Phantom: Chainfire Trilogy Part 2

Chapter 44

Jagang scooped a handful of pecans from a silver bowl and popped a few in his mouth. He smiled at his triumph as he watched Kahlan begin removing her clothes. His self-satisfied expression made her feel all the more forlorn and powerless.

She was certain that her face had gone crimson. She made no further attempt to fight his order. She knew that she had to pick her battles, and this was not one she could win. She wondered if she would ever win another. She began to doubt that it was really possible. There would be no salvation for her. This was her life, her future, all there would ever be for her. She had nothing to look forward to, no reason to aspire to anything good.

As unceremoniously as possible, she dropped her clothes in a pile as she removed them, not bothering to stall by folding them. When she was done and had removed every stitch, she stood hunched in the dead-silent room, not looking up at Jagang because she didn’t want to face his gloating, leering triumph. She tried her best to keep her trembling from being evident.

“Stand up straighter,” Jagang said.

Kahlan did as she was told. She suddenly felt weary. Not weary of physical effort, but weary of all effort. What was she struggling for? What life could she ever have? She stood no chance of ever being free, of ever experiencing love, of ever feeling safe. What chance had she of ever achieving any happiness in life?

None.

At that moment she wanted nothing so much as to curl up into a ball and cry—or just stop breathing and be done with it. Everything seemed hopeless. Her efforts were futile against such strength, such numbers, such abilities.

She ceased to be embarrassed. She didn’t care if he stared at her. She was sure that it wouldn’t be long until he was finished with his dinner and then did a lot more than merely stare. She had no choice in that, either.

She had no choice in any of it. She had only an imitation of life. Without the ability to control even this much of her life, control if she would have to submit to any indignation, she didn’t really have life. Life was something that others had. She breathed, she saw, she felt, she heard, she tasted, she even thought, but she did not live in a meaningful sense.

“There is a rock formation straight out from the opening to my tent,” Jagang said as he leaned back in his chair. “Do you remember seeing it when we arrived?”

Kahlan looked up at him, feeling dead inside. She went through the task of doing as instructed, like a good slave. She thought about his question; she remembered seeing it. It was a long way off, but she remembered the way the dark river of men poured around the rock outcropping.

“Yes, I remember it,” she said in a dull voice.

“Good.” He took a swig and set the mug down. “I want you to walk to that rock. Don’t go straight there, but go around in a circular route.” He lifted an eyebrow. “No need to go all red, darlin. The men can’t see you—remember?”

Kahlan stared at him. “Then why do you want me to do this?”

He shrugged. “Well, you killed my two guards. I need some more.”

“There are plenty of your men right outside.”

He smiled. “Yes, but they can’t see you. I want men who can see you.”

Kahlan began to grasp his meaning. She suddenly began feeling very naked again.

“The way I figure it, there is probably no better way to ferret out men who can see you than to have you walk by them showing them all you have to offer.” His gaze roamed the length of her before returning to her eyes. “Believe me, if they can see you, there is no chance they will fail to make themselves known. I have no doubt whatsoever that if they can see you, like that innkeeper or that girl could see you, and they see you like this, then they will drop whatever they’re doing and come out to pay you a kindly greeting.”

He laughed heartily at his own joke. No one else in the tent so much as cracked a smile, but he didn’t seem to care. Finally his fit of laughter died out.

“With all the men we have, I would bet that we are bound to net us a few who can see you. Among this many men, there are bound to be more ‘anomalies,’ as Ulicia put it.” He cocked his head toward her. “Then, we will have guards that you can’t sneak up on, or sneak past, the way you did the others.

“You see, darlin, you made a tactical mistake. You should have kept that trick for a better chance to escape. Now you wasted it.”

She hadn’t wasted it. She had done what she had done to save Jillian’s life. Kahlan knew that she had no chance at freedom for herself, but at least she had given that gift to Jillian. There was no benefit to saying so, though, so she didn’t dispute what he thought had gained him an advantage in the game he was playing with her.

Kahlan could think of nothing to say that would talk him out of such a plan. Her only hope now was to remain invisible. But she didn’t feel at all invisible. She suddenly felt as if, when she walked out of the emperor’s tent, every man in camp would be able to see her. She could already feel millions of lewd men leering at her.

Jagang gestured. “Ulicia, Armina, you will go along, but hang back a goodly distance. If any man can see her I don’t want them to notice you two and go all shy before they have a good chance to make themselves known to us. I want any men who can see her to be eager enough and bold enough to drop whatever they’re doing to come and investigate our fine young lady, here.”

They both bowed and as one said, “Yes, Excellency.”

