Kay Hooper - The Wizard Of Seattle

Merlin nodded. "I should have realized. It explains how male and female wizards are able to harm each other. If it had been just you and Varian here, you in a temper and him scared half out of his wits, both of you could have been badly injured."

"But we weren't alone. You were here. So he got burned-literally-and maybe he'll think twice next time before he barges in on a lady's bath."

With a slight smile Merlin said, "And maybe he'll think about what he's doing here if he knows the outside world is quite a bit different."

Serena looked up at him gravely. "That's why you taunted him? I wondered."

"I shouldn't have done it," he admitted wryly. "I'm not even sure why I did, except… it seemed right, somehow. I seemed to know what I should say to him."

"As if… you'd already said it?"

Merlin frowned a little. "A sense of déjà vu? Yes, as a matter of fact, that was what I felt."

Had he felt that way because what he'd said to Varian was what he was supposed to say? Because their confrontation, like the destruction of this place, had-to Merlin and Serena, anyway-already happened a long time ago?

It had occurred to Serena to wonder if she and Merlin would in some way contribute to the destruction of Atlantis, an unnerving possibility she had promptly put out of her mind. Now it returned, and she had to wonder. Had it been their fate to be a part of the process that destroyed Atlantis? They couldn't be responsible for everything that happened here, Serena knew, because this had been a dying place long before they arrived. But were they perhaps the catalysts, their presence and actions sparking what would become the final upheaval?

Time travel was a tricky thing, its laws elusive and largely theoretical, so how could they know? Perhaps their being here now was a piece of the puzzle, a part of the reason it all happened as it had.

She didn't ask Merlin, because she wasn't at all sure she wanted to hear his answer; sometimes ignorance was indeed a blessed thing. And she didn't ask him something else, though not for the same reason. She didn't ask him why he'd told Varian that she was his mate. Instead she merely suggested that they have breakfast, take another look at the ruins of the Old City, and then head back toward Sanctuary so they could check on the progress of Roxanne and Tremayne.

That was, after all, their best chance at changing the future, which was why they were here.

"Nearly twenty years ago Varian wasn't so careful," Roxanne said with forced composure. "He hadn't yet developed the habit of taking young powerless women up to his palace and keeping them there so he could control his offspring."

Tremayne watched her across the tiny fire. With their late start in leaving Sanctuary, they had gotten less than halfway across the valley before night and the Curtain fell, so they had made camp in the forest. Tremayne had waited until then to ask about her parentage, because he thought she'd be more willing to talk to him with darkness at their backs and the Curtain draining her resistance.

"So Varian… encountered your mother in the village?" he said, keeping his voice neutral.

"No, near the Old City, where she'd gone to pick berries. She didn't fight him, even though she didn't like him at all and was more than a little bit afraid of him. It wouldn't have' done her much good to fight, and in any case, she was like all the village girls: simple and submissive. She just did as he commanded. He told her he'd come back for her later and take her up to his palace, but he didn't. When she realized she was going to bear his child, she had to leave the village, because she knew her father would beat her; the last thing he needed was another mouth to feed. So she went to Sanctuary."

"The city must have been new then."

"It was. My mother was welcomed, and I was born there. She knew I was born with power, of course, and she thought I should be raised by wizards. So I was." Roxanne was still astonished that she was telling him all this, astonished she was talking to him at all; she didn't understand herself, and tried to blame the Curtain for her singular willingness to confide in him, even though she knew that wasn't it.

The frightening truth was, something about this man drew her out of herself and urged her to trust him, and she seemed helpless to fight it.

"She left you there?" His voice was still carefully dispassionate.

"She wasn't comfortable in the city. It was too new, too strange and different for her. She returned to the village, took the beating her father gave her, and went on with her life."

After a moment Tremayne said, "Would it surprise you to learn that there are places in this world where women are valued and treated well by their men?"

Knowing that her bitterness had escaped her, Roxanne gazed across the fire at him and wondered what she had heard in his deep voice. Pain? Whatever it was, it unnerved her. "It's getting late," she said, and eased down on her pallet of blankets, wrapping one around her and making sure her walking stick was near-for all the good it would do if they were to be attacked in the night by village men. But she doubted that would happen. Tremayne had been right; his presence made the night safer for her, since it was unlikely that village men would do anything to anger a male wizard.

"Good night, Roxanne. Sleep well."

She didn't bother to remind him that sleeping well was impossible with the Curtain pressing down on them. Instead she half closed her eyes and watched him through her lashes as he sat silently on his side of the fire, until weariness finally sent her into a fitful sleep.

It was just after dawn when she woke, but she didn't move right away. The fire was still burning, and Tremayne was sleeping on a pallet like hers with his coat wrapped around him. His thin face was innocent, with no sign whatsoever of the duplicity, selfishness, or cruelty she had for so long associated with male wizards, and Roxanne felt very odd as she looked at him.

By the time the sun rose and chased away the Curtain, Tremayne was stirring, and she waited until he sat up before she followed suit.

They didn't talk very much, although he made several attempts at conversation. Roxanne was deeply troubled by the strange feelings he roused in her, and she was also thinking about what she intended to do when she reached the village; the result was confusion and uncertainty on both fronts. She didn't object when he conjured a morning meal for them, and excused herself some time later in order to retreat to a nearby stream- one of the few still unspoiled-and perform her morning ablutions.

Since the sun was up, the almost automatic dread of the night was gone, and Roxanne wasn't nervous or wary. After she'd splashed her face, she conjured a bit of material to use for a towel, and was standing there patting her face dry when a heavy body suddenly burst through the undergrowth on the other side of the narrow stream. To her utter shock she found herself face-to-face with her father for the first time in her life.

She recognized Varian only because he had once been pointed out to her by an older female wizard when they had seen him crossing the road some distance from Sanctuary. Roxanne had been able to hide her distress then, but now she knew her mouth was open and her face was undoubtedly ghost white.

"God's blood, another whore!" he snapped, holding his coat about him with one hand as if chilled, even though his eyes were as hot as burning coals.

In that first seemingly eternal moment, as his crude insult stabbed her, Roxanne looked at her rather and realized with certainty that she was no part of him. That he was her sire was nothing more than an accident of chance and circumstance; he'd had no part in raising her, had no knowledge of her other than his recognition that she was a woman of power. She was no more like him than she was like her guileless, pliable mother.