"Somewhere else," she said tightly, gritting her teeth to keep from saying something she might regret later. Such as the words that made up the spell to turn an enemy into a toad. Would it work on another wizard? She had no idea, but she was willing to experiment on him.

"I don't recognize that mark," he said. "If your Lord isn't in Atlantia, then-"

"He is," a new voice said calmly.

The wizard turned and eased back from Serena in a clear gesture of giving way as he watched another tall, dark wizard coming toward them. His frown smoothly became a smile. "Merlin. She's yours?"

"Yes, Varian, she is."

"May I make an offer?"

In a polite tone Merlin said, "I couldn't allow you to waste your time. She isn't for sale." He stepped past the other wizard to join Serena, giving her a quick, unreadable look before he faced Varian again.

"Bitches are always for sale, Merlin," Varian retorted, still smiling.

"She isn't for sale. Not now. Not ever. And I won't change my mind." Merlin's tone was equally pleasant, but there was a note of steel underneath.

For a moment it seemed Varian would either continue to insist or challenge Merlin in some other way, but finally he inclined his head in an ironic little bow and shrugged. "So be it. You should keep a closer watch on her if you don't want her stolen away from you, my friend. Not all the wizards here are as reasonable as I am about such matters."

"Thank you. I'll remember that," Merlin told him, still cordial.

Varian glanced at Serena again, much in the hungry way some men eyed sleek red sports cars that fired their passions, then said to Merlin, "You're certainly welcome to bring her to my place on your next visit. In the meantime I'll leave you alone with your property. I'm sure that after several days apart, you're eager to lie between her legs again."

Serena felt her mouth drop open as she stared after the departing wizard. She closed it carefully, very conscious of Merlin's silence beside her. And his closeness. After Varian's crude statement, she thought she might be blushing for the first time in her adult life.

In a dispassionate tone Merlin said, "He's the most sexual creature I've ever encountered."

She took a couple of steps away from his side and turned to face him, hoping she didn't look as stiff as she felt. However she might have greeted Merlin after having been separated from him for so long, Varian's presence-and his words-had made her feel emotionally paralyzed. "Yeah, I got that impression. Was he a good host?"

"I didn't see much of him." Merlin was gazing at her steadily. "What I did see, I didn't like."

Serena glanced around them at the dead city, avoiding his scrutiny. She was uncomfortable with Merlin for the first time in her memory. "I know the feeling. Sanctuary is a pretty weird place. It's funny… I got a close-up look at the nearest thing I've ever seen to pure sisterhood, and I didn't like it much. Not that the city isn't run capably; it is. And most of the women seem fairly content when they aren't dreading the night. But there's absolutely no mental stimulation at all. Nobody disagrees, because they all think the same on almost every subject. Sometimes they sound like parrots, especially when they blame all their troubles on the male wizards."

"Do you disagree with that?"

Serena crossed her arms beneath her breasts and sighed. "In a way I do. Oh, the males were unquestionably bastards when they encouraged the rape of female wizards and when they refused to allow the females to have at least a mountain of their own to get above the Curtain. And their practices of owning powerless women and murdering their female infants hardly qualify them to be members of the human race."

Merlin smiled slightly. "But?"

"But… the women in Sanctuary aren't even trying to do anything about their situation. They stick close to the city and go on with their lives day to day. If you ask them, they tell you how rotten the males are, but some of them have never spoken to a man-powerless or wizard-in their entire lives. And as far as I could tell, no female wizard has tried to climb one of the mountains in years. I'll bet the male wizards don't even bother to guard them anymore."

"They don't," Merlin confirmed. "According to what Tremayne told me, they haven't had to worry about that in ten years or more."

Serena shook her head. "That figures. I asked one of the women why somebody didn't try, and she looked at me like I was crazy. The female wizards don't think beyond what they've been told, never questioning, never even considering that it might be possible to find a way to coexist with the males. Even though it was done here once."

"Yes, I know. I heard about this city from Tremayne."

"Is that why you're here?"

He nodded. "I wanted to take a look at it before I returned to Sanctuary, and when I saw Varian, I decided to follow him. He hadn't said anything about coming down to the valley when Tremayne and I left this morning."

"Where's Tremayne?"

"He was going straight to Sanctuary." Merlin hesitated, then said, "He wanted to see Roxanne."

"They know each other?'"

"She didn't tell you about it?"

"No…" Serena frowned. "But now that I think about it, if she's interested in Tremayne-in spite of what happened to her and all they've tried to drum into her in Sanctuary-that could explain why she asked so many questions about you and me, especially after she figured out I was a wizard." She briefly explained Roxanne's deductions.

"And she seemed most interested in our relationship?"

Since he had asked the question coolly, Serena replied in the most unruffled tone she could manage. "I think so. The fact that we were together in any sense of the word obviously intrigued her, and she specifically asked if you'd ever hurt me."

"I hope you told her I hadn't."

"Of course I did." Serena didn't remind him that he had come close to hurting her here, although she couldn't help remembering it. She hesitated, then added, "I also told her there was a wall between us."

"Is that the way you see it?"

"Don't you? You told me there were boundaries we couldn't cross, and what's happened here makes it obvious what you meant, I think. When you left Sanctuary a few days ago, you didn't believe male and female wizards could coexist. Has something happened to convince you otherwise?"

Merlin looked at her for a moment, then shrugged off his light pack and dropped it beside the flat stone where Serena had sat earlier. He took his coat off, as well, and tossed it over the stone. It was a warm day, but Serena didn't know if he had removed the coat because of that or in a gesture like rolling up his sleeves. He wasn't wearing his staff, and she thought he'd probably sent it into limbo until it was needed for the sake of convenience.

Answering her question obliquely, he said, "I told Tremayne what had happened to Roxanne after it became obvious to me that he was very interested in her. He wants her to go with him when he leaves here."

From that response Serena gathered two things. The first was that Merlin was, for the moment at least, going to ignore how her question related to them personally. The second was that he had decided Tremayne was indeed the witness who would record the destruction of Atlantis for the future society of wizards.

Following his lead, she said, "How did he take it when you told him she was attacked?"

"He was furious enough to want to kill the men who attacked her; that was obvious. I was half afraid he'd blame her, but he didn't. He has an unusually compassionate nature for a man, or wizard, of this time."

"So you really did change history when you saved Roxanne's life, didn't you?"

Merlin shook his head. "There's no way to be sure of that, not until we return to our time. There are so many variables that could affect the outcome. Not the least of which is that Roxanne can still reject Tremayne, which would certainly leave him bitter and very likely to give his father and the other Elders on the Council of this time a negative report on what's happened here."