Lightnings Daughter (30 page)

The men were silent as they tried to absorb the meaning of what they had heard. Athlone and Piers moved to the tree to take the dead Bahedin down. This time when the chieftain yanked at the sword, the man remained lifeless, his soul forever lost to death. They pulled the sword free and gently lowered him to the ground.

They carried the dead herdsman to the spot where his fellow Bahedin lay. A vulture squawked as they approached the bodies, and a few others that had landed nearby sidled away from the Khulinin.

"What do we do with them?" Sayyed asked, indicating the dead clanspeople.

"Bury them,” Gabria said flatly.

"We don't have time. That wil put us farther behind Branth,” Athlone reminded her.

She looked down at the dead herdsman. "Someone buried my clan when I could not. Maybe it was the Bahedin. We could at least burn them. Someone else can build their mound." The chief nodded. As badly as he wanted to catch up with Branth---or the gorthling that had sided with him---he knew she was right. They could not leave the slain clanspeople to the scavengers.

The task took Gabria and the men the rest of the morning. Using wood from the Bahedin's carts, dead tree limbs, dried brush, or anything that would burn, they built a bier and laid the thirteen men and women side by side with their tools, weapons, jewelry, and the necessities for their journey out of man’s world. Keth and Tam brought the horses down, and the little girl watched solemnly as Gabria sang the songs of the dead and lit the fire under the bier. The smoke rose high above the plains, its acrid smel driving the vultures away one by one.

By noon the party was on Branth's trail again, heading south. They rode hard, their anger and worry following at their heels. They found a place to camp at sunset in a hollow between two hills. Gabria built a fire, and everyone gathered around the bright warmth. No one felt like talking.

It was Gabria who finally broke the silence. She lifted her head and stared up at the brilliant stars overhead. "Athlone, I want to go see the Oathbreakers." The men started in surprise.

"No," the chief said automatically.

Gabria continued to look at the sky, her mind busy behind her eyes. "I wil go without you if I have to."

Athlone closed his eyes and swal owed the anger he felt at her defiant tone. "Why? Why them?"

"They may be the only ones who can help me."

"Help you what?" he demanded.

Gabria lowered her eyes and shook her head. "They have a few books from the days of the old sorcerers in their citadel. I think Seth might be able to help me find something I could use to fight the gorthling."

"How can you be sure this is a gorthling? All you have are the magic words of a dead man,” Athlone said angrily.

"I'm not certain, but everything fits. Branth summoned something evil and now he is slaughtering every human in his sight. He has changed, we have al sensed that. I think he has been overcome by a gorthling. That's how they work; they possess a host body and wreak havoc using it as a tool."

"So why don't we kil its host body?" Sayyed suggested.

"We could do that, but a gorthling is immortal. It would simply take another body as host.”

Athlone leaned forward. "Then how do we destroy it?"

Gabria threw her hands up in the air and cried, "I don't know! The gorthling is a creature of magic and must be fought with magic. That's why I must see the Oathbreakers.”

The Turic gestured to himself and Athlone. "We are magic-wielders. We can help."

The woman shook her head wildly. "I can't teach you enough to fight something as powerful as a gorthling. Look at what it did to al of those people. It would slaughter you. I couldn't bear that."

"And what if it kills you?" Athlone said. "Who will fight it then? Do you expect us to just stand by and watch you face it alone?”

Gabria felt her heart leap. This was the first time Athlone had spoken to her about using his talent.

Nevertheless, she forced her excitement down and shook her head. She did not want him learning sorcery just so he could die at the hand of a gorthling. "Athlone, let's start by learning how to fight this creature. Then we will worry about who will destroy it.”

Athlone drew a deep breath. "All right. We'll go talk to the Oathbreakers. Just you and I. The others will follow Branth so we won't lose his trail.”

The hearthguard warriors protested. They feared the Oathbreakers, as did any sensible man of the Dark Horse Plains, but they were equally intent on fulfilling their duty to protect their chieftain.

"That's an order," Athlone told them. "There's no sense angering Seth and his fellow cultists by bringing all of you. Gabria and I will be all right. You'll have enough to worry about just keeping up with Branth."

