The Dark Citadel (The Green Woman)

by Jane Dougherty

  Odin nudged him and leered. “If this wasn’t a holy place, I’d have that screen down and give them hot bitches what for, wouldn’ I, son? Eh? An’ wouldn’ you too?”

  Hector, his slow thoughts still on his mother, gave his father a horrified look. “Ah, leave off, Da. It is a temple though, innit?”

  His father shrugged. “An’ they’re still hot bitches.”

  Hector’s uneven eyes narrowed. How he hated his father sometimes! He would never find his mother’s face among the women hiding behind the temple screens. The last time he had seen her face was in the morgue, blue with bruises, a black swelling beneath her left eye.

  Odin had taken his six-year-old son to see his mother. In the morgue. He hadn’t told the child she was dead. Hector wondered what his mother was doing in a drawer. She was set upon by a band of bloodthirsty Ignorants, his father told the officials. Hector looked at her face and didn’t understand. The marks were the ones she had when he last saw her, in the morning before he went to school. Her face often looked like that. As a child Hector knew he was supposed to admire his father, but he had never been able to like him. From that day Hector’s dislike of his father was tinged with hatred.

  The temple filled. As the Elders filed in, their faces hidden behind golden masks, the pushing and shoving stopped. The stiff-robed priests called upon the Wise God to forgive the sins of His children, to keep the desert demons at bay, and bestow His soothing breath upon them once more. For either His children had sinned, or there were sinners in the midst of the faithful.

  The children of the Wise God harboured sinners, they knew that, but it was a necessary evil: without the labour of the sinners the Ark of Providence would founder. Something had angered the Wise God and He had turned His face from His children. Instead of His life-giving breath, it was the burning demon breath of the desert void that filled the Hemisphere. The Elders prayed for guidance to extirpate the evil in their midst and deflect the wrath of the Wise God.

  The Elders muttered their prayers; men pressed their faces to the ground. The sound of wailing, muffled by thick veils, fell from the galleries while the air thickened like soup and the oxygen began to rarefy. The thickest part of the throng folded over a fallen body—someone had fainted. Children’s crying was stifled, older people rasped and wheezed. Hector stretched his scrawny neck and gasped for air, but only the burning emptiness of the desert filled his lungs. Time was marked by the pounding beats of frantic hearts. The atmosphere was as hot and motionless as the inside of an oven.

  Hector shuffled closer to his father and sank to his knees, his pale face sticky with sweat, his wiry red hair dark and damp. His head swam, and he strained to hear the panting of the demons he feared were clustered round the darkened Hemisphere. He imagined the darkness palpitating with unholy life creeping through the shadowy, unlit streets and moaned in terror as he felt the clammy touch of approaching death.

  “Da? Is it nearly over?” he croaked. “It’s suffocating in here. I can’t breathe!”

  Odin cleared his dry throat and shrugged. “Could be hours. She could kill us all. It’s her fault, you know. Your bleedin’ betrothed.”

  “How?” Hector asked, his head spinning, unable to work out the connection.

  “She’s got out, ain’t she? Gone to find her bitch of a mother, ain’t she? Defyin’ the Wise God, ain’t she? It’s them two green bitches doing this, mark my words.”

  When the sense of his father’s words sunk in, Hector’s jaw dropped. His nose was running but he hadn’t the energy to wipe it. He thought of his betrothed, the girl he had been ordered to find and bring back to face her punishment. He hadn’t imagined this though, that she was capable of such blasphemy.

  He studied his father out of the corner of his eye. Odin wheezed and groaned, his mouth hanging open, sweat trickling down his thick neck. Too stupid to lie, Hector thought, and his unsettling eyes narrowed in anger. He’d sort her out, the little whore. Running away from her rightful betrothed and upsetting the Wise God! He’d sort her out, just wait and see if he didn’t.

  The sound of wailing floated down from the galleries, to be stopped abruptly as a mother clapped her hand across the baby’s mouth to prevent the crying drawing evil down upon them. Hector knew many babies would never cry again after this evening, and he sneered to himself at the stupidity of women.

