The Sixth Discipline
by
Carmen Webster Buxton
Copyright © 2011 by Karen Wester Newton
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living, dead, or undead, is purely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the author or publisher.
THE SIXTH DISCIPLINE
A Cracked Mirror Press novel
Cracked Mirror Press
Rockville, MD
Contents
Other Cracked Mirror books by Carmen Webster Buxton
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Acknowledgments
Other Cracked Mirror books by Carmen Webster Buxton:
No Safe Haven
Tribes
For John
Oh, how I wish you were here to read this!
Chapter One
On the morning he was kidnapped, Ran-Del Jahanpur stepped out of his great-grandfather’s house and stretched to his full height. The sky above, just visible through the leafy canopy of blackwood trees, glowed golden with morning light. The spicy scent of a nearby tea vine promised it would be a warm day.
Ran-Del grasped his bow, checked that his dagger was in its sheath and his quiver full of arrows, and set out.
He hadn’t gone three steps when his grandmother came around from the back of the house carrying a leather bucket half full of water. Her brown eyes brightened when she saw him. “So you’re off, are you?” She glanced around as if expecting to see someone or something. “You’re not taking Buster?”
“I’m hoping for a tree bear,” Ran-Del said. “Buster would just scare him off.”
“Well, try to bring back something for the pot,” she said. “I’m tired of trying to make vegetables taste like stew all by themselves.”
Ran-Del gave her a quick, one-armed hug. “I’ll do my best.”
“A couple of day bats would be plenty,” she called after him as he walked away. “Don’t stay out all day. You didn’t let me pack you any food, and you’ll get hungry.”
He waved a hand but picked up his pace, jogging along the beaten path between the leather and wood-frame houses. People were out hoeing their gardens or hanging laundry, but Ran-Del didn’t stop to chat, not even when his grandfather waved to him. He ran steadily until he was deep into the forest.
He slowed his pace, walking silently, his moccasins soundless, his movements careful. Once he was off the path and moving through the trees, he watched for any sign of game.
All around him the Sansoussy Forest loomed. The light filtering down through the canopy made flickering shadows. Wherever a shaft of sunlight made it to the ground, the copper moss gleamed with red glints. Flowering vines scented the air with their light, familiar fragrance. Only the hum of tree borers drilling into the tree trunks broke the silence.
Ran-Del had just sighted a furry shape moving among the waving branches of a lace palm when a sudden surge of warning overwhelmed him. Something was wrong.
Ran-Del stopped in his tracks. His psy sense had never told him what would happen, but it had warned him of trouble in the past. He stepped back against the bole of a lofty blackwood and surveyed his surroundings. Trained in woodcraft since he took his first tentative steps, he responded to every nuance of the forest around him—every swaying leaf, every twitch of a branch, every faint scent on the breeze.
Silence. Even the tree borers had stopped. No sound, no movement. Ran-Del sniffed. From somewhere nearby he could smell an alien, metallic odor.
Suddenly the very air seemed to split open. What had been a clear space between two trees instantly filled with strangely dressed people and oddly glowing metal boxes. Ran-Del stood frozen, stunned by this disruption of reality. Only when one of the strangers pointed something at Ran-Del did he think to move. Just as he reached for an arrow, something sharp stuck him in the chest. He looked down to see a tiny red dart lodged in his bare flesh.
Ran-Del fell to the ground, suffering the pain of the impact but unable to move even his eyes. He lay face down, one arm trapped under his chest, and fought to maintain awareness. Mentally reciting the mantra for the Second Discipline, he kept himself from sliding into unconsciousness. The strangers’ feet scuffled through the copper moss and leafy vines toward him, but Ran-Del couldn’t move his eyes to look up.
Four sets of ankle-high boots approached. The man who had shot him came closest. His boots looked too smooth for leather, and Ran-Del saw no sign of stitching.
Ran-Del tightened his mental control as fear gripped him. Could this be a raiding party from the Horde? If the fierce People of the Mountains had acquired new and powerful weapons, the Sansoussy would suffer.
The man who had shot him spoke. “Well, Baron, will this one do?” His voice had the peculiar, clipped accent of a city dweller that Ran-Del had heard from the traveling peddlers who traded with his village.
“Don’t be so impatient, Toth,” a deeper voice with a similar accent answered. “I need to look at what we’ve caught.”
Alarm filled Ran-Del’s mind. He couldn’t go above the Third Discipline and stay aware of his surroundings, so he forced himself to ignore his growing dread. He concentrated his psy sense on the one called Baron and felt no hostility from him, no anger, only excitement and apprehension.
“He looks the right age,” the deep voice said, “and his hair is still long, so he’s not married. I didn’t see a braid, so he’s not betrothed, either. Let me see the caste bracelet, Toth.”
Why would it matter if he were married? The one called Toth gripped Ran-Del’s right wrist and pulled his hand out from under his body. Ran-Del could feel the man’s anxiety as he did it. Were the strangers afraid, too?
“See that?” the deep-voiced Baron spoke again. “The red bead means he’s a warrior who’s killed in the service of his clan. The three blue beads mean he’s from a family of high status, and that golden-colored glass bead means he has some psy gift, but not enough to make him a person of power—he couldn’t be a warrior if he were. The carved stone is a clan totem, but I don’t know the clan. Are there two black beads or three?”
Ran-Del felt a tug as the leather thong of his caste bracelet twisted around his wrist. He raged at his helplessness. This must be how a timber cat felt when it fell into a Sansoussy hunter's pit.
The Baron let out an exclamation. “A silver bead and two black beads, one with a silver inlay!”
“What does that mean?” asked the unseen Toth.
“Sansoussy men wear a black bead for every living male ancestor on the paternal side. The silver bead is a marker, to hold the father’s position, so this man’s father must be dead, but his grandfather and great-grandfather are alive. The silver inlay means the great-grandfather is a shaman, a clan leader. He must be pretty damned ancient.”
&
nbsp; The accuracy of the Baron’s reading took Ran-Del’s breath away. This stranger knew Sansoussy ways.
“So is this one acceptable, or do we give him the antidote and let him go like the others?” Toth said insistently.
Hope surged, but the Baron didn’t give a definite answer.
“I don’t like the shaman business, but if he has brothers or male cousins, it shouldn’t matter too much. Other than that, he looks damn near perfect. Let me just confirm his age and health. Give me the medi-scanner, will you, Quinn?”
Ran-Del couldn’t so much as blink. What was a medi-scanner? He heard a faint sound—almost a humming except that it wasn’t that distinct—but felt nothing. There was another startled exclamation.
“What?” asked Toth’s voice. “Is he the wrong age?”
“His age and health are fine. Damn it, the bastard is conscious!”
“What?” A new voice, female this time. “I saw the dart go in, Baron. It hit dead center.”
Ran-Del felt something press against the flesh of his upper arm. It tingled for a moment. What were they doing to him?
“I can see that, Quinn,” the Baron said. “He’s got more than enough juice in him to put him out cold. He must have the constitution of a prairie ox or a will of iron—or maybe both.”
“So what do we do?” Toth said. “This is taking too long. More of these folks could come along any time.”
“He’s the best we’ve done in a week,” the Baron said, his voice grim. “And as the Sansoussy say, there’s more than one way to skin a day bat.”
Something cold and hard pressed against the back of Ran-Del's neck as he struggled to move. The browns and reds in front of his eyes blurred into blackness, and he felt nothing.
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