Tales of Midbar: Secret Priest
Chapter 26: The Grotto - part 1

Buxnir was, as far as we could tell, the first Benai Nibeyim leader to leave home for the leadership conference. We’d placed a homing transmitter on him and tracked him from Rendamar, by ferry, to Targrath. Then from Targrath to Vindian. I thought for a while that the convention would be in Laraget but he just drove through there and then headed south west. To our surprise, we realized the Benai Nibeyim leaders were converging on Siglanti.

The town of Siglanti was nearly in the south west corner of Pax, located on the outer edge of the mountains that ringed the Great Basin. A shallow river ran through its center with four small bridges over it. There was an open, park area on either side of this, which was in turn ringed by buildings. Six roads led from it. One, as you would expect, ran north-east towards the sea, and was fairly wide. A very wide highway ran from the north-west, around the outer side of the mountains, and continued after a large junction. This was something of a mystery and whatever function it had and why it was so wide was lost to history, even Dwendra didn’t know (this road had existed in her time). A smaller road led to the south west, to the megaliths of Roglin, a mysterious Holy Site that was now seldom visited. Another small road led south to the border with the small nation of Clidrac, which lay outside the Great Basin. The last led due North to the Grotto of Faratondikh, a large but seldom visited Holy Site.

The reason the Grotto was seldom visited was that Siglanti was a ghost town. It’s water supply had been lost. Its river was dry. The trees in its park were long dead and eroded from wind and sand. Its buildings crumbling. However nobody had told the sapphires which still shone over it, trying to mimic Earth’s twenty four hour daily cycles with their cyan light in a vain attempt to allow plants with chlorophyll to photosynthesize.

Vehicles were driving through Siglanti’s streets, coming along at least three of the roads, the ones from the north east, north west and south west and leaving along the north road. This was because the Grotto of Faratondikh, the almost forgotten goddess of caves and astronomy, was the venue for the Benai Nibeyim’s leaders’ meeting.

We’d been following several of the Benai Nibeyim leaders by a combination of dowsing and remote viewing and had set up some remote cameras around Siglanti when we’d realized where their different routes were converging. As many of these leaders were psychic, we didn’t want to scare them off by having them detect anavim.

Siglanti library was creepy, with some broken furniture and even a few books. There was a pile of partly burnt books and some graffiti, mostly in Faharni, on the walls. I got the distinct feeling some rather strange and unpleasant things had happened in this place.

We; Dwendra, Rilletteecket, Hubril, Egrindreth, Vrenloa, Ice and myself, sat down in a circle in the middle of the floor in the main room. Ice had brought some plans of the Grotto and spread them out on the floor.

“This is probably going to get boring,” said Ice. “We’ll have to watch carefully to make sure we don’t miss the important bit. We should also check the bits which aren’t likely to be used, just in case something weird happens. Unfortunately these Holy Site plans often aren’t very reliable.”

“I want to give Buxnir a chance to tell the rest what he thinks about the actions of the current leaders,” I said. “If he doesn’t do that, or if they don’t take much notice of him or it doesn’t go well, we’ll intervene.”

“Something won’t go well,” said Ice. “Unfortunately I don’t know what but I get a very bad feeling about this conference. We, meaning Haprihagfen, don’t want to have a major conflict with Benai Nibeyim now but I don’t think this system of having a treaty which only one side bothers to stick to is really acceptable and needs to be resolved before things get bad in the Ruination. Therefore I’m going to bring that up before the election whatever Buxnir says. I’ve also got an emergency team ready to teleport here if things get really bad.”

We set about visioning the grotto and we’d also planted several surveillance devices inside. It was a cave, apparently partly natural and partly excavated; a huge, onion shaped chamber with a shaft from the top leading to an opening in the side of the mountain high above. There was only one entrance, a zigzag passage to the car park and a group of buildings. However there were a few side chambers and passages which didn’t lead to the outside.

Of course the sapphires went out at the normal time and Ice lit a small mage light.

“There used to be a lake inside,” said Ice, “with an island in the middle. The lake’s dried up now but they seem to be using the island as a stage.”

At first not much happened. Several people had arrived early and set things up. Then other people came in and helped themselves to drinks and snacks which had been set up near the door. They stood around, talking to each other.

“There seems to be more stuff in that shaft from the top than this plan shows,” I said.

“Probably a clue to the location of the relic or something,” said Ice

Several people, four men and one woman got onto the stage and the others sat down facing it.

Buxnir was the first to speak, at least the first to speak addressing the crowd. He said a prayer, which was odd in that it didn’t name any deities.

Then Quandat started speaking. For a while he made a speech which didn’t tell us anything new, and a lot of it was saying how great Benai Nibeyim was and how important it was to elect new leaders.

“What are those people doing?” asked Hubril, standing up.

Before I could ask him to clarify, he teleported.

“I’ll get him,” said Rilletteecket and she also teleported.

“Can we avoid ..?” Ice started to say.

Qundat said, “We’ve selected the people we believe will be best and it would simplify things if you just elect them unopposed. Does anybody disagree?”

“I think before we get to that ...” Buxnir started to say.

“Sorry but we’ll handle other business after the election,” said Quandat.

“Heard enough!” said Ice, standing up.

I took her right hand and Dwendra took her left.

We materialized in the dark and dropped a few centimeters to the stone floor, hearing many gasps and a couple of screams from the dark void in front of us about two meters lower. We were behind the people on the stage, so they hadn’t seen us but the four psychics turned to look at us. Yoldasia seemed shocked and frightened but the others were more annoyed.

The only lights were a few mage lights on the island stage. Most the attendees were sitting or standing in the dry lake and hidden by darkness but I could feel some of them were nibeyim with fewer katcheyim.

“What the fornication are you doing here?” asked Yoldasia. She had a strange resignation as well as fear and shock.

I felt a sudden sickening feeling, like multiple violent deaths. I couldn’t see why this should be and thought it might be some weird feature of the Grotto. We spread out and stepped forward a pace. Yoldasia was seated near where I’d materialized, still with smoke ball in hand. A hipsick I didn’t recognize was seated to my right and Buxnir was right in front of me. The hipsick emitted unpleasant, smug vibes.

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