Confessor: Chainfire Trilogy Part 3

"I want you to know who you are when I do this," he had told her. "I want you to know what I mean to you when I do this. I want you to hate this more than you have ever hated anything in your entire life.

"But you have to remember who you are, you have to know everything, if this is to truly be rape . . . and I intend it to be the worst rape you can suffer, a rape that will give you a child that he will see as a reminder, as a monster."

Kahlan didn't know who the "he" was.

"For it to be all of that," Jagang had told her, "you have to be fully aware of who you are, and everything this will mean to you, everything it will touch, everything it will harm, everything it will taint for all time."

The idea of how much worse such a violation would be for her then was more important to him than sating his immediate urges. That alone spoke volumes about the man's craving for revenge, and about how much she had engendered his lust for it.

Patience was a quality that made Jagang all the more dangerous. He could easily be impulsive, but it was a mistake to think that he could be lured into becoming reckless.

Feeling the need to make her understand his greater purpose, Jagang had explained that it was much the same as the way he punished people who angered him. If he killed such people, he'd pointed out, they would be dead and unable to suffer, but if he made them endure agonizing pain

then they would wish for death and he could deny it. Witnessing their endless torment, he could be sure of their great regret for their crimes, of their insufferable grief for all that was lost to them.

That, he'd told her, was what he had in store for her: the torture of regret and utter loss. Her lack of memory left her dead to those things, so he would wait until the proper time. Having reined in his immediate urges in favor of greater ambitions when she finally remembered everything, he had filled his bed with a variety of other women captives.

Kahlan hoped that Jillian was too young for his tastes. She wouldn't be, Kahlan knew, if she were to do anything to give him cause.

As they moved through crowds of soldiers cheering for a game already under way, the royal guards forcefully shoved any men out of the way they judged to be too close to the emperor. Several men who didn't move willingly enough, or quickly enough, got an elbow that nearly cracked their skulls. One burly drunk in a sour disposition, who didn't intend on being shoved aside for anyone, even an emperor, turned on the advancing royal guards. As the soldier stood his ground, growling bold threats, he was eviscerated with one swift scything cut from a curved knife. The incident didn't slow the royal party a single step. Kahlan shielded Jillian's eyes from the sight of the man's insides spilled in their path.

Since it had stopped raining, Kahlan pushed the hood of her cloak back off her head. Dark clouds scudded low over the Azrith Plain, adding to the suffocating feeling of being closed in. The thick, murky overcast suggested that the first damp, cold day of winter would offer no chance of sunlight. It felt like the whole world was gradually descending into a cold, numb, everlasting gloom.

When they reached the edge of the Ja'La field, Kahlan rose up on her toes, looking over or around the shoulders of the guards, trying to see the faces of the men already in the thick of play. When she realized that she was stretching in order to see the game, she immediately lowered herself back down. The last thing she wanted was for Jagang to ask her why she was suddenly so interested in Ja'La.

She wasn't really interested in the game, but she was interested in seeing if she could spot the man with the gray eyes, the man who had deliberately tripped and fallen in the mud so as to hide his face from Jagang-or maybe Sister Ulicia.

If the rain didn't return, it was soon going to be hard for the man to maintain a muddy face to hide his identity. Even with rain and mud Jagang would quickly become suspicious if the point man for Commander Karg's team walked around all the time with a muddy face. Then the man would find that the mud, rather than hiding him, only attracted Jagang's suspicion. Kahlan fretted about what would happen then.

Many of the men watching the game cheered and shouted encouragement when the point man for one of the teams made it into the opposing team's territory. Blockers rushed in to prevent the man from gaining any more ground. The onlookers roared as the players toppled one another while other men scrambled to protect their territory.

Ja'La was a game in which men ran, dodged, and darted past one another, or blocked, or chased the man with the broc-a heavy, leather-covered ball a little smaller than a man's head-trying to capture it, or attack with it, or score with it. Men often fell or were knocked from their feet. Rolling across the ground without shirts, many were soon left slick not just with sweat, but with blood.