Tales of Midbar: Secret Priest

I sat down and tried to process what they’d said. I hadn’t been sure about what Egrindreth had said about some organization being involved and something strange going on I didn’t know about. She seemed to believe it although she was trying so hard not to say something she shouldn’t it was hard to tell if she was lying. I was fairly sure Wiandra and Maclan were telling the truth but they were hipsickot so they couldn’t read minds and weren’t that smart. I settled down trying to figure out what was going on. The police mage had said I had a lot of magic residue on me. I had no idea why that should be the case. I was a psychic but only had the normal exposure to artifacts I didn’t use, I only used magic in school magic lessons. The obvious source was Egrindreth but she was an anavah, not a mage, or could she be both? She was certainly young for a mage. I’d heard of a boy who’d become a mage at nine but that was very unusual.

The other kids were clearly more somber than normal. I got a nasty feeling there’d been another rape and this time they thought it was a girl from our school. That would probably explain the police. The rapist used an artifact to put date rape spells on his victims, erasing their short term memories. This was a serious problem in getting information about him.

Then the teacher, Dard, came in.

“As you’ve probably noticed,” he said quietly, looking at his desk, “Clindar is back with us pending a legal case about whether his expulsion was justified. I know he thinks girls should be forced to have sex with him ...”

“I don’t think that!” I said. “I think girls having sex with all the other boys but not me is a form of bullying. I’m not sure what the alternative is but considering some of the boys they have been having sex with, I don’t see why having sex with me would be so bad. Perhaps you could find a girl who’d want to have sex with me and put her in this school or something.”

“Just let’s not talk about this because it involves a legal case that’s still ongoing,” said Dard. “The other issue is there was another rape.”

“Was it Saldren?” asked Foongad.

I realized Saldren’s chair was empty. I liked her more than most girls, she was a nibeyah and, as far as I knew, a virgin. I very much hoped she hadn’t been raped.

“The identity of all the victims is being kept confidential,” said Dard, “and I’ll ask you not to try to figure it out. The rapist uses a date rape artifact so the police checked all the boys as they came in this morning but I don’t think they found anything.”

“The took a long time with Clindar,” said Telnid.

Everybody looked at me.

“They pulled Goflakh, Utnisdian and Jedris out of the line!”

“But they’re normal guys,” said Telnid.

“Apparently I have a lot of magic residue on me but not from a date rape spell,” I said. “I want a girlfriend, not victims!”

I did a lot of thinking. I didn’t think there was any denying there was more to my situation than I was aware of. The problem was how to figure out what. The bits just didn’t seem to form a sensible picture.

I went to see Narblo and discussed it with him. He seemed rather distracted and absent.

“Most crimes are motivated by money, sex or revenge,” he said, pursing his lips. “But I can’t see how messing with your life was achieving any of those things. There are many claims of conspiracies; the Mechanism, the disappearance of Nuhar Zorg, the Cataclysm, all the avatars but particularly the Minris massacre and the two avatars who appeared the same day, but most people think most of them are insane.”

I’d heard of Nuhar Zorg, for one thing Lerg kept going on about how he was going to return soon but Dad thought he’d been murdered by his wife.

“Do you know anything about Haprihagfen?” I asked.

“Not much. They’re a fundamentalist Winemaker group, even other Winemakers tend to think they’re weird. They’re in charge of the Vineyard in Minris, which is probably the main Winemaker Holy Site now Rendamar Temple’s been taken over by the Nuharas. Well that’s kind of semi-official because religions aren’t supposed to take over each others’ Holy Sites but the government never seems to enforce laws when Nuharas break them.”

“I can’t understand why some other organization should be helping me but isn’t and they’ve ordered Haprihagfen not to help me.”

“That sounds very strange.”

“How do you read minds?” I asked, leaning forward, deciding to change the subject. “I think I can do it a bit but if I could do it better, I should be able to get a good idea of what’s going on. I think I can tell hipsickim, nibeyim and katcheyim apart and I’ve met two anavot.”

“I’m not really sure how anavim work, you have two copies of the katchey gene but also two copies of the nibey gene and they kind of combine to make you very powerful. The trick to most psychic things is to try not to think, clear your mind, keep the internal noise down. It’s like when you’re listening for something it’s best to keep quiet yourself. The easiest way to read somebody’s mind is to question them and you can tell if they’re telling the truth or not but it’s much harder to tell what the lie is. Also it doesn’t work unless the person is really trying to deceive you, so just asking me a question and having me deliberately lie, won’t help.”

I practiced my mind reading by asking people questions which I didn’t think they’d want to give a straight answer to. Asking why they thought I was the rapist was a good one and nobody had a good answer to that, at least not one they were willing to tell me. I thought I was getting good at it but I couldn’t really be sure without being able to check what I thought was true or false against the truth.