The Dark Citadel (The Green Woman)

by Jane Dougherty

  “What are you doing?” Jonah grabbed her arm in fright. “Don’t touch it! Can’t you see it’s not dead yet?”

  “Samariel.” The creature’s voice was hoarse and low. “Not it.” The words came out with difficulty, using up precious strength, and blood frothed at the corner of the blackened lips.

  Deborah felt the hatred and the anger of the creature pour out and blow away in the desert wind. The evil that gave the creature its strength had scattered like black rags, and the demon did nothing to hold it back, letting its life force ebb with the dissipation of the black cloud. Deborah’s fear ebbed away too, and she knelt down in the sand. She heard the quick, anxious intake of breath as Jonah reached out to grab her shoulder, but she took no notice. Her gaze was deep in the glowing eyes of the demon who called himself Samariel.

  “There is nothing to fear,” he hissed, glaring at Jonah. “She gave me the strength to break my bonds, and I have let him go, the black fiend. But he has taken my life with him. I am worthless, empty. Unless…” The demon reached out a hand to Deborah. “You broke my chains, now give me back what I was! You can. The aura surrounds you. Please,” the dying voice implored.

  Deborah was filled with pity at the supplication in the fallen angel’s ravaged face.

  “Please!”

  She reached out a hand to the angel’s forehead.

  “No! Princess, don’t touch it, you don’t know…”

  His voice died as Deborah laid the tips of her still trembling fingers between the heavy brows. “Samariel? What were you?”

  The brow creased with pain, the burn scars crept and contracted like thick scaly worms.

  “We…I was a creature of the upper air. I fell, plunged into the eternal flames, following a mad, rotten dream. I want…to go back, not into the dark fire. Send me back to the light. You can.”

  Deborah smoothed the wrinkles with her fingers, and the carbonised flesh changed, glowing as if with an inner light. The night shadows were no longer about them, and Deborah had to shade her eyes from the brilliance that grew into a climbing path, spiralling upwards until it was lost in a searing ball of light. Beneath her soothing fingers the muscles of the ruined face relaxed into a radiant smile.

  With a tremendous effort, the angel turned his eyes to Deborah, eyes in which the red fire had died leaving a calm blue-green light. With his last strength he breathed, “Samariel walks the path of light once again.” The head sank, and the light in the sea-coloured eyes dimmed.

  Two tears dropped onto the blackened cheeks before Deborah turned away and wiped her eyes. “What did I do?” she whispered to the silent Jonah.

  “You gave him back his past,” he said.

  Chapter 11

  The night ended and Jonah found them a place to hide from the light. He was still shocked at what he had seen Deborah do, shocked and excited. He remembered the voice that had drawn him back to the citadel to wait, the green magic that had protected him from the desert demons. He had known as soon as he saw her, standing like a dummy in the path of the mutant dog, that this was the girl he had been waiting for.

  It had seemed simple at first. The voice of the green magic, the comforting mother-voice, had sent him to protect someone, someone important. He had accepted the role willingly. That was what his years of wandering in the wasteland had prepared him for. But the girl, the dummy from Providence, was more than he had imagined. Much more. He remembered the touch of her hand. It never left him. She had bound him to her, and all he wanted was for the touch to stay with him, to grow deeper and stronger. It became his future, his life. Nothing else mattered.

  He watched her now, as she sat, thinking about what she had done. He could read the expression in her face. It was as clear as river water. She was as shocked as he was, but she was exhilarated and proud too. He wondered if she felt the touch of his hand still, or if it had faded with the bolt of power that broke the demon’s chains.

  Deborah sat with her arms wrapped around her knees, her face aglow. She tingled all over with her awakening powers, and the increasing conviction that she would be able to share her mother’s work. Whatever it was. On an impulse she reached out and took Jonah’s hand.

  “Tell me about her,” she asked, suddenly realising how little she knew of her own mother. “Tell me what exactly having the Memory means. My father said the Memory had passed to me too, and that I was in danger in Providence. He also said I could help my mother. But he didn’t explain what the danger was, or how I could help. The Ignorants, sorry, the Dananns, know more about the Memory than I do.”

