His vision and hearing throbbed with each heartbeat, but the nausea was passing. Not now, he thought. Not while I need all my wits about me. He grasped the rolled parchment pages in his left hand, and they too seemed to pulse with each beat of his heart. It had started as a headache three years ago, one that lasted four days and seemed to reach out to every nerve in his body, drowning him in a pain he had never imagined before. He had thrashed and cried in his bed, unable to move or go for help. Even back then, Nomi was the only person who ever paid him a visit, and then not frequently, but she had been away on her second voyage to Ventgoria. He had suffered alone, and recovered without telling anyone what had happened. One of those things, he had thought at the time. A sickness in the air, or bad food from one of the street vendors. Looking back, he now considered it the period of impregnation, because every time an attack came he had visions: strange, obscure, sometimes disturbing, other times quite mundane.
