Legacy of the Witch (5 page)

His brows went up, and he looked interested.

“Sort of like kismet, isn’t it?” More and more I was sure it
was exactly that. This really was fate. I’d known this man before. Lifetimes
ago. God, could that be true? “Maybe we can help each other,” I suggested.

“How?”

“I’ll help you finish and polish your memoir if you’ll help me
find that treasure box. I don’t even want to take it from you, I just want to
make sure it’s safe until I know what I’m supposed to do with it.”

“It was stolen from you. It’s rightfully yours. I’ll help you
get it back. You don’t have to do anything in return.”

His eyes met mine then, and I felt a rush of emotion rising up
in my heart, and I would have sworn a matching look filled his eyes. Before I
could even acknowledge it, he blinked and said, “Shit.”

“What?”

“My ex. Glenda. If you saw her on that show, they sure as hell
did, too.” He set the mug down, shooting to his feet. “She’s liable to be their
next stop,” he said, finding his jacket, pulling it on, patting down his pockets
in search of keys. “She’s in danger. I have to go.”

“I’m coming with you,” I said.

He didn’t argue.

Chapter Five

I wondered many things as we barreled over the smooth
roads in his sporty red Jeep that night. I wondered, of course, if I would
finally recover the witches’ box, and I wondered if I would ever know what to do
with it if I did. I wondered what had happened between Harrison Brockson and his
beautiful fiancée, and whether the worry and fear on his face meant that he
still loved her. I wondered why that thought stabbed me in the heart with a pang
that felt like jealousy. And I wondered about the meaning of the other things
spinning through my mind as we drove through the darkness.

Chapters of the harem witch stories unfolded in my mind, but
not episodes that my
gidaty
had ever told me. Nor
had I ever told them to her. And I swear to you, they didn’t feel like fiction.
They felt like…like memory.

“You must come with me,” Harmon begged of
me that night by the harem pool. “I won’t leave you.”

“Just let me warn them, and then I’ll
come. I promise. They’ve been good to me.”

He stared at me, his eyes so full of
feelings that it took my breath away. Fourteen, so young now, but in those
times fourteen wasn’t young at all. Girls my age were entering the harem, or
the temple as priestess trainees. They were marrying and having babies of
their own. It was a different world.

But at that moment I was in love in a
giddy teenage way that has stayed the same through the ages.

When I looked at Harrison Brockson behind the wheel, I felt
that love again. But this time it was all grown-up, full-blown, deep. Old.

And then the memory came rushing back to me.

We’d dried off. He was dressed, and I was
wrapped in a sarong. Together we were heading into the hallway that led to
the chambers of my three favorite harem girls. Lilia, Magdalena and Indira.
But the sound of stomping feet from another hallway brought us up short, and
we ducked into an alcove as soldiers appeared in the garden we had just
left.

At that moment Magdalena and Indira came
rushing past us, and I reached out to grab Indira’s trailing gown. She
spotted me where I hid, her eyes flashing wider when they fell on
Harmon.

“I was coming to warn you—”

“Shhh!” She glanced toward the soldiers.
Magdalena was already facing them. “Get yourselves out of sight. Bad things
are happening this night.” She shot a look at Harmon. “Hide her
well.”

And then she went out to face the
soldiers, and Harmon tugged me the other way, weaving and dodging through
the vast corridors of the harem quarters until we emerged from a rear door
into the dark bleakness of the night.

“I know a cave where you can hide,” he
said. “I’ll bring you food, blankets, but you’ll be safely out of
sight.”

“I don’t want to leave them,” I insisted,
turning back. I heard the raised voices of the soldiers and the cry of one
of the women I adored, and I lunged as if to go back, but Harmon held
me.

“It won’t do them any good. You can’t
fight an army. You’ll only suffer, too, and your beloved ladies will suffer
more because of it. They want you safe. Give them that gift.”

Tears were streaming down both my cheeks,
but I saw the wisdom of his words.

“If they are arrested, I’ll get you in to
see them. I promise you I will.”

I looked into his eyes, and I knew he was
telling the truth. “All right,” I said. “I trust you, Harmon.”

“Good. Let’s go, then.” He tugged my hand
and led me away from the oasis that was our city, into the desert, up into
the craggy foothills that were the farthest-reaching fingertip of the
distant mountains. And there he led the way into a cave. Vast, cool—cold
even—and dark as pitch.

I hugged my arms and shivered.

“I don’t want to leave you here,” he said.
Then he wrapped his arms around me and held me close to him, warming me with
his body. “I promise I won’t be gone long. I’ll return with a lamp,
blankets, food and water. It might take an hour or more, but…here.” He took
off his cloak, draping it around my shoulders. “Be still, and promise me you
will not return to the city. Wait for me right here, all right?”

