She tried to move, but it seemed that a chill had come to her limbs. Within her mind visions floated, but walls of darkness closed in around them before they could register. She felt herself fading.

A man's voice spoke close by, urgent. 'What do you hear?'

She frowned, trying to concentrate. Then she smiled. 'A spinning coin. I hear a spinning coin.'

BOOK TWO - DARUJHISTAN

BOOK TWO - DARUJHISTAN

What windfall has brushed our senses?

This rocking thunderhead that scraped

the lake's placid waters

and spun a single day's shadows

like a wheel that rolled us

from dawn to dusk, while we

tottered our tender ways ...

What windlass crackles dire warnings?

There in the gentle swells that tossed

a bobbing cork our way

with its fine magenta scent wafting

like a panoply of petals

that might be ashes

in twilight's crimson smear ...

Rumour Born

Fisher (b.?}

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER FIVE

And if this man sees you in his dreams,

while you rock in the season's

brooding night

'neath a tree's stout branch,

and your shadow is hooded

above the knotted rope,

so will the winds of his passing

twitch your stiffened limbs

into some semblance of running ...

Rumour Born

Fisher (b.?)

907th Year in the Third Millennium

The Season of Fanderay in the year of the Five Tusks

Two thousand years since the birth of Darujhistan, the city

In his dream the small round man found himself leaving the city of Darujhistan through Two Ox Gate as he headed towards the setting sun. The tattered tails of his faded red waistcoat flapped in his haste. He had no idea how far he would have to walk. Already his feet ached.

There were miseries in the world, and then there was misery. In times of conscience he held the world's concerns above his own. Fortunately, he reflected, such times were few, and this, he told himself, was not one of them.

'Alas, the very same dream propels these many-toed implements beneath these wobbly knees.' He sighed. 'Ever the same dream.' And so it was. He saw before him the sun riding the distant hilltop, a copper disc through woodsmoke haze. His feet carried him down the winding dirt street of Gadrobi Shantytown, the shacks and huts on either side crouching in the gathering gloom. Old men wrapped in the dingy yellow rags of lepers squatted over nearby cookfires, falling silent as he passed. Similarly clad women stood by the muddy well, pausing in their endless dunking of cats – a bemusing activity, its symbolism lost on the man as he hurried past.

He crossed Maiten River bridge, passed through the dwindling Gadrobi Herder camps, out on to the open road flanked by vineyard plantations. He lingered here, thinking of the wine these succulent grapes would produce. But dreams carried on with their own momentum, and the thought was but fleeting in its passage.