"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 soundec like something crackling, possibly burning, followed by a thump. As the men around him parted to let Richard and Nicci through, he saw a mar-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 shoulder, 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 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 intc 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.

Unlike the others, though, it continued to smolder. No flames erupted, but the whole thing, including the uniform that Richard could now see was not actually a uniform of cloth, leather, and armor, but actually a part of the beast itself, melted and bubbled. The dissolving mass began to coagulate into a blackened mass. As everyone stood stunned, watching, it burned without flame, drying and cracking and curling until only ashes were left.

"You used your gift," Nicci said, her head hanging. "It found you."

Richard nodded to no one in particular. "Berdine, please get Nicci to somewhere where she can get some rest."

Richard hoped that she could recover, that she would be all right. He didn't just care about her, he needed her. Adie had said that Nicci was his only hope.