The Dark Citadel (The Green Woman) (21 page)

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 echoed 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.

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!

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 moved 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.

“Done!” he proclaimed, splitting open one of the
lumps and tipping a little of the juices from the partridge over its white
flesh. “Let it cool a bit before you try it,” he warned, “or you’ll burn your
mouth.”

“Are you sure this is edible?” Deborah asked,
wriggling an arm from beneath her shawl and dropping the hot thing with a yelp
onto a fold of her shawl.

“The man who taught me how to forage called it
spud. It’s a sort of food that grows under the ground. You find them in odd
green places, especially along the river. Sometimes there are the remains of
houses, and plants with scented flowers and sharp thorns. The man I lived with
said there were more and more of these places. He said it was a sign the Green
Woman’s magic was working. I found these in an abandoned garden further up the
slope. The people before grew all sorts of food, in plots around their houses.
There were lots of these spud things. They must like the soil here.”

Deborah was impressed. “Who was it taught you all
this? I wouldn’t even have known gardens existed before, never mind how to cook
the things I found growing in them.” She eyed the spud with circumspection.
“I’m going to need both hands for this,” she murmured and wriggled her other
arm free so her shoulders were bare.

Jonah couldn’t help staring at the whiteness of
Deborah’s skin, at the tiny drops of water that dripped from her hair, and his
eyes followed their course as they trickled down her neck into the fold of her
shawl. His hands sawed mechanically at the partridge until he nicked himself.
He sucked his finger and remembered he had been asked a question.

“The Elders tell you the war destroyed everything
except Providence, don’t they?” Deborah nodded. “Well, it didn’t. Don’t ask me
how, but there were isolated valleys, mountains, places where few people ever
lived, that were not touched by the effects of the war. They barricaded
themselves in, high in their valleys, letting no one come near. The stories say
the mountain people are cruel and merciless, protecting what they have like a
wolf with its kill. But there were other survivors too who wander about in the
desert.” He hesitated. “They don’t look like you and me, the war has changed
them.”

Deborah looked uneasy, thinking of Cerberus and
lindworms and suchlike. “What do you mean?”

“The survivors of the bombs had all been exposed to
the burning atmosphere, they got sick; many died. The babies who were born
after the bombs were deformed and sickly.”

“Just like the Ignorants—I mean the Dananns,”
Deborah interrupted. “I knew they had been poisoned.”

“Mostly the desert wanderers live alone, living by
what they remember of the time before the war, passing it on to their children,
if they have any. They are the people who showed me the ruined houses, the wild
gardens. They taught me what’s edible and what isn’t. They showed me how to use
flints to make fire, how to make a bow and arrows. I stayed with one of them
for a few years. He was almost blind, but he knew every nook and cranny of the
desert round about the Cleft Rock.”
    

They both ate in silence for a few moments, then
Deborah said brightly, “This garden food is delicious. We must remember to
collect some before we move on.”

Later, Jonah watched Deborah’s brisk, decisive
movements as she wrapped the potatoes up in her shawl. Already she seemed
totally concentrated on her journey. Now that she had eaten and rested and
washed away the dust of Providence, all she wanted was to push on, to find her
mother. All she had left behind in Providence was set to one side, her family,
friends, the Dananns who helped her escape from prison. Briefly, the glimmer of
sadness that lay in the depths of Jonah’s eyes flickered on the surface, and
his brow furrowed. If he lagged behind, Deborah would forget him too.

Jonah gathered his things together, deep in
thought, and scattered the ashes of the fire. Whistling softly he called the
pups and let them trot ahead to find the way. With her shawl pressed into
service as a sack, Deborah’s hair hung loose and blazed like a flag as she
marched, head held high, behind the pups.

Jonah could not help admiring her. Deborah had a
mission to accomplish, it was only right she should be single-minded about it.
The sadness sank back, out of sight again, and he smiled to himself. Deborah
was pig-headed and pig-ignorant, and he hadn’t had so much fun in ages.
Whatever happened, he would stick by her to the end.

