The Dark Citadel (The Green Woman)

by Jane Dougherty

  “We did it!”

  Jonah saw too, but he had eyes only for Deborah. He put his arms around her and drew her to him. “We did it,” he murmured and kissed her lightly on the lips, as if afraid she would break.

  Her face aglow with happiness, Deborah pulled away from him. “Come on! We’re almost there.”

  The pups, wagging their tails, trotted towards the bridge, bouncing up and down as they leapt deep pools, scrambling over one another across narrow dry places. Jonah followed behind wrapped in his own thoughts. Princess was no longer a damsel in distress. She was the Queen’s daughter and a bridge builder! He wondered what other things she could see, things neither of them understood. What if she didn’t just remember things that were useful, or good? What if…?

  Deborah jolted him out of his reverie, turning to him with the fierce light of pride in her eyes. “Look,” she pointed excitedly, “the traces of a road—and it runs up to the bridge.”

  They hurried now, as fast as the treacherous terrain would let them. The mud gave beneath their feet with an evil sucking sound, and bubbles rising up from its disturbed depths broke to release the stench of rottenness. The old road gave them a better foothold, and soon the first of the pups was standing on the parapet of the bridge.

  Jonah and Deborah ran the last hundred yards and stopped, panting, before the great stone road that was to carry them across the river. They stared in reverent awe at the pillars that marked the beginning of the bridge. Not columns, but stone trees. One at either side, they rose smooth and straight, their stone branches, delicately intertwined, met to form an archway. Stone birds perched among the leaves, and the most perfect stone apples hung from the branches.

  “It’s a sign, Princess,” Jonah whispered, brushing a stone apple with hesitant fingers. “It can only mean the Garden.”

  Deborah took his hand. The hard, rough touch of his skin comforted her, and she realised she wanted very much to be comforted. She had not made the bridge, but she had brought it back. Many more things would be brought back, and the world would be different. It was the uncertainty of this new world that frightened her.

  She thought of the carnage on the riverbank, the rocket launchers, and the piles of shrivelled bodies in the bunker. Was that part of her work too? Would she be required to make all that horror live again? Gingerly, on the tips of her toes, she stepped onto the smooth paved surface of the road and gave Jonah’s hand a slight squeeze. With Jonah by her side, she could face whatever lay ahead.

  “It’s all right. I think we can cross.”

  Hand in hand they walked across the river, listening to the sound of water curling swiftly around the great stone piers of the bridge. A vine motif followed them along the parapet, stone grapes grew in profusion, and a thousand carved birds peeped at them through the broad leaves. The western sky was still dark when they reached the far side, but they could feel the change. The darkness was different, not the thick, soupy darkness of Providence, but soft and clear, and full of a silvery glimmer. They could make out that the river flowed through a great grassy plain and that the plain ended in the smudgy darkness of woods.

  There was no road where the bridge ended, but they did not need a road to point the way. Gaily the pups set off at a run for the low woods. Already the earth was firm beneath their feet, and Deborah looked about her in wonder at the long grasses crowded with flowers, the first she had ever seen. She brushed their delicate heads with her fingertips as they passed, releasing a faint perfume. First, strong bushes appeared, then single trees, then groves, their pale bark gleaming even in the dark. The land was rising perceptibly as they encountered the first real woods.

  Deborah and Jonah turned and looked back the way they had come. The morning was on the eastern rim of the sky, and despite the lingering dust and fumes of the last war, there could be no mistaking the dawn. As the light increased, the land filled with the tenderest of colours—pale green splashed with white and yellow of the river plain, soft browns and greys among the trees, and the sky glowed with pink and mauve and grey veils.

  The river remained obstinately dark and murky, and beyond lay the desert they had just crossed. It stretched, the indeterminate colour of corruption, as far as the southern horizon where the sky and sand met in a thick bank of brown fog that tainted a third of the sky. Providence lay out of sight, deep in the fog.

  Deborah sighed. “Let’s stay here to rest a while. We surely don’t have to hide all day now we’ve crossed the river. Those things last night, they don’t come out in daylight, do they? Anyway, the Garden’s just the other side of the mountains—they wouldn’t dare touch us now.”

