Dragon's Maze

DOUG BEYER DRAGON’S MAZE The Secretist, Part Three

ONE WAY

Jace’s back slammed against the wall of a sealed stone cell. He was trapped in an exitless Dimir prison, miles below the city with two vampires, the assassin Mirko Vosk and the recently-turned form of his compatriot Kavin. He was bait thrown into a shark tank. The two bloodsuckers approached him to drain him, first of the contents of his mind, and then of his veins.

Jace always had one escape open to him, as long as he had time to muster the will to travel. But it meant breaking his mental connection with Emmara. It meant abandoning her. And she was trapped as well.

“I have to leave you,” Jace projected into Emmara’s mind. “But I want you to listen to me very carefully.”

“Don’t you dare give me a moving final speech,” Emmara’s thoughts came back to him. “Whatever plight you’re in, fight it. I have no desire to be witness to your last words.”

The vampires advanced toward him, their faces painted the color of a garish bruise by his globe of blue light. Jace had a momentary thought that his attackers represented an escape of another kind. They would drain him, take away all the responsibility of handling this Ravnican disaster in progress. They would purge him of the knowledge of the maze again, the need to care, the need to persist or strive. He could slowly drown in oblivion, and let others solve the Implicit Maze, stop Lazav, handle Niv-Mizzet’s schemes … Maybe it didn’t all have to fall on him.

But if he did nothing, the consequences were plain. Jace saw it in flashes, as clearly as if it had already happened. Emmara would be imprisoned by the shapeshifter Lazav, and when she became too problematic, he would kill her. Niv-Mizzet would hold his public race through the maze, and teams from all ten guilds would cut as many throats as they needed to in order to win. Niv-Mizzet would have the advantage of the most information, but Dimir agents would steal what they needed to know, if they hadn’t already. Lazav would use the maze to claim power, and with no Guildpact to stop him, he would succeed.

He needed to concentrate. Emmara needed him. He found that was the simplest thought to focus on: Emmara needed him. Emmara was captured. Emmara would die.

“I am not planning on dying,” Jace thought to her. “Not yet. But I need you to do something. You have to run the maze for the Selesnya. You have to be selected. Do you understand?”

“What? Jace, that’s never going to happen. I’m a traitor to the Conclave.”

“You have to be chosen. It has to be you.”

“Calomir, Jace. Trostani is going to choose Calomir.”

“Under no circumstances should it be Calomir—or the one who’s taken Calomir’s form. No. Trostani’s going to choose you.”

“Why would she do that?”

“Because you will be the only one who knows the route.”

The fangs were bright as the vampires made their move. Vosk leaped forward and wrapped his claws around Jace’s neck, prying him from the wall. Kavin dashed around behind Jace’s back and seized his wrists, twisting with unnatural strength and hyperextending ligaments in his shoulders.

Jace struggled to continue his thoughts. “I’m going to show you what you need to know. Use it. Take his place. You’re the one, Emmara. You have to be the one.”

“You don’t understand. I can’t.”

“Here it comes. Use it. Just keep moving.”

Jace flashed through the maze route in his mind, skipping from landmark to landmark, projecting each location into Emmara’s mind. An intersection on the Transguild Promenade. A long bridge near the Golgari gate. A path up the wide steps to the Azorius gate. A passage through a tunnel that bent and exited near the hellish Rakdos gate. Every twist and turn of the maze. As he rushed through the route, he sent those images to Emmara. He showed her almost the entire path through the Implicit Maze, crystallizing the images in her own memories.

“Jace, I can’t—”