Kay Hooper - The Wizard Of Seattle

He shook his head abruptly to cut off her apology. "Never mind. We wandered from the point. This account of the destruction of Atlantis is very detailed, obviously from an eyewitness who was at sea. So there must have been at least one survivor."

Serena realized she had touched a nerve in her comment about his mother, but she had no idea why. Nor could she probe for an answer; his shuttered eyes made that clear. All she could do was follow his lead.

She was relieved to find a humorous angle in her own thoughts, and that relief was audible in her voice. "It just occurred to me that since the nonwizard world has no idea about some of this stuff, any powerless historian would just love to get his hands on your books."

Merlin smiled slightly. "They wouldn't be able to read a word."

"True." Serena thought for a moment, and found a genuine worry to distract her from everything else. "Something else occurs to me. Since we'll be in Atlantis just when everything's about to hit the fan-you will be able to get us out of there in a hurry, won't you?"

"If we're near the gate, certainly."

She stared at him. "If we're near it? You mean it's a fixed gate?"

Returning her stare, Merlin said, "Well, I don't propose to carry it around in my pocket."

"That's not what I meant, and you know it. If we happen to get stuck away from the gate just when we need it, wouldn't you be able to make another? A spur-of-the-moment escape hatch, so to speak?"

"No. One gate causes a small rip in the space-time continuum, which is dangerous enough; a second gate could create a crosscurrent and make it impossible for either doorway to be closed. We don't want that to happen."

"I guess not." Serena frowned. "So there really is a space-time continuum?"

"Of course."

"Oh. I thought the science fiction writers made that up."

"So do they."

Serena laughed, and realized only then that in the surprise of Merlin's announcement about their forthcoming trip, she had completely forgotten the tension between them. It felt more like old times, talking to him like this without difficulty, as if no trouble had sprung up between them.

Remembering, of course, brought all the emotions and stress back to mind, and even as Serena heard her laugh trail off, she saw Merlin's smile fade, as well. The tension hadn't vanished, it had merely been ignored for a while.

Would she really have all her questions answered by the time they returned from Atlantis? Even the painful ones-like the identity of his blond bedmate? Would this trip be a panacea for their strained relationship, or would it only make matters worse between them?

"Serena…"

She looked at him, at the awareness in his eyes, and wondered despairingly if she had forever lost her ability to keep her feelings hidden from him. It seemed so.

Carefully neutral, she said, "So you want to get started first thing tomorrow?"

He nodded slowly in reply, but said, "Serena, what we have to do is going to be difficult enough without-"

She couldn't let him finish that, and got up even as she spoke briskly. "I know. Look, neither of us has eaten supper, so why don't I go and see what Rachel left for us?"

"Fine."

When he was alone again in the study, Merlin gazed broodingly down at the open book on his desk, trying to forget the naked moment with Serena. He was able to push it aside, if only because there were so many other things to think about.

Odd the twists and turns fete pursued. If his father had not given him this book, the "reference material" that contained the procedure to take Serena's powers, he would never have found what he had searched for all these months. It wasn't an answer, but it was definitely a beginning.

The book seemed to have been written long after Atlantis's destruction and long after the law forbidding women to become wizards had been created. But in the section of the book detailing the extended and elaborate procedure used to render a female powerless (Merlin refused even to read the actual procedure), there were numerous vague references to "the dark times" and allusions to some dreadful cataclysm.

As the judge had said, there was nothing specific in this book about the reasons for the law, but the use of the word cataclysm had struck Merlin forcibly. How many true cataclysms had there been in all of history? Not many, really, given the span of time. And in the history of wizards , none was claimed to have had any meaningful effect on their society.

Yet in this same book, in another section dealing with the historical accuracy of certain events, was an old account of the destruction of Atlantis, clearly written by an eyewitness who had been, of course, a wizard. (The doings of powerless beings were detailed by their own books.) Though the account was concise and detailed, it was not dispassionate; there was anger and bitterness and pain in every word. And after the bald details of what a continent looked like as it wrenched itself apart and sank into the ocean, there was one line that had made Merlin's heart suddenly beat faster.

We mustn't let it happen to us.

A great deal of meaning could be inferred from that brief statement. "It" had to be the destruction of the continent; and "us" had to be the other wizards, the ones who had lived, then, primarily in Europe. The implication was that the eyewitness had been a visitor to Atlantis. And the statement was a strong indication that the wizards of Atlantis had somehow caused their own destruction.

Speculation, certainly, but possible.

It had taken hours of searching through his library for Merlin to find any other information about Atlantis, and what he did find was sketchy. The society there had seemed to be one of great promise, its people strong and healthy, their land fertile, and their community vigorous. There were definitely wizards among the powerless; Merlin couldn't find out how many because whole passages in several of his books and scrolls were completely illegible, and nothing he tried had any effect.

As if the information had been deliberately destroyed.

Still, there was enough to convince Merlin he was on the right track. Common sense told him that the taboos against women must have resulted from some immense traumatic event (a good definition of a cataclysm, he thought, would be the destruction of an entire continent), and it was surely no coincidence that much of the information regarding Atlantis was as elusive as that regarding female wizards.

From that deduction it was only natural to consider going back in time to find out what had happened.

It wouldn't be the first instance of time travel for Merlin, so the actual journey didn't disturb him-even without the permission of the Council. He wasn't even unduly alarmed at the prospect of landing on a continent about which he knew next to nothing except that it was about to vanish under the sea. His worries were more complicated.

What tormented him the most was Serena, and what he would have to do to her if the past held nothing to help him. He would have to destroy her. To see the astonishing trust in her eyes turn to horror and fear… and pain.

Merlin tried to shake off the thoughts; there was no use worrying until he knew whether or not the past offered anything helpful. But he couldn't stop thinking about Serena; he'd never been able to do that. Not since she'd grown up.

Was he being reckless as well as irrational in taking her with him into the past? There was no real reason for that course of action, after all. He had certainly never needed help, and given the tension between them, her presence was likely to cause more strain than he wanted or needed to deal with. There was no reason at all for her to accompany him.

Was there?

He'd been sitting here at the desk for hours with that question in his mind, and had come to a decision only when Serena walked into the study. It might have been because he was a fair man and this certainly concerned her; it might have been because he had a hunch that this time he would need help-her help-to attempt to understand what had gone wrong in the society of wizards.