Station Of Seers : 22

Orietta never knew about Crinomu's trial and sentence. It was a matter of indifference to the Council and he chose to spare her the knowledge knowing that to share it would only cause his lover needless distress. As far as Orietta was concerned her pregnancy against all the rules he had carefully explained was due to a happy mistake in the growing of his body. He told her that the seers had decided to accept the consequences after the fact, though they had since ordered his sterilisation to prevent the conception of a second child. She had no reason or desire to question this story.
Three months passed and towards the end of the summer Orietta gave birth to a healthy baby boy in a relatively trouble free delivery. According to the custom of the Rider tribes, less than a month later she took the baby out into the open air of a pre dawn morning. She rode Cassia a short way into the cool early autumn darkness with the boy strapped in a papoose and wrapped up tightly for warmth. Crinomu accompanied mother and child on Paramal, bearing a lantern. They stopped on a low rise before the dome of Kalonia was out of sight and all gathered together in the glow of the lantern. Then as the sun rose, Orietta lifted the boy into the brighter light bursting over the horizon.
"Let your name be Asanka," she declaimed formally, "in honour of a good man who could have been your father and who died to save your mother. Though you will live here with the seers, I make a promise now that I shall teach you all the ways of the Riders, so that the spirit of your namesake Asanka and his people, and my people too, will dwell within you all your life!"