“I hear it too. The call is faint, but it will grow. We must not wait until it becomes a cry of distress so loud the dead will hear.”
Oscar’s face glowed in the silvery light. He felt so elated he would have taken Medb in his arms and kissed her if she hadn’t been his mother’s sister. They would tell the High King the Green Woman was calling, and he would send messengers to the four corners of the land to call up the Fianna. It would be a hosting such as the tribes had never witnessed since the island was claimed from the fairy people. At this thought, another came to trouble him.
“And the Sidhe?”
Medb nodded gravely. “The fairy people too will answer the call. They bear us no grudge. Well, most of them anyway,” she added with a thin smile.
“The Sidhe too.” Oscar could hardly contain the excitement welling up inside him. “What a hosting this will be!”
“The greatest,” Medb agreed and, with an unqueenly gesture, squeezed his arm.
Chapter 9
Sand sifted into his shoes, dragging at Zachariah’s feet, each step requiring the effort of two. The desert noises were strange and eerie, flutterings and whisperings made by things the darkness obscured. Treacherous winds whipped sand into his eyes and howled around his head, and strange rock shapes loomed in front of him, invisible until he was almost upon them. Worst of all was the nagging impression that someone was following him. There was nothing precise, it was too dark to see anything, and the sand covered the sound of footfalls. But at times he could have sworn someone or something was close behind.
Each time he stopped to check that he was still heading north, Zachariah listened. What sounded like the swish of sand could have been anything; the wind, a small animal, the rustling of dry branches. But as the lonely night wore on, he became increasingly uneasy, and at the first glimmer in the sky, he looked about for a place to hide.
When he found the right place, a small crater half-filled with a tumble of boulders with dark sandy spaces between, he perched just below the lip of the depression and looked back the way he had come. At first, there was too little light to see anything, but as the daylight increased, he could make out the steep scree slope and the black cavern that marked the end of the tunnel that led to Underworld. It looked far away now, almost as far as he could see, and it stared at him like an unblinking eye.
Suddenly the growing light caught a movement, something scuttling up the slope, something dark with lots of legs that dashed up the loose rocks and disappeared into the darkness of the tunnel. Zachariah crouched lower into his foxhole, the hair at the back of his neck standing on end, and turned to face the flat-topped butte that had come to feel familiar and reassuring in the nightmare landscape of the wilderness.
Beyond the butte, far to the north, he thought he saw a pale green rim to the waste of sand and rock. It was such a pale green as to be hardly distinguishable from the yellow of the dried shrubs that cluttered the desert, but Zachariah was convinced it was green, and it undulated with the promise of hills, and beyond, perhaps the hope of a mountain. It seemed so far away, in another world.
Zachariah reckoned he had enough water for another three days. After that he would have to hope he came across a spring. And he would be reduced to eating the spiky, rebarbative-looking fruits that grew begrudgingly on the sparse bushes.
He had just ducked down into the shelter of the boulders when he heard the unmistakable sound of something creeping along the crater’s edge. A pebble skittered down to chink against the rocks before him; loose scree scrunched beneath a furtive footfall. He held his breath and crouched back as far as he could into the shadow of his hiding place. Another pebble fell further away, then there was nothing but the cruel sounds of the desert, scourging wind, and the wailing of a sandwraith. Whatever it was had passed by.
Zachariah was too terrified to move. He just watched the patch of sand before him change from grey to dirty yellow as the day advanced. No shadow fell across the patch of light; no more sounds interrupted the scratchings and scrabblings of the desert plants and animals. The temperature rose, and he was enveloped in a suffocating heat, like being wrapped in a thick, dusty blanket. Fatigue got the better of him, and without daring even to open his water bottle, Zachariah dropped off to sleep.
