The Last Null

by K L Reinhart

  “Hyagh!” Terak grunted, throwing himself into a roll as the first of the Ixchtmen’s curving scimitars flashed through the air where he had landed.

  The elf slid his foot forward, using it as a jumping point to fling himself upwards. One dagger batted away the raised scimitar and the next shot toward the insect-man’s head.

  “Ssskra!” the thing hissed and recoiled with a spurt of green ichor as Terak felt the crunch of the thing’s head shell crack.

  With a growl, the creature batted at the elf’s head with a wild fling of its fist. The creature was insanely strong for one with such thin limbs, and the elf’s ears rang as he staggered back, tasting blood in his mouth.

  “Hsss!” This time it was Terak’s turn to hiss, growling through his delicately pointed teeth as elvish rage swept through him.

  Remember the Path! His Enclave-training kicked in as Terak attempted to control his feelings. Around him, the elf could see the jumping, flashing, and half-flying forms of both Elder Beings and Ixcht close in battle. Wild skirmishes played out all across the deck.

  The cat-like elf and his insect-like combatant had a brief moment as they eyed each other—one with hard pupils that almost glowed with battle-light, the other with eyestalks that were trained with unsettling intensity on the Enclave assassin. And then, they threw themselves at each other.

  The curving scimitar flashed through the air, spilling reflected light of gouts of Ixcht-flame. Terak’s daggers flickered just as quickly. There was the clang of sparks as Terak engaged and pirouetted, dancing around the larger insect man as he fought to find that calm point of balance in the center of the fray.

  It’s only pain. It’s only anger, fear, hurt. You remain yourself in the center of it all. The words of remembered advice and the litanies of the Book of Corrections sounded in Terak’s mind. The elf and the insect-man darted together once again, the Ixcht trying to part-slash, part-strike at his foe.

  But Terak was expecting it. Ducking out of the way of the scimitar and stepping forward to catch the insect-man’s wrist with his own forearm, he pushed it clear to open the enemy’s guard—

  And Terak reversed the grip on his second dagger and plunged it down, above the chest carapace of the warrior and into the thinner neck parts.

  “Sskrek!” Another insectile chitter of pain and fury as the blade smashed chitin and hit home. The elf leapt back as the Ixcht staggered forward a few paces, swinging weakly with one hand. It dropped the scimitar.

  But Terak was already backing away. He knew what came next from the insect-men, as he had fought them before. One of the most dangerous things about the Ixcht wasn’t their strange, incomprehensible savagery or the fact that they had a command of fire that few could parallel.

  Terak saw the great green gem at the base of the thing’s neck start to flash and glow with a speeding ragged time. It was as if he were looking at the desperate thing’s heart in its final throes.

  The elf waited for the creature’s flailing limbs to flash past once more, and then he jumped forward, planting a firm kick in the creature’s center driving it backward. It fell onto the deck as the green neck-gem flashed and flashed.

  The elf turned to bound away, running from the dying insect-man. He felt the explosion before he heard it and had the sense to throw himself forward into a roll as the wave of force hit his back, followed by the wave of heat and fire.

  This was what made the insect-men the most dangerous foes of Midhara and a universal curse-word for many. It was the fact that, upon death, their warrior-caste would self-immolate, although no one knew if the gems were something which was installed upon them or something that they were born with.

  “Urk!” Terak hit the deck and rolled as gobbets of fire flashed and flared around his form. He skidded to a halt against one of the masts.

  He shook his head and sprang to his feet, seeing flaming ichor spread around him in a wide circle as he jumped toward the rear of the boat. He prayed that Lars and the others had managed to do what he had asked of them. The last thing he wanted was for him and the rest of the Elder Beings to be marooned here on a burning Ixchtish barge, about to crash land in the quarry of the Navigators.

  Around the elf, the Elder Beings were attempting to extricate themselves from their lightning-fast attacks. Terak had briefed them on what the plan must be—to strike as many killing blows as possible and then to flee the enemy craft by any means necessary.

