The Last Null Read online

  “This way?” Terak asked, nodding up the bank to the unburnt patch of forest.

  Their Elder guide nodded. “Last rise. The edge of our home,” it said. Terak accepted Kol’s weight against his own, and they climbed upwards.

  They could hear the once-great Forest of Hon burning behind them as they clambered. Even Terak’s usual sure-footedness betrayed him as he slipped and fumbled ahead. The heat had diminished, but the smokes billowed around and ahead of them in waves. The elf, human, and Elder Beings choked and coughed in the thick air.

  “Not far!” He heard the voice of their guide, or who he thought was their guide. The forms of trees emerged out of the thick white smokes on either side. The group stumbled and chirruped, whistled and clicked in their bird-tongue to each other. It was clear to the elf that they were as distressed as he was.

  More so, Terak thought, when he paused to consider the reaction that their guide had at seeing its home burning. In some sense, Terak knew that the Elder Beings were a part of this place—perhaps a part of the world of Midhara entirely. They were the first race of creatures that Grom had helped sing into being. Their fate, life, and vitality were fundamentally bound up with the stuff of this world.

  The smoke got thicker and the trees sparser as the group pushed on toward the edge. Terak could still hear the distant cracks and cries of a forest in pain. The fire must have crossed the river, he thought. Was he imagining the rising sense of heat at his own back? He picked up his feet and tried to push Kol faster.

  “Tsss!” There was a hiss on one side. The Elder Guide suddenly stepped across Terak’s path in the smoke, holding its spear low and forward.

  “Grakh!” A guttural, inhuman shout sounded. A shape emerged out of the waves of smoke, leaping toward them.

  “Hyagh!” The Elder Being in front of them reacted instinctively to the charging battle-orc, darting forward in a perfect lunge. It met the orc’s body before it had even landed on the ground.

  “Urgh!” But the weight and the momentum of the orc was too much. Even though it skewered itself on the white-wood spear, both orc warrior and Elder Being crashed into a rolling tumble across the forest dirt . . .

  Wait—they’re running toward the fire? Terak had a moment to think, before—

  Ixcht! Terak lowered Kol to the ground, stepping forward and smoothly seizing up his blades. There was another swirl in the smokes that surrounded them.

  “Grekh!” A rushing orc form ran out of the mists, wildly swinging a broadsword. Terak ducked and rolled, shooting out a leg to hit between the orc’s own.

  The orc went head over heels, skidding along the dirt, a few feet away from Kol—

  Who grunted in effort, as the Emarii storyteller plunged his own dagger into the orc’s neck.

  “Teamwork,” the Emarii coughed grimly. There was another growl approaching them from behind. “Look out!” the storyteller shouted. Terak backward rolled toward the sound, spinning over and raising his daggers.

  “Ugh!” His daggers hit orcish breastplate. Both the orc and Terak collapsed into a biting, hissing, snarling ball of murderous fury.

  The orc was far larger in every respect than the elf, and Terak had no hope of overpowering it. But the elf knew plenty of tricks that an orcish warrior didn’t. Terak wrapped his legs around the orc’s torso as much as he could, given the size of the brute. He dropped one knife to seize at the orc’s neck.

  “Pointy little Ixchter!” the orc snarled, slamming its weight down onto the floor. The move would surely have snapped Terak’s spine like a twig, had Terak not shifted his weight at the last moment. As such, the pain was still almost as bad. The orc’s weight partially fell on Terak’s still-pained thigh. The place where Emarii ointments and healing balms had recently sealed the wound where another orc’s dagger had lodged into the meat of his leg.

  Only pain! Only pain! Terak ignored it, concentrating instead on worming his arms up to the orc’s head and seizing the creature’s neck, just under each side of the jaw. The assassin tried to remember the charcoal sketches of inhuman bodies and skeletons and arteries that the Chief Martial of the Black Keep had tried so many times to impress upon him.

  “Gerr’off me!” the orc bellowed again, pushing out with one great clawed fist. The other hammered onto Terak’s back. Terak only had a studded leather cuirass under his black cloak—enough to stop the punches and kicks of any human or elvish assailant. But a seven-foot tall battle-orc?

