We mustn't let it happen to us.

A great deal of meaning could be inferred from that brief statement. "It" had to be the destruction of the continent; and "us" had to be the other wizards, the ones who had lived, then, primarily in Europe. The implication was that the eyewitness had been a visitor to Atlantis. And the statement was a strong indication that the wizards of Atlantis had somehow caused their own destruction.

Speculation, certainly, but possible.

It had taken hours of searching through his library for Merlin to find any other information about Atlantis, and what he did find was sketchy. The society there had seemed to be one of great promise, its people strong and healthy, their land fertile, and their community vigorous. There were definitely wizards among the powerless; Merlin couldn't find out how many because whole passages in several of his books and scrolls were completely illegible, and nothing he tried had any effect.

As if the information had been deliberately destroyed.

Still, there was enough to convince Merlin he was on the right track. Common sense told him that the taboos against women must have resulted from some immense traumatic event (a good definition of a cataclysm, he thought, would be the destruction of an entire continent), and it was surely no coincidence that much of the information regarding Atlantis was as elusive as that regarding female wizards.

From that deduction it was only natural to consider going back in time to find out what had happened.

It wouldn't be the first instance of time travel for Merlin, so the actual journey didn't disturb him-even without the permission of the Council. He wasn't even unduly alarmed at the prospect of landing on a continent about which he knew next to nothing except that it was about to vanish under the sea. His worries were more complicated.

What tormented him the most was Serena, and what he would have to do to her if the past held nothing to help him. He would have to destroy her. To see the astonishing trust in her eyes turn to horror and fear… and pain.

Merlin tried to shake off the thoughts; there was no use worrying until he knew whether or not the past offered anything helpful. But he couldn't stop thinking about Serena; he'd never been able to do that. Not since she'd grown up.

Was he being reckless as well as irrational in taking her with him into the past? There was no real reason for that course of action, after all. He had certainly never needed help, and given the tension between them, her presence was likely to cause more strain than he wanted or needed to deal with. There was no reason at all for her to accompany him.

Was there?

He'd been sitting here at the desk for hours with that question in his mind, and had come to a decision only when Serena walked into the study. It might have been because he was a fair man and this certainly concerned her; it might have been because he had a hunch that this time he would need help-her help-to attempt to understand what had gone wrong in the society of wizards.

Might have been, but wasn't.

Ever since he had talked with his father, Merlin had been struggling to cope with the painful knowledge that the older wizard had not trusted his wife of twenty years, despite her fidelity, trust, and devotion, and that she might have killed herself because of it. That, more than anything else, revealed to Merlin just how tragic and unnatural was the wizards' reflexive wariness and mistrust of women.

When Serena had walked into the study, he had looked at her and had felt the disturbing jumble of emotions that had become painfully familiar these days-and his father's words had echoed inside his head. There is no place in your life for a woman of power… It's not in me to trust a woman, just like it isn't in you… You feel it's true even if you don't think it is, and that kind of conflict will tear you apart.

His deepest instincts were at war with his intellect, and Serena, innocent and unsuspecting, was in the middle of that battle. If there was something in Atlantis that would help resolve his conflict, Merlin intended to find it, and he wanted Serena to be with him when he did. In the end his decision to take her with him was just that simple.

As it turned out, both Serena and Merlin had to go to their offices early on Monday to arrange to take the remainder of the week off, so they decided at breakfast to begin getting ready for their forthcoming trip in the early afternoon.

Serena met Jane for lunch, mostly because she knew her friend was sincerely worried about her. Their broken shopping date on Saturday, as well as Serena's recent preoccupation, had convinced the lively brunet that Kane's column had caused all kinds of problems, and it required Serena's best efforts to convince her otherwise.

After soothing her friend, she returned home to find the house deserted. Rachel had gone, and Merlin apparently hadn't gotten home yet. Serena changed into jeans and then, on impulse, went downstairs to his study. The door wasn't barred, which was something of a relief for more reasons than one.

What she wanted were a few answers. She didn't know if she could find anything Merlin wanted to keep from her, but she had to try because she had the uneasy feeling that what he was doing-his apparent dispute with the Council of Elders and his flouting of their authority in his decision to travel through time without permission-was somehow her fault.

Besides that, there was simply too much curiosity in her nature to allow a puzzle to continue unchallenged.

For the first time, Serena entered Merlin's study with her mind and senses deliberately wide open-and as soon as she crossed the threshold, she felt breathless. She realized that her own strong mental shields had always blocked whatever energies were contained in the ancient writings-but she felt them now.

Not a negative force, the sense she had was of sheer power, muted and dormant. She leaned back against the doorjamb and half closed her eyes, cautiously probing. And at the extreme edge of her awareness, she almost heard soft whisperings of a hundred, a thousand voices.

The languages were varied, but all were obscure and contained Latin phrases and strange words that belonged to no language mankind had ever known. Or had ever heard, even when it had been spoken.

Her veiled gaze traveled slowly around the room, sliding over books and scrolls, then stopped. She pushed herself away from the door and walked to the shelves between two windows. A particular book, oversize and so old that the leather had been worn almost to nothing, seemed to pull at her. She had never noticed this book before. It wasn't the one that had lain open on his desk; that book was not in the room.

Damn him-he knew her too well.

She got the other book down, the one that seemed to tug at her senses. Handling it carefully, she carried it to Merlin's desk; then holding it balanced on its spine, she allowed the book to open where it would.

A glance showed Serena that the language was totally alien to her, and she wasted no time in trying to decipher the unfamiliar symbols. But there was a full-page illustration on the righthand side, a stark, black-and-white drawing. It was faded by time so that little of it was even identifiable to her. She thought it represented a terrible conflict; bright jagged lines like lightning bolts seemed to be emanating from some kind of structure, and framed by what looked like a lighted window, two human figures struggled.

Serena touched the drawing and almost instantly drew her fingers back. She felt unsettled, strangely anxious and almost afraid. It was a primitive fear, like something rustling in a dark corner of her mind.