin mounts in every direction. The elemental cast its electric gaze down, and Ral looked up and beckoned it to him. It thundered a reply, and floated down, blanketing the plaza in a chaos of wind shot through with wild magical currents.

The subminster read her list of demands dutifully until the winds blew her scroll into the air and lightning blasted it to ash. All the Azorius faces wore grimaces. One by one, they withdrew.

Once the plaza was empty but for the Izzet mages, Ral squeezed his fist and opened it. The storm elemental whisked itself away into the sky, dissipating into mist. Thunder rolled in the distance, somewhere far beyond the horizon.

“Guildmage—er, Zarek, sir,” said the young mage, after the storm had subsided.

Ral didn’t turn.

“You were right. The mana braid continues up into the air from the trail we had followed. It passes through the tower, and then proceeds at an angle down to an adjacent rooftop.”

“We move on, then,” said Ral.

“There’s something else, sir. Researcher Klama died while fighting the Azorius, sir. She was trapped in one of their detention spells. When we, uh, dispersed the lawmages, she couldn’t get out. She suffocated.”

“We have much more to do,” said Ral. “Let’s not let the trail go cold again.”

The Golgari guild symbol was painted in white across the troll’s face like an albino insect mask. He was tall enough that Jace looked him straight in the chest. A bloom of shelf mushrooms grew across the hulking creature’s back and shoulders. His muscled body was crisscrossed with scar tissue—a burn scar on his shoulder, a jagged slash wound down his thigh, the scar of some kind of puncture on the side of his head—all healed over in rough, rigid scars. It was clear this troll got himself in a lot of fights, and it looked like his body was very good at healing damage, even if not prettily.

Judging by the way that the troll walked straight toward Jace without acknowledging him, it seemed that the mind-cloaking spell was doing its job. Jace kept his breath as silent as possible and tried to formulate a plan to exit before he was discovered, but the way out was blocked by the formidable troll.

The troll sniffed the air, huffing great breaths in through his nostrils. His biceps flexed as he swung his club back and forth in the dim tunnel, tearing through finger-thick strands of spider webbing. Jace remained as still as he could. He knew he should try to remain calm, so that he wouldn’t perspire and spread his scent around the chamber, and so that the thudding of his heartbeat wouldn’t give him away. Any evidence he revealed of himself might weaken his diverting illusion and let the troll notice him. But his body seemed to think this would be a good time to flood with panic. A beetle the size of Jace’s fist clambered up his leg, content to treat him as any other immobile obstacle. If the troll noticed, he didn’t give any indication.

Then without warning, the troll slammed his club into the wall of the tunnel, smashing another giant beetle to pulp. He grabbed the greenish remains that oozed from its shattered exoskeleton and wiped it on his tongue. He swallowed and smacked his lips indelicately. Jace pressed his hand to his mouth, but couldn’t quite stifle a groan.

The troll whirled around. “Who goes?” it roared. “Come out, darkling. I can smell the meat in you.”

Jace could feel his illusion dissolving. The troll’s senses were too good to be tricked by the delusive spell, and in moments he would be in clear view again. He thought through what other spells might help protect him here, but in the panic of the moment, he was coming up short. He pressed his back against the Izzet pipes, hearing the hissing of their pressurized contents, and tried to avoid the troll’s club.

“There you are, little darkling,” said the troll.

Eye contact. He was visible. Jace prepared countermagic on impulse, but that would do nothing against the troll’s massive club.

“You invade my gate? Is that it? You bring your meat into Swarm land, thinking you’ll best me and take what’s ours?”

Jace looked around, and grabbed a jagged dagger from one of the dead Rakdos warriors, just to feel armed. Then he had an idea.

The troll laughed. “Go on,” he said. “Take a swipe at Varolz. Hit as hard as you can.” He spread his arms wide, exposing his scar-laced chest, and grinned needles.

Jace turned to the wall behind him, jammed the dagger into the brass pipes, and dived away. A flood of pressurized, superheated water sprayed out of the rent, crashing into the troll. Jace rolled, trying to maneuver around the distracted troll, and recovered his feet again.

The stream of water had already fallen to a trickle. A cloud of steam cleared, and the troll still stood, chuckling in deep, chest-shaking grunts. The scalding water had eaten away several layers of the troll’s chest, exposing glistening muscle, but his skin was already spreading in regenerative patches over the wound.

“Now Varolz’s turn,” said the troll.

“Jace!” called a woman’s voice from the darkness. “Get down!”

Nevertheless, the troll’s club found its target. Jace’s world became a blinding explosion of pain, then a black void, as he fell limp onto numb stone.

When Jace awoke he was looking into the face of a monster. But it wasn’t Varolz the troll.

The creature looking down at him was an enormous, vaguely humanoid mass of vines, foliage, and white marble. He was still in the dank Golgari chamber, but this monster wasn’t Golgari. It bloomed with life, a sculpture made of plant matter, animated by an inner light.

A hand touched him. To Jace’s immense relief, was Emmara, kneeling at his side.

“I thought you weren’t going to make it,” she said. She was weaving spells, healing his wounds. Just like old times.

Jace looked up at the gigantic nature elemental again, and back at Emmara. “I thought you’d been kidnapped,” Jace said.

“Change your thinking,” Emmara said dryly. “That’s what you’re good at, isn’t it?”

“The Rakdos … didn’t the Rakdos take you?”

“Well, I went with them, but by choice. They crashed their way into the room at the inn and made a show of breaking the place up. They knew my name, and they tried to threaten me. They told me to come with them. That’s not their style—the Rakdos are killers, not kidnappers. I think someone must have put them up to it.”

