Jagang and his party made their way along the wide tracks between the pits arranged in a grid across the plain. Those pathways between were wide enough to accommodate wagons going in opposite directions.
“Down here, Excellency. This is the place.”
Jagang paused, peering down the long, sloping ramp into the pit. It appeared to be the only excavation that was deserted. He looked around at the other pits nearby.
“Clear this one, here, as well,” he said, gesturing at the next pit lying in the direction of the plateau. “And don’t start any new digging beyond in the same direction.”
Some of the supervisors who had gathered hurried to carry out his instructions.
“Let’s go,” Jagang said. “I want to see if this is really something or not.”
“I’m sure you will find it as I described, Excellency.”
Jagang ignored the angular messenger as he started down the sloping track into the pit. Kahlan stayed close. A glance back revealed Sister Ulicia not a dozen steps behind. The Sister, without a hood on her cloak and with her wet hair plastered to her head, did not look at all pleased to be out in the rain. Kahlan turned back to watch her footing on the slick, muddy slope.
The bottom of the pit was an uneven mess where thou
sands of men had toiled at digging and loading. Since some of the ground was softer and easier to dig, those places were deeper. In other spots, where it was more rocky and harder to dig, there were mounds nearly twice Kahlan’s height that had yet to be reduced.
Following the messenger through the disorder, Jagang descended into one of the deeper areas. Kahlan followed them down into the muck, her guards staying close around her. She wanted to stay close to Jagang in case he became distracted by what ever was in the pit. If she got a chance, no matter the risk, she would try to kill him.
The messenger squatted down as they came to a halt. “This is it, Excellency.”
He slapped his hand on something just peeking up from the ground. Kahlan frowned, looking along with everyone else at the smooth expanse that had been exposed.
The messenger had been right, it definitely did not look natural. She could see what looked like joints. It did look like a structure buried deep in the ground.
“Clean it off,” Jagang said to some of the foremen from the project who had come down into the pit.
Apparently, as per standing orders, when the structure had been discovered all work was abandoned and the workers pulled out until Jagang could personally inspect the find. The form was slightly rounded, as if they had uncovered the very top portion of a massive, long, rounded shape.
As men worked with shovels and brooms, Jagang directing where they dug, it quickly became apparent that the messenger had been accurate in his report: it did look like the exterior of a barrel-vaulted ceiling.
As the men cleaned it off, Kahlan could see that the structure was made of large stones cut to precise shapes to make up the curve of the arch. It reminded her of nothing so much as a buried building, except that there was no roof, just the exposed outer structure of an interior vaulted ceiling.
Kahlan could not imagine what such a thing could be doing buried all the way out here on the Azrith Plain. There was no telling how many hundreds or even thousands of years what ever was inside had been entombed.
When enough of the dirt and debris had been cleared off, Jagang crouched down and ran his hand over the wet stone. His fingers traced a few of the joints. They were so tight that not even a thin knife blade would have slipped between them.
“Get some tools down here—pry bars and such,” he said. “I want this opened. I want to know what’s down inside it.”
“At once, Excellency,” one of the construction bosses said.
“Use your assistants instead of the laborers.” Jagang stood, sweeping an arm around at the general area. “I want this whole place cordoned off. I don’t want any of the regular soldiers anywhere near here. I will have some of my guards stationed here to watch the site at all times. This area is to be as restricted as my own tents.”
Kahlan knew that if any of the soldiers were to get into a tomb—or what ever ancient thing it was that they’d found—they would loot everything of value. The plundered rings he wore said that Jagang knew the same thing.
Kahlan glanced up when she noticed some of Jagang’s guards rushing down the slope into the pit. They pushed their way through the construction foremen and other guards to get in near the emperor.
“We got her,” one of the breathless men reported.
Jagang smiled a slow, wicked grin. “Where is she?”
The man pointed. “Just up there, Excellency.”
Jagang glanced briefly at Kahlan. She didn’t know what he was up to, but the look he gave her ran a chill up her spine.
“Bring her down here, now,” Jagang told the man.
He and another of the guards hurried back up the slope
to get whoever it was they had. Kahlan could not imagine who the men had been talking about, and why it gave Jagang such satisfaction.
