Shadows rolled back from the high windows, and moonlight flooded the ruins, pale and silvery. There was no altar. Only a pit where it had stood. Fragments of white marble littered the pavement, and among the shards lay the crumpled body of Brother Constantine. His outflung right hand still clutched part of a broken crucifix, and even in the moonlight, the acolyte could see that it was a seething mass of burns. The air was still. The light pure and unwavering, but the young man knew they were there and waited for them to speak.

The amulet grew hotter and agitated in his fingers. He had no need to press it to his brow to see the images, the awful bloody images of the brown-robed priests cutting down the worshipers with their steel swords, snatching children and babies from their mothers, smashing skulls, splitting and slicing and gouging until the…