The dry season.  On the Steppe, it betrayed its coming with a variety of signs: the first sight of the Lance among the stars on the northern horizon; the quickness with which the milk soured; the first trailers of the caünnu, the midsummer wind.

At the beginning of the rainy season, Scylvendi herdsmen ranged the Steppe in search of the sandy ground where the grasses grew quicker.  When the rains waxed, they drove their herds to harder ground, where the grasses grew slower but remained green longer.  Then, when the hot winds chased the clouds to oblivion, they simply followed the forage, always searching for the wild herbs and short grasses that made for the best meat and milk.

This pursuit always caught someone, particularly those who were too greedy to cull wilful animals from their herd.  Headstrong cattle could lead an entire herd too far afield, into vast tracts of over-grazed or blighted pasture.  Every season, it seemed, some fool returned without horse or cattle.

Cnaiür now knew himself to be that fool.

I have given him the Holy War.

In the council chamber of the dead Sapatishah, Cnaiür sat high on the tiers that surrounded the council table, watching the Dûnyain intently.  He did his best to ignore the Inrithi crowding the seats about him, but he found himself continually accosted - congratulated.  One fool, some Tydonni thane, even had the temerity to kiss his knee - his knee!  Once again they called out "Scylvendi!" as though in salute.

Flanked by hanging gold-on-black representations of the Circumfix, the Warrior-Prophet sat upon a raised dais, so that he looked down upon the Great Names sitting about the council table.  His beard had been oiled and braided.  His flaxen hair tumbled across his shoulders.  Beneath a stiff knee-length vestment, he wore a white silk gown embroidered by the forking of silvery leaves and grey branches.  Braziers had been set about him, and in their light he seemed aqueous, surreal - every bit the other-worldly prophet he claimed to be.  His luminous eyes roamed the room, stirring gasps and whispers wherever they passed.  Twice his look found Cnaiür, who cursed himself for looking away.

Wretched!  Wretched!

The sorcerer, the woman-hearted buffoon whom everyone had thought dead, stood before the dais to the Dûnyain's left, wearing an ankle-length vest of crimson over a white linen frock.  He, at least, wasn't festooned like a slaver's concubine - as were the others.  But he had a look in his eyes that Cnaiür recognized, as though he too couldn't quite believe the lot fortune had cast him.  Cnaiür had overheard Uranyanka on the tier below saying that the man, Drusas Achamian, was now the Warrior-Prophet's Vizier, his teacher and protector.

Whatever he was, he looked obscenely fat compared with the rakish lnrithi caste-nobles.  Perhaps, Cnaiür thought, the Dûnyain planned to use his bulk as a shield should the Consult or Cishaurim attack.