Legacy of the Witch
Read Legacy of the Witch Online
Authors: Maggie Shayne
“Once upon a time, there lived three witches....”
As a child, Amarrah loved her grandmother’s stories of three witches who were members of the king’s harem. But they were more than just stories. Amarrah knows she was there with them…and now their legacy, along with an ancient box that once belonged to them, lies in her hands.
Charged with keeping the box safe, Amarrah is heartbroken when it is stolen from her while she moves to America. Years later, she is shocked to see it on TV and is determined to get it back. Tracking the artifact leads her to Sergeant Harrison Brockson, a handsome soldier who stirs memories of a man she knew centuries ago in ancient Babylon. Is Harrison the key to finding the box—or could he be her destiny?
Prequel novella to Maggie Shayne’s exciting trilogy,
The Portal.
Legacy of the Witch
The Portal
Maggie Shayne
Dear Reader,
I cannot tell you how excited I am to bring you this brand-new series, The Portal, about two subjects near and dear to my heart: witchcraft and the ancient Near East, in this case Babylon. It’s a series about magic, about reincarnation and about the greatest power of all: the power of love.
The series begins with this special prequel,
Legacy of the Witch
, the tale of Amarrah, slave girl to the harem. The series then continues with three full-length novels:
Mark of the Witch
, Indira’s story;
Daughter of the Spellcaster
, Magdalena’s tale; and
Blood of the Sorceress
, the saga of Lilia and the cursed Demetrius.
I’m launching a big gorgeous new website focused on this series and the art of magic, at
www.theportalbooks.com
. There you’ll find videos, music, excerpts and collectible trading cards, as well as lots of information about real magic.
I hope you enjoy these stories. I’ve had an absolutely magical time writing them.
Blessed be!
Maggie Shayne
Chapter One
1981, Baghdad, Iraq
“Once upon a time, a long time ago, not very far away
from here, there lived three witches,” my
gidaty
said, as she had so many times
before. The story she told was an old and familiar one.
The first time my grandmother told me the tale of the three
harem slaves of Babylon, I’d replied, “I know this story already.”
Her old eyes—not as old as they were now, of course, for I’d
been only five years old then, and I was thirteen now—had widened at my innocent
words. “You know the story, Amarrah? How, my little one?”
“I was there.”
Gidaty had been stunned, I could tell. “You were, were
you?”
I’d nodded. I remember how clearly I’d been able to see it all
in my mind. The glittering city of Babylon and the luxurious harem quarters
where I’d been a servant. Slave girl to the slave girls. “I was a palace slave
before,” I’d told my increasingly astounded grandmother. “I worked in the
kitchens. But the other servants were mean to me. I had to do all the nastiest
jobs. But then one day Lilia, the king’s favorite harem slave, asked him to send
me to serve her and the others in their quarters. And from then on, I was so
much happier.”
Gidaty had cupped my face and stared into my eyes. “I’ve not
told you this story before, have I, child?”
“No, Grandma. I knew them. Lilia and Magdalena and Indira. I
told you, I was there.”
She blinked and nodded. “Perhaps you were at that.”
Later, as I grew older, I came to believe it had been my
imagination, that I was just very good at storytelling even then. That belief
had led me to want to be a writer when I grew up. Over time, I’d forgotten which
parts of the story my
gidaty
had told me and which parts I had told her. They
had all blended together into a single compelling tapestry. But to me, it was
all fiction.
But
beloved
fiction.
I knew the tales of the three harem slave witches so well I
could have told them to my grandmother, instead of the other way around. And on
days when her illness was very bad, she asked me to. I never refused. But that
night when I was thirteen, when her voice weakened and I held the water glass to
her lips, she didn’t ask me to take over. She sipped and swallowed, then fell
back against her pillows, closing her eyes so I wouldn’t see her pain.
But I didn’t have to see it. I
felt
it.
