by Kay Hooper
Somewhat grimly Tremayne wondered if Varian had considered the fact that by slaughtering their female infants and busily using the available powerless women as broodmares, he and his male offspring were steadily destroying the balance of the population. Probably not. Though there was a certain cunning in his nature, Varian’s appetites overwhelmed any rational overview of the future. His obsessions were blind, deaf, and mute.
“Alone again? God rot you, Tremayne, it isn’t natural for a man your age to ignore bitches the way you do!”
Tremayne glanced briefly aside to find his uncle, stark naked despite the chill of the air, staring at him with a frown.
“Didn’t you take a fancy to that black-haired bitch who was twitching her teats at you during supper?” Varian asked, leaning an elbow on the balustrade as he looked at the younger man.
Tremayne had once objected to his uncle’s degrading terms for women—powerless women were bitches to him, and female wizards were whores—but Varian had only laughed at him. Having always considered himself rough-mannered, Tremayne knew that here in his uncle’s house, and perhaps in Atlantia itself, he was by comparison a veritable gentleman.
“No,” he said finally, his voice even. “She was very pretty, but I won’t bed a child half my age.”
Varian looked surprised. “A child? Fifteen’s a bitch all filled out and haired over. Why, I got a boy on her … let’s see, must be a year ago. You have to get ’em while they’re fresh, man, not dried up and stretched out of shape.”
For a brief moment Tremayne felt curiously detached. He was, he realized, listening to a Master wizard, probably the most powerful one in the world, and this supposed giant had absolutely nothing on his mind except breeding. Varian was barely forty, just ten years older than Tremayne. He had more than sixty of his sons in residence (those deemed too young to be sexually active occupied a house nearby), triple that number of girls and women in various stages of being impregnated, a home that was a virtual palace, and any luxury he could wish quite literally his for a snap of his fingers.
Tremayne imagined Varian and his offspring breeding like rabbits for another thirty years, and into his mind crept the clear, cold awareness that they would have to be stopped. Somehow. Before Atlantia broke under the weight.
“You worry me, Tremayne,” Varian said.
Tremayne looked at him, not for the first time grateful that his own considerable abilities shielded his thoughts from even a Master wizard. “Would it ease your mind if I told you I kept a mistress in Sanctuary?” he asked dryly.
Varian’s frown cleared, though the twist of his full lips indicated scorn for a man who could be satisfied with only one woman. “I suppose that’s where you were all afternoon?”
“Yes,” Tremayne answered, not lying. He had been in Sanctuary, though there was no mistress; if Varian dared show his face in the city, he would realize that the laws there prohibited any male wizard from so much as touching a female, with or without power, unless she was his legal wife. And since none of the male wizards in Atlantia had ever married, all the women of Sanctuary were completely off-limits to them. But few males of power ventured inside the walls of Sanctuary, and few atop these mountains knew or cared what laws prevailed there.
Tremayne knew the laws well. He had spent much of his time these last months exploring the city, taking extreme care to give no offense and wearing the mark of power without either shame or arrogance. He had learned a great deal.
Varian shook his head almost pityingly. “You’re too damned choosy, Tremayne, that’s your trouble. And a fool to keep your bitch in the city. Her place is here, warming your bed. Is she breeding yet?”
“No,” Tremayne replied. Again no lie. She was not pregnant, the woman he wanted; at least she showed no sign of it. And he had hardly gotten close enough to be responsible if she were. She had proven elusive; he hadn’t been able to find her since that brief meeting more than a week ago that had struck him with such numbing force, he still felt shock when he thought about it.
“My Lord?” Ginny’s voice was almost a wail, bereft.
“She’s ready for another ride,” Varian said to his house guest with a wide smile, and turned away to stride back along the terrace.
Tremayne didn’t linger to hear the noisy coupling. He descended through the gardens rather than returning to the house. It would be dawn before he reached the valley floor, but he was restless and, more than anything, had to get away from his uncle’s house.
Thoughts of the lady pushed every other aside, and he felt again that strange, wrenching shock inside himself. He didn’t know if she was a wizard or powerless; their meeting had so affected him that he had been blind to even that most basic of questions. He knew only that he wanted her. She had been slight and rather fragile, but not childlike; hers had been the ripening body of a young woman. Golden hair escaping the net into which she had carelessly bundled it, wide blue eyes in a heart-shaped, delicately lovely face. The grace of a young doe. The innate wariness of a woman of Atlantia.
He didn’t know who she was. Or what she was. But he knew he had to find her.
It was past dawn when Tremayne reached the valley floor and took the road to Sanctuary. The Curtain was dispersing as the first rays of the morning sun reached over the mountaintops. And it had been many long hours of torment since Roxanne’s final, hopeless cry had echoed through the forest beside the road. If he glanced to the left, he might see something like a pile of soiled laundry against the base of a tree no more than thirty feet away.
He didn’t look.
Seattle—1984
It was his home. She knew that, although where her certainty came from was a mystery to her. Like the inner tug that had drawn her across the country to find him, the knowledge seemed instinctive, beyond words or reason. She didn’t even know his name. But she knew what he was. He was what she wanted to be, needed to be, what all her instincts insisted she had to be, and only he could teach her what she needed to learn.