  There was a flash of green fire from one side of the deck. Terak saw another of the Elder Beings leap to one side, hop to the forward railings, and then jump from its side.

  Yes! Terak snarled, seeing the course that he had to run and how successful their raid on the barge had already been. More flashes of green fire and more forms of Elder Beings leapt from the rear gunwales of the barge. In their conflagrations, the burning chemical ichor of the Ixcht had been flung about the boat, spreading to the sails and the decks and starting to race up the mast.

  More of the Elder Beings were flinging themselves from the rear railings of the Ixcht barge. The elf had to believe that they did so because Lars had managed to swing the battle barge in a downward maneuver to slide past the rear of this flame-scarred boat.

  “Tsss!” But then, stumbling out of the side of Terak’s vision, came a flailing, screeching Ixcht. One side of its head was a terrible mess of smashed scales and its neck-gem already flickered green.

  Dammit! Terak jumped to one side as the creature exploded, and the elf felt himself flung across the deck with the force of the explosion.

  Everything was a blur of deck and sky and flame as the elf tumbled and skidded. Slamming to a stop against the far railing, he coughed and spluttered.

  Get up! he demanded of himself, before stumbling to his feet to stagger down the deck.

  A deck now alive with sheets of green and red flame. The remaining Ixcht warrior-sailors on board who were fortunate enough to deflect the Elder Being’s balletic attacks were caught up in the flames and explosions of their fellows, creating a chain reaction of fire.

  Dammit-dammit! Terak saw, through a brief gap in the flames, the direction that he had to travel, as the rear gunwale was still sixty feet away. But the battle-barge of the insect-men was swaying and swerving to one side, and the elf couldn’t run forward with his accustomed speed.

  “Hss!” Terak dodged to one side as a mast hit the floor across the deck, sending up glittering fans of burning canvas-sail.

  The elf bounded on—he was almost there!

  Pha-BOOOM! The front of the barge behind Terak pitched and shook as one of the flame-cannons of the barge exploded. The elf snarled as he forced his aching limbs to climb the slanting deck toward the railing,

  To suddenly see that the battle-barge of the Royal Guild was not below them at all. Lars Mendip had attempted to keep pace with the exploding Ixcht barge. But he had to rise out of the way as they became engaged with the second unharmed Ixchtish barge.

  Oh no. The elf saw the racing stony ground under their prow. When he looked behind him to the front of the barge, he saw that it was just crossing the edge of the quarry and would surely hit the terraced floors in a mighty fireball like dragon’s breath.

  The elf had no choice. The flashing ground had to be twenty feet below him—but it was either that or be consumed in the crash.

  He jumped.

  10

  The Blood of the Black Keep

  “Hold your positions! Keep your eyes peeled!” The words of the Senior Brothers and Sisters of the Enclave rang over the outer northern walls of the Black Keep. Sister Reticula and Father Jacques had just arrived.

  In front of them, there was a heavy wall of black from the Fourth Baleful Sign. The new Sister could see where its tendrils had eked forward to caress at the stones, as if somehow alive. The tops of the outer wall and inner walls, as well as the northern towers, all heaved and gleamed with spear points and the hard light of the eyes of the Enclave.

  THUMM!

  THUMMM!

/>   The war drums of whatever was out there in the darkness were loud and clear through the dark. Even though Reticula couldn’t see what was making them—from their cacophony, they couldn’t be far away.

  It looks as though Inedi has called for every available body to stand here, Reticula thought. She followed the limping form of the Father as he hurried to his destination. The younger woman had never seen so many Brothers and Sisters assembled all in one place. Behind them on the inner walls, Reticula could see lines of Journeyers and even acolytes awaiting to be called up to fight. Thankfully, the least experienced of their order—the novitiates—had been tasked with the healing and provisioning roles inside of the Black Keep. They had given up their training practices and hours of meditation to turn instead to hauling crates and barrels here and there about the keep.

  Which was precisely what the Chief External had in mind, it seemed, as he whistled to one of the Senior Brothers and pointed to the northern towers.

