This story continues Adnan's account of his adventures prior to the Awakening and is placed during the opening fiction for Episode Three: Black Hand, Black Heart. Adnan has just followed the Senpet leader of the Qabal, Hekau, into a disturbing section of the City of One Thousand Stories...

This part of the city is well-known to me. Those with little to fight for anymore or without the will to go on make it their home. It is called the Khesir Quarter by most but to those that live there, it is called the Last Stop. The homeless and forsaken souls who have given up lurch along its pale stone walks every hour of the day, squabbling amongst themselves over the nights sleeping arrangements or a half-empty bottle of turned milk.

I said I know of it Highness. But I must also say that I avoid it at all costs.

My curiosity was piqued now, for I could not understand why the Senpet would choose to bring the girl here. She would simply become another possession to barter...

Had he not turned then into Redemption's Court I might have acted rashly. Amru was in no way my responsibility, but she was nonetheless innocent of her abductor's crimes. But instead he brisl slipped past the rusted gate, pulling Amru across the cobblestones the far wall within.

You see, Redemption's Court has a curious history. It is said that those who enter risk judgment for their indiscretions. No one goes there unless they are longing for a new beginning... or an early end. I, for one, was not willing to take the chance. Instead, I watched as the Senpet vanished into a narrow crack between two barren porches.

When they did not return for nearly an hour, and I found myself nodding off, I realized that I would have to do something. It would not be wise to fall asleep in the Last Stop, but I would if I remained idle. In all the excitement it had been nearly two days since I had last rested.

For a moment, I considered returning to the relative safety of the River Quarter and finding a place to bed down for the evening. But my less rational side won out, and I found myself passing through the gate and into the heart of the Court. Slowly, I paced across the smooth flagstone, trying to ignore the odd stains that had collected across its surface and in between its broad, irregular wedges. More stories had ended there than had begun again, I'd wager, and I was loathe to become another lost character, a victim of his own indomitable prying eye.

It was foolish to think that a person with my history could cross the Court unscathed. Perhaps I was sensitive to its influence just then, or maybe there is a debt every man carries into the place with him. Not ten steps did I take into the shadowed (and presumably empty) square before a man dressed in filthy rags and walking with a disturbing gait shambled out of a nearby corner.

As he stepped out into the early moon light I could see that he was shaking terribly, and clutching the scant cloth around his frail form in a vain effort to shake some perceived chill. He stumbled forward more than walked, and never in a straight line, though roughly in my direction. As he approached, a strange sense of foreboding washed through me.

"Old man?" I called. 'Are you well?"

His answer was but a low chuckle, and my blood ran as ice at hearing it. When it trailed off, a faint, unbroken whistle of labored breathing replaced it. Long, slow, painful gulps of air that his entire body seemed to brace for.

When he was within several feet of me, I stopped moving, prepared to run if necessary, but thinking that his condition would limit any attempt at pursuit, regardless. He halted as well, his weight precariously balanced on one foot, as if the other were lame or badly injured. For several long moments, he observed me.

I knew that he was not natural, not someone simply lost and begging for help. As we faced one another, I knew that he was here for me, and that I was being challenged somehow. I wanted to flee, to be anywhere but there. But I had waited too long. Something powerful, perhaps even my own morbid desire, was holding me there. I could feel my muscles tightening with every passing second, ache drawn across my immobile form.

His old, withered hand rose to draw back the makeshift hood he wore. I did not want to see his face, was not prepared to stand before my adversary, but could not look away. I was a prisoner of my greatest vice - curiosity itself. His skeletal fingers grasped the fetid cloth and pulled, revealing the leprous features of Qarajah the merchant, a man whose ill-protected wares had long provided me a fast and easy method of obtaining a day's lodgings and food.

His beard had mostly fallen away, the gristle-caked skin beneath a pallid cream, pinched here and there with tiny yellow sores. His eyes were hollow and deeply set like those of a man recently gone blind. And his teeth were nearly all gone, only pulpy blue-black flesh visible within his gaping mouth. When he spoke, many words were mangled by his unnatural drawl.

"Well, boy, it seems you've taken a wrong turn!"

My voice stammered out in response, "What happened to you?"

"I was robbed of my trade by a young and impertinent thief."

"Why are you here? You're always at your shop until late." A growing nausea was settling into my belly, and I still could not will myself to move.

Another icy chuckle followed before he said, "You will learn, sooner than you think, young Adnan, that a living cannot be made from the fruits of others without a price."