  There was a sharp hiss of indrawn breath from the people before the altar. Hector saw the crowd surge forward and caught sight of one of the Elders staggering and falling, a gold mask slipping from his slack fingers. Two Sons of the Word, two Pure Ones caught him, their movements fluid and machine-like in their long black coats and boots. They removed the stricken Elder with military efficiency, but not before the horrified worshippers had glimpsed the pale, sweating face of an old man. Men glanced at one another through lowered lashes before pressing their faces into the dust of the floor, murmuring frantic prayers for the preservation of their souls and muttering revenge on the blasphemers who had drawn down the fury of the Wise God.

  After six hours of litanies and breathless incantations, the lights flickered once, twice, then grew in strength. The people gasped in relief as burning lungs filled once again, and they struggled back up off their knees with hallelujahs of praise for the mercy of the Wise God. Odin was already elbowing his way to the doors, but Hector hung back to count the prostrate bodies that didn’t rise, to listen for the shocked gasps of the mothers who had inadvertently smothered their babies. Hector felt lucky, blessed by fortune, and hoped the dead were some of those who had looked the other way when he or his father passed by.

  In the street outside, the dead were carried in silence to the morgue. The crowd that poured homeward was not silent. Voices were already raised against those responsible for provoking the Wise God’s anger. The crowd called for vengeance on the usual scapegoats, the traitorous Ignorants. No Ignorant had ever asphyxiated in the temples, they shouted. Hector didn’t care that no Ignorant was allowed to set foot in a temple because his prayers would be impure and blasphemous. Hector joined in the chanting, eager to belong to the group, relieved to still be alive, rejoicing in the prospect of violence.

  Hector had a mission, and that he had been spared seemed to bode well for its success. The principal of his betrothed’s school had entrusted him, crooked Hector, with a secret mission. He stuck out his narrow chest with pride and his eyes glittered. He would show them what he was made of. Nobody would call him Spider Boy again.

  * * * *

  Demons settled thickly on the crystal surface of the Hemisphere, clustering where the streetlights were fewest and the dusk deepest. Avidly, they drank in the unthinking hatred that boiled and churned in the animated streets. Peering down between the shabby buildings, lidless eyes picked out two figures on the edge of the waste ground that separated the Ignorant tenements from the Hemisphere. The two figures moved hesitantly, picking their way round unseen obstacles, searching for something.

  Demon eyes found her. She was coming! The wordless scream ran across the Hemisphere, chilling the blood of the Ignorants who heard. She was coming! Dark shapes settled with spread wings over the crystal. Scales scraped, claws scratched, clutching at the smooth, resistant surface. They did not know how she would pass to the other side, but they knew that she would try. Then Hell would be unleashed to pick up her tracks.

  Chapter 26

  “Can’t you remember anything?” Persephone whispered.

  Deborah shook her head despondently. “It could be anywhere, it could be any shape or form. I just can’t find anything in my head that looks remotely like a door. Is it possible Lugh could be wrong?”

  “It was a long time ago, but Lugh’s as old as almost anything around here. Your father said the door was here too, didn’t he?”

  “My father said lots of things. You’d have to be nuts to believe the half of them.”

  Persephone grinned. “So, what’s so great about being sane?”

  Deborah frowned, and her eyes
became two green slits. “All right, so this door just got forgotten when the workmen abandoned the site. How do you forget a door?”

  “Why would you remember it? The war took them by surprise. Who was going to worry about a service door once the bombs started to fall?” Persephone asked logically.

  “It must be more or less invisible,” Deborah mused, half to herself, “to have been lost for so long.”

  They stopped, discouraged, and in the deepening silence, they became aware of movement above their heads—not a sound, more a vibration, a movement of the air, like a silent fluttering. The impression thickened, took form, and as they held their breath, a hoarse cry rent the air, cold and cruel. Dark shadows fell from the Hemisphere above; darkness reached out to them from every pothole in the decrepit roadway.