* * * *

There was still much of the afternoon left by the time they struck camp.
The colours were brighter and most of the trees seemed sturdy and healthy. The
veil of yellow cloud had thinned, barely concealing a new luminosity that was
the sky. On the far side of the mountains, Jonah was convinced the sky would be
as blue as it was in the old stories. On the far side of the mountains, there
would be no more sinister scars of the war, no more clumps of blighted trees,
blackened and dead or dying, with stunted brown leaves and rotten branches. When
they came upon these places where the soil was poisoned, like spots of disease
on a ripe fruit, they hurried past, keeping close together, their eyes averted.
Something had claimed the dead vegetation and invested it with a creeping
presence that was not life, but not quite death either.

By the time evening fell, they were deep in
deciduous woods. The leaf canopy screened the dying light, and darkness caught
them almost unawares. They found themselves in a grassy hollow ringed by young
beech trees and undermined by burrowing animals. The edge of the hollow was
broken by a deep trough, and in the trough lay the remains of an ancient tree.

Neither of them had seen a tree of such awesome
dimensions, even though it was rotted by insects and fungus and quite hollow.
Jonah stood by the tree, looking down its hollow length, and a deathly chill
clutched at his heart. Shadows moved in front of his eyes, and every fibre of
his body called on him to move, but his will was frozen.

He called out to Deborah in his head, but his lips
refused to obey, and she didn’t hear the unspoken cry.

“What a giant it must have been!” Deborah’s voice
was strong and practical. Her attention was already turned to searching out a
comfortable place to sleep.

Jonah felt the shadows take his hands, leading him
into a darkness that was full of a silent menace.

“The tree made the hollow when its roots were
wrenched out of the ground as it fell.” He forced out the words the shadows
whispered inside his head. “The roots and branches have been eaten
away¬—only the trunk is left. The heart of the tree is dead, but its body
waits. It defies the corruption of time. Its destiny is fire.” Jonah passed a
hand in front of his face to brush away the shadows. He was deathly white and
his hands trembled.

“Cow pasture,” Deborah said briskly.

“Cow pasture?” Jonah had no idea what she was
talking about. He tried to shake off the shadowy grasp. “Let’s get away from
here, Princess, find somewhere better. This place is evil.”

“Don’t be silly, it’s just an old tree. It was the
big shade tree in a cow pasture.” Deborah seemed proud of her discovery. “I can
hear the cattle lowing, can’t you?”

Despite his cold fear, Jonah listened. From far
away, it seemed, came a sound neither had ever heard before, but that was so
redolent of peace and a lost happiness that they held their breath, unwilling
to lose a note of the dying sound. Briefly, Jonah’s shadows left him.

The sound of the cows cast them both into a pensive
silence. Even Deborah was discouraged by her meagre knowledge of the world.
Jonah had seen pictures of cows on the walls of Underworld, but no one had been
able to tell him what they sounded like or what they did. The Dananns
remembered a lot of things, but much more had been forgotten. How were they
going to bring back what they had never heard of?

Deborah was the first to recover her optimism.
“Tomorrow we might be high enough to see our way to the far side of the
mountains. We might even meet a cow!”

Jonah smiled, but in his heart he was afraid.
Deborah had no idea of the unpleasant things they might find before they found
their cow. Since they entered the forest, he had been aware of rustlings and
cracklings, of shadows slipping from tree to tree, of jaws opening and snapping
shut, of panting and withheld breath. He had never been into a forest before,
never attempted to cross the river for fear of disturbing the river monsters.
But he had not expected this. The shadows were everywhere, something was not
right.

The air beneath the trees was still and mild, and
the harsh desert wind, carrying flails of sand and grit, seemed to have been
left behind on the other side of the river. While Jonah covered their fire for
the night, Deborah collected armfuls of greenery to soften the forest floor.
She was aware she was making a single sleeping place, not two, and her heart
raced at the audacity of it. But with her journey’s end so close, she was
incapable of reining in her excitement.

Once she had been a loved child, but it was so long
ago she couldn’t remember it. For years she had known only the dislike of
givenparents and distrust of her classmates. It had made her bitter and cold;
that was obvious to her now. Her heart beat quicker since she met
Jonah—she could feel how it glowed. The ice around it was melting in the
warmth of another human being who cared more about her than anyone had done
before. Jonah had been with her ever since she lost her parents. He had been
with her when she cried herself to sleep in those first months as a givenchild.
He had held her hand when she wanted to slip into the shadows and give up
longing for something better. He had been part of her dreams.