The Dark Citadel (The Green Woman)

by Jane Dougherty

  “I will teach you how to hunt on our journey.”

  Deborah glanced at the woman’s withered arm and looked dubious.

  “The bow is for cowards,” Eve said, and held up a long blade that flashed in the light. “The knife is for those who know how to use stealth, and for those with steady nerves and a steady hand.”

  Without warning, she spun on her heels, and before Deborah realised what was happening, the knife had flown from her hand into the throat of a pup as it leapt snarling with hatred in its eyes. Deborah put her hands to her mouth as a cry of horror escaped. She tried to move, she really did, but though her eyes followed the last convulsions of the small body, her feet remained rooted to the spot, her hands to her face, wet with tears.

  The other pups crept forward, growling and yapping in their puppyish voices, lips curled back savagely and fur bushed out in fury. They spread out in a circle around Deborah and Eve, held at bay by the ice splinters in the woman’s eyes.

  Snarling and snapping, the circle tightened, and the most enraged of the pups snatched at Eve’s skirt, ripping the deerskin until she kicked it in the side with such force that the ribs caved in. The pup cried piteously then choked on the blood that boiled up from the punctured lung and spilled out onto the green grass. Eve’s lips were also curled back, and her teeth were strong and gleaming white.

  * * * *

  The noise woke Jonah who cast about wildly, looking for Deborah and the pups. He leapt to his feet facing the direction of the clamour, but before he could launch himself into the fray, the black shape in the sky was upon him with a raucous croak.

  Jonah put his hands above his head to protect himself, but the giant crow’s claws fastened onto his arms, tearing into the flesh. His gasp of pain and shock was drowned by the wild yelping of the pups as they threw themselves furiously at the great bird. Ignoring the irritation, the crow jabbed her beak dagger-like into the flesh of Jonah’s neck. He screamed as the beak jabbed again at the other side of his head, ripping through his ear, but the pain cleared the sleep from his wits.

  “Princess!”

  Jonah’s warning broke against the barrier of the spell, unable to penetrate Deborah’s thoughts. Eve’s frozen gaze still held her fast; her hands hung limply at her side, the bow, forgotten, over her shoulder. Her legs could not move.

  “Princess!” Jonah screamed again, his eyes darting, looking for but not finding her. “Run! Run for the trees!”

  Jonah, she whispered, in a voice no louder than the beating of her heart.

  The Morrigu turned her head sharply, and a sharp black eye scanned the edge of the clearing. The eye looked at Deborah where she stood motionless on the edge of the clearing, but slid across rippling veils of illusion and saw only the glimmer of something that might or might not have been.

  “The girl? Come out! There is nowhere in this world you can hide from me.” The crow’s voice rasped like the creaking hinges of the gates of Hell. She turned her head and peered with the other eye. “Listen, girl, for you are there. I feel the heat of your blood. Listen and do not move. Your illusion will not work long against me.”

  The ragged black wings opened as wide as the breadth of the river, and the claws released Jonah’s arm. The crow turned her head from side to side, searching for movement. Jonah too looked, but Deborah was nowhere in sight.

  “Princess!”

  The crow hopped into the air and panic seized him.

  “Run! Deborah, please, run!” he yelled and with blood pouring down his face and neck gripped the Morrigu’s legs. The pups yelped and whined, as if begging him to let go.

  Something in the way he spoke her name, calling her Deborah, as if for the last time, woke her out of her trance. Eve’s grip on her thoughts shattered, and the fumes of enchantment cleared from her brain.

  “No, Jonah! Let go!”

  As the enchantment faded, Jonah saw her and redoubled his efforts to pull down the great bird. The crow flapped and turned her head in the direction of the voice.

  Deborah fumbled for her bow. This time she really was going to show Jonah she could help. She was going to fight for him as he had fought so many demons to save her. This time Deborah was going to save Jonah, because she loved him with all her heart, and nothing could prevail against her love.

  But before she could reach for an arrow, fingers, strong as a steel trap locked round her arm. She turned furiously, struggling to free herself, but the angry words died in her throat, and what escaped was a gasp of fear. Instead of Eve’s disfigured face, Deborah found herself gazing into the cold eyes of a pale-haired warrior.

