by Kay Hooper
He was smiling a bit ruefully, but his eyes held that unnerving hunger she had seen before. “It isn’t something I can explain or control, you see. It just happened. I looked at you, and something inside me said, ‘There she is!’ I didn’t question it any more than I question that my heart is beating.”
After a moment Roxanne turned and kept walking. “You’re a very strange man” was all she could manage to say.
Tremayne’s only response was to suggest that they find a place to camp for the night. “The village should be no more than an hour or so away, so we can go in first thing in the morning.”
Roxanne agreed they should make camp, and by the time darkness and the Curtain fell, they had settled down in the shelter of the trees just east of a ridge. The moon, a bare sliver of light, was briefly visible before the Curtain intensified.
As she made herself comfortable sitting on her side of the campfire, Roxanne noticed that the ground felt warm to the touch, and it made her uneasy. This time of year, the ground never warmed very much even in the sunlight, and here, underneath the trees, it should have remained decidedly chilled. It was another sign of turmoil in the very ground of Atlantia, she realized, like the strong tremor that rocked the valley not long after dark.
Though it didn’t seem to damage the area where their camp lay, both Roxanne and Tremayne were disturbed by the quake; it was always unsettling to feel the ground beneath roll and twitch as if it had no more substance than mist. Even after the ground steadied again and the night sounds of the valley had resumed, neither of them felt much like sleeping.
They ate food neither really tasted and talked rather aimlessly for a while, passing the hours. It was near midnight when Tremayne said suddenly, “You can tell me the truth, you know. Or shall I tell you what I think? Your mother would never ask you to risk yourself by crossing the valley at night, would she, Roxanne?”
She was silent, staring at him across the fire.
“Is she even alive?”
“No. She died when I was small.”
He sighed softly. “I was hoping you’d tell me yourself, but it appears you aren’t going to. So I’ll have to confess. I told Merlin how I felt about you, and out of concern for you, he thought I should know about the attack.”
“Out of concern for me?” Her voice was brittle.
“Yes. I was so eager for you, I probably would have been impatient and reckless in trying to persuade you I could be trusted—which would have had the opposite effect, as well as quite possibly harming you. Merlin wanted to warn me that you’d been so badly hurt by men, it would take time for you to heal.”
He was able to speak calmly only because he had already grappled with his rage and pain at what had been done to her. But he knew that given the chance, he would kill the men who had hurt her. Slowly.
Roxanne looked away from his intent gaze, filled with the oddest combination of emotions. “Do you … I’m surprised you still find me … acceptable.”
“Why would I not?”
“You know very well why.”
Tremayne waited patiently until her gaze returned to his, and then he said, “Roxanne, if I could, I would make it so that you had never been hurt in any way by any man. What they did to you was terrible, but it certainly wasn’t your fault, and it doesn’t change how I feel about you.”
She didn’t believe him, but didn’t protest.
He hadn’t expected anything else; she was still too wary. Quietly he said, “You mean to find those men, don’t you? To destroy them.”
“Yes,” she answered flatly.
“Will that give you back whatever you feel you lost?”
“I don’t know. All I do know is that I can’t live knowing they haven’t been punished for what they did to me.”
Tremayne was silent for a moment. Did he have any right to tell her what she intended to do was wrong? No, not really, not when he wanted to destroy them himself. He couldn’t begin to understand how she felt; perhaps a sense of justice would help her to heal completely. But he was very much afraid that killing her rapists would change Roxanne far more deeply and irrevocably than the attack itself.
“Let me do it,” he said at last. “Point them out to me, and let me destroy them.”
That was the last thing she had expected. “You? But … but why?”
Because I want to. “Because you shouldn’t do it. If you kill them, they’ll always be with you. If I do it, you’ll have the satisfaction of knowing they were punished for what they did to you without the blood on your hands. Or your soul.”
“What about your soul?”
