NexLord: Dark Prophecies (43 page)

"So he finally killed them, is that it?"
Katek demanded.

"Oh no, Katek, he didn't kill
them.  The pain and fear went on and on, day after day,
until... she went insane.  She took a knife and she went
to her son's bed and held him."

Mara took out her knife again as a prop and
then leaned over the
table
as if
she were looking down on
Paoul's
bed herself.

"Then, when she heard the first dreaded creak
of the stair, as her drunken husband came up, she smiled and then
slit her son's throat.  With her son's blood on her
hands, she turned and went to the door, where she stabbed Jord in
the throat as he came through the door."

"Good!" Lor declared.

"But she didn't succeed.  Her blow
only wounded him severely, and he fell down those
stairs.  Jezebeth fell to her knees and stared at the
blood on her hands. She wanted to kill herself, now that she had
put her son where he could be safe from the pain, but then she
heard it, the sound of those hated stairs creaking.  Jord
wasn't dead, and he was coming for her again.  Terror
shot through her, and she crawled to her dead son's bed and
cowered
until Jord arrived,
bleeding from the neck, he crawled into the room, and beat her to
death with his fists, before he eventually died from loss of
blood."

"So?" Katek stated, "There are sad stories a
plenty around this city."

"The power of fear can build up, and if this
continues over a long time, the fear becomes very powerful
indeed.  There is fear at Jezebeth's house, and hate, it
is a marked place, where people do not go lest the emotion staining
the ground should cause other crimes.  They have
considered burning it to the ground, or having a church cleanse it,
but until such time as one or the other happens, it is
closed. They call them the Forbidden Zones. You've seen
markers for such places, have you not?"

Lor looked sheepishly at Dono and
Aerin. 

"Perhaps you have even been inside a few,
on a dare
or something, but this
one, this one is powerful; it carries a weight of fear close to the
Dreadmaster's black heart.  It could kill someone from
fear alone; I've seen it happen.  Tonight each of you
will go into Jord's house, alone.  I will not be with
you, your friends will not be with you, but Jord and Jezebeth
will.  Tonight you must learn to conquer your fear, lest
you give Jord the power to beat
you
like he beat Jezebeth, and if you fear too much, even
kill you, as he killed his wife."

"You wouldn't put us in that much danger,"
Dono said into the dead silence of the room. 

"I must," Mara stated, "for if you face the
power of the Dreadmaster with fear, you will certainly die, and
your fear may well kill others. Your failure could cost the freedom
of this world."

"We're just kids," Dono stated, in a half
whisper.

"Yes, and the fate of the world will rest
partly in your hands.  So it is written in the Prophecies
of Gold, and in the Dark Prophecies."  She paused, and
her students were silent.  "Katek, you will have the
honor of going first tonight.  Until that time I want you
all to go to your individual rooms.  Yearl will come for
you when it is your turn.  Think about what I have said,
come to face your fear, and understand that it is nothing, only you
give it power, and only you let it grow.  Even when the
outside forces of other people's fear reaches for your heart, you
can let it pass through, as if it was less than air. Fear has
no power over those who will not feed it.  Remember, fear is
nothing. You all have strong minds and I believe you are ready
to face this test."

Katek put on a good front, but sitting alone
in his room and thinking about what he would face when he was
called nearly had him unnerved.  When Yearl knocked on
his door he was startled out of deep reflection.

Mara was not present when Katek opened the
door.  The
willowman's
eyes were dark brown and showed little of his
thoughts.  Silently, Yearl led Katek through the dark
streets to a rundown section on the eastern side of the
city.  Here the street cobblestones were rough and
mismatched.  Streets were narrower and followed thin
canals of still muck.  They crossed a bridge and walked
along a
dank
waterway.  Buildings in this area were old
two-storied
structures, made of black rotting
wood.  At last, Yearl brought him to a thin wooden
stairway, that climbed up to a thick door above.

