She was afraid and felt very, very alone. Worst of all, the person closest to her was no longer someone she could instinctively and trustingly go to with her fears. Now she hesitated, wary and uncertain.

Because he was a man-and a wizard.

By midway through the following morning, they were no more than a mile from Sanctuary. Roxanne hardly spoke-not at all to Merlin-and kept close to Serena. The fragile blond was pale but controlled; she seemed physically all right, or else was drawing on her wizard's powers, because she had no trouble in walking steadily with the other two.

Still, Merlin called a halt after they'd been traveling for a few hours. He had carefully avoided getting near Roxanne, but it was obvious to Serena that he'd kept an eye on the young wizard and knew she needed rest, even if she wouldn't show it or admit to it.

Serena left Roxanne sitting on a fallen tree and moved a few yards away to join Merlin, who stood on the bank of a wide but shallow stream they would have to cross.

"This water's bad, isn't it?" she asked.

He nodded. "You can smell the sulfur. I'm willing to bet most of the groundwater's no good. The wizards can create fresh water, but I don't know what the villagers do."

Serena started to suggest that maybe the lake near the village contained drinkable water, but she caught a glimpse of his left hand just then, and all thoughts of water vanished. With a gasp she caught his hand and lifted it between them. His arm tensed as if to draw away from her, but then relaxed.

"What happened?" Cradling his hand in both hers, she stared down at the vicious blisters marking each of his long fingers. Burns, she realized. Then she remembered, and looked up at his face quickly. "Roxanne had burns like these all over her hands when we found her."

Merlin met her gaze, his own calm. "Yes."

"You had to find out, didn't you? You had to try and use your powers last night."

"Of course," he answered matter-of-factly. "We couldn't know for sure that the Curtain would affect us as it does them until I made the attempt."

"'So now we know it does affect us."

"Yes. And I wouldn't advise you to try. The effects are rather painful."

Serena looked down at his hand again, knowing that the burns must have been much worse when they were first inflicted than what she saw now. Wizards tended to heal from their rare injuries extremely quickly, but not even a Master wizard could heal himself. Merlin had once told Serena he believed that inability was simply another reminder that no mortal being could be all-powerful.

She very gently traced one blister on his index finger with the tip of her thumb, not even conscious of her desire to heal him until the blister began to fade.

"Serena…"

"Roxanne can't see what I'm doing."

"That isn't the point."

"Healing the skin is simple," she murmured, touching the blisters one by one and watching them fade away, replaced by healthy skin. "It was the first thing you taught me when I began studying healing."

"You promised not to attempt to heal anything until I said you were ready," he reminded her.

Serena looked at his unblemished skin with satisfaction, then met his eyes innocently. "How can I be expected to keep a promise I won't even make for millennia?"

"You won't be born for millennia. Don't split hairs, Serena." But his low voice was amused rather than annoyed.

They were both speaking quietly, aware of Roxanne's presence a few yards away.

"It's still a fact that I can hardly keep a promise I haven't made yet. That isn't logical."

"Logical? Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't it you who once said that math wasn't logical?"

She dismissed the memory with a shrug. "Numbers confuse me. But I'm very good with words, you know I am, Richard. And ideas. I may be new to this time travel business, but I think I'm getting the hang of it. And I know that promises I made in our time aren't valid here."

His half smile faded a bit. "Even the promise you made to obey me?"

After a moment Serena let go of his hand, rubbing her own down over her thighs in an unconsciously nervous gesture. "Even in our time that promise was reserved for the workroom and my lessons," she reminded him, striving to keep her voice easygoing. "You're my Master as a wizard-not as a man."

Merlin nodded slowly. "I wanted to make sure you remembered that. I haven't forgotten it, Serena. And I won't. No matter what happens here, no matter what ideas and customs these people have, you and I are from a different time. We can't let ourselves be torn apart by what's destroying them."

She gazed up at him, and for the first time since Roxanne had talked about this place and its people, Serena remembered all the years that Merlin had virtually raised her. She owed him a great deal, far more than she would ever be able to repay.

Without his willingness to guide her, she probably would have ended up using her inborn powers simply to survive any way she could. Instead he had given her the first real home of her life and had not only taught her the skills of a wizard, but also provided her with an excellent model of what a decent human being should be.

The recent strain between them, strong and bewildering though it was, had not erased her memories of those times or her awareness of how much she owed Merlin, and she couldn't allow Atlantis to wipe them away, either.

At the very least she owed him her trust-unless and until he did something to betray that trust. What other wizards, male or female, did was hardly something for which she could hold him responsible.

Serena drew a breath and nodded. "Point taken. I'll try to remember that what happens here doesn't necessarily have to affect us."

Merlin didn't ask her to explain the qualifier. "Good. Now, I'm going to follow this stream a bit father north and see if there's a better place to cross."

"You could just conjure a bridge."

"I probably will, but I hesitate to use my powers too often until we find out just how much these wizards are capable of."

"That makes sense. I'll stay here with Roxanne." She had taken no more than two steps away when he said her name, and she paused to look back at him.

He lifted his left hand, the thumb brushing over the unmarked fingertips lightly. "Thank you."

"Any time." She went back to join Roxanne, unaware of smiling until the younger woman's openly curious stare made her aware of it. "Is something on your mind?" she asked lightly, sitting down on the fallen tree.

After she'd glanced past Serena to make sure Merlin had gone, Roxanne said slowly, "You two are certainly… different."

"In what way?"

"Sometimes you seem very comfortable together, and other times it's almost as if you're strangers. You seem to view each other as equals, and yet you appear willing to follow his lead. I can see now you aren't his concubine, but the way you look at him and the way he looks at you makes it obvious there is something between you."

"You're very observant," was all Serena could think to say. The way Merlin looked at her?

Roxanne gazed at her steadily, the wide blue eyes puzzled. "You say you're his companion?"

Serena felt uneasy, remembering what Merlin had said. "Yes, but maybe you'd better tell me what that word means to you."

"What it means? It means a comrade, a friend-"

"That's it," Serena said, relieved.

"-or a mate," Roxanne finished. "But you couldn't be his mate, because male wizards don't have mates."

"Well, I'm not his mate, but why do you say male wizards don't have them? If they have concubines…"

Roxanne frowned. "That's different. The males want sons, of course, and they want their pleasure, so they have concubines. But never mates. All they have to give to any female is their seed. Even if they possessed hearts, they could never give them to a woman, not even a powerless woman."