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She wanted to say something to deflate him, but she thought better of it and remained silent, indifferent.
Jagang's mouth was on her ear. His rough stubble scraped painfully against her cheek and neck. His breathing was fast and ragged. He was lost to the lust he was about to unleash on her.
"If only you knew… this would kill you," he said, obviously and profoundly pleased with the thought.
Even more puzzled, she remained silent, her worry building about what he could possibly mean.
She thought he was about to resume his obviously lecherous need, but he rested there, holding her legs open, staring down at her. The length of his hairy body pressed against her, on the brink of his intent. With his weight on her, she could hardly get a breath, but she knew that any protest would only be met with disinterest in what discomfort he might be causing her.
In a way, she wished he would just hurry up and get it over with. The waiting was making her crazy. She wanted to scream, but she refused to allow herself to. She couldn't help dreading how much he would hurt her, how long it might last — how it would undoubtedly be repeated not just this night but in the nights to come. Had not his bull-weight been pressing her down into the bed she would have been trembling in terrible anticipation.
"No," he said to himself. "No, this is not what I want."
Kahlan was bewildered. She wasn't sure she had heard what she thought she'd heard.
He let go of her legs, letting them slip down onto the bed as he pushed himself up on his hands. She wished he weren't lying between her legs so that she could draw them together.
"No," he repeated. "Not like this. You don't want this, but it would only be onerous. You would not like it, but nothing more.
"I want you to know who you are when I do this. 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. I want to be the one to do this to you both. I want to plant the memory of what it means to you in your mind when I plant my seed in you. I want that memory to haunt you for however long you might live, to haunt him forever, every time he looks at you. I want him to learn to hate you for it, to hate what you have come to represent to him. To hate your child, the child that I will give you.
"To do that, you have to know who you are, first. If I do this to you now, it will only dull you to it, spoil the exquisite suffering it would cause you if you knew who you were when it happens to you."
"So then tell me," she said, almost willing to endure rape to know.
A slow, sly smile came to him. "Telling you is no good. Words would be hollow, without meaning, without emotion. You have to know. 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."
Staring down at her, he slowly shook his head with the self-satisfaction of the dimension of his intent. "To be that, 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."
He abruptly rolled off her to the side. Kahlan drew in a breath that was almost a gasp.
He gritted his teeth, and his big hand seized her right breast. "Don't think you've escaped anything, darlin. You'll not be going anywhere. I'm only seeing to it that it's a lot worse for you than this would have been, tonight." He chuckled as he squeezed her breast. "Worse for him as well."
Kahlan could not imagine how anything could make it worse than it would have been. She could only imagine that to him, rape cast guilt on the victim. That was the way he thought, the way the Order thought, that the victim was to blame.
He abruptly shoved her out of the bed. She landed painfully on the floor, but at least her fall was broken by somewhat soft carpets.
He looked down at her. "You will sleep on the floor, right there, beside the bed. Later, I will have you in my bed." He gri
Kahlan lay on the floor, fearing to move, fearing that he might change his mind. She felt heady relief that this night she would not have to endure it.
He leaned over the edge of the bed, closer to her, peering down at her with his disturbing black eyes. He shoved his big hand between her legs so unexpectedly that she cried out.
He gri
Kahlan nodded, feeling a tear run down her cheek.
"If you move off those carpets beside the bed tonight, then the power of that collar will stop you. Do you wish to test it?"
Kahlan shook her head, fearing her voice might fail her.
He withdrew his hand. "Good."
She heard him turn over on his side, facing away from her. Kahlan lay perfectly still. She could hardly breathe. She wasn't sure what had happened this night, or what it could all mean. She only knew that she felt more lonely than she had ever felt in her life — at least, the part of her life that she could remember.
In a strange way she almost wished he had raped her. If he had, she would not now be trembling in fear of what he'd said, wondering what he'd meant. Now she would have to wake each morning not knowing if that was the day she recovered her memory. When she did, it was somehow going to make that rape all the worse, make everything worse, far worse.
Kahlan believed him. As eager as he had been to have her, and she knew very well how eager he had been, he would not have stopped at that point unless everything he'd said was true.
Kahlan realized that she no longer wanted to know who she was. Her past had just become too dangerous to her for her to want to ever know who she was. If she knew, he would do the worst to her. Better that she remain in oblivion, and safe from that.
When she heard his even breathing, and then his low, rumbling snore, she reached out and with trembling fingers pulled on her underthings and then the rest of her clothes.
Despite it being summer, she was shaking with icy dread. She pulled a nearby carpet over her as she lay beside the bed, knowing better than to test his word about the consequences of any attempt to escape. There was no escape. This was her life.
She now only hoped to keep the rest of it buried and forgotten.
If she ever remembered who she was, then her life would get infinitely worse. She wouldn't let that happen. She would stay behind the dark shroud. This night she was a new person, separated from who she had been. That person had to remain forever dead.
She wondered who the man could be that Jagang had talked about. She feared to imagine what Jagang was going to do to him, through her, that would so destroy him.
She forced those thoughts away. That was the old her. That person was gone forever, and would remain so.
In the depths of loneliness and despair, Kahlan curled up in a ball and wept silently in racking sobs.