After a moment she said, "So that was why you marked me with a heart?"

His arms tightened around her. "No. I didn't mark you with your heart, Serena. I marked you with mine. Something you've had for a long time."

Serena didn't move. She didn't even breathe. She didn't dare. She thought this might be as dose as he could come to telling her that he loved her, now at least, and her eyes closed briefly as she tried to endure the shattering wave of emotions that washed over her.

With desperate calm she finally said, "You'll accuse me of being prosaic again if I confess that I decided you chose a heart simply because no other male wizard here would have."

"That," he said in a thoughtful tone, "never even crossed my mind. Go to sleep, Serena."

The rain began to come down harder just then, and Serena closed her eyes, smiling, listening to that and feeling his heart beating against her back. Without even realizing she was going to, she drifted off to sleep.

"Where do you suppose Roxanne and Tremayne are?" Serena asked early the next morning. She was standing near the edge of their little clearing, looking down on the valley as the last of the Curtain dispersed in the sunlight.

Merlin came up behind her. "Why don't you reach out and try to find them?" he suggested.

When she'd tried to do that in the past, Serena had never been able to gather anything except vague impressions, but she made the attempt now because she was curious. She closed her eyes, since it helped her to concentrate, and sent her senses winging out over the valley.

Sounds. Bird sounds, she thought. The smell of wet earth and the whiff of sulfur that is always present in the valley. What was that? A hit of motion? No… a child's laugh…

Behind her Merlin lifted his hands and put them gently on her shoulders.

Serena gasped and opened her eyes, startled. She could feel Merlin's power spreading through her body, warm and tingling, and an image promptly formed before her eyes. The image wavered as her concentration faltered, but then she focused intensely, and it was as though she were looking at a hologram-three-dimensional, alive-suspended in the air several feet away.

Roxanne and Tremayne were walking slowly, his head bent attentively toward hers, an expression of shy eagerness on her face as she talked to him. They were holding hands. Holding hands. And a little girl rushed up to them-Kerry-talking rapidly, a doll held in the crook of her elbow. Tremayne seemed more amused than annoyed by the interruption, and Roxanne's delicate face softened as she answered the child. Then Tremayne put his free hand on Kerry's shoulder and they kept walking, and Roxanne turned her head to look up at him so seriously, talking…

"Damn, doesn't this channel have sound?"

The image vanished instantly.

Merlin took his hands off her shoulders and sighed.

Serena turned to face him, grinning a little. "I know. I'm such a trial to you."

He bent his head and kissed her. "Yes, but the advantages seem to outweigh the disadvantages."

"Seem to?"

"We've only been together nine years, so it's a little early to be sure," he explained gravely. "As an Apprentice wizard, you have a long way to go."

"Obviously." Thinking about what had happened, she said, "Your power helped me to see them, right?"

"Yes."

She had several questions about that. "You've never done such a thing before. Why?"

"Because I didn't know it was possible," he answered readily. "After what happened with Varian, it was obvious our energy could combine. Something I somehow doubt my ancestors knew. And after last night… well, I had the idea that either of us could enhance the other's abilities by sharing power."

"Which is what happened. Is that-what we saw-is that what you see when you reach out with your senses?"

He nodded.

Serena was impressed. "I do have a long way to go. Alone, all I get are faint impressions."

"Time, Serena. It takes time."

"And I'm impatient, I know."

He kissed her again, then said, "Why don't we start down now? Tremayne, Roxanne, and Kerry won't reach Sanctuary today, I think, but if we cut across the valley, we should meet up with them before dark."

"Okay. I'm curious to find out what that kid's doing with them."

After leaving the clearing the way they'd found it, they made their way down the mountain, careful of the rain-slick slope, talking idly, not about anything really important. Being lovers, Serena realized happily, had removed barriers and constraints and made them closer, but it hadn't changed the familiarity that came of years together. Being lovers added dimensions and layers and depths. It was wonderful.

They reached the dirt road late in the morning, and before they could even turn toward the west another tremor rumbled through Atlantis. It wasn't a bad one, over in seconds.

"I don't like them," Serena told Merlin in the tone of one who has made a personal discovery.

"No, they aren't pleasant," he agreed.

Serena looked ahead to the dark, dreary forest and said, "I have an idea."

"Which is?"

"Why don't we go just far enough into the forest to be out of sight if anybody happens to be watching, and conjure ourselves a little house or something. Then we can stay there all day, and even tonight, and when Roxanne and Tremayne are close enough early tomorrow morning, we can just pop over." She eyed him hopefully.

In a mild tone he said, "That would be cheating."

"No… just taking a little shortcut, is all. Besides, which would you rather do, spend the day walking through that dreadful forest, or spend the day in bed? With me." To make certain he understood his options, she wreathed her arms around his neck and stood on tiptoe to kiss him.

Merlin wrapped both arms around her and lifted her off her feet, an abrupt and intense hunger evident in him. Against her lips he murmured, "Woman, do you plan to use your body to get your way with me from now on?"

"Only when I think it'll work," she confessed.

He shifted his hold on her, cradling her in his arms, and began carrying her toward the forest. "Well, it's working now," he told her ruefully.

Varian prowled the terrace of his palace restlessly. His hand lifted often to touch the place on his chest that had been burned by the two wizards from Seattle, even though it was healing rapidly and scarcely hurt at all now. It wasn't pain he felt at any rate; it was bewilderment and unease, coupled with a growing sense of eagerness and anticipation.

It had to be a portent, he thought, a sign to him. Forty years here without even an instance of power mating power, and yet in a single morning he had encountered not one, but two pairs of wizards. First the pair from Seattle, that redheaded whore Serena and Merlin, and then his own crafty kinsman Tremayne and his whore from the city. Two pairs.

And it wasn't just the fact of them that disturbed Varian. The two from Seattle… their powers had combined. Combined. He had never felt anything like the jolt that had sliced through his own energy and knocked him off his feet, and he knew he'd never forget it.

"My Lord…"

He looked at one of his concubines as she glided out onto the terrace and smiled at him. He thought her name was Elena. She was very young and ripe to bursting with libidinous juices, and since he'd broken her in right, she was eager for him. She cupped her own breasts and lifted them invitingly, the nipples stiffly visible through the filmy material of her shift.

"My Lord… please take me."

He didn't want her.

The thought was so shocking that he waved her away without a word and retreated to the end of the terrace to try to understand what was wrong with him. Why didn't he want her? He had never in his life turned away from a willing bitch, not unless he was exhausted, and he wasn't-in feet, he was half hard, partially aroused, but not by Elena.