Guildpact Read online

  A dark sign lights the sky.

  Kos retired to the edge of society for some well-earned rest. But on the fringes, the Guildpact is fraying. The guilds rip each other apart, a terrible plague runs rampant, and someone has a secret worth killing for. Kos must uncover the secret before it destroys the Guildpact he’s spent his life protecting.

  Cory J. Herndon continues the intricate tale of

  murder, conspiracy, and adventure he first began in

  Ravnica.

  “Cory Herndon’s Guildpact is rousing tale of high (and low) adventure in Ravnica, the city that fills an entire world. The novel is much like Ravnica itself, immense in its scope, incredibly detailed, and churning with both political intrigue and magical danger. Featuring a large cast of unique and engaging characters (that includes everything from a humble goblin test pilot to the most feared and respected of elite wizards), the story’s momentum never lets up and the surprises keep coming as retired constable Agrus Kos continues to dig up Ravnica’s greatest secrets. Herndon has expertly crafted a sharp and fast-paced tale of good old-fashioned detective work set against a world of magic, madness, and monsters.”

  —Scott McGough, author of

  Guardian: Saviors of Kamigawa

  Ravnica Cycle, Book II

  GUILDPACT

  ©2006 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.

  Published by 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.

  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2005928110

  eISBN: 978-0-7869-5709-5

  U.S., CANADA, EUROPEAN HEADQUARTERS

  ASIA, PACIFIC, & LATIN AMERICA Hasbro UK Ltd

  Wizards of the Coast LLC Caswell Way

  P.O. Box 707 Newport, Gwent NP9 0YH

  Renton, WA 98057-0707 GREAT BRITAIN

  +1-800-324-6496 Save this address for your records.

  Visit our web site at www.wizards.com

  v3.0_r2

  Dedication

  For Dad, who taught me everything there is to know about bam-sticks.

  Acknowledgements

  The following signatories made Guildpact possible:

  Susan J. Morris, the editor;

  Brady Dommermuth, of the Magic creative team;

  the artists, writers, editors, freelancers, and other

  professional folk who create and produce

  Magic: The Gathering games and books;

  and the past and present residents of Kari Jo Lane and

  Cunningham Road.

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  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

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Special thanks to

  S.P. Miskowski, beloved heroine of Alligator Point.

  Die trying.

  —Motto of the Izzet Observation Corps

  15 MOKOSH 9965 Z.C.

  Observer Kaluzax was not a betting goblin, but before he set foot inside the mizzium-plated vessel that was designed to carry him to his doom (and perhaps a bit beyond) he put his life savings—all 5,732 zinos of it—on the chance that he would survive Observation Expedition Nine. The odds against him when he’d placed the bet were enough to make him the wealthiest goblin in the history of Ravnica, and he intended to collect. Observer Kaluzax was not a betting goblin, but he was certainly a lucky one.

  He settled into the lizardskin acceleration chair; slotted the traditional ignition offerings of sulfur, saltpeter, and coal into slot atop the brazier mounted near his right foot; and said, “Glory to Niv-Mizzet. Ignite!”

  The darkened, powerless observosphere rumbled to life and the interior lamps flashed to life. The rusty glow revealed a simple set of controls and a glowing scrying pool that would record everything Kaluzax saw—and much more—from ignition until he returned to the floating Dragonfire Base. The base was currently high over his head, nestled atop the back of an enormous zeppelid that had been bred from the rarely domesticated high altitude variety. The observosphere was clamped to its underbelly, ready to launch. One day the creature might be eight hundred feet long, big enough for its shadow to black out the sun, but after sixty years it was less than half that size. Kaluzax’s observosphere hung at the front of a row of six, though his was the only one occupied. The corps had not decided to send more than one observer on this particular mission, nor had the magelord ordered more than that—if he had, the corp’s wishes would certainly have been cast aside.

  Observer Kaluzax had earned every syllable of his name, and the title he bore testified he was elite among the goblins in the Izzet League and the members of Zomaj Hauc’s colloquy. No mere lackeys or lab assistants, goblin observers bore witness to the grandest of experiments. They were the eyepieces of the magelords, the stalwart recorders of every major advance in the magical and alchemical sciences since pre-Guildpact days, and their unique vessels were designed to record every angle of an experiment for posterity. Observers, not surprisingly, had a much higher mortality rate than the average Ravnican goblin, and that came with the territory despite the sturdy observospheres they flew. Major advances in the magical and alchemical sciences usually required an explosion or two.

  The odds against his survival on most missions were astronomical, but Observer Kaluzax guessed that the bookmakers had needed all the stars in the sky to calculate the chances of surviving this particular jaunt. With those odds, Observer Kaluzax’s life savings, meager as they were, could win him a stake impressive enough to establish his own academy. He muttered a curse—the observer had uncanny luck, but there was no need to push it with such jinx-worthy thoughts.

