The Wizard of Seattle (36 page)

Serena had been right—as an example of sisterhood, this place came up lacking.

Antonia sat before her crystal, staring fixedly into the shimmering depths. And, again, as she had for weeks now, she saw the same scene. The background was only darkness, so she wasn’t sure where it took place, but two people lay together, their naked bodies entwined, obviously making love. They were lying on a bed covered with fur, and firelight flickered over their bodies, so there was apparently a hearth nearby. The man was dark, muscled, powerful; the woman slender and yet seductive, her rich red hair spread out like waves of fire, and the aura surrounding them was literally pulsing with their combined power….

Antonia sensed that she was looking at something truly incredible, and it fascinated her. All that power, she thought, and simply due to a sexual alliance! If she had known years ago that her power could combine with a male’s, she would have chosen a consort then and saved herself years of a frustrating standoff in which she governed the women while the male wizards bickered and bred like rats.

Striking the table with a clenched fist, Antonia swore softly, intensely. Why had he refused her?
Why?
She wanted to believe his rejection was momentary, that she would find a way to persuade or seduce him, but she wasn’t fool enough to indulge in stupid fantasies.
His power was obvious, and when he had slammed the door to shut her out, she had found no possibility of forcing her way back in again.

No, Merlin was stubbornly attached to his Serena. How sweet. The only bright spot Antonia could find was his assertion that they would soon leave Atlantia; given his power and skill, the last thing she wanted was for him to linger long enough that he might be tempted to interfere in her plans—however much he denied an ambition to rule.

But with Merlin gone, what hope had she of finding a powerful male wizard willing to join his body and power to hers—and, of course, to later be commanded by her?

The situation seemed hopeless, but Antonia didn’t give up so easily. Instead she covered her crystal with a black cloth and went to her desk, taking from one of the drawers several sheets of parchment. There were written the names of every adult male wizard in Atlantia, with the ones said to be weakest and easiest led at the top. She had devoted much time and effort during the last weeks to the compilation of the list, since she had known only that her lover would be a dark male wizard.

She went to the perfect mirror hanging on the wall of her bedroom and recited a soft spell, then glanced down at her list. Looking back at the mirror, she said, “Show me Selby,” and watched as an image swiftly formed. She knew at once he was wrong; this wizard was thin and too pale, not at all like the man she had seen in her crystal.

She cleared the mirror and consulted her list again, knowing it could take her days to work her way through all the names. She couldn’t devote all her time to the search, of course, no matter how anxious she was; the city had to be run and its citizens looked after, and that was her responsibility.

But she intended to snatch every moment she could in which to continue her search. She had to find the lover fate was offering to her. Only then could she rule all of Atlantia.

“Show me Wyatt….”

• • •

By late afternoon of the second day of their hike, Roxanne and Tremayne had covered very little ground—and she knew it was her fault. The closer they came to the village, the more reluctant she was to continue, partly because she was having doubts about what she meant to do, but mostly because she was—against all odds—enjoying this time with Tremayne.

He seemed perfectly happy to slow their pace to a stroll, and there seemed to be a great deal to talk about. He spoke of his home in Europa, answering her questions with vivid descriptions of a world different from the one to which she was accustomed. And Roxanne found herself listening with a wistfulness she couldn’t conceal.

“Is it ugly there, as it is here?” she asked him. “With twisted trees and so much rock—and earthquakes?”

“No, Europa is paradise compared to Atlantia. The trees are tall and straight, the grass grows thick and green, and all the water is pure. As for earthquakes, I’ve never known one to strike Europa.”

“And no Curtain,” she murmured.

“No Curtain. It’s a beautiful land, Roxanne.”

“Male and female wizards don’t fight there?”

“No. They
do
tend to avoid each other,” he admitted honestly, “but there’s no open hostility. What worries me is the notion that the society of Europa could be heading down the same path Atlantia followed. If something isn’t done to create a sense of understanding and unity between men and women of power, the entire society of wizards could be doomed.”

“Is that why you—”

“No, it isn’t.” Tremayne’s voice was calm. “My feelings for you are entirely personal, Roxanne.”

“You don’t know me. How could you feel anything for me?”

“I don’t know.”

That reply startled her so much that she stopped walking and turned to stare at him. “You don’t know?”

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 personality 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?”