  Jonah held the hand, letting its warmth course through him, and he knew Deborah too felt the link that bound them together. He smiled wryly. “The Ignorants are the most inappropriately named creatures I ever came across.”

  Deborah laughed, a frank, open laugh. As Jonah stared down at their hands, Deborah pulled hers away. He still felt a tingling of the skin where their fingers had touched.

  “The Queen is using the Memory of the world to rebuild it as it ought to have been,” he said, with a slight tremor of emotion in his voice, “and she is doing it alone. Sometimes she must be afraid. Perhaps she needs you to shoulder some of the burden.”

  Deborah’s thoughts were focused on her mother and their joint powers. She did not notice how Jonah refused to meet her gaze and stared at his hands as if he yearned to take something in them. She could not see the longing in his eyes.

  But Jonah was first and foremost her protector and guide, and an unpleasant thought had struck him. He forced his turbulent emotions to be still. “Princess?” His expression was pensive. “Your mother escaped from Providence, and Abaddon is doing everything in his power to find her.”

  “I know that,” Deborah interrupted impatiently.

  “Well then? You escaped too, didn’t you? And he must know by now. He has spies everywhere. Like Samariel.”

  Deborah understood the concern in Jonah’s face, and her eyes widened. She thought of the winged demons who haunted the desert nights and the clammy, whispering shadows that lurked in every unlit corner of Providence. Fear of those shadows that filled the streets after dark and seeped under doors and up unlit stairwells, came back with a violence that made her start physically. But she forced the fear back and locked it away. That was behind her now. Now she knew where she was going.

  “Then the sooner I find Mother the better. And you promise you’ll come with me?” There was a determination in the question that made it more like a statement.

  “We’ll take you to the river. Beyond you will find more friends than enemies.” Jonah hung his head in confusion. “I would go with you to the mountains, to the Queen herself, but the pups will never cross the river.”

  “Oh.” Deborah looked crestfallen.

  “Their parents are in the desert with the Iron Horde. The pups never stray far from their scent.”

  Deborah sighed. “Perhaps they’ll change their minds when we get there,” she said finally, confident of her powers of persuasion.

  “Perhaps,” Jonah said, and this time his eyes betrayed the longing in his heart. “But right now, it’s time to sleep.”

  The pups curled up into tight balls of soft fur with only their noses showing. Deborah snuggled against them, wrenching off her headscarf, and shaking the sand out of it. Her hair fell about her shoulders and lay lightly across her cheek. She fell immediately into a deep sleep.

  Jonah watched as the unseen sun rose in a sky hung with veils of thick cloud, transfixed by the beauty of that deep red hair. He had seen the same colour before, in the autumn leaves of the trees on the far bank of the Great River. Every autumn he and the pups would go to the river to watch the trees on the other side of the water as they changed from green to yellow, to gold and finally to red. Now he could see that the trees had been taking on the colour of Deborah’s hair.

  Gently, with slightly trembling fingers, he touched the fiery strands and moved them away from her cheek. Her eyelashes fluttered for a moment, s
he gave a sigh, and settled back into her dreams. Jonah held his breath. He had never seen anything so beautiful. Beautiful enough to die for.

  * * * *

  At nightfall, Jonah woke Deborah and presented her with something to eat. She looked suspiciously at the pale slivers on the flat stone.

  “Holy Mother, that looks like soggy bandages. What on earth is it?”

  “Lizard. Sorry it’s cold, but I daren’t make a fire. Too risky.”

  Deborah stared in disbelief. “Not only is it reptile filets,” she grimaced, “it’s raw reptile filets!”

  Jonah flicked his hair out of his eyes and raised his hands in a shrug. “Sorry. If I’d known you were such a gourmet I wouldn’t have let the pups have all the innards.”

  Deborah gingerly picked up a piece of the meat. “Is there any salt?”

  Jonah laughed and squeezed a thick-skinned fruit over the food. “The juice is okay, but the pips are like pebbles.”

