The Wizard of Seattle (2 page)

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 close 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, closing 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 run 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 clear, 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 fact.

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.