Chainfire (63 page)

Just the thought of trying to escape from the Sisters brought on such terrible pain that it made her feel like blood would run from her ears and nose and that her eyes would surely burst. When she thought of leaving the Sisters and the pain closed in to bear down on her, she couldn’t get the thought out of her head fast enough, and even then the pain lingered. Such an episode usually left her so sick to her stomach that it was hours before she could even stand, much less walk.

The Sisters always knew when it happened, probably because they found her in a heap on the ground. When the pain in her head finally faded, they beat her. The worst was Sister Ulicia because she used the stout stick she always carried. It left welts that were slow to heal. Some still had not healed.

This time, though, they had ordered Kahlan to leave them and go in
alone. They had told her that it would not bring on the pain so long as she kept to her instructions. It felt so good to be away from those four terrible women that Kahlan thought she might cry with joy.

Inside the room, though, were four big guards to replace the four Sisters. She paused, unsure what to do.

Serpents on one side of a door with serpents carved on it, and serpents on the other. She seemed never to be able to find any peace.

Kahlan stood frozen for a moment, afraid to try to go past the guards, afraid of what they might do to her for being in a place that she so obviously did not belong.

They were staring at her in a most curious way.

Kahlan gathered her courage, hooked some of her long hair behind an ear, and started for the stairwell she saw across the room.

Two guards stepped together to block her way. “Where do you think you’re going?” one of them asked her.

Kahlan kept her head down and kept moving. She turned a little sideways to be able to slip between them.

As she went past, the second guard said to the first “What did you say?”

The first man, who had asked Kahlan where she thought she was going, stared at him.

“What? I didn’t say anything.”

As Kahlan made it to the stairs, the other two guards strolled over to the ones who had tried to block Kahlan’s path.

“What are you two babbling about?” one of them asked.

The first waved a hand. “Nothing. It’s nothing.”

Kahlan hurried up the steps as fast as her tired legs would carry her. She paused on the broad landing to catch her breath, but she knew she dared not rest for long. She grabbed the polished stone handrail and hurried on up the rest of the way.

A soldier at the top immediately turned to the sound of her footsteps. He stared at her as she climbed up into the hallway. She rushed past him. He paused only briefly before turning and ambling off to continue his patrol.

There were other men in the hall—soldiers. Soldiers everywhere. Lord Rahl had a lot of soldiers, all of them huge, intent looking men.

Kahlan swallowed in wide-eyed fright at seeing so many soldiers in the way of what she had been told to do. If they slowed her, Sister Ulicia would not be understanding nor forgiving. Some of the soldiers saw
Kahlan and started her way, but when they reached her they lost their intent gazes and walked right by. As Kahlan hurried along the hall, other guards turned urgently to officers, but then, when questioned, said that it was nothing, and to forget it. Other men lifted an arm to point, only to then let the arm drop before continuing on their way.

As the men saw her and at the same time forgot her, Kahlan steadily made her way down the hall toward where she had been told she had to go. It concerned her, though, that so many of the men were carrying crossbows. The men with the crossbows wore black gloves. Their cocked weapons were loaded with deadly-looking red-fletched arrows.

Sister Ulicia had told Kahlan that as part of the magic that brought on the pain to prevent her from escaping, she was shrouded by webs of magic that kept people from noticing her. Kahlan tried to think of why the Sister would do such a thing, but her thoughts simply would not connect, would not link together into understanding. It was the most ghastly thing, not being able to make herself think about specific things when she wanted to. She would start out with the question, then the answer would begin to form, but simply run out as if there was nothing more there.

Despite the conjured shroud around her, though, Kahlan knew that if one of the soldiers pointed his crossbow at her and pulled the bolt release before he forgot her, she would be dead.

She wouldn’t mind being dead because it would at least mean being freed of the anguish that was her life, but Sister Ulicia had warned her that the Sisters had great influence with the Keeper of the dead. Sister Ulicia said that if Kahlan ever thought to slip away from her duties to them by slipping the bounds of the world of the living and taking the long journey into the world of the dead, she would find that it was no refuge and in fact would prove to be a far worse place. It was then that Sister Ulicia had told Kahlan that they were Sisters of the Dark, as if to drive home the veracity of the warning.

