Soul of the Fire

by Terry Goodkind

  Richard shook his head. “I’m sorry, Cara, but she’s gone.” Stark, taunting memories of her alive cavorted unbidden through his mind.

  “Lord Rahl—”

  “She’s not breathing, Cara.” He reached to close her eyes. “She’s dead.”

  Cara gave his wrist a fierce tug. “Did Denna not teach you? A Mord-Sith would teach her captive to share the breath of life!”

  Richard grimaced away from Cara’s blue eyes. It was a gruesome rite, the sharing of pain in that way. The memory flooded through him with horror to match that of Du Chaillu’s death.

  A Mord-Sith shared her victim’s breath while he was on the cusp of death. It was a sacred thing to a Mord-Sith to share his pain, share his breath of life as he slipped to the brink of death, as if to view with lust the forbidden sight of what lie beyond in the next world. Sharing, when the time came to kill him, his very death by experiencing his final breath of life.

  Before Richard killed his mistress in order to escape, she had asked him to share her last breath of life.

  Richard had honored her last wish, and had taken into himself Denna’s last breath as she died.

  “Cara, I don’t know what that has to do with—”

  “Give it back to her!”

  Richard could only stare. “What?”

  Cara growled and stiff-armed him out of her way. She dropped down beside the body and put her mouth over Du Chaillu’s. Richard was horrified by what Cara was doing. He thought he had managed to give the Mord-Sith more respect for life than this.

  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.”

  Cara scowled. “Lord Rahl, stop looking at me like I am a great spirit come to our world. I am Mord-Sith. Any Mord-Sith could have done this. We all know how.”

  She snatched his shirt collar and pulled him closer. “You know of it, too. Denna taught you, I know she did. You could have done this as easily as I.”

  “I don’t know, Cara, I’ve only taken the breath of life. I’ve never given it.”

  She released his collar. “It is the same thing, just in the other direction.”

  Du Chaillu sprawled herself across Richard’s lap. He smoothed her hair with gentle empathy. She clutched at his belt, his shirt, his waist, holding on for dear life, as he tried to keep her calm.

  “My husband,” she managed between gasping and coughing, “you saved me… from the kiss of death.”

  Kahlan was holding one of Du Chaillu’s hands. Richard took the other and placed it on a leg sheathed in leather.

  “Cara is the one who saved you, Du Chaillu. Cara gave you back the breath of life.”

  Du Chaillu’s fingers kneaded at Cara’s leather-clad leg, groping their way up until she found Cara’s hand.

  “And the Caharin’s baby.… You saved us both.… Thank you, Cara.” She gasped another rattling breath. “Richard’s child will live because of you. Thank you.”

  Richard didn’t think it the proper time to point out paternity.

  “It was nothing. Lord Rahl would have done it, bu
t I was closer and beat him to it.”

  Cara briefly squeezed the hand before standing to make way for some of the grateful blade masters to get close to their spirit woman.

  “Thank you, Cara,” Du Chaillu repeated.

  Cara’s mouth twisted with the distaste of people appreciating her for having done something compassionate. “We are all glad your spirit had not yet left you, so you could stay, Du Chaillu. Lord Rahl’s baby, too.”

  34

  Not far off, Du Chaillu was being tended to by the blade masters and most of the hunters. The Baka Tau Mana spirit woman had returned from the spirit world, or near to it, and Richard could see she had left behind her warmth. The blankets were insufficient, so Richard had told the men they could make a fire to help warm her if they all stayed together to reduce the chances of any surprises.

  Two of the Mud People cleared grass and dug a shallow pit while the other hunters made tightly wound grass billets. Twisting wrung out most of the moisture. They coated four of the grass bundles in a resinous pitch they carried with them and then stacked them in a pyramid. With those burning, they windrowed the rest of the grass billets around the little fire to dry them out. In short order they had a good fire going and dry grass for firewood.