As they waited, the construction supervisors continued to expose more of the buried structure. In short order, a stretch of the stone nearly fifty feet long had been exposed. All of it that they had uncovered ran in a straight line, the arch uniform along the entire length.
Other men worked at widening the excavation around the smooth stonework. The more of it they uncovered, the more the shape—and scale—of it came into view. This was no small thing. If the stone really was a ceiling of something beneath, then that room, or tomb, would have to be nearly twenty feet across. Since it showed no sign of terminating, there was no telling how long it was. From what she could see of it, it looked something like a buried hallway.
At the sounds of muted cries and a scuffle, Kahlan looked up. The big guards were bringing a struggling, slender figure down the muddy slope.
Kahlan’s eyes went wide. Her knees went weak.
The men each held a thin, spindly arm of a girl not half their height.
It was Jillian, the girl from back in the ancient ruins in the city of Caska, the girl Kahlan had helped to escape. Kahlan had killed two of Jagang’s guards and Sister Cecilia so that Jillian could get away.
As the guards brought the helpless girl forward, her copper-colored eyes finally caught sight of Kahlan. Those eyes filled with tears at all that had been lost, at her failure to evade the men of the Order.
The guards brought her in close and stood her up before the emperor.
“Well, well,” Jagang said with a shallow, gruff chuckle, “look what we have here.”
“I’m sorry,” the girl whispered up at Kahlan.
Jagang glanced over at Kahlan. “I’ve had men searching for your little friend, here. Quite the dramatic escape you pulled off for her.” Jagang cupped Jillian’s chin, his thick fingers squeezing her cheeks. “Too bad it was all for nothing.”
Kahlan thought that it wasn’t for nothing. She had at least killed two of his guards and Sister Cecilia. She had at least done her best to gain freedom for Jillian. She had tried her best. Her efforts had cost her dearly, but she would do the same thing again.
Jagang seized the girl’s thin arm in his big hand and pulled her forward. Again he grinned at Kahlan. “Do you know what we have here?”
Kahlan didn’t answer. She was not about to join his game.
“What we have here,” he said in answer to his own question, “is someone who can help you behave.”
She gave him a blank look and didn’t ask.
Jagang unexpectedly pointed at the waist of one of Kahlan’s special guards, the one standing just to her right. “Where’s your knife?”
The man looked down at his belt as if he was afraid a snake might be about to sink its fangs into him. He looked back up from the empty scabbard.
“Excellency…I, I must have lost it.”
Jagang’s icy look made the man’s face pale. “You lost it, all right.”
Jagang spun and backhanded Jillian hard enough to send her flying through the air. She landed in the mud, screaming in shock and pain. A red stain spread in the puddle around her face.
Jagang turned back to Kahlan and held out his hand. “Give me the knife.”
His completely black eyes were so deadly looking that Kahlan thought she might have to take a step back out of sheer fright.
Jagang waggled his fingers. “If I have to ask again, I’ll kick her teeth in.”
In a flash Kahlan ran though everything she could think of. She felt like the man with the gray eyes must have felt when he deliberately fell face-first into the mud. She had no choice either.
Kahlan laid the knife in Jagang’s upturned palm.
He grinned in triumph. “Why, thank you, darlin.”
Without pause he turned, as if driving his fist in a mighty blow, and slammed the knife right though the face of the man it belonged to. The damp air rang with a loud crack as bone shattered. The man collapsed dead into the mud. The flood of blood was shocking in the gray light. The man never even had time to scream before he died.
“There’s your knife back,” Jagang called down to the corpse.
His attention focused on the stunned faces of Kahlan’s special guards. “I’d suggest that you keep better track of your weapons than he did. If she takes a weapon from any of you, and she doesn’t kill you with it, I will. Is that simple enough for you all to understand?”
As one they all said, “Yes, Excellency.”
Jagang bent and yanked the sobbing Jillian to her feet. He effortlessly held her up so that only her toes were touching the ground.
“Do you know how many bones are in the human body?”
Kahlan choked back her tears. “No.”
He shrugged. “Neither do I. But I have a way to find out. We can start breaking her bones, one at a time, counting each one as it snaps.”
“Please…” Kahlan begged, trying mightily to contain her sob.
Jagang shoved the girl at Kahlan as if he were giving her a life-size doll.
