The Dark Citadel (The Green Woman) (22 page)

Together they had overcome the dangers of the
desert, and the Garden was just at the other side of the mountains. Nothing
could stop them now! The release of tension was almost painful, and she
shivered as the other emotions, bottled up for days, began to fight their way
to the surface.

From beneath her lashes, Deborah snatched furtive
glances at Jonah, watching him greedily as he bent to place rocks and sods of
green earth around the campfire, as he paced about the clearing making certain
everything was safe for the night, for her, for his Princess. Her heart swelled
with longing, and suddenly she wanted Jonah there, next to her, to share her
thoughts, to share something more profound, though she was confused as to what
that might be.

She sat down on the springy mattress, imagining
Jonah sitting beside her, taking her hand, pulling her towards him. A hot blush
swept across her cheeks. She wanted to know what it was like, she thought
angrily, to love somebody so much that…She
would
find out, nobody was going to stop her! With a defiant gesture she tipped the
garden food on the ground and shook out her shawl before spreading it like a
pillow where their heads would lie. She lay down amid the red waves of her hair
and waited for Jonah.

* * * *

Jonah paced the clearing one last time. Deborah was already making herself
comfortable, but the pups were as edgy as he was. They turned round and round
on themselves before deciding not to curl up after all. A few of them whined
and licked his hand.

He comforted them as best he could, but he knew
they were uneasy so far from the scent of their parents. They too sensed
something was wrong. Perhaps their parents were already preparing for war,
wearing their heavy-spiked war collars. Their handlers would be goading them
with sticks and spear tips to a battle frenzy, throwing them captured wolves
and foxes to fight, to rouse their fury and their hatred with the taste of freshly
spilled blood. The army hosting in the desert was cruel and relentless. It was
the army of death.

  
The closer they drew to the Garden, the uneasier Jonah became. He was
used to the desert with its hardships and dangers, the demons filling the night
with the fluttering of giant wings, and he had often seen wolfmen too on the
prowl. This was different. The new green world should be full of hope, but he
sensed evil very close at hand.

Suddenly, he caught sight of Deborah watching him
intently from a bed made of branches and a mattress of green leaves, and his
anxieties faded into insignificance, carried away on the wave of the most
powerful emotion he had ever experienced. Her red hair lay like the petals of a
luxuriant flower about her head, and her green eyes never left him. Jonah’s
mouth was dry as he took a step closer, feeling awkward and wooden.

She smiled and held out a hand. He knelt beside
her—the moment trembled, fragile as a leaf in the wind. The slightest
movement could blow it away. He took her hand and she drew him down beside her.

“Jonah,” she whispered. “Did you remember me? Did
you dream of me too?”

He smiled. The scent of her hair filled his head
reminding him of wood smoke and gorse flowers. Or did gorse flowers simply
smell of Deborah? The touch of her hand was as familiar to him as the memory of
his mother’s hands, and he had seen her hair in the colour of autumn leaves.

“I used to dream of a little girl who needed
comforting. Then an older girl who needed a guide. I used to see you in every
wonderful thing, rocks and coloured pebbles, a pool of clear water, a tree
bowing down beneath the weight of orange leaves. I think you have always been
with me.”

“It was meant to be like this, wasn’t it? We were
meant to meet and we were meant to recognise one another.” She put her arms
round his neck, her whispered words echoing inside his head and touching a deep
chord of sadness in his heart.

“It was magic. Green magic brought me to you,”
Jonah murmured. “I don’t want to lose you now.”

“You won’t,” Deborah whispered, so low it was the
sound of her breath he heard. “You are part of me. We can’t be parted. Ever.”
She turned her head and her lips found Jonah’s.

In that instant, Jonah, the dog boy, desert
wanderer, and Ignorant runaway became simply Jonah. Deborah’s Jonah. He pushed
aside his sadness and gave in to the heat of her fire, wrapping himself in the
flames of her hair. Whatever happened, they would always be together.

Deborah slept
soundly.
She was not even aware the pups had curled up around her when Jonah got up
to watch again. She did not stir later when her live blanket wriggled and
squirmed, unaware that parts of it got up and wandered about, that it whined
and growled piteously.

Jonah watched. At first the turmoil of his thoughts
kept him awake, and he watched Deborah’s sleeping face and the faint smile on
her lips. He traced the outline of her cheek and brow and smiled to himself.
This was the first time he had ever seen her features in such peaceful repose.