  Du Chaillu looked like death warmed up a bit. She was still very sick. At least she was alive. Her breathing was better, if interrupted by coughing. The blade masters were seeing to it that she drank hot tea while the hunters-turned-mother-hens cooked her up some tava porridge. It appeared she would recover and remain in the world of life for the time being.

  Richard found it miraculous to think a person could come alive again after dying. Had someone told him such a thing, instead of him seeing it himself, he doubted he would have believed them. In more ways than one, his beliefs had been skewed and his thinking altered.

  Richard no longer had any doubt as to what they must do.

  Cara, arms folded, watched the men as they took care of Du Chaillu. Kahlan, too, was watching with fascination equal to any of the rest of them—except Cara; she didn’t think it was at all out of the ordinary for a dead person to breathe again. What was ordinary for a Mord-Sith seemed very different from what others thought ordinary.

  Richard gently took ahold of Kahlan’s arm and pulled her closer. “Before, you said no one had gotten past the Dominie Dirtch in centuries. Did someone once get past them?”

  Kahlan turned her attention to him. “It’s unclear and a matter of dispute, outside of Anderith, anyway.”

  Ever since it had first been mentioned by Du Chaillu, Richard had gotten the feeling Anderith wasn’t Kahlan’s favorite place.

  “How so?”

  “It’s a story requiring some explanation.”

  Richard pulled three pieces of tava bread from his pack and handed one each to Cara and Kahlan. He settled his gaze on Kahlan’s face.

  “I’m listening.”

  Kahlan twisted a small chunk off her tava bread, apparently pondering how to begin.

  “The land now known as Anderith was once invaded by people known as the Hakens. The people of Anderith teach that the Hakens used the Dominie Dirtch against the people who were then living there, those people now called the Anders.

  “When I was young and studied at the Keep, the wizards taught me differently. Either way, it was many centuries ago; history has a way of getting muddled by those controlling the teaching of it. For example, I would venture the Imperial Order will teach a very different account of Renwold than we would teach.”

  “I’d like to hear about Anderith history,” he said as she ate the chunk of tava bread she had torn off. “About the history as the wizards taught you.”

  Kahlan swallowed before she began. “Well, centuries ago—maybe as long as two to three thousand years ago—the Haken people came out of the wilds and invaded Anderith. It’s thought they were a remote people whose land possibly became unsuitable for some reason. Such a thing has happened in other places, for example when a river’s course is changed by an earthquake or flood. Sometimes a formerly productive area will become too dry to support farming or animals. Sometimes crops fail and people will migrate.

  “Anyway, according to what I was taught, the Hakens somehow made it past the Dominie Dirtch. How, no one knows. Many of them were slaughtered, but they somehow finally made it past and conquered the land now known as Anderith.

  “The Anders were a mostly nomadic people, composed of tribes who fought fiercely among themselves. The were uneducated in things like written language, metalworking, construction, and such, and they had little social organization. In short, compared to the Haken invaders they were a backward people. It wasn’t that they weren’t smart, just that the Hakens were a people possessed of advanced learning and methods.

  “Haken weapons were also superior. They had cavalry for example, and they had a better grasp of coordination and tactics on a large scale. They had a clear command structure whereas the Anders bickered endlessly over who would direct their forces. That was one reason the Hakens, once past the Dominie Dirtch, were easily able to bring the Anders to heel.”

  Richard handed Kahlan a waterskin. “The Hakens were a people of war and conquest, I take it. They lived by conquest?”

  Kahlan wiped water that was dribbling down her chin. “No, they weren’t the type to conquer simply for booty and slaves. They didn’t make war for mere predation.

  “They brought with them their knowledge of everything from making leather shoes to working iron. They were a literate people. They had an understanding of higher mathematics and how to apply it to endeavors such as architecture.

  “Their core skill was farming on a large scale, with plows pulled by oxen and horses, rather than hand-hoed gardens like the Anders kept to supplement their hunting and gathering of things growing wild. The Hakens created irrigation systems and introduced rice in addition to other crops. They knew how to develop and select better strains of crops, such as wheat, to give them the best use of land and weather. They were experts at horse breeding. They knew how to breed better livestock and raised vast herds.”