  “Run, Deborah!” Jonah called for the last time, the laughter in his eyes turned forever to love and sadness and regret as he strained to capture a last image of his princess before the battle crow hammered her beak through his skull.

  Chapter 26

  Sobbing with grief and horror, Deborah struggled with the blond, bare-chested warrior, but she might as well have been wrestling with a tree. “Let me go or I’ll kill you,” she shrieked. “Let me go, he’s hurt!”

  She was too shocked to even wonder who the warrior was or where he came from. Her eyes were full of Jonah. “Let me go!”

  “Be still,” the man snarled. “Can’t you see it’s too late? Your little friend is dead.”

  The Morrigu flapped her wings to shake off the weight of Jonah’s body, but his shirt was caught on her claws. The pups, mad now with sorrow, surged in a body towards the black bird, leaping and twisting as high as their strength allowed. Each fell back as the great black wings lifted the crow out of reach. But only just.

  The battle crow cocked her head first one way, then the other, unable to resist the pleasure of carnage. The razor beak opened wide and snapped a leaping pup in half.

  “No!” Deborah screamed. “Not Silver!”

  The pack responded in a frenzy of foaming jaws and the desolate, furious snarling of loss and hatred.

  The Morrigu flapped over their heads, stabbing at the maddened pups while the eerie sound of low growling and snarling filled the encircling woods, and the green shadows beneath the trees flickered with the blinking of yellow eyes. The shadows took form and leapt from cover, skimming the ground, a blur of soft grey fur and white fangs. Leaping over the pups, the great grey wolves launched themselves high in the air from their powerful haunches, iron jaws clamping fast on the wings and body of the battle crow.

  The fabric of Jonah’s shirt ripped, and his body fell into the mêlée. The Morrigu cried, her beak swinging from side to side, her steel-like claws slashing about her in a frenzy of blood and fur. She was loath to leave the carnage, but the wolves were too many. She had been caught too low to the ground, and they hung on her wing feathers to prevent her gaining height. Hampered by the dead weight of the wolves, she could no longer stab and tear. Murder reluctantly gave way to retreat in the blood red convolutions of her mind.

  With a croak of disgust and a last thrash of her wings to dislodge the clinging jaws, she lifted her ragged body over the trees and away to another battlefield. Her hunger for blood and death still raged—the girl, the search, Abaddon himself could all wait a while until it was sated.

  * * * *

  The pups were silent, licking their wounds or simply sitting, blinking, their sides heaving. The wolves crouched, watching over the corpses, watching Deborah. The warrior’s grip slackened, and Deborah shook herself free. She ran the first steps towards Jonah’s body, then stopped, unwilling to bring to an end the last seconds of hope.

  “Jonah,” she whispered in a tiny voice, and reached out to touch his mutilated face. Her tears fell into his blood-soaked hair, and, with trembling fingers, she combed the thick locks to hide the gaping wound. His skin was warm.

  “Jonah?” She stroked his cheek, and his head settled in the grass. The slight movement parted his lips.

  “Jonah!” Her heart gave a lurch, with a joy so painful she sobbed aloud. But the parted lips were silent, not the faintest hint of war
m breath escaped. Hope died, and she laid her head on his still chest and sobbed.

  She thought of nothing: her mind was dead. She never wanted to open her eyes again, just wanted oblivion, to sleep, never to wake. But she couldn’t, not here, alone in a strange place with an unknown strongman at her back and the hostile eyes of a wolf pack fixed upon her. She screamed aloud, her eyes full of swimming, stinging tears, “Jonah, come back! Don’t leave me!”

  She stroked his face. “You looked so peaceful when you were sleeping,” she whispered, as if he could hear, not wanting the stranger to catch the words of tenderness. “It was the first time I’d seen you sleeping. The first time we’d been so close, the first time…” She swallowed hard to get rid of the knot in her throat. “Why couldn’t I just have stayed by your side, watching you sleeping, until you woke?”

  More tears came, and her shoulders shook with sobbing. The pups did not move. They did not growl, but their eyes narrowed to yellow slits and glittered with hostility. Deborah hid her face in her hands, unable to bear the unmistakable look of reproach in the pups’ eyes. The one they all loved unreservedly had been taken from them.

