The Wizard Of Seattle

PROLOGUE

Atlantia-Past

It was near midnight, but the sky remained a deep and pulsing blood red, as if a dying sun lingered long past its time. Directly above the village, above the miles-across natural amphitheater formed by the tall mountains that ringed the valley, the very air was alive with energy, crawling and crackling softly. The small cottages of the village were dark and silent, huddled in among themselves.

If anyone heard the girl, no one answered her cries.

She did not scream hysterically, nor was there any note of hope in her calls for aid. Her wide blue eyes lifted often to the shifting sky that could be glimpsed between the trees, but she spared no glance behind her, where the sounds of pursuit grew louder. After a time she saved her breath for running, knowing only too well that she could expect no help from the villagers.

"Where'd she go?"

"I saw her-"

"There! Quick, cut her off."

Harsh voices. Three of them. Ruthless male voices containing no pity, no mercy, no emotion save furious urgency.

With the instinct of a hunted animal, she evaded their trap, choosing the thickest part of the forest and ignoring the thorns that ripped and tore her white robe as she ran. The sounds of pursuit dimmed, the forest echoing with ghostly epithets no less savage for the distance between them and the desperately fleeing girl.

The stabbing ache in her side forced her to halt when she was less than halfway across the valley. She leaned against a squat and gnarled tree and stretched her right hand up to the sky, as if beseeching some nameless, faceless god to help her. Her only answer came when her feeble energies were turned back on her fiercely by the unforgiving night of Atlantia; there was a flash of dim, grim light and a searing pain in her hand that jerked a moan from her lips. She brought the hand to her breast and cradled it there with her left one, not bothering to look at the new blister that had been added to the others.

At night in the valley, all were powerless.

Especially the women.

Over the sounds of her labored breathing, she could hear her pursuers, closer now, on her scent like a pack of ravenous wolves. They were not wizards. Unlike her, they were not enervated by the heavy pressure of energies lashing in the sky above or unable to use the natural strengths of their bodies and minds. They were not exhausted, or lost, or alone.

And they were not afraid of her. Not now. Not at night.

She pushed herself away from the tree and stumbled on, so weakened now by her useless attempts at defense that she knew she would never reach the slope of the mountain looming ahead.

They wouldn't kill her, she knew, at least not deliberately. Even in this valley, where she was powerless, they would not dare to take her life. She almost wished they would, for what they intended to do to her would destroy her slowly and in agony. The power she could not use to defend herself would be stolen from her by their greed and lust.

Or so they believed.

She slowed her pace simply because she could no longer run, but continued to make her way through the forest, trying to move silently through the thick undergrowth. She held her seared and blistered hand to her side in an effort to ease the pain in both. She was so tired. So weak. Sanctuary was too far away; the slopes of the mountain ahead seemed more distant with every step she took.

Her terror and hatred, rising from the depths of her soul like some black thing alive and on the wing, blinded her. Her strength almost gone, she plunged through a thicket of brambles, into a shaft of brilliant moonlight-and into the brutal embrace of her hunters.

Two of them grabbed her by the arms, stretching her limbs out from her sides and holding them immobile as if, even now, they half feared her power. They were strong, their work-roughened hands grasping her arms with a force that nearly broke bones. These were farmers, she realized dimly, men who worked exhausting hours to tear crops from the capricious soil of Atlantia. And all three were still young enough to hope for something better.

"Hey, boys, we caught ourselves a wizard," a third one said with a laugh, approaching her with a caution that suggested both eagerness and wariness.

"Don't do this." She felt the rough bark of a tree against her back, and pain stabbed her shoulders as her arms were nearly pulled from their sockets. She didn't bother to deny her powers, knowing it would make no difference even if they believed her. And they wouldn't believe her, for she bore the unmistakable sign of a female wizard of Atlantia.

The two men holding her were silent but for their heavy breathing; the third stood before her and looked slowly, insolently, from her wildly tangled hair to the delicate, scratched ankles below the hem of her torn white robe.

"Haughty bitch," he muttered. "Strutting around in the daylight with your nose in the air like you own the world. Not so proud now, are you?"

Terror, rage, and aching despair welled up inside Roxanne like a tide of anguish. She couldn't stop this! They would never listen to reason, and they certainly feared no punishment for what they were about to do. She was helpless against them, powerless, without any defense at all. No matter what she said or did, they would be on her like animals, rutting out of hate and ambition and fear and lust. And she couldn't stop them.

