by Kay Hooper
“You’ve been very quiet today,” Roxanne observed, seemingly fixing most of her concentration on the mending in her lap. “Is it—do you miss Merlin?”
“Yes, I do,” Serena replied honestly. It was the bald truth. Whatever else she thought or felt about this place and why they were here, one truth she had finally accepted was that Merlin wasn’t to blame for any of it. And she missed him desperately; they hadn’t been apart for so long in all the years she had lived with him.
She looked at Roxanne, catching a glimpse of something she couldn’t quite read in the younger woman’s blue eyes; it was a fleeting thing, hidden when the delicate blond returned her attention to her work.
“Perhaps he’ll return soon,” she suggested colorlessly.
Serena doubted that was a pleasant possibility to her hostess, but didn’t comment, and they went on to talk casually of other things—including, when she finished it, Kerry’s rather lopsided but functional mirror.
It was very late in the night, actually not long before dawn, when Serena sat up in her bed and used a tinder-box to light the candle on her bedside table. She banked the pillows behind her and leaned back against them, drawing her knees up and wrapping her arms around them. Even inside this solid stone house, the effects of the Curtain were oppressive, and she felt exhausted. Too exhausted to sleep.
One thing she had swiftly noticed about Sanctuary was that only the powerless citizens stirred about in the early mornings; the wizards tended to sleep for several more hours, because they slept so uneasily, if at all, during the dark night. Serena had managed to be up and about every morning before Roxanne, but she had caught herself dozing several times during the warm afternoon hours and knew she was risking an utter collapse if she didn’t manage to get some decent sleep.
That thought had barely crossed her dulled mind when there was a soft knock at the door and Roxanne glided into the bedchamber, a ghostly figure in her shift.
“Are you all right, Serena?”
“Did the light disturb you? I’m sorry.” Serena strove to keep her voice relaxed.
“No, I was awake.” Roxanne came to the bed and eased down near the foot, facing her guest. Her delicate face was pale with the fatigue that gripped all wizards at night in the valley, but her eyes were clear and steady. “It’s almost impossible to get any real rest while the Curtain drains us. Isn’t it?”
Serena hugged her upraised knees and frowned. Unless her sluggish mind was playing tricks on her, she was fairly sure her friend was asking if she was a wizard. Then Roxanne spoke again, still softly, and the probability became a certainty.
“Do you think I haven’t noticed that you’re affected just as we are? That the night and the Curtain leave you weary and drained? I don’t know what things are like in Seattle, and I’m not sure how you’re able to hide your power … but you are a wizard, aren’t you, Serena?”
Resting her chin on her upraised knees, Serena tried to decide if confession was a good idea and finally gave in because she couldn’t think her way out of it. “This isn’t fair, you know,” she told the younger woman. “You seem to be able to think, and I can’t. I suppose it gets a bit easier over time?”
Roxanne drew a deep breath. “Yes, I suppose. Like anything else, one grows accustomed…. I—I couldn’t believe I was right in what I suspected. You seemed so unlike the powerless women here, far more like us, but that could have been because you weren’t born here. But then I noticed how tired and listless you were each morning, and I wondered….”
It was Serena’s turn to sigh. God, would morning never arrive? “Yeah, Merlin figured he’d covered all the bases, but neither of us expected the Curtain.”
“Bases?”
“Sorry.” For some reason she seemed to have baseball on the brain, and it hardly translated. “I meant, well, we thought it might be a good idea if only one of us appeared to be a wizard. When you travel as far as we have, you never know what to expect in the way of customs and beliefs, and …”
“You’re both wizards.” Roxanne’s eyes were very bright.
“Uh-huh.”
“And you’re … companions?”
Serena glanced toward the window and was relieved to find that dawn had arrived. Just a few more minutes now until the sun came up, and her mind would begin to clear. She looked back at her hostess and tried to concentrate.
What was it? Ah, yes … companions.