Tremayne never got the chance to answer that, because both of them were frozen by the chilling sound of Kerry’s shrieks coming from somewhere in the dark woods to the east.
“Roxanne! Roxanne!”
Their stillness lasted only a second or two. Both of them leaped up and raced off in the direction of the child’s hysterical screams. The Curtain provided some light for them to see their way even as it sapped their energy, and both Tremayne and Roxanne were breathless by the time they burst into a clearing.
They saw Kerry struggling in the brutal embrace of two village men, her small face white with terror as they tore at her clothing and began to shove her toward the ground.
Roxanne cried out in anguished protest, and even as she was stretching her hand instinctively toward them, she recognized one of the two men as one of her own attackers. Then everything happened so quickly that afterward she was never sure if her recognition of the man in any way changed what seemed fated to be.
At her side Tremayne stretched out his own hand, despite the danger of the Curtain, his only thought to save the child. The pulsing streams of energy that left his hand and Roxanne’s met and twined together, forming one stream. With no interference from the Curtain, the energy obliterated first one of the men and then the other—with no sound at all except the sharp pops of air rushing in to fill the voids left by two bodies that were there one instant … and gone the next.
Roxanne rushed to gather Kerry into her arms, holding the sobbing child tightly against her. “It’s all right,” she murmured. “It’s all right.”
“I—I just wanted to—to be with you, Roxanne,” Kerry wailed, shaking violently. “I didn’t mean to do—anything wrong, I p-promise!”
“I know you didn’t, sweetheart. It’s all right, don’t cry. It’s over now. You’re safe.” Roxanne looked at Tremayne as he knelt beside her, both of them only now wondering how and why their power had combined, and how they’d been able to use it despite the Curtain.
Tremayne gazed into Roxanne’s wide, darkened eyes for a moment, and then reached out and very gently placed his hand on Kerry’s head in a comforting gesture. Roxanne looked at it, large and strong, and remembered how instantly and unhesitatingly he had moved to help the child. Something inside her that had been closed seemed to open up a bit, and she lifted her own hand to cover his.
“It’s your fatal charm,” Serena said gravely as she followed Merlin up a narrow mountain path.
“I doubt that,” he retorted, throwing the words over his shoulder. “What it is, is a power play, pure and simple. Antonia has her own agenda, and my part would have been something like … the mate of a black widow spider.”
“Yuk. Don’t the females—”
“Yes. They do. That’s how they got the name.”
Serena thought about that as they climbed, then objected. “But she wouldn’t kill her mate, would she? Antonia, I mean. A wizard’s power dies with him or her, so she’d need her mate alive if it’s power she’s after. Wouldn’t she?”
“How very prosaic you are.”
She couldn’t help laughing a little, even as she reflected that he must have found the interview with Antonia distinctly unnerving. She was only grateful that he had emerged apparently without having been dragged back into the struggle between his instincts and his intellect; his attitude toward Antonia seemed more to do with the lady’s own perso
nality than any prohibition his ancestors had decreed.
“Well,” she said finally, “it’s true, isn’t it? A dead mate wouldn’t be much good to Antonia.”
“I suppose not. Though I’m sure she has every intention of being the dominant partner in any … merger. She’s far too ambitious to be willing to share power, despite what she said to me.”
The sun went down about then, and the first flickering haze of the Curtain began forming over the valley, but they were high enough to escape the effects. They had chosen a mountain at random and were at the east end of the valley above Sanctuary; they could see the scattered lights of the city, though as the night wore on and the Curtain thickened, those would become less visible.
They were heading for a spot halfway up this mountain, where there appeared to be a clearing. They could have covered the distance far more quickly than they had by simply transporting once out of sight of the gates of Sanctuary, but both enjoyed walking, and they had gotten used to more primitive means of travel in Atlantis.
“I won’t know how to drive when we get back,” Serena had commented somewhat ruefully. “Has it only been two weeks?”
