This place looked strange, sounded strange, smelled strange, and definitely felt strange.
Merlin stopped suddenly, and Serena followed suit, her wandering mind recalled to more pressing concerns when she saw that they were about to have their first contact with the citizens of this alien place. Powerless citizens. Serena could sense no power at all emanating from them, but she sensed in them a great deal of brute strength.
The men, three of them, approached after a momentary hesitation when they first saw the strangers. Their eyes were fixed on Merlin; as far as Serena could see, not once did any of the three even glance at her. But she didn’t really think about that because she was so busy staring herself. At them. And the fine hairs on the nape of her neck were stirring in a primitive response to what she saw.
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.
It was nearly an hour later when Serena saw what she first took to be a pile of discarded clothing at the base of a tree near the edge of the forest. They were moving in that general direction, heading back toward the road that would lead them to the city, and her first thought was that somebody had tired of carrying laundry and had simply abandoned it.
“Look,” she said to Merlin, nodding toward the tree. “I guess somebody didn’t want to carry—” She broke off, frowning, and her steps quickened. “Richard, that isn’t just a pile of clothing … is it?”
He didn’t answer, because he didn’t have to. Within seconds they were both kneeling on the ground, pushing aside dirty and stained tatters of cloth to find what was underneath.
“Oh, my God,” Serena whispered, helping Merlin gently turn the girl over.
Her blond hair was matted and filthy, her face so swollen and discolored, it was impossible to guess whether her features were delicate or coarse. She was horribly bruised and bloody, her pale skin marked with deep lacerations that were unmistakable evidence of deliberate torture. There was hardly a place on her naked body that had escaped the awful abuse, and it was obvious she had been repeatedly and brutally raped.
“Is she alive?” Serena asked unsteadily.
Merlin nodded, his fingers grasping one of the girl’s fragile wrists. “Barely. But she won’t be for long.”
The girl moaned, a thin sound of agony.
“We have to help her.”
He looked at Serena, his eyes compassionate in a face of masklike self-control. “Serena—”
She shook her head, unwilling to hear whatever objections he had. Her voice was fierce. “We have to help her. I don’t know enough to heal her, but you can. We can’t leave her to suffer like this. Please, Richard. Please.”
It might have been because it was the first time he had ever heard her plead, or it might have been his own pity for the dying girl, but in any case Merlin found he couldn’t just turn his back and walk away.
He shrugged out of his pack and leaned over the girl. He placed his left hand gently over her forehead to remove her pain and induce a deep sleep, then moved the right to hover over her body. Slowly, pausing at each injury, his hand moved inches above her skin.
Serena watched, overwhelmed by his ability and skill even in her anxiety for the girl. As his healing energies touched the girl’s poor wounded body, she was slowly, painlessly made whole again. Broken bones knit together, straightening her limbs. The burns on her fingers and hands were healed. The terrible bruises faded away to nothing. Rips and tears in her flesh sealed themselves, leaving only faint pink scars that would, Serena knew, be gone within hours.
Merlin’s face tightened as his hand hovered over the girl’s lower body, and he was still for a long time, concentrating his power there. The girl had suffered severe internal injuries, Serena realized, sickened by the thought of what she must have gone through.
Finally he sat back on his heels, gazing down at the girl. She was unmarked now, her flesh pale and smooth from her peaceful, lovely face to her delicate feet. She was obviously very young, probably not yet out of her teens, not so much frail as fragile. Merlin lifted his hand from her forehead and made a slight gesture over her, and the girl’s clothing, clean and repaired, covered her nakedness.
Looking at Serena, he said, “She’ll sleep for a few hours.”
Unguarded because she wasn’t thinking about hiding anything from him, too much of her heart shining through her eyes, Serena said, “Thank you, Richard.”
Something flared in the depths of his black eyes, and for a moment it seemed he leaned toward her. But then he was rising to his feet, expressionless. “You do realize I might have changed history just now,” he said conversationally.
Serena blinked. “But you said she was dying.”
“Exactly.”
“Then she couldn’t have been the witness. I mean, if she died the first time—”
“Serena, every life touches other lives, sometimes in very dramatic ways. Her death may have been a direct factor in whatever happened here. Her survival could change everything, even in our time.”
After a moment Serena shook her head. “I don’t care. We couldn’t just let her die.”
Very gently Merlin said, “They’re all going to die, don’t you remember?”
