Tales of Midbar: Secret Priest

I materialized in the courthouse car park just after I’d left. Dad seemed to be using some sort of magic healing on Dwendra who’d taken her harness off so he could get a better look at her injuries.

“... consummated,” said Dwendra.

“Because you killed him!” said Mum.

“He wast going to rapeth me and killeth Clindar!”

“What the feces was Clindar doing there? This was a thousand years ago!”

“I’ve brought you a dress,” I said. “You might like to wait until the healing’s finished to put it on.”

“I art not badly hurt.”

“You don’t want to bleed all over the new dress.”

“Thou hast a point.”

“Told you she was weirder than Miandri,” said Attan.

“Look,” said Dad, “she can’t really be Nuhar Zorg’s wife ...”

“Twas never consummated!”

“... and Mum isn’t Benai Nibeyim! Now can we try to get back in touch with reality?”

“Somebody just tried to blow us up,” said Attan, “and Clindar just teleported!”

Dad stared at me trying to process that. “Perhaps we should decide what to tell the police when they question us. Do any of us have any awkward baggage?”

“Ooo that doth feeleth good,” said Dwendra.

“Dwendra!” Mum and Attan both said at once.

“What?” asked Dwendra.

“Do any of you know who’s responsible for that attack?” asked Dad.

“Anden?” asked Dwendra.

“What?” asked Mum.

“Do you know who sent the suicide bomber?” I asked.

“Of course I don’t! It wasn’t Benai Nibeyim who I don’t know about anyway!”

She was lying but I wasn’t sure if she knew the truth or just had strong suspicions.

“If you don’t know about them ..?” I started to ask.

“Don’t be so fornicating logical!” said Mum.

Dwendra removed her torn dress and started using it to clean off the blood, which was obviously a thrill for Attan.

“Actually Clindar has a point,” said Dad. “If you don’t know about Benai Nibeyim, you can’t know it wasn’t them.”

“Why would they do it?” asked Mum.

“Because I’m an anav and firstborn son descended from the Yohoist priesthood so they think I should marry a virgin psychic but they don’t know if I should marry Dwendra or not so they want to kill Dwendra to end the argument and maintain unity, which you seem to think is so fornicating important! I thought we’d already explained that.”

“You could just not marry each other,” said Mum. “She’s a walking genetic engineering lab and you’ve never even been on a date with a normal girl.”

“Who’s fornicating fault is that!” I asked. “I didn’t make all the girls in town think I was a fornicating rapist!”

“That is about the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard,” said Dad, “apart from Dwendra being Nuhar Zorg’s wife.”

Dwendra started putting on the new dress. “Twas not consummated!”

“Your father was a firstborn son,” I said, “what sort of work did he do?”

Dad looked at me as if I’d just claimed, well I didn’t think there was anything more shocking that I could tell him. I wasn’t sure if telling him I’d been to parallel universes would have outdone Dwendra being Nuhar Zorg’s wife. “Can we stick to what we’ll tell the police?”

“They’re not going to investigate this properly anyway,” I said. “They won’t say it was Nuhara terrorism because they can’t make people think Nuharas are fornicating diarrhea no matter how many people they kill or rape and there’s no way they’ll say it was Benai Nibeyim so they’ll probably just chalk it up as yet another magic accident.”

“Were any of those actually accidents?” asked Attan.

Dwendra put the harness back on over her dress.

“Forget speculation,” said Dad, “what do we know?”

“Just tell them we can’t say anything because it might affect our legal cases and our lawyer’s been decapitated,” I said.

Dad looked sad and said, “She was a good friend.”

“We should go before the blitz attack,” said Dwendra, taking my hand.

“No!” said Mum. “You can’t just leave! You can’t fight Benai Nibeyim!”

“Thou hast a point,” said Dwendra, holding her hand out to Mum and Attan who collapsed. “Merely a date rape spell so they wilt not tell Benai Nibeyim what we planeth or anybody else about teleportation and time travel. Only magi art supposed to knoweth about teleportation.”

“What!” said Dad, clearly shocked.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“Thou dost knoweth this time better.”

It occurred to me it was probably a good idea to find Miandri and see if she knew anything. She’d said she was going to the beach so I visioned the hotel where we’d met that morning, as it was near the beach. There wasn’t much activity there now and it had a stairwell where nobody would see us materialize.