The Portal 00 - Legacy of the Witch

car’s tires
screeching and its engine roaring. I pulled myself up to my feet, clasping the
desk, limping around it and finally turning on the light.
    I heard Harrison swear, then looked up to see him in the
doorway staring at me just before my world went black.

Chapter Four
    I was there again, in the secret garden in the midst of
the harem, splashing in the warm water of the pool, this time by the dead of
night. I kept a scrub brush nearby. Should anyone question me, I was to tell
them I was cleaning away the algae. Lilia had made a loud fuss over having
“filthy old housemaids” sullying the pool’s pure waters, worked the others up
into a real fit about it, and then slyly suggested the job be made one of my
many duties.
    She was always doing that, my Lilia. Finding out what I loved
to do best and then conniving a way to make it my duty. Often times other, less
pleasant, tasks had to be moved aside to make room. My life of servitude was
becoming a life of fun. Doing things I loved and calling them work. So, since
I’d nearly drowned playing in the waters of the sacred river, she’d decided to
find a way to allow me to frolic in the waters of the harem pool, which was
supposed to be for the use of the king’s harem slaves alone. Its waters were
said to contain minerals that enhanced their already breathtaking beauty.
    I didn’t mind at all giving the pool a scrub while I was
basking in it. It was a far better job than scrubbing the stone floors or
washing the bed linens.
    This night, however, my fun was interrupted by the arrival of
someone who jumped nimbly down from the wall, as he had so many times before,
and landed softly, his bare feet slapping the wet stone.
    He smiled, and my heart melted the same way it always did. I
crossed my arms in front of me, painfully aware that I was wearing only a scrap
of cloth around my chest and another around my hips.
    He was aware of it, too, and appreciative. I felt a rush of
heat and power, and thought perhaps I understood another of Lilia’s frequent
cryptic comments—this one about what she called feminine magic. “The woman who
can wield her own womanhood can bring any man to his knees,” she told me. Over
and over, she told me this.
    “Hello, slave girl,” he said.
    “Hello, soldier boy.” I lowered my head shyly but could not
dislodge my eyes from his. “Join me in the water?”
    “And lose my head for it?”
    “Everyone’s asleep. They won’t know.”
    He looked around. There was only darkness, stone walls, water
trickling from the fountain in the center of the pool. Arching doorways led off
in several directions, all of them dark. It was dark in the courtyard, too,
where we were. The crescent moon was above us, waning, hanging low in the
sky.
    Giving a nod, he set down the shoulder pack he’d been carrying,
stripped off his garment and revealed the white fabric that was his
undergarment. It twisted around his lean hips, down between his legs and up
again, the untucked end hanging like a short curtain over his man parts. And
then he was sliding into the pool with me, his breath rushing out of him as he
closed his eyes. “Oh, you are so right. This is good.”
    “Yes, I know. My Lilia made it part of my duties to clean the
pool, so if I’m caught, I have my scrub brush nearby.”
    “You are not only beautiful but smart, little Amarrah.”
    I blushed with pleasure.
    “What will be my explanation if I
am caught, clever one?” he asked.
    I thought for a minute as he sloshed through the water, closer
to me. When I looked up again he was standing very near. And something inside my
belly went all molten. “You won’t need an excuse. You can run like a gazelle,
leap the wall and be gone before anyone gets a close look at you.”
    “And leave you to be whipped for cavorting with an unknown male
in the harem, where men are forbidden to set foot?”
    “I would say you were an intruder. That I was about to scream
for help.”
    “That might work.”
    “If not, whipping isn’t so bad. I can take it.” I said it
proudly, but my words made his expression darken.
    “How often have you been whipped, Amarrah?”
    “Not once—since I came to the harem. Before that?” I lowered my
head. “No, I do not want to think about before.”
    “It was bad, in the king’s palace?”
    I nodded. “Never the king, though. The other servants.”
    “Wrinkled old hags, jealous of you being the most beautiful
female in all of Babylon.”
    My eyebrows rose high.