She had so often wished to be rid of it, but never realized what it would feel like to be without her magic. She cried out again. Tears streamed down her cheeks at the forsaken, vacant desolation. She felt naked before the mob of people.
She forced herself to stop the tears. She would not let these people see the Mother Confessor cry. No—she would not let these people see Kahlan Amnell cry.
Ranson drew Prince Fyren's sword from its scabbard. He stepped behind her. He took up her hair in his fist and pulled it out tight as she knelt on the cold floor.
With the sword, he sliced her hair off, close, right at the nape of her neck. The shearing felt almost as shocking to her as having her power taken. The hair Richard loved so. She bit back tears.
Neville Ranson held up the severed handful of her hair to wild cheering. Kahlan knelt, numbly staring at nothing, as soldiers tied her wrists behind her back. Ranson grasped her arm, under her shoulder, and hauled her to her feet.
"The first of it, then, Mother Confessor. You have been stripped of your power, and its symbol. As I promised you. Now to the rest of it."
Kahlan was silent, there was nothing to say, as Ranson and a cluster of grinning guards led her down through the Palace. She didn't pay any attention to where she was being taken. She was thinking about Richard, hoping he would remember her love for him. She lost herself in memories of him. She let the world around her go. She would soon let the world of life go, too. The good spirits had deserted her.
She was numb to what was happening. The emptiness of being without her power left her feeling half dead already. She had never known how much it meant to her, how much a part of her the magic was, until it was gone. She wondered if this dull bleakness was the way people without the power felt all the time. She couldn't imagine living without the magic.
She longed for death, now, to end this dead feeling. Only Richard had accepted her with her power. She never completely accepted it herself, but Richard had. Now it was too late. She grieved more for the loss of her magic than her life. She knew, now, what the other creatures of magic would feel, when it happened to them. She grieved for them.
Ranson's hand on her arm jerked her to a halt, jerked her to awareness, before an iron door in a dim corridor. One of the guards worked at a rusty lock on the iron door. Kahlan recognized the door. She had taken confessions down here.
"And now, to my second promise, Mother Confessor," Ranson said with a sneer. "You will be stripped of your dignity."
Kahlan gasped as his fist grabbed what was left of her hair and jerked her head back. As she was held helpless, her wrists bound painfully behind her back, and her hair in his fist, Ranson kissed her neck.
Right where Darken Rahl had kissed her neck.
The same horrors coursed through her mind as when Darken Rahl had done it. She shuddered with revulsion, with the horror of the visions. In her mind, she saw the young women in Ebinissia, only this time, she was one of them.
"I would rape you myself," Ranson whispered in her ear, "but I find your sense of honor disgusting."
The door squeaked open, and without any further word, Ranson shoved her through the doorway, into the pit.
59
Kahlan gasped at the feeling of falling through space, but before she had a chance to fully consider what would happen when she hit the floor, rough hands caught her. They pushed her down to the cold stone. She saw the light of the doorway above disappear when the door clanged closed. In the light of a sputtering torch in a bracket, she saw grinning men all about, pushing in at her.
The rope cut into her wrists. Her feelings of terror and helplessness gave way to desperate action. Kahlan kicked a man in the groin. She was on her back on the floor, so she had leverage to do damage. She rammed her heel into the face of another man leaning over her. He fell back with a cry. She kicked frantically at the others.
The grasping hands caught her ankles. She kicked her legs but the men held tight. She rolled to the side, breaking the grip, and skittered into a corner. Her freedom was only momentary. They seized her flailing legs again.
In the back of her mind, as she fought, Kahlan desperately tried to think. A spark of thought tried to get her attention. It was something about Zedd, but she couldn't think clearly.
The men fighting to get at her pushed her white dress up her legs. Hands pawed at her thighs. Big, meaty fingers hooked her smallclothes, stripping them down her legs and off her feet. She felt rough hands and cold air on her flesh. She fought the men and, at the same time, her own panic.
Two men were on the floor; one holding his crotch, the other sprawled out, blood gushing from his ruined face. His nose was crushed. There were ten others, all trying to get at her at once. They threw each other back, trying to force themselves on top of her, the biggest working his way in. Kahlan couldn't get her breath.
