Soul of the Fire

The sight staggered him with the obscene memory, seeing it new again before his eyes, seeing her crave that corrupt intimacy again. It stunned him to see Cara covet something so ghastly from her past. It angered him she had not risen above her brutal training and way of life, as he had hoped for her.

Pinching Du Chaillu's nose, Cara blew a breath into the dead woman. Richard reached for Cara's broad shoulders to rip her away from Du Chaillu. It enraged him to see it, to see a Mord-Sith do such a thing to the freshly dead.

He paused, his hands floating there above her.

Something in Cara's urgency, in her demeanor, told him all was not what it had at first seemed. With one hand under Du Chaillu's neck and the other holding her nose closed, Cara blew another breath. Du Chaillu's chest rose with it, and then slowly sank again as Cara took another for herself.

A blade master, his face red with rage, reached for Cara, since Richard seemed to have changed his mind. Richard caught the man's wrist. He met Jiaan's questioning eyes and simply shook his head. Reluctantly, Jiaan withdrew.

"Richard," Kahlan whispered, "what in the world is she doing? Why would she do such a grotesque thing? Is it some kind of D'Haran ritual for the dead?"

Cara took a deep breath and blew it into Du Chaillu.

"I don't know," Richard whispered back. "But it's not what I thought."

Kahlan looked even more bewildered. "And what could you have possibly thought?"

Unwilling to put such a thing into words, he could only stare into her green eyes. He could hear Cara blow another deep breath into Du Chaillu's lifeless corpse.

He turned away, unable to watch. He couldn't understand what good Cara thought she was doing, but he couldn't sit there while others watched.

He tried to convince himself that, as Kahlan had suggested, perhaps it was some D'Haran ritual to the departing spirit. Richard staggered to his feet. Kahlan caught his hand. He heard a wet sputtering cough.

Richard swung back around and saw Cara hauling Du Chaillu over onto her side. Du Chaillu gasped with a choking breath. Cara slapped the woman's back as if she were burping a baby, but with more force.

Du Chaillu coughed and gasped and panted. Then she threw up. Richard fell to his knees and held her thick mass of dark hair out of her way as she vomited.

"Cara, what did you do?" Richard was dumbfounded to see a dead woman come back to life. "How did you do that?"

Cara thumped Du Chaillu's back, making her cough out more water. "Did Denna not teach you to share the breath of life?" She sounded annoyed.

"Yes, but, but it wasn't…"

Du Chaillu clutched at Richard's arm as she panted and spat up more water. Richard stroked her hair and back in a comforting manner to let her know they were there with her. The squeeze on his arm told him she knew.

"Cara," Kahlan asked, "what have you done? How did you bring her back from death? Was it magic?"

"Magic!" Cara scoffed. "No, not magic. Not anything near magic. Her spirit had not yet left her body, that's all. Sometimes, if their spirit has not had time to leave their body, you still have time. But it must be done immediately. If so, you can sometimes give them back the breath of life."

The men gestured wildly as they all jibber-jabbered excitedly to one another. They had just witnessed a marvel that was sure to be the birth of a legend. Their spirit woman had traveled to the world of the dead-and returned.

Richard stared slack-jawed at Cara. "You can? You can give dead people back the breath of life?"

Kahlan whispered encouragement as she picked wet strands of hair from Du Chaillu's face. She had to stop and hold back the hair when the woman's coughing was interrupted by another bout of heaving. As grim and sick as Du Chaillu looked, she was breathing better.

Kahlan took a blanket the men handed down and wrapped it around Du Chaillu's shivering shoulders. Cara leaned close to Richard, so no one else would hear.

"How 'do you think Denna kept you from death for so long when she tortured you? There was no one better at it than Denna. I am Mord-Sith, I know what would have been done to you, and I knew Denna. There would have been times she had to do this to keep you from dying when she was not yet finished with you. But it would have been blood, not water."

Richard remembered that, too-coughing up frothy blood as if he were drowning in it. Denna was Darken Rahl's favorite, because she was the best; it was said she could keep her captive alive and on the cusp of death longer than any other Mord-Sith. This was part of how she did that.

"But I never thought…"

Cara frowned. "You never thought what?"

Richard shook his head. "I never thought such a thing was possible. Not after the person had died." After she had just done something noble, he didn't have the heart to tell Cara he had thought she was sating some grisly appetite from her past. "You did a miraculous thing, Cara. I'm proud of you."