Off to the side, the fat, barefoot Otto sat gumming a hard crust of bread. He had a projecting underbite, and only two teeth that she could see, both on the bottom just left of center. Both flat, yellow teeth tipped outward and hooked over his upper lip whenever he closed his mouth. His flattened nose looked to have been broken beyond repair ages ago, making it mostly useless for breathing. Since he usually breathed through his mouth, he rarely closed it.
It was Otto’s job to torment her. He would get up from time to time and use an oak rod as fat as his thumb to beat her across the back of her ribs until she slipped and lost her balance, making her weight drop into the manacles. When she eventually succumbed to tears from the agony and the hopelessness of it, he would be satisfied and go sit against the wall and gum his food, or pick at his filthy, bare feet. He seemed to have a fixation with pulling off strips of calluses.
He never spoke, and seemed to treat his job with all the enthusiasm of beating dirty rugs. He seemed satisfied when she lost control of her balance, and would go sit for a while.
When she would finally recover and bring herself under control, stop her crying, and stabilize her balance on her toes, he would then get up again, come over, and start the whole process over. Sometimes, rather than using the oak rod on her back, he would smack it across her thighs so that the stinging blows would make her weight drop.
Kahlan thought she might lose her mind before they ever got around to killing her. She felt a sense of abject hopelessness. She had no idea where Richard and the others were, and she knew that they wouldn’t know where she was. She was alone with merciless people who believed that torture would get them prophecy. She knew that, as it got increasingly worse, she would eventually want nothing so much as to die.
Which, she knew, was exactly what Ludwig Dreier was after. He believed that on the cusp of death a person could see into the eternal, timeless underworld, and give him prophecy in return for the mercy of death.
There was only so much a person could take. She expected that at some point, she, too, would end up pleading for death.
The footsteps were coming closer. The place echoed, so it was easier than it might have otherwise been to hear people coming. Otto was busy with his crust of bread, and wasn’t paying attention to the footsteps. They meant little for him, anyway. Kahlan’s heart sank, knowing that it was probably the Mord-Sith Dora.
The abbey was mostly stone. The rooms were cramped and filthy. It didn’t look like it had ever been swept. Dirt clung to cobwebs in all the corners.
A light scattering of straw covered the floor in her room. The straw looked to have been an attempt to soak up some of the blood. It had done a poor job, but at least most of it was long dried. She expected that there would eventually be a lot more of hers all over the floor.
Kahlan was exhausted to the point of delirium from the effort of staying up on her tiptoes and so getting almost no sleep. Otto saw to it that she was kept awake on the rare occasions they lowered her to the ground for food and water. They allowed her only brief naps.
The sickness she carried deep inside wasn’t helping, either. It was always there, gnawing away at her soul, it seemed.
The footsteps grew closer. By the sound of the boots, Kahlan decided that it was a Mord-Sith. She didn’t know how many Mord-Sith were at the abbey, but there were more than just Erika. The only other one she knew by name was Dora, a particularly unpleasant woman of average height and above-average bad temper.
Dora was the one who came around for routine chores, like bringing Kahlan food and water. She made Otto empty the chamber pot. She wasn’t pleased to be doing any of it. She apparently thought that she deserved a higher rank in life than supervising the mute Otto and feeding prisoners. She looked impatient with the whole process of the drawn-out torture.
Kahlan knew by the looks the woman gave her sometimes what she really wanted to be doing.
Kahlan felt so sick from the poisonous touch of death inside her that most of the time she felt too ill to care. That only seemed to irritate Dora all the more. She seemed to want Kahlan to tremble at the sight of her. The Mord-Sith would sometimes spin her Agiel up into her fist as she left, pointing it, telling Kahlan that she would be back. The Agiel was an implied threat of what the woman intended to do once she returned.
On a few rare occasions, when Otto had gone off for a time, she seemed to become impatiently angry with her lot in life and took out that frustration by ramming the weapon into Kahlan’s middle. It left Kahlan nearly unconscious, hanging helpless, and gasping for breath.
