The Peloi encampment was quiet. It was early summer now, and the midday heat kept the nomads inside their tents. Sparhawk walked across the hard-packed earth toward the tent shared by Ambassador Oscagne and Patriarch Emban. His chain-mail jingled as he walked. Since they were in a secure encampment, the knights had decided to forego the discomfort of their formal armour.

He found them sitting beneath a canopy at the side of their tent eating a melon.

‘Well-met, Sir Knight,’ Oscagne said as the Pandion approached.

‘That’s an archaic form of greeting, Oscagne,’ Emban told him.

‘I’m an archaic sort of fellow, Emban.’

‘I was curious about something,’ Sparhawk said, joining them on the shaded carpet.

‘It’s a characteristic of the young, I suppose,’ Oscagne smiled.

Sparhawk let that pass. ‘This part of Astel seems quite different from what we ran into farther west,’ he observed.

‘Yes,’ Oscagne agreed. ‘Astel’s the melting-pot that gave rise to all Elene cultures – both here in Daresia and in Eosia as well.’

‘We might want to argue about that some day,’ Emban murmured.

‘Daresia’s older, that’s all,’ Oscagne shrugged. ‘That doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s better. Anyway, what you’ve seen of Astel so far is very much like what you’d encounter in the Elene Kingdom of Pelosia, wouldn’t you say?’

‘There are similarities, yes,’ Sparhawk replied.

‘The similarities will stop when we reach the edge of the steppes. The western two-thirds of Astel are Elene. From the edge of the steppes to the Atan border, Astel’s Styric.’

‘How did that happen?’ Emban asked. ‘The Styrics in Eosia are widely dispersed. They live in their own villages and follow their own laws and customs.’

‘How cosmopolitan are you feeling today, Emban?’

‘You’re planning to insult my provincialism, I take it.’

‘Not too much, I hope. Your prototypical Elene is a bigot.’ Oscagne held up one hand. ‘Let me finish before you explode. Bigotry’s a form of egotism, and I think you’ll have to concede that Elenes have a very high opinion of themselves. They seem to feel that God smiles particularly for them.’

‘Doesn’t He?’ Emban feigned surprise.

‘Stop that. For reasons only God can understand, the Styrics particularly irritate the Elenes.’

‘I have no trouble understanding it,’ Emban shrugged. ‘It’s their superior attitude. They treat us as if we were children.’

‘From their perspective, we are, your Grace,’ Sparhawk told him. ‘Styrics have been civilised for forty thousand years. We got started somewhat later.’

‘For whatever the reason,’ Oscagne continued, ‘the initial impulse of the Elenes has been to drive the Styrics out – or to kill them. That’s why the Styrics migrated to Eosia much earlier than you Elenes did. They were driven into the wilderness by Elene prejudice. Eosia was not the only wilderness, however. There’s another that exists along the Atan border, and many Styrics fled there in antiquity. After the Empire was formed, we Tamuls asked the Elenes to stop molesting the Styrics living around Sarsos.’

‘Asked?’

‘We were quite firm – and we did have all those Atans with nothing else to do. We’ve agreed to let the Elene clergy deliver thunderous denunciations from the pulpit, but we garrison enough Atans around Sarsos to keep the two peoples separate. It’s quieter that way, and we Tamuls are extraordinarily fond of quiet. I think you gentlemen are in for a surprise when we reach Sarsos. It’s the only truly Styric city in the entire world. It’s an astonishing place. God seems to smile in a very special way there.’

‘You keep talking about God, Oscagne,’ Emban noted. ‘I thought a preoccupation with God was an Elene conceit.’

‘You’re more cosmopolitan than I thought, your Grace.’

‘Just exactly what do you mean when you use the word God, your Excellency?’

‘We use the term generically. Our Tamul religion isn’t very profound. We tend to think that a man’s relationship with his God – or Gods – is his own affair.’

‘That’s heresy, you know. It would put the Church out of business.’

‘That’s all right, Emban,’ Oscagne smiled. ‘Heresy’s encouraged in the Tamul Empire. It gives us something to talk about on long, rainy afternoons.’

They rode out with a huge Peloi escort the following morning. The party moving northeasterly looked not so much like an army on the march as it did a migration. Kring and Tikume rode more or less by themselves for the next several days, renewing their blood-ties and discussing an exchange of breeding-stock.

Sparhawk attempted an experiment during the ride from Pela to the edge of the steppes, but try though he might, he could not detect any traces of Aphrael’s tampering with time and distance. The Child Goddess was simply too skilled, and her manipulations too seamless for him to detect them.

Once, when she had joined him on Faran’s back, he raised an issue that had been troubling him. ‘I’m not trying to pry, but it seems that it’s been about fifty days since we landed at Salesha. How long has it really been?’

‘Quite a bit less than that, Sparhawk,’ she replied. ‘Half that long at most.’

‘I was sort of looking for an exact answer, Danae.’

‘I’m not very good with numbers, father. I know the difference between a few and a lot, and that’s all that’s really important, isn’t it?’

‘It’s a bit imprecise, wouldn’t you say?’

‘Is precision all that important to you, Sparhawk?’

‘You can’t begin to think logically without precision, Danae.’

‘Don’t think logically then. Try being intuitive for a change. You might even find that you like it.’

‘How long, Danae?’ he insisted.

‘Three weeks,’ she shrugged.

‘That’s a little better.’

‘Well – more or less.’

The edge of the steppes was marked by a dense forest of pale-trunked birches, and Tikume and his tribesmen turned back there. Since it was late in the day, the royal escort made camp on the edge of the forest so that they might follow the shaded road leading off through the trees in the full light of day.

After they had settled down and the cooking fires were going, Sparhawk took Kring and they went looking for Engessa. ‘We have a peculiar situation here, gentlemen,’ he told them as they walked together near the edge of the forest.