“You are now responsible for her life. Whenever you
give me any cause to be displeased, I am going to break one of her bones. I don’t know the exact number of bones in her frail little body, but I’m sure that it’s a great many.” He arched an eyebrow. “And I do know that I’m easily displeased.
“If you do more than simply displease me I will have her tortured before your eyes. I have men who are experts in the fine art of torture.” The storms of gray shapes shifted in his inky eyes. “They are very good at keeping people alive for a long time as they endure unimaginable agony, but if she should happen to die under torture, then I will have to start in on you.”
Kahlan clutched the poor girl’s bleeding head tightly to her chest. Jillian sobbed softly to Kahlan how sorry she was for getting caught. Kahlan gently shushed her.
“Do you understand me?” Jagang demanded in a deadly calm voice.
Kahlan swallowed. “Yes.”
He grabbed Jillian’s hair in his big fist and started pulling her back. Jillian screamed with renewed terror.
“Yes, Excellency!” Kahlan shouted.
Jagang smiled as he released the girl’s hair. “That’s better.”
Kahlan wanted more than anything for the nightmare to end, but she knew that it was only just beginning.
“Stop being a big baby and hold still,” Richard said.
Johnrock blinked frantically. “Don’t get it in my eyes.”
“I’m not going to get it in your eyes.”
Johnrock took an anxious breath. “Why do I have to be first?”
“Because you are my right wing man.”
Johnrock didn’t have an immediate answer. He pulled his chin away from Richard’s grip. “Do you really think this will help us win?”
“It will,” Richard said as he straightened, “if we all follow through with the rest of it. Paint all by itself isn’t going to win games for us, but the paint will add something important, something that merely winning could not accomplish—it will help to forge a reputation. That reputation will unsettle those who have to face us next.”
“Come on, Johnrock,” one of the other men said as he impatiently folded his arms.
The rest of the team gathered around watching nodded their agreement. None of them really wanted to be first. Most of them, but not all, had at least been won over by Richard’s explanation of what the paint would do for them.
Johnrock, looking around at all the men waiting, finally grimaced. “All right, go ahead.”
Richard glanced past his wing man to the guards with arrows nocked and at the ready. Now that the chains had been removed from the captives, the guards watched for any sign of trouble as they waited to take the team to their first match. Commander Karg always stationed a heavy guard whenever Richard and the other captives were not chained. Richard noted, though, that most of the arrows were pointed in his direction.
Focusing again on Johnrock, he spread his fingers and grabbed the top of the man’s head to hold him still.
Richard had been fretting about what he would paint on the faces of the team. When he’d first come up with the idea, he had thought that maybe he would simply have each man paint his own face in what ever manner he wanted. After brief consideration he realized that he couldn’t leave it up to the men. Too much was at risk.
Besides that, they all wanted Richard to do it. He was the point man. It had been his idea. He figured that most of them had been hesitant because they believed that they were going to be laughed at, and so they had wanted it to be by his hand rather than their own.
Richard dipped his finger in the small bucket of red paint. He had decided against using the brush Commander Karg had brought along with the paint.
Richard wanted to feel the act of drawing directly.
In the little time he’d had, he’d given a great deal of thought to what he would paint. He knew that it had to be something that would accomplish what he’d intended in the first place.
In order to make it work the way he’d described, he had to draw the things he knew.
He had to draw the dance with death.
The dance with death, after all, was ultimately centered
on life, yet the meaning of the dance with death was not merely the singular concept of survival. The purpose of the forms was to be able to meet evil and destroy it, in that manner enabling one to preserve life, even one’s own. It was a fine distinction, but an important one: it required recognizing the existence of evil in order to be able to fight for life.
While the vital necessity of recognizing the existence of evil was obvious to Richard, it was clearly a concept that many people willfully refused to face. They chose to be blind, to live in a fantasy world. The dance with death would not allow such lethal fantasies. Survival required the clear and conscious recognition of reality; therefore the dance with death required that one recognize truth. It was all part of a whole and would not succeed if parts were ignored or left out.
The elements of the dance with death—their forms—were at their base the components of every manner of combat, from a debate, to a game, to fighting to the death. Drawn in a language of emblems, those components built the concepts making up the dance. Using those concepts involved seeing what was really happening—in part and in whole—in order to counter it. The ultimate purpose of the dance with death was winning life. The translation of Ja’La dh Jin was “the Game of Life.”
