"Then whose...?"

Jandra lifted the skullcap from the box. "It's your genie, Shay."

Shay took the skullcap, staring at his reflection. His hair was a hopeless mess.

There was a note in the box. "Thank you for saving my daughter," it read. "Study hard in case you need to do so again."

"He has nice penmanship," said Shay. He shook his head. "I adjusted to the wings, but I don't know if I'm ready to learn magic."

Jandra took the skullcap from his hands and set it back in the box.

"Learning magic can wait," she whispered. "Making magic is the order of the moment."

Her lips brushed against his. He closed his eyes.

And then there was magic.

VENDEVOREX FLOATED DOWN to the fishbowl garden. The fish, he noted, were still doing well. Jazz's antenna was dismantled, spread on the ground before the young boy who studied the pieces with ancient eyes. He was dressed in a white toga torn from the sc.r.a.ps of a larger garment. to the fishbowl garden. The fish, he noted, were still doing well. Jazz's antenna was dismantled, spread on the ground before the young boy who studied the pieces with ancient eyes. He was dressed in a white toga torn from the sc.r.a.ps of a larger garment.

Zeeky sat near him on the lip of a large flowerpot. Skitter foraged at a nearby tree, ravenously devouring the ripe avocados that weighed down the branches.

The boy looked up as Vendevorex's shadow fell over him.

"The jamming signal is gone," said Vendevorex.

"Yes," said the boy.

"But you still can't communicate with the nanites that populate the city?"

"No," said the boy. He looked toward the towering spires. "I can no longer hear the voices of my children." He looked back at the dismantled antennae. "I don't know how she managed it, but she's locked the parts of my mind that would let me talk to all the pieces of myself."

"What are you?" Vendevorex asked.

The boy smiled. "I'm Atlantis, of course."

Zeeky shook her head. "He knows who you are. He's asking what you are." Vendevorex looked at the girl. She shrugged. "I'm good at understanding what folks are really talking about."

Atlantis swept his hands across the garden, toward the spires, then gazed toward the ocean. "I am all that you see. I am the city."

"Again," said Vendevorex. "I'm aware of that. Ca.s.sie told me you weren't from earth."

"Not from this this earth," said Atlantis. earth," said Atlantis.

"That's an odd word to emphasize."

"There a many, many earths. More are created with every tick of the clock. Unders.p.a.ce is the medium in which these infinite earths float, each existing in a slightly different s.p.a.ce than the others. You can't be blamed for not knowing. The earths are separated by dimensional membranes. Under ordinary circ.u.mstances, the only evidence of the other universes is their gravitational bleed. They create the illusion that there's far more matter in a universe than there truly is."

"I take it that these dimensional membranes can be crossed," said Vendevorex.

"Yes. The technology of this earth would have required eons to develop it, however. I come from an earth where the dinosaurs never died. They evolved into a tool-using civilization fifty million years before the clever apes of this world learned to master fire."

"You don't look like a highly advanced dinosaur," said Vendevorex.

"No," said Atlantis. "I arrived here as a seed. A tiny nugget of intelligence wrapped in a sh.e.l.l of nanites, programmed to serve the race of beings that had designed me, colonizers of other realities. I didn't find the race I was programmed to serve, however. Instead, the first intelligent being I encountered was a human. I sampled his genetic code and constructed this body in his image. I gleaned the myth of Atlantis from his memories. I was programmed to serve others in perfect altruism, providing for every need. So I allowed the children of this world to share in the bounty of my abilities."

"I'm not certain that your children have thrived under your guidance," said Vendevorex.

The boy's forehead wrinkled. "How can you say they haven't thrived? They're immortal, or at least they were. They had no reason to fear hunger or thirst or heat or cold, until I was crippled by the G.o.ddess."

"The fact that you have a city of six billion people who've forgotten how to feed themselves, or sew a garment, or start a fire, is rather convincing evidence that you've done your children a disservice."

Atlantis frowned. "It's all I know how to do. It's true, perhaps, that unlimited altruism has not been as successful an advancement strategy for humans as it was for the quinveris."

"The quinveris?"

"The race that long ago created my kind. You know them as earth-dragons."

