Dragon's Maze

“If all succeed, then there shall be a Guildpact. But not like before.”

“What do you mean?”

“The most worthy shall actualize the Guildpact.”

The bailiff’s body swirled with light, which Jace felt as a pressure in his mind. Jace felt great power behind the bailiff’s presence, and fatigue crept over him as he kept his mind connected to it.

“All right, so the winner will rekindle the Guildpact somehow. Good. That’s good. But what happens if the guilds do not succeed?”

The bailiff shimmered. He blinked, but his eyes were still empty holes. “Then I shall deliver the verdict.”

“What is the verdict?”

“It is the Supreme Verdict of Azor.”

“But what does that entail?”

“If, in the course of the Assessment, one or more of the guilds’ chosen do not appear for the final sentencing, then the Guildpact cannot be actualized.”

“Wait. They all have to appear? They all have to make it here, to the Forum of Azor?

”

“That is the Assessment. That is what is meant by the success of all.”

“And if they don’t? No Guildpact?”

“All will have failed the Assessment. The will of Azor will be to deliver the verdict.”

“And you can’t tell me anything more about the verdict? Is it dangerous?”

“The Supreme Verdict of Azor always fits the crime.”

Jace took a breath. The bailiff’s words whirled through his thoughts. He turned and scanned around the forum. Guild representatives worked the recruiting kiosks around the forum’s outer ring, calling out to passersby who looked mostly disinterested. They were real, flesh-and-blood people, totally unlike the magically-constructed bailiff. Communicating with the bailiff felt like interacting with an extremely logical ghost, a presence made of logic, the embodiment of a strict rule.

Except that this embodiment didn’t seem particularly forthcoming about specifics. This verdict was still a mystery. Jace had thought that by learning the maze’s route, he knew how to ensure Emmara’s victory—but now it seemed that something could go horribly wrong if the maze-runners did not successfully advance all the way to the end of the maze. Jace tried to think like the mage Azor. What use was it to create a bailiff to carry out your supreme verdict, if you didn’t give it the ability to explain what that was? What use was it to create all of these conditions and potentially dire consequences, if no one could know what they were?

Azor must have had his reasons. The Guildpact was a force for stability on Ravnica, the mortar that kept its bricks fused together, and he must have feared its loss terribly. He was the founder of the guild of prudence and law—the thought of the senseless chaos of ten short-sighted, clashing guilds would have weighed on him more than any other.

“Thank you,” Jace thought to the being in the rock.

He let his communion with the bailiff fade, but he could still sense the being’s presence there in the stone, waiting. The bailiff, or the magic behind it, felt immensely powerful, like a massive quantity of mana crushed into a singularity and contained there. Maybe it was just his unanswered questions about the verdict, but he felt a sense of dread, as if he were standing on a bomb.

Whatever the nature of this power stored at the Forum of Azor, it was profound, primordial, and plane-altering. If the power of the bailiff was any indication, the verdict was something to be avoided at all costs. Jace needed to find Emmara, but even before that, he needed to know more about what he was getting her into. He thought he knew someone he could ask.

***

As Jace left the floating stone in the center of the Forum of Azor, a figure who appeared as an elderly woman watched him go. The figure was not a woman, nor truly a man, but a being who could take the shape of either. Wearing the form of the old woman, Lazav climbed the stairs up to the top of the floating stone, and with a spell he contacted the intelligence within.

“Greetings,” said the being within the stone. “I am the bailiff. I can provide information.”

“Tell me everything,” Lazav replied.