"Kill them all. God will know his own."

Eight words that spelled the doom of the life Ilara de Molay had known. She never heard them spoken, never even knew they had been uttered, but their import was to change the way she lived and breathed for the remainder of her mortal lifetime.

The walled city of Montsegur, perched atop a mountain in the region known as the Languedoc, was her birthplace, the place of her childhood and adulthood, what little adulthood she lived. It was a time of prosperity, when the people she knew and loved rejected riches as evil but still managed to gather wealth enough to keep them all in comfort. Culture thrived, there was no petty squabbling over religion or power. Peace reigned in the land Ilara knew, and it reigned, too, in her heart as she grew to womanhood.

Her father, Hugo de Molay, had come to this region seeking the enlightened wisdom those living there were said to possess. He had not found it before his destiny found him. Aimal bint Nasr al-Zayd, the daughter of a merchant travelled over the mountains from Muslim Spain, was his destiny, and it was little time before they married. For despite the Papist intolerance toward peoples of other faiths and creeds, in the Languedoc there thrived tolerance and understanding, borne of a mutual wish for knowledge.

The Papists held no sway there, their tithes were not paid, their masses unattended. Those clregy who purported to be of that faith did not minister their dwindling congregations, but ran businesses of their own, collecting the wealth encouraged by the culture of the people about them. But they were a viper, coiled and ready to strike.

One of Ilara's earliest memories was that of the Parfait, the man who led she and her fellows in their religious practises, gently telling her that though she was a woman, she was his equal, and though her body was made for the bearing of children, to do so would be to fall into the hands of Rex Mundi. It was a conversation that profoundly changed her in subtle ways that no woman outside the Languedoc would have understood.

Where beyond the borders of that region women were subjugated and controlled, the land in which Ilara grew up gave women the rights and responsibilities of men. She grew up knowing she was any man's equal, and as such, was taught her grandfather's trade. She and her father worked alongside one another as she grew into womanhood.

But the peace and prosperity was too good to last. Soon there were reports of a large army called together by the Pope descending on the Languedoc, putting men, women and children to the sword. This army was said to be put to the task of suppressing the heretical Languedoc, and would wade through blood to achieve its goal.

But though the army advanced, and the refugees poured into the walled, isolated city of Montsegur, no one retreated further. They would die as they had lived, but not before taking a good many of the Papist soldiery with them. Yet they did not know the words that had been spoken of them, when a soldier had asked his clerical senior how he was to know the difference between a heretic and a true believer. Those words were the doom of the Languedoc, and the people the world called Cathar.

"Kill them all. God will know his own."

How quickly the thunderous roar and crash of siege weapons becomes commonplace. No more did Ilara scurry for cover as the mangonels of the besiegers sang; she had seen the deaths of those hit by the shrapnel and debris, and though such deaths seemed painful, they were not truly miserable.

Each day that passed, more of their comrades died, and by the end of a month, more than one hundred men, mercenary and common folk alike, lay in the common graves dug courageously beyond the city walls for them. Such was the destruction that women were soon requested to stand their turn at the walls, usually during the night, while the vast army below slept.

Ilara stood at the near ruinous battlement, leaning on the long staff she had been given to defend herself. Her eyes, green and pale as the grass in the moonlight, moved restlessly over the darkness of the slopes below, and the flickering sea of campfires that marked the resting place of her enemy.

It was a strange night, this, for it was one of danger and excitement. Parfaits and mercenaries alike were this night to set out on a perilous mission; to remove the bulk of the wealth and treasure which had so enflamed the nobility of the north into greed from the confines of Montsegur, and take it to a place of hiding in the foothills of the Pyrenees. At any moment, she expected to hear the hue and cry from below signalling their capture, and prayed in the silence of her heart that it would not come. For among their number was her mother, a guide for them as escaped into Muslim Spain, and safety.

And it was this night that was special to Ilara herself, for come the turning of one day into the next she would have reached her twentieth year, unmarred by the interference of outside custom. But she knew it could not last, this innocence of the outside world, and indeed, knew also that if she was spared the fury of the Dominican Order and their child, the Holy Inquisition, it would be no mercy. For she was a woman, and old at that to be unmarried. She would be shackled one way or another to the Catholic faith, through marriage or enforced holy orders, and the tranquility of equilibrium would be gone from her heart and mind.

There was no telling how much longer the siege would continue. They had been captive in their own city almost eight months, tenacious in their resistance of the forces below. And yet, such tenacity could not last. The army below fought with the fire of Rome in their bellies, in the sure certainty of the promises the Roman Church had made them. They were to be expiated of all sin, and receive a guaranteed place at God's table for their sacrifice. All the inhabitants of Montsegur expected to receive was condemnation and death.

The whistle of arrows through the darkness alerted her in time to protect herself, and Ilara, like so many along the walls, threw herself to the ground in the hope of being spared an injury by the unseen projectiles. The point-headed arrows clattered harmlessly on the crumbling buildings and rubble-strewn streets, unanswered; for there was barely a man left now, who could answer such an attack in force.

Of the many hundreds who had once been confined here with them, now the defenders numbered barely five hundred, and it was certain more would die before the end came. The Parfaits did not take up arms, nor did many of the local folk, who obeyed the tenants of the faith they followed not to bear arms or strike out in anger. Instead the defense fell to the mercenary bands hired for just such an action, and they welcomed any attempt by those like Ilara who wished to aid in the defense of their home.

But truly, there was no hope left to those who remained, Ilara mused darkly as she rose tentatively to her feet once more, peering into the darkness for any sign of renewed attack. Their only solace came in the sure and certain knowledge that death would bring them to the True God, to Amor, the Principle of Light, in whose name they lived and died. To die at the hands of Rome for such a reward was no more than deserved, and no less than hoped for.

So, in the darkness of the pre-dawn night, Ilara and her companions waited, their prayers wishing for the safe passage of that brave band seeking shelter beyond the walls, and longing for the swiftness of a merciful death.