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 ringers.

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?

Serena hesitated, then said softly, "You must be hungry by now, aren't you? I know you're awake. Won't you at least look at me-and tell me your name?"

After a long moment the girl's eyes opened and focused on Serena's face. They were wide, blue, and shadowed, and her voice was innately gentle and very wary when she said, "I'm Roxanne. Who are you?"

"My name is Serena."

Roxanne turned her head just slightly and flicked a tense glance toward the fire and Merlin. "And… him?"

"His name is Merlin," Serena answered, keeping her voice soft. "He helped you."

"He's a wizard," Roxanne said.

"Yes."

"Then he wouldn't have helped me." Her voice held absolute conviction.

Serena frowned slightly. "He did help you, Roxanne. I watched him heal your injuries."

Slowly Roxanne pushed herself into a sitting position, her wary gaze leaving Merlin-who hadn't moved or reacted in any way to what was happening in the lean-to even though he had certainly heard their voices-and studying Serena no less warily. The blanket fell to her waist, and she looked down at her dean, untorn clothing. She lifted one hand to her hair, finding it dean and in a neat braid down her back like Serena's. Slender fingers probed her face, and a look of confusion tightened her features.

"I was dying," she whispered. "I know I was. They had used me and left me to die. No one could have saved me, not even a Master wizard."

Serena remembered then that Merlin had said the wizards of Atlantis were less advanced than their modern counterparts, and thought quickly for a plausible explanation. "We're visitors here. Where we come from, Merlin is renowned as a gifted healer. He's devoted much study to the art of healing."

Roxanne seemed to accept that, but her eyes were still distrustful and puzzled when she stared at Serena. "You're powerless. Are you his concubine?"

Finding a compromise between a label she refused to wear and the complicated truth, Serena said, "I'm… his companion. Look, why don't I get you something to eat, all right? You must be hungry."

"Thank you," Roxanne said quietly.

Serena eased away and returned to the fire, where the remainder of their stew was being kept warm on a flat rock dose to the flames.

"My companion?" Merlin murmured.

Ladling stew into a bowl, Serena shot him a glance and kept her own voice low. "Like you said, we're strangers here. Just because everybody we meet assumes I'm your property doesn't mean I have to accept it. Companion is a nice, neutral word, and I much prefer it to concubine."

"I'll keep that in mind. But there's something you should keep in mind, Serena. In their language the word companion may not be neutral at all."

Unnerved by that possibility, Serena carried the bowl of stew and a spoon back to Roxanne. Along with everything else, now she had to worry about how her words translated. Great. She frequently got into trouble with English; what kinds of linguistic pits yawned at her feet now?