“Yes.”

“Promise?”

“I promise.”

Nodding, he turned to go, but I caught his
shoulder. “Will you check on them? Tell me what is happening?”

“I will,” he said.

“And…and…”

He tipped his head sideways. “And
what?”

I lowered my eyes. “And…before you leave,
will you kiss me again?”I should have felt guilty, I supposed. He was
promised to another, after all. But I didn’t. They’d never even met, and I
knew his heart belonged to me.

He smiled, catching my chin on his
forefinger and tipping my head up. “And again when I return,” he
promised.

And then he kissed me, and I tried to take
comfort in it, even though my blissful existence was, I thought, coming to
an end. As, I feared, were the lives of the women I loved most in all the
world.

“This doesn’t look good,” Harrison said.

His voice snapped me out of my fantasy, and I looked at the
house in front of us, realizing the Jeep was sitting still. There was a police
car in the driveway of the little Cape Cod, its lights flashing. The front door
stood open, and light spilled from inside.

He opened his door, glanced down at me, and when I looked in
his eyes I knew for sure they were the same eyes I’d seen in the fantasy, the
memory, that illusion…. He was the same boy, just grown-up. And I was the same
girl. Slave girl to the slave girls.

“I—I’ll stay here,” I said, thinking his feelings for his ex
were none of my business. And yet they were. He belonged with me.

He nodded but gave a look around. “Lock the door. Blow the horn
if you see anyone, okay?”

“Okay.”

He closed his door. I pushed the locks down and watched
intently.

I saw the blonde woman appear in the doorway, fling her arms
around his neck and bury her face in his chest. My belly tightened. And then a
man stepped up behind her, and she stepped away from
my
soldier and into the other man’s embrace, even as he reached
around her to shake Harrison’s hand. The two police officers spoke to Harrison
briefly, and then, after a final word with the blonde, he returned to the
Jeep.

I unlocked his door to let him in.

“They were here. And they got the box,” he said.

“Oh, no!”

He backed out the driveway and started driving back the way
we’d come. “Who was the man with your ex?”

“Her husband.”

I blinked.

“They fell in love while I was overseas.”

“That must have been devastating for you.”

He looked at me. “Oddly, it felt more like relief.” Then, with
a glance at my eyes, he added, “I’m starting to think maybe it was for the best.
I’d have hated like hell to have met you and been married to someone else.” He
quickly looked back at the road. “That was probably way out of line.”

“No, it wasn’t,” I said, way too quickly.

He smiled at that. “You feel it, too, then? It’s like there’s
something between us, and it almost feels like something that’s been going on
for a long, long time. Like it’s…I don’t know. Familiar. Right. Weird, huh?”

“Maybe. But I’ve been feeling it, too.” I lowered my head. “If
only we could have gotten there in time to— Ohmygod, look out!” A woman was
standing right in the middle of the road. Harrison hit the brakes, bringing us
to a sideways stop without hitting her, but she never moved. She was dressed all
in white, with pale blond hair and a glow around her. I shot a look at Harrison,
but he was looking at me as if I’d lost my mind.

“What is it?” he asked.

The woman was still there, and she was pointing. I looked at
him. “You don’t see her?”

“See who?”

“The woman. Right there in the road, in front of us. She’s…” I
squinted, leaning closer to the windshield. Her eyes met mine and beamed into
me, and I could see beyond her current appearance. Somehow I could see who she
really was, even though she’d been olive skinned, raven haired and ebony eyed
when I had known her before.

“It’s Lilia,” I whispered.

He blinked at me. “Amarrah, maybe we need to take you in to
have your head looked at. That thug might have hit you harder than I
realized.”

“It’s not my head. It’s real. It’s…just trust me on this,
Harmon.”

“Harrison,” he said.

“Well, yeah,
now.
Go left.”

Lilia nodded, and her eyes held mine. Inside my head, I heard
her whisper, but her lips never moved.

“St. Mary’s,” I told him. “It’s a big church with red doors and
a statue of—”

“I know what it looks like,” he said. “I’ve seen it
before.”

“I haven’t.”

He frowned at me, the worry in his eyes growing bigger, but he
drove.

Chapter Six

There were lights on inside the church, and two
vehicles in the driveway. Harrison pulled the Jeep to a stop just a little way
past, and we got out and hurried back to the entry. At the top of the stone
stairs he pushed the red door slightly open, and we crouched, peering
inside.

The two thugs I remembered so well, minus their ski masks, were
handing the witches’ box over to a man dressed as a priest. But I did not
believe was a priest at all.

“Here is it, Father Dom, just like we promised.”

The priest, his dark hair a contrast to his pale blue eyes,
took the box as if he were accepting a long sought after prize. He tipped it up
and examined the bottom. I remembered the symbols painted there, pictures like
those found on the cards of the Tarot.

