Tales of Midbar: Secret Priest

Dad, Attan, Dwendra and myself went to my Targrath lawyer’s office, which was in one of the old buildings near the courthouse, over a souvenir shop. Attan clearly didn’t think Dwendra should be there. Miandri had gone to the beach saying the trial would be boring and Dwendra said she wasn’t going anywhere with Miandri. The lawyer was a faharni hipsickah named Galdreth who Dad knew from university. The room was smaller and more cluttered than Dad’s office and the window looked out onto another building.

“Is there anything you particularly want to go over?” Galdreth asked.

“There is one thing,” I said. “Are you a member of Benai Nibeyim?”

“No. I’ve never felt the need to be spiritual and there are easier ways to support charities.”

“You have to keep things confidential don’t you?”

“Yes but I can’t guarantee the same for your family,” she looked at Dwendra, “are you Egrindreth?”

“No,” said Dwendra.

“She’s got engaged to Clindar but she’s a weird loony,” said Attan.

“I think I should talk to you with just the two of us,” I said. “There’s something which may impact this trial and I don’t know what to do about it.”

“You know you can tell me anything,” said Dad.

“Actually I can’t,” I said. “There are things I’ve been told to keep secret from you, like the details of how I got here.”

“All right,” Galdreth said.

When the others left, I got out the camera I’d taken from the rape gang. “Because of the anti-korbarism law, I can’t tell you how this came into my possession ...”

“Can you elaborate on how this is related to the anti-korbarism law?”

“Somebody used magic or psychic powers they’d like to keep secret in order to obtain this and pass it to me.” I folded out the screen and started it playing.

“I think that will fall under the anti-korbarism law. What is this? Holy Streculic! You really should give this to the police!”

“The culprits are dead,” I said. “They were working for Master Kiard, who’s a member of Benai Nibeyim, to rape girls who I stood a chance with and make them think I’d done it. The police were also in on it and didn’t investigate the case properly.”

Galdreth turned white and started breathing heavily. She turned off the camera. “This is hard to believe. Does this have anything to do with your new fiance?”

“Yes.”

“Would you like to elaborate?”

“Benai Nibeyim think I’m a descendant of the Yohoist priesthood ...”

“I thought only Universal Winemaker priests were supposed to be celibate but that’s actually contrary to Winemaker scriptures, not to mention all the sexual abuse.”

“They don’t think I should be celibate. They think I should only marry a virgin, with some other qualifications. They believe Dwendra’s something special and couldn’t decide if I should marry her or any virgin with the other qualifications so they weren’t letting me have sex with anybody. They consider any sexual act between unmarried people to be getting married. Raping girls, of course, disqualified them as potential partners for me.”

Galdreth rolled her eyes. “I find this very hard to believe, this is probably the most ridiculous conspiracy theory I’ve ever heard and I’m not sure if you should be talking to a psychiatrist. Then you do have some evidence. I already knew that you’ve being falsely accused of a real series of rapes in Laraget and there were two fatal magic accidents there, connected with your school, on the same day ... Is that how these rapists died?”

“Yes.”

“... and then you were in that safe house because somebody was targeting you. I don’t know what to make of this. Does this have much to do with magic or psychic powers?”

“Yes.”

“Well I don’t know much about that. Latchmir’s a mage so he may have a better idea.”

“He’ll have questions I’d rather not answer and probably shouldn’t answer for good reason. He’s also married to my mother who’s a member of Benai Nibeyim.”

“This all sounds very far fetched and complicated. Complexity helps the defendant so we should try to keep things simple but it’s already complicated.”

“I understand that. There are wider issues here like the amount of control Benai Nibeyim has and compensating the rape victims not to mention convincing people the rape accusations against me are false so I’m not just concerned with this trial. However, I don’t know the repercussions if we don’t mention this in the trial and it’s discovered later we knew about it.”

“Does this incriminate you of any wrongdoing?”

“No.”

“Does it disprove any of the accusations you’re making about unfair treatment?”

“No, it helps substantiate them.”

“In that case, I think we should keep this out of this trial, unless the defense bring it up but I can’t see why they should. We can decide what to do about it later but I really think this is over my head and I’m not sure anybody can do anything about it. Do you want me to hang onto the camera?”

“No, I can hide it very effectively and you and Dwendra are the only people who know about it.

The Universal Winemakers were an old sect of Winemakerism that incorporated far more Trulism and Malgaric than mainstream Winemakerism. Although they believed the main Winemaker doctrines they considered the teachings of their leaders to be of equal authority to scripture (in practice greater authority as they often followed their leaders even when they contradicted scripture). Their most controversial doctrine is that psychics and priests (who aren’t required to be psychic) should remain celibate. In spite of its name, it was only ever a minority sect. In the early 3rd century AC, it was discovered some of their priests were sexually abusing children and the leadership was covering this up. This resulted in many followers leaving the sect, mostly for other forms of Winemakerism.

I probably would have been nervous at the trial whatever but the advice of the man in the shrine doors worried me. The courtroom was another very old building, that still had burn marks and obvious repairs from an attack during the Cataclysm. The court my case was being held in was fairly small and located in the basement. It was divided in half by a low, stone wall with a gap at the end near the only door. On one side there was seating for the public. On the other there was the judge’s desk, adjudicators’ seats and witness dais as well as seating for lawyers and their clients. There weren’t many members of the public, as well as my parents (Mum had arrived just before the trial started), Attan and Dwendra; Ice, Egrindreth and Vrenloa also arrived. My parents and Attan sat in one group near the middle with the four anavot sitting behind them. After the rest of us had taken our places, the judge entered. She did indeed look very old and clearly wasn’t a magis (they stop aging at about twenty and don’t start looking old at about a hundred and fifty). The lawyers started explaining the main facts of the case.

At one point the defendant’s lawyer said, “I’m afraid my client, master Kiard, has recently been bereaved. His wife, a number of his friends and five popular pupils from the school were killed by two separate magic accidents on the same day. Also the school’s counselor has mysteriously disappeared.”

“Do you really think it’s fair for me to treat him preferentially because of that?” asked the judge. “Besides, the plaintiff was probably also affected by this.”

The judge kept looking around the courtroom in a disconcerting way. Staring at me and then at the public. I realized that in particular, she was looking at Ice, Egrindreth, Vrenloa and Dwendra.

“Stop!” she said at one point, interrupting a lawyer in mid sentence. Then she looked at me and said, “You come here!”