I took the glass away when she’d finished. “They were the most
beautiful women in all of Babylon, and beloved by the king, but they were
keeping dangerous secrets,” I said, picking up where she’d stopped, even though
she hadn’t asked me to. “The practice of magic was the right of the high priest
alone. For anyone else to cast and conjure was considered witchcraft, and it was
forbidden. And so were their loves.
“Indira had fallen secretly in love with a young priest of
Marduk, the sun god. Very bad mojo, that. Magdalena loved the prince—the son of
the very king she was bound to serve. That might have worked out all right, if
things had been different. The king would have given her to his son had the
prince but asked. But time ran out for them because of Lilia, who loved a
soldier—the king’s most trusted, his First.”
Gidaty held up a hand to stop me. “We have to skip to the end
this time, Amarrah. I don’t have much time.”
Frowning, I looked at the clock beside the bed, as if it would
tell me something. It sat ticking softly beside the heavy black telephone. But
in a heartbeat I understood. I was thirteen, after all. It wasn’t the ticking of
the clock that had my grandmother rushing but the slowing, stuttering beats of
her own heart.
“Should I call for help?”
“There’s no one to call. It’s my time, child, and you mustn’t
be sad. All will be well, you’ll see. And we’ll be together again. Just like
those poor cursed harem witches in our story.” She closed her hand more tightly
around mine and whispered, “There’s so much I must tell you. Above all else
this. It’s not a story at all, my girl. It’s true. All of it. But I think you
already know that.”
My eyes widened, and I wondered if the drugs she took for pain
were making her talk crazy. “Don’t be silly, Grandmother. Of course it’s a
story.”
“You know it’s not. You knew the story before I’d ever told it
to you. You were there.”
“That was just my overactive imagina—”
“You knew their names. Before I ever spoke them to you, you
knew their names. Indira, Magdalena, Lilia. You knew, child.”
I lowered my eyes.
“We’ve kept the legacy of the three witches alive, kept their
story alive, down through generations of our family. And something else, too,
though I don’t know yet how it all fits, I think it will reach its culmination
with you, my precious Amarrah. So you must listen to me now and swear to do as I
say, or you will fail all those generations of your ancestors and the
long-suffering spirits of those three women you once loved.”
I blinked back tears and told myself to just humor her, even
while part of my mind was hungrily absorbing all she said. And believing,
because part of me did believe. Part of me, perhaps,
knew.
“Go to the painting, child.” Gidaty lifted a weak hand,
pointing beyond the foot of her bed at the portrait on the wall. It was of the
three women from our beloved story, three harem girls standing on a cliff,
watching the sun rise over the desert. I’d always thought my grandmother’s story
had been inspired by the painting. But now she said it had been painted by her
grandmother, who had handed the tales down to her mother, who in turn had handed
them down to her.
“Behind it,” she told me.
Frowning, I tried to lift the bottom of the painting away from
the wall so I could peek behind, but instead it opened like a door, and there
was a wall safe behind it. I was shocked. I’d had no idea it was there in all
the years I had lived with my grandmother. I had gone to live with her in 1973,
when I was five and my parents had vanished, as so many did in Iraq in those
times.
“Gidaty, what is this?”
“Turn the dial, Amarrah. One to the left, then all the way
around sunwise, stopping at the nine the second time around. Back then to the
six, and right once again, stopping at the two.”
I followed her instructions, then tried the lever, and the safe
opened. I peered inside, wondering what secrets my grandmother had been keeping
from me all this time.
There, inside, was a box. It looked like a miniature treasure
chest, an ancient one. It was a couple of feet long, maybe half that deep, with
a top that curved and was banded in black iron. It was locked with a hasp and
antique padlock. I took it out of the safe with great care and brought it to the
bed. “What is it, Gidaty?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never known. That box has been handed down
through our family, from mother to daughter, for longer than I have ever known.
You must take it now.”
I frowned. “And do what with it?”
“Keep it safe.”
“But—”
“Hush, now. Listen and I’ll tell you all I know, though it’s
very little. That box belongs to the witches of our story. They will come to
claim it one day. I know not when nor how. But I do know there are others, dark
forces, who do not want them to have it, and who will try to take it from
you.”
