by Kay Hooper
With half the length of the terrace between them, Merlin stopped and watched the younger wizard with the wary gaze of a bomb expert handed a ticking package. He saw Tremayne’s aura become visible, a shimmering halo that was at first different colors but quickly turned an angry red.
What he was seeing was anger, rage. And Merlin knew better than to intrude while the powerful emotions ran their course. Though Master wizards never displayed their auras, simply because they had learned to control all aspects of their inborn power, lesser wizards sometimes allowed their emotions to overwhelm them. Tremayne’s fury over what had happened to Roxanne was perfectly understandable, and Merlin sympathized, but there was nothing he could do to make it easier for the younger man.
He stood by silently, waiting, and when white-hot threads of energy escaped Tremayne’s aura like a shower of sparks and rained down on the garden below the terrace, Merlin instantly doused the tiny flames ignited. He was careful not to allow his own energy to touch the younger wizard’s, saving them both a nasty jolt, and kept a wary eye turned toward the house because he hoped he wouldn’t have to explain this to his host.
After what seemed like a long time but was probably no more than half an hour or so, Tremayne’s aura gradually lessened in intensity, the colors fading, until finally it was no longer visible. As silently as he had drawn away, Merlin rejoined Tremayne at the balustrade.
“No wonder she told me I was mad.” Tremayne’s voice was drained.
Neutral himself, Merlin asked, “Does it change the way you feel about her?”
Tremayne’s head snapped around. “If you’re asking me if I consider her less than she was—I may be mad, but I’m not a fool. She was a victim of this place and can’t be blamed for what happened to her.”
“I agree,” Merlin said quietly. “But it certainly won’t make your task any easier. If, that is, you mean to try and persuade her to go with you when you leave Atlantis.”
Tremayne looked shocked for an instant, but then an unsteady laugh escaped him. “I … think that is what I was hoping.”
“Is it such a startling possibility?”
“Yes—you must know it is. Oh, we don’t fight the way wizards here do, but I don’t know of a single mated pair of wizards in all of Europa. Not one pair. We mate with powerless; it’s always been that way.”
Merlin nodded toward the Curtain spread out over the valley. “The way it has been here. And look what’s happened. Maybe the blame for all this lies there, in our belief that we can’t allow ourselves to be vulnerable—especially to the female of our kind.”
“Because they can damage us, even kill us,” Tremayne reminded him.
“You and I could kill each other.” Merlin turned his head and looked at the younger wizard steadily. “If we became angry enough to use our powers against each other, the likelihood is that we’d both die. But that doesn’t stop us from being friends. We’re willing to take the risk among males—why not with females? What are we really afraid of?”
Tremayne frowned and spoke slowly. “Because … the friendship between male wizards is a fairly casual, unemotional kind of relationship. The one thing we all are, almost by definition, is alone. Wizards have always been separate, unique beings. So much of what we are is inside us, and we study and practice all our lives to harness and control the powers we were born with, including our emotions. We may marry, but when we do, we never give much, if anything, of ourselves. And our children leave their parents at a very young age, just as we did.”
“Christ,” Merlin muttered.
“What?”
“Nothing. You’re right, of course.” And why the hell didn’t I see it before now? We are solitary creatures, doing our best to control our powers—and our lives. We’re closed, guarded, and to reach for intimacy with a woman means more to us than mere vulnerability; it means a loss of the command with which we center our lives. We learn at an early age to use what’s inside us, to contain and control, to gaze always inward, not even suspecting that we can never achieve the perfection we seek simply because we’ve locked ourselves away from the ultimate test of our own humanity….
Tremayne shrugged wearily. “In that sense what’s happening here isn’t so different from the rest of our world. The wizards here are alone, even if they’re surrounded by others. Varian, so frantically begetting sons, doesn’t give anything but his seed. The number of his sons makes him more powerful, but gather twenty of them together in one room, and I’ll bet he couldn’t name them all. They’re no part of him, merely … tools.”
“It doesn’t have to be that way,” Merlin said. “Perhaps it is against our very nature to allow anyone to get close to us, but we can overcome that. We have to. How can we call ourselves Masters otherwise?”
Tremayne smiled slightly. “You’re the Master—I’m Advanced. But I suppose that’s hardly the point. You’re saying we can’t be complete as wizards until we can allow someone to get close, because the fear of being vulnerable is … the final flaw in all of us.”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying.” Merlin was abruptly aware of an urgent need to see Serena, to talk to her. She hadn’t been out of his thoughts since he had left her in the city, but he had managed not to drive himself crazy struggling with the conflicting emotions she evoked in him. Now, though still conscious of that conflict, he at least had some idea of what he was struggling with. And why.
“How can you be so sure we can overcome that flaw?” Tremayne asked soberly. “I don’t know anyone who has.”
“Nor do I. But I think both of us had better do our best to change that.”
“Both of us?” Tremayne looked at him curiously. Merlin hesitated for all of a few seconds, then sighed and said, “I think I’ll tell you about my … companion.”
He didn’t tell the younger wizard everything, of course, but he did confess that Serena was a woman of power (artfully disguised while they traveled together), and he did make it clear that he and Serena were struggling with feelings neither one of them seemed able to easily accept.
