I was going home.  I could think of nothing else, reliving old
memories of my grandmothers and greatgrandmothers before me.  Was this
how they had felt on returning too?  My training was over, but my
learning had just begun.  My Exodus... So many many others had gone
before, yet they were gone and I alone remained.  I had learned so many
things, yet only now would I be permitted to actually use them.  I was
through playing with blocks and baubles, my childhood was over.  Time to
begin my real work.

	*********************

	The Gifting 
	Chapter 1: Of Beginnings

	The shuttle settled down into the gravity well of the large moon with
a dampened rattling and quiet groans.  Ferdinand was not only an expert
pilot, but he loved his job and it showed in every movement of the
little vehicle.  It wasn't every day that he got the opprotunity to fly
something as small and maneuverable as this, he thought.  But then, it
wasn't every day that an Heir came back from Exodus.  He wondered if the
old tales were really true, with all the rumours surrounding his
passenger's return.  He wondered if he could face being the one to have
brought destruction to the Holdings and he prayed that it wasn't so.

	In such confined and close quarters, I could not help but taste the
overflow of the pilot's fears and musings.  He was the first Giftless I
had met in all the time of my Exodus, and I was startled at both his
lack of shielding and his fear.  Why should any fear me?  I mused.  With
the state of the Holdings during the last five years since the death of
my great aunt, I had hoped that all would welcome me as the means of
reunification.  With a embarrased start, I tightened my own shields. 
Myriide had warned me about how blatant the projections of the Giftless
were.  She would not have been lenient with such a lapse.



	With the cumbersome robes of an Initiate Heir draped around me,
interfering with my every step, I walked down the gangway to the soil of
the outermost of my nation's Holdings.  Tradition required that an
Initiate must personally set foot on every Holding that the nation she
was come to rule may see her and test her, proving to themselves that
she was worthy of their loyalty.  Here, today, I would  begin to bring
the nation together, or I would divide it until the end of my reign.   I
held my head proudly erect as I took the last step off the ramp into the
fine reddish dirt that would soon be staining the hem of my robes.  Well
then, what must be, will be.  Let it begin.

	*********************

	3 years of traveling, and I was setting down on yet another planet.  As
before,
reputation and rumour had flown before me, sweeping across the Holdings
like a bowcrest wave before a ship.  As before, the heavy robes were
squashed into the cushioned straps that held me into the chair.  As
before, as before.  The only thing different today was the Holding I was
arriving at.  All others had pledged to me already, but that would
matter not a whit if this one single Holding did not.  This was the end
of the line, the true end of the Exodus.  And the final end to child's
freedom for me.  I listened as Ferdinand set the shuttle down expertly
yet again.

**************

	She's grown, he thought.  A child had left, but no one would care to
mistake this regal woman as such now.  Clearly she had grown into her
heritage during her Exodus, but then, was that not exactly the purpose
for it?  He watched as she greeted the throngs of people as her people
and the Holding as her home.  A path cleared, and she purposefully stood
toward the dias where the elders sat, passing him without a flicker of
her eye.  He sighed.  It would be too much to hope for that she would
remember him.

***************

	I stood forth on the dias facing the mass of people.  The elders had
challenged me to prove to them what I had learned, and so I would.  I
stretched forth my conciousness, further, further, touching each
individual in the croud and greeting them personally, individually, rich
with the sudden knowledge of who they were.  Silence swept over them,
and I spoke to all of them.  Later some would swear that they heard me
aloud, but all who had been there that day knew the truth, that I had in
fact inherited the Gifts that had skipped so many generations of Heirs,
until only the legend had remained.  A great shout went up as so many
times before, across the rest of the Holdings, proclaiming me to truly
be not merely a placeholder, but truly the Holder of Holdings and ruler
of the nation.  I turned back around to face the elders, and saw the
terribly mixed reactions there.  Some were crying quietly, some were
simply overawed, some broke my heart as I saw the terror in their eyes,
and two looked at me with scarce-veiled hatred.