Ravnica Read online

  A darkness rises from the depths.

  For ten thousand years, the City of Ravnica’s nine guilds have been bound to peace by the Guildpact. But when important people start turning up dead and the League of Wojek Kos has served for over fifty years tries to stop him from solving the mystery, he finds that Guildpact or no, he is all that stands between the City of Ravnica and total destruction.

  Cory J. Herndon begins a complex story of intrigue, murder, and deception in the danger-filled streets of Ravnica.

  Ravnica Cycle, Book I

  RAVNICA

  ©2005 Wizards of the Coast LLC

  All characters in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  This book is protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America. Any reproduction or unauthorized use of the material or artwork contained herein is prohibited without the express written permission of Wizards of the Coast LLC.

  MAGIC: THE GATHERING, WIZARDS OF THE COAST, and their respective logos are trademarks of Wizards of the Coast LLC, in the U.S.A. and other countries.

  All Wizards of the Coast characters and the distinctive likenesses thereof are property of Wizards of the Coast LLC.

  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2005922496

  eISBN: 978-0-7869-5712-5

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  ASIA, PACIFIC, & LATIN AMERICA Hasbro UK Ltd

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  Visit our web site at www.wizards.com

  v3.0_r1

  Dedication

  For S.P. Miskowski,

  who always figures it out before the ending.

  Acknowledgments

  The following people made this book possible,

  even if they don’t know it (but most of them do):

  Susan J. Morris, whose infinite patience

  is equaled only by her editorial skills.

  Peter Archer, who offered me a trilogy of my very own—

  and then turned out to be serious.

  Brady Dommermuth, who let me run rampant

  over a perfectly good plane.

  Scott McGough, who knows how to tweak the little details.

  The artists, editors, designers, creators, and all-around stand-up

  folks who design the cards, make the cards, paint the pictures,

  write the flavor text, edit the words, and publish the books.

  Special thanks to Bayliss and Remo,

  general advisors on general investigation.

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  INCIDENT REPORT: 10/13MZ/430221

  FILED: 17 Griev 9943 Z.C.

  PRIMARY: Cons. Kos, Agrus

  SECONDARY: Lt. Zunich, Myczil

  A falcon the color of rusty blood delivered the call just before the end of the day shift, and it was as much dumb luck as destiny that the bird alighted upon the shoulder of a wojek constable named Agrus Kos. Only Kos and his partner were in the squad room at the time, wrapping up the day’s scrolls during the brief peace before the night shift had assembled, and after the day shift had for the most part left. By chance, Kos had been closest to the window. The avian messenger’s choice of perch gave the lawman his first case as lead investigator after more than a few years spent keeping peace in the City of Ravnica.

  If Kos and his partner had finished their duty logs on time and left the Leaguehall a few minutes earlier, the young lawman might have missed it. Had his partner, Lieutenant Myczil Zunich, refused the order by right of seniority and decided to call it a day, they might have ended that evening as they ended many long weeks, with a few rounds at the Backwater. They would have reviewed the day’s altercations, violations, and leftover mysteries with a mug of hot bumbat and the freedom to speak their minds and blow off a little steam. More likely they would have gone their separate ways: the lieutenant to his wife and newborn child, the young constable to a small apartment, where he would have studied for a promotion exam. The next day, both of them would have been alive.

  After the call, the surviving partner never blamed the bird for doing its job, but for the rest of his life he did remember the moment its talons dug into the shoulder of that young, overeager wojek. The blood-red raptor was the first image in his nightmares for many years to come. The rest were far worse.

  A mounted wojek sky patrol over the abandoned Parha industrial quarter sent the original message. The Orzhov Syndicate had slated Parha for evacuation, demolition, and reclamation, and the entire zone was supposed to be empty. But over the last two weeks skyjek roc-riders had observed some rough-looking types, most likely a gang of Rakdos cultists, coming and going from one of the many large, empty structures in this run-down section of the Tenth. Today, for the first time, the skyjeks had seen the thrill-killers loading what looked like two or three zeppelids’ worth of shipping containers from the backs of pack beasts and into the biggest remaining structure in the quarter, a huge shipping warehouse. Rakdos were not known for their interest in moving cargo. They consumed the flesh of their own kin as readily as a wojek ate roundcakes.

  “If the Rakdos are moving crates,” Zunich said, “Odds are they’re not filled with toys for the orphanage.” He didn’t have to say what could be in those crates. The best-case scenario would be a weapons cache. The worst could be. … Actually, Kos wasn’t sure he could imagine a “worst” as bad as whatever the Rakdos could conceive.

  But membership in the Rakdos cult was not in and of itself a crime. This was still Ravnica. The Guildpact Statutes, City Ordinances, and other regulations existed to protect the guilds so they could protect the relatively peaceful development of an entire civilization. Over almost ten millennia, their prosperity had covered the entire surface of the plane in some form or another of urban development. The Rakdos were the prime source of heavy labor, and their mines stripped ore from the depths, where the remaining patches of exposed Ravnican stone offered precious metals, gems, and minerals. They provided butchers for the Golgari killing floors. They were mercenaries, bodyguards, and slaves for anyone with the gold, regardless of guild. Nor did trespassing warrant the law’s attention so long as the owner of the property, the Orzhov in this case, didn’t report the violation. The Syndicate had yet to do so. However, a black-market operation run by death-worshiping homicidal maniacs was another matter entirely. It could even explain the Orzhov’s reluctance to report the incident, since smuggling was but one of the many operations dominated by the Guild of Deals.

