CAPITAL OFFENSE

I was born on the thirteenth day of July in the eighteenth year of the reign of His Glorious Majesty Henry VIII, in the one thousand five hundred and twenty-seventh year after our Lord's death. I had the great good fortune to be born an Englishman, and when I came of age in both knowledge and reason, I served my country and my queen, Elizabeth Regina. Trapped by the Medici, I was condemned as a heretic and a spy, walled up alive, condemned to die for queen and country. Instead the hand of Fortune swept me up and I was spared. It is now the eighteenth day of March in the year 2101, and I am as trapped as I was in Venice. Fortune's servant, Dyckon, a creature called the Roc -- who by his very countenance calls forth the living visage of the Dark Ones -- swears he will find a way to send me home, to my time, my place, my queen. But the forces of this time and place rage against me as surely as did the Medicis. Others of Dyckon's race even now look to wipe clean the face of the planet of every human. The powers of this time plot to subjugate me with their horrible machine -- an identity chip. And if these powers were to find out that I was in league with the Roc, I would be condemned. It will take all the skills I learned as a spymaster to keep me free, to stop the Roc, and set me on the path to home. THE SPELLBINDING CONCLUSION OF THE SAGA OF THE MERCHANT PRINCE, DOCTOR JOHN DEE.