In truth, it would be easy for a man to lose his way in the Delta. And would that be such an ill fate? Pausing to swig from his waterskin, Ushahin pondered the matter. There was something … pleasant … about the swamp. He felt good here. It wasn’t merely a question of the moist air being kind to his bones,. no. Something else was at work, something deeper. There was a pulse beating in his veins that hadn’t surged since … since when?

Never, perhaps. One half of his blood, after all, was Ellylon. Haomane’s Children did not know desire of the flesh, not in the same way other races among the Lesser Shapers did. The Lord-of-Thought had Shaped them, and the Lord-of-Thought had refused Satoris’ Gift, that which was freely bestowed on other Shapers’ Children.

The other half … ah.

Arahila Second-Born, Arahila the Fair. She had accepted his Lordship’s Gift for her Children; and Haomane’s, too, that which he had withheld from all but his beloved Sister’s Children. Thus the race of Men, gifted with thought, quick with desire.

Ushahin had never reveled in the mortal parentage of his father, in his possession of Lord Satoris’ Gift. Here, in the Delta, it was different. The songs he crooned under his breath were cradle-songs, sung to him by his mother aeons ago, before his body was beaten, broken and twisted.

“So, Haomane!” Ushahin addressed his words to a cloud of midges that hung in the air before him, standing in lieu of the First-Born among Shapers. “You’re afraid, eh? What’s the matter? Was Lord Satoris’ Gift more powerful than you reckoned?” Pushing hard on his pole, he hummed, watching the midges dance. “Seems to me mayhap it was, Lord-of-Thought. At least in this place.”

“Kaugh, kaugh!”

Ravens burst from the tops of the mangroves; one, two; half a dozen. They circled in the dank air above the center of the swamp, and sunlight glinted purple on their wings. Ushahin paused and rested on his pole, gazing upward. Images of a hillock, vast and mossy, flickered through his mind.

“What’s this?” he mused aloud. “What do you wish me to see? All right, all right, little brothers! I come apace.”

He shoved hard on the pole, anchoring its butt in the sludge beneath the waterways. The skiff answered, gliding over still waters made ruddy by the afternoon sun. In the center of a watery glade stood a single palodus tree, tall and solitary. In the shadow of its spreading canopy arose the mossy hillock he had glimpsed. For no reason he could name, Ushahin’s mouth grew dry, and his pulse beat in his loins. It was a strange sensation; so strange it took him long minutes to recognize it as carnal desire.