"Climb the stairs and go
inside.  Find the bed in the far room and sit down for at
least five minutes.  If you can last that long you will
have conquered your fear," Yearl explained.

Katek looked up the old, uneven stairs, in
consternation. 

"Do you think the stairs are good enough
to..." Katek trailed off as he realized he was speaking to himself,
the willowman was gone.  The young man looked behind him
into the dark thin path and saw no sign of Yearl.

Katek took a deep breath and let it out, then
took hold of the rickety stairway railing and started toward the
top.

As his weight came down on the first stair it
creaked loudly.

Katek felt, more than heard, movement in the
room above him, and paused as he tried to see something through the
cracks of the door above.  He noticed the yellow 'X'
painted on the door.  It was a clear warning sign to
anyone approaching that here was a place stained with evil, a
Forbidden Zone.  It was against the law to enter a place
thus marked without proper approval, but Katek took another breath
and climbed the second step.

It too
creaked
, and he heard a muffled giggle come from
somewhere nearby.  Again there was
motion
from above, that he felt as a slight
swaying of the stairs.  He thought he caught a flash of
movement through the cracks around the door above him.

Katek paused and considered the fear he was
starting to feel; it had crept into his lungs and heart and made
them labor.  There was a taste of salt and acid in his
mouth and a cold sweat on his brow.  He cursed and
grabbed the reins of his fear, telling himself to remember what
Mara had told him; only he could give fear power over his body.

Steady again, Katek climbed the stairs, each
one causing a creak and a reciprocal furtive movement from
above.  He had no weapons, no armor, just himself and his
thin clothes.  He wished he had at least brought a knife,
but Yearl had told him no weapons would be needed.

As he reached the top of the stairs, the
feeling of anxiety increased, and he was almost in a
blind
panic.  He stilled his heart by
imagining the feeling as water flowing around and past him, as Mara
had described.  It helped to visualize the emotion.

He opened the door.  Inside it was
dark, only moonlight from the outside bled in across the rough wood
floor.  Katek steeled his emotions and stepped into the
room.  It was like plunging into cold water on a hot
day.  Fear squeezed his heart, like a hand inside his
chest.  He felt waves of terror, followed by savage
thoughts of hatred for a man he did not know.

The door slammed shut on its own and
startled
Katek. The boy spun
around in a crouch.  Below he heard the sound of
footsteps on the old stairs, step by slow step.  The
terror increased and he ran to the bedroom through the
dark.  He stopped when he reached the dark closed door
ahead of him.

W
hat am I doing?
  He
thought, reaching for that calm center that he had achieved
earlier, but it was hard.  His heart beat in loud
thumping shudders in his chest, and behind
him,
he heard the footsteps nearing the top of the
stairs.

His body shook with the effort of not
running, and he heard a woman's voice behind him speaking in a
soft, insane, whisper:  "‘Tis Jord, and he's come for
you.  Kill him, kill him as he comes in, or he'll kill us
all!  Save my boy!"

Katek looked around for a
weapon
and found a broken chair leg in the
corner of the room. He picked it up in his hand like a club.

"I hate him, hate him!  Kill him
before he gets you!” she urged him in her insane voice.

Katek didn't dare turn to see if Jezebeth was
behind him, he was too scared.

Mara's words returned to his fear-clouded
mind, and Katek paused in his advance toward the
door.  He fought a battle within and won.  He
finally managed to detach himself from his fear and look upon
it.  He knew that he was creating the voice out of the
fear in the room and giving it a
reality
.  With a conscious effort, Katek
managed to stop and drop the chair leg.

He turned and faced the dark room and went to
the door. It felt like his mind watched his body from
outside.  The more he stayed detached, the easier it
became.  Jezebeth's voice didn't speak and he didn't see
her.  He reached the door and took hold of the handle,
but here his resolve faltered; he didn't know what he would see on
the other side.  His imagination raced, and the dead
decaying bodies of the two adults and one child came to his
mind.  Then he saw them standing, waiting just on the
other side of the door for him to open it and let them out,
waiting, hungrily.