With frantic effort, the spark of thought sprang forth. She remembered asking Zedd if he could remove her power. She had wanted to be free of it so she could be with Richard. Zedd had told her that it wasn't possible to rid a Confessor of her power, that she was born with the magic, and it couldn't be separated from her as long as she was alive.
How could Ranson have stripped her of her power? Zedd was a wizard of the First Order; there was no wizard with more power than a wizard of the First Order. Why wouldn't Ranson have wanted to rape her first? He said she disgusted him. But he said he wanted to strip her of her dignity. Why wouldn't he want to do it?
Unless he were afraid.
Afraid she would figure it out. Figure what out?
It came to her. The Wizard's First Rule.
People would believe anything, if they wanted to believe. Or if they were afraid it was true. She was afraid it was true that he had stripped her of her power. Maybe he had used magic to give her pain, to try to trick her into believing what she feared.
As the men groped at her, she groped for her power. She tried to find the calmness, the place of her magic, but it just wasn't there. All she felt was emptiness. Where she always felt the swell of magic before, she now felt only a numb, hollow void.
She wanted to cry at the feel of the men's hands on her legs, and between them, but she couldn't allow herself to lose control, her only chance. Try as she might, she couldn't find the magic, couldn't call it forth. It was simply gone. She desperately wanted her hands free.
"Wait!" she screamed.
The men all stopped for a moment, their faces pulling back, looking at her. She gasped to catch her breath.
Talk, she ordered of herself, while you have the chance. "You're doing it all wrong!"
They laughed. "We think we'll figure it out," one said.
Kahlan struggled to control her fear, and think. They were going to do what they were going to do, and she couldn't stop them. Fighting them in this way was going to accomplish nothing, except to feed her panic. She had only one chance, and that was to use her head. She had to slow them down and give herself time to think.
"If you do it this way, you will just be denying yourselves the full satisfaction of it."
They frowned. "What do you mean?"
"If you're all fighting each other, and me, you won't be able to really enjoy me as a woman. Wouldn't it be more enjoyable if I cooperated?"
They all looked at one another. One to the side spoke up. "She has a point. The Queen wasn't nearly so much good after she went numb on us."
"Queen?" Kahlan asked. "What queen? You men are just bragging on me. You've had no queen."
"Queen Cyrilla," a different man said. "She fainted on us, then went feeble-minded. Just laid there the whole time, like a dead fish. But we had her anyway, had a queen. Still..."
Kahlan fought back the scream, fought to keep the meaning of what she had just learned from making her start kicking again. That would only get her the same as Cyrilla.
Her only chance was to use her head. She needed time to search for her magic, and if she somehow did find it, she needed the men separated. Otherwise, nin
e men would overpower that one. She had to have things organized first, in case the magic worked. And, she needed the strongest to be the one.
For an instant, she abandoned her idea, fearing it wouldn't save her, and worse, fearing she wouldn't have the nerve to do it. But then she bleakly realized that even if it didn't work, it didn't mater. They were going to rape her one way or the other. Her only chance was to try. She had nothing to lose.
"That's what I mean. Wouldn't you rather have my cooperation? I'm going to be down here for days. You'll each have more than your share of time on me. Wouldn't you rather I helped? That way, you could all have what you want." She thought she might vomit.
"Keep talking," the biggest man said in a gruff voice.
Kahlan stiffened her resolve. "I've never... had a man before." They all hooted at their luck. She waited until their leers came back to her. She fought back the urge to shriek at the looks in those eyes. "Like I said, I've never had a man. I know you men are going to have me, and I can't stop you. If it's going to be done anyway, I'd rather... enjoy it."
Their hungry smiles widened. "Yea? Well, what do you think you'd enjoy most, little lady?"
"If you did it one at a time. Wouldn't that be better for you, too? If you weren't fighting each other, if you waited your turn, then you could concentrate on enjoying everything a real woman has to offer."
A couple of the men grabbed at her legs, pulling them apart. They growled that they would have what they wanted their own way. The biggest, the one with the gruff voice, hauled them back, throwing one against the wall. His head banged with a loud thunk.
"Let her talk! She makes sense!" He turned his vicious eyes on her. "Let's hear your offer."
Kahlan tried to slow her voice down, and sound like she might be intrigued by the idea. She tried to sound self-confident as she shrugged.
"If you do it my way, I'll give you whatever you want. I'll make sure you enjoy whatever you like."