When he woke, the light was dimmer but not dark enough for him to venture outside his den. The air was still parched, and he needed to drink. He swallowed a few mouthfuls of the warm, stale water in his bottle and broke a piece of dry bread, smearing it with the mushroom sauce to moisten it. When he had finished, the last of the daylight had caught the peaks of the tallest rocks, and Zachariah noticed with a shiver that the Yellow Rock was still in view. The distance and the dimness of the light did not allow him to see if the winged shapes were beginning their nocturnal prowlings. But an ominous silence had settled on the desert waste, settled on Zachariah like fear, and he left his hiding place reluctantly, despite the hopeful sight of greenery.
* * * *
How many more than three days went by, Zachariah couldn’t remember. He had been hungry and thirsty forever, it seemed. More often than not the pools he came across contained an oily liquid that was not water and hissed with the release of noxious gases. The waterholes that he did find were thick with mud, and no matter how carefully he let the sluggish dampness trickle over the lip of his water bottle, it inevitably filled with a mixture more mud than liquid. His lips were so dry they cracked and split, and stung when he bit into the acid flesh of the desert fruits. Scabs crusted round his eyes until the green horizon grew even fuzzier, became even more of a mirage.
He rubbed his eyes, rubbing in grit, making them sore and puffy. He started at movements that flickered and dodged in and out of his vision when he peered after them through lashes clotted with a mixture of sand and mucus. Only his dogged belief in the Dananns’ dream kept him plodding on, screwing up irritated eyes in the half-light of morning and evening, willing the green vision to grow.
One evening, he couldn’t remember which, he had been about to leave his hiding place among a clump of thorn bushes when a movement caught his eye and he blinked, struggling to keep it in focus. His path north led across a slight sand-filled depression, and the sand was moving.
Zachariah slunk back into the bushes and watched as the smooth surface buckled and swelled like waves on the sea in the Danann cave painting. More prosaically it made him think of the surface of a pan of gruel as it thickens and begins to bubble and heave. The light grew dimmer by the instant, and he strained to see exactly what was emerging from the sandpit. The heaving turned to thrashing as long, scaly tails and necks broke free, like monstrous worms wriggling in a bucket, with dull skin that flaked and shed like tattered shrouds.
Coiling and uncoiling as they emerged from the ground, the worms swung their open jaws. Flickering tongues tasted the air, belching a stench of open graves. The still air was filled with the sounds of hissing and scraping as the creatures opened and closed their dry, creaking wings, dust-dry skin cracking and tearing as they struggled.
Pressing himself into the stony ground, so close he could feel every sharp rock as he squirmed over it, Zachariah crept backwards into the bushes. Cold waves rolled over him, and he ground his jaws to prevent the noise of his chattering teeth giving him away. The stink was nauseating, and he knew if he were sick the creatures would smell him in an instant. Hot tears stung the corners of his eyes as he struggled to control the retching of his stomach and the urging of his bladder. With a last desperate gulp, he tried to hold back the bitter bile that rose in the back of his throat, and he almost managed it. But not quite.
A head, long and narrow with flaring horse-like nostrils, swung in his direction, its small, dark eyes fixed on the clump of thorn bushes. A long ribbon of a tongue flicked in and out; the jaws opened, tasting the air. Zachariah shrank back even further, digging with his knees and elbows into the unyielding ground. The head darted, snapping; its thick, evil-smelling body followed, propelled by stubby ba
ck legs. Zachariah closed his eyes.
Another scaly head appeared and the grave worm stretched its sinuous neck out taut, uttering a high-pitched scream as jaws sunk into its flank. Zachariah’s eyes opened wide, and he gasped in horror and relief as yet another pair of jaws clamped onto the neck, rigid with pain, and shook it. The worm reared, and a rippling motion overtook the coiled nest as other worms, excited by the hot smell, snatched at wings and limbs, tearing and rending. In a few moments the sand was black as it soaked up the spilled gouts of blood.
It was almost completely dark before the unfortunate worm was nothing more than bloody rags and brittle yellow bones, and the sounds of frenzied feeding changed to the rush and rustle of parchment-dry wings as the nest of grave worms took to the sky. Zachariah watched them go, flapping their creaking wings and shrieking with the cruel voices of birds of prey. He had not heard the voice that called them away, did not know it was not his tracks they were seeking. But he felt faint with relief when the abominable creatures departed.
