The Last Null Read online

  “Demiene tincture,” Jacques coughed again, thumping his broad chest with his four-fingered hand. “Thank you . . .” but then his face twisted into one of anguish as he realized something. “There was only one vial left—” The man turned quickly, to see the open wooden box on the side of the table.

  The Chief’s eyes met her own, searching there for answers and full of trepidation. Reticula was too shocked by the events of the last few moments to perform the skills that she had been taught—those of evasion and performance. But it was Father Jacques who had taught her such things, and he knew well how to see through them.

  “You found it,” he said heavily. Reticula was certain that he was angry. “The Prophecy of Magister Lorenz, about the Last Null.”

  Reticula opened and closed her mouth, then bobbed her head mutely. The Chief to groaned heavily and sat back against the pillows.

  “Then you know that all hope is lost. We’ve lost our only hope of closing the Blood Gate. We lost Terak Var,” Jacques said slowly.

  Reticula held her silence for a moment, frowning. She remembered what words she had held back from the Father before, when he had appeared to have given up all hope. That the Enclave still stood. That they were more than just any one Brother or Sister.

  But now I know the truth, don’t I? Reticula tried to reconcile her feelings. Without the Last Null—the one strong enough to unmake the magic of the Blood Gate, and even dangerous enough to unravel the magic of their entire world—they had no hope of stopping the hordes of Ungol.

  But Journeywoman Reticula had been trained in the Path of Pain, of course. She was not one used to giving in to despair.

  “Pain teaches,” she said slowly. It was the only lesson that seemed to make sense right now. She raised her eyes in a hardened glance at the Chief, almost challenging him to deny her.

  Only to find that the Chief’s eyes were meeting hers in a hardened, fierce glare. “Pain teaches,” he nodded, just the once.

  Reticula cleared her throat. “The way I see it, Father,” she said. “It doesn’t matter whether we can close the Blood Gate before it opens now. What matters is how many Ungol-spawn we kill.”

  Father Jacques’s eyes narrowed as he examined both her and the words she had spoken. “Congratulations, Reticula,” he said at last after a long pause. “You have succeeded, at a time when even I faltered in the Path. And in this, I can see that you have become a full Sister of the Enclave. Welcome,” he said, reaching out to grasp onto Reticula’s five-fingered own with his four.

  “Continue like this, Sister Reticula, and one day I can see you being a Master and Chief yourself!” he said fiercely.

  Sister Reticula was filled with pride, and somehow, this time it wasn’t tinged with agitation. “Well then, we’ll just have to make sure that the Enclave still stands, won’t we?” the young woman said, with a new timber of authority to her voice.

  “Yes,” Jacques said. “Yes, we will,” his words were quiet and intense. Outside, the sounds of the war drums continued to pound, drawing ever closer.

  Thumm . . .

  Thumm . . .

  Thumm . . .

  7

  Battle-Barge

  “FLEE! FLEE THIS PLACE!”

  The voice boomed from the floating battle-barge as Terak and the Elder Beings gave way, jogging backward in alarm at what they saw. The craft was huge—and surely it could contain a hundred or more soldiers.

  And there are what, twenty of us? Terak looked around at the squawking and agitated Elder Beings. One well-placed cannon shot could probably take out a third of their number with ease.

  “Where are the rest of you!?” Terak demanded as he thumped his back to one of the outlying boulders, taking cover as the bird-like Elder Beings also sought to do. The elf knew that there were more of the bird-people with them—but why weren’t they here?

  “Protecting the humans, elf!” the Elder Scout hissed across at him from his covering boulder on the other side of the ford.

  Not much use back there! Terak thought. If they had all of their number—the Elder Beings, the Emarii, and the citizens, too—then they could swarm and defeat those inside.

  But it will be a heavy battle, the elf’s Enclave-hardened mind reckoned. A remembered piece of the Chief External’s advice swam up into his mind: Don’t lose before you’ve even begun.

  “Ixcht it!” Terak swore, knowing that there was really only one way out of this. And that could easily fail.

