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His gift had returned. He had no idea why or how, but it had returned.
The thing that kept him conscious, though, kept his mind focused, was his seething rage at those who through the self-justification of their own twisted beliefs harmed others who didn’t think as they did.
In that moment as his blinding rage at all those who existed to hate and hurt others again flowed through that integral connection with his gift, he heard a metallic pop.
Nicci gasped.
Richard, almost unaware of what was happening, realized that her arms were around him, and she was gasping to catch her breath.
“Lord Rahl,” Cara said, shaking him, “look! The collar came off! And the gold ring that was in her lip is gone.”
Richard backed away to peer down into Nicci’s blue eyes. She was staring up at him. The Rada’Han had burst apart and was lying broken behind her neck.
“Your gift is back,” Nicci whispered, barely conscious. “I can sense it.”
He knew without doubt that it was true. His gift had inexplicably returned.
He noticed a forest of legs as he glanced around. Men of the First File, weapons in hand, had surrounded him. Ulic and Egan stood between them and Richard. Between Ulic and Egan was a wall of red leather.
Richard realized that when the burning pain of it had exploded through him he had screamed. They had probably thought he was being murdered.
“Richard,” Nicci said, drawing his attention. Her voice was little more than a weak whisper. “Are you out of your mind?”
She had to force her eyes open several times. Her brow was beaded with sweat. Richard knew that she was spent from the ordeal and needed time to rest if she was to fully recover. Still, it was profoundly heartening to see the life in her eyes again.
“What do you mean?”
“Why in the world would you paint those symbols in red all over yourself?”
Cara glanced over at him. “I like the look.”
Berdine nodded from above. “Me too. Kind of reminds me of our red leather, but without the leather.”
“It’s a good look for him,” Nyda agreed.
Even through her exhaustion, Nicci’s expression revealed that she was not amused. “Where did you ever learn to do that? Do you have any idea of the danger those symbols represent?”
Richard shrugged. “Of course. Why do you think I painted them?”
Nicci sagged back, looking too weak to argue. “Listen to me,” she said. “If I don’t…if anything…listen—you can’t tell Kahlan about the two of you.”
Richard frowned as he leaned close, trying to hear her clearly. “What are you talking about?”
“It needs a sterile field. If anything happens to me, if I don’t make it, you need to know. You can’t tell her about the two of you. If you tell Kahlan about her past with you, it won’t work.”
“What won’t work?”
“Orden. If you ever get the chance to invoke the power of Orden, it needs a sterile field to work. That means that Kahlan can’t have foreknowledge about the love between the two of you or the memories can’t be rebuilt. If you tell her, she will be forever lost to you.”
Richard nodded, not sure what she was talking about, but greatly concerned nonetheless. He feared that Nicci might be delirious from the ordeal of the collar. She wasn’t really making any sense, but he knew that it was not the time or place to get into it. He needed her fully recovered and thinking clearly, first.
“Are you listening?” she asked, her eyes sliding closed as she struggled to remain conscious.
Richard wasn’t sure if he had actually gotten the collar off in time. He knew that, at the least, she was not yet herself.
“Yes, all right. I’m listening. Sterile field. Got it. Now, just relax until we can get you to a place where you can rest. Then you can explain it all to me. You’re safe, now.”
Richard stood as Cara and Berdine helped Nicci up.
“She needs a quiet place where she can rest,” he told them.
Berdine put an arm around Nicci’s waist. “I’ll see to it, Lord Rahl.”
It had been quite a while since he’d heard himself referred to as “Lord Rahl.” The thought struck him that Nathan might be a little resentful of suddenly being displaced as the Lord Rahl. This had not been the first time that he’d been pressed into service as the Lord Rahl, protector of the bond, only to have Richard return to reclaim the title.
Before he could really think about it, he heard an odd noise. It sounded like something crackling, possibly burning, followed by a thump. As the men around him parted to let Richard and Nicci through, he saw a man moving toward them.
At second glance, Richard wasn’t sure what he was seeing. It seemed like a soldier of the First File, but then again it didn’t. The uniform looked somehow indistinct.
