Truthmarked (The Fatemarked Epic Book 2)

by David Estes

  “Ten years old,” Jai said. It was the same for the children born in Garadia. They all became slaves on their tenth name day. He had personally taken them to Phanea for the ceremony. Only the knowledge that he would return their free will upon returning to Garadia allowed him to suffer through it. But still, seeing their eyes turn black, that stiff expression falling over their young faces…it broke his heart every time.

  “Yes. I was ten when I was made a slave. My sister, too, though she was two years older than me.”

  “How are you here? How are you free?” If she knew a way for slaves to gain their minds back, he longed to hear it. By sunset every man, woman, and child in his group could truly have their freedom, not just the temporary reprieve he’d granted them.

  Shanti shook her head. “I don’t really know. Our master was not a kind man. We were naught but dogs to him, working us from dawn until the dark of night, until we collapsed into bed. When I was twelve and Aliyah was fourteen, our master finally saw my sister.”

  Jai frowned. “What do you mean?”

  Shanti pursed her lips momentarily, but then continued. “As more than a Teran dog. As a woman. She was already flowered and growing more beautiful by the day. Everything’s foggy, like I was living in a world of smoke, but I can still remember Aliyah’s beauty. It was like a light in a storm.” Jai wasn’t certain he wanted to hear the rest, but he didn’t interrupt. “Our master tried to take Aliyah to his bed. He commanded her. And then something impossible happened.”

  “What?” Jai was vaguely aware that they had both stopped walking, the rest of the people passing by on either side, some of them glancing in their direction before continuing on.

  “My father intervened.” She paused, allowing Jai to consider her words.

  “But that’s…”

  “Impossible. Yes. He was a slave. He shouldn’t have been able to do anything but follow the commands of his master. Just as it’s impossible that your people can make their own decisions.”

  “No, that’s different. As their appointed master, I gave them free will. They are still slaves, just following my command rather than Vin Hoza’s.”

  “True. But my father broke the chains somehow.” She motioned to her own neck. “His slave mark vanished. He threw himself at our master, trying to protect Aliyah. My father killed him, Jai, with his bare hands. I watched him as he squeezed the life out of that horrible man.”

  “I—I don’t know what to say.” Jai pictured all of the slaves across the realm rising up to fight their masters. The thought made him want to unleash a roar of excitement.

  “There’s nothing to say. It happened. The only trouble was that our master was very rich and had an army of guards. They caught my father. They made him watch while they slit Aliyah’s throat. Then they slit his, too.”

  Jai’s heart was pounding in his head and a fist-sized knot had become lodged in his chest.

  Shanti pointed to one of the tears beneath her other eye. “This one is for my father. My second tear.”

  Jai felt real tears welling up. “I’m sorry.”

  “Me too. He was a good man. Have you heard of the Teran Virtues?”

  He nodded. Jai’s mother had taught them to him as a child. There were seven of them. “Purity. Selflessness. Faith. Generosity. Courage. Perseverance…” The last one escaped his memory.

  “And Patience,” Shanti said. “I always struggled the most with that one. But my father didn’t. He was a Seven.”

  Jai remembered what his mother told him about the Terans, how they strove to master each of the Virtues in order to become closer to their god, Absence. “So he was some kind of a holy man?”

  She shook her head. “Not a priest, no. He could’ve been, but he chose to remain a farmer. Until we were taken.”

  Gods. “I wish I could’ve met him. And your mother? Has she passed over into the Void, too?”

  She shook her head. “She has no tear. Not yet. She has a new master though. They separated us. She now works for Hoza himself, else I would’ve rescued her years ago.”

  Jai contemplated the many times he’d been to Hoza’s lavish residence. Had he ever seen a woman that resembled Shanti? He didn’t think so. He would’ve surely remembered a woman as beautiful as that. “I would take your pain if I could,” Jai said, his own words surprising him. And yet he believed them. He desperately wanted to erase those tears from her skin, turn back time. Save her family. And my own.

  “Thank you. You are kind.”

