Legacy of the Witch

by Maggie Shayne

  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?”