Kahlan hadn’t really needed the assurance; she had always been sure that any of the four Sisters could chase her down any hole and get her, even if that hole was a grave like the one they’d opened one dark night for reasons Kahlan couldn’t even imagine and didn’t want to know.

Looking into the Sister’s terrible eyes, Kahlan had known that she was hearing the truth. After that, while death invited her with release, it also terrified her with dark promises.

She didn’t know if this had always been her life, the life of chattel belonging to others. No matter how hard she tried, though, she could remember no other.

As she slipped by men patrolling, she made her way through a series of intersections that Sister Ulicia had drawn in the dirt for her at various camps as they traveled. The Sister had used her oak rod to diagram the halls so that Kahlan would know where she had to go.

As she moved through those halls she had memorized, no one ever tried to stop her. In a way, it was depressing that the men paid her no heed.

It was the same everywhere, though, no one ever noticed her, or if they did, they immediately disregarded her and went back to their own business. She was a slave, without her own life. She belonged to others. It made her feel invisible, insignificant, unimportant. A nobody.

Sometimes, like when making the long underground climb up into the palace, Kahlan would see men and women together, smiling, an arm around each other, touching one another. She tried to imagine what that would feel like—to have someone care about her, cherish her…to cherish them.

Kahlan swiped a tear off her cheek. She knew she would never have that. Slaves did not have a life of their own, they were used for their master’s purposes; Sister Ulicia had made that very clear. One day, when Sister Ulicia had gotten that vicious look in her eyes that she sometimes got, she said that she was thinking of having Kahlan bred so that she could produce them an offspring.

But how did it come to be this way? Where had she come from? Surely, everyone’s past didn’t evaporate out of their minds the way Kahlan’s had.

In the fog of her thoughts, she couldn’t make her mind work the problem through. She asked the questions, but the concepts seemed to be soaked up into a dim haze of nothingness. She hated the way she couldn’t think. Why could other people think while she could not? Even that question quickly faded away into irrelevance among the mire of twisting shadows, just the way she faded away when people saw her.

Kahlan stopped when she arrived at a pair of huge doors covered in gold. The doors looked like Sister Ulicia had said they would—a scene of rolling hills and forests all sheathed in gold. Kahlan looked both ways, then put all her weight into the task of pulling one of the massive doors
open enough to slip inside. She took a last look, but none of the guards were watching her. She pulled the door closed behind herself.

It was much brighter inside than the hallway had been. Even though it was an overcast day the skylights let in a flood of light that lit a most astonishing garden. Sister Ulicia had told her about the garden, in general terms, but for Kahlan to see it, up here in the palace, was beyond anything she had imagined. The place was wondrous.

Richard Rahl was a lucky man to have such a garden that he could visit any time he wanted. She wondered if he would come and visit while she was in there, and see her…and then forget her.

Remembering her task, Kahlan admonished herself to keep her mind on what she had been sent to do. She hurried down one of the paths through a sprawl of flower beds. The ground was littered with fallen red and yellow petals. She wondered if Richard Rahl picked flowers here for his lady love.

She liked the sound of his name. It had a comforting ring to it. Richard Rahl. Richard. She wondered what he was like, if he was as pleasant as his name was to her ear.

As she made her way along the path, Kahlan gazed up at the small trees growing all about her. She loved the trees. They reminded her of…of something. She growled in frustration. She hated it when she couldn’t remember things that she was sure were important. Even if they weren’t important, she hated forgetting things. It was like forgetting parts of who she was.

She hurried past shrubs and vine-covered stone walls until she reached the grassy place that Sister Ulicia said would be there in the center of the garden. Across the way the grassy ring was broken by a wedge of stone atop which sat a slab of granite, looking much like a table.