Until this moment she had never doubted that he would accept her as his pupil. At sixteen she was passing through that stage of development experienced by humans twice in their lifetimes, a stage marked by total self-absorption and the unshakable certainty that the entire universe revolves around oneself. It occurred in infancy and in adolescence, but rarely ever again, unless one was utterly unconscious of reality. Those traits had given her the confidence she had needed to cross the country alone with no more than a ragged backpack and a few dollars.
But they deserted her now, as she stood at the wrought-iron gates and stared up at the secluded old Victorian house. The rain beat down on her, and lightning flashed in the stormy sky, illuminating the turrets and gables of the house; there were few lighted windows, and those were dim rather than welcoming.
It looked like the home of a wizard.
She almost ran, abruptly conscious of her aloneness. But then she squared her thin shoulders, shoved open the gate, and walked steadily to the front door. Ignoring the bell, she used the brass knocker to rap sharply. The knocker was fashioned in the shape of an owl, the creature that symbolized wisdom, a familiar of wizards throughout fiction.
She didn’t know about fact.
Her hand was shaking, and she gave it a fierce frown as she rapped the knocker once more against the solid door. She barely had time to release the knocker before the door was pulled open.
Tall and physically powerful, he had slightly shaggy raven hair and black eyes that burned with an inner fire. For long moments he surveyed the dripping, ragged girl on his doorstep with lofty disdain, while all of her determination melted away to nothing. Then he caught her collar with one elegant hand, much as he might have grasped a stray cat, and yanked her into the well-lit entrance hall. He studied her with daunting sternness.
What he saw was an almost painfully thin girl who looked much younger than her sixteen years. Her threadbare clothing was soaked; her short, tangled hair was so wet that only a hint of its normal vibrant r
ed color was apparent; and her small face, all angles and seemingly filled with huge eyes, was white and pinched. She was no more attractive than a stray mongrel pup.
“Well?”
The vast poise of sixteen years deserted the girl as he barked the one word in her ear. She gulped. “I … I want to be a wizard,” she managed finally, defiantly.
“Why?”
She was soaked to the skin, tired and hungry, and she possessed a temper that had more than once gotten her into trouble. Her green eyes snapping, she glared up into his handsome, expressionless face, and her voice lost all its timidity.
“I will be a wizard! If you won’t teach me, I’ll find someone who will. I can summon fire already—a little—and I can feel the power inside me. All I need is a teacher, and I’ll be great one day—”
He lifted her clear off the floor and shook her briefly, effortlessly, inducing silence with no magic at all. “The first lesson an Apprentice must learn,” he told her calmly, “is to never—ever—shout at a Master.”
He casually released her, conjured a bundle of clothing out of thin air, and handed it to her. Then he waved a hand negligently and sent her floating up the dark stairs toward a bathroom.
And so it began.
PART ONE
Seattle
ONE
“Ten bucks says you can’t do it.”
Serena Smyth lifted an eyebrow at her friend, her catlike green eyes alight with amusement. “You’re on.”
It was one of many bets between the two young women since they had met in high school years before, lighthearted and, as usual, challenging Serena’s uncanny ability to get information, or anything else she wanted, from a man.
Jane Riley, an attractive and vivacious brunet, giggled, but then suddenly looked nervous. “I don’t know. Maybe this isn’t such a good idea. Serena, Jeremy Kane uses his column to trash anybody he hates, and since that model broke up with him, he hates every woman still alive and breathing. There’s no way he’ll dance with you, let alone spill the beans about the grant. And if he realizes you’re just after information, next week’s column will make you look like the whore of Babylon.”
“He’ll never guess what I’m after,” Serena retorted confidently.
“Oh, no? Look, friend, we both know he’s virtually pickled after years of drinking, but he was a crackerjack investigative reporter once upon a time, and some of the old instincts might still be there.”
Serena shrugged. With the frankness that often startled people because her appearance made them believe she was too elegant and haughty to ever speak bluntly, she said, “I don’t think he could find his butt with both hands and a flashlight.”
Jane, knowing her friend rather well, began to regret her own impulsive challenge. “Serena, why don’t we just forget the bet this time? If you go and do something crazy, Richard will never forgive me.”
“Forgive you? Don’t be silly, he knows me too well to ever blame anyone else for my tricks. Besides, you know you’re dying to find out if Seth gets the grant.”
Jane couldn’t deny that. Seth Westcott was her live-in lover, an artist with a difficult temperament, and Jane knew their cluttered loft would be much more peaceful if she could tell him that the fifty-thousand-dollar grant from Kane’s newspaper was going to be his. More peaceful for a while, at least.
But she hesitated, mostly because of Serena’s uncle and onetime guardian, with whom her friend still lived here in Seattle. Richard Merlin had always made Jane feel just the tiniest bit uneasy, though she couldn’t have said exactly why, since he’d always been perfectly pleasant to her. It might have been his dramatic appearance; his slightly shaggy black hair, austere, rather classical bone structure, and startling black eyes gave him the appearance of a man who might have been anything from a poet or maestro of the symphony—to a serial killer.