  The sound of Jonah’s laughter echoed in Deborah’s head, stirring memories. In her loveless home within the grey confines of a loveless city, she had often cried herself to sleep. Sometimes her mother’s voice whispered to her and a soft, invisible hand wiped away her tears. Sometimes a gale of throaty laughter had made her smile in her loneliness. She had often wondered who offered her the comfort of his good humour. She had never thought the weeping child of her small-girl dreams could be the same as the boy who laughed as if the world was full of happiness. She looked into Jonah’s eyes and for a moment thought the brightness was clouded with sadness. He grinned back at her and the impression, the cloud, vanished.

  * * * *

  Dusty day followed the wearisome trudge of dusty night, and both Deborah and Jonah felt the strain. Despite their fatigue, they found it impossible to adapt to sleeping during the day and spent most of the daylight hours awake, starting at every shadow and rubbing their eyes sore, straining into the shifting desert sand clouds. It was difficult for Deborah to pick out any changes at all in the everlasting desert wilderness. But they left the ponds of poisonous slime behind after the first few days, and Jonah assured her, pointing out clustered plants around a damp hollow, that they were not far now from the Great River.

  As always, the pups trotted in front at a steady lope, their bushy tails held low. One night, in the darkest hour before dawn, they stopped, hackles raised. As Jonah and Deborah listened to the throbbing darkness, they heard a shriek, like the call of a giant bird. The call was answered, again and again.

  “What is it?” Deborah whispered.

  “Wyverns hunting.”

  “Wyverns?”

  “Some people, the desert wanderers, call them grave worms.”

  Jonah clicked his tongue to warn the pups and pulled Deborah beneath a clump of spiny bushes where they huddled together, not daring to breathe. The air turned icy cold, rushing over their faces with the beating of giant wings. The wind passed but they were aware of a presence hovering above them. Their flesh crept in revulsion, and an icy trickle of fear made its way down their backs. They could see nothing, but they could hear a reptilian hissing and the sound of sniffing. The steady flapping of broad wings sent waves of fetid air to rattle the bushes of their hiding place.

  Deborah felt sick with terror. This can’t be right, she thought in a panic; this can’t be where it ends.

  Jonah pulled Deborah down with him into the sand. “Close your eyes,” he hissed. “Whatever happens, don’t look up.”

  Suddenly, there was the swoosh of displaced air, and a piercing bird-shriek was followed by a cry that might have been the beginning of a bark and ended in a scream of agony. Jonah drew Deborah’s head into the shelter of his shoulder, grinding his clenched teeth. The cold air quivered, viscous and evil smelling, and the presence departed. They lay, clinging together until the darkness began to break up.

  * * * *

  “What is a wyvern?” Deborah’s voice trembled. “I mean, what does it look like?”

  “Ugly. A great winged serpent,” Jonah’s voice too was unsteady, “two-footed and venomous. It got one of the pups, the filthy vermin! They smell warm blood; they see body heat. Nothing escapes them.” He shook his head to clear the nascent tears and tried a feeble smile. “It’ll be light soon, we should find somewhere better to hide.”

  But he didn’t move, just carried on gazing at Deborah’s face. With her finger, she touched away the damp beneath his eyes then kissed the place where the tears had been. As they got slowly to their feet, Deborah slipped her hand shyly into his.

  Chapter 12

  Far away on the broad green plain, Oscar pulled up his mare and listened. Bán stamped her hooves and twitched her ears. Oscar patted her neck to soothe her. He too listened for the night sounds of foxes barking, nightjars whirring. He heard the wind whispering over the grass and the shriek as a stoat found its prey. Bán stamped again and shook her head.

  Oscar was wondering what was the trouble, when it hit him like the first buffeting gust of a storm wind. Not the Green Woman, another was calling, and this one called straight to his heart. Bán felt it too, and without waiting to be bid, flew like an arrow back to the rath.