  Tsss! Terak ground his slightly pointed teeth together with each blow against his back. It is only pain, he thought. Only pain, as his hands found the crook of the orc’s jawline, and then pushed inwards as hard as he could—

  “Little mite!” The orc’s fist pounded once more. Terak felt the slightly syncopated rhythms of the orc’s heartbeat, thick and strong, under his thumbs.

  With a roar, Terak’s opponent flung itself onto its own back—absurdly making Terak’s job all the easier for a brief moment. Then Terak realized that it allowed the orc to scrabble at its belt for one of its thick-bladed knifes.

  It’s too strong! I’m too weak! Terak’s mind started to panic as the orc’s jaw and neck continued to move and thrash. The elf’s grip was apparently having no effect. What sort of fool of an elf tried to strangle an orc barehanded?

  The orc snarled and gurgled with glee. It clearly had managed to find the blade at its belt . . .

  Terak pushed harder against the tandem pulse—

  There was a movement underneath him, as the orc had clearly freed the blade and intended to plunge it into the elf’s back.

  “Urk-gle . . .” The orc’s eyes flickered close once, then twice, then the entire body slumped to the floor with a spasm. Terak held his hands there for a longer period until he was sure that he had done the work of the Black Keep—before he gasped and fell backward. He rolled off the orc and groaned with the pain in his thigh, back, and fingers.

  “Was that a Timarren Death Grip?” Kol coughed beside him, stumbling to Terak’s side to help the elf up this time—a reversal of their roles.

  “I hope so,” Terak groaned, accepting the storyteller’s aid. The elf hadn’t been sure whether an orc even needed blood to the head for it to keep on stubbornly attacking everything around it. Thankfully, the orc-kind proved just as susceptible to the martial arts as any other race had so far . . .

  “Beware!” the familiar voice of the Elder Guide was saying ahead of them. Both assassin and storyteller turned to see that their avian friends were fanning out around them, before an advancing line of wavering torches, wreathed in the forest-smoke.

  “Are they the orcs?” Kol whispered urgently. The old man visibly shook and rocked on his feet as he held up his dagger before him defiantly.

  Wait, the assassin thought. “I don’t think so,” he murmured to Kol. “The orcs were running toward the forest fires that they had set, weren’t they?”

  Kol’s bright eyes flashed in the reflected light. “You mean that the orcs were fleeing something?”

  “Perhaps—” Terak was saying. The line of torches approached and revealed their holders. Humans appeared, shrouded in heavy cloaks with gauzy hoods that steamed as they walked. Each one held a torch in one hand and a long, bare blade in the other.

  “Kol!?” One of the forward figures said, tearing aside the gauzy hood to reveal the tumbled red locks of none other than the Emarii Tanwen.

  3

  The Last Null

  Tharound . . .

  Thumm . . .

  THUUMM . . .

  The sounds of the beating war drums grew louder and louder as Reticula ran through the corridors, galleries, and courtyards of the Black Keep. The sound seemed to magnify as it crept through window cracks and echoed down the narrow corridors.

  In Journeywoman Reticula’s head, all that she could hear was Doom, Doom, Doom . . .

  “To arms! Get to the Northern Walls!” the sister of the black-garbed Enclave heard the various Seniors call as she raced past, again and again. T
he Black Keep was without any of its magical shields now. Any attack or incursion would have to be met with magic bolt, blade, and fist alone.

  But despite the rising sense of alarm, the human woman still managed to find her place of inner calm and determination.

  Pain teaches us. Pain is a guide. She remembered her teaching as she found the brick that, when pressed, would allow her access to the secret passage up to the workshop of Father Jacques. She paused briefly, waiting to be sure that she wasn’t followed. Then she pressed the stone. A glimmering, faint, green line raced along the mortar of a door-sized section of the brickwork. Then that entire section of wall moved backward, revealing the tight and cramped stairwell behind it.

  Reticula dove in, seeing the green flash and hearing the snick as the magically hidden door shut behind her and plunged her into darkness. With a murmur, the Journeywoman summoned a small, glowing ball of bluish were-light. She flung it into the air, where it would speed a few feet ahead of her and light her way.

