The scourge still lay at the bottom of his travelling bag. He hardly felt the sting of its knotted cords as he struck himself in penance again and again. He was trying to score the image from his mind. The false dream-image. The dark succubus that had betrayed him into sins of incontinence and self-pollution.

The scourge dropped to the floor. He looked down at himself in the first light of dawn and winced. Angry weals had brought a brighter stain to the sign of the Rosecoeur. The rose wept real tears of blood.

Dawn cast pale shadows on to the grey and red slate tiles of the sloping roofs outside his window.

It was not as if he was still in love with Fiammis. He had purged himself of that hopeless love long ago in the deserts of Enhirrë, he had let the fierce sun burn her from his heart. His love for Mhir, selfless and all-encompassing, had filled the void she had left. It was just seeing her so unexpectedly –

How alone he felt in this foreign city. He sorely missed the spiritual counsel of his fellow Guerriors. Even if he had been in the barren deserts of Enhirrë, he could have sought advice from his confrères. Here he could not even find solace in prayer at the shrine of Mhir the Peacemaker.

And then he remembered the Temple. Elesstar the Beloved was venerated here in Sulien. It seemed the only place to go to shrive himself.

He winced as he pulled on his shirt, gritting his teeth, The pain scored his mind clean, it centred him.

A little while later, he went stiffly down the stairs and set off in the direction of the Temple.

It was not long past dawn and few people were about; a street sweeper pushed his cart across the Temple courtyard, sending the clustering Temple doves up into the air in a fluttering cloud of grey and white.

Drifts of steam blew across the Temple steps from the lustral baths.

Acir was used to the grey, echoing vaults of the Commanderie Abbaye, the austerity of unadorned pillars lit by the reflected fires shining through great rose windows. The Thorny Path began in stark stone gashed by a glory of blood-red light.

Elesstar. The name was Her name. But as he entered the Temple of the Source, he sensed he entered the presence of an older deity.

Acir gazed around, searching for a shrine, a plaque even, dedicated to Iel the All-Seeing. There was none. Till this moment he had not realised to what extent the influence of the Goddess of the Source still prevailed. In spite of the invaders’ imposition of the worship of Iel, the Sulien people had managed to keep their allegiance to their Goddess alive through the cult of the handmaiden, Elesstar.