Station Of Seers : 53

Late in the afternoon of the third day with at least two days more to travel before they would reach the dome of Kalonia, Crinomu suddenly pulled up his horse and dismounted.
"What's the matter?" Asanka asked, worried at this unexpected stop.
"I'm getting some bad news from the sanctum," he said. "I can't go on just now. Something terrible has happened. The Riders have broken through."
Asanka climbed down from his horse and watched with concern as Crinomu paced in circles biting his lip. It was the first time he had seen his mentor look discomposed and even apparently disoriented. Despite the urgency of the journey he could quickly see that there was nothing for it but to set up an early camp and start a fire against the evening cold. Crinomu tried to help but he was soon shivering uncontrollably. His co-ordination seemed to be failing him as though he were drunk or struck down with a sudden central nervous condition.
"I have to tell you something dreadful," he said as Asanka was starting to melt snow in a pan over the freshly kindled flames so that they could have a warm drink.
"The Riders have killed your mother. They have killed Orietta," he blurted out. Whilst the youth was still absorbing the shock of it he continued.
"They have killed all the seers and not just the Embassy to the Substrate. They have destroyed the sanctum itself. Kalonia is overthrown. And they have killed me too."
Trying to make sense of this overwhelming intelligence, Asanka could only puzzle over the last remark as though he could save a single unravelling thread from a burning tapestry.
"I don't understand. How can they kill you? What do you mean?"
"Before all things I am an artilect, Asanka. Or rather I was. You saw me in this form and thought that I was exactly the same as you but this decanted body was only a projection. I may have breathed, eaten and slept as you do but like the seers the greater part of me has always been in the sanctum of Kalonia. That was the true home of my soul. Now it is destroyed and with it my soul. A shadow will linger yet awhile in this body, bereft of its true self and unable to stand the shock of separation. Stay with the shadow and be kind for soon, very soon, this faint image will pass from the world. I was older than most of the seers of Kalonia. In my youth I roamed the Galactic Compact before the Great Forgetting and before the Vow Of Earth was taken when so many wonders were possible they can no longer even be conceived of in this barren age. But now I have reached the end. This last projection of my long, long life will die quickly now, outlasting for only a short while my true life that has finally passed forever."
Having delivered himself of this speech Crinomu seemed to lose all willpower and strength and he lay down shivering more violently than before. There was little Asanka could do now other than to make him comfortable by propping a pillow under his head and a blanket under and over him.