  Jonah looked doubtful. They were too exposed for his liking. He was thinking of what might cross the bridge from the desert, things that were not afraid of the light. And there was something else too, some vague fear that eluded his grasp but destroyed his pleasure in crossing the river and reaching the forest.

  “I don’t think the kelpies and the worms are frightened of a bit of daylight. We ought to get a little further from the river if we can. When the demon king’s spies see the bridge—”

  “Oh, Holy Mother! Can’t you stop playing commandos for five minutes?” Deborah interrupted, tiredness making her peevish. “I’m worn out and hungry, and I’m not moving another step until I’ve had a rest.” She sat down where she was and tucked her legs beneath her.

  Jonah looked about him anxiously. “Just a bit further, Princess,” he pleaded. “Just into that little thicket. Then you can sleep. We’ll catch something to eat too, I promise.”

  Grudgingly Deborah got to her feet. She really was tired, mortally tired. She stared at her feet as she trudged up the hillside, tripping occasionally on the tussocky grass. When Jonah was satisfied they were reasonably safe, she let herself drop and gave a low moan as she curled up with one of the pups for a pillow.

  Jonah watched as Deborah drifted into an exhausted sleep. Anxiously he peered into the unfamiliar woodland, unsure what he expected to find, but troubled by the way some of the trees seemed to huddle together in conspiratorial clumps, leaning inwards to form impenetrable thickets. Others crouched over the path with their branches swaying in an unfelt breeze, sweeping the ground like dangling limbs. In the growing morning light, the shadows should have been dispersing, but the trees gathered shadows about them, and the darkness clustered strangely as though the shadows were not cast, but existed independently. Jonah peered hard but their depths were black as pitch, and when he looked away, for an instant, at the edge of his line of vision, he was convinced he saw them move.

  He frowned but there was nothing for it, they had to eat. Leaving most of the pups to guard the camp, Jonah set off, ill at ease, through the unsettling woodland to see what game he could find.

  Chapter 20

  Zachariah clung to the thick skin at the nape of the wolfman’s neck as they raced headlong, following the mudflats to the place where he had been startled by the river monster. The wolfmen skimmed the reed beds, silent as ghosts. Suddenly the pack stopped, listening. A shriek rent the air, followed by the clamour of hounds on a scent approaching the river. The wolfmen jabbered excitedly, and two individuals leapt in the direction of the questing beasts, the instinct to join in the hunt crying out in their blood. More shrieks followed like the cry of gigantic carnivorous birds coming from further still up river, and the furious neighing of wild horses.

  The wolfman leader snarled and bounded after the two deserters, rounding on them with bared fangs. The insubordinates slunk back to join the pack, bearing teeth marks that bubbled red and bloody on neck and shoulders. Then in the quivering, tense silence that followed, a wolfman, rough black against the oily blackness of the river, threw up his muzzle in a howl of triumph. Still calling, the creature lurched forward running grotesquely, swinging long arms, his body straining forward and tongue tasting the air for Zachariah’s scent.

  The leader raised his muzzle and nosed the air. His eyes glittered and jaws gnashed as he echoe
d the triumphant call and leapt away. The rest of the pack took up the cry and bounded like a single animal in the tracks of the leader.

  Now they all had the scent and they ran, open-jawed, jibbering and gasping with what sounded like demented laughter. The path was smooth now across the desert sand and loose rock. Soon they reached the place where Zachariah had rested at the end of the previous night’s march. At this rate it would not take them many days to reach the cavern that led to Underworld, even supposing they rested during some of the hours of daylight. The sound of snickering and teeth snapping increased; thick foam formed in the corner of the beasts’ jaws and flew behind in their wake like streamers.

  A flat rock loomed before them, and the pack swerved to pass it on the left. The leader was almost beyond it when he stopped in his tracks and lifted his head again, sniffing suspiciously. He cast about, first left then right and, with a snarl of rage, sprung high in the air, twisting and struggling with something sticking from his chest. He fell and lay twitching while the rest of the pack scattered to encircle the rock.