The things that belonged to a war wizard all played some part in the dance with death. In that way a war wizard was devoted to life. Among other items, the symbols on the amulet Richard had worn were a picture, a condensed diagram, forming the core concept of the dance. He knew those moves from fighting with the Sword of Truth.
Even if he didn’t have the sword any longer, he grasped the totality of what was involved in the meaning of the dance with death, and therefore the knowledge he’d gained from using the sword remained with him whether or not he had the sword itself. As Zedd had often reminded him in
the beginning, the sword was just a tool; it was the mind behind the weapon that mattered.
Along the way, since Zedd had first given Richard the sword, he had come to understand the language of emblems. He knew their meaning. They spoke to him. He recognized the symbols belonging to a war wizard, and understood what they meant.
Using his finger, Richard began laying down those lines on Johnrock’s face. They were the lines of parts of the dance, the forms used to meet the enemy. Each combination of lines making up an element had meaning. Cut, sidestep, thrust, twist, spin, slash, follow through, deliver death swiftly even as you prepare to meet the next target. The lines he put on Johnrock’s right cheek were admonitions to watch for all that would come at you, without focusing too narrowly.
Besides the elements of the dance, Richard found himself drawing parts of spells he had seen. At first he didn’t realize he was doing it. At first, as he drew those components, he had trouble recalling where he’d seen them before. Then he remembered that they were parts of the spells that Darken Rahl had drawn in the sorcerer’s sand in the Garden of Life as he had invoked the magic necessary to open the boxes of Orden.
Richard realized only then that the visit by the strange, ghostly figure the previous night still weighed heavily on his mind. The voice had told him that he’d been named a player. This was the first day of winter. He had one year to open the correct box of Orden.
Richard had been exhausted, but he could think of little else after that encounter. He had been unable to get much sleep. Being distracted by the pain of the wound in his leg and the one on his back kept him from fully devoting his mind to reasoning it out. The first day of winter had brought the inspection by Jagang. With his sudden concern
over how to avoid being recognized by Jagang and all the Sisters in the Order’s encampment, Richard hadn’t been able to consider how it was possible for him to be a player for the boxes of Orden.
He wondered if it could be some kind of mistake—some misdirection of magic caused by the contamination left by the chimes. Even if he had the knowledge, which he didn’t, his gift had been cut off by that witch woman, Six, so he didn’t see how he could have somehow inadvertently put the boxes in play. He couldn’t imagine how such a thing as opening the correct box would be able to be accomplished without his gift. He wondered if Six could be at the center of it all, if it could be some part of a plot he didn’t yet understand.
Back when Darken Rahl had been drawing those spells just before he opened one of the boxes, Richard had not understood anything about their composition. Zedd had told him that drawing such spells was dangerous in the extreme, and that one misplaced line, drawn by the right person, in the right circumstance, in the right medium, could invoke disaster. At the time all the drawings had seemed like arcane motifs executed with mysterious elements that were all part of some complex foreign language.
As Richard had come to learn more about magical designs and emblems, he had come to grasp the meaning behind some of their elements—in much the same way he had at first learned the ancient language of High D’Haran by first coming to recognize individual words. As his understanding of words grew, he was able to grasp the ideas the words were expressing.
In much that same way, he had come to learn that some of the parts of the spells Darken Rahl had drawn to open the boxes of Orden were also parts of the dance with death.
In a way that made sense. Zedd had once told him that the power of Orden was the power of life itself. The dance
with death was really about preserving life, and Orden itself was centered around life and preserving it from the rampages of the Chainfire spell.
Richard dunked his finger back in the red paint and laid down an arcing line across Johnrock’s forehead, then supported it with lines that created a symbol for centering strength. He was using elements he understood, but combining them in new ways to alter them. He didn’t want a Sister to see the drawings and recognize their direct meaning. While the designs he was painting were composed of elements he knew, they were original.
The men who had gathered all around leaned in a little, spellbound not just by the process, but by the drawing itself. It had a kind of poetry to it. While they didn’t understand the meaning of the lines, they experienced the totality of them as expressive of meaningful purpose, as important, and as exactly what they were: threatening.
