Phantom (52 page)

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.

Kahlan stared at the pattern in the carpet on the ground at her feet. She didn’t want to look defiantly into Jagang’s black eyes. A show of bravery at the moment, she knew, would serve little purpose.

When she had been made to walk while the Sisters rode, she had always told herself that it would make her stronger for a time when she would need strength. In much the same way, she wouldn’t now use her resolve for a useless show of defiance. Railing against her captor and what he was about to do to her when she knew that she could do nothing to stop it would only be squandering her strength.

She wanted to save her hot rage until the time was right.

And that time would come. She promised herself that such a time would come. Even if it was when she threw herself into the teeth of death itself, she would unleash her smoldering anger at those who did this to her and all the other innocent victims of the Imperial Order.

She saw Jagang’s boots appear right in front of her. She held her breath, expecting him to seize her. She didn’t know what she would do when it actually happened, how she would be able to endure what she knew he was going to do. Her gaze lifted just a little, just enough to see where his knife was on his belt. He rested the heel of his hand on the knife handle.

“We’re going out,” he said.

Kahlan looked up with a frown. “Out? For what purpose?”

“Tonight is a night of Ja’La dh Jin tournaments. Different units of our soldiers have teams. There are nights devoted to the tournaments. It lifts the hearts of our forces to have their emperor there to witness how they play the game.

“Men are also gathered from all over the conquered parts of the New World and given the chance to join in challenging other teams. It is a great opportunity for them to begin to fit into the new culture we bring to
defeated lands, to become part of the fabric of the Order, to participate in our ways.

“The best players can sometimes become heroes. Women fight over such men. The men of my team are all such men—heroes who never lose. Crowds of women wait for these men after the games, eager to open their legs for them. Ja’La players have their pick of any woman.”

Kahlan noted that while, as emperor, Jagang probably had the pick of many women who would want to be close to such a man of authority and power, he would rather force himself on her. He would rather take what was not offered, have what he had not won as a result of merit.

“Tonight some of those teams play for ranking. They all hope that one day they might have the chance to play my team in a grand contest for top honors. My team plays the best of the best once or twice a month. They never lose. There is always a burning hope among each new group of challengers that they will be the ones to defeat the best—the emperor’s team—and be crowned champions of the games. There would be many rewards for such a team, not the least of which would be the most beautiful of the women who now are eager only to be with the men of my team.”

He seemed to enjoy telling her about the habits of such women, as if he were generalizing about all women and in so doing telling her that he thought she was at heart the same. She would rather open a vein. She ignored the innuendo and asked him something else instead.

“If your team is not playing, why do you wish to watch? Surely a man such as you would not bestow your precious presence on the faithful on such a regular basis just to be generous.”

He peered at her with a puzzled look, as if it were a strange question. “To see their strategy, of course, to learn the strengths, the weaknesses, of those who will become the opponents of my team.”

His sly smile returned. “That is what you do—size up those who might be your opponents—and don’t try to tell me that you don’t. I see your gaze go to weapons, to the layout of rooms, to the position of men, cover, and escape routes. You are always searching for an opportunity, always watching, always thinking of how to defeat those who stand in your way.

“Ja’La dh Jin is much the same way. It is a game of strategy.”

“I’ve seen it played. I’d say that the strategy is secondary, that it’s primarily a game of brutality.”

“Well, if you don’t enjoy the strategy,” he said with a smirk, “then you will no doubt enjoy watching men sweat, strain, and struggle against one another. That’s why most women like to watch Ja’La. Men enjoy it for the strategy, the give and take of the contest, the chance to cheer their team to victory, and to imagine being such men themselves; the women like to watch half-naked bodies and sweat-slicked muscles. They like to watch the strongest men prevail, dream of being the desire of conquering heroes, and then scheme of ways to make themselves available to such men.”

“Both sound pointless to me. Either brutality, or meaningless rutting.”

He shrugged. “In my tongue, Ja’La dh Jin means ‘the game of life.’ Is not life a struggle—a brutal contest? A contest of men, and of sexes? Life, like Ja’La, is a brutal struggle.”

Kahlan knew that life could be brutal, but that such brutality did not define life or its purpose, and that the sexes were not rivals, but meant to share together in the work and joys of life.

“To those like you it is,” she said. “That’s one difference between you and me. I use violence only as a last resort, only when it’s necessary to defend my life—my right to exist. You use brutality as a tool of fulfilling your desires, even your ordinary desires, because, except by force, you have nothing worthwhile to offer to exchange for what you want or need—and that includes women. You take, you do not earn.

“I’m better than that. You don’t value life or anything in it. I do. That’s why you must crush anything good—because it puts the lie to your nothing of a life, shows by contrast how you do nothing but waste your existence.

“That’s why you and those like you hate those like me—because I’m better than you and you know it.”

“Such a belief is the mark of a sinner. To consider your own life meaningful is a crime against the Creator as well as your fellow man.”

When she only glared at him, he arched an eyebrow with an admonishing look as he leaned a little closer. He held up a thick finger—adorned with a plundered gold ring—before her face to mark an important point, as if lecturing a selfish, headstrong child who was within an inch of getting a well-deserved thrashing.

“The Fellowship of Order teaches us that to be better than someone is to be worse than everyone.”

Kahlan could only stare at such a vulgar ideology. That pious statement of hollow conviction gave her a sudden, true insight into the abyss of his savage nature, and the vindictive character of the Order itself. It was a concept that had abandoned the distant foundation upon which it had been built—that all life equally had the right to exist for its own sake—in order to justify taking life for the Order’s own contrived notion of the common good.

