Tales of Midbar: Secret Priest

“What art we to do? He ist dead! We killed him!” She realized the state of her clothing and hastily covered her breast.

I thought about pointing out she’d killed him but I had rather helped and decided that considering her obviously fragile mental state, I probably should avoid being too confrontational. “What exactly is going on?”

“Wast thou sent by Benai Nibeyim or Haprihagfen?”

I wasn’t sure how I should feel about her suddenly saying something that seemed to relate to my bizarre situation. She was an anavah so perhaps she’d read my mind or something. “One of the psychics was Haprihagfen and she seemed to think the other two were Benai Nibeyim. I don’t know if any of them actually sent me, I think it was an accident. What’s actually going on?”

“Thou dost not knoweth? The other psychics didst not telleth thou?”

“No, they’re very bad at explaining things to me. Another organization has forbidden the Haprihagfen from helping me or telling me much or at least that’s what the Haprihagfen said.”

“Haprihagfen art not to be trusted. They art heretics!”

“I’ve no idea. What the fornication is going on!”

“Thou useth bad language!”

“Thou ist very stressed!”

I tried calming down and tried to read her mind. It was complicated and muddled, her mental state clearly wasn’t good.

She looked at me oddly and said, “My parents art Benai Nibeyim likhatzot; hipsickim born unto nibeyim and katcheyim. They didst converteth unto Nuhara and gaveth me unto Nuhar Zorg,” she indicated the dead man, “to be his eleventh wife but I hath remained loyal unto Yoho and art a Holy Woman and must remaineth a virgin. Zorg brought me here to defileth me as ist the tradition of the false prophet’s family. I didst telleth him I wast promised unto the priesthood but he laughed and delighted in the thought of defiling a Holy Woman and woldst hath raped me had not thou appeared.”

She seemed to be telling the truth but it raised more questions than it answered and I was now pretty sure she was delusional as well as seriously urinated. Would Nuhar Zorg and his bride know Faharni? Faharni had been Midbar’s link language since long before the Cataclysm so they probably would. I decided to concentrate on what I thought important, “Did I just materialize or walk in here in a hypnotic state or what?”

I instantly wondered how I could have got in with the sandstorm raging. Then I knew they could start very suddenly. This one must have started recently for the man not to have had time to rape the woman.

“Thou didst materialize. I hath heard some anavim hath the power of teleportation.”

“Yes, my sister can do it. Egrindreth can teleport! We can’t leave until the sandstorm’s over, can we? What’s going to happen then?”

“What doth thou expecteth?”

“I’m well past thinking logic applies!”

“He hath a great household and hath invited many friends and dignitaries unto the wedding. He didst telleth me he wouldst taketh me back unto his guests and boast unto them of my great beauty and how he didst defileth me, as he hath with all his wives.”

“Where are his cloths? I could probably pass for him if I don’t talk or show my face.”

She looked around and pointed to a pile of fabric. “Only his family and doctors art allowed to gazeth upon his countenance but he wert very talkative. He hath many bodyguards, some of them psychic and thou are not the same korbar.”

“If I stand next to you, that might not be so obvious. Could we hide the body and say he wandered off by himself?”

I’d noticed it was harder to tell somebody’s korbar if there were a number of people close to them, particularly telling hipsickim who were standing near psychics.

“That wouldst not be like unto him and we couldst not fooleth his mind readers. His body art bound to be foundeth.”

“If you hadn’t stabbed him, we might have been able to make it look like an accident.”

“I wert angry!”

“I could pretend to be him and pretend to be sick. Something that would prevent me from talking. A stroke! That’s sudden and can be brought on by stress, so it’s plausible although he looked rather young for it.”

“We still needeth to hide the body.”

I could tell she was dubious about my plan. I was dubious about it! My back up plan was to say I’d just accidentally been teleported there and she was insane and had killed him.

We still couldn’t go outside because of the sandstorm. I had the idea of putting the body in the toilet as it probably had some sort of pit under it. However the seat was too small to get the body down. It was screwed to something in the floor. This seemed an odd set up but I suppose in sand it would be easy to dig a new pit or whatever. Neither of us were good at psychokinesis so we used the dagger to unscrew the seat. This took a couple of hours. This revealed a bigger hole but still too small. However we now could see a pit underneath.

The girl, who told me her name was, “Bedri, no Nuhar Dwendra, no it shouldst be Bedri Dwendra because the marriage wast not consummated,” decided I should change into Zorg’s clothing. Her use of family names also suggested she wasn’t in touch with reality. Family names had been banned to discourage familyism. Zorg’s clothing was like something from an old movie about pre-Cataclysm Nuharas. He must have shared her delusions or perhaps was going along with them to have sex with her or something. Perhaps he should have listened to Dad’s theory that Nuhar Zorg had been assassinated by his wife. Then we used my clothing to stop spilling too much blood as we cut Zorg’s arms off. This proved a difficult business, as there were various tendons and things, although I think the knife’s magic helped. Bindings bind associates to patterns, not physical matter so if the pattern changes enough, the binding is undone. This means if a mage or chelas dies, his or her bindings come undone and their associates tend to dissipate. In this case, the protective magic was no longer active making dismembering easier. His shoulders were sufficiently narrow to get what was left of him down the hole. There was a horrible gurgling noise each time we fed part of the body down the hole, there must have been some sort of waste disposal mechanism down there, not just a hole in the ground. Dwendra insisted on putting my, now very bloody, clothing down there as well. I was a bit reticent about this because they were nice clothes and I’d have trouble explaining it to Mum. I decided explaining any of this to anybody would be difficult but not my immediate problem. I had to restrain Dwendra from throwing my bus pass down the toilet as well (she seemed to know what the money chip was and didn’t try to dispose of it). We screwed the toilet back into place and threw the dagger down the toilet. This produced some grating sounds, suggesting the disposal mechanism was magic.

“You know I needeth to use this now,” said Dwendra, as we were leaning against it puffing.

“So do I.”

We both used the toilet. While I was in it, Dwendra took the opportunity to remove her torn, bloody dress and put on a traditional, gray Nuhara woman’s robe but left her head bear. We washed our hands (fortunately Nuharas think cleanliness is important and the tent was suitably equipped). Then Dwendra decided we should pray. She had us go through a rather elaborate ritual of standing, kneeling, laying face down and saying many prayers, mostly in Semic. At least I think it was Semic. I basically went along with this although it seemed very strange and un-Trulist. Then Trulism was very tolerant, including tolerance for other religions. Also I was a Yoho worshiper so I guessed if Dad was wrong about gods being symbolic, Yoho wouldn’t be too upset about this.

Dwendra decided to turn the light off. The sandstorm was still blowing. I remembered they could last days and cover much of the planet although they just turned into strong winds in the Great Basin.

“Respecteth my virginity!” she said.

“Sure, I’m not a rapist.” I’d seen what had happened to last man to try to rape her but this was moot because I really wasn’t a rapist.