Jagang lost his cheerful pretense and turned menacing. “Now, get going. Make a big circle to the right, through the camp, to that rock formation, and then continue the circle on around back to here. Move, woman!”

Kahlan padded across the soft rugs to the carpet hanging over the doorway. She could feel his leering gaze on her. She pushed the carpet aside and slipped through the opening.

Outside, facing the sprawling camp, she went stiff with dread. She forced herself, trembling every step, to walk among the hulking brutes near the emperor’s tent. Tears stung her eyes. She felt humiliated and completely naked to all the men in camp.

She paused at the first defending ring of soldiers, terrified to go out among the men beyond. She wanted to scream with fury, with mortified embarrassment. She felt trapped by those who controlled her. She couldn’t make her legs take another step. She looked back over her shoulder.

Emperor Jagang was standing just outside his tent, holding by the hair the woman he had threatened to torture. She was in helpless tears.

Kahlan had done something hard to save Jillian’s life. She decided that she would devote herself to doing this to save the life of the woman Jagang now held under such terrible threat. She, too, was a slave who had no choice in her life. Only Kahlan could make a choice that would spare the woman terrible suffering.

Kahlan turned back to the pandemonium of the camp and started out. The ground was rough and she had to step carefully to avoid not only rocks and bits of broken gear, but fresh manure as well.

She reminded herself that none of these men could see her. She paused at another defensive line where big brutes stood guard. She peeked up at the man beside her. He didn’t notice her, but instead watched those out beyond. So far, none of the men could see her. She looked back and saw the Sisters waiting for her to get farther away. Jagang was still holding the woman by the hair. Kahlan understood the message and without wasting a moment started moving again.

She saw horses nearby and briefly contemplated making a run for them. In her mind she envisioned jumping up onto the back of a horse and galloping away, escaping out of the camp altogether. She knew it was only a fantasy. The Sisters would unleash a torrent of pain through the collar and bring her down. What’s more, the woman Jagang held would die. He was not a man to make idle threats. He carried them out lest anyone ever think he was the kind to bluff.

Kahlan knew such an escape was impossible, but thinking about it took her mind off all the men so close all around her, off all the filthy hands she couldn’t help staring at. She felt completely vulnerable and exposed. She stood out among the sprawling encampment like an alabaster water-lily blossom stranded in the middle of a vast, reeking mudflat.

She moved quickly, reasoning that the sooner she made the circuit, the sooner she would be back in the sheltering protection of the tent. It was a terrible thought, Jagang’s tent being her protection, that terrible man her security. At least she would be out of sight again and right then that was all she wanted. It became the focus of her thoughts. Make the distance to the rocks and make it back. The sooner she did it, the sooner she would be back inside.

Unless there were men out in this mass of soldiers who could see her. It only made sense. She had run across two people who could see her and that was among a small sampling of people. There were millions of men in this army. The chances were that she would run across men who would see her only too well.

What would she do then? She glanced back over her shoulder. The Sisters looked like they were way back across a river of men. What if a man grabbed her and pulled her down, dragged her away? The Sisters finally started following after, but they were a long way back. Kahlan worried about what would happen if men could see her, and grabbed her. What if a whole group of men all could see her? Would the Sisters be able to pull a whole mob off her? Besides, the Sisters were a long way back. Kahlan worried how far a rape would go before the Sisters showed up.

But the Sisters could cast magic. Surely, they would not allow men to ravish her.

She wondered what made her have any such confidence.

Jagang. He wanted her for himself. He was not the kind of man to let underlings have his prize of prizes. He would want to take her himself. The thought of him on top of her ran a shiver of icy dread through her.

The immediate problem, though, was not Jagang, it was these men. In one fluid movement, as she passed a soldier with his back to her, she lifted a knife from the sheath at his hip. She made the motion fit in with the swing of her arms, so that if the Sisters were looking they wouldn’t have seen what she had done. The man glanced around, having felt something. Even though he looked directly at her for an instant, his gaze moved on and he went back to his conversation.

The men she had been moving among were all still the outer rings of the many layers around the emperor’s compound, but she was now moving out beyond, in among the regular soldiers. They were drinking, laughing, gambling, and telling stories around fires. Horses were picketed among them. Wagons stood about at various places. Some men had already pitched crude tents, while others were content to cook over fires, or sleep.

She saw, too, women being taken into the tents. None went cheerfully. She saw other women emerge only to be snatched up by waiting men and dragged to the next tent. Kahlan remembered Jagang mentioning sending the Sisters out to the tents as punishment. Hearing the women in those tents weeping made Kahlan sweat in dread of her own fate when she finally returned to Jagang’s tent. As terrifying a circumstance as being taken into those tents with those men would be, Kahlan could not feel sorry for the Sisters. If they ended up being raped by these men it was not enough punishment to Kahlan’s mind. They deserved far worse.