“This is it. This is really it.” He reached into his shirt and
pulled out a fat wad of cash, handing it over to them. Both thugs reached for
it, but the skinny one was quicker and got it first. “Well done.”

“Now what, Padre?” asked the shorter thug.

“Now you forget you ever saw me. Get out of here. Never utter
my name again. Tell no one of this. Go spend your cash.”

They looked at each other.

“And what about the box?”

“Yeah, we’re dying to know what’s inside.”

I all but perked up my ears, wondering what the answer would
be, but the priest merely pointed at the door. “Your job is done. Get out.”

The two thugs shrugged and came toward us. Harrison pulled me
aside. We crouched low as the door swung open in front of us, and the two crooks
trotted down the stairs, got into their car and left, never looking back.

As soon as they were out of sight we peered inside again, only
to see the priest vanishing, box in hand, through a door in the back of the
sanctuary.

In my head, I heard Lilia whispering.

“We have to go after him. He’s going to destroy it,” I
said.

Harrison looked at me but didn’t bother to doubt. “You’re going
to have to tell me how you do that sometime.”

“I’m going to have to tell you a lot more than that,” I
said.

We crept through the church and chose the same door the priest
had, which revealed a set of rickety stairs leading down into a dank basement.
Harrison went first—of course he did. Protecting me, just as he had done before.
We reached the bottom: stacked stone walls, dirt floor, in the distance, heat
and light.

There was a furnace. And the priest was in front of it, pulling
open a door, lifting the treasure box as if to shove it inside.

I lunged at him, but not by choice. It felt for all the world
as if a pair of very real human hands had pushed me from behind, even though
they hadn’t needed to. As I reached him, the priest turned, swinging the box,
hitting me upside the head with it and knocking me flat to the floor.

Everything was blurry after that. Harrison and the priest,
locked in combat, the box lying on the floor near me. I let them fight, turning
onto my side, reaching for the box as my vision swam, pulling it to my chest,
and closing my eyes.

It had been two days, and though I was lonely and frightened in
that cave, Harmon had brought me enough supplies to make it comfortable. Though
a cave could never compare with the luxury of the harem quarters, I knew my life
there was over for good.

This night, though, I was leaving the cave for the first time.
This night I was going to see my beloved ladies again.

Harmon had brought me a dark cloak, and I’d wrapped up inside
it and felt as invisible as a breath of night air. I felt safe, too, with him
beside me. Though just a boy, he was, to me, a hero of mythical proportions. So
we slid silently through the night together, down from the rocky peak, through
the dunes, into the glittering jewel-like city of Babylon and then beyond its
beautiful face to its dankest bowels. The underworld. The subterranean prisons
were not beneath the palace, as I’d heard some dungeons were, but scattered
about the city in several locations, like the burrows of a pack of rats. Our
king preferred to keep his prisoners farther from his abode, not that he ever
kept them there long. Prisoners in Babylon had the life expectancy of an insect.
If not executed, they were left to starve.

The passage to which Harmon led me was guarded, of course.
Visitors who were willing to pay for the privilege were sometimes allowed, but
since he feared they might still be seeking me for questioning in regard to the
goings-on within the walls of the harem quarters, he didn’t want me seen. I hid
behind a nearby dune as he spoke to the guard outside the stone rectangle that
was the entrance. A doorway into the earth itself.

The guard nodded, quickly leaving his post on whatever false
errand my hero had sent him, and Harmon watched him go, then waved me over. I
hurried to him. “You’ll have to go alone,” he said. “Take this lamp, light it
from the third torch. There won’t be others. When you’re ready to come out, I’ll
be here. Throw a pebble at me, and I’ll distract the guard so you can slip past.
All right?”

“Yes. Yes, all right.”

“Are you afraid?”

I lifted my chin, met his eyes. “Not enough to stop me from
going.”

The admiration in his gaze made my heart swell. “Go on, then,
and be quick and quiet.”

“Thank you,” I said, and, rising up on my toes, I kissed his
cheek, then turned, holding the lamp to my breast as I faced the dark entrance,
flanked by stone jackals with onyx eyes and lolling tongues. I shivered, but I
pushed myself forward, and soon I was walking downward as the floor sloped away
ahead of me. At the first left turn I found the third torch mounted to the wall,
filling the air with its smoke and heat. Lifting my lamp, its wick sticking out
the spout end, I stole flame from the torch, then carried it with me as I moved
on.

The walls were built of stone, as was the floor of the
corridor, which was just a narrow pathway slanting downward, turning left,
slanting, turning left, slanting further, then turning left again. Its spiraling
progress ended as it widened into an actual room lined with a handful of stone
cells that had only two openings each. A single small hole for a window and a
door of heavy wood, barred from the outside, secured with locks the likes of
which I had never seen.

