Phantom: Chainfire Trilogy Part 2

"Excellency?"

"Tell her about the extensive experience we have in convincing people to do as we wish. Tell her what tortures we employ."

Before Sister Ulicia could speak, Kahlan spoke first. "Just get on with it and torture me. No one is interested in hearing you gossip about it like an old hen. I'm sure that you'd rather make me suffer — so get on with it."

"Oh, the torture isn't for you, darlin." He twisted a leg off a roasted goose and used it to gesture to a young woman behind him. "The torture is for her."

Kahlan glanced at the suddenly panicked woman and then frowned at Jagang. "What?"

He bit off some of the dark goose meat. Grease ran down his fingers. He sucked the grease off the rings.

"Well," he said as he picked at the meat hanging from the leg, "perhaps I should be the one to explain. You see, we have this torture where the inquisitor makes a small incision in a lower abdomen of the person in question." He turned and poked the goose leg at the young woman's belly, just below her navel. The goose leg left a greasy spot on her bare flesh. "Right about there.

"Then," he said, turning back, "the inquisitor pushes the jaws of a pair of tongs deep into the belly and gropes around until he is able to grab hold of a bit of the small intestine. It's all quite slippery in there, and the person being subjected to this treatment is not just lying still for it, if you know what I mean, so it usually takes a bit of doing to snag the proper bit of their insides. Once he has it, he slowly begins to pull a few feet of it out. Quite an ordeal."

He leaned over and pulled off another strip of ham. "Now, if you don't do as I say, then we are all going to go over to the torture tents"—he gestured with the limp strip of ham off to his left — "and we're going to let one of our experienced inquisitors do that to this girl behind me."

He turned an icy look up at Kahlan. "All because you refuse to do as you are told. You will get to watch the whole agonizing thing. You will get to listen to her screams, listen to her begging for her life, watch her bleed, see her vital insides being drawn out of her. After the man has pulled a few feet free, he then begins winding it around a stick, like spare yarn — just to keep the mess all neat and tidy. After that, he will pause and look to me.

"At that time, I will again politely ask you to do as I have instructed. If you again refuse, then we will slowly pull out a few more feet of her tender, delicate, bloody gut, winding it around the stick, while we all listen to her scream and cry and beg to die. This whole process can go on for quite a long time. It's an excruciatingly slow and painful ordeal." Jagang gave Kahlan a cheerful smile. "And then, near the end, you will get to see her convulse in her death."

Kahlan looked up at the girl. She hadn't moved, but she had gone as white as the sugar mounded in the bowl to the side of the table.

Jagang slowly chewed and then washed the mouthful down with a swig of wine. "After that, you can watch us throw her lifeless carcass on the dead cart, with other ruined bodies of people who have been questioned.

"Then, I will offer Ulicia and Armina the choice of either being sent to the tents to entertain my men, who have quite the lustier desires, or, if they would rather, think of ways to use that collar around your neck to give you more pain than you have so far experienced from it. The stipulation will be that they must not allow you to pass out. I will, of course, want you to feel it all."

Outside, the din of the army carried on without letup, but inside the tent it was dead quiet. Jagang sawed off another slab of the bloody beef as he went on.

"After the Sisters have exhausted their imaginations, and I believe that the incentive will spark some inventive ideas, then I will personally beat you to within an inch of your death. After all of that, I will rip your clothes off of you and you will be standing there naked before me."

His nightmare eyes fixed on her. "Your choice, darlin. Either way, in the end, you are going to comply with my order and end up standing there naked before me. What method do you choose? Make it quick. I'll not offer you the choice again."

Kahlan had no choice. Resisting in this was pointless. She swallowed and immediately started unbuttoning her shirt.

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.