Station Of Seers : 40

Orietta stood between Hirrilow and Malorye as they bade the expedition farewell. How she wished that she had been allowed to travel with the men! She had pleaded with Hirrilow for the chance but the chief seer had forbidden it. It wasn't because he didn't recognise the strength of her case as well as the strength of her desire. After all, she was the only resident of Kalonia who had actually travelled beyond the boundaries of the plateau and her knowledge of the peoples and customs of the wider world could have been very useful. In all honesty she should have been the leader of the mission. But whilst he was sympathetic, Hirrilow would not let her go. The simple fact was that he was in a very delicate political situation and taking a huge risk already. On a slim technicality he could just about plead conformance with the Vow of Earth in everything he'd done so far but to let Orietta go would have been a clear and unambiguous violation of the code the Enclaves had all maintained for so long. The separation of the Enclaves from the Riders and the rest of the world must be absolute. It was for the Riders to live the Season of Innocence and the Enclaves to watch over it and no Rider must pass knowledge of the Enclaves into the world to pollute its purity. Because he needed not just to establish communion with the Conclave but to obtain other Enclave allies, Hirrilow dare do nothing more that might count against Kalonia in Conclave eyes. Orietta, a citizen of both cultures now, had to stay. Asanka had never been a Rider and on this thin line of logic Hirrilow had allowed him to go. To Orietta it seemed an age since she had come to Kalonia. Seldom since those first few days had she remembered that she was a prisoner as well as a guest but now she felt anew the bitter sting of liberty denied.
In some ways, she felt scarcely older than the day she'd ridden over the mirror bridge. There was a restorative, almost magical aspect to the diet, lifestyle and subtle medical knowledge of the seers which had preserved her youth far beyond the span of years a wild Rider could ever expect. She was not immortal as the seers were and would not return to the Sanctum when aging and death finally caught up with her, yet she had learnt much of their culture and come to appreciate something of their great knowledge and their gentle ways. Despite her longing to be free she had finally accepted the bitter judgement of Hirrilow with good grace. She had learned patience.
But it seemed too, to Orietta at that moment as she watched her lover and her son ride away that she might have inherited something else from Kalonia; a strange capacity for prophecy which had infused her spirit from the proclivities of the Seers in the same way their care had affected her material body.
A sudden coldness came to her heart, harsher than that of the bright Autumn dawn for she had a powerful presentiment that this moment on this bridge was a final farewell. And though she tried later to dismiss her instinct as simple superstitious fear, this foreboding was a true prophecy. Orietta would never see Crinomu or Asanka again for as long as she lived.