  A pup whimpered in pain and licked a ragged tear in its flank. The whimpering continued, spreading to the other pups, and for the first time Deborah saw them for what they were—babies, orphaned for a second time, and she was to blame.

  Her sides shook in a spasm of silent sobbing, the tears squeezing out of tight closed eyes and running down her cheeks. She clung to Jonah’s hands, and laid her head on his chest over his heart. The sobbing took over, became her grief, supplanting all her thoughts, wringing her dry. She ceased to think at all. Gradually, Jonah’s hands grew cold, his face beneath the tan pale and still.

  When the tears had drained all her strength and all she wanted to do was sleep, Deborah remembered Eve. She looked around, a murderous light in her eyes, but she could see only Eve’s warrior friend. He was sitting on a fallen tree trunk, watching her with an amused expression on his face. Deborah’s grief found a target and began to transform into fury.

  “Where did she go, that woman, that liar?”

  Ignoring the anger in Deborah’s voice, the man gave an extravagant bow, his plaits sweeping the ground. “But she is still here! Loki, shape-shifter, Prince of Lies and Arch-deceiver, at your service.”

  “She…You killed Jonah! You said he called up the crow!”

  “So, I exaggerated.” Loki laughed.

  “You crept inside my head, twisting my thoughts. You tried to make me believe Jonah was a traitor, that my mother…that I…that he wasn’t worthy—”

  “Oh, come on! I didn’t have to try very hard.”

  Deborah shook her head, her eyes filling with tears. “I never believed, not really. But I couldn’t move. You paralysed my will, you black devil! Oh, Jonah, why did you have to be so brave?”

  Laying her head down again on Jonah’s lifeless chest, Deborah wrapped her arms around him and found she still had tears to weep.

  The pups were silent, but the wolves raised their muzzles to the sky and howled. The eerie, unearthly sound rolled around the hollow, a sound of utter desolation and grief. It rolled through the sinuous passages of Deborah’s ear and found an empty chamber in her head. The lament of the wolves would never leave her now. Jonah’s sacrifice had become a part of her. When it stopped, the silence flooded back, deeper and emptier than it had ever been before.

  Without a sound the wolves turned and melted back into the woods of the lower slopes. The pups rose, still whimpering.

  “Wait!” Deborah sprang to her feet. “Don’t go! Don’t you leave me too,” she called after them. But with ears and tails drooping in misery, and many a backward look, the pups left the body of their old companion and followed their cousins.

  Deborah wiped her eyes and stared at the empty shell that had been Jonah. The new, vibrant emotions that had made her believe she could take on a hundred demon kings and beat them to a pulp were dry now and bitter and dead. Like dust and ashes they blew away, leaving her with a future as arid and harsh as the desert. She was empty, dried up like a dead thorn bush. Nothing mattered any more—the empty years ahead, the coming weeks and days, even the next minute may just as well never happen. Without Jonah to share the future with her, Deborah didn’t want it.

  She heard footsteps approaching and spun round.

  “Haven’t you gone yet?” she asked, her voice full of loathing. “You’ve got what you wanted. Jonah’s dead. Now just leave me alone.”

  “On the contrary, your brave little friend got himself killed for nothing. Nobody asked him to throw himself at the Morrigu. Do you think I would have let her have you? Why do you think she looked straight at you, yet couldn’t see you?”

  Deborah felt icy cold all over. “What do you mean?”

  Loki laughed. “But surely, my dear, it’s obvious. I hid my prize from the feathered fiend because it was you she wanted, not some root-grubbing little desert jackal.”

  Deborah backed away. “Get away from me, you murderer. I’m not your prize, and I’m not going anywhere with you.”

  Loki burst out laughing. “You don’t understand anything, do you? My former demonic master suspected you might have escaped from the city, so he sent us, your humble servant and the Morrigu, to search for you. But I found you first, and I have had the pleasure of depriving the great prince Abaddon of his prey.”

  “I said, get away from me.” Deborah’s voice was low and menacing as she slipped the bow from her shoulder and reached for an arrow.

