The Wizard of Seattle (18 page)

“Why don’t you go check on the patient,” he said, taking her empty bowl away from her. “By now she might need food worse than she needs sleep.”

Serena nodded and got up from the broad tree stump she’d been using as a seat. She shook out her skirts and sighed. “Damn this outfit. It weighs a ton and feels like burlap.”

Merlin glanced over at her and then made a slight gesture, just a flick of his fingers.

Immediately most of Serena’s discomfort disappeared. She felt inside the neckline of the shift and, surprised and grateful, said, “You lined it with silk. Thanks.”

“My pleasure.” He was sitting on a fallen log near the fire, poking a stick into the flames, and didn’t look at her.

Serena hesitated, feeling oddly reluctant to walk away from him right then. “Um … I meant to ask you before. When you healed the girl, did you take away any of her memory?”

He frowned as he stared into the fire. “Strictly speaking, no. She’ll remember what happened to her, but it will be as if it happened months ago; the sharpest edges
will be blunted, less painful and traumatic.” He turned his head and met Serena’s gaze. “She needs to remember. We’re all shaped by our experiences, positive and negative.”

Nodding slightly, Serena said, “I suppose so. She’ll be grateful to you.”

“Will she?” Merlin looked back at the fire “I wonder. Men hurt her; I’m a man.”

“But you healed her.”

He shrugged. “Maybe that will count for something. But don’t expect her to feel the way you do about it, Serena. I’m a stranger to her—and from the looks of this society, men and women seem to have problems relating to each other.”

Serena thought he was undoubtedly right about that. If the male wizards kept powerless concubines whom they bought, sold, and traded like property, and the female wizards lived, for the most part, in a city protected by a wall, then there were definite problems here.

She crossed the few feet of clearing to the lean-to, which was quite roomy, and knelt beside their patient. Almost immediately, she knew that the girl was awake, though she appeared to be still deeply asleep. How long had she been awake? Had she heard anything they didn’t want her to hear?

Serena hesitated, then said softly, “You must be hungry by now, aren’t you? I know you’re awake. Won’t you at least look at me—and tell me your name?”

After a long moment the girl’s eyes opened and focused on Serena’s face. They were wide, blue, and shadowed, and her voice was innately gentle and very wary when she said, “I’m Roxanne. Who are you?”

“My name is Serena.”

Roxanne turned her head just slightly and flicked a tense glance toward the fire and Merlin. “And … him?”

“His name is Merlin,” Serena answered, keeping her voice soft. “He helped you.”

“He’s a wizard,” Roxanne said.

“Yes.”

“Then he wouldn’t have helped me.” Her voice held absolute conviction.

Serena frowned slightly. “He did help you, Roxanne. I watched him heal your injuries.”

Slowly Roxanne pushed herself into a sitting position, her wary gaze leaving Merlin—who hadn’t moved or reacted in any way to what was happening in the lean-to even though he had certainly heard their voices—and studying Serena no less warily. The blanket fell to her waist, and she looked down at her clean, untorn clothing. She lifted one hand to her hair, finding it clean and in a neat braid down her back like Serena’s. Slender fingers probed her face, and a look of confusion tightened her features.

“I was dying,” she whispered. “I know I was. They had used me and left me to die. No one could have saved me, not even a Master wizard.”

Serena remembered then that Merlin had said the wizards of Atlantis were less advanced than their modern counterparts, and thought quickly for a plausible explanation. “We’re visitors here. Where we come from, Merlin is renowned as a gifted healer. He’s devoted much study to the art of healing.”

Roxanne seemed to accept that, but her eyes were still distrustful and puzzled when she stared at Serena. “You’re powerless. Are you his concubine?”

Finding a compromise between a label she refused to wear and the complicated truth, Serena said, “I’m … his companion. Look, why don’t I get you something to eat, all right? You must be hungry.”

“Thank you,” Roxanne said quietly.

Serena eased away and returned to the fire, where the remainder of their stew was being kept warm on a flat rock close to the flames.

“My companion?” Merlin murmured.

Ladling stew into a bowl, Serena shot him a glance and kept her own voice low. “Like you said, we’re strangers here. Just because everybody we meet assumes I’m your property doesn’t mean I have to accept it.
Companion
is a nice, neutral word, and I much prefer it to
concubine.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. But there’s something you should keep in mind, Serena. In their language the word
companion
may not be neutral at all.”

Unnerved by that possibility, Serena carried the bowl of stew and a spoon back to Roxanne. Along with everything else, now she had to worry about how her words translated. Great. She frequently got into trouble with English; what kinds of linguistic pits yawned at her feet now?

She knelt and handed the food to Roxanne, returning the girl’s guarded look with a touch of wariness herself. “Do you live in the city?” she asked.

After tasting the stew tentatively, Roxanne obviously found her appetite and began eating, but she didn’t take her eyes off Serena. “Yes … Sanctuary.”

“Sanctuary? That’s what it’s called?” It seemed a fitting name for a walled city, Serena thought.

“Yes. Where are you from?”

Serena hesitated, but then opted for the truth. Why not, after all? No one here could possibly recognize the name—and besides, it probably translated as so much gibberish. “It’s a city called Seattle.”

“I’ve never heard of that. It’s across the ocean?”

“Yes, far away. We—Merlin and I—wanted to see a bit more of the world.”

Roxanne’s delicate lips twisted. “And you came to Atlantia?”

“It seemed a good idea at the time,” Serena murmured. “Your customs are no doubt different from ours, and it’s always interesting to encounter a different culture.”

After a wary glance toward Merlin, Roxanne said,
“He
may find Atlantia to his liking. Men, especially wizards, have the best of things here. But you may wish you had not left your Seattle.”

“Why?”

