The Sentinel glanced at the mark at the base of Serena's throat, and her thin lips curved in a feint smile. "You should be safe enough even at night, but that's by no means certain. I would advise you not to spend the night outside our walls. Unless your Lord is with you, of course."

Despite Roxanne's contention that all in Sanctuary were treated with respect, this wasn't the first time Serena had caught a touch of scorn from one of the female wizards. The mark she wore was a kind of brand, every bit as degrading as the one the male wizards were forced to wear inside the city. Many of the wizards of Sanctuary seemed to feel that the powerless women marked with the signs of possession were to be condemned for something that was never their fault.

Because she hadn't been marked when she had first walked through these gates, Serena had been treated with respect by the Sentinels; now she was apparently just another powerless woman who had been used by a male wizard.

Serena was tempted, but there was no good reason for her to reveal her own powers to this wizard. Besides that, she had a hunch that keeping the knowledge quiet for a while longer would be for the best. Roxanne had agreed to say nothing, though she'd been obviously puzzled by the request.

Keeping the expression pleasant, Serena said, "Fin quite capable of taking care of myself, Phaedra."

The Sentinel wizard nodded. "Fine. Just remember that we close the gates an hour before sunset. And we don't open them after that, for anyone, until sunrise."

"I'll remember." Serena walked on, past the burned circles on the ground that indicated old and recent campsites where powerless men (and very few male wizards) had spent nights waiting for the gates of the city to open. She moved into the woods toward the northwest, heading for the ruins Roxanne had told her about, the remnants of what had once been the center of culture and society in Atlantis.

No one seemed to remember what it had been called; now it was simply the Old City. It had existed a long, long time ago, when wizards and powerless, male and female, had lived and worked in something like harmony. The population then had consisted mostly of powerless people with a scattering of wizards, and perhaps that had simplified matters and enabled everyone to coexist peacefully.

As she walked steadily through the forest, crossing a narrow stream, working her way around a ridge carefully because she was hampered by the heavy, awkward skirts of an outfit she'd come to despise, Serena thought about that bygone time and wondered what had happened to alter the status quo. No one in Sanctuary had been able to tell her. Probably it had been a gradual change, maybe even over generations. In any case, the result had been the first salvos in the battle between male and female wizards.

It was midafternoon by the time Serena topped a ridge to see what was left of the Old City before her, and the sight froze her. Once, the city must have been huge, far larger than Sanctuary, sprawling out at the northern end of the valley. Now it was tumbled piles of stone and jutting bits of petrified timbers and thin trails that had once been wide thoroughfares.

The increasingly frequent earthquakes of recent times had torn open a ravine like a jagged cut zigzagging in the center of the ruins, and the bizarre plant life of Atlantis had encroached to lend the remains of the city an even more pathetic and ravaged appearance.

Serena made her way down into the ruins cautiously; Roxanne had said that snakes were plentiful, and though none apparently were poisonous, Serena didn't like snakes. She shrugged out of her backpack and hung it over the low branch of a tree barely taller than she was with violet leaves, and then wandered along one of the thin paths threading the ruins.

It was incredibly sad. There were signs that this had once been a thriving culture, for more advanced than the somewhat primitive conditions in Sanctuary. There was evidence of a sophisticated water and sewer system, for instance. The roads seemed to have been laid oat with care and logic, unlike the winding and wandering ones of Sanctuary. Bits and pieces of the pottery and stonework that had survived indicated a love of beauty and a high degree of skill.

All that, Serena knew, had been produced by the powerless people who had once lived here. How she knew that was quite simple; because any creation of a wizard could always be recognized by another as just that-and nothing here told her it had been conjured by a man or woman of power.

When the female wizards had built their own city, Serena thought, they had made it solid and safe and not very pretty, choosing substance and safety over style. They created water when it was needed, not even bothering to conjure wells that would have probably been destroyed by earthquakes, and they got rid of waste with the same automatic and offhand competence. Since the wizards could also easily create pottery or intricate stonework any time they wanted, they simply tended not to bother.

Serena sat down on a huge flat table of stone that seemed once to have been part of a terrace, and removed a pebble from one of her thin slippers. With the stone gone and her shoe back on, she continued to sit there, looking around her. She learned nothing new from what she saw, but a number of conclusions she'd reached during these last days were reinforced. The major conclusion was inescapable: In their blind struggle for supremacy, the male and female wizards here had literally ruined everything around them.

They had destroyed the powerless people who shared this valley, turning the men into aggressive brutes and the women into virtually mindless doormats. They had destroyed the farm stock that had once flourished; the horses, cattle, and chickens had died out quickly and completely even before the Curtain had formed, exterminated by the energy spillover of battling wizards. The wizards had warped and stunted plant life, contaminated the groundwater, disturbed the very earth beneath them… and inadvertently created the Curtain.

Of course, an argument could be offered that they had done all of it inadvertently, not out of the desire to destroy but because they had been ambitious, shortsighted, and self-involved. But that hardly excused them. Of how many races could it be said that they had destroyed a continent?

"A redhead, by God!"

Startled, she jerked her head around to see a tall wizard striding toward her, his coat sweeping out behind him. He reminded her a little bit of Merlin because he was dark and well built; when he got closer, she saw that his lean, handsome face held a subtle stamp of cruelty. And his eyes gleamed flatly, like two lumps of coal.

Serena wasn't frightened, but she was wary. She eased off her stone seat and turned to face him.

Still several feet away, he stopped suddenly, his eyes narrowing as he studied her. Obviously he was momentarily puzzled by her. She didn't have an elongated ring finger, nor did she reveal the power of a wizard, but she was also lacking the blank gaze and subservient manner of powerless women. She looked him straight in the eye, which was hardly something to which he could be accustomed. Then his gaze fixed on the mark at the base of her throat, and he frowned.

"Who owns you, bitch?"

For a full moment Serena was too shocked to be able to utter a word. She had never in her life been called a bitch-not to her face, at any rate-and her response to the word was completely visceral.

"Answer me," he ordered impatiently.

She could feel his power; except for Merlin, she had never met a wizard whose power literally radiated in a palpable aura. But she was too angry to care. "I'm not a female dog or a piece of property," she snapped, glaring at him.

He took two large steps toward her and stood little more than an arm's length away, forcing her to look up in order to continue meeting his eyes. He was still frowning, but a little half smile curved his sensual lips at the same time. "The last spirited bitch in these parts died of old age before I was born. Where did you come from?"