Too weak and exhausted after Dora finished and left to get back up on her tiptoes, Kahlan would hang by her wrists for a time, unable even to cry. She could only think of how much she missed Richard, how much she wanted to be in his arms, how much she wanted to look into his gray eyes and see his smile.
When the heavy oak door squeaked in protest, Kahlan looked over from where she hung by the manacles. As the door was pulled open, she saw that, as expected, it was Dora in black leather.
This time, Dora looked unusually distracted and rushed. Kahlan noticed that she had a key hung on her belt by a short piece of leather thong. The key looked to be the key they had used to put the manacles on her when they had brought her in.
Kahlan wondered if she was to be taken somewhere else for the serious torture. She started trembling at the thought. She was at her wits’ end and she knew that it had not even really begun in earnest.
She also knew that if the woman unlocked her from the manacles, it would be her only chance to fight and try to get away.
The way Kahlan was feeling, though, and as weak as she was, she thought that she was going to have little chance of overpowering the muscular-looking Mord-Sith. Not only that, but the woman would be expecting it and likely have her Agiel pressed against Kahlan’s throat in a heartbeat once Kahlan tried anything.
Still, Kahlan’s heart was already pounding because she knew that this was going to be her only chance, and she was going to have to take it. If she wanted to live, to ever see Richard again, then she was going to have to fight for her life.
Dora gestured angrily at Otto. “Let her down.”
Otto jumped to do as she wished. He unhooked the chain and then used his weight to hold the chain as he lowered Kahlan to the floor. He was not gentle about it, and she landed in a heap. The chain ran to an iron bolt set into the stone of the wall, so being let down from the ceiling was not enough for her to be free. The manacles had to be unlocked.
Once Otto had let Kahlan down, Dora dismissed him with a grunt and a gesture. He bowed and left, closing the heavy door behind himself.
“Get up,” Dora growled. “I’m to take you somewhere else.”
“Where?” Kahlan asked without moving. She was so weak she didn’t know if her trembling legs would hold her.
“You’ll find out soon enough. Now, I said get up.” Dora smiled in that terrible way she had. “But don’t get your hopes up. I promise you, you are not going to like where I’m taking you, or what is going to happen to you there.”
CHAPTER
83
As the woman came across the room toward her, Kahlan heard footsteps running at the far end of the hall. Then, in the distance, she heard a heavy thud. Dora didn’t seem to notice the footsteps, but then, before she reached Kahlan, she heard the thud.
Kahlan heard people running out in the hall.
The Mord-Sith turned just as people flung open the heavy door as they burst into the room. Kahlan was astonished to see three bare-chested men with shaved heads and smeared with whitish ash charge through the doorway. Their eyes were circled with black. It was a frightening, otherworldly sight.
Dora’s Agiel spun up into her fist. The three men leaped for her without pause. The first caught the Agiel in the center of his chest. He let out a clipped cry before falling dead.
The other two crashed into the Mord-Sith, taking her off her feet and to the ground right in front of Kahlan. When Dora lan
ded hard on her back on the stone floor, it knocked the wind from her in a loud huff.
With lightning speed, one of the two men, to Kahlan’s horror, used his teeth to rip a massive piece out of Dora’s throat. Blood gushed in great gouts as the man tore at her like an animal. The second bit into her face, raking his teeth over her cheek, pulling off a mouthful of flesh, gulping it down.
Dora’s feet kicked weakly as her life’s blood pumped out of the gaping wound. She couldn’t breathe. She stared up at the ceiling in shock.
The eyes of the first man, his whitish face smeared with blood, turned up toward Kahlan, as if suddenly noticing her for the first time there on the floor.
His head lifted as he growled like a wolf seeing prey.
While the other man feasted on the still-moving Dora, tearing at her with his teeth, the man who had ripped out Dora’s throat suddenly sprang over the downed Mord-Sith toward Kahlan.
