Tales of Midbar: Religious Intolerance

“I’m not religionist,” said Mudar. “But everybody else bends over backwards to keep the Nuharas happy but you keep urinating them.”

“They keep attacking us for no fornicating reason!” said River. “Anyway I’m trying to heal this girl, I’ll argue about this later!”

I think Mudar walked away from the door a bit and muttered, “I’ve nothing against regular Winemakers, it’s just the local ones are a fundamentalist sect.”

“That’s a contradiction in terms,” said Ice’s voice. “Sects, by definition are heretical, but fundamentalists are orthodox. Anyway, I’m looking for the injured girl.”

I felt Ice’s presence enter the room.

“It looks like the Nuhara kid will live but he’ll need a new arm,” she said. “How are you Eleprin?”

“Back hurts.”

River took her hands off my back and Ice put her’s on.

“Now observe closely Breeze,” Ice said. “I’ll have to clean out this cut by extending an associate, can you see that?”

“Yes,” said Breeze.

“Now I’ll just use my psychic healing.”

I started feeling a lot better.

Irvis arrived after a few minutes. He explained that Narim had claimed to know that the Winemakers were responsible for the Night Leaper because he was a mage. Irvis had pointed out that reading magic books didn’t make you a mage and he was taking magic lessons from magi, used artifacts and knew a magis who was going to equip him. This had enthuriated Narim who’d started hitting him and telling him to use his magic to defend himself. When Irvis had hit back he’d screamed to Kerdnan that Irvis was picking on a smaller boy.

Mum and Dad arrived, clearly hysterical but Ice told them that I’d be all right.

Then Veran and Poslit came in.

“Feces have you used some sort of healing on her?” asked Veran to Ice.

“Is this going to mess up your readings?” asked Ice.

“What are you going to do about that Nuhara kid?” asked Dad.

“As I understand it,” said Veran, “your daughter did insult Nuhara first.”

“Narim hit me for knowing more about magic than him but he doesn’t like Winemakers and Kerdnan was cross with me for defending myself,” said Irvis.

“Why is it alright to attack somebody who speaks the truth about your religion, but wrong to defend yourself against somebody who starts fighting you because they don’t like your religion?” I asked.

“Nuharas are different!” said Veran.

“Where does the legal code say that?” said Dad. “And why the fornication did he have a knife?”

“Have you ever seen a rule book for this school?” asked Ice.

“He’s allowed to carry that as part of his religion,” said Veran.

“So the kid from the notoriously violent religion is the only one allowed to have a weapon?” said Dad.

“Nuhara isn’t really violent,” said Veran.

“Have you read their scriptures?” asked Dad.

“That’s got nothing to do with it!” said Mudar. “Trulist scriptures say it’s OK to rape women but we don’t go round doing that.”

“That’s because you don’t take your scriptures seriously,” said River.

“Well they keep contradicting themselves and are a load of nonsense,” said Mudar.

“You’ve finally said something I agree with,” said River, causticly.

“Your daughter used a powerful artifact to remove Pardnis’s arm!” said Veran.

“I don’t have any artifacts,” I said.

“Actually,” said Poslit, who was looking at me and Breeze through his magic detector, “I don’t think I can identify the culprit without breaking the anti-korbarism law.”

“What?” asked Veran.

“You can’t charge an eight year old with a crime,” said Poslit, “no matter how bad, but I’m fairly sure this required a bound associate, which would make the culprit a mage and I’m not allowed to identify magi.”

“How the fornication could an eight year old become a mage?” asked Veran. “Oh stool, one of them’s the new magis!”

“It could have been intervention by our God,” said Ice. I knew she was lying as she knew that Breeze had used her magis power. Then she probably thought that Breeze’s powers had something to do with Yoho. “The Nuhara was attacking one of only two Winemaker girls in Minris.”

“Couldn’t your God have found a more subtle way to do it?” asked Veran.

“I expect he had his reasons,” said Ice.

“Anyway,” said Poslit, “the magic residue on Eleprin and Breeze is very different from that on the Night Leaper victims.”

“Who cares?” asked Veran. “It’s just somebody doing what happens legally in temples.”

“It shouldn’t happen in temples and definitely isn’t legal elsewhere,” said Ice. “What exactly happened about that? I only got a garbelled account.”

“It seems that this Night Leaper has been attacking pre-pubescent girls as they slept, always on the upper stories without ceilings,” said Veran.

I was going to comment on Vritan but realized that she’d only seen the Night Leaper, he hadn’t attacked her.

“We believe he’s using magic to enhance his leaping and make himself appear as a monster,” said Veran.

“I’d say he really is a monster,” said Poslit.

“Tenenit didn’t seem badly hurt,” I said.

“It’s worse than it looks,” said Ice.

“Some people are saying that it’s the Winemakers or a minion of the Winemaker God because he hasn’t attacked any Winemakers,” said Veran.

“There are only two prepubescent Winemaker girls in Minris,” said Ice. “One of them lives in a hotel basement and the other on a Holy Site with some very competent magi.”

“I’ve sometimes slept over at the Vineyard,” I said.

“That’s an issue isn’t it?” said Veran. “You’re matriarchal, all your young men leave and the women carry on the community but I recon all your women are past child bearing but you’ve only produced one girl in the past century so your hopes for the future rest on Eleprin and Breeze.”

Perhaps that’s why I was important.

“You’re not having Eleprin!” said Mum.

“We never force anybody to marry or have sex,” said Ice. “Eleprin will probably want to marry when she’s older. We do have contingency plans if we don’t have enough young women.”

“What’s ‘have sex’?” I asked.

“The Night Leaper evidence is consistent with somebody who uses two artifacts,” said Poslit, “probably not a proper mage and there’s no evidence he’s a Winemaker.”

“He must have realized that we’re onto him,” said Veran, “so he’ll probably leave town.”

There was no school for a couple of days and I noticed that my parents weren’t letting me see the news on the internet. They seemed more worried about me than normal although my wound had been healed. Ice suggested that my parents file a lawsuit against Pardnis’s parents for teaching him to hate Winemakers. Breeze came round and told me that all the children from the beginner school in Taunbrit, had been called in for medical tests and that the police mage was going around the town with his magic detector. Lishrashic and Iandris also came round to see how I was. Actually I felt perfectly fine and got a bit fed up with my parents insisting that I stay in the apartment.

We were all sitting in the school playing field on the first day back. This also acted as our assembly hall, why bother with a hall when it hardly ever rains? It was blue day making everything look cold and depressing. Pardnis hadn’t shown up, nor had Tenenet, Peretrin or Dren. The other children seemed to be even more wary of us. The master stood up and looked at us. Then he started walking among us, holding a bit of transparent material in front of his face.

“I know you’re probably all rather shaken up by what’s happened,” he said. “Your parents have been warned to take precautions against the Night Leaper and the police think he’s probably left town anyway. Now for the matter ...”

“Excuse me,” said Cloud, standing up, “but you’re not allowed to use a magic detector unless you’re a mage.”

“To defeat a mage, you must become a mage. A mage is just somebody who uses magic, unlike a psychic, where it’s a power you’re born with. I’m just making sure none of you have brought artifacts as ...”

“Actually a mage needs to be given associates, binding and training by a magis,” said Cloud. “You realize what you’re about to do is illegal!”

“There’s nothing illegal about detecting artifacts!”

“As long as that’s all you do,” said Cloud.