Deathmarked (The Fatemarked Epic Book 4)

by David Estes

  “Your mother?”

  Bear nodded, his beard shifting. “She never considered what I wanted. It was always about her, about war and peace and prophecies. But then she died…and she took my spirit with her.”

  Roan could feel the sorrow in this man, clothing him more fully than any shirt or cloak could. “Tell me what I need to know. What your mother wanted me to know.”

  He shook his head. “I cannot.” Roan’s heart sank. “But I can show you.”

  That’s when Roan noticed Bear had been hiding one hand behind his back. He withdrew it now, a knife shining in the moonslight.

  As it turned out, all the large man wanted was a shave. Not just his beard and head, but the hair on his chest, back, and arms as well. He rolled up his trousers too, shaving his feet and legs. He did all of this in silence, not looking at them, the hair falling away in dark clumps.

  Everywhere the knife passed, skin was revealed. Skin covered in words.

  Roan’s eyes met Yela’s, then Windy’s, and he could see that his excitement was only rivalled by theirs. It felt like turning the final page of a book only to discover there were a hundred more pages. No, a thousand.

  He longed to move closer, to read each and every word, but he waited. It tested his patience, but there was something intimate about words inked on one’s flesh, and he would wait for an invitation.

  When Bear finally finished, only an oval of hair remained in the center of his back, where he couldn’t quite reach with the knife. He looked up, meeting Roan’s gaze. “The entirety of my mother’s work,” he said. “These are the true prophecies. Only a few made it into the history books. Most of them were burned or otherwise destroyed by your forefathers. They feared her. They feared her knowledge, the power she’d unlocked when she first discovered this place. This god.” He cast his hand over the hole he’d begun to dig. “Absence.”

  “May I?” Roan finally asked, unable to hold in the question any longer.

  “Have at it. That’s why you’re here.”

  Roan moved forward, Windy and Yela following just as eagerly. “Where do I start?” Roan asked.

  “There is no order, no rhythm. Every word is of equal importance. Start where you will and continue until you finish. I will rest while you read.” With that, he lay back and closed his eyes.

  The others had already started reading, but Roan hesitated, wondering whether he would find truth in what Bane had said, or whether they were lies by omission, as Windy had once suggested.

  There was nothing for it. The truth was all he had left.

  He began to read.

  Hours passed in silence, none of them daring to speak, as if their voices were frozen in some spell. Some of the words were large, and others so small they had to practically touch the man’s skin with their eyeballs to make them out. The size, however, seemed to have little to do with each word’s importance.

  The words contained prophecies of each of the fatemarked, what their powers would be, when they would come forth. Some were dead, some were alive. According to the prophecies, all were of equal importance to the fate of the Four Kingdoms. The phrase ‘Each of the fatemarked have a role to play in the game of war and peace’ was repeated several times.

  Roan found his own title, Peacemaker, amongst the prophecies, as well as the Kings’ Bane. To his frustration, they were shown as opposite sides of the same coin, just as Bane had said. There was no additional context to support his hope that perhaps they weren’t as linked as it seemed.

  When Bear sensed they were done with the front, he rolled over onto his stomach so they could read the back. It was more of the same, visions of years of war, of violence, of the bringing forth of those with godlike powers who could change everything…

  Roan sat back in frustration when he’d finished.

  “We know all this,” he said. “There are more details, but it doesn’t tell us what to do next.”

  Slowly, Bear turned over and sat up. “My mother’s legacy is no secret, even if the west tried to cast a shadow over it.”

  “Then why are we here? We should be in the Four Kingdoms doing something.”

  Bear stared at him, his enormous brown eyes unblinking.

  Roan stiffened. “What’s in the center of your back?” he asked, a chill running through him.

  “You already know. Or at least suspect. I can see it in your eyes.”

  Roan did, but he wanted to see for himself. “Give me the knife.”

