Page 86 of The Third Kingdom (Sword of Truth 13)

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.

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