He drank greedily from his water bottle and crawled out of the bushes, scratched and bleeding at the knees and elbows. Stumbling to his feet, he set a course that took him on a detour through the rocks, avoiding the churned and bloodied sand nest. The night was deep and cold before he returned to the plain and his path northwards.
* * * *
In the course of those endless days, the impression of being followed never left Zachariah, and the fear of being heard made him clamp his jaws tight together when he surprised himself muttering his disjointed thoughts aloud. Each time his clothes snagged on a spiny bush, he stopped and listened. Each time a small creature scuttled out of his path, he held his breath, though he heard nothing else above the crying of the wind. He sniffed the wind like an animal, straining after the putrid stench of the grave worms, flinching each time a branch above his head creaked or a night bird called.
Anguish was the only sensation until, as one interminable night neared its end, he remembered what hope felt like. Zachariah found that his feet trod firmer earth, and in the earth, low plants grew here and there. There was a new smell in the air, moister, less gritty. As he drank it in, the air slid into his lungs almost as cool and luscious as water. It no longer rasped its way down his throat like a metal file. The plants grew taller, thicker, and eventually came the sound he had been hoping for.
It was the sound of running water, a low whispering through the plants along its banks, and the clap clap of little river waves as they lapped the shore. He waded now through damp mud and pushed through reeds and grasses that reached to his shoulder. The sky grew brighter and cleared of the sand and dust pall of the desert wasteland. Zachariah found a firm place and stamped the reeds flat, making a little nest for himself, then, narrowing his eyes against the growing daylight, he tried to order his chaotic thoughts.
As he feared, the Yellow Rock, though well behind him now, was still not as far away as he would have liked. Far to the south he could make out little as the swirling desert sands hid Providence and the surrounding wastes from his view. Before him lay what he knew to be a river, and on the other side, a wide undulating plain of long grasses and slender trees. Far away in the distance, the trees thickened, grew closer together and became a forest. The forest climbed higher in great steps, shaggy and green, until it gave way to meadows, then the bare rock of the mountains.
Mountains! They rose before him, massive and magnificent, strung along the horizon, pink and violet, orange and blue, like living marble. Zachariah rubbed his crusted eyes and gasped in awe at the sight. All his doubts fell away, he believed. The Garden had to be there.
He scrambled awkwardly from his hiding place to the water’s edge. He leaned forward and plunged his head into the cool water, snatching great mouthfuls of it as if it were solid food, shivering with pleasure as he washed the grit and sand from his face and neck. His waterlogged lashes stuck together, blinding him completely, and he doused his head again and again, rubbing gently until the dried crusts softened and washed away.
Once he had splashed and soaked himself sufficiently, he dipped his empty bottle below the surface and smiled at the optimistic gurgling sound as it filled up with the clear, cold river water. He raised it to his lips and drank again, slower this time, savouring the sensation of quenching thirst, letting water run down his chin and over his shirt. He bent to fill the bottle again and froze in terror. There was something in the river.
As he watched wide-eyed and helpless, the water boiled and bubbled. It broke with a great sucking noise as a head appeared, huge and grey, that split open with a roar revealing a red throat as wide as a man’s body and white fangs like tent pegs. Zachariah was petrified with fear. His legs would not move; his hand still held the water bottle in the river. Then the beast roared again and began to heave its glistening grey bulk out of the water.
Zachariah turned and ran, crashing through the reeds, away from the river. As if in answer to the roar of the river beast, a scream came from overhead. Zachariah snatched a terrified glance upwards but saw nothing except a confusion of black limbs and scaly wings, tipped with cruel hook claws. Arms, with hands strong as steel cables, gripped him beneath the armpits and yanked him off the ground. He gave a cry of terror and struggled frantically as the ground receded beneath him, and the wind in his face blew away the stench of the creature holding him.
