He slumped against his bed of bone and flesh, life draining out of him, aware of each fading beat of his heart. The dragon's red scales shimmered like fire as the beast drew near to watch him die.

Then the dragon jumped backward. Bitterwood's eyes reflexively followed the motion. The beast's scales no longer shimmered like flame-they were actually on fire. The dragon yelped like a scalded puppy as bright white flame danced over his whole body. The dragon fell in seconds, its hide and muscle boiling away with a terrible heat. Foul, oily smoke rolled over Bitterwood, reeking of burnt feathers and charred meat. In under a minute the flame died away, leaving only a mound of jumbled, black bone, which cracked and crumbled to dust.

Bitterwood knew what had happened. The gates of h.e.l.l had opened for him, and the heat of the infernal furnace had caught the dragon. It was time to pay for all his sins. Silently, he closed his eyes, and surrendered to the glowing green devil that walked toward him. The last sound he heard was the buzz of flies.

BITTERWOOD WOKE SLOWLY to soft music played on instruments he couldn't recognize. The sound was ephemeral; a woman's voice sang wordlessly in harmony. The air was cool and dry, and smelled of freshly washed cotton. He opened his eyes to the cleanest room he'd ever seen. Light seeped from every direction through pale, translucent blue walls. The room was dome shaped, as best he could determine. In the absence of shadows and corners, it was hard to judge its scale. Raising himself for a better look, Bitterwood discovered he was naked, resting beneath a cotton sheet on a firm, white mattress. He raised his right arm to his face. To his bewilderment, he found a hand there. A strange, new hand, plump and pink as baby skin, nailless, hairless, and itching like mad. to soft music played on instruments he couldn't recognize. The sound was ephemeral; a woman's voice sang wordlessly in harmony. The air was cool and dry, and smelled of freshly washed cotton. He opened his eyes to the cleanest room he'd ever seen. Light seeped from every direction through pale, translucent blue walls. The room was dome shaped, as best he could determine. In the absence of shadows and corners, it was hard to judge its scale. Raising himself for a better look, Bitterwood discovered he was naked, resting beneath a cotton sheet on a firm, white mattress. He raised his right arm to his face. To his bewilderment, he found a hand there. A strange, new hand, plump and pink as baby skin, nailless, hairless, and itching like mad.

He raised his left arm to scratch... and discovered a second fresh limb, also sporting pale, white fingers. His hands felt as if they were being swarmed by ants, as did his legs. He kicked aside the sheets to find his legs restored. Not even a bruise remained as evidence of their earlier mutilation. He noticed something strange about his toes. He could see them quite clearly. Although he was looking at them from a distance of about five and a half feet, they may as well have been an inch from his face.

Behind the walls the shadow of a tall, slender man moved. The shadow grew closer. The wall shimmered as the figure pa.s.sed through.

He gasped as the figure turned out to be not a man, but a woman, the glowing devil he'd seen before he'd died. Now that he wasn't seeing her through the haze of smoke, she didn't look as fearsome as she had earlier. Still, she didn't look fully human, either. While she had a lovely face, beautiful by any measure, her skin was a bright jade green. Her hair was a darker shade, like moss. She wore a golden gown that hung closely to the curves of her body. She smiled with pearly teeth. Her lips were a shade of green darker than her hair, nearly black.

"You'll grow nails in a few hours. Hair, too," she said. "Until then, you'll itch like crazy. Sorry."

"Where...?"

"We're still in Atlanta," the woman said. "My name is Cynthia. I used to live here, a long time ago. I know I look strange but I'm human, like you. What's your name? Where are you from?"

"Christdale," he answered. "My name is Bant Bitterwood."

"Hmm," she said, setting down on the edge of the bed. "Interesting. Christdale. I'm always amazed at how Christianity has endured over the centuries. Of course, when I lived here, this whole state was in an area known as the 'Bible Belt.' If the old time religion was going to survive, it makes sense that it endured in what used to be Georgia."

Bitterwood stared at the woman, at her flawless features. Despite her odd coloring, she was the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen. Her face reminded him of the face of the G.o.ddess statue that used to dwell in his home village, long ago. She smelled liked honeysuckle and mint. He asked, "Are you the G.o.ddess? Is this heaven? Was Hezekiah wrong about my d.a.m.nation? Was that only another lie?"

