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 by not just 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.