  “Father.” The Senior Brother gave a respectful nod to Jacques, and Reticula saw that he, too, had a patch of out-of-place black thread on the outer edge of his tunic. A sign that he was one of the Enclave-External who probably had been trained undercover by the Chief External himself.

  The Senior Brother had already been briefed by the Chief. Reticula had seen Jacques start to send runners with coded scrolls here and there about the Black Keep as soon as he could stand. An infectious, almost manic energy filled the Father, and it seemed to Reticula that their earlier agreement had not been taken lightly. The Chief was going to give his all to the defense of the Black Keep—even if they had no hope of winning the war.

  “Sister Reticula will take over.” Jacques coughed, turning to Reticula as the Senior Brother whistled for lines of the acolytes below to jump into action. She saw them attaching and hauling barrels and sacks to the heavy chains that dripped from the two northern towers, before pulling on bell ropes for the bags to be slowly raised upwards.

  “Supplies?” Reticula breathed as Jacques watched the operation.

  Thumm!

  THUUMM!

  “No. Fire-oil, rocks, and a few concoctions of my own,” Jacques said. “We lost the old fire-wall defenses against the beastials, but there is just enough to make it difficult for any besieging army.”

  The Sister nodded soberly. Not for the first time, she wondered how many laboratories and bolt-holes the Chief External had hidden throughout the Keep. She had seen with her own eyes how his prime workroom had been destroyed by the Arcanum and the possessed Sister Joana.

  “I’ll send up a blue flare,” he said, ushering Reticula to the door at the base of the tower next to them. He limped off toward the next tower with its own series of chains and ropes at the far side.

  “Yes, Chief.” The young Sister (one of the youngest of her rank, if she had stopped to realize it) banged through the door to find the set of stone stairs winding upwards through the spine of the tower. Window-slits here and there afforded her a glance at the outside—first the confined and cramped quarters, halls, squares, and courtyards of the Black Keep itself, and then the wall of dark outside.

  When she finally got to the top, a door opened to a viewing chamber. It showed nothing to the north, east, or west of her but the Plague of Darkness and a large wooden contraption with cogwheels and levers labelled Pulley One, Two, Three and so on.

  These towers weren’t only good watch and signal towers. They were also used to move goods from one side of the walls to another. Various floors had hatchways that provided access to certain hard-to-reach halls. She had never seen the northern levers used at all, as few travelers or merchants ever arrived from the north. But she had seen those on the southern ends used often, as moving the carts and trolley-loads of goods that the frozen Enclave needed was difficult given its erratic architecture.

  Sister Reticula stood with her hands over the pulleys, looking back to the blackened westward window, and waited.

  Thumm!

  THUMM!

  THUUUMM!

  The war drums were beating louder and louder, reaching almost a heaven-splitting thunder. Some of the less-experienced acolytes even swore that they could feel the walls shaking.

  “Remember the Path! Hold the words of the Book of Corrections!” called the Senior Brothers and Sisters on the walls as they, too, waited.

  Of the lines of Brothers and Sisters, almost all of those in the front ranks held bows with arrows cocked and readied. Those behind held long spears—some easily twelve feet long. The Magister Inedi herself had demanded that none of her pupils use any magic other than the defensive shield at first—as magic could tire and exhaust the mind and the body quickly, and this battle could be a long one indeed.

  But still, some Brothers and Sisters did mutter their cantrips under their breath, sending flushes of hot and red strength through their bodies or calling on the vision of Tartaruk vultures for guidance.

  Not that any seer’s magic did any good. The Fourth Baleful Sign, the Plague of Darkness, was born of Ungol itself, and was impenetrable to any attempt to see through it.

  Until, that is—those that had been given the authority of the Queen of a Thousand Tears called it back.

  THUMM!

  THUMM!

  THU-

  The war drums stopped suddenly and completely, mid-sounding, and the dark and shadowed fog convulsed and swept backward. This revealed the churned-up and blackened ground where Jacques’s fire traps had erupted. But the many hundreds of bodies of the ogre-like beastials it had repulsed were all gone. No scrap of blackened and singed fur and no smoking bone remained where there should have been a charnel pit.