  “But what about you? I still don’t understand.”

  “Like I said, neither do I. It was like my father; I can’t explain it. After I lost Aliyah and my father, after my mother was taken away, I felt different. Still numb, but not from the chains marked around my neck. From loss. From pain. I felt…human again. And then, one day I woke up and the slave mark was gone. I—”

  She stopped abruptly, biting her lip.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.” He sensed there was something unsaid, just resting on the tip of her tongue. It vanished. She continued, picking up where she left off. “I ran away from my new master and never looked back. When I heard about what the Black Tears were doing, I spent three years trying to find them. And then I did. They are my family now. Just like these people are yours.”

  Jai was about to respond, when someone shouted across the terrain. A small, shadowy form raced across the dustlands, his feet churning so fast they were a blur. “Jig, what is it?” Jai asked, steadying the boy with two hands on his shoulders when he skidded to a stop.

  “I found something big,” he said.

  “What?”

  “A hole. A massive hole. I almost fell into it.”

  Oh gods, Jai thought, a similar gaping hole opening up in his stomach.

  Jai and Shanti had to push through a thick knot of people surrounding the hole. Sonika and several of the other rebels had already arrived on the scene, peering down the dark shaft with narrowed eyes.

  Jai said, “Does it look fresh?” Once he got within a step of the round void, he leaned over and looked into it. The chasm went straight down but then seemed to angle on a more horizontal underground path. He knew only one thing that could make a hole that big.

  Sonika inspected the edge of the hole, rubbing the crusted dirt between her fingers, wincing in pain. “The red pyzon’s slime is not yet dry,” she said. “It’s still poisonous.” In other words, yes, it was fresh. The tips of her fingers were already red and enflamed from touching the slime, which, though painful when touched by human skin, was primarily used by the pyzon to mark its territory from other predators.

  Jai noticed a large section of dried snakeskin dangling from the far side of the hole, fluttering in the wind.

  “There’s another hole over here!” someone shouted in the crowd. “And here!” a third said. More and more discoveries of holes were announced. And then: “A skin. I found the skin!”

  They moved in the direction of the final call. When they came upon a group of people pointing and gawking at a tangled mess of dried red and black snakeskin, Jai’s heart sank even further. The skin was impossibly long—even a hundred men lying end to end would not stretch as far.

  “We have to move,” Jai said. It was known that after coming out of hibernation, the first thing a red would do was shed its skin. The second thing it would do was hunt. He’d never seen a red pyzon, though he had seen their burrows before. The best bet was to turn around and go the other way. Unfortunately, they couldn’t go back.

  “Not necessarily,” Sonika said. “They travel fast. This snake could be a thousand leagues away by now.”

  “Or right under our feet,” Jai said.

  “No,” Shanti said, shaking her head. “If it was under our feet, we would feel it. The earth would rumble.”

  “I hear it,” a small voice said. Jai noticed that Jig had pressed his ear to the earth, listening intently. His eyes were wide. “Listen.”

  Immediately, the Tears and Jai did th
e same, as well as many of the people gathered around. Though it was faint, the slight tremor was unmistakable. Something was moving beneath the ground. Something big. Murmurs of fear coursed through the crowd like the current from a lightning strike.

  Sonika was on her feet in an instant. “Move!” she shouted. She leapt back on her horse and swooped her hand in the direction of the red cliffs, which resembled dark spikes in the distance.

  The people needed no further urging, shouldering their packs, grabbing their children’s hands, and fleeing north. The mounted Black Tears spread out amongst the people, shouting commands and warning them to avoid the holes. Jai snatched Jig’s hand and took off, practically pulling the boy off his feet. “Hurry!” he said.

  The rumble grew stronger, until Jai could feel it as he ran. He was forced to skid to a stop when a dark void opened up in front of him. For a moment he thought he’d halted his momentum too late, his foot slipping over the edge, but then he fell back, Jig collapsing on top of him.

  Cursing, he scrambled to his feet and cut a wide path around the hole, still dragging Jig behind him.