  This time Zachariah clearly heard the whistle of the arrows as three more of the wolfmen caught at throat and chest, and his heart leapt. Enemies of the wolfmen had to be friends! But while the others, jabbering in the frenzy of battle, swerved off course to attack the rock, looking for the archers, Zachariah’s wolfman kept after the scent. Some terror, deeper than nature, forced him onward despite the clamouring of his instinct to join in the bloodletting. Struggling against the conflicting urges, the creature flew across the sand and leapt into the bed of the dry watercourse Zachariah had followed.

  Zachariah looked over his shoulder and realised his mount was running alone. Seizing the unexpected chance, he brought a fist down hard on the wolfman’s head, hoping to slow the creature down a little as he prepared to throw himself off its back. His hand hurt, but the thick skull of the wolfman absorbed the shock, and no nerve twitched with pain. Instead the creature reared onto its hind legs and pressed hand-like forepaws into Zachariah’s back, pinning him down, his face crushed into the stinking fur of the wolfman’s neck.

  The wolf muzzle strained, sniffing. Its tongue whipped left and right, tasting the air and scattering foam and spittle. The creature plunged, neck outstretched, and stumbling as it made its ungainly way from boulder to boulder in his descent. A last boulder straddled the channel, and the beast reared almost upright to leap it.

  A shadow moved, the air vibrated, and the wolfman shuddered along his entire frame as an arrow thunked into his unprotected throat and disappeared up to the white feathers of the fletching. He hit the boulder hard, and a flood of blood and dirty spittle gushed from his mouth and the hole in his neck. Released from the creature’s grasp, Zachariah lurched sideways.

  “Jump, Zachariah,” a high ringing voice ordered. “Jump clear of the blood!”

  Zachariah reacted, his numbed senses returned, and trampling the wolfman’s convulsing flanks, he leapt to the ground while gouts of black blood and matter continued to spurt from the twisted muzzle.

  “Over here!”

  The speaker stepped out from the shadow of the boulder and stretched out a hand. Zachariah clasped it with relief and gratitude as he recognised Maeve.

  “Come on,” she said. “We have to get back quickly. Terrible things are happening in Providence.”

  “Maeve,” Zachariah gasped, his voice hoarse with emotion. “How did you get here?”

  “The Centaurs brought me. I’ll explain later. This is no place to chat.”

  Maeve winced at the long, bloody wound that ran from Zachariah’s throat to his stomach and the wild expression in his eyes. Gently she steered him between the boulders of the dry watercourse, then moved quickly in front, running silently, bent close to the ground. Zachariah followed, his breathing difficult at first, his heart hammering. But gradually excitement took over from fear, and his nerve-endings tingled with the prospect of danger. The sound of half-human screams of pain and the booming voices of the archers grew fainter as they turned a bend in the canyon, and Maeve scrambled up the bank.

  “There it is.” She pointed to a strange-shaped rock, split right down the middle. “The Cleft Rock—that’s where we are to wait for the Centaurs.”

  Zachariah followed trustingly, relieved beyond words to let a girl take charge.

  Chapter 21

  From the four corners of the island a host was assembling. The broad, green plain was bright with fluttering cloaks and shining weapons. Tall hounds loped between the prancing horses, their noses lifted to the wind from the sea. Children watched from the fort and shouted in admiration at the bronze chariots and the fine horses. They cheered the warriors and the sons and daughters of their many kings.

  In the centre of the mêlée, the High King and his Queen rallied their armies. Oscar with his red-gold hair was at the Queen’s right hand, his ears straining above the din. Suddenly he heard a call, but not the call he had been listening for—a scream, a war cry from far away. He froze, his eyes on the Queen. She had heard it too.

  “The Morrigu!” She cursed. “Time presses. The Pattern is shifting. We must hurry if we are to play our part.”

  Oscar clutched the green cloakpin at his shoulder. His expression was grave, but his eyes were filled with an eager warlight as he threw his arm in a broad gesture that took in the thronged field. “The host is ready, Aunt. All we await is the word.”