  Terak the elf of the Enclave stood up, turned toward the approaching battle-barge, and dropped the dagger he held from his hand. He said the two words he never thought he would ever say—that he had been trained never to say in his entire life:

  “We surrender!”

  There was a moment of stunned silence all around.

  “Fool!” the aghast Elder Scout finally hissed at him from where he crouched behind his boulder. “You don’t know what side they fight on! For the Queen or for life!”

  “You’re right, I don’t,” Terak muttered. He slowly raised both of his empty hands and started walking toward the slowly approaching battle-barge.

  But what else can I do? the elf grumbled with himself. The orcish warbands and their War Burg are coming up from the South. The kingdom of Brecha ahead of us is apparently besieged.

  Terak knew that if they ran, then their caravan of people would be slow against the flying citadel and now this flying battle-machine. They could easily be overrun and picked off before they ever got to Brecha or the Black Keep.

  “We surrender!” Terak shouted again, but the answering voice—amplified through some form of magic—was loud and deafening.

  “FLEE THIS PLACE!” it repeated once again, in exactly the same tone as before.

  Terak planted his feet at shoulder width apart and glowered at the nearing prow of the battle-barge. It was only thirty feet or so away now. If it chose to fire on him, he would be torn apart.

  “We’re not going to do that, I’m afraid!” Terak called out, shrugging as he still held his arms up. “You see, there’s nowhere to flee to. The whole world is about to burn—”

  “FLEE! FLEE THIS PLACE!” The occupants of the battle-barge appeared not to care for any concerns that the elf or the rest of the world might have. The barge approached at the same steady speed. From this distance, Terak could see the gleam of the thing’s metal cannons inside the darkened portholes.

  “I told you, we can’t,” Terak shouted again, repeating his desperate plea. “The whole world is about to burn. We need safe sanctuary, at least for a night. There’s an orcish War Burg coming this way—”

  “Hyugh- Ixcht!” There was a cough and a sudden fit of swearing from the magically enhanced voice. “YOU BROUGHT A WAR BURG HERE!? YOU IDIOTS!!”

  “It wasn’t exactly our idea—” Terak started to growl, feeling that hot anger start to rise into a boiling crescendo in the middle of his chest.

  “YOU WILL LEAVE. YOU WILL TAKE YOUR STRANGE ALLIES WITH YOU! YOU WILL LEAVE US IN PEACE!” the voice from inside the battle-barge demanded. “LEAVE NOW, OR WE WILL DESTROY YOU ALL!”

  The elf started to shake with frustration and rage, his unexpected feelings so intense that he almost started to cry with the unfairness of it all. He had come so far, sacrificed everything that he had ever known. From never seeing Father Jacques or Reticula again, to probably never seeing his friend the orc Vorg or even Lord Falan again. He had crossed the three worlds through magical portals that had seared his very soul, and he had fought orcs and living statues and worse . . .

  And now I am about to see all of the Emarii and Elder Beings—the very people who appeared to accept me—get killed as well!? the elf thought in alarm.

  “Wait—” Terak called once more to the approaching war-machine, now only fifteen feet in front of him—

  “TOO LATE!” The magically booming voice cried out in glee. There was a sudden flash of white chemical light from the portholes and a sound like the world breaking apart.


  The cannons erupted around Terak. The noise instantly switched into the high-pitched whine of tinnitus as the elf’s finer hearing gave out under the onslaught.

  Certainty, fear, and, pain all blurred together in the elf’s gut, along with one other feeling: rage.

  Terak was somehow miraculously still alive, and still moving as well. His training and instincts had taken over, throwing him forward toward the enemy—straight at the rising form of an entire floating battle-barge . . .

  The cannons were too far apart! The elf realized as his feet pounded on the first step, then the second toward his foe. Although the elf was now barely able to hear and covered with the white charge that had ignited the cannons inside—the gun portholes were still too wide apart for any of them to track him!

  Terak saw his entry point—the edge of one of the gun portholes. He bounded, using every ounce of strength to leap into the air.

  Gotcha! He seized the seated lip of the gun porthole and swung, his legs banging the bottom end of the tarred barge as he sought to haul himself upwards.