Frowning slightly, she said, “Merlin and I have been together for a long time, Roxanne, but we aren’t lovers—mates—if that’s what you’re asking. I went to him to learn how to control my powers. He’s been my … my teacher.”
“He never tried to hurt you?”
“Of course not. In fact, we’ve always been very good friends. Until we came here, I even thought … Never mind.”
Roxanne leaned forward a bit, her eyes painfully intent. “You thought …?”
Serena felt almost drunk, a little vague and sleepy. And tired. She was very, very tired. She leaned her head back against the rough wooden headboard of the bed, not bothering to try to hide a tiny yawn.
“Oh, I don’t know. I used to have these stupid fantasies about him. I knew I was being an idiot, but all the other men I met were always lacking. It wasn’t just that he was a Master wizard and they weren’t wizards at all; it was other things. He was taller than they were even when he wasn’t. Stronger. He walked like … like a king, I guess. His voice was … pure magic. And his eyes … He has incredible eyes, doesn’t he? So black and liquid. Sexy. And that was the laugh, you know, that was the joke on me, because as soon as I grew up and decided I could be pretty sexy myself if I put my mind to it, he just sort of… went away.”
“What do you mean?”
“He didn’t actually go. I mean, he was still teaching me, and we were still living in the same house, and sometimes things were even the way they used to be. But there was a wall that hadn’t been there before. He said … there were boundaries we couldn’t cross, and I thought he meant between Master and Apprentice, but that wasn’t what he meant at all. So we came here, and things are even worse here with those awful male wizards and the Curtain and this walled city—”
A huge yawn suddenly cut into Serena’s growing self-pity, and she stared at Roxanne, blinking owlishly. “Oh, God, I’m sorry, but I’ve got to crash.” She slid bonelessly down, pulling the covers up to her nose, and went out like a light.
Holding her head carefully upon her shoulders with one hand, Serena felt her way down the hall to the kitchen, where Roxanne was already sitting at the rough-hewn table. Having been awakened by one of the frequent tremors that shook Atlantis—was it her fourth or fifth earthquake since leaving Seattle?—Serena was feeling disgruntled.
“Good afternoon,” the blond offered gravely.
“You couldn’t prove it by me.” Serena sat down cautiously, and risked letting go of her head. It didn’t fall off, which was a nice surprise. Apparently exhaustion had finally caught up with her; she had slept soundly for nearly nine hours, and the aftereffect was rather like a hangover.
Roxanne pushed a heavy mug across the table to her guest. “Drink this. It will help, I promise.”
A cautious sip rewarded Serena with a cool, sweet drink that began clearing her head immediately; by the time she set the mug back onto the table a moment later, she felt reasonably human again.
“You took advantage of me,” she told her hostess severely. “Unless I dreamed it, you visited me before dawn and forced me to babble like an idiot.”
Roxanne was smiling slightly. “I merely asked you a few questions. And you didn’t babble.”
“I didn’t?”
“No. Well, toward the end you may have lost the thread of what you wanted to say, but I would hardly call the result babbling.”
Serena winced. “Yeah, right.” She cleared her throat. “I seem to remember confessing that I’m a wizard.”
“Yes. And now that your mind is clearer, I’m very curious, Serena
. How do you hide your powers?”
“A little trick Merlin taught me. I hope you aren’t upset about this. It wasn’t that I wanted to deceive you, it was just that … well, it seemed a good idea at the time.”
Roxanne’s shoulders lifted and fell in something more than a shrug. “It’s just so incredible. A male and female wizard traveling together, not fighting or hurting each other. Is that common in Seattle?”
Serena hesitated, but she couldn’t lie to the younger woman any more than she had to. “No, it isn’t common—but then, Seattle is hardly a city filled with wizards. Merlin and I are pretty much trying to find our way alone. Or we were, until we came here.”
“But you want to be together?”
“I want to be with him,” Serena answered honestly. “And he’s risking quite a lot by being here with me.”
“I don’t understand.”