Atop the granite slab were supposed to be the things Kahlan had been sent to retrieve. Seeing them suddenly, she quailed. The three objects were as black as death itself. They looked as if they were sucking in the light from the room, from the skylights, from the very sky, and trying to swallow it all.

Her heart hammering with dread, Kahlan rushed across the grass to the granite table. Being that close to such sinister looking objects made her nervous. She slipped the shoulder straps off and set the pack down
beside the black boxes she had been sent to recover. Her bedroll, lashed underneath, made the pack not want to sit up, so she had to lean it a little to the side.

She laid her hand on the bedroll for a moment, feeling the soft contour of what was rolled up inside. It was her most precious possession.

She remembered, then, that she had better get back to business. She immediately realized, though, that she was going to have a problem. The boxes were bigger than Sister Ulicia had said she thought they would be. They each were nearly as big as a loaf of bread. There was no way they would all fit in her pack.

But those had been her explicit instructions. The wishes of the Sisters conflicted with the reality that the boxes weren’t going to fit. There was no way to satisfy the contradiction.

Memories of previous punishments flashed through her mind, bringing a sheen of sweat to her brow. She wiped the sweat from her eyes as the visions of torture came back to her. This, of all things, she cursed silently, she had to remember.

Kahlan decided that there was nothing else she could do; she would have to try.

At the same time, she also fretted about stealing things out of Lord Rahl’s garden. After all, they didn’t belong to the Sisters, and Lord Rahl would not have that many men posted all around the garden unless the boxes were important to him.

She was no thief. But was it worth the kind of punishment she would receive should she refuse? Was her blood worth Lord Rahl’s treasure? Was Lord Rahl the kind of man who would want her to refuse to steal and as a result suffer the Sisters’ torture?

She didn’t know why, and maybe she was only coddling her doubts, but she told herself that Richard Rahl would say to take the boxes rather than sacrifice her life.

She flipped open the top of her pack and attempted to shove things down in tighter, but there was very little give. They were already packed as tightly as they were ever going to pack.

With rising worry that she was taking too much time, she pulled on clothes, trying to get something to wrap the first black box in.

Out came part of her satiny white dress.

Kahlan stared at the silken, nearly white material in her fingers. It was
the most beautiful dress she had ever seen. But why would she have it? She was a nobody. A slave. What would a slave be doing with such a beautiful dress? She couldn’t make her mind work to answer such a question.

The thoughts simply would not come together into answers.

Kahlan snatched up one of the boxes and rolled it up in the skirt of the dress and stuffed it all into the pack. She leaned on the box, trying to shove it down deeper, then closed the flap to test the fit. The flap hardly covered the top of the box and she only had one of them inside. She had to cinch the flap down with the strap just to get it to stay. There was no way in the world that the other boxes were going to fit in her pack.

Sister Ulicia had been very explicit that Kahlan had to hide the boxes in her pack or the soldiers would see them. They would forget Kahlan, but Sister Ulicia had said that the soldiers would recognize the boxes Kahlan was taking out of the garden room and then they would send up alarms. Kahlan had been told in no uncertain terms that she had to hide the boxes. But she could see that there was no way all three would fit.

Around the camp fire a few nights before, Sister Ulicia had put her face right up close to Kahlan’s and whispered exactly what she would do to Kahlan should she fail to do as instructed.

Kahlan started trembling at the memory of what Sister Ulicia had told her that terrible night. She thought of Sister Tovi and trembled all the more.

What was she going to do?

Kahlan pushed open one of the doors with the snakes on the other side of it. Sisters Ulicia and Tovi immediately spotted her and with furtive gestures motioned for her to come to where they waited down the hall. They didn’t want to be seen near the doors with the snakes and the skulls.

Kahlan crossed the hallway, watching the patterns in the marble floor, not wanting to look up into Sister Ulicia’s eyes.

As soon as she had walked down the corridor and was close enough, Sister Ulicia snatched Kahlan’s shirt at her shoulder and pulled her over to a niche in the far wall. Both Sisters Ulicia and Tovi caged her in.