  In the grip of terror, the two girls turned and ran with their baggy garments flapping round their legs, stumbling on broken paving stones, back to the relative comfort of the crumbling, stinking tenement blocks. Persephone was swifter, saw better in the dark, was accustomed to the treacherous roads with their cracked and missing paving stones. Deborah trailed, encumbered by Juno’s heavy clothes and the Ignorant headscarf that left only a narrow slit to see through.

  As they raced down the middle of an empty street by the crematorium, Persephone way out in front, Deborah caught her foot in a pothole and fell her length on the rock-strewn street. Persephone stopped and looked back. At the same time the silence was shattered by the chilling bark of military orders and the sound of splintering wood as Black Boys broke down doors and smashed into apartments all over the Ignorant quarter. Persephone gave a little gasp of fear, took a step towards Deborah and stopped. Mouthing the words, I’m sorry, she turned and ran towards her home.

  Deborah’s head had caught a stone, and she saw stars when she tried to stand. She sat down again, her hand to her forehead, but the impression remained, the white light did not diminish, and with a thrill of excitement, she knew she was having a flash of Memory. The sounds of shouting and screaming faded as she became absorbed by the past.

  Before her in the ground was a rectangular opening covered by a sliding metal door. The flash grew even brighter, and Deborah saw every inch of the door, the way it slid back, the mechanism concealed inside. She saw the ghostly hands of the last workman slide it across, she saw the lock, she saw the hand move away not locking it, maybe not realising he was to be the last.

  The light grew dimmer as she approached the place, trembling, Persephone forgotten. The light faded and died. She felt the ground before her, her fingers scrabbling in the dirt, left then right. She felt the smoothness, found the button, pressed. She felt the sliding metal beneath her fingers and let herself down into the pitch darkness of the tunnel below.

  Chapter 27

  At breakfast time, Grania and Ezekiel explained to Zachariah that they and Fionnuala’s family were taking their turn in Overworld so that the families of Ezekiel’s sister and Grania’s cousin could take their places. If too many families slipped away into the hidden city, the authorities would start to notice.

  “You can’t go back up there with us.” Ezekiel jerked his thumb upward. “Not for a long time anyway. You could pass for one of us once the fuss is over, but you would live in fear of having your papers controlled by the Black Boys.”

  As they ate, Ezekiel told Zachariah all he knew about Underworld. He spoke of huge dumps of waste materials, the underground protein production plant where rabbits and chickens lived and reproduced in thousands of metal cages set twenty, fifty high. There were the abattoirs and water purification plants where hundreds of Dananns worked with just a handful of higher caste supervisors, the mines where minerals were extracted, and the sinister energy zone, set in solid, unbroken rock.

  Ezekiel’s voice grew harsher as he told Zachariah of the Dananns’ fears, about the cull, the deformed babies born in secret, the murder of those born inside the House of Births.

  “We suspected something when they doled out an enormous ration of nutrition. Good stuff too, not the usual sweepings. Said it was for some feast or other nobody had ever heard of. Some of us wouldn’t touch it, it was just too good to be true, but you know how it is when people are hungry—they take a chance. People got sick soon after, wasting sicknesses. Some went to the hospital. None of them came back. Then the first babies were born.” Ezekiel’s voice filled with anger. “Some had no limbs, or they were twisted and broken. Some of them lived. For a while.”

  Grania patted his arm and took up the story. “The women were frightened, and instead of coming down here to the wise women to have their babies they went to the House of Births, thinking it would be safer. But they were never given their babies back, not even the healthy ones. They knew something terrible was happening; they heard some of the nurses crying, saw their red eyes. They were told the babies were sick, that they’d gone for treatment at the hospital, but we know what happened.” Grania swallowed back the catch in her voice. “They were murdered! Every single one of them.”

  Ezekiel put his head in his hands. “Have you heard of Gehenna, boy?”

  Zachariah shook his head. The sound of the word was evil and gave him goose flesh.