  There remained, however, the matter of confirmation, and that’s where Zunich and Kos came in. Without confirmation or evidence of a crime from ’jeks on the ground, the shift captain would not approve an assault squad. Before tying up an elite strajek unit, the lucky pair would investigate on foot and send the falcon for back up if warranted.

  The wojeks took some time to scout the surroun
ding vicinity and confirm that the rest of Parha remained as abandoned as ever. The rain began shortly after they arrived, a slow, gentle drizzle that quickly became a downpour.

  They took a few minutes to observe the alleged Rakdos hideout from a concealed vantage point and checked for patrolling guards. There didn’t appear to be any, but Kos briefly caught a glimpse of a face, possibly goblin, in one of the upper windows. It was gone a second later.

  The warehouse was a simple, box-shaped building like so many in this run-down sector of Ravnica’s Tenth District. The sagging assembly of wood and brick occupied most of the block that contained it, and over time its hard luck had seemingly seeped into every other building in the area. Boarded-up restaurants and storefronts huddled together around the warehouse as if for warmth. An abandoned construction pit to the east had flooded over time and probably concealed at least a few desperate aquatics in ramshackle huts, unable to survive the long journey to a larger body of water. What had probably been a church to some forgotten god crumbled under millennia of creeping growth and rot due north of their target.

  The upper tier of the warehouse’s windows no longer held any glass—only shards. The walls around them bore large black scars from the raging fire that had rendered it worthless to the original owner decades ago. What remained of the large painted sign over the main doors read “Broz Shipping.” Eight windows and the visible entrance—a pair of heavy, wooden doors shaded by almost a third of the original awning—faced south toward a long, open street. The wojeks stepped into the middle of that street from their hidden observation post. Kos drew a silver baton and Zunich drew a short sword, and they marched up the ancient, wooden steps.

  The older of the two lawmen wore a white handlebar mustache and had the pinkish complexion of a heavy drinker. The color of his pasty skin stood in harsh contrast to the scarlet leather and golden wojek sigil of his duty uniform. Myczil Zunich took the left side of the door and held his sword ready. The lieutenant motioned his partner to the door. Kos, just entering his second year wearing the ten-pointed star, did his best to maintain calm.

  “Ready?” Zunich whispered, and Kos nodded. “Good. You’ve got the honors, Constable. And remember,” the lieutenant added with a nod to the silver baton gripped in Kos’s sweating hand, “the silver end points away from you.”

  The younger partner nodded again and forced a half grin for Zunich’s benefit. He shifted the pendrek into his left hand and turned to face the door. Kos reached into one of the pouches on his belt, pulled out a pinch of red and silver powder, and flicked it into a cloud that spread over the doors and stuck to the frame. The dust that settled onto the door fell in a pattern resembling the first letter of the word “death.” The letter was three feet high.

  “Forty, fifty victims,” Kos whispered. “Maybe more.”

  “That dust only counts to fifty. Be careful,” Zunich replied.

  Kos took a step back and pounded on the heavy, wooden slats three times with the butt of his pendrek. They waited almost half a minute, then Kos tried again. Nothing. The warehouse was silent as a tomb. Kos suspected that the blood-dust might have been all too accurate.

  With a nod from Zunich, Kos knocked on unresponsive hardwood a third time and called into the warehouse with his best drill sergeant’s bellow.

  “This is the League of Wojek! This building has been condemned, and any occupants are in violation of Guildpact Statutes and City Ordinances! You have ten seconds to—”

  The door swung open and slammed into the outer wall of the warehouse with a crash. On its way around, the edge of the door caught Kos’s baton and knocked the silver end of the pendrek into the rookie’s chin, sending him tumbling over backward onto the hard stone and sending Hul the falcon flapping for the safety of Zunich’s shoulder. A tall, ram-horned half-demon leaped over Kos, its jaws hanging open in silent terror, and disappeared from Kos’s vertical field of vision. Seconds later, the scream was cut short by the sound of Zunich’s sword slicing through flesh, followed by a thud as the Rakdos corpse hit the wet street. It wasn’t pretty, but lethal force was the rule when dealing with an enraged Rakdos of any species.

  “And that,” his mentor said, “is why we don’t stand in front of the door when we knock, Constable Kos. This isn’t necrobiology, you know.”

  The elder partner offered Kos no assistance in getting up from the ground. He never did—and Kos, for one reason or another, often found himself on the floor in Zunich’s presence. Last night, it had been a lost drinking contest. Today, it was a simple rookie mistake that had almost gotten Kos killed. The day wasn’t over yet.