Men. Even women of power were ultimately helpless against them. These valley men who hunted at night with their brutal hands and frightened lust, eager to vent their hate and greed and frustration on vulnerable females. Those male wizards with their lordly palaces high in the mountains and their lies and schemes and arrogance, enacting laws expressly designed to torment and degrade both the women of power they feared and the valley women who served as the vessels for their pleasures and their sons.

With a choked sound she spat in his face.

He stood motionless for an instant, as if he feared her saliva might contain some terrible magic that would melt his flesh. Then a hoarse growl erupted from his throat, and he slapped her, with the full strength of his arm behind the blow. It rocked her head back against the tree; blackness swam before her eyes, and nausea churned in her stomach. As if from a great distance, she heard hollow, echoing, booming voices.

"Bitch! Make sure she can't move."

"You gonna plow her standing up?"

"Just hold her."

Nearly unconscious, Roxanne moaned as the pull on her arms sent spasms of agony through her shoulders and back. She felt the touch of fingers, cold and clammy as they fumbled against the base of her neck, and then there was a sharp tearing sound and the rush of air as her robe and shift were ripped open from neckline to hem. She tried to struggle, but her movements were only weak twitches. Fighting to hold the blackness at bay, she shook her head to clear it and looked up into the feral, feverish eyes of the man.

He was tearing at his own clothing, yanking his trousers open and shoving them down, his lust further inflamed by the sight of her slender body. He half stumbled and lurched closer, his meaty hands grasping and clawing at her naked flesh.

Roxanne made a last desperate bid for freedom, ordering her drained muscles to offer up what strength they had left. But the effort was little more than a jerk, and cost her almost unimaginable pain as the men tightened their grip on her arms.

"Hold her," the one pawing her grunted as he reached a hand down to guide himself. "Hold her-"

She didn't have the strength to fight, the breath to scream, or the will to die. The tears she might have shed were burned dry by her hatred before they could escape her eyes. She stared over his shoulder at tiny distant lights high on the highest mountain, and tried to detach her mind from the agony and degradation of what he was doing to her.

They were laughing. The other two, the ones holding her, were laughing and fondling themselves with their free hands, waiting for their turn. They would take turns with her all night, using her again and again until dawn stole their courage and sent them slinking away from what would be left of her.

She couldn't… couldn't… Something inside her snapped, and the pain was gone. She didn't feel anything at all. Or hear anything. Or see anything.

Tremayne drew his cloak about him to protect against the chill of the night air, and leaned against the balustrade. Far below, the valley was spread out in the peculiar flickering darkness of an Atlantia night; up here atop the tallest of the seven mountains that ringed the valley, the air was clear and sharp. Sound carried well up here.

Especially some sounds.

He tried to dose his mind to what was happening at the other end of the terrace, not so much disturbed as disgusted. His "uncle" Varian-the title was actually one of respect, since their familial connection was distant-was entertaining his favorite concubine, a plump village girl of perhaps eighteen who had already borne him four sons and who was eagerly at work to accept a fifth into her womb. Varian tended to get sons on his women; his favoritism toward the improbably named Virginia stemmed more from her energetic lustiness than her fertility.

They were rutting now on a pile of cushions at the opposite end of the terrace, some sixty feet from Tremayne, and he knew it would not disturb his uncle at all if he went over and pulled up a chair to watch; Varian, upon occasion, enjoyed performing for an audience-usually made up of his sons.

Tremayne, however, was no voyeur. He would have much preferred to go inside, but knew only too well that his "cousins" were engaged in activities similar to those of their sire. He doubted he could find an empty room.

So, dosing his ears to the sighs and moans coming from that end of the terrace, he gazed out over the valley and let his thoughts wander. They were disjointed, as thoughts often are, skipping across his mind like stones on a pond. Occasionally one would drop and cause ripples that circled outward.

The lady. No, don't think of her. Think of something that won't drive you mad. Your father sent you back here to Atlantia to find out why the earthquakes have worsened, why the tides are erratic, and why even across the sea the flickering clouds above this continent are visible. All the wizards outside Atlantia are worried-and now you know why.

Yes, he knew why. Because here on this isolated island continent, ambition and greed had ran rampant. An old civilization was splintering, the population teetering on the brink of extinction, the very ground beneath them shuddering in the first throes of death.

The Master wizards here saw themselves as gods. Especially Varian.