“So I have to hide it?”
“Yes. Hide it, and tell no one you have it. Keep it safe.”
“But how will they find it? When are they coming? How will I
know them?”
She smiled softly. “You sound just like me when my own mother
gave me the box. I didn’t know the answers then. I don’t know them now. I only
know that you will know exactly what to do when the time is right.”
I nodded, wrapping the box in my arms, holding it against my
chest. “All right, Gidaty. I don’t understand it, but I’ll do it.”
“Promise me, child. Promise me you will keep the witches’ box
safe.”
“I promise, Tata.”
“Good,” she said softly. “Good.” She relaxed back on her
pillows, closed her eyes and exhaled the words “I love you, Amarrah. You’re a
very special girl.”
She didn’t breathe in again.
* * *
I was all packed and ready, the box hidden—as well as
something that size could be—in my largest suitcase. I’d spent hours alone,
trying to get it open in between long sessions of crying my heart out for my
beloved grandmother, who’d gone and left me all alone, and full of fear over
what would become of me now. The box had a padlock without a keyhole, and odd
images painted in a grid pattern on the underside. Short of destroying the
witches’ box, there was no way to get inside it. And part of me thought opening
it would be a bad idea anyway.
My
gidaty’s
burial had been arranged before her death, and my
airline ticket pre-purchased. Now that she was at rest, I was going to a world I
knew nothing about, to live with cousins I had never met.
Part of me wanted to run away.
Later, when the rifle-toting security officer at the airport
crooked his finger at me, calling me closer, I thought I should have listened to
that part. “I need to see what’s inside this bag,” he said. He had eyes like
black marbles, a moustache that covered his lips. He didn’t look like an honest
man to me.
“It’s only my personal things,” I said.
“All the same.” He opened my case while I stood there, helpless
to argue. Then his eyes fell upon the box and lit with greed. “What is
this?”
“A family heirloom. It was my grandmother’s.”
He picked up the precious box, and I lunged for him, reaching
out, but his arm—the one holding his rifle—shot out, and the cold metal barrel
pressed across my chest.
“Open it,” he said.
I swallowed past the lump in my throat. “I can’t. I’ve tried
and tried, but there’s just no way. It feels empty, though.”
He held the box up near his ear and shook it. “No, there’s
something. Light, but still…. I’m going to have to confiscate this.”
“But it’s mine!”
“You’ll get it back,” he said. “Once I’ve cleared it with the
Department of Antiquities. People are constantly smuggling treasures from our
ancient sites, selling them on the black market.” He set the box down. My gaze
remained pinned to it as I searched my brain for a solution.
Pulling a pad and pen from his uniform pocket, he handed them
to me. “Write down the address of the place where you are going in the U.S. I
will see to it that this is shipped to you once it has been cleared.”
I obediently jotted the address, and then a symbol, one my
grandmother had taught me, because I wasn’t entirely powerless. It was a minor
hex of sorts—for along with the history of the witches, a few of their skills
had been handed down through the generations of my family. It was part of our
legacy, and my grandmother had taught me all the bits and pieces of magic that
had come down to her with the tales. So I drew the sign that would ensure he
would know no peace until he returned the box to my hands.
I eyed the box, and while my head was down, muttered in a
whisper, “I bind you now, oh box, to me, by the power of three times three,
return return return to me.”
“What was that?”
“I was praying,” I said, straightening and handing him the
paper. “That you would take mercy on an innocent orphan girl and not steal from
her the last thing her dead grandmother gave to her.”
His eyes held mine for a long moment.
“I promise you will regret it if you don’t,” I added, letting
my fury show in my face.
His marble eyes narrowed angrily. “It will be shipped to you
when it clears the Department of Antiquities. Now go, before you miss your
flight.”
I kept on staring. He thrust out an arm. “Go!” he shouted.
I knew I would be arrested if I stayed, so I went, feeling I
had failed my grandmother utterly.
I didn’t see the box again for ten years.