"No," Cynthia said. "I mean, no, you're not d.a.m.ned, but, no you're not in heaven either. I have no idea who Hezekiah is or what he told you. But I'm just a person like you." She paused a moment and glanced down at her hands with their dark green nails. "Oh," she said. "You might be thrown by my skin tone; it's just a fashion choice where I come from. You're still on earth."

"But, the dragon..." Bitterwood held his hands before him. His skin continued to itch.

"Is dead. I've broken all sorts of rules," Cynthia said, brushing her long hair back from her face. "I'm here as part of an ecological survey. My job is to capture a few dragons and take them back to Atlantis for further study. Still, I saw that dragon toying with you and something just snapped. I'm not supposed to intervene but I felt guilty. I had to save you."

"Guilty?" asked Bitterwood.

"About a thousand years ago, I was one of the people who decided we should leave the dragons alone. They were ecological nightmares, yes, the epitome of everything wrong with genetic modification. However, I argued that it would be unethical to exterminate them all after they'd escaped into the broader environment. They were sentient beings, after all. I had no idea where that would leave the world a thousand years later."

Bitterwood shook his head. "I don't understand what you are saying."

"No. I'm pretty sure you don't," Cynthia said, smiling. "You don't have the proper social context to understand what we did a thousand years ago. The simple story is that mankind went through a century or so when we had unraveled the genetic code-the building blocks of life itself-and we used it to make all kinds of fun things. Some were benign: drought resistant crops, cancer-eating bacteria, allergen-free cats. Some weren't so great, though. We made weapons out of micro-organisms, for instance. Nearly killed half the people on earth in the last war with those. And, of course, somebody had the bright idea of making dragons."

Bitterwood sat up further in the bed. He wasn't sure what she was trying to communicate, but thought he got the gist of her final statement. "People made dragons?"

"Yeah. By the mid twenty-first century, all the big game animals on the planet were extinct or protected. So my employers sidestepped the law by creating new game animals. We pulled creatures out of mythology: chimera, hydras, unicorns and, of course, dragons. Filled up a big game park in the middle of the Ozarks. Charged clients a million dollars an hour to hunt there. We turned a profit inside of five months."

Bitterwood tried to make sense of what Cynthia was saying. Individually, he understood about half of her words. Strung together, the words were meaningless to him.

"We wanted the dragons to be smart," Cynthia said in a tone that sounded like a confession. "We already had the genetic code to build the most effective brain the world had ever evolved-the human mind. Around the time I was born, our early genetic tampering let us put jellyfish genes in monkeys. By the time I entered the field, we were putting human cerebral cortexes in warm-blooded bird-lizards. There was something of a slippery slope in between the two developments. In fairness, we only wanted the dragons to be smart enough to be challenging prey. We didn't really plan on them escaping and organizing the way they did. We set out to make entertaining monsters; we wound up making man-eating politicians with feathers. Talk about the law of unintended consequences."

Bitterwood shook his head. "I don't know what you are trying to tell me."

Cynthia shrugged. "It's not important. I'm just babbling about old times. I get nostalgic whenever I come back to the mainland."

Bitterwood rubbed his eyes. "I must be dreaming," he said. "I have a clear memory of my legs breaking. My hands... they were devoured."

"Yeah, that was pretty gross," she said. "I'm not supposed to help people, but really, when the dragon spit out your own hand into your face, I kind of lost my head. After I killed the dragon, I figured, in for a penny, in for a pound, and decided I'd save you. I pumped you full of nano and nutrients to fix your legs and regrow your arms."

"Nano?"

"Tiny machines. Don't worry about it. Think of it as magic. And, hey, you're in for a treat. Your old arms and legs looked pretty banged up. I examined the hand the dragon had spit out. It looked like you'd broken almost every bone in it at one time or another. Your new arms and legs are going to be as finely tuned as your genetic code can support. You'll be crazy fast and crazy strong, at least for a few years until you wear them out again."

"Oh," he said. "Will they always look this strange?"

"Once they age a few hours, they'll look more like the ones you had. I also tuned up your eyes. You were a teeny bit nearsighted; you probably didn't have a great picture of what your feet looked like most of the time. Now I've got you set to about twenty-ten. The next time you shoot at a dragon from a couple of yards away, maybe you'll hit him. I just wish I could do something about your brain."

"My brain?"

"Yeah. It's a bi-polar mess. Alas, I have to tap into a different database before I can program any kind of brain alterations. I'll get grief if they find out I gave you new fingers. If I start rewiring your brain, wow, I won't be let back out of Atlantis for like, another thousand years."

