Not a dream ? a warning. Geoffrey had been sitting by Ian, who was remembering in a broken, scarcely coherent way how he and Ian had rescued Misery from the palace dungeons of the mad French viscount Leroux, how they had escaped in a wagonload of hay, and how Misery distracted one of the viscounts guards at a critics moment by slipping one gorgeously unclad leg out of the hay and waving it delicately.

It was not a pleasant experience. It would be nice to credit himself with such selfless motives, but it wasnt the truth. The actual manuscript of Miserys Return had been safely deposited under the bed, and there it still was. And there was not just one piling but two; the pain was the pilings, and part of him knew for a long time before most of his mind had knowledge of knowing that the shattered pilings were his own shattered legs.

It snarled dully in what remained of his shins and in the bunched salt-dome that had replaced his left knee. It had been the match he wanted.

This dragged his left leg slightly askew, and the bolt of pain in his crushed knee was enough to wake him up. Paul thumbed the thickness of the remaining pages in Annies book and thought Ralph Dugan should have checked his horoscope whoops, make that horrorscope ? the day he proposed to Annie.