  One flight of stairs, two flights, a short race across a landing, and another flight of stairs led upwards once more. She headed toward the hidden workshop of the Enclave-External.

  And yet, Reticula’s feet skidded to a halt and her heart hammered in her chest when she realized that she was not alone. Her blue were-light emitted a circle of radiance that ended a few feet before and above her—where another radiance met it.

  Intruders! Reticula froze, calling her light back into her hand with one smooth gesture and cancelling it with a grasping fist. Darkness and shadows wrapped themselves around her like a blanket. She took a slow breath, remembered her training, and drew her long knife.

  Very, very carefully, Journeywoman Reticula started to ascend the steps.

  She had been right—blue were-light was spilling from the edges of the workshop door at the top of the stairs. There were sounds of movement coming from the other side.

  Shuffling movement, Reticula noted. The dull thump, scrape, and thud of someone moving items about. The young woman narrowed her eyes. It was true that Father Jacques had never kept a particularly tidy abode, and that his students would often have to search for whatever ingredient, tool, or grimoire that he had requested of them.

  But the Father is lying near dead below me, Reticula frowned, and all of his students are terrified of upsetting his system!

  There was another series of thumps and bangs, followed by a hiss of frustration from the other side. Whomever it was ransacking the Chief’s room was clearly doing a very poor job of finding what they wanted, Reticula noted.

  “Ocamba Ocula . . .” Reticula raised her free hand, cupping it beside her chest as much as she was able. She cast her charm.

  The Ocula charm was a small, but decidedly not simple, cantrip. It was one that would help diagnose the flows and presences of other magical happenings around her. Reticula’s eyes flickered from the open doorway to her cupped hand, to see a small green ball waver into fragile life. It appeared to effervesce a fine, silvery haze as it bobbed slightly.

  Let’s see now . . . Reticula had to grit her teeth as she concentrated on the small green sensing-ball, extending her hand before her slowly toward the door—

  “Ach!” The green ball of magic light suddenly turned white and seared so cold that, even without touching it, it felt as though her hand had been plunged through the ice of the Lake of Mourn.

  The Ocula charm winked out in a second as Reticula lost focus—but the damage had already been done. There was a sudden scrape of noise from behind the door, and a further hissing snarl from the occupant.

  One that didn’t sound human at all to Reticula’s ears.

  “Haii!” The Journeywoman sprang forward up the stairs, one forearm shoving aside the door. She levelled her long blade in the other, against the interloper to Father Jacques’s realm.

  She was very surprised to see that it was someone she already knew. A Sister of the Enclave-External, Joana.

  But as the human snarled, Reticula realized that Sister Joana didn’t seem like Sister Joana at all.

  “What the . . . !?” Reticula gasped, too surprised to do anything other than stare at the scene before her.

  Father Jacques’s workshop was in complete disarray, with his worktables now in a mess, the wooden boxes pried open, and jars upended. The cabinets where Jacques had kept his costumes and practice equipment were now spilled all over the floor. Sister Joana had been intent on finding something.

  But Reticula’s rage at this treachery was met by her confusion at the change that she saw in the Sister.

  It wasn’t that the taller woman had been Reticula’s friend—it was rare for any of those who lived here at the Black Keep, whether they studied here or lived as Seniors and Chiefs, to have “friends” precisely. And the extra layers of secrecy that were demanded by the Enclave-External meant that no Sister, Brother, or Journeyer had more contact with any other of their secretive cabal than they needed to.

  But still, Reticula had seen Sister Joana at Father Jacques’s side. She had been in the same room when they had discussed matters that required more than two heads.

  Sister Joana had been quiet, tall, and with a cool temperament as far as Reticula remembered. Discrete, Reticula would have said about her, if she had been asked. The Sister was auburn-haired, taller than Reticula by easily a foot, and wore the black robes of the Enclave.