Vendevorex was puzzled by this revelation. Earth-dragons could, plausibly, be evolved dinosaurs. They definitely weren't part of the genetically engineered lineage that had produced sky-dragons and earth-dragons. But, as a race, they hardly seemed advanced enough to create the miraculous technology Atlantis commanded. However, if the quinveris had relied on this technology for millions of years, was it possible that their minds had devolved? Were they near-sighted, cannibalistic dullards when stripped of their technology?

"There are earth-dragons on the planet now," said Vendevorex. "Why didn't you a.s.sist them instead of humans?"

"Because they weren't here when I arrived. I was drawn to this world by a false signal. I arrived at the correct place, but almost a century earlier than my coordinates indicated. I didn't know this; I thought I'd arrived on the wrong world, with no way of turning back. By the time the quinveris colonizers arrived, I was already imprinted on humanity."

Vendevorex shook his head. As clever as he was, he couldn't begin to fathom time travel. "How is it possible to arrive a hundred years ahead of schedule?"

The boy's white toga slipped on his shoulder as he shrugged. "I got lost."

"He's the lost city of Atlantis," said Zeeky.

Vendevorex knew the girl had said the words innocently. She didn't possess the cultural background to understand the joke. Vendevorex turned and said, "I'll leave you to your work."

"Thank you," said Atlantis.

He walked away. Zeeky hopped down from the planter and followed him. When they were far out of the range of the boy's hearing, she whispered, "You're figuring out if you should kill him."

Vendevorex looked down at the strange little blonde girl. As Shay was recovering, Jandra had filled him in somewhat on the powers of perception that had resulted from the G.o.ddess's genetic engineering.

"This is a curious notion," he said.

"You're afraid of what might happen if he gets his powers back. You think mankind-and dragonkind-are going to be better off without him. You already know how to use his tools. You think you can teach folks to use these tools in a less dangerous way."

Vendevorex stopped. "You know a lot for a girl whose main claim to fame up to now was an ability to talk to pigs."

"I was born with some gifts," she said. "When I was a captive, Jazz gave me others." She bit her lip after she said that. "Don't tell Jandra. She'll be worried."

"Should she be worried?"

"No," said Zeeky. "Jazz was a bad woman. I'm a nice girl."

"I see. As a nice girl, tell me your opinion. Should I kill Atlantis?"

"Could you?" she asked.

He clenched his jaw and took a long breath. He knew she wasn't asking if he had the ability. She was asking if he had the coolness of thought to take the life of a being who had reverted, in appearance at least, to a five-year-old child.

"Yes," he said.

"Will you try to help the people here with their new lives?"

"Of course."

"Bitterwood wouldn't," she said.

"Did you have this talk with him?"

"No. I don't want him to have to make this kind of choice. He's been nice to me. He's really brave. But I've watched his face when he's sleeping. He doesn't need any more bad dreams."

"You should go find him now," said Vendevorex. "I have other matters to attend to."

"I don't think you do," she said.

He stared at her.

"You don't have to go back," she said.

"We both know what's at stake," he said.

"You don't need to do anything," she said.

"If I don't, who will?"

She shrugged. "I don't know." She shook her head slowly and started to walk again, with her hands clasped behind her back. "All I know is, if you don't watch a long-wyrm every minute, it's likely to eat just about anything."

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO:.

MORNING MEDICINE.

ANZA LED THE way as they came in low and fast from the east, the rising sun at their backs. Burke watched her with pride as she moved confidently through the air like some mythic creature. way as they came in low and fast from the east, the rising sun at their backs. Burke watched her with pride as she moved confidently through the air like some mythic creature.

Burke followed closely behind his daughter with Vance and Jeremiah flanking him. Far behind, almost hidden against the brightening horizon, Poocher and Th.o.r.n.y were mere specks. Burke didn't care about leaving the pig behind, but felt bad for Th.o.r.n.y, who complained that when they flew too fast he couldn't breathe. The flight that Shay had made in two hours had taken them all night. Still, that was far swifter than Burke had imagined possible.

Dragon Forge lay before them, the rust-mound surrounding it glittering beneath a sheen of morning frost. The trees beneath them were stunted parodies of healthy forests. Burke wondered if they suffered from a lack of light due to the brown clouds that normally hung over the area, or if trees no more enjoyed breathing smoke than men did. If he continued to run the foundry after this morning, he'd already thought of several improvements to the furnaces and smokestacks that would allow them to operate more efficiently. His intent was to make the atmosphere within the fort healthier; perhaps the forest would enjoy the benefit as well.