Behind
him,
Jezebeth whispered.  "Come to join us,
Katek?  I've been waiting for a friend to come and play
with my Paoul.  Open the door and come in, I'll fix it so
you can sleep with us, forever, just as I fixed Paoul."

From the direction of the front door, he
heard the handle start to turn and then Jord's deep, drink-laden
voice called out.  "Who you got in there,
Jeze
?  You dirty woman, I'll kill you
both!"

Katek stopped opening the bedroom door and
looked across the dark main room to the front door.  The
handle really was moving; he could see it in the moonlight seeping
through the joints from outside.

The frightened boy once again swallowed his
rapidly beating
heart
and faced
down the fear inside to a place where he could contain
it.  He reached back for that state where he was almost
an observer in his own body, and after a
moment
achieved it.  He didn't make the choice
to open the door, nor did he wonder at it, he just did it.

The door opened
to
an empty room.

Behind him, Katek heard the front door
opening, and he knew it was Jord come for his wife.

Footsteps approached across the room, and
Katek fought to maintain his detached state of calm.  He
didn't even jump when the voice spoke, though the tone did surprise
him.

"You have done well," Mara said softly to his
back.  "You have managed to open the bedroom door, and
stay in control of yourself, even when you heard this door opening
and my footsteps approaching.  I am pleased by your
progress."

Katek swallowed, he wasn't feeling very cocky
at the moment.  Fear had nearly gotten the best of
him.  He had been holding onto a razor edge of control,
but he had held.  Suddenly he knew it would be easier
next time, and that thought alone made him stronger.

"Come on, you've disturbed the ghostly
memories of Jezebeth enough for one night," Mara decided and led
him from the house.

Behind them the house sat silent, waiting for
a more malleable victim to feed upon.

Each of Mara's students faced their fears
that night in the emotionally haunted rooms of Jezebeth and
Jord.  Each student had a different experience, all of
them terrifying, all of them in the end, beneficial in their
learning.

It was hard on them, harder than most young
men and women could handle, but Mara knew these kids were special,
and they were already trained far beyond their
years.  She knew they could survive this trial by fear;
they had
to
because she had no
time for any other method.  It was their first real
exercise in controlling powerful fear; it was not their last.

Aerin woke with a start, and his body was
covered with sweat.  It had been three weeks since they
had started their training in controlling fear.  This was
the fourth night he had experienced nightmares, and this one was
bad.  He had been back in Jezebeth's house, and the
decayed face of Jezebeth, that he had seen leaning down into his
during his trial, had returned in his dreams, but this time it
turned into Mara's face.  She had smiled and said, "I've
kept something from you, Aerin."  Then she reached and
tore away the flesh of her face while laughing at him.

He lay in the dark and applied Mara's
teachings to calm his nerves.  Soon he was free of the
leftover
feelings of
fear.  He analyzed the dream, and noted that he had not
been in Jezebeth's house this time; it had actually taken place
inside of the abandoned building on Netter Street, where he had
seen Mara talking to the crazy man.

Aerin got out of bed and
dressed.  It was three hours past midnight, but he didn't
want to go back to sleep.  He decided to face whatever
fear it was that haunted his dreams, right now.

Soon he was out on the dark and misty streets
of the city.  He saw one darkly cloaked man, furtively
staying to the shadows.  Aerin kept an eye on him, as he
went past, but the man only moved away while keeping his face
concealed by his dark hood.

Soon, Aerin reached Netter Street and he
sought the building where the crazy man was usually
found.  Aerin saw the place in the stones where they had
left the
sword
and wondered about
Mara and her relationship with this strange man.  He
looked at the dark doorway and started forward. Aerin used his new
skills in controlling his fear to keep a calm
state.  Detached from his instinctual fear of entering
this dark and unknown place, Aerin stepped into the gloom.