Kay Hooper - The Wizard Of Seattle

Now she knew what "wrongness" Merlin had sensed earlier.

"May we be of service, My Lord?" the first asked in a courteous and deferential tone as they halted before Merlin and Serena. The man had to look up quite a ways to meet the Master wizard's black eyes.

Merlin didn't react visibly to the men, nor did he correct or question the assumption of his rank, and when he replied, his tone was uncharacteristically careless, even arrogant. "No, I think not."

Still respectful, the same man said, "You are a stranger to Atlantia?" It was more of a statement than a question.

"Yes, though I don't see why that should concern you," Merlin replied, bored.

The man ducked his head slightly, as if in apology, but his eyes remained on Merlin's face. "No offense was intended, My Lord. We see few strangers here these days, and I merely wished to be of service. If you should be interested in trading or selling your property, I'm sure I could arrange a viewing with the Mountain Lords."

"My property?"

"The woman, My Lord. Her coloring makes her rare. She is your concubine?"

That caught Serena's attention. "I-" she began indignantly, only to be silenced when Merlin's hand squeezed hers in warning. The man still hadn't looked at her.

"She is mine," Merlin replied calmly.

"The Mountain Lords are always greatly interested in powerless women, My Lord, particularly when they possess rare coloring and have not yet been affected by the Curtain. My Lord Varian, especially, would pay any price for her."

Serena, still struggling with shock and incensed by the assumption that she was any man's property- concubine , for God's sake!-tried to make sense of the man's words. The "Mountain Lords" had to be the male wizards, she decided, but what in hell was the "Curtain"?

"I have no desire to be rid of her," Merlin told the man, his tone still bored.

The man inclined his head. "If you should change your mind, My Lord, I can be found in the village to the west. My name is Payne."

"I'll remember that. Good day."

"My Lord." Payne inclined his head again and half bowed, his two companions did likewise, and the three men strode off toward their village.

Putting aside, for the moment, her outrage at being called a concubine, Serena said, "Richard, what the hell's happened here? Did you see them? They looked like… like Neanderthals. As if they'd regressed physically. Is that possible?"

Merlin gazed after the men, frowning. "Neanderthals… yes, they did resemble ancient man. Sloping forehead, overhanging brow, jutting jaw. Much shorter than modern man, heavily muscled, conspicuously hairy."

With a shudder Serena said, "They made my skin crawl. Even before Payne offered to sell me for you."

"They were definitely hostile, despite Payne's so-polite tone," Merlin said, looking down at her. "His respect and courtesy were no more real than his smile. He was afraid of me, afraid and resentful, I think. I was recognized instantly as a wizard, and he just as quickly assumed you were powerless. Why? They had no power and shouldn't have been able to sense mine."

Serena pulled her hand gently from his and took a couple of steps to sit on a fallen tree. She was trying to think, fighting to overcome the aversion she'd felt toward the three men. "Well, if all the powerless men here look like them, and the wizards don't , it would be easy to see the difference."

"True. But if their women, the powerless women, also look like throwbacks to the Ice Age, then why did he assume you were powerless?"

"The women must not look like them." She frowned. "We aren't in the Ice Age, right? I mean, those men don't look the way men are supposed to look whenever we are?"

Merlin untangled the question silently, then shrugged. "No, we aren't in the Ice Age; we haven't traveled seventy thousand years back in time. The men of this time should look very much like modern man in most respects. A few inches shorter, on the average, but they should certainly not look like Neanderthals."

"Is it possible they've regressed?"

Merlin shook his head slowly. "I think not. Neanderthals died out; we aren't directly descended from them. But I suppose these people here might have… mutated."

"What could have caused it?"

He joined her on the fallen tree, still frowning. "Mutations sometimes occur during the duplication of DNA. Or if DNA is damaged by X rays or some chemicals. Or-" He looked up suddenly, through the sparse leaves above them at the pale blue sky. "Or, perhaps, the energy spillover of generations of wizards."

Remembering the weird fog they had first glimpsed hanging over the valley, Serena shivered again. The mist had been alive with energy, crawling with it. "You mean, the wizards caused those men to look like that?"

"It's possible," Merlin replied thoughtfully. "Even likely. Electrical energy affects the human body in various ways. It could have caused a mutation. Once a gene has mutated, the new form duplicates as faithfully as the original. And a mutation that occurs in a sex cell can be transmitted from generation to generation. In this case, there would have been a whole series of mutations happening over time."

"But we agreed the women must look fairly normal, more like me. If we're assuming only the males are affected-" Serena broke off as an idea hit her. "The mutations affected only the Y chromosome?"

"If only the males are affected, it has to be the Y chromosome," Merlin agreed. "It's been proven that many abnormally aggressive men have double Y chromosomes; the men we've seen could fit that profile even to an exaggeratedly brutish physical appearance-that could be the mutation. Or the Y chromosome could have simply been damaged by generations of exposure to unrestrained, unfocused energies. Over time the physical appearance could have been altered by internal changes. They could have evolved into what we've seen."

He gazed around them at the gnarled trees and other bizarre vegetation, and added softly, "It might once have been a paradise, Serena, a long time ago. But now almost everything has been twisted and stunted."

She didn't say anything for several moments, but then stirred slightly and sighed. "Payne said that the Mountain Lords were interested in powerless women who hadn't yet been affected by the Curtain. Do you suppose he was talking about that weird mist we saw hanging over the valley before the sun rose?"

"Could be. It could be that the energy expended by all the wizards is somehow trapped over the valley each night, making it even more likely that the people would be affected."

"Including the women. From what he said, the women have been affected-but probably not in the way they look, because he assumed I was powerless." Serena sighed again. "It's like trying to put together a jigsaw puzzle when you don't know what the picture is supposed to look like."

"We don't know enough," Merlin agreed. "Still-not bad for our first couple of hours."

"I guess. Didn't Payne call this place Atlantia? Did history get the name wrong?"

"Proper names are often altered by the passage of time and imperfect translations. If we say Atlantis, they'll hear the name they're accustomed to hearing, so it doesn't really matter. Nothing to worry about, Serena."

Serena stood up when he did and, as she adjusted her pack, said somewhat grimly, "I'll tell you one thing. If the women here are no more than concubines, that is something to worry about. I'm going to have a hard time keeping my mouth shut."

He smiled slightly. "Try, please. At least until we have a better idea of what's going on. In the meantime, I'm afraid you'll have to resign yourself."

She looked away from his gaze, feeling a bit unnerved. So she was to play the part of his concubine? Lovely. Just lovely. This place really was turning into somebody's idea of hell.