After being in this house for several months, Tremayne had come to the conclusion that Varian was a glutton, his appetites insatiable. He was a glutton for food, but since he was also a glutton for sex, perhaps he needed the energy. He was a glutton for power. He was obsessed with the determination to rule Atlantia, whatever the cost-and his frantic begetting of sons on every powerless female capable of bearing them was only one of the strands of his web.

Varian, Tremayne had realized, intended quite literally to people the wizard population with his offspring and eventually crowd out all other male wizards. He was confident of his ability to control his sons-with some justification, Tremayne thought-and equally scornful of the other Master wizards' less energetic reproductive abilities. As for the female wizards, he was plotting even now to find a way to destroy their Sanctuary and them.

He'd steal their powers if he could-and he hasn't given up the idea of that yet. He hates and fears them, but he can't help wondering… It's all that's forbidden to him, taking a woman of power into his bed. One day his lust may overcome even his fear of vulnerability, and he'll risk his life to satisfy his urges.

Somewhat grimly Tremayne wondered if Varian had considered the fact that by slaughtering their female infants and busily using the available powerless women as broodmares, he and his male offspring were steadily destroying the balance of the population. Probably not. Though there was a certain cunning in his nature, Varian's appetites overwhelmed any rational overview of the future. His obsessions were blind, deaf, and mute.

"Alone again? God rot you, Tremayne, it isn't natural for a man your age to ignore bitches the way you do!"

Tremayne glanced briefly aside to find his uncle, stark naked despite the chill of the air, staring at him with a frown.

"Didn't you take a fancy to that black-haired bitch who was twitching her teats at you during supper?" Varian asked, leaning an elbow on the balustrade as he looked at the younger man.

Tremayne had once objected to his uncle's degrading terms for women-powerless women were bitches to him, and female wizards were whores-but Varian had only laughed at him. Having always considered himself rough-mannered, Tremayne knew that here in his uncle's house, and perhaps in Atlantia itself, he was by comparison a veritable gentleman.

"No," he said finally, his voice even. "She was very pretty, but I won't bed a child half my age."

Varian looked surprised. "A child? Fifteen's a bitch all filled out and haired over. Why, I got a boy on her… let's see, must be a year ago. You have to get 'em while they're fresh, man, not dried up and stretched out of shape."

For a brief moment Tremayne felt curiously detached. He was, he realized, listening to a Master wizard, probably the most powerful one in the world, and this supposed giant had absolutely nothing on his mind except breeding. Varian was barely forty, just ten years older than Tremayne. He had more than sixty of his sons in residence (those deemed too young to be sexually active occupied a house nearby), triple that number of girls and women in various stages of being impregnated, a home that was a virtual palace, and any luxury he could wish quite literally his for a snap of his fingers.

Tremayne imagined Varian and his offspring breeding like rabbits for another thirty years, and into his mind crept the dear, cold awareness that they would have to be stopped. Somehow. Before Atlantia broke under the weight.

"You worry me, Tremayne," Varian said.

Tremayne looked at him, not for the first time grateful that his own considerable abilities shielded his thoughts from even a Master wizard. "Would it ease your mind if I told you I kept a mistress in Sanctuary?" he asked dryly.

Varian's frown cleared, though the twist of his full lips indicated scorn for a man who could be satisfied with only one woman. "I suppose that's where you were all afternoon?"

"Yes," Tremayne answered, not lying. He had been in Sanctuary, though there was no mistress; if Varian dared show his face in the city, he would realize that the laws there prohibited any male wizard from so much as touching a female, with or without power, unless she was his legal wife. And since none of the male wizards in Atlantia had ever married, all the women of Sanctuary were completely off-limits to them. But few males of power ventured inside the walls of Sanctuary, and few atop these mountains knew or cared what laws prevailed there.

Tremayne knew the laws well. He had spent much of his time these last months exploring the city, taking extreme care to give no offense and wearing the mark of power without either shame or arrogance. He had learned a great deal.

Varian shook his head almost pityingly. "You're too damned choosy, Tremayne, that's your trouble. And a fool to keep your bitch in the city. Her place is here, warming your bed. Is she breeding yet?"

"No," Tremayne replied. Again no lie. She was not pregnant, the woman he wanted; at least she showed no sign of it. And he had hardly gotten close enough to be responsible if she were. She had proven elusive; he hadn't been able to find her since that brief meeting more than a week ago that had struck him with such numbing force, he still felt shock when he thought about it.