  Bear handed it over, handle first. Roan took a deep breath and crawled around the large man. The unshaven hair was so thick it was more animal than human. Slowly, careful not to cut his skin, Roan scraped the hair away, watching as each letter took shape, pounding in his mind in rhythm with the beating of his own heart.

  There were only five letters, larger than all others tattooed on the man’s body, filling the width of his back.

  HORDE.

  “Your dream,” Yela whispered, staring over Roan’s shoulder at the letters.

  “You are no soothsayer, Roan Loren,” Windy said. “It was a nightmare, nothing more. Your dreams hold no power. That is not the power of your mark.”

  “No,” Roan agreed. “It is not. But I am connected, somehow, to the other fatemarked. To Bear’s mother. The Western Oracle binds us all.”

  Bear grunted.

  “What are you not telling us?” Roan asked, suddenly angry. He was angry that all the pieces seemed scattered before him, but that it wasn’t that they wouldn’t fit together; they didn’t seem to belong to the same puzzle.

  He stalked around to face Bear once more, not caring that the man was the size of a bear, or that he could transform into one and rip him to shreds. This man had all the information but refused to just tell them, making them earn it like peddlers on the street. To Roan, this wasn’t some game. There were lives at stake. His friends. People he loved. Innocents, caught in the crossfire.

  “Speak,” he demanded.

  Bear said, “You know everything I know. Something is coming, what my mother called The End of All Things. Not from within the Four Kingdoms, but from the outside. Some force; some Horde. You are right. You are all connected, my mother saw to that. Even after the grave claimed her, she spoke to me. Not often, but enough. It has been many years since I have heard her voice, but I don’t believe she’s fully gone. Saving herself, more likely.”

  “Saving herself for what?”

  “To speak the truth, a truth she never even shared with her own son.”

  “How?” As soon as the question started to float away, Roan grabbed it. “The hole. Absence. That’s why you were digging when we found you.”

  “Yes.”

  “Absence is dead,” Windy said.

  “You think a bit of dirt can kill a god?” Bear asked, his thick eyebrows lifting.

  Windy quirked an eyebrow. “The hole was said to have no bottom. I’d say that’s more than a bit of dirt.”

  Instead of answering, Bear asked another question. “What wins a battle even before it begins?”

  “Loss of faith,” Yela said.

  Bear nodded.

  Roan understood. “The Phanecians,” he said, the pieces finally starting to look the same color.

  “Long have I suspected them of this, but the time wasn’t right until now. This needed to play out a certain way. But now, at long last, is the time.”

  Roan’s eyes met those of his companions, and he saw their resolution meet his. There was only one thing left to do:

  Dig.

  The hole was deep enough that Roan could stand and still not see over the edge. What if we dig for days and find nothing? The thought of so much time passing without results made him feel frantic, like, once more, he was on a fool’s errand and he was the fool.

  No, he thought. This must mean something. It feels like we’re so close…

  He dug, the cracks and crevices in his hands caked with dirt. Bear was too large to fit in the hole with them now, so he sat above, watching.
r />   Windy used a stick to chop at the dirt, softening it so Yela could clear it away with her hands. “If there was anything to find down here, don’t you think the Terans would’ve found it already?” Windy asked, firing a pointed look in Bear’s direction. She’d been grumbling the entire time they’d been digging.

  Bear said, “They were a people of faith. Once that faith was lost, they crumbled like weakened stone. Just like the Phanecians knew they would. Anyway, how do you know none of the Terans did this very thing?”

  “Because then we wouldn’t be digging.”

  “Not if the Phanecians kept filling it in. Then whoever dug it up wouldn’t have been believed by the others.”

  “But—”

  “The Phanecians came. They enslaved the people without a fight. Even if one of the Terans knew something, there wasn’t time to prove it. The damage was done.”

  Silence fell for a few moments as they all considered the man’s words. It was hard to argue with one who’d lived near on two centuries.

