Tales of Midbar: Religious Intolerance

Rinjac marched up to the door of the bus, which was open. I followed closely to stay in his rain shield. I could see a woman, no a katchey dressed like a woman, must have been a Love Priest. His dress had a bones and leaves pattern.

“In case you didn’t hear what I just said,” said Rinjac. “The Vineyard magis thinks that artifact you’ve got in there is a relic and is causing this storm.”

“There isn’t a Vineyard magis,” said the Love Priest.

“Not officially! Obviously a new one was conceived as soon as the last one died so he or she is still just a kid.”

“So you’re listening to a kid? That cutie’s,” he obviously meant me, “a nibeyah, isn’t the Vineyard magis always an anavah?”

“I didn’t say she was the magis. I’m a level three mage and I can tell that artifact is very powerful and very complicated.”

“We’re blocked in by two cars,” said the female acolyte. “Ulgarin’s gone to try to persuade their drivers to move them. Also I didn’t like that artifact from the first time I looked at it with a magic detector and this storm started as soon as we left the Conservatory and has followed us all the way.”

“I’ve lived in Minris for fifty years,” said Rinjac, “and I’ve never seen a storm like this here or anywhere else!”

Just then I felt some anavim and turned to see the Vineyard’s bus stop in the street outside the car park and several anavim get out of it and start running towards us.

“Let me guess,” said the Love Priest, “the Vineyard magis is a Winemaker and biased against Trulism.”

“Who’s in charge here?” asked Ice. She was using a rain shield, as were River, Mountain and Faldren.

“I am deary!” said the Love Priest. “Narvas, chief Love Priest of Astrigis.”

“Ice, apostle of Haprihagfen, level five mage, daughter and student of the previous Vineyard magis and magic teacher to the new magis! The magis thinks your artifact is a relic and is causing the storm. If anybody would know about that, this person will! I suggest we find some way to mitigate its destructive effects, immediately.”

“Now calm down! You’ve just got your knickers up your anus about a homosexual Trulist priest, who isn’t even a mage, using an artifact from a Trulist Holy Site to cast a spell you couldn’t break.”

I realized that he’d just admitted to putting the tether spell on Lishrashic. Yoldasia’s goat and eagle flutter sacrifice had worked only, as Ice had predicted, in a way that wasn’t good for Lishrashic. I’d had a bad feeling as soon as I’d realized that he was a Love Priest. Now I realized that he was partly responsible for what had happened to me and Breeze, I was seriously thinking how I could do something very bad to him.

“This has nothing to do with that!” said Ice. “You know what’s supposed to happen if you remove a relic from a Holy Site.”

“Surely merely superstition,” said the Love Priest.

“That isn’t how it’s looking!” said Ice. “The magis is trying to find a way to deal with this and I’ve sent messages to the mage council and the other magises to determine the best way to deal with this.”

“I think you’re rather overreacting, this is just a little bit of rain.”

“This is probably just the start. You may just have started the Prophesied Ruination! Eleprin, get the licence numbers of those cars and then go into the hotel and tell Criadria there’s a magic emergency and that if the drivers of these cars don’t move them in the next few minutes, they may be moved my magic and possibly towed away by the police. Faldren, go and get the police!”

“Now this isn’t really necessary,” said the Love Priest as I ran, back out into the rain, to get the licence numbers.

As I ran back towards the hotel, I heard the Love Priest say, “You don’t know what he was doing to my girls.”

“Like you care about ‘your girls,’” said Ice.

In the foyer it was still chaos. The acolyte was running around shouting that a car needed moving. Criadria and Vritan were at the desk trying to deal with all sorts of enquiries.

“Excuse me!” I said repeatedly squeezing my way to the desc. “Criadria!” I shouted when I got there.

“I’m busy!”

“Magic emergency!” I shouted. “Cars 87499 and 5563 need to be moved or they’ll be moved by magic and towed away by the police!”

Criadria stared at me. “You’d better be telling the truth. What were those numbers?”

I’d been repeating them to myself over and over.

I wasn’t sure what to do after that. I went back to our apartment, got a hot drink and a towel and went to watch the action in the car park with the other kids. They’d gone to the front as soon as they’d heard the words “magic emergency” over the intercom. By the time I got back with my drink, Narim had gone outside to offer his services as a great mage. He was soon dragged back inside by Faldren.

“You are not a mage!” said Faldren. “You’re not even a chelas! If you don’t even understand that, you don’t even know much about magic! There’s an extremely dangerous artifact out there and we don’t want you messing with it. Stay here! Irvis, Cloud, Eleprin, make sure he stays put until his parents come for him or something!”

The cars got moved fairly quickly. Then the female police officer, who’d I learnt was named Lardian, arrived with Poslet and spoke to the people gathered round the bus. Lardian looked in our direction and then came in.

“Rigar, Narim,” she said. “This is where you are. Come with me, I’ll take you back home. Eleprin is home and Cloud and Irvis’s family members are out there so I’ll leave you.”

Shortly after that Poslit came in and spoke to Criadria.

Then Dad came in, said that he was unable to unblock the drain and noticed that water was now coming down the stairs from the upper floor.

“Most our rooms are unusable because of the rain,” said Criadria over the microphone. “I’ve just been informed that the same is true of every hotel in town. There’s some emergency accomodation at the town hall, hospital and Vineyard. I’ll ask those of you who don’t have problems with Winemakers to go to the Vineyard. If you can sleep in your vehicle, do. We’re going to try to accommodate people in the restaurant and ballroom.”

Poslit left and Vritan came over to us, “Right kids, you know where the bedding’s kept, Eleprin. Get out everything. You boys start moving tables around in the restaurant!”

After what seemed an eternity of arranging bedding, Mum called me, Cloud and Irvis for food.

“What happened to Breeze?” she asked.

“Went back the Vineyard,” I said.

I woke in the morning to find myself next to Mum, and Vritan in the office. I remembered that the basement had flooded. I’d spent some time helping to move everything important to the ground floor. I got out of the chair I was curled up in and, squelch, there were several centimeters of water on the floor.

I paddled into the foyer. Several people were sleeping on the seats. Dad was behind the counter, which had two children I didn’t recognise sleeping on it, talking to Veran, Ice, the Astrigis Love Priest and a smartly dressed woman I didn’t recognise. They all looked as if they’d slept in their clothes and hadn’t slept much.

The clock said it was morning but it was still dark outside and raining heavily.

“... executive order of the mage council,” said Ice.

“Which only you, deary, can communicate with,” said the Love Priest.

“They’ve dispatched people here,” said Ice, “but this storm’s knocked out communications over a huge area ...”

“Except for you,” said the Love Priest.

“My communication spell only works for anavim who’ve reached puberty,” said Ice. “If you have any you trust, I can arrange for them to be shown how to do it.”

“You’ve also got all the anavim!” said the Love Priest.

“The Vineyard only has six resident adults!” said Dad.

“Anavim are very rare darling,” said the Love Priest, “and Haprihagfen recruit them all. If they’re not born Winemakers, they send them to Hecrin so they can convert.”