  The ground shifted, throwing him off-balance. He jabbed his hand down to the dirt to keep from falling, but the sudden jerk made Jig trip. As the boy tumbled, his hand ripped out of Jai’s grasp.

  It saved both their lives.

  Just where they would’ve been had they continued running in a straight line, the earth exploded upwards, followed by an enormous line of rubbery flesh painted in alternating lines of red and black. Jai and Jig kicked backwards in tandem, staring in horror as the monstrous beast seemed to take an eternity to fully emerge from the newly formed hole, its body the length of a hundred men, as wide around as one of the Great Pillars of Phanea. Thick slime spewed from its skin, splattering Jai’s face, arms and chest as he threw his body across Jig.

  Jai howled at the pain from the slime, which was like a dozen flames being shoved into his skin. Gritting his teeth, he rolled, still keeping Jig between him and the pyzon, which flew through the air, opening its giant maw and swallowing several people whole as it plunged back into the earth, opening up a new hole like a knife slicing through butter.

  My people are dying. In the dark, it was hard to recognize the victims, but he’d spotted Carp, the friendly barrel-sized man who’d vouched for him back at Garadia when the Black Tears wanted to kill him. He’d seen the man’s mouth gaped open in terror, heard his last cry before the monster took him.

  Oh gods, what Void have I led them to?

  “No!” Jai screamed, fighting off the wave of sorrow that threatened to pull him under, to suffocate him. It wasn’t the time to mourn those lost, not when so many were still alive, rushing in droves through the dark, dodging holes and—

  Screams rent the night as the pyzon emerged once more, this time farther away from Jai. Those unfortunate enough to be directly beneath the snake were impaled on its teeth, swallowed whole, or thrown roughly aside like ragdolls. Gardner, Hominy, Nash, Jai rattled off in his head. There was one of the Dreadnoughters, too—Lonish—who’d always been one of the best miners working in Garadia. There were dozens more, as this time the snake landed with a thump on the hard-packed dirt, its long tail snapping as it slithered from side to side, hissing and biting anyone in its path.

  “Jig,” Jai said. “Stay here, right next to its hole.”

  Jig clung to his neck, tears streaking his cheeks. “Don’t leave me,” he cried.

  Jai clamped his hands on either side of the boy’s face. “Do you trust me?”

  Jig nodded between Jai’s hands.

  Jai had once heard that a red pyzon wouldn’t dig a new hole directly beside an existing one, because then its tunnels would grow unstable. “Stay here. I have to help the others. Don’t move. It’s safest directly beside the burrow. Do you understand?” The boy nodded again.

  Jai clambered to his feet, praying that what he’d heard was true and he wasn’t sentencing the boy to death.

  All around him were bodies. Some were injured, groaning and writhing in pain. Others weren’t moving. Others were whimpering, too afraid to move, hoping the pyzon would simply pass them by.

  Ahead, the snake slapped one of the Black Tears from her horse with its barbed tail. The way her body flopped lifelessly, Jai could tell she was dead before she hit the ground. Though he hated himself for the thinking it, in his mind he said please don’t be Sonika or Shanti, please please please. The way the other women looked to Sonika, Jai already knew she was the heart and soul of the Tears. They needed her. And Shanti…Jai didn’t know what she was to him yet, only that he’d felt connected to her from the moment he met her. Perhaps his subconscious had known they both had parents who were slaves.

  With a loud hiss, the pyzon vanished, diving into one of its burrows, its deadly tail scraping behind it. Nearby, a horse whinnied in fright as the ground continued to shake. Jai called out, racing for the rider. It was Sonika, who was gathering the rest of her surviving Tears to her. “We have to fight it,” she said. “Wound it or kill it. It’s the only way.”

  Jai knew she was right. Given its size, he was certain the pyzon could devour them all and still be hungry. It was known that one of the reasons red pyzons were so rarely seen was that they hibernated for years at a time, only coming out to hunt when their slow-digesting bodies had used up all of its resources. Then they would emerge from their burrows and feast until sated, before returning to hibernation once more.