  Only one person stood, illuminated by the wall torches before and above him.

  It was the Hexan himself.

  “The hour is growing late, and here I see before me brave and courageous men and women who have been blinded by lesser minds!” the Hexan shouted. His voice was strangely doubled and tripled in the frozen airs as he doubtless magnified it by his magics.

  From her vantage point up in the North-Eastern Ward Tower, Reticula could clearly see and hear their nemesis, even though he looked small and inconsequential on the frozen plain. The way that the Ungol-serving sorcerer stood alone and so nonchalant there somehow added to his malefic presence. How powerful is he? Reticula could imagine the thoughts of her comrade Brothers and Sisters.

  How stupid, more like! The newly-promoted Sister scowled down at the man, and wondered how long it would be before someone decided to shoot him.

  But no arrows or bolts or magic curses were falling as yet, and the Hexan continued to berate the Black Keep.

  “You Brothers and Sisters—do you know what is about to happen? Has Magister Inedi, in her pride, kept the truth from you!?” the Hexan called, and his voice sounded as though it rang with concern.

  “The Blood Gate is about to open. The Queen of a Thousand Tears even now amasses her legions on the other side and is awaiting the final preparations to enter!” he called out. A bitter chill appeared to follow them, as if the reach of the Queen was being summoned by his words alone.

  “I have seen her armies! I have seen her war beasts and her monsters!” The Hexan sounded incredulous, awed even. “They fill plains of fire and ash as far as the eye can see.” The Hexan half-turned, appearing to pause to consider something afresh.

  “Wait—has the Magister even told you about the Queen of a Thousand Tears? About the Ungol at all, other than it is the place of nightmares!?” He sounded hurt, confused, and worried on their behalf.

  “The Ungol is not some place of shadows and spooks—it is an entire world! Just like the Midhara! They have continents and brackish seas. They have mountains larger than our Tartaruk here, forests deeper than the Everdell or Hon! And every city, township, cave, and meeting place is devoted to their Queen. Every creature, living and dead, has marched here to our world. Did the Magister tell you what faced you? Did she even give you that common courtesy of informing you wh
at you were facing?” the Hexan asked.

  It was clear what the sorcerer was doing, Reticula thought. He was trying to spread fear and mistrust amongst their ranks, to weaken their resolve in any way that he could.

  But the brave Brothers, Sisters, Journeyers, acolytes, Seniors, and Chiefs of the Enclave had all been brought up believing in the Path of Pain. They all knew the value of hardship and of tight, difficult challenges.

  Death is not something to be feared or welcomed. Reticula remembered the advisory sermons from the Book of Corrections. Strike the outcome of your challenges from your mind—and concentrate on the only thing that will teach you the way forward: Pain.

  Not a man nor woman on the walls or below said anything in response to the Hexan, Reticula was intensely proud to see. Instead, a few hundred hard-glimmering eyes stared down intently at the Hexan, awaiting the order to attack.

  The sorcerer, too, appeared to sense the iron-clad resolve of the defenders of the Black Keep. He made a shaking movement with his head as he scoffed in disgust.

  “You have been taught awry,” he said again, and this time his voice dripped with scorn. “Your Chiefs and your Seniors—and especially your Magister Inedi herself—have led you wrong. Now I see nothing but shame for you all!” he spat.

  “You had one chance, Brothers and Sisters. One chance to save each other. The Queen of a Thousand Tears has offered leniency to every soul who would join her, fight for her. And are any of you so proud and so great as to refuse such generosity?” he called again, his tone at once threatening and entreating.

  There was a moment of silence, before it was broken by the muted sound of one person’s slow clapping.

  Reticula searched for the source of the sound, to see that there was a disturbance on the northern walls. Brothers and Sisters were shifting in their ranks as a blue radiance moved up the stairs and onto the wide stone avenue under the battlements.