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“Your turn will come, wife.”
He heaved her back. Kahlan smacked into the wall and slid down onto something hard and sharp. The pain brought stinging tears to her eyes. It was Nadine’s bag, full of all those horn containers. She lurched and wrenched herself until she was able to slip to the side, off the bag, and get her breath back.
Drefan turned his Darken Rahl eyes on her. “If you tell me where Richard is, I’ll let Cara go.”
“Don’t tell him!” Cara screamed. “Don’t tell him!”
“I couldn’t if I wanted to,” Kahlan called out to Cara. “I don’t know where you hid him.”
Drefan picked up the book Kahlan had brought. “What’s this?”
Kahlan’s gaze locked on the sinister black book. She had to have that book, or Richard would die.
“Well, no matter, you won’t be needing it anymore.”
“No!” Kahlan screamed when she saw what Drefan was going to do with the book. “Please!”
He looked back at her as he held the book out over the sliph’s well. “Tell me where Richard is.” He smiled, lifting an eyebrow. “No?”
He dropped the book down the well. Kahlan’s heart sank with the book. The sliph, who liked to watch the people in the room, was nowhere to be seen now. She probably had been frightened away by the screams.
“Drefan, let Cara go. Please. You have me. Do what you want to with me, but please let her go.”
Drefan smiled as wicked a smile as Kahlan had ever seen. It was a twin to Darken Rahl’s smile. “Oh, don’t you worry, I intend to do what I want with you. When it is time.”
He turned back to Cara. “How are the rats doing, Cara? Ready to talk yet?”
Cara cursed him through clenched teeth.
Drefan reached into a sack and brought out a rat, holding it by the scruff of its neck. He shook it in her face as she tried to turn away. He lowered it against her. Squeaking and twisting, its claws scratched and dug as it tried to get away from Drefan’s grip, leaving red streaks along Cara’s cheeks, chin, and lips.
“Please,” Cara wailed. “Please, get them away!”
“Where’s Richard?”
“Dear spirits, help me. Please help me. Please help me,” she mumbled over and over.
“Where’s Richard?”
Cara’s body jerked violently. “Mama!” She shrieked. “Help me! Mama! Get them off! Mamaaaaa!”
Cara was alone in a cage with rats, in the grip of terror and pain. She was a helpless child again, begging for the comfort and protection of her mother, wailing for her mother.
Kahlan gasped in tears. This was her fault. She had told Drefan that Cara was afraid of rats.
“Cara, forgive me! I didn’t know!”
Cara thrashed at her ropes, a little girl, frantically begging for her mother to get the rats away.
Kahlan strained to pull a hand free. If she could only get a hand free of the ropes. But they were so tight. She tugged and pulled. Her fingers tingled. The coarse rope cut into her wrists.
Kahlan pressed her wrists against Nadine’s bag, searching for something sharp to cut the ropes. The bag was cloth, the handle smooth wood.
The bag. Kahlan bent to the side, her fingers feeling for the button that held the bag closed. She found it. She struggled to undo the button, but her fingers were numb and at the angle that her arms were twisted, she couldn’t make her fingers work properly. She dug at the button with her thumbnail, trying to hook it to the side, trying to rip it off. It was sewn on with heavy thread to stand up to the rigors of use and weight. At last, the button popped through its hole.
Kahlan scooped at the contents in the bag, trying to sling them out where she could see them. Every shrill wail from Cara made Kahlan flinch. Every time Cara cried for her mother to save her from the rats, Kahlan had to hold back a sob of her own.
When she glanced up, she saw Drefan wiping a rat across Cara’s face. He had broken the back of another and draped it across her throat. Kahlan gritted her teeth and fingered the horn containers out of the bag.
Cara was her sister of the Agiel. Kahlan had to do something. Cara’s only hope was Kahlan. She twisted her neck, trying to see the markings on the horns. She couldn’t find the one she wanted.