She had been expecting it. With lightning speed, as he dove in on top of her, Kahlan whipped the chain around the man’s neck, spinning him around in the process.
With a grunt of effort powering her muscles, she planted her boot between his shoulder blades and gave the chain a mighty yank. The chain suddenly snapping taut crushed his windpipe. He clawed at his throat as he struggled to gasp for air.
The second man, seeing what was happening, immediately jumped over Dora to attack Kahlan.
As his full weight flew toward her, Kahlan kicked him square in the face, crushing in his nose and left cheekbone. He was stopped cold, clutching both hands over the gushing wound. The blood flooding back into his throat immediately started drowning him.
He fell blindly, rolling over on his back, writhing on the floor, struggling in vain for air. Without a moment’s delay Kahlan used the heel of her boot to hammer his face as hard as she could. It broke his fingers, but it also crushed in the more fragile bones in the center of his face. She used her boot twice again in quick succession, battering his face, until he went still.
The first man, still tangled in the chain, had finally suffocated and was hardly moving any longer. Kahlan panted, catching her own breath.
She could hear people racing up and down the hall, searching the other rooms. She knew that at any moment they would find her chained to the wall. She knew that if she was to have a chance, she had to get away.
She could see the key to the manacles hanging from Dora’s belt. Kahlan unwound the chain from the dead man and tried, but couldn’t quite reach the key with her fingers. She switched positions, throwing her legs out instead because they would have a longer reach. She stretched the chain to its full length and was able to get her boot over Dora’s middle.
With all her strength, she pressed down on her foot to keep hold of the body as she struggled to drag the woman closer. She needed the key off Dora’s belt or she was going to be killed and eaten while still chained to the wall.
With grunts of effort, she made jerking pulls. She kept at it until she had dragged the Mord-Sith closer. The pool of blood helped make the floor somewhat slippery and the black leather Dora wore also helped her slide a little easier in the blood. At last she had pulled the dead weight close enough to be able to snatch the key from the belt.
As she heard people running up and down the halls, and distant screams and pleas for help, or mercy, Kahlan fumbled frantically with the key, trying to get it into the manacles.
At last the iron on one wrist sprang open. Kahlan shoved the shackle off her wrist and went to work to open the other. With one wrist free, the second was easier and she quickly got it open. She tossed the chain aside and ran to the door.
Catching her breath, she flattened herself back against the wall behind the door just as several more of the same kind of people charged through the doorway and into the room.
Like a pack of hungry scavengers, the people dove onto the body of the Mord-Sith. Some of them tore into the exposed flesh of her face and neck while others lapped at the blood. Others, unable to get in to feed, ripped open the black leather to get at her.
Kahlan, her eyes wide at the ghastly sight, quickly slipped out of the room behind them. Once out of the room, she raced down the dark hallway, not knowing where she was going. She saw Otto, or what was left of him, down a side hall with at least a dozen of the whitewashed savages growling and tearing at him with their teeth. She realized that the thud she had heard at first was probably the attackers taking Otto down.
When she heard someone in the distance, and saw shapes coming around the corner, Kahlan quickly ducked down a stairwell. She bounded down the stairs three at a time and then raced down the dark hall at the bottom. She didn’t know how many bloodthirsty monsters were after her, or how close they might be. She ran for her life without looking back.
She could hear the noise of other terrified people running. Racing past rooms, she looked through one open door and saw a number of the whitish figures piled on several servants lying dead on the floor, tearing at them with their teeth or lapping up the blood. She thought that the underworld itself must have opened up and the dead were feasting on the living.
As she raced down the hall, she heard someone coming from the other end. As they rounded a corner, she saw that they were more of the cannibals. When they saw her, they broke into a dead run toward her.
Kahlan ducked into a room to the side. She slammed shut the door but there was no bolt.