“It isn’t important. All that matters is that Merlin is making an effort to tear down that wall between us. At least I think he is.”
“What will happen then?”
For the first time since coming to Atlantis, Serena considered that question. “I … I don’t really know.”
“Will you … be mates?”
“I don’t know,” Serena repeated slowly. “Can two wizards be mates? All the years we’ve been together … will that let us trust each other enough to get so close? Can we forget what’s going on all around us here? I just don’t know.”
Roxanne hesitated, then said, “What if Merlin returns from his visit to the mountains more like the male wizards here?”
“That won’t happen.”
“How can you be so sure? Serena, the male wizards of Atlantia are treated like gods. And you said—you told me he was at Varian’s palace. Varian is by far the worst of the Mountain Lords, concerned with nothing except his … his gluttony. What if Merlin likes the idea of being godlike?”
Serena didn’t hesitate. “He won’t. If he had wanted to be treated like a god, he could have made it happen before now.” And after now. “Believe me, Roxanne.”
Solemnly the younger wizard said, “I believe you believe it. I just hope you’re right.”
So did Serena.
“Are you leaving the city for good?” Phaedra asked.
Serena adjusted the pack she carried and smiled pleasantly. It was late the following morning. “No, just for a while. I thought I’d explore the ruins of the Old City I’ve heard so much about.”
The Sentinel glanced at the mark at the base of Serena’s throat, and her thin lips curved in a faint smile. “You should be safe enough even at night, but that’s by no means certain. I would advise you not to spend the night outside our walls. Unless your Lord is with you, of course.”
Despite Roxanne’s contention that all in Sanctuary were treated with respect, this wasn’t the first time Serena had caught a touch of scorn from one of the female wizards. The mark she wore was a kind of brand, every bit as degrading as the one the male wizards were forced to wear inside the city. Many of the wizards of Sanctuary seemed to feel that the powerless women marked with the signs of possession were to be condemned for something that was never their fault.
Because she hadn’t been marked when she had first walked through these gates, Serena had been treated with respect by the Sentinels; now she was apparently just another powerless woman who had been used by a male wizard.
Serena was tempted, but there was no good reason for her to reveal her own powers to this wizard. Besides that, she had a hunch that keeping the knowledge quiet for a while longer would be for the best. Roxanne had agreed to say nothing, though she’d been obviously puzzled by the request.
Keeping the expression pleasant, Serena said, “I’m quite capable of taking care of myself, Phaedra.”
The Sentinel wizard nodded. “Fine. Just remember that we close the gates an hour before sunset. And we don’t open them after that, for anyone, until sunrise.”
“I’ll remember.” Serena walked on, past the burned circles on the ground that indicated old and recent campsites where powerless men (and very few male wizards) had spent nights waiting for the gates of the city to open. She moved into the woods toward the northwest, heading for the ruins Roxanne had told her about, the remnants of what had once been the center of culture and society in Atlantis.
No one seemed to remember what it had been called; now it was simply the Old City. It had existed a long, long time ago, when wizards and powerless, male and female, had lived and worked in something like harmony. The population then had consisted mostly of powerless people with a scattering of wizards, and perhaps that had simplified matters and enabled everyone to coexist peacefully.
As she walked steadily through the forest, crossing a narrow stream, working her way around a ridge carefully because she was hampered by the heavy, awkward skirts of an outfit she’d come to despise, Serena thought about that bygone time and wondered what had happened to alter the status quo. No one in Sanctuary had been able to tell her. Probably it had been a gradual change, maybe even over generations. In any case, the result had been the first salvos in the battle between male and female wizards.
It was midafternoon by the time Serena topped a ridge to see what was left of the Old City before her, and the sight froze her. Once, the city must have been huge, far larger than Sanctuary, sprawling out at the northern end of the valley. Now it was tumbled piles of stone and jutting bits of petrified timbers and thin trails that had once been wide thoroughfares.
