Terry Goodkind - Temple of the Winds

As she erupted from the sliph, before she could brace herself to react, big, strong hands reached down and seized her. She struggled to get her bearings, to make sense of what was happening as the sudden light and sound whirled in around her.

The hands tore the book from her grasp. An arm clamped around her neck, its big fist gripping her arm. She felt rope being wound around her wrist.

A nightmare came to life in her vision as she was dragged from the well, kicking and twisting and trying to get away. She went limp when a fist in her gut drove the wind from her lungs. Her knees smacked the stone floor. Her arms felt as if they were being wrenched from her shoulder sockets as they were twisted behind her back.

She fought to reach her Confessor’s power—only to remember when she couldn’t touch it that the spirits had walled it from her so she could be married to Drefan. She was defenseless. It was Drefan attacking her.

Cara was there, on the floor, her wrists bound above her head, the rope fastened to a pin in the wall. Her ankles, likewise secured with rope, were stretched toward the opposite wall. She had an iron pot chained over her middle. The smell of hot coals and burning flesh assailed Kahlan’s nostrils, gagging her.

Drefan pressed his knee to her arm as he knotted rope around her wrists. Kahlan tried to bite his leg. He backhanded her across the face so hard that her vision narrowed to a tiny spot. She fought to keep that vision, to stay conscious. She knew that she was lost if she passed out.

Her arms bound behind her, unable to break her fall, she smacked into the stone floor face-first. Drefan pounced on her back, sitting on her, holding her down, as he bound her legs together. Kahlan struggled to pull a breath against the weight of him. Blood gushed from her nose. The rope around her wrists was so tight that already her fingers were tingling.

Cara screamed. It was the loudest scream Kahlan had ever heard. It sent icy needles stabbing into her head. It made her face hurt.

Blood was running from under the rim of the iron pot. Cara shook and thrashed. She stiffened and screamed again.

Drefan lifted Kahlan’s head by her hair. “Where’s Richard?”

“Richard? Richard is dead.”

Kahlan grunted at a punch in her kidney. She couldn’t get her breath. Drefan turned his attention to Cara.

“Ready to talk yet? Where did you hide Richard?”

Cara’s only answer was another shuddering scream. When it ended, she panted in pain.

“Why did you tell him?” Cara wept. “Why did you tell him about . . . the rats? Dear spirits, why did you tell him about the rats?”

Terror locked Kahlan’s breath in her lungs.

Blood, vivid red against white skin, ran in rivulets from under the pot’s rim, and down Cara’s side. Smoke curled up from the hot coals atop it. And then Kahlan saw the bloody claw wriggling from under the rim of the pot on Cara’s stomach. Kahlan suddenly understood. It took all her force of will to keep from vomiting. Cara cried hysterically, thrashing at the bloody ropes holding her. Kahlan furiously squirmed forward, going for the chain, to try to undo it with her teeth—to try to get the iron pot off Cara.

Drefan lifted Kahlan by her hair. “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.