Within that simple-sounding framework of an irrational tenet, he had just unwittingly revealed everything.

It explained the depravity of his whole cause and the determinant emotions driving the nature of those monstrous men massed outside, ready to kill anyone who would not submit to their creed. It was a dogma that shrank from civilization, praised savagery as a way of existence, and required constant brutality to crush any noble idea and the man who had it. It was a movement that drew to it thieves who wanted to think themselves righteous, murderers who wanted holy absolution for the blood of innocent victims that drenched their souls.

It assigned any achievement not to the one who had created it, but instead to those who had not earned it and did not deserve it, precisely because they did not earn it and did not deserve it. It valued thievery, not accomplishment.

It was anathema to individuality.

At the same time, it was a frighteningly sad admission of a rotting core of weakness in the face of life, an inability to exist on any level except that of a primitive beast, always cowering in fear that someone else would be better. It was not simply a rejection of all that was good, a resentment of accomplishment—it was, in fact, far worse. It was an expression of a gnawing hatred for anything good, grown out of an inner unwillingness to strive for anything worthwhile.

Like all irrational beliefs, it was also unworkable. To live, those beliefs had to be ignored to accomplish goals of domination, which in themselves were a violation of the belief for which they were fighting. There were no equals among those of the Order, the torchbearers of enforced equality. Whether a Ja’La player, the most professional of the soldiers, or an emperor, the best were not simply needed but sought after and highly valued, and so as a body they harbored an inner hatred of their failure to live up to
their own teachings and a fear that they would be unmasked for it. As punishment for their inability to fulfill their sanctified beliefs through adherence to those teachings, they instead turned to the self-flagellation of proclaiming how unworthy all men were and vented their self-hatred on scapegoats: they blamed the victims.

In the end, the belief was nothing more than fabricated divinity—unthinking nonsense repeated in a mantra in an attempt to give it credibility, to make it sound sacred.

“I’ve already seen the Ja’La games,” Kahlan said. She turned away from him. “I have no desire to see more of it.”

He seized her upper arm, pulling her back around to face him. “I know you’re eager to have me bed you, but you can wait. Right now we are going to watch the Ja’La games.”

A lecherous smile oozed onto his face, like greasy muck bubbling up from his festering soul. “If you don’t enjoy watching the games for their strategy and competition, then you can let your eyes roam over the naked flesh of the rivals. I’m sure that such sights will make you eager for what comes later tonight. Try not to be too impatient.”

Kahlan suddenly felt foolish for protesting any reason to avoid his bed. But the Ja’La game was out among the men, and she had no desire to go out there again. She also had no choice. She hated being among those vile men. She reminded herself to get a grip on her feelings. The soldiers couldn’t see her. She was being silly.

He pulled her toward the passageway out of the tent. She went without resisting. This was not a time to resist.

Outside, the five special guards waited. They all noticed that Kahlan was dressed, but none of them spoke. They stood tall, straight, and attentive, looking ready to jump if told to do so. They were obviously on their best behavior before their emperor, wanting to impress him.

Kahlan guessed that to be better than someone was all right if you were the emperor, and that it wouldn’t make him worse than everyone. He fought for a doctrine from which he exempted himself, as did each and every one of his men. Kahlan knew better than to point it out.

“These are your new guards,” Jagang told her. “We’ll not have a repeat of the last incident, since these men can see you.”

The men all looked pretty content with themselves, and the apparently harmless nature of the woman they were to guard.

Kahlan took a quick but good look at the first man the Sisters had brought to task, the partner of the one with the broken nose. With a glance she evaluated the weapons he carried, a knife, and a crudely made sword with two halves of a wooden hilt wired onto the tang, and how graceless he appeared in the way he wore them. In that glance she knew that they were implements he no doubt used with bravado when slaughtering innocent women and children. She doubted that he had ever used them in combat with other men. He was a thug, nothing more. Intimidation was his weapon of choice.

By his self-satisfied smile, he looked unimpressed with her. After all, he had already, by himself, nearly brought her to task, and to his tent. In his mind he had been only a few steps away from having her under him.

“You,” she said, pointing right between his eyes. “You I will kill first.”

The men all snickered. She swept an appraising gaze over them and their weapons, learning what there was to learn.

She pointed at the man with the broken nose. “You die second, after him.”

“What about us three?” one of the others asked, unable to suppress a chuckle. “What order will you kill us in?”

Kahlan shrugged. “You will know just before I cut your throat.”

The men all laughed. Jagang didn’t.

“You would be well advised to take her seriously,” the emperor told them. “The last time she got her hands on a knife she killed my two most trusted bodyguards—men a lot better at soldiering than you—and a Sister of the Dark. All by herself, and all in a matter of a few brief moments.”

The laughter died away.

“You all will stay on your toes,” Jagang said in a low growl, “or I will gut you myself if I even think you are being inattentive to your duty. If she gets away under your watch, I will send you to the torture tents and command that your death take a month and a day, that your flesh rot and die before you do.”

There was no longer any doubt in the men’s minds as to the seriousness of Jagang’s orders, or the value of his prize.

A vast escort of hundreds, if not thousands, of the inner and most expert of the emperor’s guards formed up around their leader as he strode purposefully away from his tent. The five special guards surrounded Kahlan
on every side except the side Jagang was on. They all moved out into the camp in a wedge of armor and drawn weapons. Kahlan supposed that, as a leader, Jagang was just taking normal precautions against spies, but she thought that it was more than that.

He was better than everyone else.