One of the nearby men glanced up at her. Kahlan could see recognition flash in his eyes—eyes that fixed on her. He saw her. His mouth fell open, thrilled with his luck at what sort of woman had just stumbled into his arms, so to speak.

As he rose up, before he was fully erect, Kahlan sliced his belly open from one side to the other as she swiftly continued to move past, as if nothing had happened. The man, his face registering the shock of it, weakly tried to catch his guts as they spilled out in a heavy mass. He toppled over and crashed to the ground while making panicked grunts that weren’t noticed as anything more than the other raucous noise all around. When he hit the ground, his insides spilled out. Men turned to look, some shocked, some laughing, all of them thinking the man had just lost a knife fight.

Kahlan didn’t slow or look back. She kept moving, without breaking her stride, reminding herself of her task: get to the rock, get back to the tent. Make the circuit. Do as she had been told.

As a man appeared out of the crowd and rushed up to her, she tightened her muscles and used his momentum to drive the knife up under his ribs, ripping his vital organs apart. The lifting cut, like a punch, along with his descending weight, drove her fist through the gash and into his warm insides. By the way he went down like a sack of sand without so much as a word, she was pretty sure that she had managed to cut open his heart. As a memento of the brief encounter, she now wore a glove of his blood.

She wondered where she had learned to do such things. It felt like they came instinctively to her, the way emotions just came naturally, without the need to summon them. She couldn’t remember anything about herself, but she remembered how to use a weapon. She supposed that she should just be glad she could.

In making her way out into the sea of men, she came to a dense island of activity. Men had all drawn back to leave an open field in the center of a low area, and teams of men were playing Ja’La there. Soldiers gathered all around in the tens of thousands cheered on one team or the other. The game was a violent affair, with the point man encountering the worst of it from the other team. When he went down, bloodied, half the men surrounding the field cheered wildly.

“Well, well,” a man to her left said. “Looks like a fine whore come to pay me a visit.”

As she began to turn toward him, another man to the right seized her wrist, twisted, and had her knife. In an instant, both men were on her, grabbing at her, pulling her back away from the crowd gathered to watch the Ja’La game.

Kahlan fought to get free, but they were a lot stronger, and had taken her by surprise. She silently raged at herself for being caught unawares like that. None of the men around noticed anything at all. They couldn’t see her; she was invisible to them, but not to these two, who pressed in tight, to hide her from their fellow soldiers lest they have to fight for their fresh prize. She might as well have been alone with these two.

One of them shoved his hand between her legs. She gasped at the sudden violation. As he leaned in to grope her, she managed to get her wrist free. In an instant she whipped her arm around and slammed her elbow into the center of his face, breaking his nose. He fell back screaming, blood gushing across his cheeks and eyes. The other man laughed, seeing it as his opportunity to have her for himself. He changed direction, pulling her along, holding both of her wrists together in one of his powerful hands as he used the other to explore the spoils.

Kahlan struggled and twisted, but he was far too big and husky for her. She couldn’t get any leverage to break free of his grip.

“You’re a feisty one,” he said into her ear. “What did you think—that you could avoid your sacred duty to the soldiers of the Order? Think you’re too good to serve in the tents? Well, you’re not. Here’s my tent, so it’s time to do your duty.”

Kahlan twisted around to try to bite him as he dragged her toward an empty tent not far away. He backhanded her. The blow stunned her. The noise of the encampment seemed to fade away. She couldn’t make her muscles do as she wished, couldn’t make them resist the grimy soldier as he pulled her toward the tent.

Suddenly, Kahlan saw Sister Ulicia’s face. She had never before been glad to see one of the Sisters, but she was now.

The Sister distracted the man’s attention from Kahlan for an instant, then pressed her fingers to the side of his forehead. Finally free, Kahlan jumped back as her captor dropped to his knees, clutching his fists to his head as he cried out in pain.

“Get up,” Sister Ulicia told him. “Or I’ll do worse by far.” He stood on wobbly legs. “You are ordered immediately to the emperor’s tent to serve as a special guard.”

The man looked confused. “Special guard?”

“That’s right. You will be guarding this troublesome young lady for His Excellency.”

The man gave Kahlan a dangerous look. “It would be my pleasure.”

“Pleasure or not, get moving. That’s an order from Emperor Jagang himself.” She pointed a thumb back over her shoulder. “That way.”