“Because women are ultimately powerless here. Even wizards like me. What happened to me in the night happens to many women, thanks to the
Mountain Lords.”
Her voice dripped contempt and hatred when
she named the male wizards, the emotions so strong that Serena leaned back.

“The male wizards? They … hurt you last night?”

Roxanne offered a painful smile. “If you mean were they the ones who rutted like animals between my legs, no. Village men—powerless men—did that. For all their arrogance, no male wizard would dare attempt to take his pleasure with a woman of power.”

Baffled, Serena said, “Why not?”

“Because she would kill him, of course,” Roxanne replied a bit impatiently. “We may be lesser in power compared to most of them, but any female wizard who is taken against her will is quite capable of destroying even the mightiest male. It’s the one time we’re able to defeat them.”

Serena knew she looked as confused as she felt. “I don’t understand this.
Powerless
men hurt you last night?”

“Yes.”

“And you couldn’t fight them? Couldn’t stop them?”

“No, of course not. It was night.”

“What does that have to do with it?”

Roxanne looked briefly confused herself, but then her frown cleared. “It must be different in Seattle, as it once was here. Now we are unable to use our powers at night. From sunset to sunrise the Curtain makes all in the valley powerless.”

T
he lean-to was on the right and slightly behind Merlin, far enough away that the girl wouldn’t feel unduly threatened by his presence, Merlin thought, but close enough so that he could hear every word spoken there.

What he heard was hardly reassuring, but he listened nonetheless.

It was nearly an hour later when Serena returned to the fire, her face a bit drawn. She was carrying Roxanne’s empty bowl, and set it near the fire absently before she sat down on the stump she had earlier used for a seat.

“She’s asleep again. It seemed to hit her all at once.”

Merlin nodded. “Delayed shock. The next time she wakes, I doubt she’ll seem so calm.”

“I wondered about that. She seemed … almost detached about what had happened to her.”

“Waking to find herself uninjured and with her memory of what had happened to her somewhat distant, she wasn’t forced to deal with the trauma immediately. Since we were here, strangers, she was able to concentrate on us. Explaining some of the traits of this place
kept her mind off herself. It was a healthy enough response.”

“But temporary?”

“She’ll have to deal with what happened to her sooner or later.”

Serena was silent for a moment, then said, “Is that coffee you’re drinking? Do they have coffee here?”

“Yes, it is coffee, and no, they don’t have it here. I’m cheating.” Merlin gazed broodingly into his mug. “Would you like some?”

“Please.”

He conjured a mug of coffee for Serena—fixed with cream and sugar, the way she always drank it—directly into her grasp without even looking at her.

“I’m always impressed when you do that,” she murmured.

Merlin felt too unsettled to respond to her light tone. Instead he said, “At least now we know why Roxanne was unable to defend herself against her attackers.”

“I suppose it’s useless to hope we won’t be affected the way they are,” Serena ventured.

“Probably. If this
Curtain
does indeed reflect energy at the wizard who tries to use it, we’re vulnerable to it as well.”

Serena spoke slowly. “She said it also drains them. That it depletes more than their excess energy. If that’s so, men like those three we met could overpower even the strongest wizard during the night. So why haven’t they? I mean, if the powerless men resent wizards as strongly as you felt with those three, then why don’t they get together one night and—”

Merlin shook his head. “It isn’t that simple, I think. The male wizards live high in the mountains, remember? I very much doubt that many of them venture down here often, if at all, and never once the sun sets. Judging by what we saw this morning, the Curtain blankets only the valley. In the mountains the wizards are above it, and probably beyond its effects.”

“Then why don’t the women move up there?” Serena’s voice was a bit tense. “The female wizards, like Roxanne. It doesn’t seem to have occurred to her—and
the answer is so simple. Why do they remain down here, where their powers are drained night after night? Where they’re vulnerable?”

Merlin turned his head slowly and looked at her strained features. He had hoped they could avoid talking about this until there was more information, until he found some painless way of dealing with it, but Roxanne’s matter-of-fact words were undoubtedly echoing in Serena’s mind just the way they were resounding in his.

… no male wizard would dare attempt to take his pleasure with a woman of power…. she would kill him…
.

That was what Serena wanted to talk about, he knew. Roxanne had drawn an ugly picture of the battle going on between male and female wizards with a few brief but stark sentences, and that was so alien to what Serena knew of wizards that it was deeply troubling to her.

How much time did he have before she figured out why they were here? Not much, Merlin thought. She was a highly intelligent woman, and even now her mind must be filled with a jumble of impressions and speculations.

But he still didn’t want to cope with this right now. Roxanne’s intense hatred of the male wizards had shaken him very much, because it told him just how ominous the situation was. And his own reaction to the knowledge of a city filled with women of power was just as troubling. Even now he was struggling against the negative feelings.

“Richard?”

Returning his gaze to the mug in his hands, Merlin said unemotionally, “You heard Roxanne. The males are more powerful. The mountains must be their strongholds; so far they’ve apparently been able to keep the women down here in the valley.”

“But why?”

Because female wizards are capable of destroying males—if only when they are taken against their will? Did this hate and mistrust come about because too many
females were raped and too many males paid for the crime with their lives?

“I don’t know why,” he said evenly. “Any answer I could offer would be sheer speculation.”

“Then speculate.” Serena nearly snapped out the words.

“On the basis of what?” His tone was a bit snappy as well. “We’ve encountered three village men and one traumatized female wizard—hardly a representative sampling of the population. Roxanne’s hatred for the male wizards may be more unique than she’s led us to believe; those three men could have been mutant individuals rather than the norm; and the male wizards may have taken to the mountains simply to escape the Curtain
or
combative females. I—we—just don’t know enough yet even to speculate, Serena.”