Closing my eyes, I focused all my strength into my limbs. I had to escape this phantasm. I couldn't succumb to fear, or remorse. The rumors went that those who accepted what they saw and heard in the Court were already lost, and never found their way back out. I could not shut out the words of the vision, but I could ignore them. Slowly, inch by staggering inch, I began to pace backward.

Qarajah's speech continued. "I am that price, boy! Every item you steal from me brings me one step closer to the miserable life of a beggar!"

Step. Step. My arms reached out behind me to feel for a wall, anything to grab hold of, remind me of the real world.

"Do you hear me, boy?" His reeking anger seemed to be almost upon me, closing with every retreating footfall. I turned and ran, uncaring of what was behind me or where I was going anymore. It was only as an afterthought that I pried open my fearful eyes.

Others were within the Court then. Some I recognized as victims of my pilfering, others were new to me. They seemed to part for me, and I dashed past them without thinking to question their odd actions. Suddenly, one of them stepped out into my path, her scowling face painted with resolve. It was Shala, another merchant and some would say lover to Qarajah.

She held out her powerful arm and pointed with reproach, screaming, "You are a thief, and a liar!" I was compelled to stop, if only to avoid toppling into her. Given my feeble state, I doubted that I could have forced my way past her in any case.

"You carelessly steal away people's futures, never considering the consequences. You've brought this horror on yourself, Adnan. No one can save you from your sins."

The crowd was closing on me then, their arms outstretched as if to rip away my very being, and I turned desperately about, trying to find a break in them. The night air grew hot and stale, sucked away by my accusers. I coughed hoarsely as the reality of my dire situation was felt. I was responsible for this, all of this. Every questionable thing I had ever done was coming back to haunt me, and I couldn't escape them.

I became dizzy, and was vaguely aware that my balance was faltering. Something was tugging at my foot and when I glanced down, I saw a deformed, worm-infested hand had seized my ankle. It had erupted from the ground, and the rest of its decomposed form was following behind. When its misshapen head emerged from the earth beneath the cracked stone, a wavering howl of inhuman history bellowed out into the heavens.

"You have disturbed our rest young one," it moaned, "and taken from us the last gifts of our families and friends. You have stolen away our buried thoughts, so that none may ever remember us again."

With a frantic jerk of my leg, I was free of the monster, but fell back upon a jagged, upturned stone and rolled onto my side. Before me, another of the ancient corpses was prying itself from the and earth, clawing at me with long, spindly fingers only half-covered with long- dead flesh.

I kicked the zombie back and shot upward. Several more of them were bursting through the ground around me, and the first was already on its feet lurching toward me and mumbling indecipherably. The crowd had thinned somewhat, now circling the macabre scene like a rabid carnival audience.

'Adnan.' The voice came from behind me, a soft lilting symphony I could scarcely place in this horrid scene.

A woman's hand gently touched my shoulder, her fingers lightly cresting my collarbone as she moved to my side. "You have fallen, Adnan,' she said sweetly, 'surrendered to the corruption polluting the jewel."

Her angelic face was taut in a broad smile, tiny rays of wisdom drawn at the edges of her sparkling green eyes. I was immediately comfortable in her tender embrace, as she gripped me tightly and said, "Your ways are your own, but your actions smother the hopes and dreams of others. You must change your life, or you will not be ready."

"For what?" I stammered, tears of relief welling beneath my eyes.

"For the part you will have to play in the coming disquiet. And with that she twisted around, pitching me through the assembled figures and into the unyielding back wall of the Court.

I didn't understand her message then, and now I wish that I ha been more quick to see the truth in sound words. But if I were, I would not be here with you, my dear Caliph, and that would be a piteous shame.

Who was she, you ask? She was... my mother.

Long ago, after my father had died, I ran away from her, convinced that I could do better for myself on my own. I never considered what that would do to her, any more than I considered what my recent actions would do to others. I never guessed what my decision would make her do. Days later, she walked from our home in the Last Stop to Redemption's Court and passed beyond its gate. She was never seen among the living again.

Perhaps I had been wrong, and cruel to those who cared for me. Maybe pain is a shared experience, intended to strengthen, but which to demean. Each of us must carry our burden, or the rest suffer.

Perhaps that was the point.

I remember looking back into the Court from where I lay, and seeing a ring of people at its edges, the jagged stones level again. Every one of the figures was smiling at me, though not in a happy or excited way. The cheerless, despondent masks they wore would never permit them to express joy again, and I doubted their ability to feel it as well.

They were smiling to be rid of me. I would not add to their number-to their pain-this day.

Centered among them and across from me was my mother, whose grim expression carried with it the weight of all my thoughts, less mistakes, but also the possibility of a second chance, of an opportunity to atone for my apathetic deeds and begin anew...

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