From the moment she stumbled out of Providence and
he snatched her from the jaws of certain death, Deborah had been a burden to
him. Despite her obvious talents, like being able to build bridges and convert
demons into angels, she was about as worldly-wise as a nest of newborn field
mice. All of his short life had been spent living on his wits, watching out for
himself, and now he found himself, like it or not, having to look out for
someone else too.

Jonah’s smile spread to a face-splitting grin of
happiness. Deborah was a burden he never wanted to put down. He would watch
over her forever, carry her anywhere, whatever the cost.

Later, as the night wore on, the inexplicable
melancholy returned. The enormous responsibility of his task overcame him, and
the wearying day’s march began to take its toll. His head began to nod. It was
then he first noticed the whispering. It was the trees, or rather the tree
spirits, the Dryads, helping to keep him vigilant. Sometimes he thought he saw
them, with their supple limbs and hair threaded through with vines. Their light
voices like leaves rustling in the breeze comforted him though he could not
quite hear what they said. He knew they were telling him stories of the olden
times, the times of the great forests, and he let the rhythm of the words weave
its own story of untroubled happiness. He knew he must stay awake.

The long night deepened, and the pups whined and
snapped their jaws even in sleep. He knew he should wake Deborah, that he could
not safely watch the whole night through, but he was loath to disturb her. He
could not imagine how she did all that stuff with the Memory, but he could see
it consumed her and left her drained and pale. It was his role to look after
her, so he would let her sleep.

He dared look no further ahead than the next day.
The sadness that waited behind every moment of happiness told him that his part
would soon be over. Soon Deborah would not need protecting any more. Soon she
would no longer need a guide. The sadness welled and flooded. Perhaps nothing
can ever be perfect, he thought. Without sadness we would never recognise how
lucky we are to hold happiness in our hands, if only for a brief while.

Deborah’s face took up all of Jonah’s thoughts, her
green eyes mesmerised him; he could see every golden fleck of their irises even
through her closed lids, then through his own closed lids. With a sigh, he gave
up the unequal struggle and felt himself falling into their green depths. Round
about the hollow, shadows slunk out of the trees, and narrow, yellow eyes
watched without blinking, as Jonah’s head sagged and his chest rose and fell in
the regular rhythm of sleep.

* * * *

A pale light was falling through the branches of the trees above her head
when Deborah awoke. The pups shifted and yawned then got up and stretched. Some
wandered off on their own business; Silver licked Jonah’s sleeping face but
when she got no reaction left him alone. Deborah sat up, a radiant smile
illuminating her face. In a daze, she picked her clothes off the bush where
they had been drying and dressed. She sat for a while, hugging her knees,
watching Jonah curiously. It was a rare opportunity. Usually he seemed to be
watching her.

She remembered how it used to bother her, his
constant attention, made her feel awkward and self-conscious. But all that was
long ago, in a fading dream. Now she was glad he noticed her. The emotion his
attention kindled burned like a steady fire deep inside, radiating a warmth she
felt to the tips of her fingers. Thanks to him, she knew what it was like to
love and be loved. It was an
experience
,
and she felt stronger for it, older, more mature…ready to take on whatever task
might be required of her. Not knowing anything about singing, Deborah wanted to
shout!
 

She saw Jonah differently too. He was no longer the
wild-looking, ragged boy of their first encounter, but a man, with a hard,
muscular body and a feline grace. She shivered as she recalled that body,
stroking the chest and the sliding muscles of his back. She loved the taste of
his lips, and the touch of his fingers as they wandered across her skin,
memorising her body. But most of all she loved his face, or rather the look in
his hazel-green eyes. Jonah’s eyes were the mirrors of his thoughts, and what
they showed was such honesty, such devotion, such generosity and selflessness
that Deborah felt worm-like beneath their gaze. Jonah was good.

 
Impulsively she bent over the sleeping boy. He frowned and a
wave of tenderness washed over her. Jonah appeared carefree and independent,
but she knew he saw the dark side to even the brightest moments. He saw the
rotting leaves beneath the flowers; he felt the long shadows of the day’s end
at every new dawn. Jonah worried about her safety even in his sleep.

She brushed his forehead with her lips. He didn’t
wake, but a smile flickered across his face. She waited for him to wake so she
could see in his eyes if something had changed for him in the course of the
night. But he slept on. She wouldn’t wake him; she would use her time to give
him a surprise. She knew what it would be—lunch.

