Serena's outfit, on the other hand, made her feel rather like a medieval peasant girl. She was also in a long, robelike garment with a square neckline and full sleeves, but except for the white sleeves, hers was dark green, loosely belted at the waist, and worn over a white shift. There were flimsy brown slippers on her feet, and her long hair hung down her back in a single neat braid-which was how she often wore it.

"Oh, brother," she muttered.

"I did warn you it would probably be a skirt," Merlin pointed out dryly.

"Yeah, but I hoped you were wrong." She moved just a bit, trying to adjust to the heavy and rough-textured material of the clothing, and felt suddenly self-conscious when she realized that the shift was her sole undergarment. No bra and panties for the women of Atlantis, obviously. Of course, that also meant there'd be no panty hose, which was a merciful thing, and at least she wasn't burdened with a corset or some other instrument of fashionable torture that had been inflicted upon women at various points in history.

She looked at Merlin just in time to see the box he carried vanish, and realized he had sent it into limbo until he needed it or else found a safe place to leave it. He'd had to carry it with him through the gate, naturally.

"What if all the Master wizards here carry their staffs?" she asked him, wondering for the first time how many Master wizards there would be here.

"Then I'll carry mine," he replied calmly. "When we know for sure." He looked around slowly, taking note of their surroundings rather than searching for a particular thing, and Serena decided she'd better do the same.

Behind them a rocky face jutted out from the slope, and a smooth expanse of granite shimmered very faintly to indicate the presence of the gate. Serena noted at least three landmarks in the area-a twisted tree, a rock formation bearing the distinct shape of an elephant, and the orientation of the peak above them in relation to the rising sun-and fixed the location carefully in her mind. They were at the south end of the valley and nearly halfway up this mountain; it was something to remember. If there was a need to return to the gate quickly, she wanted to be able to find it.

Having done that, she looked back over the valley, not even sure what she was looking for until she heard her own question. "Where are the people?"

Merlin was looking down into the valley. Much of it was forested, but here and there were clearings and meadows, as well as patches of cultivated land, their boundaries too neat to be natural, and at the base of the mountain they stood upon was the faint trace of a dirt road that seemed to encircle the valley. Throughout as much of the valley as they could see clearly, there were no other visible roads, merely indistinct paths.

"There are some people in a village in that direction," he replied, pointing to the west. "But not many for a valley this size. Maybe a hundred men and women. Almost no children. All powerless, I think." He frowned as he continued to stare toward the west.

"What?" Serena could have opened her senses, but she was a bit wary of doing so until she felt more secure behind her innocent mask of powerlessness. Besides, Merlin could absorb twice the information she could glean for herself.

He shook his head. "I don't know. There's something wrong there. I can't quite bring it into focus."

"Maybe when we get closer," she offered.

"You're probably right." He turned his gaze away from the west, scanning the remainder of the valley. Far to the east, barely visible now as the sunlight streamed into the valley, something at the base of another mountain caught his attention. "A city," he said.

Serena looked, as well, and felt a jolt of excitement mixed with uneasiness. The city was too far away for her to be able to see clearly, but one fact was evident. "It's a walled city, isn't it?"

"Yes, I think so. And the gates appear to be closed."

"Then they're afraid of something… out here?"

"A reasonable assumption." Merlin scanned the valley again, frowning. "But it isn't dear what that might be. I'm not sensing any dangerous animals. In fact, except for birds, insects, a few small rabbits, and the like, I don't sense any animals, not even livestock."

That didn't strike Serena as particularly strange, mostly because she was simply worried about why anyone would build a walled city. "Could the people in the city be afraid of wizards, do you think?"

Merlin gazed toward the city, obviously probing. After a moment a muscle tightened in his jaw and he looked down at her. "I think more than half the people in the city are wizards. A few hundred people, certainly not more. Maybe some children, though not many. And there's something else. As near as I can tell, it's a city populated almost entirely by women, with very few men-and the men are all powerless."

Bewildered, Serena said, "Where are the male wizards?"

His dark gaze swept the valley again, then turned upward to probe the mountains. "In the mountains, high up on the peaks. They're all around us, Serena, encircling the valley. I can feel them. More of them than the women. Some of them are quite powerful. I can't tell if there are women or children; the energies of the males is acting like a screen."

"Wait a minute. The male wizards are up here in the mountains, the female wizards are in that walled city with some powerless women and men, and the rest of the powerless people, as far as we can tell, are in the village? What kind of segregated society is this?"

"One we have to understand," Merlin told her. "And we don't have a lot of time. Just a month, thirty days."

The reminder made Serena more uneasy. "That sounded like a lot of time back in Seattle, but it doesn't now."

"I know." Merlin looked thoughtful for a moment, then gestured slightly, and packs appeared on their backs. "We'd better get started. We're travelers, Serena, visitors here in Atlantis. Our customs are a bit different, so we're curious about the society here-remember that when you ask questions of anyone."

"Works for me." She adjusted the light pack and added, "What's in this, anyway?"

"A change of clothing, the minimum any traveler should have. Anything else we need along the way, we can create-or I can. You shouldn't use your powers unless absolutely necessary, at least until we figure out what's going on here."

"All right. So where do we start? Up here with the male wizards, or down there with the rest?"

"Down in the valley, I think. We'll head toward the city, but not by the road; I'd rather not be that visible until we know something about this place and its people."

Serena nodded and followed Merlin as he began picking his way down the rocky slope. She kept close to him, but studied her surroundings warily as she tried to get a sense of the place. The air still felt heavy to her, even though the sunlight was chasing away the chill, and she was grateful that the mist that had hung over the valley was almost gone, because it had made her feel uneasy.

It took nearly an hour for them to reach the valley floor, and by then Serena was fascinated. Along the way they had seen weird flowers growing from odd places-at least three different ones from solid rock- and the strangest trees, bushes, and other plants growing in assorted shapes and sizes and colors, a few of them also in odd places.

In the valley the vast majority of the trees were squat and gnarled, just as Serena had thought, with meager broad leaves gleaming dully. Most of them were green, but no fewer than half a dozen trees she saw had leaves of odd shades, such as red and blue; the effect was more grotesque and unsettling than attractive. There were bushes, pathetically stunted, twisted things, and an incredible number of uprooted or simply broken trees, some dead and others dying.