Now, glancing across the valley, she saw the moon rise between two peaks and shivered slightly. Just a sliver now, but within a few days it would be a quarter, then a half… and eventually, in barely two weeks, the moon would be round and full—the final warning of the destruction of Atlantis.
“Serena?”
Realizing she had come to a stop, she turned her back to the valley and quickly caught up with him. “Sorry.”
Merlin had stopped to wait for her, and looked down at her with a slight frown. “What’s wrong?”
With forced lightness she replied, “I was just thinking how soon the fireworks are due to start around here.”
Steadily he said, “It happened a long, long time ago. Try to think of it that way.”
As they began climbing again, this time side by side, she said, “I’ve tried, but I can’t help it when that doesn’t always work. I think of Roxanne as my friend, you know, and we can’t be certain she’ll leave here with Tremayne. And then there’s little Kerry….”
“Is that the child whose mother was looking for her as we left Roxanne’s house?” Merlin asked, trying to distract her thoughts from the coming devastation.
“Um. She’s a little imp, always sneaking off and worrying people, according to Roxanne. Between them, she and Felice—who’s more of a foster mother, by the way—have their hands full watching Kerry.” With a slight grimace Serena added, “I’m not surprised the kid made herself scarce, though; with Roxanne leaving the city yesterday afternoon and Felice preoccupied because she’s trying to get pregnant, I imagine Kerry found herself at loose ends. And she’s a doer.”
“Do you want children?” Merlin startled himself as much as Serena with the question.
“I don’t know. Yes, I think so.” She cleared her throat. “To be honest, I haven’t thought a lot about it. There didn’t seem to be much use in it.”
They had reached the clearing that was their goal, and Merlin stopped, looking down at Serena. It was getting dark rapidly, but he could still see her lovely, solemn face. “Why not?” he asked her curiously.
“Because I thought you were beyond reach,” she answered candidly. “I couldn’t see myself getting married or making a baby with anyone else, not when I loved you. So it seemed … less painful to just not think about it.”
Merlin felt a strange sensation in his chest, as if his heart had turned over. Slowly he said, “You’ve gone out with dozens of men over the years.”
“And you’ve gone out with dozens of women,” she reminded him. “All a part of the social pretense of being just like everyone else instead of wizards.” Turning away and shrugging off her backpack, she added dryly, “Of course, I didn’t have a bordello to go to.”
He followed her slowly, grappling with what she seemed to be telling him. As he shrugged out of his backpack, he said a bit absently, “I’m never going to live that down with you, am I?”
“Not on your life. Shall I put the fire here?”
“Yes—and be careful.”
“Something I’ll never be able to live down,” she murmured, recalling her youthful attempt to create fire back in Seattle that had nearly resulted in a four-alarm blaze.
The clearing was tucked back several yards away from a sharp cliff overlooking the valley, with trees climbing the slopes. It was as if someone had carved a large step from the mountain. Behind Serena and beginning some feet away was a rock-strewn gradient that eventually grew steeper and became dotted with trees farther up the mountain.
Merlin watched her, critical out of habit because he’d been her teacher for so long.
After dropping her backpack to the ground and pushing the edges of her cloak back over her shoulders, Serena created a small basin in the ground by circling her hand above it, and then prepared to make a campfire. But before she could begin, a deep, angry rumble signaled yet another tremor, and she found herself completely occupied in trying to keep her balance on ground that was suddenly no more solid than quicksand.
It seemed to get darker as the earth heaved and moaned underneath them; even the sliver of moon hid behind scudding clouds. Over the unholy racket of a continent trying to wrench itself apart, Merlin heard a different sound, and he sensed the threat hidden by darkness. Without thought and out of an instinct born of man rather than wizard, he leaped toward Serena.
She clung gratefully to him when Merlin’s arms closed about her. She was trying so hard just to keep to her feet that she didn’t hear the sharp, angry sounds of stones and boulders plunging down the gradient toward them and only felt the impact of something striking Merlin’s body as he shielded her.