The increasingly frequent earthquakes of recent times had torn open a ravine like a jagged cut zigzagging in the center of the ruins, and the bizarre plant life of Atlands had encroached to lend the remains of the city an even more pathetic and ravaged appearance.
Serena made her way down into the ruins cautiously; Roxanne had said that snakes were plentiful, and though none apparently were poisonous, Serena didn’t like snakes. She shrugged out of her backpack and hung it over the low branch of a tree barely taller than she was with violet leaves, and then wandered along one of the thin paths threading the ruins.
It was incredibly sad. There were signs that this had once been a thriving culture, far more advanced than the somewhat primitive conditions in Sanctuary. There was evidence of a sophisticated water and sewer system, for instance. The roads seemed to have been laid out with care and logic, unlike the winding and wandering ones of Sanctuary. Bits and pieces of the pottery and stonework that had survived indicated a love of beauty and a high degree of skill.
All that, Serena knew, had been produced by the powerless people who had once lived here. How she knew that was quite simple; because any creation of a wizard could always be recognized by another as just that—and nothing here told her it had been conjured by a man or woman of power.
When the female wizards had built their own city, Serena thought, they had made it solid and safe and not very pretty, choosing substance and safety over style. They created water when it was needed, not even bothering to conjure wells that would have probably been destroyed by earthquakes, and they got rid of waste with the same automatic and offhand competence. Since the wizards could also easily create pottery or intricate stonework any time they wanted, they simply tended not to bother.
Serena sat down on a huge flat table of stone that seemed once to have been part of a terrace, and removed a pebble from one of her thin slippers. With the stone gone and her shoe back on, she continued to sit there, looking around her. She learned nothing new from what she saw, but a number of conclusions she’d reached during these last days were reinforced. The major conclusion was inescapable: In their blind struggle for supremacy, the male and female wizards here had literally ruined everything around them.
They had destroyed the powerless people who shared this valley, turning the men into aggressive brutes and the women into virtually mindless doormats. They had destroyed the farm stock that had once flourished; the horses, cattle, and chickens had died out quickly and completely even before th
e Curtain had formed, exterminated by the energy spillover of battling wizards. The wizards had warped and stunted plant life, contaminated the groundwater, disturbed the very earth beneath them … and inadvertently created the Curtain.
Of course, an argument could be offered that they had done all of it inadvertently, not out of the desire to destroy but because they had been ambitious, shortsighted, and self-involved. But that hardly excused them. Of how many races could it be said that they had destroyed a continent?
“A redhead, by God!”
Startled, she jerked her head around to see a tall wizard striding toward her, his coat sweeping out behind him. He reminded her a little bit of Merlin because he was dark and well built; when he got closer, she saw that his lean, handsome face held a subtle stamp of cruelty. And his eyes gleamed flatly, like two lumps of coal.
Serena wasn’t frightened, but she was wary. She eased off her stone seat and turned to face him.
Still several feet away, he stopped suddenly, his eyes narrowing as he studied her. Obviously he was momentarily puzzled by her. She didn’t have an elongated ring finger, nor did she reveal the power of a wizard, but she was also lacking the blank gaze and subservient manner of powerless women. She looked him straight in the eye, which was hardly something to which he could be accustomed. Then his gaze fixed on the mark at the base of her throat, and he frowned.
“Who owns you, bitch?”
For a full moment Serena was too shocked to be able to utter a word. She had never in her life been called a bitch—not to her face, at any rate—and her response to the word was completely visceral.
“Answer me,” he ordered impatiently.
She could feel his power; except for Merlin, she had never met a wizard whose power literally radiated in a palpable aura. But she was too angry to care. “I’m not a female dog or a piece of property,” she snapped, glaring at him.
He took two large steps toward her and stood little more than an arm’s length away, forcing her to look up in order to continue meeting his eyes. He was still frowning, but a little half smile curved his sensual lips at the same time. “The last spirited bitch in these parts died of old age before I was born. Where did you come from?”