"Terry Goodkind - Sword Of Truth 10 - Phantom" - читать интересную книгу автора (Goodkind Terry)

She was no less cruel or dangerous than Sister Armina, or Sister Ulicia, but she had a quiet,
composed way of speaking that was somehow more terrifying than Sister Ulicia's screaming.
Sister Armina's straightforward the cats were simple and sincere but delivered with a bit more
bile. Sister Tovi had a kind of sick glee in her approach to discipline and even torture. When any
of them wanted something, though, Kahlan had long ago learned that to deny them would only
bring nearly unimaginable suffering, and in the end what they had wanted in the first place.
"Do you?" Sister Cecilia repeated with calm directness.
"Answer her," Kahlan whispered in the girl's ear. "Please, answer her questions. Please."
"No," the girl managed.
"Then tell us where Tovi is."
In the room behind Sister Cecilia, the girl's mother gasped in a terrible rattle and then went silent.
Kahlan heard bony thumps as the woman hit the wood floor. The house fell quiet.
From the dim, flickering light beyond the doorway, two more shadows glided up behind Sister
Cecilia. Kahlan knew that Emmy would answer no more questions.
Sister Cecilia slipped into the room, closer to the girl Kahlan held tightly in her arms.
"The rooms are all empty. Why are there no guests in your inn?"
"None have come," the girl managed as she shook. "Word of the invaders from the Old World
has scared people away."
Kahlan knew that that made sense. After leaving the People's Palace in D'Hara and swiftly
traveling south through mostly remote country on a small riverboat, they still had encountered
detachments of Emperor Jagang's troops more than once, or been through river settlements where
those brutes had been. Word of such atrocities would have spread like an ill wind.
"Where is Tovi?" Sister Cecilia asked.
Holding the girl protectively away from the Sisters, Kahlan glared up at them. "She's just a child!
Leave her be!"
A shock of pain slammed into her. It felt to Kahlan as if every fiber of every muscle had violently
ripped. For an instant, she didn't know where she was or what was happening. The room spun.
Her back hit the cupboards with bone-breaking force. Doors flew open. Pots, pans, and utensils
cascaded out, bouncing and clattering across the wooden floor. Dishes and glasses shattered as
they came crashing down.
Kahlan slammed facedown onto the floor. Jagged, broken shards of pottery slashed her palms as
she tried unsuccessfully to break her fall. When she felt the end of something razor-sharp pressed
against the side of her tongue in back she realized that a long sliver of glass had pierced her
cheek. She clenched her jaw, snapping off the glass between her teeth so that it wouldn't slash
open her tongue. With effort she managed to spit out the bloody, daggerlike piece of glass.
She lay sprawled on the floor, stunned, disoriented, unable to fully gather her senses. Grunts
escaped her throat as she tried without success to move. She found that as those sounds slipped
out, she couldn't draw a new breath back in. Each bit of air that escaped her lungs was a bit of air

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lost to her. Her muscles strained to pull the wind back into her lungs. The pain lancing through
her middle was paralyzing, acting to counter her effort to get a breath.
In desperation she gasped, at last managing to pull in an urgent breath. She spat out more blood
and sharp splinters of glass. She was just beginning to feel the twinge of pain from the fragment
still stuck through her cheek. Kahlan couldn't seem to make her arms work, couldn't lift herself
up from the floor, much less reach up to pull out the piece of glass.
She turned her eyes upward. She could make out the dark forms of the Sisters closing in around