  Kahlan handed back the waterskin and ate a bite of tava bread. She gestured with the half-eaten tava.

  “As is the way of conquest, the Hakens ruled as victors often do. Haken ways supplanted Ander ways. Peace came to the land, albeit peace enforced by Haken overlords. They were harsh, but not brutal; rather than slaughtering the Anders as was the custom of many conquering invaders, they enfolded the Anders into Haken society, even if it was at first as cheap labor.”

  Richard spoke with his mouth full. “The Anders, too, benefited from the Haken ways, then?”

  “Yes. Under direction of the Haken overlords, food was plentiful. Both the Haken and the Ander people prospered. The Anders had been a sparse population always on the brink of vanishing. With abundant food the population multiplied.”

  When Du Chaillu fell to a coughing fit, they turned to her. Richard squatted and dug through his pack until he found a cloth packet Nissel had given them. Unrolling it, he found inside some of the leaves Nissel had once given him to calm pain. Kahlan pointed out the ground herbs supposed to settle the stomach. He tied some into a cloth and handed the bag of ground herbs to Cara.

  “Tell the men to put this in the tea and let it steep for a bit. It will help her stomach. Tell Chandalen that Nissel gave it to us—he can explain it to Du Chaillu’s men, so they won’t worry.”

  Cara nodded. He put the leaves in her palm. “Tell her that after she drinks the tea, she should chew one of these leaves. It will calm her pain. Later, if she is sick at her stomach again, or in pain, she can chew another.”

  Cara hurried to the task.

  Cara would likely not admit it, but Richard knew she would appreciate the satisfaction of giving assistance to someone in need. He couldn’t imagine how much greater the satisfaction would be to bring a person back to life.

  “So, what happened then, with the Hakens and the Anders? Everything went we
ll? The Anders learned from the Haken?” He picked up his tava bread for a bite. “Brotherhood and peace?”

  “For the most part. The Hakens brought with them orderly rule, where before the Anders squabbled among themselves, often leading to bloody conflicts. The invading Hakens had actually killed fewer Anders than the Anders themselves regularly killed in their own territorial wars. At least, so said the wizards who taught me.

  “Though I’m not saying it was by any means entirely fair or equitable, the Hakens did have a system of justice; it was more than the simple mob rule of the Anders, or the right of the strongest. Once they had conquered the Anders and shown them their ways, they taught the Anders to read.”

  “The Anders, who had been a backward people, may have been ignorant, but they are a very clever people. They may not devise things on their own, but they are quick to grasp a better way and make it their own on a whole new scale. In that way, they are brilliant.”

  Richard waved his rolled up the tava bread. “So, why isn’t it called Hakenland, or something? I mean, you said the vast majority of people in Anderith are Haken.”

  “That’s later. I’m coming to it.” Kahlan pulled off another chunk of tava. “The way the wizards explained it to me was that the Hakens had a system of justice, which, once they settled in Anderith, and with the spreading prosperity, only became better.”

  “Justice, from the invaders?”

  “Civilization does not unfold fully developed, Richard. It’s a building process. Part of that process is the mixing of peoples, and that mixing is often via conquest, but it can often bring new and better ways. You can’t impulsively judge situations by such simple criteria as invasion and conquest.”

  “But if one people comes in and forces another people—”

  “Look at D’Hara. Because of conquest—by you—it is coming to be a place of justice, where torture and murder are no longer the way of rule.”

  Richard wasn’t about to argue that point. “I suppose. But it just seems such a shame for a culture to be destroyed by another that invades them. It isn’t fair.”

  She gave him one of her looks akin to looks Zedd sometimes gave him: a look that said she hoped he would to see truth rather than repeat by rote a popular but misguided notion. For that reason, he listened carefully as she spoke.