The monk bobbed nervously. 'Dom Brocard, there is a dragon in the cathedral.' Sentenced to walk the Changewinds as punishment for his crimes, Gonard leaves the safety of the settlement and submits himself to the irradiated blasts of air which can make even the most intelligent of beings go mad. Seeking shelter from the winds and his own haunted past, the dragon finds his way to a place where his tortured soul and crippled body might at last be healed. But such is not to be, for forces even more powerful than the winds drive Gonard and his companions--the rapidly failing medtech and the human woman Itsa--to an inexorable confrontation with the nature of life... And the finality of death.