Jace thought of the cloaked figure he had seen in the blood witch’s memory. “Someone did. But I don’t know who yet. But why did you go with them?”

“Because of you. If it had just been me there at the inn, I could have dispensed with them immediately. But you were busy destroying your own mind.”

“I was … what?”

“They thrashed the room, and you fell, but you didn’t wake up. Then one of them had you by the throat. They were going to kill you. So I made a deal with them.

“They left you alone,” Emmara continued, “and I let them lead me down here. They brought me here, and we waited. I think they were meant to hand me over to someone else. But instead I summoned my friend here, and he killed them all. He was enough to drive off that Golgari troll, too.”

Jace took in the massive Selesnya elemental. It was bowing down to fit, even in the high-ceilinged chamber. It was powerful magic to summon such a creature. Jace had seen her construct small living constructs before, but those were toys. He had never seen her accomplish a summoning like this.

Emmara looked up at the elemental, and bowed her head to it. It returned the bow with its great head, and she let her summoning spell lapse. The creature glowed for a moment, lighting the chamber. Then its massive bulk became transparent as the magic dissipated out of it. The elemental dissolved into the air, leaving behind only a few green leaves that floated down to the chamber floor.

It was a lot for Jace to sort out, and he was sure he wasn’t understanding it all. But there was a detail Emmara had mentioned that he understood the least. She had said that when they were at the inn, he was destroying his own mind. Before Jace had a chance to ask her what she meant, a presence joined them.

A vampire appeared out of the darkness, as quiet as a breeze. He was stripped to the waist despite the chill underground, and his eyes reflected light like a cat’s. He floated effortlessly down from the upper reaches of the chamber, and alighted on the chamber floor near the two of them.

“I am Mirko Vosk,” the vampire said. “And it appears you’ve bested those Rakdos lackeys. Thank you. You’ve spared me the trouble.”

“You’re Dimir,” said Emmara.

“Unlucky for you. But it’s time I collected you, my dear, as my master does not like to be kept waiting. And you, Beleren, will be a bonus—he’s had his eye on you for some time.”

Kavin climbed tier after tier of luminous stairs, slowly spiraling his way up through one of the towers of New Prahv. He had a writ of passage in hand, signed by the head of the Azorius gate-guard, and he showed it to each bureaucrat, scribe, or lawmage he encountered. Anyone looking at the vedalken man would have said his face looked placid, but there was a hardness in him that could have ground stone to dust.

A pair of flanking guards opened the door for him. Lavinia’s office was surprisingly compact.

“It’s been a long time, Kavin,” said Officer Lavinia. “Tea?”

Kavin walked in and sat down opposite her small desk. “Thank you for meeting with me.”

“You said you have information for me? About Jace Beleren?”

“I do.”

“Where is he?”

“I do not know his current whereabouts.”

“When did you last see him?”

“It was three days ago. He brought me to an inn near his sanctum, where I worked for him on his research. But that sanctum has been destroyed. I assumed you knew that much.”

“What kind of research did he conduct there?”

“I cannot recall many of the specifics. At that last encounter, he destroyed most of my memories related to what we had discovered.”

“He is capable of magic that destroys memories?”

“Yes.”

“And he used this magic to prevent you from remembering your research?”

“Yes. But as he performed the memory destruction spell, I fled. I was able to record some notes to myself before the spell was complete.” Kavin produced a scroll of hastily-scrawled lettering and set it on the desk. “I don’t understand everything I wrote, but it’s written in my hand. I wrote of clues found carved in city buildings, and of a message written in an ancient Azorius code. I wrote of a path that the Izzet are attempting to discover, that could lead to power that could unbalance the guilds. And at the end, I wrote your name.”

“I’m very glad that you did.”

“You realize I have no way of knowing that any of what I wrote is true. I still feel that these notes might be part of some elaborate joke. But I thought that it was something that should be brought to the attention of the proper authorities.”

Lavinia set down her cup and folded her hands. “You should come back to us, Kavin. You were a good lawmage. We could use you.”

“That’s not my life anymore. Besides, the Guildpact is gone. Old Prahv is gone. I’ve no place in this guild anymore.”

“Are you sure it isn’t sentimentality, Kavin? Loyalty to that man you call Master Beleren?”

“Don’t insult me. How loyal could I be? I’m here, aren’t I?”

“Yes, you are. Kavin, would you be interested in helping us contacting Beleren?”

“You mean setting a trap.”

“I mean doing what it takes to restore order in this district.”

“He may not be of much use. He was planning on destroying his own memories, as well. He might know less than I do.”

“Did you know that a high-ranking Selesnya official was with Beleren, on the night the sanctum was destroyed?”

“Yes, I remember that much. His friend, Emmara Tandris.”

“A favorite of Trostani, the dryad sisters. Were you aware that she was abducted on that same night? And that neither have been seen since?”

“I was not. You’ve confirmed this?”

“Much more is going on than you know, Kavin. Come back to us.”

“But it’s like I told you, Lavinia. He won’t know anything about this maze. If he’s anything like me, he’s lost his mind.”

“That may be. And maybe that’s all the better for him. Right now that might be the only thing that’s keeping him alive.”

TO BE CONTINUED …

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Doug Beyer started out as a MAGIC: THE GATHERING® fan, then became a web developer for magicthegathering.com, then a prolific flavor text writer, and eventually, a writer and creative designer for the Magic™ R&D creative team. He resides in Seattle, Washington.