Without Jonah she would never have made it so far.
She would have been eaten by Cerberus in the first three minutes after leaving
Providence. Now she wanted to share everything with Jonah, learn to be like him
and do all the things he could do. She had never killed anything before, but if
she wanted to help him provide food for them, it was about time she learned how
to hunt. That would astonish him more than any number of bridges out of her
memory.

Twisting her hair into a plait to keep it out of
the way, Deborah picked up Jonah’s bow and a handful of arrows and set off into
the trees beyond the hollow. The pups watched with pricked ears and whined. A
small band detached itself from the pack and trotted silently behind her.

She moved slowly and awkwardly through the
untrodden undergrowth, hoping to find a rabbit. Hoping also that she would have
the nerve to kill it. She had watched Jonah practice with his bow, and as far
as she could see, there was nothing much to it. The pups seemed to know what
she was about and fanned out in front of her. Before they were even out of
sight of the hollow, they startled a rabbit, and Deborah aimed at the quick
brown shape as it leapt in wild zigzags towards her. But she was far too slow,
and the rabbit had careered out of sight into the trees before she let fly a
useless arrow that flopped feebly into the bushes ten yards away.

One of the pups bounded after the spent arrow to
fetch it back. It was about to dive into the screen of low shrubs when it
stopped dead, its chin almost on the ground, hackles raised. It gave a low
menacing growl and crept backwards, its tail standing out in a stiff brush.
Deborah froze. The rest of the pups crept close, stiff-legged, all with their
ears pricked and their hackles up. At the edge of her line of vision, Deborah
thought she saw shadows slip between the trees, but when she looked there was
nothing there.

Suddenly the biggest of the pups snarled and darted
forward. Deborah was seized by a cold fear as the undergrowth shivered and
branches snapped, and something crashed into the clearing.

By the time
they reached the
Cleft Rock, Zachariah’s spirits were quite revived. By rights he should be
protecting Maeve, but he was coming round to the surprising and quite
unconventional idea that she was perfectly capable of looking out for both of
them.

In the centre of the Cleft Rock, a spring bubbled
up from the ground at the base of one wall. It ran through a deep channel the
short distance across the cleft and disappeared back into the rock wall at the
other side. They both drank deeply and splashed the icy water over their faces.
Maeve took a sort of bread from her bag, soft and full of tiny, dark fruits,
and strips of tough cured meat with a wild, smoky flavour. Zachariah’s mouth
watered.

“I am so hungry—” he said through a mouthful
of bread.

“I know—you could eat a scabby baby.” Maeve
laughed. “One of David’s new expressions.”

“Well, maybe not a scabby one,” Zachariah replied,
surprising himself with an uncharacteristic attempt at humour. “Why did you
decide to come after me?” he asked suddenly. He knew what answer he wanted to
hear, and that too surprised him.

Maeve tried to settle into a comfortable
storytelling position, but anxiety made her squirm and fidget as she explained
about the panic they found in Overworld. Some of their neighbours had been
arrested, others beaten up; homes had been wrecked. They feared that this was
just the beginning, just a practice run for a new, more terrible raid of the Danann’s
quarter. While the adults were debating about whether to hide, or run, or
fight, Maeve had slipped back down to Underworld, hoping to catch up with
Zachariah.
 
But he had been
difficult to follow. The desert winds blew away his tracks, and the night was
full of dark angels. Zachariah’s eyes opened wide with surprise and admiration
at her courage.

“They all seemed to have forgotten about the
Queen,” Maeve said indignantly. “Somebody had to let her know what was
happening, didn’t they? What would be the use of you finding the Garden and the
great shining host of heroes if you didn’t get them moving to save us right
away? Even if there was no host, just the Garden, we could have got everybody
out in the night—”
 

“Why don’t you just say you didn’t trust me to come
back and tell you?” Zachariah’s eyes shone with anger and disappointment, but
Maeve took his hand and grinned.

“I trusted you to come back all right.” The grin
faded and her eyes took on a haunted look. “It’s just that finding the Garden
had become so…imperative. When you set out, you didn’t know what was at stake.
If the Garden isn’t there, we’ll all die. I know it! I couldn’t just sit about
waiting. I had to do something, just to know.” The grin almost came back as she
went on. “You should have seen the fuss they made when I suggested going after
you. Da threatened to knock me out and keep me locked in the apartment bound
and gagged.”

