Acir’s faith still burned in his breast, a vision of warmth, of joy, of reconciliation. How had his fellow Guerriors lost their vision, how had they come to perpetrate this atrocity upon their fellow men in the sacred name of Mhir?

‘Do not desert us in our hour of need,’ he whispered, one hand pressed to his breast. Beneath his fingers he felt the Rose graven into his flesh. The physical pain he had endured as the tattooist’s needle pricked out the intricate pattern of petals and thorns was as nothing to the agony of knowing that the cause he followed had wrought so much damage and despair.

The sky is darkening above the Fortress of Faith, a cloud rides fast on the Fevre wind, sweeping in to blot out the sun.

Duststorm – here in Bel’Esstar?

Acir gazes frantically around for somewhere to shelter – but the walls of the Fortress are open to the sky.

Dry particles of dust, grey dust, begin to swirl about the city. Dust stings his face, his upraised hands – cold, ice-cold as stinging hail. The icy dust settles over the city, choking the streets. Soon the whole city will be filled with it, smothered in it, stifled to silence.

Acir staggers into the Fortress, fighting against the gusting Fevre wind to reach the entrance to the Poet-Prophet’s shrine. Drifts of grey snowdust lie across the doorway: he tears at them with his hands, feeling each icy particle sharp as shattered glass. When he looks down at his hands, they are bleeding from a myriad tiny dust-grazes.

At last he tugs open the door and slithers down into the darkness. Dust blows in after him: he puts his shoulder to the door, straining with all his strength to close it. A gust of wind blows it open again, sending showers of dust cascading down into the tomb below.

He throws himself across the tomb, trying to protect it from the encroaching dust with his body. His lacerated hands leave smears of blood across the worn stone.

The tomb shudders.

Acir draws back, terrified.

Something has penetrated the worn stone, and is spearing its way upwards.

A thin branch of green, prickled with black thorns. At its tip a bud unfurls, crimson petals unfold.

A rose. A perfect crimson rose.

The miracle renewed. The sign of divine forgiveness.

The shrine door slams open again and the whirlwind comes tearing in.

‘No!’ he cries aloud, vainly trying to encompass the miraculous Rose in his arms.

The Rose droops in the death-cold blast. Its velvet petals, red as heart’s blood, begin to wither, frostburned.

One by one, the seared petals drop. Even as he watches the fresh green of the branch turns brown – and the dry stick crumbles away.

CHAPTER 17