She used her fingers, groping at the symbols scratched into the horn. She felt one that she thought was the right one, and her hopes soared, only to be dashed when she felt that there were three circles. She flicked each horn out of the way when she determined that it was not the one she needed.
She rooted in the bag and found another. Her fingers blindly felt the scratches. They went in a circle. She slipped her fingers along the horn and found another circle. She felt a heavily scratched straight line between them.
Kahlan held the horn in her fingertips and twisted, trying to see if she was right. Cara screamed and Kahlan dropped the horn. She scooted to the side so she could see it on the floor.
It had two circles scratched into the patina of the horn. A horizontal line ran through both circles. It was the right one: canin pepper.
Nadine had warned her about taking off the wooden stopper, warned her about getting it in your face, your eyes. It would immobilize a person for a time, Nadine had said. Make them helpless, for a time.
Kahlan worked the horn back into her fingers. She wiggled the wooden stopper, trying to loosen it. It was cut to fit tightly, to keep the dangerous substance from leaking out.
Kahlan’s fingers were so numb they had no strength. She gritted her teeth as she tried to work the stopper loose. She didn’t want it off, yet, but she had to know she could get it off.
With her hands behind her back, she couldn’t throw it. She frantically tried to think of what she was going to do. She had to do something. If she didn’t, Cara would soon be dead. And then Drefan would start in on his loving wife.
Cara wailed in agony.
“Please, mama, get the rats away from Cari. Please, mama, please. Help me, please help me.”
The pleading cries of hopeless terror ripped at Kahlan’s heart. She could wait no longer. She would just have to figure out what to do when the time came. She had to act.
“Drefan!”
His head twisted around. “Are you ready to tell me where Richard is?”
Kahlan remembered something Nathan had told her. You must offer Richard’s brother what he truly wants, if you are to save Richard. Maybe it would save Cara.
“Richard? What would I want with Richard? You know that it’s you I want.”
He smiled a knowing, satisfied smile. “Soon, my dear. In a little while. You can wait.”
He turned back to Cara.
“No, Drefan! I can’t wait. I need you now. I want you now. I can’t resist any longer. I can’t pretend any longer. I need you.”
“I said—”
“Just like your mother.” He froze at her words. “I need you like your whore of a mother needed your father.”
His expression darkened. Like a provoked bull, he turned toward her, his piercing eyes riveted on her. “What do you mean?”
“You know exactly what I mean. I need to be taken, like your father took your mother. I want you to take me like that. Only you can satisfy me. Do it. Do it now. Please.”
He rose up, huge and imposing. His muscles rippled and knotted. His brow drew down in that grim Rahl glare.
“I knew it,” he breathed. “I knew it. I knew you would finally give in to your filthy perversion.”
He hesitated, looking back at Cara.
“Yes. You’re right. You’re always right, Drefan. You’re smarter than me. You were right all along. I can’t fool you any longer. Give me what I want. Give me what I need. Please, Drefan, I’m begging you. I need you.”
The look on his face was frightening. It was madness. If she could have shrunk back into the stone, she would have.
Drefan slipped free the knife at his belt as his tongue wet his lips. He started toward her.
She had had no idea just how effecti
ve her words had been. In sudden panic, Kahlan wiggled the wooden stopper. Drefan’s whole face, the whole way he carried his body, changed. He was a seething monster coming at her. His eyes narrowed with bestial loathing, savage hatred. Hatred for her.
Kahlan swallowed back the sudden terror welling up in her throat. Dear spirits, what had she just done? She scuffed her feet against the stone floor, trying to back away. She was already against the wall.
How was she going to get the powder in his face?
Dear spirits, what do I do?
Kahlan wiggled the stopper with all her might. It popped off. Drefan went to a knee beside her.
“Tell me how much you want me to please you.”
“Yes! I want you. Now. Give me the pleasure only you can give me.”
He brought the knife up as he leaned toward her.
Kahlan heaved herself toward him, twisting, rolling to the side as hard as she could, flinging the horn full of powder at his face as she rolled onto hers.