  “What do we do?” Jai asked. Though he’d never used it to fight, Jai pulled his knife from its sheath, gripping it with white knuckles.

  “Go for its eyes, its throat,” Sonika said. Her horse reared up when there was a fresh rumble, the ground undulating beneath them. “Get ready!”

  For a moment, his eyes met Shanti’s, which were full of steel, like she’d become a completely different woman to the one he sat atop the cliffs with. He knew to survive he’d have to become a completely different man, the one trained for combat.

  For them, he thought. I can do it for them.

  The snake emerged, scattering Jai’s people like dominoes swept off a table by a child’s hand. “Go!” Sonika roared, spurring her horse forward.

  Jai took off, quickly falling back from the riders, but refusing to give up, leaping over bodies and swerving around those fleeing the beast. The horses pulled to a stop and their riders attacked, throwing knives and shooting arrows. The miniscule weapons bounced off of the pyzon’s hard scales as it reared up, its head too high for any of them to reach with their projectiles.

  Jai’s knife suddenly felt like a toy against such raw power. What am I doing? he thought.

  But then he saw several of his people, Jahi and Manesh and Job, hunkering next to one of the burrows. I’m protecting them, he thought. And I will give my life if necessary. Though he’d always known he would die for them, the realization was like a splash of cold water across his face.

  He reached Shanti and shouted up to her. “It’s not working!”

  She had something in her hand, a wrapped package tied with twine. “Remember what I did to Garadia?” she asked. “If we can get close enough to light this and throw it in its face…”

  Jai remembered the power of the fireroot. He also knew there was no way they’d be able to light it and throw the weapon fast enough to land a direct hit. But they had to try.

  “I’ll light it,” he said. Jai searched his pockets for his flint, and then used the blade of his knife to get a spark going, but the thread dangling from the package wouldn’t seem to light. The snake hissed loudly, and Jai fumbled the flint, dropping it in the dirt. Frantically, he searched the ground, his fingers finally locating it. When he stood up, the snake was charging right for them, rearing up and preparing to strike.

  “Hurry!” Shanti cried.

  More sparks, several of them charring the thread, which burst into flame, travelling quickly toward the parcel. The snake flung its head down at them, fangs snapping. With a shout, Shanti launched
the package.

  BOOM! There was a flash of light and the snake recoiled, snapping its head from side to side. It let out a hiss and dove into the ground, only to reemerge a moment later, slightly further away.

  Shanti already had another fireroot package in her hands. “We have to get closer. Blind it.”

  But there was something in Jai’s memory, a flash of thought, and then an idea. “Give it to me,” he said, as the giant snake slithered closer.

  Above them, the pyzon hissed, preparing to strike once more. When Shanti hesitated, he said, “Hurry!”

  She handed him the parcel.

  Here goes nothing, Jai thought.

  And then he charged the pyzon just as it arched its back and struck.

  Horses and people screamed as the pyzon smashed its jaws into the earth, snapping viciously. Its scales were so close to Jai that he could see his reflection in their glossy, slime-sheathed surface.

  With a cry he threw himself onto the snake’s flesh, driving his knife in with one hand while clutching Shanti’s parcel of fireroot with the other. As the snake bucked and writhed, acid burned through his clothes, scorching his skin, but he refused to let go, pushing off with his feet. The sticky, scaly skin made the snake’s body easy enough to climb, though the pain was so fierce Jai grew dizzy. With each step upward, he slammed his knife between the scales, scraping his body a little higher.

  And then the slime was gone—he’d reached the pyzon’s head, which was covered with pure red scales with none of the sticky excretion. Still, his entire body was coated in the poison, and he felt as if he’d been thrust into a fire. His vision spun and he feared he might pass out, but he managed to hang onto consciousness by focusing on gripping the knife.

  Wind whipped all around him as the world flew past, the snake slithering across the terrain with even greater speed than before. Jai held on with everything he had, but his grip was slippery with sweat and slime, each and every nerve ending screaming with pain. One finger slid off.