Fatemarked Origins (The Fatemarked Epic Book 4) Read online

No, Henry thought. Mother, what are you doing? He took a step forward but she moved too quickly, stepping over the edge of the dark hole without a sound.

  Henry stopped, still in the shadows, watching as the coils of rope unwound, dropping into the pit. He held his breath…

  The tether went taut, reaching its limit, pulling on the hook, which tilted slightly in the direction of the hole. And held.

  A snake of uneasiness wormed its way into Henry’s stomach as he thought about his mother down there all alone in the dark. It’s just a hole, he thought, trying to convince himself. When she’s finished…doing whatever it is she’s doing—listening to the Words—Carona will pull her back up and she’ll be the same eccentric woman she has always been. My mother.

  He sat down to wait.

  Hours passed, the sun creeping across the sky, stealing Henry’s shadow, bit by bit, until he was forced to move to remain hidden. Carona sat by the hole, his legs dangling over the edge, staring silently into the darkness. He didn’t seem to mind the heat beating down upon his head and shoulders.

  After what seemed like an eternity, the man stood up and began walking circles around the hole, muttering something under his breath. Henry cupped a hand to his ear and leaned forward, trying to make out the words, catching a few.

  “Too long…no one is above…have no choice…my duty…my duty…my duty…”

  The priest repeated the last two words several times before stopping suddenly, racing to one of the temple huts, his hair streaming like a windblown cape behind him, and emerging a moment later with a small but sharp-looking knife.

  Henry jolted, watching as the man strode back toward the hole, a look of determination on his arrowhead-shaped face.

  He’s going to cut the rope, Henry realized with a start.

  He sprang to his feet, flying from hiding, moving so fast his feet barely seemed to touch the ground. The priest’s back was to him, and he was already bending over the rope, touching the edge of the knife to the braided twine, starting to saw back and forth…

  “Noooo!” Henry shouted, lowering his shoulder just as the man turned toward him, an oh of surprise forming on his lips. Carona’s positioning was such that he was off balance when Henry collided with him, his feet tangling as he was shoved backward. The knife flew from his hands, soaring end over end, its blade glinting in the sunlight. It vanished into the hole, and a terrifying image of his mother with a knife stuck into her head burst through Henry’s mind.

  But that dark thought was quickly washed away by a very real image: Carona rolling, a mess of arms and legs, sliding over the edge of the hole, reaching out desperately, his eyes huge and white and full of fear…

  Henry dove, his hand outstretched, grabbing for the priest’s fingers—

  And catching them, squeezing as tightly as he could, his joints popping under the man’s weight and the pull of gravity into the hole.

  Henry gritted his teeth as he stared down at the man who’d just tried to kill his mother.

  The man stared back…and then smiled. His hair was dangling into the hole, half-swallowed by the darkness. “My time here is finished. And you, child, have passed the test. May Absence bless the fate of the Four Kingdoms while Teragon falls into squalor.”

  Henry realized too late what the man was planning to do.

  Carona yanked his sweaty hand from Henry’s gasp and seemed to hang in the air for an impossible moment, that strangely peaceful smile plastered across his face.

  And then he fell into darkness without a sound.

  Henry toppled backward, clutching his arm, gasping for breath. Wrath, he thought. Did that really just happen? His world, which had always been an unusual one, now seemed sheathed in a thick armor of madness.

  Then he remembered: the rope! Ignoring the pain shooting through his shoulder and arm, he launched himself at the only thing saving his mother from the same fate that befell the priest. Before Henry had tackled Carona, the priest had managed to slice through a good portion of the rope, and now, thread by thread, it was snapping free of the hook, gaining momentum with each passing second.

  It sprang free and once more Henry had to dive, grabbing the end with his uninjured hand, holding tight, digging his feet into the dirt as he was dragged toward the hole. I’m going to die, he thought, but then one of his feet hooked on the metal implement stuck in the ground. He dug his toes into the iron circle, refusing to let them slip free.