  Chapter 13

  Stony desert flew beneath them as the demon carrying Zachariah turned away from the green riverbank. Rock and sand and deep fissures passed with a brown monotony until the grey light of dawn fell across the Yellow Rock, and Zachariah, already chilled to the bone, felt the marrow within turn to ice. The demon was tiring, letting its burden dip sickeningly close to the ground. Its companion rose up beneath them, and Zachariah felt his legs caught up and held in the same steely grasp as his arms. Quicker now they sped towards the Yellow Rock and, with a whistle of compressed air, shot into one of the many openings in the rock face.

  Zachariah was dumped on the ground while the two demons panted like winded horses, and a third scuttled deeper into the darkness to sound the alarm. A few moments later, two tall figures emerged from the shadows, and he shrank back in terror. If the creatures that had carried him from the Great River were simple soldiers, the beings that stood before him now were generals. To Zachariah they appeared godlike, and in Providence gods were cold and pitiless.

  Their bodies had none of the sinewy, animal-like appearance of the other demons; there was nothing scaly or deformed about them. They were tall and well boned, their sliding muscles powerful as a professional fighter’s, with gracefully folded feathered wings of a lustrous black that reflected all the colours Zachariah had ever imagined. Their faces were proud and noble, and at first sight supremely beautiful. But it was a ravaged beauty. Their brows were furrowed with deep lines, there was a depravity about the sensuous lips, and in their eyes glowed a fanatical light that expressed inflexible cruelty.

  “Follow me,” the first demon commanded in a low voice with a rasp-like edge. The second moved behind Zachariah and jabbed him in the back. He had no choice; he followed.

  Deeper and deeper into the rock they went, down endless stairs and through countless chambers that echoed hollow in the darkness but were filled with watchful eyes. Finally, when Zachariah reckoned they must be deep within the earth, the leading demon opened a massive door, revealing a room filled with dancing shadows and bathed in a cold red light. At the centre of the shadows was a hooded figure, not hidden by the shadows, but part of them, so massive Zachariah did not realise it had substance until it moved.

  The darkness unfolded, reaching around to envelop Zachariah. A wave of horror washed over him, blurring his sight and filling his ears with the gasping and panting of unspeakable tortures. This was the heart of evil, he was certain, and the creature before him was its creator. He struggled, damp with sweat, but the shadows held him fast. The hooded figure turned and looked down on him. Black-rimmed almond eyes blazed from a long, fox-like muzzle. The flews curled back, and pointed teeth gleamed dully like the teeth of a shark looming out of murky ocean depths. The savage face filled Zachariah’s vision, and his guts melted with fear.
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  “Well, little man,” the creature hissed, “and what brought you to the River of Death? Could it be you had an appointment on the other side?”

  “I’m sorry,” Zachariah stammered, his voice trembling. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  The creature snarled. “Do not waste my time, little man. Abaddon knows whom you seek. Who sent you? What is your message?”

  Zachariah panicked. “No one sent me, I was running away!”

  The demon’s eyes flared in anger, and though the mountain of darkness did not move, Zachariah was knocked to the ground as if a monstrous hand had struck him hard in the mouth. His head swam, and a rank smell filled his nose. He tasted blood on his lip.

  “One last time. Then we will use the old way; we will read the answer in your still palpitating tripes. What message were you to give the Serpent Witch?”

  Zachariah swallowed, his head ringing, trying to master his fear, trying to order his galloping thoughts, to find something to say that would not betray his friends. Out of the fuzz of his spinning vision, Ezekiel’s face smiled at him, the children bickered good-naturedly, Maeve turned and held him in the gaze of her deep blue eyes.

  Zachariah took a deep breath, and the trembling left his voice. “I ran away from the House of Correction. I hid in the Ignorant quarter, and they told me about the Garden. I wanted to find the Garden.”

  “You have not answered the question,” the voice growled, low and menacing, like a roll of thunder thrown back from the shadowy walls. “What was your message for the Witch?”

  Zachariah guessed the creature did not much care for this witch. “I had no message. I wanted to try and drive her out. The Ignorants said she was evil and prevented them returning to the Garden.”