  He gained one foot on the wide square of the porthole—in time to see a fizzing line of charge wire eating its way greedily to the base of the hidden gun inside.

  “Ixcht!” Terak seized the upright edge of the porthole and threw himself outwards, just as—

  Ka-PHOOOM! Even though his current lack of hearing, Terak heard the roar of the explosion and felt its burn against his body. He slammed into the outer hull, started to slide before grabbing out with one long-fingered hand.

  “Ah!” He caught onto a bronze rung in the wood.— It appeared to be a ladder for naval sailors and soldiers to scamper up and down the sides of the battle-barge when it was in full flight, to fix and pitch the outer hull as required.

  Now that Terak had a firm handhold, he was moving. He threw himself up the rungs with a speed that would have astonished anyone still uncertain of the null’s abilities.

  Terak snarled as he climbed, pausing only to reach the very top of the high-walled prow, edged in protective metal battlements. The elf had never particularly laid siege to anything before, and certainly had never expected to do so alone, or to a floating boat. So it was only his frenzied rage that he used, instead of any skill, to vault over the top battlements, flipping in mid-air. With one hand, he snatched his second dagger from its hiding spot at the small of his back.

  Wham! He landed with both feet on the inner deck of the barge, dagger outstretched toward the army of awaiting sailors and soldiers—

  Of which there were none.

  There were the wide decks, the barrels, coils of rope, and the masts and sails. There were also the extra gun emplacements that ran along the top deck.

  But there was only one occupant of this entire battle barge: a short, rotund human ensconced in a throne-like chair, with multiple glowing gemstones on levers about him—which the pilot clearly used to fly and operate everything else.

  The rather round man with a wispy ginger beard let out a yelp of alarm at the sight of the as-yet not killed and very, very angry elvish assassin stalking toward him.

  “I only fired blanks! I ran out of cannonballs decades ago!” the man squealed. Terak ran to him to quickly level his dagger at the rolls of the man’s neck.

  “Stop firing on my friends and land this boat, or I am going to be even more annoyed!” the elf of the Black Keep snarled.

  8

  The Last Boat

  “No one’s meant to come here! No one’s allowed!” whimpered the red-bearded man of the battle-barge.

  The man in question was portly and short and was attired in an over-sized serviceman’s jacket of braided leathers. It was covered with pouches from which spilled coils of twine and tar-soaked rags. He no longer sat in his pilot’s chair—as Terak was coming to think of the strange throne with gem-handled levers Instead, he was sitting on the deck of his own battle-barge, surrounded by Emarii, Tor-civilians, and Terak. The Elder Beings had taken one sniff at him before moving to the battlements and rigging of the barge, seeming happier perched in high places.

  “What’s your name?” repeated Kol, the older leader of the Emarii storytellers. He had been treated along their march and seemed to have lost the ghastly gaunt look of near-death. He still breathed a little shallowly, Terak noted, and now used a heavy crook under one arm to support himself after their battle with the orcs.

  The red-bearded man scowled and looked at the array of spears, staffs, and blades that were arrayed against him.

  “Doctor Mendip. Lars Mendip,” the man said irritably. “Master and Chief Aviator—I’ll have you know—of the Ancient and Royal Guild of Navigators!”

  Terak saw Kol cast a wary eye about the battle-barge that appeared to be built for a hundred or more, but now only held one actual crewmember. “Doesn’t look like you’re Master or Chief of anything much, Doctor Mendip,” the old storyteller said caustically.

  “How dare you!” The man started to rise from his crouch. But he immediately froze and returned to his seat when Terak made a feral growling noise in the back of his throat, pressing his blade a little closer.

  Doctor Lars Mendip blinked several times, then looked down at his hands, encrusted with heavy signet rings. “Well, perhaps the Guild isn’t as busy as it used to be . . .” he admitted.

  “Ha!” Kol laughed, rocking back on his crook. “Word has it that the Guild of Navigators hasn’t built a new boat in almost eighty years!”