The three warriors agreed reluctantly, and Gabria nodded with relief. She knew Sayyed was not happy to be left with the other warriors, but he, too, had to accept the decision.

Later, as she packed the death mask in the smal bag of belongings she would take with her, the sorceress wondered if Seth could tell her something about the golden artifact, too. She dismissed that hope immediately; it was possible that the Oathbreakers would refuse to talk to her at all.

* * * * *

The Khulinin left their camp shortly after sunrise the next morning. Secen led his group south on Branth's trail while Athlone, Gabria, and the three Hunnuli turned west to seek the citadel of Krath in the northern tip of the Himachal Mountains.

Athlone estimated it would take almost four days to reach the citadel, talk to Seth, and catch up again with the rest of the party. He hoped with all his heart that this trip to see the Oathbreakers was worthwhile. He had his doubts. The cult of Krath guarded their secrets jealously. They had gained the title' Oathbreakers by forsaking their vows of fealty to clan and chieftain and shunning their own people for the desolation of their mountain temple. Even if they had the information Gabria sought, they would not help her out of loyalty to the clans.

Athlone could not stifle a cold feeling of dread at the thought of the Men of the Lash, as the cultists were known. A cloak of suspicion born of whispered rumors and stories of heinous deeds hung on the Oathbreakers' shoulders. Unlike the men of the clans, who worshiped two male gods, the Men of the Lash worshiped Krath, the dark sister of Amara. But where the goddess Amara embodied the positive aspects of femininity, her sister represented the dark, less predictable facets.

Krath was the ruler of unbridled passion and violence, of secrecy and jealousy. Her power to destroy lay in ways that were either slow and subtle or sudden and unexpected.

Accordingly, Krath's followers became highly trained killers whose religious goals were to perform perfect murders in the service of their bloodthirsty mistress. The men used no metal in their arts. Their only weapons were their bodies, their whips, and their finely crafted killing instruments of leather and stone. It was said an Oathbreaker could snap a man's neck with his bare hands or remove a head with a flick of a vicious black whip.

The clanspeople looked on the Cult with aversion and fear. It was not the Oathbreakers' bloodlust that the clans despised, but the subterfuge they practiced. Their silent, furtive, deliberate style of killing was incomprehensible to the men of the clans. The cultists, for their part, preserved their secretive ways. They had scorned the clans for generations and held themselves aloof in their secret stronghold.

As he approached that stronghold, Athlone missed Bregan's strong, solid presence more than ever.

The loss of the warrior was a real blow. Athlone would have appreciated Bregan's level head and experience when the time came to deal with the Oathbreakers. The chief’s hand tightened unconsciously around his sword hilt. If he had to, he would tear down the citadel of Krath stone by stone to get the help Gabria needed to destroy Branth. That murderer had too much clan blood on his hands to remain in this world.

The next day, Gabria and Athlone saw the gray-blue humps of the Himachal Mountains rise above the horizon. The Himachals were a much smal er mountain range than the mighty Darkhorns. They did not have the tal peaks and snow-covered summits, and they rose only to a modest height above the plains, yet their slopes were steep and rugged with an almost impenetrable wilderness of heavy timber and underbrush.

Fortunately, Gabria and Athlone did not have to enter the wildness of the mountainside. The citadel of Krath was located in the northern end of the range, in the foothills not far from Geldring Treld.

The citadel was not hard to find, but almost impossible to enter.

The weather had been clear and warm for several days, but that afternoon the wind shifted and began to pile clouds together. The horizon to the north turned iron-gray, its line edged with towering, white-capped clouds. Gabria and Athlone did not need to urge the Hunnuli faster to avoid the storm.

The animals sensed the coming rain and picked up their pace. By late afternoon the riders spotted the citadel of Krath on a promontory a few leagues to the south in the tree-clad flanks of the mountains.

They altered their route and hurried south ahead of the rain.

Before long, they came to an old stone road that paralleled the mountain peaks. Gabria and the chieftain recognized the stonework immediately as that of the ancient men, the Sons of the Eagle, who had conquered the plains long before the clans had arrived. The men from the west had also built the fortress of Ab-Chakan, which lay only a few days' journey to the south. The road ran past Ab-Chakan and the Isin River, then vanished somewhere near Dangari Treld in the southern end of the mountains.