“I can imagine.” Zachariah smiled wryly.

 
“Anyway, I had almost caught up with you when the demons
snatched you. I didn’t know whether to try and rescue you, or go ahead and find
the Queen.”

“Yes, you did,” Zachariah snorted.

“Well, okay, I did. And I found part of the Queen’s
host! Or rather they found me. The Centaurs told me the Protector has already
moved against the Dananns. The evil in thrall to Abaddon is massing outside the
gates of Providence, but the warriors of the Queen’s host are gathering. The
Protector is afraid the Dananns will open Providence to the Queen’s armies. The
time has come to fight, before he kills us all! If it isn’t already too late.”

Zachariah suddenly felt only seventeen again, a
puny boy, weakened through lack of food, traumatised by his treatment at the
hands of the demon king and his wolfmen. And they hadn’t even seen the Garden
yet. They weren’t even certain it was there.

“What can we do?” he asked pathetically.

“We can fight!”

Zachariah looked startled and amazed at the same
time. “Us? How?”

“With the Queen’s host, that’s how!” And Maeve
explained how the Queen had brought back the Old Ones. She was assembling a
host of warriors to counter-balance the Iron Horde of the demon Abaddon and
mend the broken Pattern.

Zachariah was confused. “But where are they, these
warriors? All I’ve seen so far are demons and wolfmen and that awful thing in
the river.”

Maeve laughed. “That was Tawaret, the river
goddess. She was only trying to help by warning you that the winged demons had
seen you.”

“Funny way of helping, I call it,” Zachariah
grumbled to himself.

“And then, while I was wondering how I was going to
get across the river, it got light enough to see that a bridge had appeared in
the night, and galloping across it were more of the Old Ones.”

“I can’t imagine that river thing galloping,”
Zachariah muttered darkly. “Lumbering maybe, or wallowing, but not galloping.”

“Not Tawaret,” Maeve snapped in exasperation.
“Centaurs! I recognised them from a painting in Underworld. Only the Queen
could have brought them back. I just stood there and they found me. They had
been sent to watch the bridge for someone from Providence.”

“But what is a Centaur?” Zachariah was too curious
to be ashamed of his ignorance.

“You’ll find out in a minute. Here they come.”

With a thunder of hooves, two-dozen creatures,
half-man, half-horse, appeared. Two couples held up a wounded brother between
them. They were all dusty and blood-streaked, their glossy horse flanks flecked
with foam and dark with sweat. Many of them had ugly gashes across their broad
man-chests and teeth marks on their horse-backs from their fight with the
wolfmen. All carried long bows, and their great hooves, that seemed to be of
iron rather than horn, were red with blood as if they had trampled and waded in
the pulped bodies of their enemies. They all wore curling beards, and their
faces were solemn and intelligent, but proud too and with a hint of cruelty.

“The wolf vermin are destroyed except for two that
got away. Unfortunately they will warn the Destroyer. We must hurry.”

The Centaur who spoke was coal black, from the
curly hair of his head to the tip of his luxuriant horse’s tail. He turned to
Zachariah with an expression that chilled him through, as if he had been caught
out in a most dreadful crime.

“So this is the child for whom so much blood has
been spilt?” The harsh accusation in the cold eyes made Zachariah look away. He
tried to stammer his apologies, but the Centaur held up a hand for silence.
“Two Centaurs are grievously wounded. But it was necessary.”

“We couldn’t let them carry off Zachariah,” Maeve
interjected.

The Centaur silenced her with a withering look.
“The wolfmen must not find their way into Providence. They must not open the
gates of Providence to the Destroyer. The gates of Providence must be opened to
us.” The Centaur gave Zachariah a look of such chilling disdain that suddenly
Tawaret seemed quite endearing. “The time is not yet right. The power of the
Green Woman is not complete. But we cannot wait. Evil approaches the gates of
Providence and, worse, the evil within is already in motion.”

At the sight of Maeve’s deathly pallor, Zachariah
forgot his own humiliation. His thoughts flew back to Underworld, to Ezekiel
and Grania, to their happy, riotous home hidden beneath the sad city of
Providence. Maeve had followed him alone through the desert. She had found the
Centaurs and helped ambush the wolfmen. Maeve was bold and fearless, much more
than he, and she was afraid. Something clutched at his heart and squeezed it,
hard. He reached out and took her hand. It was trembling.