  After a while, Windy said, “Your mother. How much time did she spend down here?”

  Bear grunted. Said, “Too much.” Roan thought that was the extent of his answer, but then he continued. “You know, I saved her life once, in this very spot. She was communing with Absence. She was down there longer than she was supposed to be, refusing to come up. The Teran priest, a man named Corona, lost his senses. He wanted to sacrifice her to Absence. He didn’t know I was watching, and when he tried to cut the rope I…” Roan paused his digging to glance up at the man. One of the moons—the green one—had risen behind him. A shadow seemed to fall over Bear, filling in the gap where words could not.

  When he continued, his tone was even. “Mother was safe, but she was different. She was like a woman who had walked through fire without being burned by the flames. Touched, yes, but not hurt. That was the moment I started losing her, though I didn’t realize it until much later. Much, much later. I was only a boy then. So young. So foolish. And she was as powerful as a god.”

  “She gave you immortality,” Roan said, scooping away more dirt.

  “I am long-lived now, yes,” Bear said, “but I don’t think I’m immortal. I pray I am not. She wanted me alive for this moment, to be her eyes, her ears, her mouth. To show you what I am showing you.”

  “A never-ending hole,” Windy chirped. She stabbed at the dirt with a stick, and instead of the usual sludgy sound she got a hollow thud. Roan stopped and stared at her. “Most likely I hit a rock,” she said.

  “That didn’t sound like a rock,” Yela said. “More like wood.”

  Roan looked up at Bear, who was peering over the edge, his thick head blotting out the moonlight. “Go on,” he said.

  Roan crawled over to the others and began digging. It took them another half-hour to clear away the rest of the dirt, but what they found was worth it.

  Wooden planks. When they scraped away the dirt trapped between them they felt the most remarkable thing.

  Air, cool and damp, rushing between the slats.

  The hole had survived.

  And it was deep.

  It took them another hour to carefully break the planks and haul them up, revealing the blackness of a hole so deep they couldn’t see the bottom, if there was one. First, they’d had to find some rope. Roan had tied it around his waist and chest while Bear secured it to himself at the top. The others had caught the wood as Roan had thrown each plank up.

  What he saw now made Bear’s earlier words seem almost prophetic. “There are signs of other planks,” Roan said.

  Windy stared down at him. “Meaning what?”

  “Someone dug this deep once before. Broke the boards. Knew the truth.”

  “They were replaced?”

  “Yes. The hole was filled again. Whoever dug it up the first time was silenced by slavery.” Roan felt ill. An entire nation brought low by some wood and dirt. Enslaved. Broken, their lives stolen.

  The rope creaked back and forth, swayed by the breeze wafting up from the depths.

  “Haul him up,” Windy said.

  Roan said, “No.”

  “We learned the truth,” she called down. “We can reveal that to the world. The Terans are already rebelling. The other kingdoms are rallying against the Phanecians. This information will further their cause. Once the Phanecians are removed from power, there is hope for peace. This is the answer you’ve been seeking.”

  All of that made sense to Roan, but he knew there was still something missing. Bear had already suspected this hole still existed, but he’d alluded to a piece of the puzzle that even he didn’t have.

  “I want to go deeper,” Roan said, remembering Bear’s story of his mother communing with Absence.

  “This is madness,” Windy said. “It’s just a hole.”

  Bear said, “He’s right. That is why I brought him here. This is what my mother wanted.”

  “Because you speak to a dead woman?”

  “No, because I can feel it.”

  Windy huffed out a breath. “We need to go back.”

  “Give me a half-hour,” Roan said. “That is all I ask. Then we can go.”

  “Fine,” Windy said, though she didn’t sound happy. She’s worried about me, Roan thought, feeling a surprising swell of tenderness for the woman.

  Slowly, inch by inch, Roan descended into darkness, the shadows closing around him. Above him, the faces of his companions faded into nothingness.