General Trimack, concerned with helping Richard, extended an arm, easing some of his men back out of the way to let Richard get past. Richard, though, had paused. He was looking at the soldier not too far away making his way through the carnage.
The man didn’t have a face.
The first thought that struck him was that maybe the man had been horribly burned, that his face had been melted away. But his uniform was intact and his skin didn’t look at all burned or blistered. Instead, it was smooth and healthy-looking. He also didn’t walk as if he were hurt.
But he didn’t have a face.
Where there should have been eyes there were only slight depressions in the smooth skin, and above them the hint of a brow ridge. Where there should have been a nose there was only a slight, vertical rise, a mere indication of a nose. There was no mouth. He looked as if his face was made of clay but hadn’t yet been sculpted into features. His hands, too, were unfinished. He had no individual fingers, only thumbs. The hands looked more like flesh mittens.
It was so startling a sight that it was instantly terrifying to behold.
A soldier of the First File, helping an injured man and seeing only the semblance of a First File uniform approaching from behind and the side, straightened. He turned a little, lifting an arm out as if to ask the man in his peripheral vision to stay back. The faceless man reached up and touched the soldier’s arm.
The soldier’s face and hands blackened and cracked, as if intense heat had instantaneously crisped his flesh to a blackened crust. He never even had time to cry out before he’d been charred beyond recognition. He fell, landing with a thump—the noise Richard had heard only a moment before.
The faceless man had taken on a more distinct appearance. His nose had gained definition. He now had the indication of a slit for a mouth. It was as if he had drawn the features out of the life he had just taken.
In an instant, other soldiers of the First File stepped in front of the approaching threat. The faceless man touched them as he walked through their defensive line. Their faces, too, instantly crinkled into black, burnt folds that no longer even looked human, and they crumbled lifeless to the ground.
“Beast,” Nicci said from right beside Richard. He was helping to hold her up. Her arm was around his shoulder. “Beast,” she whispered again, a little louder, in case he hadn’t heard her the first time. “Your gift is back. The beast can find you.”
General Trimack was already leading a half-dozen men toward the new threat. That threat continued to walk toward Richard, unconcerned by the men rushing to meet it.
General Trimack bellowed with the exertion of a mighty swing as he brought his sword whistling down on the advancing threat. The man made no effort to evade the blow. The sword sliced down a good foot into the shoul
der, right beside the neck, nearly cleaving the shoulder off the body. It was a wound that would have stopped anyone. Anyone alive.
The general, his hands still on the sword, in an instant decomposed into crumpled, charred, cracked and bleeding flesh that started sloughing away. General Trimack collapsed to the floor without so much as a wince or a cry. Other than his uniform, the body was unrecognizable.
The faceless man, the general’s sword still cleaved deeply into his body, never missed a stride. His face had gained yet more definition. Now there were rudimentary eyes peering out from the depressions. Along the side of the face a hint of a scar had appeared, similar to the one General Trimack had.
The blade of the sword, where it stuck from the man, began to smoke as it turned white-hot as if freshly pulled from a blacksmith’s forge; then both ends sagged as it melted in two, falling away from where it had been embedded in the man’s chest. The point of the sword, behind the back, clattered to the floor while the hilt end fell and bounced once, landing hissing and smoking on a nearby body.
Men rushed in from every direction to stop the approaching threat.
“Get back!” Richard yelled. “All of you! Get back!”
One of the Mord-Sith slammed her Agiel into the base of the man’s neck. She instantly sizzled and smoked into a blackened, charred corpse and toppled back.
What had been only the indication of hair on the beast refined into blond strands, as hers had been only an instant before.
Everyone at last skidded to a stop and then started backing away, trying to confine the threat while at the same time staying out of reach.
Richard seized a crossbow from a nearby soldier of the First File. The weapon was already armed with one of the deadly red-fletched arrows that Nathan had found for them.
As the man with the evolving face stepped purposefully toward him, Richard raised the bow and pulled the release.
A red-fletched bolt slammed into the center of the chest. The man—the beast—halted. Its smooth skin began to blacken and crisp just like the men it had touched. The knees folded and the beast went down in a smoking heap, looking for all the world the same as the men it had killed.