  It was not easy to keep away from such thoughts. After eight successful flights aboard the observosphere, never once had fortune failed him. Kaluzax had ridden the eruption of a geothermic dome at the southern pole, escaped the gullet of a titanic bat-bird, and even been shot from a cannon—twice. After the collision with Xalvhar’s fortress it had taken a month and a half of precision ’drop treatments to get his bones set properly, but he had lived and returned crucial information on a competing magelord’s experiments. His master had been pleased and had begun to take notice. Such achievements, no doubt, were why Hauc had personally chosen him for this mission.

  Observer Kaluzax had even seen two previous iterations of the current experiment, an Orzhov-commissioned enhancement of the Orzhov’s own project. The magelord called it a mana-compression singularity bomb, and had explained—personally, which counted for quite a lot in Kaluzax’s opinion—that the bomb’s purpose was to remove life. That meant all life from the plague-stricken Utvara Valley, from the biggest zeppelid to the inscrutinizable worms beneath the flats. If it worked properly, the effect would accomplish the task without harming any artificial structure, inorganic object, or goblin observers protected by forg
ed mizzium. The first two iterations had met with limited success and had caused some trouble for his master with the other guilds, but this time the Orzhov had secured an area specifically for the magelord’s practice that could only be improved by the removal of every living thing: the Utvara Valley. By getting rid of any potential plague carriers, the new lords of Utvara would shave centuries off of the process of reclamation.

  Kaluzax doubted his master had any intention of disappointing those owners. No one, not even powerful magelords of Izzet, made a habit of disappointing the Orzhov. A pyromancer could set you on fire today, but a patriarch could set you on fire every day, now and for the rest of your afterlife.

  Observer Kaluzax was a lucky goblin, as well as a skilled one, but he was not truly as skilled as most thought and was luckier than most suspected. He was clever enough to make sure his bosses mistook fortune for ability every chance he got. Perhaps his luck was supernatural, as his mother had always claimed—a result of some explosive astronomical event the night of his birth. Perhaps it was mere coincidence. Either way no goblin lived forever, but a very few lived rich. A love of gambling was one of the many reasons the entire Izzet tribe was perpetually indentured to the Magewrights, and though Kaluzax had never before succumbed to his people’s celebrated predilection for games of chance, he figured his luck owed him a big win this time. He pulled a rip cord that cut the observosphere loose from its moorings and involuntarily grinned. “Dragonfire, 9477 is airborne,” he announced.

  Goblin and ’sphere dropped, spewing flames and magic, into the darkening sky over the City of Ravnica.

  His destination was miles away, but it took a little time for the vessel to pick up speed. Once he and the observosphere reached the elementally balanced velocity of 58.6 miles per hour, the pyromanic flare-pods would kick into overcharge and send him to the Utvara region before you could say “Niv-Mizzet.”

  Kaluzax flicked a silver switch on his panel to activate an hour’s worth of recording ribbon for the archives. “This is observosphere Peripatetic Eye of Niv-Mizzet 9477, calling Dragonfire Base,” he barked into the pneumanatic tube. His voice entered a magically charged glass cylinder and shot along an invisible network of aerial leylines to emerge, unseen to the goblin pilot, from a glass sphere set into the wall of a dimly lit control room atop the zeppelid he’d just departed. A second later, the slightly fuzzy voice of Observer Kaluzax’s boss emerged from the smaller, fist-sized sphere set into the simple controls in front of his pilot’s seat.

  “9477, we have you on scrying pools now,” Chief Observer Vazozav replied. “You’re hanging a little low over those spires. Destruction of public property has not, repeat, has not been authorized for this maneuver. Pull that ’sphere up out of traffic, the last thing I need is wojeks filing complaints.”

  “You won’t get any on my account, Base,” Observer Kaluzax replied. “Beginning counter-ascent. Don’t want to damage the City of Guilds, do we?”

  “What we want isn’t an issue, Observer,” Vazozav chuckled through the crackling static. “I for one would love to see what they’d do if you burned off a pod over Vito Grazi or whatever they call that place.”

  “Dragonfire Base, have you no respect for history? For the majesty of the Selesnyan Conclave?” Observer Kaluzax said, affecting a nasal sneer in a goblin approximation of a dryad accent. “For the little flowers and the dancing centaurs, lithely flitting through the dryad’s grove?”

  “I respect things that explode, Observer,” the older goblin said. “Why don’t you go find us one?”

  “Understood. Estimating elemental balance velocity in fifteen,” the pilot said. “Initiating unauthorized roll over the center.”

  “Get an eyeful,” said the chief observer.

  Observosphere pilots were as superstitious as any other goblins, and Observer Kaluzax had made a roll like this on his first successful expedition. It was part of the subtle manipulation of luck, which expected to be honored with repetition. Observer Kaluzax goggled at an urban landscape that spread from horizon to horizon. Few goblins ever saw this view more than once, and most that did were in the clutches of something winged that planned to eat them.

  The City of Ravnica was always a shocking sight from the air, and for a mathematically minded Izzet, the careful design and geometric beauty of the central metropolis could only really be appreciated from this angle. Kaluzax squinted against dawn. Sunlight, blindingly bright, bounced off the spires that covered the radial wheel of the city’s ten sections. He flipped two fingers against his brow in a silent, private salute to the ancient stone titans that watched over the City of Ravnica.

