It was the dream again.

Vissarionas ek Lesvou was back on the fields southwest of Antioch. In his apartment in Constantinople Vissa screamed in his sleep, startling several people reasting in nearby rooms. It was a scream of utter hopelessness, of abandonment.

As before the dream ran through Vissa's sleep addled awakening, his casual pursuit of the fleeing garrison of Antioch with his Order mates, and their laggardly return to the tents of the Grandmaster to find him injured. Once again the sergeants of the Order made haste for the gates of the city, but this time before they could enter a cowled figure strode out and raised a hand to halt them.

Vissa was unaware of his brethern fading out of the dream, unaware of Rafi and his guardsmen vanishing from his thoughts. All that he could see was the gray robed figure slowly drawing back his... no, her hood. It was Aliya al-Badawiyya, concubine to the Caliph of Egypt, and for a period of many months Vissa's companion in wit and entertainment. And his lover.

In his sleep Vissa struggled against the import of the dream, tossing in his bed and muttering,

No. NO! I atoned. I am forgiven. Redeemed! Please, please, please...

In the dream Aliya raised her hand in a gesture clearly recognizable from many depictions of the Virgin Mary. Vissa felt a vague sort of guilt at the near blasphemy of it, but it was quickly overwhelmed by his spiraling dread. Then Aliya spoke, not in the dulcet tones of a court lady, but with the shattering voice of an angel,

For this... For Antioch... You are forgiven.

Her raised index finger swept around to point at the city, which took on a hazy, sun glare sort of look behind her. Then the high church tower of Antioch's abbey was replaced by a series of minarets as the walls of Cairo formed. Aliya spoke once more, still with the voice of an angel but now twisted into an implacable, cruel tone,

For this... For Cairo... You will burn!

So saying her face melted away into a blackened skull, and a drop of blood appeared on her extended index finger. The figure, no longer Aliya, took one menacing step towards Vissarionas before turning and drawing back it's hand as a person might to throw a stone. The creature made a gesture of hurling an object high into the air, and that tiny drop of blood, somehow still clearly visible, hurtled into the sky over the city of Cairo. As it reached the highest point of it's arc the figure vanished, and Vissa, his horse somehow no longer under him, turned to run afoot from the city.

He'd not gone three steps when the thunderous roar of a splash, greater than any wave he'd ever heard living by the sea at Lesvou, pulled him up short. Turning about he was terrified to see a tide of rich, red blood lapping over the very walls of the city of Cairo. There could be no further purpose in flight. Vissa sank to his knees, turned his face to the sky, and accepted his dream death as the red wave rolled over him.

...

In the morning he rose refreshed, and remembered nothing as he prepared to return to the Senate. Unaware of the dream that might have arisen out of guilt over his dealings in Cairo, where he traded slaves, took a woman, and sent men to gamble in his name all to fulfill the Patriarch's confusing, rudderless, but holy mission. Or might have been a genuine prophesy? Or just as easily might have merely been an aftertaste of the Polish sausage he'd bought from a street vendor on his way home last night?