“Did anyone try to stop you?” Sister Tovi asked.

Kahlan shook her head.

Sister Ulicia let out a sigh. “Good. Let’s see them.”

Kahlan drew the pack off one shoulder and pulled it around enough in front so that the sisters could open the flap. Both of them pawed at the strap cinching it down. They finally got it loose and flipped it back.

Both Sisters huddled close together, shoulder to shoulder, so that people in the hall couldn’t see what they were doing, see what terrible thing they were about to bring out into the light of day. Sister Ulicia carefully pulled off the satiny white fabric of Kahlan’s dress still stuffed partly down into the pack to see the black box nestled within.

Both stood in silent awe, staring.

Sister Ulicia, her fingers trembling with excitement, stuck her arm down in and started pawing around, searching for the others. When she didn’t find them she stepped back, a dark look coming over her face.

“Where are the other two?”

Kahlan swallowed. “I could only fit one into the pack, Sister. The others wouldn’t fit. You told me that I had to conceal them inside, but they were too big. I will—”

Before Kahlan could say another word, before she explained that she planned to make two more trips to recover the other boxes, Sister Ulicia,
in a rage, whipped her stout rod around so hard that it whistled through the air.

Kahlan heard a deafening crack as it hit the side of her head with full force.

The world seemed to go silent and black.

Kahlan realized that she was on the floor in a heap, crumpled on her knees. She cupped a hand over her left ear, gasping in paralyzing pain. She saw blood splattered all over the floor. She took her hand away and saw that it looked like she was wearing a warm, bloody glove.

She could only stare at her hand and pant in little gasps. So crushing was the pain that her voice wouldn’t work. She couldn’t even cry out in agony. It seemed as if she were looking through a long, fuzzy, black tunnel. Her stomach felt queasy.

Suddenly, Sister Ulicia seized Kahlan’s shirt and hoisted her up from the floor only to slam her against the wall. Kahlan’s head smacked the stone, but compared to the pain radiating from the side of her head, her jaw, and her ear, it seemed inconsequential.

“You stupid bitch!” Sister Ulicia railed as she pulled Kahlan away and again slammed her against the wall. “You stupid, incompetent, worthless bitch!”

Tovi looked like she, too, wanted to get her hands on Kahlan. She saw that down the corridor half of Sister Ulicia’s broken rod lay against the wall. Kahlan struggled to find her voice, knowing it was her only salvation.

“Sister Ulicia, I couldn’t fit all three inside.” Kahlan could taste salty tears along with blood. “You told me to hide them in my pack. They wouldn’t fit. I planned to go back and get them, that’s all. Please—I’ll go back for the others. I swear, I will get them for you.”

Sister Ulicia backed away, the smoldering anger in her eyes was frightening. Even though the woman backed away, she pointed at the center of Kahlan’s chest with one finger and Kahlan was slammed hard against the marble and pinned to the wall with a force that felt as massive as a bull leaning against her. It was a struggle to draw each breath against the crushing pressure. It was a struggle to see through the blood running into her eyes.

“You should have rolled the other two boxes in your bedroll, then you would have them all right now. Isn’t that right?”

Kahlan hadn’t considered doing that because it wasn’t an option.

“But Sister, I have something else rolled in the bedroll.”

Sister Ulicia leaned in again. Kahlan feared that she was now going to be made to wish she was dead, or fear that she was about to be. She wasn’t at all sure which fate would be worse. She felt the pain come on within her head to match the pain on the outside from the blow. Pinned against the wall, Kahlan couldn’t fall to the ground, cover her ears, and scream, or she would have.

“I don’t care what trifle you have rolled up in your bedroll. You should have left it out. The boxes are more important.”

Kahlan could only stare, unable to move because of the force keeping her flattened to the wall, and unable to talk because of the force of pain crushing her mind. It felt like ice picks were being slowly shoved and twisted into her ears. Her ankles and wrists twitched involuntarily. She gasped with each throbbing wave of agony wrenching through her head, trying, but unable to squirm away from the piercing pain.

