Brilliant bit of work. I, too, am particularly drawn to stories of moral dilemmas and crises of faith. I like fiction that asks questions rather than coming to conclusions.
I *love* the final bits of the story; a graceful "Lady or the Tiger" ending is a difficult thing to pull off properly. It pleases me immensely to be asked what *I* think really happened. And I, at least, found the synesthesiac elements to be an elegant way to describe the sensation of communing mind to mind with an unholy abomination; I might have preferred a bit more work on phrasing the metaphors so that they avoided the repetitiveness Listener mentioned, but as a device they worked marvelously.
I'm also pleased to see fantastic fiction set somewhere other than the modern USA or pseudo-Europe (quasi-medieval or not.) In the early days, Arabia, the Far East, and Africa were places to set stories because they were far away and strange. Then everyone realized that was kind of demeaning and marginalizing, and for a while only people from that culture could write in that culture. I think we're reaching the point where we can have our exotic settings without committing the postmodern sin of exoticizing; I hope to see more stories set in previously exotic locales not as a way to make the story seem fantastic, but simply because that's where the story takes place, to see the setting as a proper setting instead of a "far and distant land."