I went to the windows of the first and found myself having to
hop to see inside. Empty. As was the next, and the next two after that, until
finally I found Indira, curled in the corner of the final hole. The others were
not here.

“Indy!” I called hoarsely. “Indira, it’s me, Amarrah!”

She seemed startled at first, then got to her feet and rushed
to the little window to look out at me. “Amarrah! It soothes my heart to see
you, child, but what on earth are you doing here? Lilia would have a fit!”

“I had to see you. I want to help. If I could unlock the
door—”

“I could not leave, my little one. If I did, they would kill my
sisters. They’ve locked us up in separate places, you see.”

“But we could find them. We could—”

“It’s too late, my young friend. It’s too late.” Her eyes
shifted toward the way I had come, nervous, but she seemed to make a decision
and nodded once. “But there is something you can do. Something far more
important than mounting a rescue. But I must explain things to you first.
Darling, my sisters and I are to be sacrificed to the sun god tomorrow.”

“No!” I cried loudly, no longer caring if I was heard, and I
shifted my attention to the door of her cell and yanked on the lock, twisting
and tugging at it until my hands were raw.

And all the while Indira was speaking softly to me, saying,
“Amarrah, Amarrah, please, you must listen. There’s so little time.”

Eventually I heard her and, swiping my eyes, gave up on the
lock and went back to the window. “I won’t let it happen,” I declared.

“Sweet, sweet Amarrah, every last one of us now living is going
to die. And while ordinary people think of the Land of the Dead as a place to be
feared—a place like, well, like this one, I suppose—we witches know better.”

I sniffled. “You do?”

“Yes. Death is nothing to fear, little one. It’s a glorious
release, a blissful awakening to a world beyond anything we can even imagine
while here in this one.”

My brows rose, and I stared into her eyes, holding the lamp
higher, looking for evidence she was lying to me.

“It’s true,” she said, and her eyes were sincere. “We don’t
fear death. But what they plan to do to poor Demetrius, our dear Lilia’s true
love, is much worse than any death. The high priest intends to strip him of his
soul and then imprison him in a truly dark place, a dimension of demons and
evil, for all eternity. That, we cannot allow.”

“But…how can you stop him?”

“Only in death, child. Only when death frees us from our
shackles and the bonds of our bodies. Before we cross into that blissful
afterlife I’ve described to you, we intend to snatch back Demetrius’s soul and
split it between us, hiding it within magical objects, binding those objects to
our own spirits to go with us into the afterlife, to be kept with us for all
eternity until the time when we can free him from his prison and try to restore
his human soul to him.”

I nodded slowly, as if I understood, though I really didn’t. It
was like a nightmare, the things she described, and yet she said them as if they
were perfectly ordinary.

“Someday our spirits will be reborn to an earthly life again.
But we might not remember all that happened in this lifetime. So I’ve recorded
it, all of it, on scrolls that will be hidden in the cave near the place of…of
our executions. You know where it is, do you not?”

I nodded. Sacrifices to the gods were always pitched from the
cliffs of Mount Zucaris, far to the north of our city. Often people gathered to
watch. The offerings were most often goats or bulls, but sometimes humans were
tossed to their deaths on the jagged rocks below, enemy soldiers taken captive
in battle, traitors to the king. Witches.

“There’s a special chest, a treasure chest. The scrolls will be
inside it. You must take it from the cave after the rituals are over and keep it
with you wherever you go. You must leave it to someone you trust at the end of
your life, with these same instructions, and so on down through the generations,
the ages, until the time when my sisters and I can return and set things
right.”

“But how will you get the chest to the cave?”

“I have a friend who will put it there. He will not know who
you are, nor may you know who he is, for the safety of you both.”

“And how will you find it again in some future lifetime?” I
asked.

“Just the same way I’ll find you, little Amarrah. By witch’s
magic.” She extended an arm through the opening and ran her hand over my hair.
“So, do you accept this sacred task?”

I bit my lip and nodded firmly. “I do. I won’t let you down,
Indira. I won’t let any of you down.”

“I know you won’t,” she told me. “Now go, before you’re caught
down here. That would ruin our whole plan.”

I clasped her hand, moved it from my head to my lips and
pressed kisses to it. “I love you, Indira. And Magdalena and Lilia, too. I love
you all so dearly. Please tell them that for me when you see them. And that I’m
so grateful for all you did to make my life better. I will never forget you.
Tell them.”

“I’ll tell them.”

“I don’t want you to go,” I sobbed as she took her hand
away.

“There’s no need to grieve, child. We’ll return.”

With a vengeance, I thought, but I didn’t say it out loud.