“Now,” Sister Ulicia said in a low, menacing voice that carried deadly threat, “do you think you can do that? Do you think you can go back up there and roll the other two boxes in your bedroll and bring them back to me like you should have done in the first place?”

Kahlan tried to talk, but couldn’t. She nodded instead, desperate to agree, desperate for the pain to stop. She could feel the blood running from her ear and the side of her head soaking the collar of her shirt. She was on her tiptoes, pressed back, wishing she could melt through the wall in order to get away from Sister Ulicia. The pain wouldn’t let up enough for her to catch a breath.

“Do you remember seeing some of the hundreds and hundreds of big, lonely soldiers quartered down in the lower reaches of this place as we were coming up?” Sister Ulicia asked.

Kahlan nodded again.

“Well, if you fail me again, then, when I’m done breaking every bone in your body and making you suffer the agony of a thousand deaths, I’m then going to heal you enough so that I can sell you to those soldiers down there to be their barracks whore. That will be where you spend the rest of your life, being passed from one stranger to another with no one to care what happens to you.”

Kahlan knew that Sister Ulicia never made empty threats. The Sister was absolutely ruthless. Kahlan averted her eyes as she sucked back a sob, unable to stand the Sister’s scrutiny any longer.

Sister Ulicia seized Kahlan’s jaw and turned her face back. “Are you certain that you understand the price should you fail me again?”

Kahlan, her chin held firm, managed to nod.

She felt the pressure pinning her to the wall suddenly release. She collapsed to her knees, gasping with the waves of searing pain all along the left side of her face. She didn’t know if any bones were broken, but it certainly felt like it.

“What’s going on here?” A soldier asked.

Sisters Ulicia and Tovi turned and smiled at the man. He glanced down at Kahlan, frowning. She stared up pleadingly at him, hoping to be rescued from these monsters. The man looked up, his mouth open, about to say something to the Sisters, but then he never did. He looked from Sister Ulicia’s smile to Tovi’s, and smiled himself.

“Is everything all right, ladies?”

“Oh, yes,” Sister Tovi said with a jovial chuckle. “We were just about to have a rest on the bench, here. I was complaining about my backache, that’s all. We were both saying what a nuisance it is to get older.”

“I guess it is.” He bowed his head. “Good day, then, ladies.”

He walked off without ever acknowledging Kahlan’s existence. If he saw her, he forgot about her before he could say anything. Kahlan realized that it was the way she, too, seemed to forget things about herself.

“Get up,” the voice over her growled.

Kahlan struggled to her feet. Sister Ulicia jerked Kahlan’s pack around in front again. She flipped back the flap and dragged out the sinister black box wrapped in Kahlan’s satiny white dress.

She handed the bundle to Sister Tovi. “We’ve already been here too long. We’re starting to draw attention. Take this and get going.”

“But that’s mine!” Kahlan cried out as she grabbed for the dress.

Sister Ulicia backhanded her hard enough to make her teeth slam together. The blow knocked her sprawling. Lying on her side on the floor, Kahlan drew her legs up as she cradled her head in agony. Blood was smeared all over the marble. She shook as the pain bore down and would not let up.

“You want me to leave without you?” Sister Tovi asked as she tucked the box wrapped in the white dress under her arm.

“I think it would be best. It will be safest if we get this box on its way while this worthless bitch goes back to get the others. If it takes as long as
the first one, I’d just as soon not have us both standing around here in the hall waiting for soldiers to decide to have a look. We don’t need a battle; we need to slip away without a trace.”

“If we were questioned it wouldn’t do to have them find we had one of the boxes of Orden,” Sister Tovi agreed. “I should just start out, then, and wait for you somewhere? Or keep going until I reach our destination?”

“You’d best not stop for now.” Sister Ulicia motioned Kahlan to her feet as she spoke to Sister Tovi. “Sisters Cecilia, Armina, and I will meet back up with you once we get to where we’re going.”

