Gabria’s shoulders sagged. “It claims to be from the realm of Sorh. I’m not sure, but I think there is only one such creature that can be summoned by sorcery: a gorthling.”
“What’s a gorthling?” Sayyed demanded.
When the woman did not answer, Athlone said, “They’re monsters from our ancient stories. They’re supposed to be creatures of immortal evil.”
“They’re not just stories. Gorthlings exist,” Gabria whispered. “The Woman of the Marsh warned me about them.” Her eyes held a faraway look. She crossed her arms over her chest and took a deep breath.
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 will 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 smell 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 will go without you if I have to.”
Athlone closed his eyes and swallowed 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 all 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 kill 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 all 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 small 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.