Tales of Midbar: Secret Priest

"So you might be the real Sixteen but you're basically useless," said Yoldasia.

"No," said Dwendra. "I could probably produceth anav children with an anav."

"We've got a virgin anavah," said Yoldasia.

"But you didn't introduce me to her," I said.

"She's barely reached puberty and belongs to Latchmir's extended family so he'll be suspicious of her," said Yoldasia, giving me a cross look.

"So I art better than her," said Dwendra. "Also I doth knoweth the old ways of Benai Nibeyim, the rituals and teachings of Yohoism, I knoweth the scriptures and the Book of Scholars. What I see here art a travesty of Benai Nibeyim! I canst ..."

"Who are you to judge us?" asked Yoldasia. "You just swan in here from the past and think you can judge us! We've been struggling to keep our religion alive in the face of persecution for seven hundred years and in secret for three hundred years more that you conveniently skipped! You don't even know much about us!"

"Old Magic!" said Dwendra, standing up. "Raping girls! Looketh at how thou treateth thou's anav priest! He wert raised an heretical Trulist! Thou didst not teacheth him the scriptures nor the Book of Scholars nor train him in the priestly duties! Didst thou giveth him psychic friends to helpeth him developeth social skills? No! Thou even separated him from his anavah sister! Didst thou traineth him to useth his powers? No! Thou senteth ..."

"That was a mistake by Trulist priests!" said Mum.

"... him to a school where the pupils art all sexually promiscuous and art constantly fornicating in public but didst preventeth him from having sex! Thou hadth girls who wert qualified to beeth his wife raped to disqualifyeth them ..."

"That's because we were going to give him to you!" shouted Vardnin.

"Then why didst thou not placeth a message in the crypt?"

"We weren't sure about it," said Vardnin. "Not all agreed."

"So we had to rape psychic virgins to avoid arguments about if he should be allowed to marry one," said Yoldasia.

"That's disgusting!" I said.

"Do you really want this priest?" asked Yoldasia. "He's pathetic!"

"No," said Dwendra. "Thou art responsible for most his problems! I hath seen him doeth things! Thou divorced your priestly husband because priests art not allowed to worketh! Dost thou giveth the priests the tithes which art their right?"

"I have to support the miserable complainer!" said Yoldasia.

"Why didst Miandri maketh him thinketh that she wouldst cleaveth unto him and then cleaveth unto Narblo instead?"

"That was a mistake!" shouted Yoldasia.

"Of course ..." Quondat started to say.

"Clindar wert devastated! Thou knowest that it art dangerous for untrained anavim to hath strong emotions! He nearly died! Egrindreth and myself had to saveth him! Do you honestly thinketh that any of this art acceptable?"

"There were difficulties!" said Vardnin.

"The only excuse for rape ist insanity of the rapist!" said Dwendra. "Art thou insane?"

"They used contraceptive spells to prevent pregnancy and date rape spells so the victims couldn't remember so it wasn't so bad," said Yoldasia. "Do you know how hard it is to breed anavim? Nibeyim and katcheyim don't like each other much and then you need to make the resulting children have children with each other rather than random hipsickim! Then you only get one anav or anavah for every sixteen children! Of course in practice ..."

"I knoweth all about it!" said Dwendra. "Why dost thou thinketh I calleth myself Sixteen!"

"What exactly are we trying to achieve here?" I asked.

"What do you think it was like for me being married to that lazy hipsick?" asked Yoldasia.

I jumped up, got into the middle of the circle and shouted. "Stop!" They all looked at me. "This is just degenerating into a shouting match! What are we trying to achieve?"

"I want you to be safe," said Mum.

Yoldasia took a deep breath and said, "I thought that was obvious."

"No," I said, "not to me."

"This isn't really about you," said Vardnin.

"Sorry but I thought it was," I said. "Do you know what this is about Dwendra?"

"I want to knoweth if they still recognizeth me as a Holy Woman," said Dwendra.

"We wanted to know if you were the real Sixteen," said Quandat. "And why you killed most our psychic Laraget chapter."

"They killed themselves," I said, "because they didn't want to answer our questions. Well I think Breeze using some sort of magic enhanced mind reading was the final meteor. I assume they had orders to do that?"

"You weren't there!" said Mum.

"That's the beauty of time travel," I said.

"Of course we don't want that to become common knowledge," said Ice, "or anavim would never be able to use an alibi as a defence, even if they were innocent. It's hard enough for us to get fair legal treatment as it is."

"Anyway," I said, "are we now satisfied that we found out what we wanted to know?"

There was a pause and Mum glared at Dwendra with hatred in her eyes and said, "I found out what I wanted to know a while back."

Dwendra said, "There ist a great deal I wanteth, probably needeth, to know. Thou seemeth to hath some rules that art not in the scriptures nor the Scholars. For example thou seemeth to require a priest to beeth a firstborn son. Where doth these rules cometh from?"

"We had to change some things after the Cataclysm," said Quandat, "maybe before. We couldn't have all the priests' sons refraining from regular work so we restricted it to the firstborn."

"So thou hath added unto Yoho's laws?"

"There you go judging us again," said Yoldasia.

"Do we want to take a break and decide how we want to proceed?" asked Ice.

Dwendra and Egrindreth and myself started heading for the door, with Ice following us and Mum turned to Yoldasia. Then Mum ran after us.

“Clindar!” said Mum as we left the refectory. “Can I have a few words in private?”

“I suppose so,” I said.

I led Mum away from Dwendra and Egrindreth and asked, “What is it?”

“Sorry I think I missed something in there. Can you summarize it for me?”

“Dwendra is Sixteen ...”

“Yes I got that. You see Attan was right but she had you completely fooled.”

“No she didn’t. She told me who she was as soon as we met. I just wasn’t sure she was who the police thought was after us and I knew she wasn’t the enemy. Attan’s just horribly korbarist but he doesn’t realize because he’s incapable of consciously recognizing korbarim. Anyway, Dwendra’s Nuhar Zorg’s wife, well I suppose widow, although the marriage wasn’t consummated, and can travel through time. She told the leader of Benai Nibeyim a thousand years ago ...”

“You don’t honestly believe that!”

“Yes I do!”

“She’s clearly insane!”

“Are you going to listen or argue because I’ve got better things to do?”

“Attan wouldn’t believe such rubbish!”

“Right, I’m not going to bother with this,” I turned back to Dwendra and Egrindreth. “Oh did you know girls who liked me were being raped?”

“I knew you were desperate.”

“Not by me! Benai Nibeyim had those five boys who were killed in Valley Park do it and had the police claim it was a single serial rapist. They even got them when they were checking the boys at my school for magic residue but didn’t arrest them. They kept the identities of the victims secret so I didn’t work out the pattern and wouldn’t let the police investigate me so lots of people thought it was me and the police never cleared me.”

“I’m sure that can’t be right!”

I walked back to Dwendra and Egrindreth who were standing with Ice. “Can you try to explain what happened in the meeting to my mother?” I asked Ice.

“I suppose I could try. You really should go somewhere private to discuss things,” she nodded at a woman crying at a table with several people around her.

We walked round the side of the refectory where there was a narrow path between the bushes. Mum ran after us.

“You can’t come with us Anden,” said Egrindreth, taking my hand.