The Wizard of Seattle (28 page)

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 the 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?”

“Somewhere else,” she said tightly, gritting her teeth to keep from saying something she might regret later. Such as the words that made up the spell to turn an enemy into a toad. Would it work on another wizard? She had no idea, but she was willing to experiment on him.

“I don’t recognize that mark,” he said. “If your Lord isn’t in Atlantia, then—”

“He is,” a new voice said calmly.

The wizard turned and eased back from Serena in a clear gesture of giving way as he watched another tall, dark wizard coming toward them. His frown smoothly became a smile. “Merlin. She’s yours?”

“Yes, Varian, she is.”

“May I make an offer?”

In a polite tone Merlin said, “I couldn’t allow you to waste your time. She isn’t for sale.” He stepped past the other wizard to join Serena, giving her a quick, unreadable look before he faced Varian again.

“Bitches are
always
for sale, Merlin,” Varian retorted, still smiling.

“She isn’t for sale. Not now. Not ever. And I won’t change my mind.” Merlin’s tone was equally pleasant, but there was a note of steel underneath.

For a moment it seemed Varian would either continue to insist or challenge Merlin in some other way, but finally he inclined his head in an ironic little bow
and shrugged. “So be it. You should keep a closer watch on her if you don’t want her stolen away from you, my friend. Not all the wizards here are as reasonable as I am about such matters.”

“Thank you. I’ll remember that,” Merlin told him, still cordial.

Varian glanced at Serena again, much in the hungry way some men eyed sleek red sports cars that fired their passions, then said to Merlin, “You’re certainly welcome to bring her to my place on your next visit. In the meantime I’ll leave you alone with your property. I’m sure that after several days apart, you’re eager to lie between her legs again.”

Serena felt her mouth drop open as she stared after the departing wizard. She closed it carefully, very conscious of Merlin’s silence beside her. And his closeness. After Varian’s crude statement, she thought she might be blushing for the first time in her adult life.

In a dispassionate tone Merlin said, “He’s the most sexual creature I’ve ever encountered.”

She took a couple of steps away from his side and turned to face him, hoping she didn’t look as stiff as she felt. However she might have greeted Merlin after having been separated from him for so long, Varian’s presence—and his words—had made her feel emotionally paralyzed. “Yeah, I got that impression. Was he a good host?”

“I didn’t see much of him.” Merlin was gazing at her steadily. “What I did see, I didn’t like.”

Serena glanced around them at the dead city, avoiding his scrutiny. She was uncomfortable with Merlin for the first time in her memory. “I know the feeling. Sanctuary is a pretty weird place. It’s funny … I got a close-up look at the nearest thing I’ve ever seen to pure sisterhood, and I didn’t like it much. Not that the city isn’t run capably; it is. And most of the women seem fairly content when they aren’t dreading the night. But there’s absolutely no mental stimulation at all. Nobody disagrees, because they all think the same on almost every subject. Sometimes they sound like parrots,
especially when they blame all their troubles on the male wizards.”

“Do you disagree with that?”

Serena crossed her arms beneath her breasts and sighed. “In a way I do. Oh, the males were unquestionably bastards when they encouraged the rape of female wizards and when they refused to allow the females to have at least a mountain of their own to get above the Curtain. And their practices of
owning
powerless women and murdering their female infants hardly qualify them to be members of the human race.”

Merlin smiled slightly. “But?”

“But … the women in Sanctuary aren’t even
trying
to do anything about their situation. They stick close to the city and go on with their lives day to day. If you ask them, they tell you how rotten the males are, but some of them have never spoken to a man—powerless or wizard—in their entire lives. And as far as I could tell, no female wizard has tried to climb one of the mountains in years. I’ll bet the male wizards don’t even bother to guard them anymore.”

“They don’t,” Merlin confirmed. “According to what Tremayne told me, they haven’t had to worry about that in ten years or more.”

Serena shook her head. “That figures. I asked one of the women why somebody didn’t try, and she looked at me like I was crazy. The female wizards don’t
think
beyond what they’ve been told, never questioning, never even considering that it might be possible to find a way to coexist with the males. Even though it was done here once.”

“Yes, I know. I heard about this city from Tremayne.”

“Is that why you’re here?”

He nodded. “I wanted to take a look at it before I returned to Sanctuary, and when I saw Varian, I decided to follow him. He hadn’t said anything about coming down to the valley when Tremayne and I left this morning.”

“Where’s Tremayne?”

“He was going straight to Sanctuary.” Merlin hesitated, then said, “He wanted to see Roxanne.”

“They
know
each other?”

“She didn’t tell you about it?”

“No …” Serena frowned. “But now that I think about it, if she’s interested in Tremayne—in spite of what happened to her
and
all they’ve tried to drum into her in Sanctuary—that could explain why she asked so many questions about you and me, especially after she figured out I was a wizard.” She briefly explained Roxanne’s deductions.

“And she seemed most interested in our relationship?”

Since he had asked the question coolly, Serena replied in the most unruffled tone she could manage. “I think so. The fact that we were together in any sense of the word obviously intrigued her, and she specifically asked if you’d ever hurt me.”

“I hope you told her I hadn’t.”

“Of course I did.” Serena didn’t remind him that he had come close to hurting her here, although she couldn’t help remembering it. She hesitated, then added, “I also told her there was a wall between us.”

“Is that the way you see it?”