  He flew within a bamshot of the face of the tenth and largest titan, sky-grazing Zobor, standing astride the gates to the wojek headquarters known as Centerfort. He would have gone closer, but it was best not to alarm the wojeks stationed atop the titan’s head—more than one aerial accident had been caused by such foolish behavior.

  Like most every Izzet goblin, Kaluzax had been taught that the City of Ravnica—the central metropolis from which had grown a civilization that covered the entire world—had been meticulously planned with Izzet precision after the ancient Guildpact signing, the Magewrights’ gift to the other guilds. One ready-made city that would serve to inspire the world.

  The City of Ravnica was also, secretly, an offering to Niv-Mizzet the Firemind, Izzet parun and guildmaster. According to the stories he’d learned as a young goblin, the plan would have created a giant, city-sized power sigil that would have given the magelords ultimate dominion over the entire plane of Ravnica. But Izzet goblins had intentionally (so it was said) fumbled the design just enough to prevent the sigil from working as it had been meant to.

  In the old days, the goblins had been a bit more rebellious, but most goblin theologians believed the goblins simply wanted to show off to the boss. They did make an impression. The cleverness of those ancient goblins’ actions had so impressed the magelords that the Izzet League purchased the entire tribe outright, gave them the name they now carried, and indentured Kaluzax’s people for the next thousand millennia. Over thousands of years, the slight imperfection in the layout of the city had spread—weathered, beaten, and reshaped by millions of denizens. The power sigil would never work now. But from this vantage point the goblin touch was clear—even inspirational.

  No one knew what the Izzet goblin tribe used to be called before the Izzet League bought them, and no one, least of all the goblins, seemed to care. Compared to the primitive, short, violent lives experienced by their kin in other guilds, life as an Izzet goblin was paradise. Even being near the power that magelords like Zomaj Hauc could wield was an honor. And though it hadn’t happened in a generation, every once in a while a goblin gained the gift of Niv-Mizzet, was touched by the Firemind, and became a magelord too. True, every goblin magelord in history had been killed by his or her human peers within a week of receiving that gift, but the point was that a goblin could really be someone in the Izzet League. This was rarely the case in the Gruul Clans or the Cult of Rakdos.

  Observer Kaluzax spared one contemplative look through the invizomizzium viewplate—tempted, as always, to clip off the tip of the holy Selesnyan Unity Tree as it passed only a few yards below the observosphere. Then he leveled the glittering machine with the horizon and placed a hand on a simple, red lever set into the floor. With the other he turned a small, black knob in the control panel precisely ninety degrees to the right, which sent additional pyromana to the belly-bursters and lifted the observosphere above normal air traffic such as transport zeppelids, rocs, bats, and other flying mounts. This gave him plenty of open sky to burn so long as he kept his trained eyes open. The only other things that flew as high as an Izzet observosphere were wild zeppelids, the angelic fortress of Parhelion, and the great Niv-Mizzet himself. All those obstacles were large enough they could be easily avoided. Anything smaller wasn’t any threat to his vessel.

  The chief interrupted Kaluzax’s focus only briefly when he
signaled the start of the mission’s next stage. “Begin pod firing countdown on my mark,” the fuzzy voice scratched out through the console, then waited a beat. “Mark.”

  “Ten, nine, eight,” Observer Kaluzax counted down, his heart pounding in time with the pulsing sound of the charging flame-pods, “seven, six, five, four, three, two, one.”

  “Engage flame-pods!” the chief observer shouted with vicarious glee.

  “Engaging flame-pods,” Observer Kaluzax replied and yanked the red lever back with all his might. With an explosion that would have been deafening to one without sturdy goblin ears and excellent mizzium sound baffling, the observosphere went from a brisk 58.6 miles per hour to precisely thirteen times that speed in seconds.

  Observer Kaluzax felt like a giant’s hand flattened him against the pilot’s seat, and indeed the forces of acceleration would have suffocated the goblin and crushed his insides if not for protective enchantments.

  Now there was little to look at below but clouds and the occasional glimpse of grid or highway that flashed past too quickly to make out details. Within minutes, he’d crossed the terminator and found himself beneath a dazzling, star-filled sky that stayed eerily still even as the world screamed by. An observer should always be observing, as the ancient codes said, so Kaluzax mentally catalogued star forms. Modern Izzet goblins rarely even saw the sky unless they were in the corps, and few learned the old star forms or cared about them, but for Kaluzax it was an excellent hobby that kept his fast-working mind occupied between jobs.

  He’d made it all the way to Qeeto the Cat-Thief, rising in the east, when he felt deceleration begin, just less than halfway to his final destination. He could not yet see Utvara, still over the horizon.

  Utvara had been a vibrant section of the world thousands of years ago, with a free zone that was said to rival the central metropolis of Ravnica. Before that it had been part of the ancient hunting range of Niz-Mizzet himself. Now Utvara was a name synonymous with disease and death where only the desperate dared try to survive. And “desperate” invariably meant “Gruul.” Kaluzax had trouble pitying them. Even the lowest Izzet goblin was better than a mangy Gruul.