"How dare you put a lady in a rat infested hole!"
Prince Fyren stepped close to the black maw. One hand on a hip held back his unbuttoned, royal blue coat. With his other hand he hefted a torch from a bracket.
"Rats? Is that what worries you, My Lady? Rats?" He gave her a derisive smile. He was too young to be so well schooled at insolence. Had her arms been free she would have slapped him. "Let me allay your fears, Queen Cyrilla."
He tossed the torch into the blackness. As it dropped, it illuminated faces. A husky fist caught the torch. There were men in the pit. At least six, maybe ten.
Prince Fyren leaned into the doorway, his voice echoing into the hole. "The Queen worries there may be rats down there."
"Rats?" came a coarse voice from the pit. "There be no rats down here. Not anymore. We et them all."
A hand with white ruffles at the wrist still rested on Prince Fyren's hip. His voice taunted with feigned concern. "There, you see? The man says there are no rats. Does that ease your apprehension, My Lady?"
Her eyes darted between the flickering torchlight below and Fyren. "Who are those men?"
"Why, just a few murderers and rapists awaiting their beheading, same as you. Quite vile animals, actually. What with all I've had to attend to, I haven't had time to see to their sentences. I'm afraid being down in the pit for so long puts them in an ugly disposition." His grin returned. "But I'm sure having queen among them will mellow their mood."
Cyrilla had to force her voice to come. "I demand my own cell."
The grin vanished. An eyebrow lifted. "Demand? You demand?" He suddenly struck her across the face. "You demand nothing! You are nothing but a common criminal, a loathsome murderer of my people! You have been tried and convicted!"
Her cheek burned with the sting of his handprint.
"You can't put me in there—with them." Her whispered entreaty was hopeless, she knew, but she couldn't keep it from her lips.
Fyren rolled his shoulders, straightening his back and coat as he regained his composure. His voice rose to those below. "You men wouldn't defile a lady, would you?"
Soft laughter echoed up from the pit. "Why 'course not. We wouldn't want to be beheaded twice." The coarse voice deepened into cold menace. "We'll treat her real nice like."
Cyrilla could taste warm, salty blood at the corner of her mouth. "Fyren, you can't do this. I demand to be beheaded at once."
"There you go again: demanding."
"Why can't it be done now! Let it be done now!"
He drew his hand back to slap her again, but then let it lower as his simper returned. "You see? At first you proclaimed your innocence, and didn't want to be executed, but already you are reconsidering. After a few days down there, with them, you will be begging to be beheaded. You will eagerly confess your treason before all those gathered to witness your punishment. Besides, I have other matters to attend to. I can't be bothered right now. You will be put to death when I deem I have the time."
With rising terror, she was only now beginning to grasp the full extent of the fate that awaited her in the pit. Tears burned her eyes.
"Please... don't do this to me. I'm begging you."
Prince Fyren smoothed the white ruffles at his throat and spoke softly. "I tried to make it easy for you, Cyrilla, because you are a woman. Drefan's knife would have been quick. You would have suffered little that way. I would never have allowed a man in your place such mercy. But you wouldn't have it the easy way. You allowed the Mother Confessor to interfere. You allowed yet another woman to infringe on the dominion of men!
"Women don't have the stomach for ruling. They are ill suited to the task. They should never be allowed to command armies or to meddle in the affairs of nations. Things had to be set right. Drefan died trying to do it the easy way. Now we do it the other way."
He nodded to a man behind him. The guard hauled the ladder to the doorway to lower an end into the pit as the hands on her arms moved her to the edge. The other men drew swords, apparently to prevent any in the pit from thinking to come up the ladder.
Cyrilla could think of no way to stop this. She voiced a protest, knowing it was foolish, but unable to check her panic. "I am a Queen, a Lady, I will not be made to scurry down a rickety ladder."
Prince Fyren blinked at her ludicrous objection, but then motioned with his hand for the man to pull the ladder back from the doorway.
He gave a mocking bow. "As you wish, My Lady."
He rose, giving a slight nod to the men holding her arms. They released her. Before she thought to move a muscle, he rammed the heel of his hand into her chest, between her breasts.
The painful blow knocked her off balance. She toppled backwards through the opening. Down into the pit.
As she plummeted, she fully expected to strike the stone floor and be killed. She resigned to it with a last gasp as the futile flow of her past glory whirled before her mind's eye. Had it all come to this? All for nought? To have her skull cracked like an egg fallen from a table to the floor?
But hands caught her. Hands were everywhere upon her, unexpectedly upon the most indecent places. Her eyes opened to see the light of the doorway go dark with a loud, reverberating clang.
Faces were all around her in the haunting, flickering torchlight. Scruffy, whiskered faces. Ugly, sweaty, wicked faces. Cunning black eyes played over her. Hungry, humorless grins showed crooked, sharp teeth. So many teeth. Her throat clenched shut, locking her breath in her lungs. Her mind refused to function, and flashed with confusing, useless images.
She was pressed to the floor. The stone was cold and painfully rough against her back. Grunts and low squeals assailed her from every side. Men were tight together above her. Against her struggles, her limbs were pushed and pulled as the men willed.
Clutching, clawlike hands ripped at her fine dress and pinched brutally at suddenly, shockingly, exposed flesh.
And then Cyrilla did something she hadn't done since she was a little girl.
She screamed.
27
Except for her thumb and forefinger idly turning the smooth, round bone on her necklace, Kahlan stood motionless as she studied the sprawling city. The surrounding rugged slopes seemed to tenderly cradle the buildings that filled nearly the length and breadth of the gently rolling valley. Steeply pitched slate roofs pricked the land within the ribbon of wall, with the higher peaks of the palace off to the northern end, but not so much as a wisp of smoke rose from the hundreds of stone chimneys into the clear air. She saw no movement. The arrow-straight South road leading to the main gate, the smaller, meandering roads that branched off to end at the lesser gates, and those which bypassed the outer walls altogether to lead north, were deserted.
The sloping mountain meadow before her lay buried beneath a white winter blanket. A light breeze liberated the burden of snow from a sagging branch of a nearby pine, freeing a sparkling cloud to curl away. The same breeze ruffled the white wolf fur of the thick mantle snugged against her cheek, but she hardly noticed.
Prindin and Tossidin had made the mantle for her, to keep her warm on their way northeast through the bitter winter storms that raked the bleak land they had traveled. Wolves were fearful of people, and rarely let themselves be seen, so she knew little of their habits. The brothers' arrows had found their mark where she saw nothing. If she hadn't seen Richard shoot, she would have thought the shots impossible. The brothers were almost as good as he.
Though she had always held a vague enmity for wolves, she had never actually been harried by them. Since Richard had told her of their close family packs, she had come to feel an affection for them. She hadn't wanted the two brothers to kill wolves to make the warm cape, but they insisted that it was necessary and, in the end, she had acquiesced.
It had sickened her to watch the carcasses being skinned, revealing the red muscle beneath, and white of bone and sinew, the substance of being, so elegant when filled with life and spirit, so suddenly morbid when left with neither.
As the brothers went about the grisly task, she could think only of Brophy, the man she had touched with her power, only to have it prove him innocent. He had been turned to a wolf by her wizard, Giller, to release him from the power of a Confessor's magic, so he could start over in a new life. She had wondered at how saddened these wolves' families must have been when they never returned, as she knew Brophy's mate and pack must have been when he was killed.
She had seen so much killing. She was weary nearly to tears of it, at the way it seemed to go on without an end in sight. At least the three men had felt no pride or joy at having killed the magnificent animals, and had said a prayer to the spirits of their brother wolves, as they had called them.