The Secretist Part 5

THE PATH BELOW.

An elderly vias.h.i.+no 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 vias.h.i.+no turned his head toward the sound. His eyes stared ahead. "I can't help but agree," grunted the vias.h.i.+no. "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 decor 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 vias.h.i.+no 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 vias.h.i.+no 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 s.h.i.+fted 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 vias.h.i.+no man offered.

"I'm currently invisible to the senses," said Jace. "A mind-cloaking spell."

The vias.h.i.+no 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 sc.r.a.ped 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 vias.h.i.+no 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 deja 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 s.h.i.+ny bra.s.s, 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 pa.s.sersby. 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 fas.h.i.+on, 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 rus.h.i.+ng 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 pa.s.ses 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, smas.h.i.+ng 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 ma.s.sive 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 bra.s.s pipes, and dived away. A flood of pressurized, superheated water sprayed out of the rent, cras.h.i.+ng 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 ma.s.s 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?"