  Zunich stepped over the younger man and pressed his back against the wall alongside the door, where Kos knew he should have been when he knocked. His nerves had made him sloppy. The lieutenant poked his head cautiously around the edge of the doorframe.

  “Holy mother of Krokt!” Zunich gasped.

  Zunich was not a man who gasped easily. The younger ’jek scrambled to his feet and joined his partner, and for a few seconds both stood frozen in the doorway.

  The darkened warehouse was utterly silent except for the random dripping of blood that pooled lazily on the floor. Every plop sent a jolt of nausea into Kos’s gut. Myczil Zunich had the best record in the Tenth, bar none, and he was often called to the most important or simply most baffling cases, partner in tow. Kos had seen an orc kitchen stocked with raw, sliced, once-sentient viashino steaks; been first on the scene of a Gruul murder-suicide that started in the distant tower-tops of the Reaches and ended with a pair of sudden stops on the cobblestone; and taken eyewitness accounts from stunned Magewrights when their experiments went wrong in the worst possible way. He thought he’d seen a lot.

  But the scene before him was by far the most grisly thing he’d ever laid eyes on, and the image would stay with him for the rest of his life.

  “Lieutenant … they’re all—”

  “Yeah,” the older ’jek said. “Counting that one that just used you for a springboard, I count … twenty-two? Hard to say. That’s a lot of meat. More than twenty, that’s for sure.”

  “How can you be so sure?” Kos asked, trying to keep what little he’d managed for breakfast from coming back for another pass. “The powder said—”

  “The powder isn’t infallible. Count the heads. I count twenty—no, definitely twenty-two. Thought those two over there were the ogre’s feet for a minute. I see eyes and ears.”

  “I’ll take your word for it,” Kos said.

  He shot his eyes upward in an effort to avoid the horrific scene of slaughter that littered the center of the open warehouse, fighting nausea, and noticed ghosts. The Rakdos, to a man, ogre, troll, orc, and goblin, were dead.

  Some of them, however, didn’t seem to want to leave.

  “Sir!” Kos said and pointed unnecessarily at the glowing flock of specters.

  The ghosts represented roughly the same cross section of Rakdos lying in assorted pieces before them. Kos caught himself staring into the tiny white eyes of the glowing, translucent shape of a troll, its massive shoulders hunched as if in shame, and its empty eye sockets like pits.

  Zunich placed a gloved hand on Kos’s baton and forced Kos to lower it. “At ease,” he growled and eyed the specters above them. “They’re the only witnesses we’ve got, for all the good they’ll do us.”

  “But look around,” Kos said, trying not to breathe in the stink of the warehouse. “We should be seeing ’seekers all over the place. Those things look—I don’t know, peaceful.”

  “Violence is pretty much the only way to make a peaceful killguilder ghost,” Zunich said. “Rakdos woundseekers are rare. They expect to die this way.” He waved a hand at the troll-ghost, which descended over the carnage, its phantasmal eyes still locked with Kos’s. “Go on, Kos. You’re the lead. Ghosts won’t wait around to be questioned forever.”

  “Good point,” Kos said.

  “Ground him,” Zunich said.

  Kos opened another pouch on his
belt and pulled out a small puzzle-box about the size and shape of his fat, leather notebook. The younger ’jek palmed the box and backed slowly away while maintaining eye contact with the troll specter, which seemed hypnotized. When the ghost’s ethereal feet brushed against the small section of bare floor before the constable, Kos dropped to one knee and slammed the box onto the wooden flooring.

  There was no flash, no explosion, no bolt of lightning. There was no sound at all other than that of the box striking wood. The ghost stopped its slow, lazy descent, its insubstantial feet now stuck “inside” the box. The grounder popped open when Kos released it and its individual components rotated and shifted until the box’s shape was almost unrecognizable. The grounder never found the same bizarre shape twice; every ghost created a unique configuration.

  Finally, there was a sound—a low, rasping moan that seemed to come not from the horned phantom but from the puzzle-box itself. The call triggered a flurry of movement among the remaining Rakdos ghosts, while the troll’s ethereal form remained anchored by Kos’s trap. The glowing phantoms roiled and swirled overhead and disappeared through the floor like water through a bathtub drain.

  Ghost witnesses were valuable assets to a wojek investigation in most cases, but the ’jek had to choose the spirit he wanted to question carefully—once one was grounded, the others, if any, invariably fled. A ghost under the spell of a grounder could not refuse to answer a question, but the answers didn’t always make sense. Gazing into the tiny, white pinpricks in the troll spirit’s empty, black sockets, and seeing through the ghost’s eyes to the pile of corpses, Kos hoped he’d chosen well.

  Kos fished a stylus and a leather-bound notebook from an inner breast pocket. He flipped through a year’s worth of collected notes, most of them dictation for Zunich, and folded the book open at the first blank page. He made note of the hour, date, and location. To save time, he jotted down the estimated number of corpses and his best guess at the various causes of death.

  “Hello. My name’s Constable Kos,” he said to the ghost. It was a friendly demeanor he’d seen Zunich use, and having no previous experience outside of the academy it seemed the best initial approach. “I’d like your help in finding out who did this. Can you tell me your name?”