“The spaces in between.” Ushahin nodded again. “I did. Those are the places we occupy, my children; those of us whom the world has failed to claim. No one knows it better than I. And I entrusted those places to you, with Lord Satoris’ blessing. Why, then, did you bring the Ellyl woman there?”

The hundredfold answer was there in the forefront of their thoughts, in their hungry, staring eyes. None of them gave voice to it. It didn’t matter; he knew. Lives of happy normalcy, wives and husbands, sons and daughters. An honest livelihood filled with the myriad mundane joys of living. What-might-have-been.

Oh, yes, Ushahin Dreamspinner knew.

“’Tis a bittersweet joy,” he said softly, “is it not? What might have been. I, too, have wondered, my children. What might I have been, had my Ellyl kin claimed me?” He lifted his gnarled hands, gazing at them, then at his madlings. “A bridge, perhaps, with limbs straight and true, built to span the divide between Haomane’s Children and Arahila’s. Instead”—he shook his head—“I am the abyss. And when they seek to gaze into the spaces in between and stake a claim there, they will find me gazing back at them. I am the dark mirror that reflects their most fearful desires. I am the dark underbelly of Haomane’s Prophecy.”

The madlings were silent, rapt.

“Never forget.” Ushahin’s voice hardened. “It was the Ellylon who rejected me, who wanted no part of a child of mixed blood, gotten in violence and tainted—tainted, they say—by Lord Satoris’ Gift. I am the very future they court in fear and loathing. I am the shadow that precedes the children of the Prophecy they seek to fulfill. And who can say that they will not despise their own offspring? For they, too, will carry the taint of Lord Satoris’ Gift with them.”

Someone hissed.

Ushahin smiled. “Oh, yes,” he said. “For they despise his Lordship above all else; always and forever. They may grieve at your pain, and they may offer pleasant visions, but they are Haomane’s Children, and they will not lift one finger”—he raised one crooked finger—“to aid you unless Haomane profits by it.”

The kitchen erupted in indignant rage. Ushahin rode their anger like a wave, letting them seethe and rant until they subsided, turning toward him with expectant eyes, waiting to hear what he would say next. His madlings knew him. They understood him. He had been broken and had risen triumphant nonetheless; he bore the badges of his breaking—his uneven face, his twisted limbs—in painful solidarity with their aborted lives and shattered minds. It was for this that they loved him.

A vast tenderness infused his heart, and he wondered if Shapers felt thusly toward their Children. It seemed it might be so.