  “The valley of sacrifices, the eternal fires of Moloch?” Ezekiel’s voice was barely a whisper. “Gehenna is creeping closer. The shadows are drawing in.”

  Grania held her husband’s hand tightly and picked up the story. “We’re certain it was the nutrition. There was something wrong with it, so they said, ‘Let’s give it to the Ignorants.’ Either they poisoned it on purpose, or what’s more likely, there was an energy leak.”

  Zachariah looked bewildered.

  “There’s a man up there,” Ezekiel raised his eyes to the roof, “a good man, Raphael Gabrielson. He knows all about the energy and how to maintain the reactor. He explained it to us, just the theory, you know? Seems like it can get out, through cracks in the casing, if the thing isn’t looked after properly.”

  “The energy can get out?” Zachariah murmured thoughtfully.

  Ezekiel nodded. “And this Raphael is the only scientist left who knows anything about reactors and energy and suchlike. The Elders have him locked up in the One-Gated House because he won’t work for them. They say the Protector asked him to create an army of android workers to do away with us altogether, and he said he would rather see Providence blown sky high than have any part in preserving their wretched regime. He’s one of the few High Caste people who respects us Dananns. If only we could get him out! But he won’t be helped, says the reprisals against us would be terrible.” Ezekiel sighed and shook his head. “A good man, one of the few.”

  “Why don’t the Elders kill him?” Zachariah asked, intrigued.

  Ezekiel gave him a brief glance before going on with the story. “Two reasons. There’s a story, a rumour, about a woman who escaped from Providence. A woman the Elders wanted to destroy. Some say she is the daughter of the daughters of Eve who has inherited the Memory, that she can rebuild the world as it was and end the dictatorship of the Elders. Others say she’s the Witch, the Serpent in the Garden, and her reign would be even more terrible. By a miracle this woman escaped from Providence, ten years ago now, but her husband and their little daughter were recaptured. The husband is Raphael Gabrielson.

  They sent him to the One-Gated House, but the Elders daren’t kill him because nobody else knows how to shut down the reactor safely. The other reason they’re keeping him alive is because he’s useful as a hostage if ever his wife makes a move against the regime. Same for the little girl, poor little mite! She was given. No one knows where she is now, except the Protector.” Ekekiel ground his teeth in anger.

  Grania completed the explanation. “We Dananns believe the woman who escaped, the woman with the Memory, must be the Green Woman. She’s waiting for something to complete her powers, and then she will move. Soon, maybe, we’ll be free!”

  Grania’s words sent a thrill of excitement through Zachariah and pl
unged him back into his dream of the previous night. Then he began to digest the alarming idea that Providence was a ticking bomb. “If what this Raphael said about the energy is true, she’d better not wait too long.”

  “We hear it humming to itself sometimes, like an angry beast in a cage,” Ezekiel agreed, “and not long ago it roared, like it was trying to get out. Raphael warned us that unless it was contained, the energy would poison us. The nutrition stores are close by the reactor. We reckon some of the energy must have leaked in and contaminated it. The roaring happened round about the same time.”

  “But if the energy can get through solid rock…”

  “And the Elders can’t control it…”

  “It could destroy the entire city!”

  “Yes, son, that roaring we heard could have been just a prelude, a little warm-up exercise. Next time, the beast might get out.”

  “Ezekiel?”

  “Yes, son?”

  “Do you believe in the Garden?”

  Ezekiel smiled and put his hand on Zachariah’s arm. “It’s there, it has to be. It’s our favourite story.”

  “If I could find it, we could leave this place, and Providence could blow itself into oblivion where it belongs.”

  “If only.” Ezekiel laughed, but Grania’s expression was serious.

  “Some of us would have gone long ago, but we have too much to lose. If we were caught, Underworld would be discovered, and then we may just as well roll over and die. The Garden might be just a dream. Underworld is real and it’s all we have.” Grania looked up sharply. Maeve had appeared in the doorway.

  “Is Zachariah going Outside?” she asked, her blue eyes shining with excitement. Her parents looked at one another.

  “I’m not sure…” Ezekiel began.