  But her visage was horribly and strangely changed. Her usually tan skin, weathered by the wind and snow-burn of a life running errands for the Chief across the Tartaruk Mountains, was now blotchy and somehow grayed in places. Her mouth, usually so reserved and quiet, was now open in a garish snarl revealing her white teeth and lolling tongue, drooling in rage.

  It was her eyes that were the most different about her.

  Before, Reticula was sure that they had been a hazel-green, sharp and inquisitive.

  But now they were just coal, pitch-black orbs.

  Ixcht! Reticula swore to herself.

  “Where is it?!” the woman who had once been Sister Joana screamed in rage. She lunged forward with one outstretched hand to scratch at Reticula. But this was no simple cat scratch. Her hand burst into burning crimson flames as it swept down.

  Remember your training! the Journeywoman demanded of herself, flinging herself to one side in the narrow room. The burning claw, radiating energy as it swung, missed her face by a matter of inches.

  Reticula did remember her training, as she lanced outwards with her foot, seeking to trip the obviously irate Sister Joana.

  But Joana had been trained by the Chief Martial and Father Jacques too, and despite whatever was possessing her at the moment, the older Sister’s instincts kicked in. When Reticula’s foot found her calf, she merely stamped backward, pulling the smaller woman off balance.

  “Ai!” and straight into the burning fist that Sister Joana smacked into Reticula’s chest. With a grunt, Reticula crashed backward into the worktables, spilling jars and beakers about her. Joana seized Reticula’s leather jerkin to pull her closer.

  “Where is it!?” Sister Joana bawled in her face, as the magical flames, crimson and purple, licked at the Journeywoman’s neck.

  Something coalesced in Reticula’s heart—a fierce determination born from pain and necessity. Suddenly, in one of those crystalline moments that the Path of Pain could bring about, Reticula felt clear and deadly calm. She could see what she had to do. She did not hesitate to do it.

  “Traitor!” Reticula hissed and swept the long knife that she had been holding upwards between her and the enraged Sister. She felt the blade bite deep into the woman’s side but—aside from the animal flinch of her body—Joana did not react with sudden terror or hurt.

  Instead, Sister Joana just drew the Journeywoman closer to her chest.

  “Where is the amulet!?” Sister Joana snarled again, spitting straight into Reticula’s face.

  Reticula bucked, attempting to kick out, and groaned in pain as she felt her body burn. The Pat
h of Pain only went so far—even for one as focused as Reticula was. The Path was only a technique to withstand physical and mental anguish, and it was still a struggle.

  It was too much. Reticula couldn’t hold her concentration against the rising waves of burning.

  “Ave Sizerius!” There was a blinding flash of blue, and Sister Joana was torn from her embrace and cast down the length of the Father Jacques’s room to the far side. Reticula thumped to the floor, dazed, her jerkin torn by the sudden explosion.

  “Begone, fiend of Ungol! Begone, servant of the night! Begone from my domain!” Reticula blinked, hearing a voice thundering with authority and power, as purple lightning flickered and raced over the walls.

  And in the center of that explosion of force and power was a woman—Magister Inedi.

  The Magister wasn’t a very tall woman—smaller than Sister Joana would have been, were she standing up. But the leader of the Black Keep appeared majestic and powerful, exuding force and energy like a breaking storm from her dark eyes that sparked with eldritch fire.

  Reticula couldn’t breathe, such was the force of the Magister’s presence. She had never seen the small, shaven-headed Inedi at the height of her powers—and the Journeywoman was not too proud to admit she was afraid.

  Luckily, all of that strength of character was directed straight at the cowering form of Sister Joana at the far end of the room. The Sister attempted to rise and failed as the waves of blue Sizerius charm battered her against the wall.

  “Unhand the mind of my pupil, fiend!” the Magister growled. She stalked forward, rising a hand up that was wreathed in more boiling blue light.

  What is going on? Reticula cowered. Did this mean that person wasn’t Sister Joana, her comrade? Was the Sister somehow possessed?

  “Magister . . .” whispered a voice from the hunched form. It was a voice that was layered with echoes like hissing winds. “How good it is to see you again. You know, I was hoping that I would get a chance to experience your plucked-up pride and arrogance once more!”