The Portal 00 - Legacy of the Witch

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