“You know what this whole thing, this drawing, reminds me of?” one of the men asked.
“What?” Richard murmured as he added more to the emblem that stood for a powerful strike meant to break an opponent’s strength.
“In a way it reminds me of the play of the game. I don’t know why, but the lines kind of look like the movements of certain attacks in Ja’La.”
Surprised that the man—another captive—could pick up such a significant trait from the drawing, Richard shot the man a questioning frown.
“When I was a farrier,” the man explained, “I had to understand horses if I was to shoe them. You can’t ask a horse what’s bothering him, but if you pay attention you can learn to pick up on things, like the way the horse moves, and after a time you start to understand the meaning behind certain body language. If you pay attention to those little movements you can avoid getting kicked, or bitten.”
“That’s very good,” Richard said. “That’s something like what I’m doing. I’m going to give each of you a kind of visual picture of power.”
“And how would you know so much about drawing symbols of power?” one of the men, Bruce, asked in a suspicious tone. He was one of the Order soldiers on the team—one of the men who slept in his own tent and resented having to follow the orders of a point man who was an unenlightened heathen, a man who was kept chained at night like an animal. “You people up here put a lot of stock in the outdated beliefs of magic and such, rather than devoting your minds to proper things, to matters of the Creator, to your responsibilities and duty to your fellow man.”
Richard shrugged. “I guess that what I meant by that is that it’s my vision, my idea, of symbols of power. My intention is to draw on each man what I think makes them look more powerful, that’s all.”
Bruce didn’t look satisfied by the answer. He gestured at Johnrock’s face. “What makes you think all them squiggly lines and such look like visions of power?”
“Well, I don’t know,” Richard said, trying to come up with something to make the man stop asking questions without having to actually reveal anything important, “the form of the lines just seem powerful to me.”
“That’s nonsense,” Bruce said. “Drawings don’t mean anything.”
Some of the soldiers on the team watched Bruce and waited for Richard’s answer as if considering a rebellion against their point man.
Richard smiled. “If you think so, Bruce, if you’re convinced that drawings don’t mean anything, then how about if I paint a flower on your forehead.”
All the men laughed—even the soldiers.
Bruce, suddenly looking a little less sure of himself as
his gaze darted around at his chuckling teammates, cleared his throat.
“I guess, now that you put it that way, I can see some of what you mean. I guess I’d like to have some of your power drawings, too.” He thumped his chest with a fist. “I want the other teams to fear me.”
Richard nodded. “They will, if you all do as I say. Keep in mind that before this first game the men on the other teams will probably see this red paint on all our faces and think it’s foolish. You have to be prepared for that. When you hear them laughing at you, let that laughter make you angry. Let it fill your hearts with the desire to jam that laughter right back down their throats.
“In that very first moment when we step onto the field, the other team, as well as many of those watching, will probably not just laugh, but call us names. Let them. We want that. Let them underestimate us. When they do that, when they laugh at you or call you names, I want you to save up the anger you’re feeling. Fill your hearts with it.”
Richard met the eyes of each man in turn. “Keep in mind that we are here to be victorious in the tournaments. We are here to win the chance to play the emperor’s team. We alone are worthy of that chance. Those men who are laughing at you are the worthless dregs of Ja’La players. We must sweep them aside so that we can get at the emperor’s team. The men in the first games are in our way. They are in our way and they are laughing at us.
“When you step onto the field of play let their laughter ring in your ears. Soak it in, but keep silent. Let them see no emotion from you. Hold it inside until the right moment.
“Let them think us fools. Let them be distracted by believing that we will be easy marks, rather than focusing on how to play us. Let them lower their guard.
“Then, the instant the game begins, in a focused, coordinated manner unleash your rage against those who laughed
at you. We have to hit them with our full force. We have to crush them. We have to make this game as important as if it were the emperor’s team we were playing.
“We can’t simply win this first game by a point or two as is usually the way it goes. That’s not good enough. We can’t be satisfied with that kind of piddling victory. We must be unyielding. We must overwhelm them. We must hammer them into the ground.
“We must beat them by at least ten points.”
The men’s jaws dropped. Eyebrows went up. Such lopsided victories happened only in children’s mismatched games. A Ja’La team on this level winning by more than four or five points was virtually unheard of.