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 through 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 through 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 whatever 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 nghting 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."