Even as he talked, he wondered if these last days had been as difficult for Serena as they had been for him. As painful and disturbing as it was being away from her, he liked even less the uneasy knowledge that she was in a city of women where male wizards were openly loathed and distrusted. Had Serena come to terms with the reason they were here in Atlantis?
And if she had, did she hate him because of it?
Normally Varian was interested in little except bedding his bitches and trying to think of some way he could ultimately triumph over that whore Antonia in her damned city. But when Tremayne returned from one of his frequent visits to the valley with a stranger from someplace called Seattle, a Master wizard named Merlin, Varian’s curiosity had stirred.
And that wasn’t all. His senses and instincts told him this wizard was unlike any he had ever encountered, and that made him decidedly wary. Merlin was polite and pleasant, but his black eyes were very, very sharp as they gazed about Varian’s home, and he showed absolutely no interest in any of the bitches—unnatural, as far as Varian was concerned.
He had a new one in his bed tonight, a ripe young bitch from the village whom he had bought from her father while she was still playing with dolls; it was Varian’s favorite tactic to stake his claim long before the other male wizards noticed an available powerless female. The farmer had kept her safe until Varian was ready for her, making sure she came to her Lord’s bed a virgin. That had been a few days ago, and he’d spent quite a few hours since breaking her in.
“Oh—My Lord!”
“Do you like that, Mara?”
“Yes … please …”
Varian always took care to break them in right, devoting his considerable talents to the task of turning a dim-witted but innocent village girl into a dim-witted woman interested in nothing except physical satisfaction. The eagerness he taught them increased his own pleasure. Mara was just reaching that stage after nearly a week; by the time he wa
s finished with her, she’d have his seed rooted in her belly and would spread her legs eagerly for any other male while she was breeding.
They were in her bed this night, and he was teasing her. He hadn’t yet undressed, nor had he allowed her to do so; she was wearing a flimsy shift. Lights burned on either side of the huge bed; Varian strongly disliked sex in the dark.
He took her mouth until she was weak and quivering, fondling her breasts through the thin cloth of her shift until they were swollen with hot blood, the nipples stiff. Still dressed, he mounted her. The pressure of his legs had parted hers, and he moved slowly to press his straining groin against the soft notch between her thighs. She moaned raggedly when she felt his hardness, then sighed and whimpered when he rubbed himself between her thighs.
He eased his hips back a bit and slid one hand up her thigh, slowly drawing the skirt of her shift upward. He tugged until the material was bunched around her waist, leaving her naked from there down, and then he settled back against her. He hunched slowly, rubbing himself against her leisurely while he held her wrists above her head on the pillow and gazed down at her flushed, strained face with satisfaction.
She was undulating beneath him, eyes blind as she sought the release her body craved. He licked her parted lips, pleased to find her flesh so hot, she nearly burned him. Ignoring her desperate whimper of anguish, he drew back away from her again, settling onto his heels between her sprawled legs. She was displayed for him, her hard red nipples visible through the sheer material of the shift, the skirt rucked up around her waist, her naked loins lifting and rolling pleadingly.
Perfectly able to control his own lust, Varian smiled at her and made a soothing noise that did absolutely nothing except cause her to groan with the pain of her need. He placed his hands on her white thighs, pushing them wider apart and guiding her knees high, then studied the lewd result. At the front of his trousers, a twitch indicated the impatience of his male parts, but Varian was concentrating on turning her into a mindless broodmare constantly in heat and always eager to be mounted.
He stroked her thighs, gradually sliding his hand up until he touched the pale, silky hair covering her mound. She was incredibly soft, damp, and swollen, and he smiled as he touched that heated womanly core of her.
“My Lord!”
“Do you like that, Mara?”
She groaned wordlessly, her hips lifting as she tried to press herself against his probing fingers. He reached up his free hand to rub her quivering belly and fondle her breasts, still through the shift. His other hand was still very lightly petting her mound, his touch teasing. She shuddered and moaned, her legs spreading wider in an instinctive response to the fullness of her swelling sex.
He glided one finger along the gaping cleft, then very slowly and gently penetrated her. She groaned gutturally, her hands grasping fistfuls of the sheet on either side of her hips, and another shudder shook her slender body as the length of his finger pressed deep within her.
“That’s it,” he murmured, watching her face as his finger began stroking in her scalding hot, wet depths. “So soft … so wet … yes, my little bitch….” His thumb found the stiffening nubbin of flesh and rubbed it roughly, and she writhed with a muffled cry.
He could feel her tense striving, see it in her wild eyes. Little whimpering sounds welled up and escaped her trembling lips while her hips undulated furiously to his touch. She tightened even more around his stroking finger and he increased the speed and depth of the thrusts, his gaze intent on her face.
She reached the peak swiftly, writhing, sobbing, the spasms of her pleasure shuddering through her entire body. When she at last went limp, he eased his finger out of her and opened his trousers, freeing his swollen flesh. He mounted her, hooking his arms under her knees and hoisting them high and wide as he seated himself to the hilt in her throbbing sheath.