In actuality, he was a businessman, involved in various real estate ventures, and both well known and highly respected in the city. A rather ordinary kind of career, certainly, and he had never done anything to call undue attention to himself or any of his actions. But Jane still felt curiously in awe of him, and it always made her nervous when Serena cheerfully did something they both knew her uncle would not be happy about.
Shaking her head, Jane said, “Of course I want to know if Seth gets the grant, but I’d rather not see your name in bold print in Kane’s column.”
“Oh, that’ll never happen.” Serena spoke absently, her attention elsewhere as she scanned the well-dressed crowd. The occasion was a dinner-dance charity benefit, and since the charity was a good one, the crowd was happy to be here. Both the food and the band were first-rate, and the party was being held in a hotel ballroom, so none of the guests felt the automatic constraint that came with being in someone’s home.
The huge room was very noisy.
Serena finally found what she’d been looking for: Richard’s tall form on the other side of the room. He was talking to the mayor, his attention firmly engaged, and was unlikely to notice what she was up to.
“If you’re so sure Richard won’t care what you’re going to do,” Jane said suspiciously, “then why did you check first to make sure he was across the room?”
Serena rose to her feet, leaving her wrap over the back of the chair and her evening purse on the table. She was a bit above average height and slender, but by no means thin. In fact, she could have earned a healthy income posing for the centerfold of any men’s magazine, and the backless emerald green evening gown she was wearing displayed that eye-catching figure to advantage.
The gown also set off her bright red hair, currently swept up in an elaborate French twist, her translucent complexion, and her vivid green eyes. She was a beautiful woman, her features exquisite and deceptively haughty, and a considerable intelligence made her able to hold her own in most any situation.
Smiling, she looked down at her friend and said, “I never said he wouldn’t care. I just said he wouldn’t blame you.”
Watching her friend move gracefully among the tables toward her intended target, Jane felt a brief, craven impulse to find Seth in the crowd and announce that she wanted to go home. But he’d be suspicious, and she’d have to confess she had dared Serena to do something dangerous. Again.
It had been fun during their teenage years, because Serena had accepted even the wildest dares and because peculiar things always seemed to happen when she did.
Like the time Jane had dared her to approach the famous rock star who’d been performing in Seattle. Serena had gotten past the guards at the stage door with incredible ease, emerging in triumph ten minutes later with an autograph. She had been wearing a stage pass, impossible to buy or fake, and had only laughed when Jane had demanded to know how she’d gotten it.
Later Jane had heard an odd story. The sprinkler system backstage had been acting up just when Serena had been there, going on and off in different areas randomly, drenching equipment and driving everybody nuts.
Serena, of course, had come out perfectly dry.
And there had been another occasion Jane had never forgotten. A mutual friend had taken the two girls out on a fishing boat, and he had bemoaned the fact that the small family fishing businesses such as his were a dying breed; they simply couldn’t compete with the huge commercial operations. He was on the verge of going under financially, he had confided, and during this particular week the catch had been truly abysmal.
Jane had happened to look at Serena just then, and she’d been struck by her friend’s expression. Gazing out over the water, Serena had chewed her bottom lip in a characteristically indecisive gesture and then, looking both guilty and pleased, had nodded to herself, her eyes very bright.
There had been no opportunity to ask her friend what was going on, because their host had begun to haul his nets in. To his obvious shock, the catch was the best of the season, incredibly good; the boat rode low in the water with the weight of the fish. It seemed his luck had turned. In fact, after that day he
had only to cast out his nets to be rewarded by all the fish he could handle.
Jane had never asked Serena about that, just as she’d never asked her about a few other peculiar things, such as why light bulbs had an odd tendency to blow out near her and computers often went haywire, or why she couldn’t wear a wristwatch (they went crazy or simply died on her), or why the weather always seemed to be good when she wanted it to be. Jane simply accepted the good fortune of Serena’s friends and privately decided that she was three parts witch.
But she was nervous about this bet, and watched anxiously as Serena reached Jeremy Kane’s table. The newspaperman had been drinking steadily all evening, and had more than once gotten so loud that those at nearby tables couldn’t help overhearing him as he caustically held forth on a number of subjects. But he hadn’t left his table even once to dance.
Jane saw her friend lean down to speak to Kane, but she didn’t get the chance to observe his reaction, because her own date returned to their table just then.
“Sorry to be so long, honey,” Seth said as he sat down beside her. “Thompson’s wife had to tell me in great detail how she wanted her portrait to look.” He was a tall, very thin man with average looks and deceptively mild brown eyes, and possessed only two unusual physical characteristics. His voice was so beautiful, it was nearly hypnotic; and his hands were incredibly graceful and expressive.
Jane had no trouble in fixing her attention on Seth; she was absolutely crazy about the man. “Megan Thompson? If she has any sense, she’d just ask you to make her look like somebody else.”
Seth grinned at her. “Meow.”
“She has mismatched eyes,” Jane insisted. “Besides that, her ears are set too low, and she has dark roots.”
Leaning back away from her in exaggerated caution, Seth said, “Whew—what’s with you? If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were jealous. But I do know better, so I has to be something else.”