  “But I haven’t finished with you yet. Abaddon wants you, the Serpent Witch wants you, but I have you. No, I don’t think I will let you go just yet.” As he spoke, Loki was unwinding from around his waist a coil of fine, silken rope.

  Deborah nocked the arrow with inexpert fingers. “You gave Jonah to that black bird, and I will kill you for that.”

  Loki laughed with genuine amusement. “How many deaths has it taken to awaken your spirit, warrior maiden?”

  The taunt was too much for Deborah. The truth of it and the remorse she felt, the self-loathing and the sorrow broke something inside her. The anger boiled over, and she tossed aside the bow, reaching for a more powerful weapon. Glaring fixedly at Loki, she took a step towards him.

  The laughter left his face as he saw something in the depths of her eyes. “No!”

  Deborah almost grinned at the fear in his face.

  “No!”

  Her lips curled back in a snarl, and she screamed her hatred. The power inside her guts uncoiled like a released spring, but the warrior was no longer there. Dry leaves scattered, and the lithe red shape of a fox shot into the undergrowth. Loki was escaping. Deborah let out her hatred and her fury in another scream, and the clump of bushes exploded in a blaze of white flame. She staggered forward, shielding her eyes but there was nothing to be seen in the green wood smoke and the dying fire.

  For a while she raged, let fury blind her. Then the pain rushed back like a black wave. Jonah was dead. With a sob she let her arms drop limply to her side, all thought of murder forgotten. She turned back to the place where his body lay. There was one last thing she could do for him, and it would take all of her love to do it.

  She bent over the body and hooked her hands under the armpits.

  “I’m sorry, Jonah,” she whispered. “I can’t get you there any other way. It’s not far.” She dragged him towards the hollow tree, her tears falling freely, and as gently as possible settled him inside the dead trunk. One by one she gathered up the stiffening bodies of the pups and laid them at his side. She couldn’t remember all their names, only Silver, the smallest and gentlest of all and Jonah’s favourite. She stroked the matted fur of each one, and told them how brave and loyal they had been. It was an hour before she could bring herself to leave. After one last caress to say goodbye to the pups, she bent and kissed Jonah’s cold lips.

  “Goodbye, love,” she murmured. “I’m sorry. I should have tried harder. R
emember me, wherever you are.”

  She wiped her eyes and gazed at Jonah’s face, calm and serene in death, the ugly wound half-hidden in his thick hair. His eyes were closed, but she didn’t need to look into them to let him free. She would let him go, as she had let Samariel go. It was the last thing.

  The power uncoiled again, but gently this time, like a sleek, soft-furred animal, supple as a big cat. Her thoughts were full of Jonah—fury, vengeance, hatred were swept aside in an upwelling of love and sorrow. Cat-like, her power stretched and rubbed its head against her cheek.

  “Goodbye, Jonah.”

  The big cat reached out a velvet paw and stroked the dead tree with white flame.

  “Goodbye.”

  The flames wrapped around the tree in a close embrace, lapping about Jonah’s face. A plume of white smoke rose from the parted lips, and Deborah knew it was done.

  The world was nothing but blackest night, run through with a river of fire and the sound of dry wood exploding in the heat. When the thundering began, Deborah took no notice. It was only right the sky should rage in protest at what had happened in the forest. But the thunder grew louder, dragging her back to the world that was not being consumed in flame. The sound resolved itself into the pounding of horses’ hooves, how many horses Deborah couldn’t tell.

  The flames whispered a name. Sleipnir. Clenching her fists she turned in the direction of the noise, not caring who or what Sleipnir was, prepared to vent her rage on whatever appeared. A second later she gave a gasp of astonishment as a huge eight-legged horse, grey as twilight, galloped into the clearing and stopped, snorting and pawing the earth with his eight hooves.

  Deborah held her breath as Sleipnir neighed and bent his head to the ground. She took a hesitant step forward, and the horse neighed in encouragement. She felt no fear, cared nothing at all for what might happen next. If the creature wanted to pound her into dust, she wouldn’t move a muscle to stop it. She took another step towards the arched neck, and Sleipnir swung his head towards her. Before she could react at all, she found herself on the horse’s back, grabbing wildly at the thick mane as he leapt forward into the depths of the northern forest.