"My Lord?" Ginny's voice was almost a wail, bereft.

"She's ready for another ride," Varian said to his house guest with a wide smile, and turned away to stride back along the terrace.

Tremayne didn't linger to hear the noisy coupling. He descended through the gardens rather than returning to the house. It would be dawn before he reached the valley floor, but he was restless and, more than anything, had to get away from his uncle's house.

Thoughts of the lady pushed every other aside, and he felt again that strange, wrenching -shock inside himself. He didn't know if she was a wizard or powerless; their meeting had so affected him that he had been blind to even that most basic of questions. He knew only that he wanted her. She had been slight and rather fragile, but not childlike; hers had been the ripening body of a young woman. Golden hair escaping the net into which she had carelessly bundled it, wide blue eyes in a heart-shaped, delicately lovely face. The grace of a young doe. The innate wariness of a woman of Atlantia.

He didn't know who she was. Or what she was. But he knew he had to find her.

It was past dawn when Tremayne reached the valley floor and took the road to Sanctuary. The Curtain was dispersing as the first rays of the morning sun reached over the mountaintops. And it had been many long hours of torment since Roxanne's final, hopeless cry had echoed through the forest beside the road. If he glanced to the left, he might see something like a pile of soiled laundry against the base of a tree no more than thirty feet away.

He didn't look.

Seattle-1984

It was his home. She knew that, although where her certainty came from was a mystery to her. like the inner tug that had drawn her across the country to find him, the knowledge seemed instinctive, beyond words or reason. She didn't even know his name. But she knew what he was. He was what she wanted to be, needed to be, what all her instincts insisted she had to be, and only he could teach her what she needed to learn.

Until this moment she had never doubted that he would accept her as his pupil. At sixteen she was passing through that stage of development experienced by humans twice in their lifetimes, a stage marked by total self-absorption and the unshakable certainty that the entire universe revolves around oneself. It occurred in infancy and in adolescence, but rarely ever again, unless one was utterly unconscious of reality. Those traits had given her the confidence she had needed to cross the country alone with no more than a ragged backpack and a few dollars.

But they deserted her now, as she stood at the wrought-iron gates and stared up at the secluded old Victorian house. The rain beat down on her, and lightning flashed in the stormy sky, illuminating the turrets and gables of the house; there were few lighted windows, and those were dim rather than welcoming.

It looked like the home of a wizard.

She almost ran, abruptly conscious of her aloneness. But then she squared her thin shoulders, shoved open the gate, and walked steadily to the front door. Ignoring the bell, she used the brass knocker to rap sharply. The knocker was fashioned in the shape of an owl, the creature that symbolized wisdom, a familiar of wizards throughout fiction.

She didn't know about feet.

Her hand was shaking, and she gave it a fierce frown as she rapped the knocker once more against the solid door. She barely had time to release the knocker before the door was pulled open.

Tall and physically powerful, he had slightly shaggy raven hair and black eyes that burned with an inner fire. For long moments he surveyed the dripping, ragged girl on his doorstep with lofty disdain, while all of her determination melted away to nothing. Then he caught her collar with one elegant hand, much as he might have grasped a stray cat, and yanked her into the well-lit entrance hall. He studied her with daunting sternness.

What he saw was an almost painfully thin girl who looked much younger than her sixteen years. Her threadbare clothing was soaked; her short, tangled hair was so wet that only a hint of its normal vibrant red color was apparent; and her small face, all angles and seemingly filled with huge eyes, was white and pinched. She was no more attractive than a stray? mongrel pup.

"Well?"

The vast poise of sixteen years deserted the girl as he barked the one word in her ear. She gulped. "I… I want to be a wizard," she managed finally, defiantly.

"Why?"

She was soaked to the skin, tired and hungry, and she possessed a temper that had more than once gotten her into trouble. Her green eyes snapping, she glared up into his handsome, expressionless face, and her voice lost all its timidity.

"I will be a wizard! If you won't teach me, I'll find someone who will. I can summon fire already-a little-and I can feel the power inside me. All I need is a teacher, and I'll be great one day-"

He lifted her clear off the floor and shook her briefly, effortlessly, inducing silence with no magic at all. "The first lesson an Apprentice must learn," he told her calmly, "is to never-ever-shout at a Master."

He casually released her, conjured a bundle of clothing out of thin air, and handed it to her. Then he waved a hand negligently and sent her floating up the dark stairs toward a bathroom.

And so it began.