For much of its length, the road was very old and concealed beneath a net of grass and shrubs, but it was clear and easy to follow in the rough foothills. Gratefully the Hunnuli took to the road and hurried on.

Gradual y they drew closer to the citadel. The horses came to a stop at the foot of the mass of rock upon which it rested, and Gabria and Athlone looked up in dread at the black towers. The two riders could not help but shudder. Neither of them had ever been there before, for the clanspeople avoided the stronghold like a plague camp. Few men who dared enter the confines of the citadel survived to tell of the adventure.

The citadel sat on top of a rocky promontory overlooking a wooded valley. A trail forked off the main road and wound up the precipitous slope to the only visible entrance into the closely guarded stronghold. As far as the travelers could see, the citadel consisted of a massive central keep topped by needle-sharp towers of black granite and surrounded by a high, crenellated wall of the same dark stone.

The whole edifice crouched like a brooding, malevolent beast over the road and cast its shadow into the valley below;

The riders stared up at the citadel silhouetted against the lowering clouds until the colt grew restive. The wind suddenly swooped out of the north, whipping the trees and snapping at the riders'

gold cloaks. The sun disappeared behind the heavy gray clouds.

The Hunnuli started up the trail at a trot. As they made their way along the winding path, Gabria looked closer at the towering citadel and realized it was not as finished as it appeared from a distance.

Part of the keep was still under construction and scaffolding surrounded several towers. She remembered that Lord Medb had sent an army to destroy the Stronghold the previous summer, when the Oathbreakers had refused to give him their books and manuscripts on magic.

The citadel had fallen, and the high priest and his surviving followers had fled to Ab-Chakan to join Savaric. After Medb's death, they returned to rebuild their home. Gabria was impressed despite her nervousness. The men of Krath had accomplished a great deal of work in a short period of time.

The sky was completely overcast by the time Athlone and Gabria reached the top of the rise. The mountains before them were lost in gloom, and the two riders could see dark curtains of rain hanging from the clouds to the north and west. Gabria shivered and pul ed her cloak tighter.

The Hunnuli trotted up the narrow path to the massive front wall of the citadel. A single, round-arched gateway, barely wide enough for a wagon to pass through, was built into the wall. It was blocked by a thick oaken door and an intricately carved stone portcul is. The Hunnuli stopped; Eurus pawed the ground.

The citadel loomed over them, silent and menacing, but no one chal enged the riders from the wal s. In fact, the stronghold seemed strangely lifeless. There were no banners or flags on the towers, no smoke from cooking fires, and no lights or torches. There did not seem to be any guards on the battlements, and there was no sound of life within the wal s.

Al the same, Gabria sensed she and Athlone were being watched. She looked up at the high wal s.

"They know we're here,” she said.

"What are we supposed to do, knock?" Athlone made a sound of irritation deep in his throat and slid off Eurus. He found a chunk of rock and strode to the gate. "Seth!" he bellowed, banging the rock on the portcullis. The noise rang around them, but nothing stirred behind the gates or on the wal s. A few drops of rain spattered in the dust.

After shouldering the sturdy door, Athlone shook his head and returned to Gabria's side. "Those doors have the same type of arcane wards as Ab-Chakan---you know, those small inscribed tiles. We couldn't batter them down if we had one hundred men." He shrugged and added facetiously, "Maybe they're not answering because they're hiding from the rain."

Gabria jerked her head angrily. "Seth!" she shouted at the wal s. "The sorceress seeks your help."

Still there was no response from the citadel, and the rain began to fall heavily. Gabria's expression grew angry. She knew that the Oathbreakers were there and that they were aware of her presence, but she had no time to waste on playing their games. She leaned over Nara's shoulder and said to the chieftain, "They're testing me. If we want in, we shall have to invite ourselves."

Athlone cast one last look at the wal s and nodded. Only the gods knew how the Oathbreakers would react to two outsiders breaching their door, but if the cultists would not answer, there was no other real alternative. As an afterthought, he removed his weapons and put them in the meager shelter of the wall. No need to seem too antagonistic.