A mile from the town, they pa.s.sed over the ring of encamped dragons enforcing the blockade. Several catapults had been brought into range. He wondered why Ragnar hadn't used the cannons to discourage this. The big guns had a far greater range than any catapult.

Below, a few bleary-eyed earth-dragons stood near a blue silk tent. He recognized the tent style as the work of the valkyries. The earth-dragons looked up, squinting, shielding their eyes as if trying to make sense of what they were seeing. He wasn't terribly worried. Earth-dragons were notoriously near-sighted. They probably would be mistaken for sky-dragons.

With the wind in his ears, Burke barely heard their shouts. He grimaced. Perhaps they hadn't been mistaken for sky-dragons. He saw the flap of a tent flutter open and a lone valkyrie poke her head out, craning her neck skyward. She looked only half awake, but alert enough to have thought to have put on her helmet.

Suddenly, the valkyrie's eyes popped open.

He hoped that Th.o.r.n.y and Poocher would be okay if the sky-dragon managed to summon her sisters to the air, but there was no time to slow down. The walls of the fortress were approaching fast. He scanned the battlements, looking for any sign that the sky-wall archers had seen them. He looked again, his heart sinking. No archers had seen him because none were on the walls. No living man could be seen anywhere within the city.

The same could not be said of dead ones.

As the walls flashed beneath them, he saw a severed human head in a state of advanced decay sitting on the wooden walkway inside the battlement, gazing up with crow-plucked eyes. All around the roof tops were other remains, legs and arms and torsos, along with whole bodies wedged up against chimneys or dangling limply from rain gutters.

His first instinct was that they were too late. The rebels had already been slaughtered. Logic kicked in and he understood what the catapults had been used for. The rain of corpses had been meant to soften up the rebels for an attack yet to come.

Again, he wondered why the cannons hadn't been used. Even before he left, the big guns had been rolling off the production line. By now, the construction needed to mount them on the walls should have been completed. Had Ragnar not read any of his battle plans?

Anza tilted her feet down, her long braid trailing behind her as she dropped toward the broad lip of the well at the center of town. She seemed to be going too fast, but in the final seconds her speed dropped as if a net had caught her, and she lighted on the stone rim as gently as a fallen leaf. Burke hadn't told her of the fate Shanna had suffered at the well, and the well made an inviting target for landing, given its central location and the way it rose up like a stage from the packed earth surrounding it.

Vance and Jeremiah landed beside her. Burke drifted down and then stopped, hovering above the center of the well. He nearly gagged at a human ribcage caught in the bucket that dangled a few yards down the shaft. Rats crawled over the tatters of its desiccated flesh. He hoped a lucky shot had placed it there. They were in trouble if the dragons possessed catapult marksmen capable of intentionally scoring a bulls-eye on the well. He didn't point it out to the others, who were looking around the city. There were more than enough horrors to gaze upon.

"Why hasn't anybody pulled those corpses from the roofs?" Vance asked, as he looked around the abandoned streets. "Where is everyone?"

Burke held the shotgun Shay had given him over his head. "Let's find out," he said, pulling the trigger. The bang echoed through the empty streets.

Seconds later, a few guards appeared along the city's walls. Had they been sleeping? He counted only seven. This, compared to the hundreds that should be at their posts.

Up and down the street doors creaked open. Shadowy faces with wide eyes peeked out. Slowly, voices began to call back and forth.

"Burke!" someone yelled.

"Burke," others echoed.

"Burke's ghost!" a voice shouted.

Burke grimaced. Convincing men he wasn't dead while floating a yard above the well could be tricky. But he still wasn't planning to land. He patiently reloaded the shotgun. Anza folded her wings back into the disk and drew her tomahawks. She stood in a stance that was both relaxed and impatient. Men began to cautiously step into the streets.

Vance followed her lead. He folded up his wings and drew his sky-wall bow, placing an arrow against the string and waiting, watching. Beside him Jeremiah drew Vulpine's knife, but kept his wings spread wide.

A moment behind them, Poocher and Th.o.r.n.y drifted down from the sky. Poocher let out a small grunt; all four of his cleft hooves touched the rim of his well at once. He stood next to Jeremiah. The pig also left his wings open. Burke wondered if he knew how to close them.