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 Hirilow, 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."