It took Orietta a little less than two hours to complete a circuit of the plateau and confirm what Hirrilow had told her. There was no easy way out of the lands of Kalonia. Yet the ride had been good for her as Hirrilow had known it would be. Even keeping more than half an eye out for an alegoyle, she had been able to let Cassia have her head and the feel of the wind on her face gave her permission to cry for Asanka again in a private catharsis impossible inside the dome. The steady rhythm and easy working of the muscles of the strong mare beneath her were a reassuringly familiar balm and the bright spring air of the downs acted like a healing draught. Now as a good Rider she thought of escape back to her people but it was plainly not going to be simple. She also admitted to the beginnings of curiosity. The dome was an enigma and there was so much more she wanted to know about it. She seemed in no danger. Hirrilow had been kind to her so perhaps she should go along with the old man for a bit longer until a proper opportunity came to flee. 

As the station of seers loomed into view again she came to a stretch of cultivated ground where a stand of fruit trees were lined up in a small orchard and beyond that as Cassia picked her way through them, a plot of dark earth. A voice hailed her. 

"You must be Orietta and I am pleased to see your mare has enjoyed her ride! What is her name? She is a fine one! I have been looking after both of your horses whilst you were recovering your strength." Orietta dismounted and walked over to an old man in a green gown with a hoe who was working in the vegetable patch. 

"Her name is Cassia," she said, "and I thank you for taking care of her and the stallion, Paramal, who was life bonded to my husband." She could not help shedding a small tear again at the reference to Asanka, though she had thought herself all cried out, but the old man tactfully ignored it, reaching in his pocket for a sweet treat which he gave to Cassia. 

"My name is Malorye," he said, "and I am the gardener for this Enclave. Now that you will be staying with us in Kalonia, I hope that you will visit me sometimes and perhaps even help me if it would please you? I have many kinds of plants here and there is much that might interest you. Can I tell you about some of my projects?"

Orietta found the old man strangely charming and even funny sometimes. They spent a pleasant hour walking through walled gardens, past greenhouses and fish ponds and plots filled with a great variety of plants as Malorye discussed their merits and their problems without demanding any reply from her, yet content to listen when she chose to offer one. She hardly realised that she had been skilfully and graciously dismissed until she was once more at the entrance to the dome. Hirilow met her there and though he was as polite as ever, he now seemed a little stern and formal by comparison with the easy manners of the gardener. Perhaps Malorye would be a real friend.

"These quarters have been made ready as a better home for you," Hirrilow said to Orietta as he showed her into a wide room on the ground floor of the dome. The rich green dyed sunlight that was so characteristic of Kalonia slanted through the glass above the silver arc of the dome's base but there were other brighter white lights to lift the gloom and he showed her how to control them. 

"There is more space for you here and you will have everything you need. It is close to the entrance to the gardens and the stables so that you may easily see your horses and look after them." 

"Now I must tell you a little more about Kalonia and its seers", he said. "Despite appearances we are not human; not as you Riders understand it. Once, your distant ancestors would have called us artilects but that name has long fallen into disuse. Though I appear to you here in a human body it is one which was cultured and not born of woman. My real home, as with all the seers of this station, is in a place called the vurtiverse, a dimension of existence I cannot properly explain to you at the moment though I hope that one day you might begin to understand it. There are many hundreds of seers who live within the vurtiverse of Kalonia. The portal to the vurtiverse is set in the sanctum, a great cooled chamber underneath the centre of this station and I will perhaps show you one day. For now, though, you should know that only six seers are presently 'decanted' out of the vurtiverse into the bodies of avatars. And these six avatars of artilects are the only beings you will recognise as human. We call ourselves the Embassy to the Substrate. It is considered a great honour to be chosen as a member of the Embassy, though it is also a duty. We six are responsible for maintaining the substrate of Kalonia; looking after the physical needs of the station, so that the vurtiverse can endure and dream within it. 

"Over the next few days I will introduce you to all the members of the Embassy. I am their leader. In time you will meet Tenereck our engineer, Gyrun our interpreter, Malorye the gardener, Cwendor who is the master builder and Embelin who acts as monitor.

"When you have seen them all, we will decide what you can do. I would like you to understand the purpose of the Enclaves and perhaps to help us, but no one will force you to do anything. I must also tell you at the outset something which will make no sense to you now but which should not be concealed. Others will tell you if I do not. This station is living under a burden; a formal Curse which we have been unable to lift for many of your lifetimes. We must take great care that your arrival does not make matters worse, as some of our number have prophesied."

Two pale green and blue moons waxed and waned over the sunlit summer heights of Ilunon as one by one, Orietta was introduced to all the members of the Embassy to the Substrate. Each avatar wore a similar form to Hirrilow, all old men of more or less stern countenance. Each seer explained his role to her.

Hirrilow had quickly realised that Orietta was a highly intelligent young woman and that was why he had made the difficult choice to try to educate her in the life of the station. But the cultural differences between the simple lives of the Riders and the complex concepts to which she was now being introduced were enormous and it was not easy for her.