  On the other end of the rope, he felt a tug. Then another. His mother, asking to be pulled up.

  I don’t have the strength, Mother, he tried to say, but his voice and his heart were both trapped in his throat, throbbing through his skin.

  All he could do was hang on, even as the rope burned his fingers and the metal hook bit into his toes, threatening to break them one by one.

  He hung on while the sun fell from the sky, vanishing from sight, and the dueling moons—one red, one green—rose on each side, glowing chariots charging toward each other in the dark. Countless stars of red, green, and gold, burst into being, surrounding the two moons, seeming to spur them on.

  One of Henry’s fingers lost all strength and released its hold, adding to the burden of the others. Another finger gave out. Then a third. Numb, his thumb and forefinger held on for as long as they could, far longer than Henry would’ve ever thought possible.

  They, too, however, ran out of strength. I’m sorry, Mother. I have failed you.

  Henry released the rope, which immediately darted away from him like an injured snake.

  He watched it slide into the hole and disappear—

  Before being replaced by a hand with pale, spindly fingers, curling over the edge, finding purchase on the rocky ground.

  Henry stared, unbelieving.

  Another hand, then a set of arms, and then his mother’s face, blazing with an unnatural light as if lit from within, bursting with an inhumanly radiance usually only seen in the moon or the stars.

  “Mother?” Henry rasped. “How?”

  “Sweetness,” she said, kneeling over him. “You saved me. You saved us all.”

  “I—I was too weak.”

  “You were stronger than anyone else could’ve been. You gave me the time I needed. It spoke to me.”

  Henry was bone-weary and just wanted to sleep, but curiosity got the better of him. “Who?” he asked.

  “Absence. Wrath. The God of Many Names. The One. I know the Words. The Words are me and I am the Words. My greatest desire has been fulfilled. I am going to change everything.”

  Three days after his mother’s death

  Henry was changing.

  At first the changes were subtle: a few whiskers sprouted from his chin, dark and thick. Camped to the east of Knight’s End, he played with them with his fingers. I am a man, he thought, and then laughed. If a few scraggly chin hairs made him a man, then a donkey was the same as a stallion.

  Still, there was no mistaking the way his arms and legs had changed, too. Only a few days earlier they were as straight and narrow as beanpoles; now, if the sunlight hit his skin just right, there was a shape to them.

  Muscle, he thought, flexing his bicep, all shiny and new. If the boys back home saw him, they would still mock him, but he didn’t care. He might never see them again.

  After speaking with his mother—his dead mother—he’d known what to do. He’d taken his only possession of value—his boots—back to Vaughn’s shop. He traded them in for a much more modest pair and collected the difference in value in silver Stallions.

  As he’d walked through Knight’s End, people stared at him—he was almost as notorious as his mother, by association. He’d given them no mind, however, ignoring their jeers and attempts to trip him. Thankfully, none had directly assaulted him, and now he wondered if it was fear of his mother—even in death—that stayed their hands.

  There was nothing left for him in Knight’s End, and he wouldn’t go back. He didn’t know where he would go, only that he needed to get as far away as
possible, and make his own way in the world. He was small and underdeveloped for his age, yes, but his mother had taught him much, and he wouldn’t waste that knowledge. So he’d collected supplies using what coin he had, and set off from the city.

  That was three days ago. He’d avoided the busy Western Road, instead cutting a path across the empty countryside, sleeping under the red, green, and gold stars and enjoying the mild spring weather. Wrath’s Tears, the fortnight-long rainy season, was well behind him. Each night he tried to make contact with his mother again, to no avail. He didn’t let it get him down, not yet. Instead, he took it as a sign that he was making the right choices and no longer in need of her guidance.

  Now, as the morning light crept across the lush western plains, Henry removed his shirt to study his chest. “Aye!” he screamed, peering at his skin. The day before he’d noticed black specks. At first he’d thought they were dirt, but when he’d tried to scrub them away, they refused to budge. Today they sprouted from dozens of spots in his skin, a fine layer of hair from the top of his chest all the way to his navel.