Fortunately, there was no one inside. She stood with her back against the door, panting to get her breath. There was a small fire going in the fireplace.
Bodies crashed against the other side of the door. She used all her weight and strength and managed to hold it shut each time an attacker rammed into it. As she looked around, she spotted a sword on a table.
After the next time they thudded into the door, she let go and raced for the table. Behind her, the door crashed open.
Kahlan drew the sword as she turned, flinging the scabbard aside. Without an instant’s pause, she swung, nearly decapitating the first man to rush at her. She spun out of the way of the next man and as she came back around she thrust the blade through his heart from behind.
Kahlan had grown up learning how to use a sword, but it wasn’t until Richard had given her lessons that she really became an expert with the weapon.
Now, with a weapon in her hands, she felt that she at least had a fighting chance. She used all her skill and knowledge to desperately slash, hack, and stab the onslaught of attackers and defend herself. It wasn’t as hard as it might have been, because the men all rushing in at her were not armed, and they weren’t trying to fight back. They only seemed to want to bite her, so the only weapon they used was their teeth.
Still, there were too many of them. More were rushing into the room all the time. As they raced into the room, some fell over the bodies on the floor. Kahlan stabbed them as fast as she could.
Between frantic slashes and stabs, she glanced over her shoulder at the window. The room was on the ground floor.
Right after a particularly frenzied, hacking attack to drive the men back, when she had a brief opening before they piled in at her again, she turned and raced across the room.
She dove feet-first through the window. Fortunately, the two side-hinged halves of the window flew open rather than the glass breaking and slashing her. She landed hard and rolled across the ground.
As she sprang to her feet she saw the ashen people pouring like a flood out through the window. Others prowling the grounds outside saw her come out of the building and joined in the pursuit. There was no way she could fight them all.
Kahlan turned and ran. The enemy was right on her heels.
CHAPTER
84
Rounding the corner of a vine-covered stone outbuilding at full speed, branches of shrubs flashing past her face, slapping her arms, the savages right behind her, Kahlan ran headlong into a wall of a man.
It was Richard.
In that first fraction of an instant, that infinitesi
mal spark of time, her thought was that she had to be mistaken. It was impossible for it to be Richard. She thought she must be dead and this was some afterlife delusion. In that spark of time, she was heartbroken and crushed because she thought that she had to be wrong.
In the second infinitesimal spark of time, she knew that it was real. As impossible as it was, it was real.
Richard had his sword out. She could see the magic of its rage in his gray eyes.
Without pause, as Kahlan crashed into him, he smoothly circled a powerful arm around her waist, lifted her around behind him, set her down, and as he turned back, beheaded the first man to run in toward him.
The moment of seeing him, of realizing that it was really him, seemed frozen in time to her.
None of it made any sense. The whole world didn’t seem to make sense. Being attacked by savage cannibals didn’t make any sense. But then in that fraction of a second, that spark of time, they shared a look and she knew that nothing else mattered.
Richard was there.
The rest of the horde descended in on him before the severed head had hit the ground.
And then the killing began in earnest.
Kahlan knew enough to stay out of the way of his blade when he had it out. She turned and cut down one of the pale savages to the side—a woman. As the half-naked people with the black-painted eyes rushed in at her, she drove her sword through some of them, and as she drew it back, slashed others.
As Kahlan struck, thrusting her blade through a man, Cara threw an arm around Kahlan’s waist and pulled her back out of the way of the rushing men. The Mord-Sith, with a knife in each hand, turned back to the savages and used both her blades whenever one of the ashen figures got close enough. Against their skin smeared with chalky coloring, blood looked all the more shocking.
It had seemed forever since she ran into Richard, but Kahlan knew that it actually had only been mere seconds. Suddenly, within those seconds, men of the First File flooded in all around Kahlan, shielding her, protecting her from the onslaught of the attackers smeared with white. Cara pressed in close beside her as well, protecting her from any of the strange brutes.
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