  Panic gripped him for a moment as he felt around for the walls. His hands grasped only empty air, the rope twisting. Air rushed around him, chilling his sweat-sheened skin. For the first time, he truly appreciated the name of the Teran god.

  Absence. It was the perfect description. Even at night, in that moment just before sleep claimed him, he’d been able to feel his bed, hear the sounds of life, night birds and the fall of rain and the chirp of crickets. His own breaths.

  Gods, I can’t even hear my own breaths. It was true. The wind seemed to steal all sound, while the dark was as blinding as if his eyes had been plucked from his head. Once more, he reached for the walls, but came up empty. He could no longer feel the rope biting at his skin through his clothes. He reached up, anxious to feel something. Again, he felt nothing. It was like he was floating or—

  Falling.

  He tried to scream but if he made a sound it was once more swept away by the wind.

  Seized by panic, he groped around himself, twisting and turning and flipping head over heels…

  Stop.

  The word cut through the silence like a razor-edged blade. The wind ceased to blow. His body stopped contorting, frozen in the black molten air.

  “Absence?” he tried to whisper, but the question appeared only in his own mind.

  No. Absence may not be dead, but the Teran god has gone away, maybe forever.

  Who are you? This time Roan spoke the question in his mind.

  You don’t know?

  Roan’s heart pounded faster. Her. You are Her.

  Yes. I am.

  Roan had desired this moment from the time he’d learned about the Western Oracle, about her prophecies, about the fatemarks. He had planned a million times a million questions, and yet now he could not think of a single one.

  I know all your questions, but they do not matter. What matters is that I gave you the marking on your chest. Your lifemark. I chose you to be the Peacemaker because of what I saw in your soul decades before you were born.

  Her words filled Roan with pride, though he wasn’t certain it was deserved. I haven’t done anything, he argued.

  You have, but the fact that you do not think so is why I chose you.

  Roan considered that. His brain was working again, questions churning like butter. What about Bane? Was he chosen too?

  Of course. He is your brother in spirit, if not in blood. You are two sides—

  Of the same coin. I know. He told me.

  You hate him.

  Do I? Roan wondered. No.
But we…disagree on much.

  That is why you are both needed. To keep each other in check.

  I don’t understand. What about the others? Gwendolyn Storm. Fire Sandes. Beorn Stonesledge. The Ice Lord. Vin Hoza. The slavemarked. None of us know what to do. We are dying. Our people are dying.

  I’m sorry for all the death, the Oracle said. But sometimes there are those who must die—

  In order for there to be peace, Roan finished. He was getting tired of this conversation. It was more of the same. I’ve read all your prophecies now. I am here with your son.

  Henry?

  We call him Bear Blackboots, but yes.

  How is he?

  Roan considered the question. Tired. I think he wants all this to be over.

  There was silence for a few moments, and Roan wondered if he’d said the wrong thing. Oracle?

  I am here.

  Why did your son lead me here? I know you wanted to talk to me, but why? What am I missing? I know about the Horde. I know they are coming to destroy the Four Kingdoms, to sweep over us, killing all. I know that is why you created the fatemarks. Not just to bring peace to the Four Kingdoms, but to unite us against a common enemy, one who seeks to exterminate us.

  Silence again, Roan’s heartbeats filling the void. Finally, she spoke. That is only part of it.

  What else is there?

  I fear you will hate me if I tell you.

  Her words took Roan by surprise. Why would he hate her? He was frustrated with her, yes, but she was trying to do the right thing. She was trying to save them. If she hadn’t created the fatemarks, they would have no chance to face the enemy that now threatened the Four Kingdoms. Heck, she’d been burned alive because of what she’d done for them.

  I won’t hate you. I promise. Tell me.

  No. I will show you.

  A moment later, the darkness lifted, replaced by a gray world of fire and blood.

  Roan had seen this before. It was a great battle, the forces of evil gathered against kingdoms and empires, humans and Orians and still others, standing together, fighting together