Sister Tovi leaned a little toward Kahlan as Kahlan staggered to her feet. “I guess that gives you a few days to think about what I’m going to do to you when the rest of you join up with me again, doesn’t it?”

Kahlan could manage only a whisper. “Yes, Sister.”

“Swift journey,” Sister Ulicia said.

After Sister Tovi had rushed off down the wall, taking Kahlan’s beautiful dress with her, Sister Ulicia seized a fistful of Kahlan’s hair and twisted her head close. The Sister’s fingers groped along the side of Kahlan’s face, making her cry out.

“You have broken bones,” she announced after her examination of Kahlan’s injuries. “Complete your mission and I will heal you. Fail, and it will only be the beginning.

“The other Sister and I have a number of other things we must do before our goals are accomplished. So do you. If you complete your task today you will be healed. We would like you to be healthy for those future duties”—Sister Ulicia patted Kahlan’s cheek in a patronizing manner—“but I can always make other arrangements should you fail in this one. Now, hurry up and get me the other two boxes.”

She had no choice, of course. As much pain as she was in, she knew that if she didn’t comply, and soon, then it was only going to be worse for her. Sister Ulicia had shown her that there was always more pain just waiting to be applied. Kahlan knew, too, that there was no escape from the Sisters.

Kahlan wished she could forget the pain like she seemed to have forgotten the rest of her life. It seemed that only the bad parts of her existence remained in the dark vaults of her memory.

With her breath catching on the ragged edge of tears from the throbbing hurt, she pulled her pack back around, slipped her arm through the strap, and hiked the whole thing up on her back.

“And you had better do as I said and bring them both,” Sister Ulicia growled.

Kahlan nodded and rushed off across the broad corridor. Everyone ignored her. It was as if she were invisible. The few people who did look her way only seemed to see her for a fleeting moment, before they, too, forgot that they had ever noticed her.

Kahlan grabbed the bronze skull in both hands and pulled open one of the snake doors. She raced across the plush carpets and was past the guards before they could think to wonder what they had seen. She dashed up the stairs, ignoring soldiers patrolling the halls, some of whom briefly turned her way, as if trying to hold the image of her in their memories, before losing their mental grip of her and going on about their duties. Kahlan felt like a ghost among the living; there, but not.

She grunted with the effort of pulling open one of the gold-clad doors enough to slip inside the garden. She was in so much pain that she could not rush fast enough. She just wanted to get back and have the Sister make the hurt stop. As before, the garden was as quiet as a sanctuary should be. She had no time to notice or enjoy the flowers and trees. She paused on the grass, staring at the two black boxes sitting on the stone slab, momentarily immobilized by the sight of them, and by the thought of what she had been told to do.

More slowly, she closed the rest of the distance, not wanting to ever get there, not wanting to ever have to do what she knew she must. But the agony of the twisting, throbbing pain all along the side of her head drove her on.

Standing before the slab, she finally slipped off her pack and set it down beside the boxes on its back, rather than its bottom. She wiped her runny nose on the back of her sleeve. Gently, she caressed the side of her face, fearing to touch it and make it hurt worse, but at the same time aching to comfort the throbbing pain. She almost fainted when she felt something jagged sticking out. She didn’t know if it was a splinter from Sister Ulicia’s broken oak rod, or if it was a splinter of bone. Either way, she felt light-headed and thought she might vomit.

Knowing she had little time, she crossed one arm across her stomach and with the other hand began untying the leather thongs holding her bedroll to the bottom of her pack. Her fingers were slick with blood, making the task of untying the knots more difficult. She finally had to resort to using both hands.

When she at last had them undone, she carefully unfurled her bedroll and took out what lay inside, setting it on the stone slab so as to make room for the loathsome black boxes. She sucked in a sob, trying not to think of what she was leaving behind.

Kahlan forced herself to set to work wrapping the two remaining boxes in her bedroll. When she was finished, she laced up the thongs, securely fastening them to insure that the boxes would not fall out. At last finished, she swung the pack onto her back again and reluctantly started across the open area of bare ground in the center of the immense indoor garden.