‘Our priests beguiled us, dread Priestess,’ one shaggyhaired fellow gibbered. ‘They told us that the prohibition of our rite was a Styric blasphemy. They said that it was the Styrics in our midst who were leading us away from the true God.’ He seemed blind to the fact that Sephrenia herself was Styric. ‘We are Elene,’ he said proudly, ‘and we know that we are the chosen ones.’

Sephrenia gave the Church Knights a look that conveyed volumes. Then she looked at the rag-tag band of unwashed ‘Elenes’ grovelling before her. She seemed about to speak once, her breath drawn in to deliver a shattering denunciation. Instead, however, she let out the breath, and when she spoke, her voice was clinically detached. ‘You have strayed,’ she told them, ‘and that makes you unfit to join your countrymen in their holy war. You will return to your homes now. Go back to Merjuk and beyond, and venture no more to this place. Do not go near the temple of Azash, lest he destroy you.’

‘Should we hang our priests?’ the shaggy fellow asked her hopefully, ‘or burn them perhaps?’

‘No. Our God seeks worshippers, not corpses. Henceforth you will devote yourselves to the rites of purification and of reconciliation and the rites of the seasons only. You are as children, and as children shall you worship. Now go!’ She straightened her arm, and the serpent-head emerging from her palm, reared up, swelling, growing and becoming not so much a serpent as a dragon. The dragon roared, and sooty flames shot from its mouth.

The Zemochs fled.

‘You should have let them hang that one fellow at least,’ Kalten said.

‘No,’ she replied. ‘I just set them on the path of a different religion, and that religion forbids killing.’

‘They’re Elenes, Lady Sephrenia,’ Bevier objected. ‘You should have instructed them to follow the Elene faith.’

‘With all its prejudices and inconsistencies, Bevier?’ she asked. ‘No, I don’t think so. I pointed them in a gentler way. Talen, have you finished yet?’

‘I’ve got all the pieces I could find, Sephrenia.’

‘Bring them along.’ She turned her white palfrey then and led them away from the rude altar.

They returned to the cave, gathered up their belongings and set out again.

‘Where did they come from?’ Sparhawk asked Sephrenia as they rode along in the biting cold.

‘Northeastern Zemoch,’ she replied, ‘from the steppes north of Merjuk. They’re primitive Elenes who haven’t had the benefits of contact with civilized people the way the rest of you have.’

‘Styrics, you mean?’

‘Naturally. What other civilized people are there?’

‘Be nice,’ he chided her.