"Atlantis?"

She motioned toward a wall. It faded away, revealing a great golden city beyond. Angels flitted through the air, darting among slender spires taller than the highest mountains. The music shifted from the light, ethereal tones to a more dramatic, bra.s.sy rhythm.

"This is a picture of where we live now," she said. "It's where we went, once we became immortal."

"Then this is is heaven, after all," said Bitterwood. heaven, after all," said Bitterwood.

"I can see why you might think that. Atlantis is the city we retreated to after we decided that tinkering with the world always led to more harm than good. We had reached such power with our technology that we changed the planet faster than we could react. We had the footprints of giants, and we were stumbling around as aimlessly as toddlers. After we beat death, we had the most dangerous technology of all in our hands. The fact that humans died off easily was always a nice brake on our ability to harm the world. If all the billions of people in the world were allowed to live forever and keep breeding, we'd wreck the planet. So we had to make choices. Not everyone could be allowed immortality. In the end, a select few retreated to a place where we wouldn't do any further damage, and let the rest of the world go feral."

Bant scratched the backs of his tingling hands against the raspy stubble of his cheeks. He asked, "If you are human, and you have this power, why do you allow the dragons to kill your fellow men? Why don't you save us?"

Cynthia nodded toward the wall which faded back to blue. "Actually, we're considering it. Some of us think it's time to tinker again. Bring the gift of knowledge back to the rest of humanity, slowly and carefully. Unfortunately, the downside of immortality is we'll probably debate this another century or two."

"A century?" Bitterwood asked.

"Or more," she said. "We have to consider all ramifications."

"Humans are dying now," Bitterwood said. "Dragons killed my family. Their king starves humans with his unreasonable policies. He currently wages war... I may be the only survivor of his last atrocity. What is left for you to consider?"

She sighed. "Look, don't ha.s.sle me, okay? It's not like things were so different when humans were in charge. We killed a lot more people than dragons can even dream of. You're just going to have to have faith that we'll do the right thing."

"Faith is a foul word in my vocabulary," said Bitterwood. "I've suffered only betrayal when I acted on faith."

"You're not a very grateful person are you?" Cynthia asked. "I save your life, fix your hands, tune up your eyes, and I don't even get a thank you?"

Bitterwood looked around. Without looking in her direction, he asked, "Where are my clothes?"

Cynthia handed him a neat stack of folded linen. "I had the nano patch and clean your stuff. I also fixed up your bow and arrows. Get dressed, then follow me."

Cynthia walked back out the wall. Her shadow paused on the other side, then moved away.

Bitterwood pondered the clothes she'd handed him. They looked like his, only as clean and crisp as if the cloth had just come off the loom. Was this witchcraft? Was he endangering himself by taking this gift? He thought the matter over and felt dumb; he was afraid of his own clothes. Shaking his head at his foolishness, he put his clothes back on. The clean linen against his new skin was disturbingly pleasant. It smelled as if it had been dried in warm sun in a spring breeze. His boots had been restored. The leather was cotton soft and fit like a second skin as he pulled them on.

He reached out to touch the wall Cynthia had exited. It felt like a curtain of falling water, though when he pulled his fingers back they were dry. He noticed pale half moons near the end of his fingers. His nails were growing back.

He held his breath and walked outside. Hot, humid air instantly soaked into his clothing. He raised his pink arm to the blazing summer sun. He was in a grove of fragrant, dark green kudzu, humming with yellow bees, aflutter with iridescent black b.u.t.terflies. A trio of crates stood before him holding three dragons: a sun-dragon, a sky-dragon, and an earth-dragon. Two of the dragons lay still as death within their cages. The sky-dragon alone was awake. He pressed against the slender silver bars of the cage when he saw Bitterwood.

"Help me," the dragon pleaded, extending a blue wing through the bars.

Bitterwood studied the creature's face. This dragon seemed younger than the sky-dragons he'd fought in recent weeks. His scales bore the faint white speckles of late adolescence. His accent was strange to Bant's ears. Perhaps it was only because he'd never heard a dragon ask for help before.

The dragon's golden eyes held a look of utter terror. "Before she comes back," the beast begged, "unlock the cage."

"I'm not in a mood to help dragons," Bitterwood said, walking away from the crates. He now saw Cynthia standing at the outer edge of the kudzu grove. She held his restored bow and arrows and offered them to him as he drew near.

"I can't believe this isn't a dream," he said as he took the weapons into his newly minted fingers.