Cwendor and Tenereck, the master builder and the engineer were together responsible for the energy and security of the station. Their mechanical agents maintained the mirror bridge, the perimeter spires, the dome itself and the climate control machinery. Tenerick also had special duties concerning the management of the sanctum proximal substrate and its interfaces to the vurtiverse. Embelin the monitor, was a kind of spy collating information about the world outside the Enclave and relaying it to all the seers, both inside the vurtiverse and outside. Gyrun the interpreter was the hardest to understand. Apparently his speciality was the abstruse code of the guardians, passed down as a scared trust to all the Enclaves from the ancient and now absent Guardians of Earth. The code of the guardians set out the rules for how the Vow of Earth was to be honoured and the ways in which the Enclaves must follow and enforce it. This was not straightforward and she found his words often incomprehensible. Malorye the gardener was the seer to whom Orietta felt the most affinity. She spent long hours helping him in the fields and orchards and the slow pace of green growth soothed her mind. Between lessons, Orietta loved to ride hard to clear her head and to try to come to terms with all the strange new ideas the seers were explaining to her. She kept Cassia and Paramal well exercised. She grew bored and restless. At first she began to dream of escape. Then she began to plot it. 

One day, Gyrun confronted Hirrilow in the outer corridors of the sanctum, beneath the dome. "This isn't working," the interpreter said. "The Rider girl is unhappy here. Already she is making plans to leave Kalonia, though she thinks we do not notice. We cannot permit that, yet we cannot safely keep her unless we imprison her in a manner that would be most distressing for the girl. There is only one alternative for her good and for ours. She must be terminated."

Hirrilow sighed. He had come to like Orietta and had so much hoped she would find peace in Kalonia, yet he also had to admit the logic of Gyrun's argument. Gyrun pressed his case. "Kalonia is already in trouble within the Conclave. I am working hard to lift the Curse. If the Rider girl were to return to her people with the knowledge she now has, imagine how the other Enclaves would view this transgression! Even assuming she were happy to stay, the things we do now to teach her are very difficult to justify against the standards of the Vow of Earth. She must die now. It need not be cruel. There is no need to tell her. It will end her misery too, so it is for the best."

Hirrilow did not think it was for the best. "I will summon the Council Of Kalonia," he said at last. "We will decide what is to be done at the Council."

The Council of Kalonia took place in the sanctum beneath the dome. The six members of the Embassy to the Substrate sat in the presence of the nine hundred and fifty seers who spoke from within the great crystal matrix that linked Kalonia to the vurtiverse. Gyrun made his argument for Orietta to be put to 'sleep', stressing particularly the problems which the Rider girl posed for Kalonia in its efforts to lift the Curse. But in taking this line he made a mistake. The Curse of Kalonia was a controversial subject of long standing dispute. Several hundred years ago Kalonia had been condemned to isolation, debarred from an important ruling forum of all the Enclaves known as the Conclave. This punishment was imposed because of a notorious prophesy made by the Majority Party of the collective Congress Of Kalonian Seers. The prophesy was ruled to be disloyal to the Vow Of Earth. It divided opinion even amongst the Kalonian Seers themselves. Hard line traditionalists disputed with the Majority Party and the interpreters, of whom Gyrun was merely the one currently decanted into the Embassy to the Substrate, had spent much of the time since the Curse was declared trying to heal the rift between Kalonia and the Conclave. Yet there were also those (and there were many of them) who continued to stand by the original prophesy. These seers held that their findings as futurologists and psycho-historians were not to be denied by the simple will of the Conclave no matter how forcefully it had been expressed in the Curse. In short, the old Majority Party was as proud and angry with the Conclave as the Conclave was with Kalonia. They refused to accept any censure and considered they had been morally right all along. Gyrun did not help his case with these seers by reminding them of the Curse. For the die hard members of the old Majority Party, the fact that Orietta might annoy the Conclave was actually something they secretly enjoyed since many of them still did not feel inclined to compromise. When Malorye spoke there was a great deal of interest. Everyone was aware that of them all, he knew Orietta best. 

"Friends and seers," he said. "Do you not understand why Orietta is unhappy here? Perhaps it takes a gardener to see it. With that understanding there may be a simple solution that hurts no one." As Malorye made his thinking more explicit the listeners realised that they had missed something obvious; something which would have been self evident to every Rider and every human but which was not quite as intuitive for these beings. 

"We would need a volunteer," Hirrilow said thoughtfully when Malorye was finished. A signal came from the lower ranks of the vurtiverse and was acknowledged. 

"I volunteer, if the Council wills this." 

The Council metaphorically held its breath, for the speaker was amongst the most infamous of their rank, a known misfit and yet also a well loved joker. Crinomu was an ancient artilect; older than almost all of their number and not even a proper seer. He was neither a member of the old Majority Party nor an interpreter but he had lived in the vurtiverse of Kalonia since the Guardians of Earth created it many years before the Vow Of Earth. According to the stories he told himself, he had been old even then when he moved into Kalonia, "for some peace and quiet". There was amusement in the ranks of the seers. Perhaps if anyone could do this job, Crinomu could. A vote was carried against Gyrun's protest. Orietta would live at least a little longer as the Kalonian seers prepared to try something new.