That sickening jolt was all either of them needed to remind them of their own abilities, and faster even than thought their combined energies formed a protective aura around them.
Like all the tremors of Atlantis, this one lasted no more than a minute or so, though it seemed much longer. The ground abruptly stopped heaving, and the dreadful groaning of tortured earth became utter silence, disturbed only by the clacking sounds of stone striking stone as the last few rocks cascaded down the mountainside.
“Richard, are you all right?” Serena demanded, easing back just far enough to look up at him. Their protective aura faded away, as it was no longer needed.
“It was just a glancing blow,” he said, straightening from the slightly hunched position he had assumed to shield her. The movement made him wince.
“Where did it hit you?”
“I’m fine, I told you.”
“Yeah, right.” Serena took a step away from him and briskly finished the campfire she’d begun. Then she built a roomy and sturdy lean-to just behind it, with enough space at the front for Merlin to stand up straight, even as she wondered why on earth they both kept sticking to this primitive stuff. Why not a nice little house? With a couple—no, with one big bed and a nice bathroom with a sunken tub and maybe a bottle of very good, very old wine….
Merlin barely remembered to throw out a protective screen around the clearing, hiding their presence from any other wizards who might be in the area. The stone, a large one, had struck his upper back just above his right shoulder blade, and though the blow wasn’t disabling, it hurt like hell and spread an ache over that shoulder and all the way down his right arm.
He had been injured rarely enough in his life for him to still feel a shock at the vulnerability of his own body. It was a very peculiar feeling. Always before, that sensation had troubled him long after the injury healed, but this time he found himself far more interested in Serena’s reaction. He watched her as she conjured, with a rather impatient wave of her hand, a wide, thick pallet for the lean-to, then tossed her cloak over it and came back around the fire to him, frowning.
“Very good,” he noted.
“I considered creating a nice little house with all the modern ameni
ties, but figured you wouldn’t approve. Stop being a teacher and come sit down,” she told him, taking his arm. “I want to see where that rock hit you.”
“Serena—” He started to protest, but he found himself led to the shelter and divested of his coat, which she absently folded neatly and then carelessly dropped onto the pallet. Then she reached up to begin briskly unlacing his shirt, and Merlin’s amusement faded. She looked very serious, he thought, very competent. But just as he wondered if she was thinking only of his injury, he saw the faint color across her cheekbones and realized she was as aware of him as he was of her.
“You don’t have to do this,” he murmured. “I mean, if you don’t want to.”
Her lashes lifted, and fierce green eyes glared at him. “That,” she said with emphasis, “was an asinine thing to say.”
That was his Serena, he reminded himself ruefully, frank to a fault and completely without guile. “Yes, it was,” he admitted.
“Then why did you say it?” She was watching her fingers, which were coping with the lacings of his shirt with far less dexterity than they had only a moment ago.
“Because I felt awkward, I suppose.”
“Not … not because you didn’t want me touching you?”
Merlin didn’t answer right away, because he was trying to find the words to tell her how he felt. Then she looked up at him again, and the flash of her eyes seemed to pull the honest response from him. “Christ, no.”
She looked startled, then smiled a little. “Good. Now, why don’t you help me get you out of this shirt so I can take a look at your back.”
Silently he pulled the tail of his shirt from his pants and, with her help, since his right side had stiffened up a bit, eased the garment off over his head. Then he sat down on the pallet as she directed, half turning to the side so that the firelight illuminated his back.
Serena knelt behind him. “It’s a nasty bruise,” she murmured, hesitating only an instant before touching him. The ugly reddened stamp of the stone was as large as her two hands, and she could imagine how much it hurt. Without asking his permission, she glided her hand very gently over the bruise and concentrated on healing skin and muscle. The redness slowly faded, and the pain as well, and she felt him relax.