  The topography of his chest looked different, too. Less flat. Harder and more pronounced.

  He flexed again, chuckling when the muscles beneath his skin responded, fluttering.

  Did one always become a man so quickly? he wondered to himself.

  Although he wanted the answer to be yes, he knew in his heart there was more to the changes wrought on his body in just a few short days since he’d last seen his mother. Her chanted words seemed to haunt his steps, like dark shadows closing in.

  Their hearts will fail, their lives will end,

  But yours will last, it will extend,

  Beyond all measure, on land or sea,

  From skin to skin, from teeth to teeth.

  Whose lives will end? he wondered now. And how will mine extend?

  Fang of wolf and fur of bear,

  To warm, to change, to save, to tear,

  A climb to the mount, a jaunt through the wood,

  Their fates will be yours, to help them is good.

  Help who? Mother? Are you there? Help who? The fatemarked? What does that even mean?

  As usual, the only response he received was the chirping of prairie birds and the rustling of long grass.

  He sighed. Suddenly, the tiny hairs on his chest and face didn’t mean so much. Not without her. He wanted to cry, but the tears wouldn’t come. It was as if he’d emptied out his reservoirs, and there was nothing left to refill them with.

  “Men don’t cry,” he said aloud to comfort himself.

  He packed up his camp and walked on, in no particular direction. Little did he know, his feet were guided by a force more powerful than any the world had ever known.

  Three years earlier

  When they returned to Knight’s End, everything was the same and yet entirely different. In a way, the sameness was a comfort, even when Henry’s peers—who’d all grown even taller and bigger in the few months Henry had been away, while he’d hardly grown at all—gave him a swift beating. He’d even smiled as he’d wiped the blood from his nose.

  He was home. That was all that mattered.

  And yet so much had changed. Not Knight’s End, but his mother’s place in it. At first she was the lost Fury returned, bringing words of wisdom from an ancient people who were known for their devotion to their own deity. But soon she began to share the words she had spoken in the dark, the words Henry had written on hundreds of sheaves of parchment. Her prophecies.

  She spoke of war, of arrogant rulers across all four kingdoms, of unrighteousness, of the coming of infants marked with ancient powers…

  The king denounced her position as one of the Three, and his decision was quickly confirmed by the other Furies.

  Shamed, cast off, his mother should have faded away. In fact, Henry tried to convince her to leave the city that no longer loved her. She refused.

  Instead, she took to standing on walls and steps, speaking to the people, trying to convince them of what was to come. Trying to persuade them that soon the world would have need of those bearing what she called fatemarks, strange birthmarks that would give the bearers great powers. The power to choose good over evil. The power to change the world, to right its course, to bring about peace.

  The people threw rocks at her.

  Henry couldn’t leave the house, nor would his mother let him.

  For a while, that was the worst of it, until his mother began speaking out against the furia and the Three who led them. Her next target was the king, who she said was leading the west into darkness.

  Charges were levied.

  A trial held.

  She was convicted of all charges, including treason.

  Three weeks after his mother’s death

  Henry’s powerful legs churned beneath him, propelling him forward, a breath of cold air washing over his skin. He could sense the fear slashing through his prey, a white-tailed elk with a beautiful six-pointed rack of antlers atop its head, sitting like a dark crown of bone. It was strange: he could hear the animal’s heart beating and the rush of blood through its veins as he closed in.

  It darted left, but he was already moving in that direction, anticipating the maneuver. He took two more long strides and then pushed off, throwing his body into the air. The elk glanced back and released a squeal. Henry landed atop its back, extending his muscly arms and wrapping his strong fingers around the beast’s neck, snapping it with a deft jerk of his hands.

  He landed hard on the animal as it collapsed, dead.

  He rolled off the dead elk, looking away. Breathing. Just breathing.

  He felt desire, temptation, the urge to bare his teeth and rip into the animal’s flesh, to tear and grind.