The soldier dipped his head in a bow, obviously fearful of her ability with magic. He regarded the Sister with a kind of wary, if unspoken, loathing. These men obviously did not hold those with the gift in high regard.

“I’ll be seeing more of you, soon,” the man promised Kahlan before he ran off to do as he’d been ordered.

Kahlan saw Sister Armina giving the man with the broken nose the same instructions. She spoke in a voice that Kahlan couldn’t hear over the riot of cheering, but the man clearly heard her because he stiffened with fear, bowed to her, and ran off after the first man.

Sister Ulicia turned her attention back to Kahlan. “Tears won’t do you any good. Now get going.”

Kahlan didn’t argue. The sooner it was over, the better. She started out at once, counting herself fortunate to have eliminated two of the four who had so far been able to see her. She had to skirt the Ja’La game that was working the crowd of men to a fever pitch of excitement. She paused at one point to rise up on her tiptoes and make sure where the rock was; then she headed for it.

By the time she had made it back to Jagang’s tent, they had collected five men. All of them stood outside the tent, awaiting orders, including the one nursing his broken nose. He glared at her as she walked past him, ushered through the tent’s opening by the two Sisters.

Kahlan had managed to quickly arm herself after Sister Ulicia had rescued her the first time. This time, though, Kahlan had seen to it that she secured two knives, one for each hand. She held the hilts in her fists, with the blades lying up against the insides of her wrists so that the Sisters, following her at a good distance, hadn’t been able to see them.

Kahlan had managed to kill another six men who could see her, without the Sisters realizing what she had done. It hadn’t been hard; they saw no threat coming from a naked woman. They were dead wrong. With their guard down she had been able to thrust her weapons home quickly and without a fuss. There was so much noise, confusion, drinking, yelling, and fighting in the camp that the Sisters never noticed the men Kahlan had taken out.

When she hadn’t been able to dispatch the men who could see her, either because Sister Ulicia or Armina were too close or because they were watching closely and rushed in to rescue her and give the soldiers their new assignments as special guards, Kahlan always let her knives slip to the ground and vanish under the throng of soldiers so that the Sisters wouldn’t suspect what she had been up to. Being invisible to almost all the men, it had been easy enough to get more knives throughout the long, nerve-racking walk among the soldiers.

Once she was inside the tent, Jagang threw Kahlan’s clothes at her. “Get dressed.”

Rather than questioning his reasons for a command she hadn’t expected, she wasted no time in complying with his orders. Under the unwavering dark gaze of the man, it was a huge relief to finally have her clothes back on. It didn’t seem to lessen his obvious interest in what he had seen, though.

His attention finally turned to the two Sisters. “I’ve instructed our new guards in their duties.” He smiled in a way that made both Sisters swallow in dread. “What with some guards to take the load off your backs, you will have some free time to spend in the tents, being on your backs for a different duty.”

“But Excellency . . .” Sister Armina said in a trembling voice, “we have done everything you requested. We got the men—”

“You think that because you do as you’re told for a short time I will forget the years you have been running around plotting and scheming to do me in? You think I will so easily forget your neglect of your duty to others, your obligations to the cause of the Order, your moral responsibility to sacrifice your worldly wishes to the good of others?”

“It wasn’t that way, Excellency.” Sister Armina dry-washed her hands as she searched for words that might save her. “Yes, we were shamefully selfish, I admit, but we had no direct thought to harm you.”

He snorted a laugh. “You don’t think freeing the Keeper of the underworld would harm me? You don’t think turning mankind over to the Keeper of the dead would be against me, against the ways of the Order, against the Creator?”

Sister Armina fell silent. She knew she had no argument. Kahlan had always thought of the Sisters as vipers. But now they were writhing before someone with hide too tough to sink their fangs into.

Sister Ulicia and Armina were attractive women. Kahlan had the feeling that their looks were only going to make it worse for them out among the animals that were the Imperial Order army.

“I have control of the . . .” Jagang caught himself almost using her title. “. . . of Kahlan, through the collar, through your ability. You don’t need to be present for me to call upon that power if necessary—just alive. I will instruct the men that I don’t want you two murdered while they are enjoying your feminine charms.”

“Thank you, Excellency,” Sister Ulicia managed in a small voice. She was gripping her skirts in white-knuckled fists.

“Now, there are two men waiting outside who have been instructed in what they are to do with you both. Go with them.” He grinned at them like death itself. “Have a good night, ladies. You deserve it—and many more.”

As they left the tent, Kahlan stood in the center, awaiting a similar fate.

Jagang stepped closer to her. Kahlan thought she might either faint from dread, or be sick at the thought of what was about to happen to her.