She hadn’t remembered, and the reminder was a shock. Of course, the entire continent was destroyed. They were fairly certain that one person survived, but maybe only one….
Serena looked down at the peacefully sleeping girl and said, “At least she has a few more weeks now. That might matter to her, you know, it might make a difference. Maybe helping her to live is the single thing we should have done to fix whatever went wrong here.” Her eyes raised to meet his. “That could be right, couldn’t it?”
Unable to resist the appeal in those green eyes, Merlin nodded slowly. It could be true, after all. This girl’s survival might be the sole occurrence that would mend the future society of wizards.
Or destroy it utterly.
“We might as well make camp,” he said finally, accepting that it was too late to worry about it. “She’ll sleep most of the day, and we should spend the night here. Tomorrow we can go on to the city.”
“All right,” Serena said. But before he could turn away, she added quietly. “This girl … she’s a wizard. I can feel her power.”
“Yes,” Merlin agreed, “she’s a wizard. And she apparently couldn’t use her powers to protect herself. You’d better keep that in mind, Serena. We’d both better.”
By midafternoon their camp was in place in a small clearing near where they had found the girl. A fairly wide stream curved around behind them, a deep ravine was on their right, and a fairly dense section of the forest was in front and to the left of the clearing.
Like any experienced woodsman, Merlin had chosen a place that would be difficult for anyone to approach without giving them warning, and provided the natural protection of the ravine and the stream.
“Why?” Serena asked when she realized.
“Because I’d rather be cautious,” he replied. “Because we have a walled city to the east, a city apparently designed to keep something or someone out. And because we found a nearly dead wizard who, for some reason, couldn’t use her powers to save herself.”
It made sense to Serena, and she didn’t question him further. And she didn’t object when he made their camp look more primitive than it needed to, with two lean-to’s made of branches and foliage for shelter, and a small fire to provide warmth. He had at least bowed to her request and conjured blankets that only looked primitive; they would insulate against the night chill far better than would the local variety.
The girl he had healed was sleeping peacefully under one of the lean-to’s, lying on a bed of thick moss covered with one blanket while another was tucked around her. She hadn’t stirred since they had moved her to the camp.
Merlin had conjured a pot of stew for their lunch, amusing Serena because she’d never known him to cook anything before—with or without his powers. She enjoyed the stew, eating with her usual appetite, and complimented him so solemnly that she actually got a laugh out of him.
“Why don’t you go check on the patient,” he said, taking her empty bowl away from her. ?
??By now she might need food worse than she needs sleep.”
Serena nodded and got up from the broad tree stump she’d been using as a seat. She shook out her skirts and sighed. “Damn this outfit. It weighs a ton and feels like burlap.”
Merlin glanced over at her and then made a slight gesture, just a flick of his fingers.
Immediately most of Serena’s discomfort disappeared. She felt inside the neckline of the shift and, surprised and grateful, said, “You lined it with silk. Thanks.”
“My pleasure.” He was sitting on a fallen log near the fire, poking a stick into the flames, and didn’t look at her.
Serena hesitated, feeling oddly reluctant to walk away from him right then. “Um … I meant to ask you before. When you healed the girl, did you take away any of her memory?”
He frowned as he stared into the fire. “Strictly speaking, no. She’ll remember what happened to her, but it will be as if it happened months ago; the sharpest edges will be blunted, less painful and traumatic.” He turned his head and met Serena’s gaze. “She needs to remember. We’re all shaped by our experiences, positive and negative.”
Nodding slightly, Serena said, “I suppose so. She’ll be grateful to you.”
“Will she?” Merlin looked back at the fire “I wonder. Men hurt her; I’m a man.”
“But you healed her.”
He shrugged. “Maybe that will count for something. But don’t expect her to feel the way you do about it, Serena. I’m a stranger to her—and from the looks of this society, men and women seem to have problems relating to each other.”
Serena thought he was undoubtedly right about that. If the male wizards kept powerless concubines whom they bought, sold, and traded like property, and the female wizards lived, for the most part, in a city protected by a wall, then there were definite problems here.
She crossed the few feet of clearing to the lean-to, which was quite roomy, and knelt beside their patient. Almost immediately, she knew that the girl was awake, though she appeared to be still deeply asleep. How long had she been awake? Had she heard anything they didn’t want her to hear?