Tales of Midbar: Religious Intolerance
The Storm - Part 2

“This isn’t the first time you’ve been in trouble is it?” asked Uldrien.

“This wasn’t my fault,” I said. I knew this because everybody had told me this.

“Why do you say that?” asked Uldrien.

Yes, I know. He always answers questions or even statements with questions. It’s very annoying.

“It wasn’t her fault!” said Mum.

“Anyway," said Uldrien, "I want to talk about things that have happened earlier in your life. You had some trouble in Grishnarl. Can you tell me about that?”

“She doesn’t know much about that and it had little to do with her,” said Dad.

I couldn’t tell Mum and Dad that Uldrien was a mind reader and if he kept this line of questioning up, he’d find out the truth, whatever lies we told.

“I’d just like to know how she was involved,” said Uldrien.

Think how to get out of this.

“Why do Nuharas do anything?” asked Dad. “I don’t like to sound religionist but all they know is hate.”

“Why do you say that?” asked Dr. Uldrien.

“They drove us out of Grishnarl,” said Dad, “like they’re doing with all the Winemakers who live there.”

I could only think of one way out of this. I jumped up and ran for the back door as fast as I could.

I unchained my bike, which was against the wall outside the door, carried it up the steps and jumped on it. Then I cycled as fast as I could to the Vineyard. I carried the bike a few meters along the secret path that led from the entrance to the houses. Then I left it and ran the rest of the way.

I got to the courtyard and found Breeze and River sitting at a table with a number of small objects on it.

“Breeze!” I shouted.

She looked up and one of the objects fell over, “Eleprin!”

“Try not to break concentration like that,” said River.

“Doctor Uldrien’s with my parents and was asking us about Grishnarl but there are things about that we can’t tell anybody and I can’t warn them that he’s a nibey and he said he’s treating you so ...”

“That’s a lie!” said River, getting up.

She ran to the house and I felt a power explosion.

That was easier than I expected.

“He wanted to treat me but I don’t need him and we felt he was trying to find out Haprihagfen secrets,” said Breeze. “I’m making artifacts, it makes me feel better.”

“What sort of artifacts?”

“Not sure. I’ve bound an associate to this,” she picked up a stick and pointed it, “if I tweak its bindings!” The stone she was pointing at on the other end of the table fell off. “That isn’t a lot of use as only a magis can use it. I need to make it so it responds to speech or something.”

“How can I be a proper Winemaker?” I asked.

“You’ve accepted Yoho’s avatar’s gift?” asked Breeze.

Of course! I hadn’t actually done that but didn’t want Breeze to know.

“When we were in the Conservatory, I promised Yoho that if he got us out of that I’d serve him better, not become a Temple Prostitute and marry a psychic man.”

“No good man will marry you until you’re at least a teenager.”

I was expecting her to argue that we’d got ourselves out of it but I didn’t really believe that.

“How do I get initiated?”

“You’ve got to be twelve. When I get initiated, I’ll also be initiated into Haprihagfen as well as Winemakerism and I’ll be able to choose a sleg to be my husband.”

“Isn’t twelve rather young to be getting married?”

“I don’t know any slegim I like. I may have to find a ben goyim and convert him.”

“Anything I can do now?”

“Hm. You already study scripture and come to worship. I think all that leaves is doing something that Yoho asks you to do.”

We started school again. I don’t know what the other children had been told. I’d already spoken to Cloud and Irvis and they were treating us in a similar way to normal. The others gave us more strange looks than normal and didn’t really seem to want to talk to us.

“I know we’ve kind of been through the same thing,” said Tenenet at one point, “but I don’t remember so it doesn’t seem that important to me. I suppose I’ll have to ... Well you didn’t have your memories erased so I suppose it’s worse for you and well, I don’t really ...”

I got up and found Mum in the living room with a small bowl of sugared fruit.

“Happy real birthday,” she said quietly. “Your official birthday isn’t for a couple of ten cycles but I thought you deserved something.”

“Thanks,” I said and took it from her. “So now I’m really two years older than I’m pretending to be.”

“Only until your official birthday. I think they had to make your official birthday different from your real birthday and a bit later so you’d never be your real age.”

I sat down and started eating the sugared fruit. I guess she’d made it herself, she could hardly have bought a birthday treat the day before my real birthday. She was a good cook but she never really got sugared fruit right.

The fact that Uldrien had lied about helping Breeze (he said that he was going to help her and just hadn’t persuaded her parents yet) had been enough to make Mum and Dad wary of him and they hadn’t let him back. I’d accepted Yoho’s avatar’s gift and asked Yoho what he wanted me to do. I was still having the occasional talk with lawyers and police who were preparing the case against Lishrashic and Iandris.

Is that good enough because this was kind of dull?

It was the day before Lishrashic’s trial was supposed to start. It seemed that this was the biggest thing to happen in Minris since the Cataclysm. I’m not sure if a trial had ever been held in Minris before but nobody could figure out a way to remove Lishrashic so they didn’t have any choice. A lot of people were speculating that he was the Night Leaper and I’d heard rumors that a concussion spell artifact and an anti-gravity artifact had been found in his possession. Anti-gravity artifacts were rare so this seemed rather damning evidence. The whole class was planning to attend the first day of the trial and it was unclear what would happen after that. I wasn’t sure how I felt about this. I still hadn’t been told if I’d be needed to testify or not. Kerdnan was explaining about how trials worked, about how it was important for justice to be dispensed quickly and “justice delayed is justice denied”. She started going into details of who sat where in a trial and what they all did.

It started getting noticeably colder. It was the morning of day 2 of the light cycle so Aleph was setting. However, it shouldn’t have got that cold so quickly. Breeze kept looking towards the east.

“Something’s coming,” she’d muttered.

Soon huge, black clouds started appearing in the east. Thunder started echoing off the mountains and wisps of cloud started blowing across the school.

“Looks like a storm,” said Kerdnan. “A bad one. Well this will be exciting.”

“Something bad’s coming,” said Breeze.

We sat on the playing field watching the clouds approach. Kerdnan had taken the unusual step of insisting that we put everything that shouldn’t get wet in the lockers at lunch break.

“Do you feel something bad coming?” asked Breeze.

Me, Irvis and Cloud said nothing. I’d seen thunder storms many times in Ermish but this one looked worse somehow. It was a mass of black, swirling clouds, swallowing the sapphires and flashing with lightning and the thunder was made worse by echoing off the mountains.

“I think this is a magis thing then,” said Breeze. “This could be the Coming Disaster.”

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