The Secretist Part 1

RETURN TO RAVNICA.

The Secretist.

Doug Beyer.

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 gla.s.s. 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 sanelooking 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 a.n.a.lytical spells and alchemical devices, lighting the chamber as magical energies shone through the damp haze.

Ral moved through the chamber, pus.h.i.+ng 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 sc.r.a.ping, like eggsh.e.l.l 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 sc.r.a.p 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 trespa.s.s 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 brandis.h.i.+ng 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 rea.s.sembled 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 finis.h.i.+ng 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."