"Maybe it is," Cynthia said, walking back toward the kudzu. "Maybe you should live as if it is, at least. You've got a new lease on life. What do you want to do with it?"

"Kill dragons," he said.

She giggled. "It's important to have goals. Maybe you can make all the studying and debating we're engaged in back in Atlantis moot. Get out there and wipe out all the dragons single-handed."

"I'll try," Bitterwood said, pushing aside a veil of kudzu and stepping beyond the grove. "I just have one more question."

Cynthia didn't answer.

Bitterwood stepped back through the emerald veil. The crates were gone. He called out her name. All he heard in reply was the breeze rustling through leaves.

Bitterwood took shelter from the sun in the shade of a vine-draped wall. He sat until nightfall, staring at his hands, watching his nails grow back, until all was restored. He thought about what Cynthia had told him, trying to fit the words into something that made sense.

It all boiled down to this. Humans had created dragons. Dragons had no rightful claim to the world. As the sun sank, Bitterwood closed his strong, young hands into fists, digging the nails into his palms, until the pain would most surely wake him.

He didn't wake up. Bitterwood opened his hands, then picked up his bow and arrow. He fixed his eyes on a single purple kudzu bloom across the grove thirty yards away. He fired an arrow, neatly severing the stem. The flower dropped, vanishing into the blanket of dark leaves.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: h.o.m.oNCULUS.

VENDEVOREX STEPPED BACK from the now paralyzed body of the prophet. The three smartwires continued to snake toward the silvery command homunculus he held. He reached out his free claw, fusing the tips of the three wires together so that they fell dead. The human whose life he'd just saved stood looking at him, slack-jawed. from the now paralyzed body of the prophet. The three smartwires continued to snake toward the silvery command homunculus he held. He reached out his free claw, fusing the tips of the three wires together so that they fell dead. The human whose life he'd just saved stood looking at him, slack-jawed.

"This is a very dangerous toy," Vendevorex said. "Did you bring this with you from Atlantis? Are you still working with Cynthia?"

"No," the man said. "I never saw her again. You're Vendevorex? You survived Zanzeroth's a.s.sault?"

"Yes and yes," Vendevorex answered. "So, if you aren't working with Cynthia, who are you?"

"I'm Bitterwood," the man answered.

"I see," Vendevorex said, furrowing his brow. "I expect you'll be trying to kill me, then."

Bitterwood shook his head. "I agreed to spare you. I gave my word. To Jandra."

"Jandra," Vendevorex said, remembering his reason for being here. With a thought, he encased the homunculus in a thin coat of lead, then turned away from Bitterwood and moved toward his fallen student. He knelt next to her, reaching out his hand to feel the pulse in her throat, then gently touched the gash above her ear. Jandra moaned slightly and turned her head away.

At that moment three guards ran around the corner of the nearest building.

"Halt!" one cried.

"No," Vendevorex said, reaching into his pouch of powders. He flicked his dust-coated claws in the direction of the three green dragons. "My friends and I will be left alone." Vendevorex closed his claw in a deliberate, dramatic gesture. Suddenly, the spears carried by the dragons began to glow. Then Vendevorex flapped a wing, sending a breeze across the dusty ground. The spear shafts crumbled to ash and were carried off by the gust.

The leader of the three dragons looked confused. His eyes glanced down to his empty hands, then looked toward the decapitated body of the slain soldier, before turning to the frozen form of the black-garbed man, then fixing, finally, on Vendevorex. The leader's face flickered with sudden recognition.

"You're the wizard!" he yelped.

"You're right," Vendevorex answered.

"Yaa!" they shouted in unison. Their scales suddenly stood on end as they spun about to flee.

"Stop!" Vendevorex commanded. "If you try to run, I will disintegrate your legs as easily as your spears. I want us to come to an understanding."

The three guards didn't take another step. Vendevorex could see their muscles trembling as if resisting an invisible spring that threatened to snap them away.

"You should know that now that I have seen your faces, I can kill you at any time with just a thought," Vendevorex said. "I can make it as quick and simple as I did with your weapons, or I can prolong your agony, depending on my mood. I spare you on one condition. You must speak to no one of what you've witnessed. Understood?"

"Y-y-yessir."

"Then go," Vendevorex said.

The three dragons tripped over one another as they raised their tails high and raced back down the side street.

"It was foolish to let them go," Bitterwood said. "To silence them, you should have killed them."