  The feeling scared him more than anything, and yet felt completely natural, a contradiction he was still trying to make sense of.

  He watched his breaths take shape in the form of vaporous ghosts, soaring overhead. As he’d moved northwest, the weather had grown colder and colder. Having not planned to travel northward, Henry was woefully underprepared for the drastic change in temperature, his britches and long-sleeved shirt thin and full of holes and already stretched beyond its limits, tearing in places.

  But Henry wasn’t the least bit cold. In fact, he seemed to grow warmer as the temperature dropped. His skin was now covered by a tangled layer of dark hair, curly and thick. It coated his cheeks and chin. It sprouted from the neckline of his shirt. When he removed his clothes to bathe in a pond or stream, it was everywhere. Somewhere beneath the hair were bulging muscles and thick bones, though he couldn’t see them anymore. He could feel them, however, and Henry still felt as if it was someone else’s body rather than his own, which was supposed to be skinny and weak and prone to fatigue. Now his body never seemed to tire.

  There was no doubt in his mind anymore: His mother had done something to him with her strange poem, when her eyes were rolled back in her head. She had changed him somehow, inexplicably. He was faster, stronger, even taller. Though he’d run out of supplies a week ago, he had no problem catching game on the prairielands.

  I am a killer, he thought now, as he stared at the mountains looming to the north. Due to his weak stomach, back in Knight’s End he couldn’t have stood to watch a butcher do his grisly work. Now he was doing far worse, and enjoying it.

  What am I, Mother? What have you turned me into?

  He couldn’t hold back any longer, twisting his body and sinking his too-sharp teeth into the elk’s hide, ripping away a layer of skin and burrowing his way into the raw meat, blood spurting onto his lips, dripping from his chin. The sight of blood used to make him nauseous—now it only spurred him on.

  He didn’t stop until his hunger was satisfied. Henry took what was left of the meat and tied it to his back, once more moving in the direction of the Mournful Mountains. Though he knew the animal was heavy, he barely felt the weight.

  As he walked, his feet caught his eye. They were at least twice
as long and wide as they’d been when he first departed Knight’s End. A week ago he’d been forced to cast his boots aside when they grew too small, bursting at the seams.

  The hair that grew on top reminded him of…

  Wrath. Did I really just have such a thought? I’m a man, a human, not some wild beast.

  Right?

  “I have fur,” Henry said aloud, cringing at the sound of his own voice, which was too deep, too rough, a rumble originating from somewhere deep in his chest. It was the voice of a stranger.

  It’s just hair, he immediately thought, vanquishing his dark feelings. And it’s my voice. I’ve become a man, that is all. Mother helped me become a man.

  Around midday, Henry reached a pass through the mountains, a frozen river cutting between the cliffs. Raider’s Pass, he thought. The pass’s history was well known, the stories of valor, victory and defeat sung by famous bards across the Four Kingdoms. Henry wondered how much blood had been spilled into the river, washing all the way to the Burning Sea.

  Sighing, he slung down his load. Using the elk’s thickest antler, he chipped away at the ice, until he was able to reach the stream beneath. He drank, relishing how the icy water burned his throat on the way down. He felt alive, more alive than he’d ever felt before.

  Next, he ate the rest of the raw meat, before tossing the bare bones to the side. The elk should’ve been a week’s worth of food, but it had barely lasted him half a day.

  He tried not to think about what that meant.

  Where am I going? he wondered instead. Thus far, he’d just walked, letting his legs carry him whither they would. Here, for the first time since he’d left Knight’s End, he felt like he had a choice, that he was at a crossroads in his life.

  Henry was a westerner, and now he was at an important border between kingdoms. The northern kingdom was on the other side of the pass. Alternatively, if he crossed the frozen stream, which was known as the Snake River, he would be in the east. At the present there was a tenuous peace amongst the Four Kingdoms, but that didn’t mean you could always expect safe passage across borders, especially between the east and west, where tensions were always high.