With utter self-control Varian delayed his own release in order to bring her to the peak again and again. It occurred to him almost idly, as he watched her flushed, sweating face and listened to her moans and cries, that he could never let himself find pleasure until the bitch beneath him was totally caught up in an animalistic frenzy, but he didn’t stop to examine the realization. It didn’t seem to matter.
When he finally emptied his seed into her writhing body, Varian was pleasantly weary but still not ready for sleep. He rolled off her and undressed himself, then returned to the bed and took her from behind with no preliminaries. Not that Mara noticed anything lacking in the union; by that point she was lost in a kind of sexual rapture.
It was several hours past midnight when Varian felt himself able to sleep. Mara was sprawled across the bed, and he tossed a sheet over her limp body before striding naked from her room and down the hall to his own.
He never slept with a bitch in the same room.
Just before he drifted off to sleep, Varian found his thoughts turning again to the stranger, Merlin, and they made him uneasy, just the way thoughts of his own kinsman, Tremayne, made him uneasy. Neither of them belonged here. But he had nothing to fear from either of them, Varian assured himself.
After all, he was the most powerful wizard of Atlantia.
TEN
Serena tossed the ball to Kerry and winced when it went wide of the mark. “Sorry, kid. I never was much of a pitcher,” she called. Roxanne chuckled as the little girl chased after the ball. “She could bring it back by crooking her finger, but she seldom remembers that.”
“Wizards are odd,” Serena agreed, not without a touch of irony.
“Um. What’s a pitcher?”
For a second Serena went blank, but then she remembered—and realized another of her words hadn’t translated. Dammit, she couldn’t seem to remember to watch what she said!
“It’s someone who throws a ball in a game,” she replied casually. “I’ve seen it played it Seattle.”
Roxanne nodded solemnly. She had regained all her strength in the days since her attack, and seemed hardly affected by what had happened to her; Merlin had done an excellent job. “It sounds like your Seattle would be a nice place to live.”
“Yes. It is.” Serena was sitting on a low wall that surrounded a small courtyard between Roxanne’s house and the one next to hers, while the younger wizard sat on her front step, repairing—by hand—a torn shift. She had told Serena that she enjoyed sewing, and seldom used her powers to repair clothing.
Kerry returned, the ball clutched in her small hands. “It bounced most of the way to Leader’s house!” she scolded.
“I told you I couldn’t throw straight,” Serena reminded her a bit absently, her gaze lifting to study the distant house that was the tallest in Sanctuary.
“Well, I’m not going to run after it again. Roxanne, can I use your sand to try to make a mirror?”
A little amused, Roxanne said, “If you mean the sand in the courtyard, yes. But is my sand so different from anyone else’s?”
The child nodded. “It’s perfect sand, and Teacher says only perfect sand makes perfect mirrors.”
“Very well, but be careful.”
Kerry rolled her eyes at the constant adult refrain, then scrambled over the low wall beside Serena and went to select the proper spot for her mirror-making. The one she settled on was several yards away from the two women.
“Teacher says,” Serena murmured, still gazing off at the Leader’s house. “Can’t she create a mirror without sand?”
“No, of course not,” Roxanne answered in surprise.
Serena sent her an oblique glance. “But your friend Adina the tailor can create cloth without threads. Calandra makes wonderful soup or sweets from nothing but air. And just yesterday I saw your neighbor Heather conjure enough water for those flowers she’s trying to keep alive.”
Roxanne frowned slightly. “Mirrors are different. We can no more conjure them than we can living creatures.”
Serena heard herself laugh, a low sound that was wry rather than amused. She couldn’t create a mirror, eit
her, unless she used sand. Nor could Merlin. He had taught her it was because the energies required to create anything from nothing were especially potent, and a mirror conjured that way reflected the energies so fiercely that the mirror always—always—shattered into a million pieces.
Even using sand, it was difficult, exacting work to create a mirror, and it always had to be done with the mirror facing away. Otherwise the reflection could cause a painful jolt.
As for creating living creatures, that was another ability all wizards lacked even in modern times. They could change one living creature into another—an enemy into a toad, for instance—but they could not create a living being except the same way all humans did—by having children.
“I merely wondered,” she said at last, glancing back over her shoulder to make sure Kerry was all right. She was, squatting and carefully smoothing the sand she had chosen into a small oval.
Serena sighed, turning her gaze this time toward the mountains outside the city. Without realizing what she was doing, she lifted one hand and rubbed the little heart—Merlin’s mark—at the base of her throat with a finger. What was he doing up there? Varian had a palace, Roxanne had told her; sometimes when the light was right, it was possible to get a glimpse of shining windows or pale marble, a hint of the riches the males enjoyed creating for themselves, but right now she could see nothing.
Was Merlin trying to convince Tremayne that male and female wizards could coexist? Serena didn’t know. She had thought about trying to get into his mind as she had twice before, but shied away from the attempt—partly because of the strain between them and partly because she was afraid she would find him in bed with one of the many concubines Varian was reputed to have in his palace.
That possibility hurt her even more than the knowledge that Merlin could strip her of her powers and destroy her if he wanted to, and it told her something about her own feelings. She was far less afraid of him than of losing him.