  The Queen urged her horse through the crush to the High King.

  “It is time.”

  Ailill saw the gravity in her eyes and raised his spear arm for silence. Oscar glanced at Medh and the furrow eased from her brow. Her eyes glittered with excitement and Oscar’s heart leapt. It was time!

  Chapter 22

  Deborah woke to the smell of cooking. Real cooking, not soya soup or boiled battery fowl. She sat up. Jonah was crouched over a small fire, turning a small bird on a spit. The pups were eating something else outside the thicket—she could hear the low growls they made as they wrestled with the tough bits, and the sound of cracking bones.

  “I hope you don’t mind partridge.” Jonah grinned. “I couldn’t find any lizards.”

  “Shame. I was getting quite a taste for soggy bandages.”

  Jonah turned the spit a fraction and went back to whittling more arrows. He had collected a bundle of sticks, thin and perfectly straight, to which he was giving sharp points. By his feet lay a heap of tail and wing feathers from the furtive brown desert bird presently roasting over the fire.

  Deborah watched, fiddling with a corner of her shawl. “Sorry,” she said.

  Jonah looked up in surprise. “Sorry for what?”

  “For being rude earlier. I was tired. Not that that’s an excuse. I didn’t even help you prepare the food.”

  Jonah shrugged. “Don’t worry about it. Next time we need a bridge building you can see to it.”

  They grinned at one another. Jonah prodded at the earthy brown lumps he was roasting at the edge of the fire. “Not quite done.” He looked up and pointed with his knife back over his shoulder. “See the line of trees? There’s a stream over there. It’s broad with deep pools. If you’d like to wash…while you’re waiting? I did, it’s quite safe.” Jonah raised an eyebrow, not certain his suggestion would be taken the right way.

  Deborah just grinned. “I know, I stink. I’d like to wash my clothes too.” She wrinkled her nose. “But I don’t have any clean ones.”

  “You could always wrap yourself in your shawl, just while they’re drying.” Jonah took a small grey rock from his bag and handed it to her. “You can use this to scrub with. It’s what the desert wanderers use. When they have the water to go with it, of course.” Their fingers touched and they both blushed. Deborah nodded her thanks and made her way to the line of trees that ran along the riverbank.

  She had never seen a stream before, nor a pool, nor the smooth rocks and pebbles that gleam beneath running water. The water was cold, and she shivered in the warm air. She mov
ed in a dream of unknown sensations. Naked, beneath a clearing sky, in a river pool, on the edge of a forest, she felt vulnerable, ignorant, and alive. Everything touched her, every sense responded. Her skin tingled at the contact with the cold water, she heard every tiny chink of the pebbles beneath her toes, the trickling of running water, smelled the tangy smell of damp leaf mould, was aware of leaves, tree bark, and insects skimming the skin of the still water by the bank.

  Her skin was white where it was not black with dirt. She dipped her head beneath the water, and her scalp felt as if it was held in the grip of an icy hand, taking her breath away. The chill felt clean. Jonah’s washing stone was as light as the pieces of tree branch floating lazily in the sluggish current. It bobbed to the surface of the water when she let go of it, streamers of tiny bubbles escaping from within. Everything was to be marvelled at, so many tiny brush strokes in the Pattern.

  She shivered. Leaves fluttered in the breeze. Water dripped from her elbows and chin and the thick, dark mass of hair hanging down her back. She felt Jonah’s eyes burning into her spine.

  Deborah spread her wet clothes on a bush full of sweet-smelling yellow flowers and scuttled back to the campsite and the fire. She hugged the shawl tight about her, shivering with cold and with embarrassment. Jonah very pointedly busied himself with feeding the fire. He was obviously trying not to stare, too aware the shawl was all Deborah was wearing. She pretended to be supremely concentrated on getting warm. But they were both extremely hungry, and soon the thought of warm food drove out all the other half-formed thoughts.

  Jonah turned the brown, smoking lumps in the glowing wood ash and prodded them again. His knife went easily through the crisp skin and into the soft flesh, and a plume of steam spat out with a hiss.