  “Hmm. Yes. Well . . .” the man stammered and spluttered. “Not that we can’t. Not that we don’t know how . . .”

  “I’m sure you still know how,” Kol said suddenly, with a glimmer of his old intensity. He quickly leaned forward to pierce the man with a sharp look. “We were rather banking on the fact that you did, as a matter of fact.”

  “The Royal Guild only works by commission from the royal line!” The Doctor Mendip snapped back. Twin high spots of color appearing in his rabbit-like cheeks as the man’s temper proved mightier than his fear.

  “And which royal line would that be? Brecha? Tor? Ara?” Kol said sardonically.

  “All!” The portly man sounded, if anything, even more exasperated by Kol pointing out the obvious. “Each of the royal lines of humanity descend from the One High King of old. He commanded the Guild to supply his family with air galleons and air defenses, which we have done—” the man suddenly looked confused. “Until they all started killing each other, that is . . .” the Chief Aviator said in a much quieter voice.

  “Precisely!” Kol crowed with what he thought was a winning denouement to their argument.

  This is taking too long! Terak hissed to himself. “Excuse me,” the elf coughed, remembering just what Father Jacques had taught him as a student of the Enclave-External. Tell them what they need to know. Find the common points of connection.

  “If I may say, sir . . .” Terak looked down at the singular pilot. “If you help us, you will be helping the royal lines of humanity. I am a personal friend to Lord Falan of Brecha.” Terak’s long-fingered hand held up the blade that he carried, before flipping it over in a delicate pirouette of steel. He showed the Doctor the pommel with its small motif of a carved bear.

  “And, even if you cannot believe this token, then you can believe this—none of us here are orcs, or goblins, or Ixcht. None of us serve the Hexan or the foul Queen he serves. By helping us, you will be helping all the free races—for we intend to travel north to Brecha.”

  And then onwards again, to join the battle against the Queen of a Thousand Tears herself, Terak thought. He didn’t add that bit, as that sounded like a ridiculous quest for a group of about sixty people to do. Fight the entire hordes of the nightmare realm of the Ungol, and for no better reason than if they didn’t now—they might never get another chance.

  “Hmph,” Doctor Mendip scowled once again, looking from the bear insignia on the dagger to the elf that held it and back again a few more times, before sighing heavily.

  “Fine. I will have t
o tell my brother that we’ve got guests,” he growled, looking at the weapons arrayed against him. “Are you going to let me get up now? I don’t suppose that any of you lot know how to pilot an air-ship, do you?”

  As it turned out, the emptied battle-barge was a sign of things to come. Their giant craft slowly made its way past cliffs on either side, to the boat yards of the Royal and Ancient Guild of Navigators.

  Or what’s left of it, Terak thought from where he perched on the forward battlements of the shovel-like prow of the battle-barge.

  “Stars.” Terak heard a whisper behind him. Kol had limped up to the inner ledge that ran along the inside of the high walls of the barge, and was peering over the side at the stone quarry beyond.

  It was easy for the elf to see why the storyteller was astonished. It was easy to see that this place would once have been grand and magnificent in its heyday. It occupied a vast space where many terraced layers scoured the high walls. These rocky terraces had been fashioned to form zig-zagging ramps, from which stone must surely have been quarried at one point.

  “I thought they built boats, not buildings?” Terak murmured, earning an equally confused noise and shrug from the Emarii behind him.

  But there were signs of aerial interest here, too. In front of the dark archways of mine-workings, there stretched multiple jetties and piers out into the central amphitheater space. Each intersected the void of air at different levels, and still the quarry was so vast as to allow enough room for several such battle-barges if they were to fly side by side in its center.

  From these jetties, Terak could see old winches and coils of rope-work hanging here and there. Entire wooden buildings with pulleys and levered arms appeared to form some vital role in air ship maintenance.

  And occupying a quarter of the quarry was a stone fortress—built out of the same gray-yellow rock as the boulders of this place, but with many open-arched doors and windows, flat areas behind battlements, and flagstone walkways. The elf could see tattered pennants flying from some of the towers, which had long since lost their shape and color.