Kay Hooper - The Wizard Of Seattle

"You won't be born for millennia. Don't split hairs, Serena." But his low voice was amused rather than annoyed.

They were both speaking quietly, aware of Roxanne's presence a few yards away.

"It's still a fact that I can hardly keep a promise I haven't made yet. That isn't logical."

"Logical? Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't it you who once said that math wasn't logical?"

She dismissed the memory with a shrug. "Numbers confuse me. But I'm very good with words, you know I am, Richard. And ideas. I may be new to this time travel business, but I think I'm getting the hang of it. And I know that promises I made in our time aren't valid here."

His half smile faded a bit. "Even the promise you made to obey me?"

After a moment Serena let go of his hand, rubbing her own down over her thighs in an unconsciously nervous gesture. "Even in our time that promise was reserved for the workroom and my lessons," she reminded him, striving to keep her voice easygoing. "You're my Master as a wizard-not as a man."

Merlin nodded slowly. "I wanted to make sure you remembered that. I haven't forgotten it, Serena. And I won't. No matter what happens here, no matter what ideas and customs these people have, you and I are from a different time. We can't let ourselves be torn apart by what's destroying them."

She gazed up at him, and for the first time since Roxanne had talked about this place and its people, Serena remembered all the years that Merlin had virtually raised her. She owed him a great deal, far more than she would ever be able to repay.

Without his willingness to guide her, she probably would have ended up using her inborn powers simply to survive any way she could. Instead he had given her the first real home of her life and had not only taught her the skills of a wizard, but also provided her with an excellent model of what a decent human being should be.

The recent strain between them, strong and bewildering though it was, had not erased her memories of those times or her awareness of how much she owed Merlin, and she couldn't allow Atlantis to wipe them away, either.

At the very least she owed him her trust-unless and until he did something to betray that trust. What other wizards, male or female, did was hardly something for which she could hold him responsible.

Serena drew a breath and nodded. "Point taken. I'll try to remember that what happens here doesn't necessarily have to affect us."

Merlin didn't ask her to explain the qualifier. "Good. Now, I'm going to follow this stream a bit father north and see if there's a better place to cross."

"You could just conjure a bridge."

"I probably will, but I hesitate to use my powers too often until we find out just how much these wizards are capable of."

"That makes sense. I'll stay here with Roxanne." She had taken no more than two steps away when he said her name, and she paused to look back at him.

He lifted his left hand, the thumb brushing over the unmarked fingertips lightly. "Thank you."

"Any time." She went back to join Roxanne, unaware of smiling until the younger woman's openly curious stare made her aware of it. "Is something on your mind?" she asked lightly, sitting down on the fallen tree.

After she'd glanced past Serena to make sure Merlin had gone, Roxanne said slowly, "You two are certainly… different."

"In what way?"

"Sometimes you seem very comfortable together, and other times it's almost as if you're strangers. You seem to view each other as equals, and yet you appear willing to follow his lead. I can see now you aren't his concubine, but the way you look at him and the way he looks at you makes it obvious there is something between you."

"You're very observant," was all Serena could think to say. The way Merlin looked at her?

Roxanne gazed at her steadily, the wide blue eyes puzzled. "You say you're his companion?"

Serena felt uneasy, remembering what Merlin had said. "Yes, but maybe you'd better tell me what that word means to you."

"What it means? It means a comrade, a friend-"

"That's it," Serena said, relieved.

"-or a mate," Roxanne finished. "But you couldn't be his mate, because male wizards don't have mates."

"Well, I'm not his mate, but why do you say male wizards don't have them? If they have concubines…"

Roxanne frowned. "That's different. The males want sons, of course, and they want their pleasure, so they have concubines. But never mates. All they have to give to any female is their seed. Even if they possessed hearts, they could never give them to a woman, not even a powerless woman."

"But a powerless woman couldn't hurt them, could she?"

"Not the way a wizard could-although I suppose she could cut his throat if he trusted her enough to sleep in her bed." The idea seemed an interesting one to Roxanne, her eyes going distant and thoughtful as she considered it silently.

"They don't ever do that? Sleep together in bed?"

With a shrug Roxanne said, "I could hardly know for sure, but according to powerless women who were once concubines, the males always leave the bed once their needs have been satisfied."

"Oh." Trying not to feel appalled-this was not her time or her society, Merlin had been right to remind her of that-Serena probed for more information. "You said the male wizards kept concubines partly because they wanted sons; do the mothers raise their children?"

"No, never. Their babes are taken from them immediately after birth. The sons are suckled by older powerless women, and raised by lesser male wizards in a separate house near their fathers' palaces."

Serena shook her head in disbelief. "Those poor women lose their children? God, that's not just cruel- it's inhuman."

Roxanne seemed a bit puzzled by Serena's words, but she merely shrugged. "The males fear their sons' being influenced by any female, so they take care to avoid it."

Realizing only then what she was hearing, Serena frowned. "Wait a minute. Sons. What about the daughters?"

"They are killed at birth," Roxanne replied matter-of-factly.

"What? Just automatically slaughtered because they're female?"

"Yes."

Her thoughts whirling and nausea churning in her stomach, Serena couldn't bring herself to say a single word. It was one thing to tell herself this was not her society, but the knowledge that any society could practice or condone the practice of murdering innocent newborns deemed the "wrong" sex was simply horrifying. And that wizards could commit such a dreadful act tore at Serena.

Unaware of the blow she had dealt, Roxanne returned to her original point. "You and Merlin are something out of the ordinary. Aside from your oddity as a pair, he doesn't really behave-so for, at least-like any of the male wizards I've encountered. And you don't act like a powerless woman."

Serena forced herself to respond casually. "How do the powerless women here act?"

"Subservient."

Startled, Serena frowned. "What, all of them?"

"Outside the walls of Sanctuary, yes. In the city, of course, things are different; the powerless women are never threatened or abused, and they seem content-if somewhat simple and pliable. But out here I suppose they've learned that a bowed head is less likely to anger their men."

Serena cleared her throat. "We encountered a few village men when we first arrived, and I can see how the women might have a great deal to fear. The men looked rather brutal, even though one of them was smiling."

"A powerless woman's lot is no better than a wizard's here in Atlantia," Roxanne said broodingly. "If she escapes being taken into the mountains by one of the male wizards, she is still liable to endure a hard and wretched life under the domination of some man who is as likely to knock her unconscious as he is to throw her down and take his pleasure."