* * * *
The watcher on the riverbank parted the reeds as Zachariah was snatched into the air by the demon. More reptile than bird, the creature’s muscles strained to keep its ungainly bulk in the air. The dark shape was joined by a second. Flapping wings of naked skin, they both wheeled about and turned towards the Yellow Rock that was just beginning to reveal its pinnacles and sheer facets after the obscurity of the night.
A pair of eyes watched until the clouds of the lingering darkness hid the creatures and their prey from view. The watcher gazed across the river that remained dark and impenetrable, but beyond, colours were growing out of the shadows. Trees appeared with fluttering leaves, and beneath their branches, something moved. The watcher heard the faintest stamping of horses’ hooves, and with a thrill that twisted entrails into a constricting knot, knew there could be no doubt—they were on their way. And there was nowhere to hide.
Chapter 10
They had been walking since nightfall and the shadows, in the darkest hour before dawn, were dense and still. Deborah could make out nothing beyond the pale sandy path that led through the overarching rocks of the narrow canyon, but something had shifted in the quality of the shadows. They were too dense, too solid. The hairs at the back of her neck rose and her scalp tingled. The air quivered as if an unseen presence was about to shatter the stillness, and fear lay cold and heavy in the pit of her stomach.
Without a sound, the leading pup slunk back to Jonah, belly to the ground, ears flat against his skull. The rest of the pack stopped and melted into the scrubby bushes. Jonah gripped Deborah’s arm, and she could feel an echo of her fear through his fingertips.
“What is it?” she whispered.
Jonah put a finger to his lips and pointed to where their path climbed through a narrow pass cut into a rocky escarpment. As Deborah peered through the dim light, the shadows that gathered in the gap between the cliffs seemed to shift and spread.
Jonah reached over his shoulder and silently slid an arrow from the quiver slung at his back. He nocked the arrow and raised the bow, pulling back the bowstring as he tried to take aim at something he could not see. The pups cringed silently behind them, huddled together, too frightened to even whimper. The darkness advanced, and Deborah involuntarily took a step backwards.
“Jonah,” she breathed and shrank close to his side.
He drew himself up straighter and swallowed the last of his fear. The hand that drew the bowstring taut ceased trembling; the arrow pointed straight into the heart of the darkness.
The quivering of the air shattered the stillness with a shriek of triumph or pain, and th
e darkness swelled—a thundercloud. Air whistled through long pinion feathers and two burning eyes opened in a swirling, shrieking cloud of black feathers that plunged towards Deborah. She screamed as clawed hands reached down to her out of the shadowy mass, and in the charred and twisted face, a lipless mouth opened in a snarl. Or was it to speak?
Her gaze plunged into the inhuman eyes, and she felt a surge of power or understanding, that linked her to the creature. She had no need of a weapon, did not even need to point a finger. Something called out to her from the demon’s depths, and she reached out to grasp it. Power sizzled and unseen chains burst. She cried out, not knowing what she had destroyed or created.
The thing rasped out a hoarse cry and crumpled. Jonah adjusted his aim and, pushing Deborah roughly to one side, let the arrow fly into the deformed face. But as the demon fell, still screaming, to the ground before them, Deborah knew the arrow had not been necessary.
The shadows dispersed and revealed a heap of dark feathers and furrowed, fire-blackened skin that heaved and threshed in an effort to rise. The demon lifted its head painfully from the ground, the fletching of Jonah’s arrow, a tuft of bloody feathers, protruding from the base of its neck. Deborah, with a pang of guilt, knew the physical wound was nothing compared with what she had broken. The power had leapt out unbidden, and she had changed the creature somehow, whether it was greater or lesser than before she could not tell.
Blood seeped around the wound, and the demon’s breath strained as it hissed from the punctured organ. Jonah nocked another arrow and drew his bow, but along with the shadows, the sense of evil also seemed to lift, and Deborah took a tentative step towards the wounded creature. She almost stopped when the red eyes flicked open, but their expression of helpless despair gave her the courage to move closer.
The Dark Citadel (The Green Woman) Page 15
