The Dark Citadel (The Green Woman) (16 page)

Sitting with
his
back to a flat slab of granite, Zachariah looked out of the mouth of the
cavern where the tunnel from Underworld ended in a chaos of shattered rock and
hills of debris. Earth and sky were the same sickly yellow, the air muggy and
gritty with a hint of gases that caught at the throat.

In some seismic struggle the earth’s surface had
buckled, and the mouth of the tunnel was now some hundred yards above the plain.
A steep slope of smashed rock fell away to a broken landscape of sand, stunted
bushes, and stony outcrops. Here and there jagged splinters of rock rose, some
straight, some leaning crazily. Chasms and fissures split the earth, and the
sandy plain was pockmarked with craters, some small enough for a man to curl up
in, others several times the size of the great square of Providence and deep
enough to hold the Protector’s palace. Quaking ponds popped and hissed as gas
bubbles burst like boils at their viscous surface, the noxious fumes rasping
Zachariah’s throat raw.

As he gazed in despair at the desolate landscape,
an invisible current of air whipped up the sand into a whirling tower that
screamed with an unearthly voice. The tower swayed back and forth, sucking
stones and bushes into its vortex, climbing higher and higher until it lost its
strength and fell back to earth with a hiss like gas escaping from a pipe.
Stones and grit rattled along dry watercourses like the ghosts of rivers. Winds
following the chaotic course of meteors howled and wailed among rock funnels
and chimneys.

Apart from the mad dance of the sandwraiths and the
quivering mud ponds, nothing moved. Sand-filled air mingled with the shifting
dunes in an oppressive pall, dull ochre and arid, the shattered debris of the
war to end all wars. Shading his eyes against the glare of the pale sand,
Zachariah peered across the landscape, looking for a path, a sign of life, for
anything that might indicate the entire world had not been reduced to a sterile
wasteland.

Far away, his gaze was held by a great yellow rock
that towered above the plain, taller than anything else in sight. It rose in
jagged pinnacles, and its sheer sides appeared pierced with dozens of holes.
There was an air of menace about the rock, as if unseen eyes were watching him
from its depths, and Zachariah found himself crouching back into the shadow of
the tunnel. He did not much feel like venturing out into the inhospitable plain
where he would be completely exposed, but where else was there to go?

Zachariah’s spirits were beginning to sink as he
opened his pack and took out the provisions Grania had packed for him. He drank
sparingly from the water bottle, not knowing when he would be able to refill
it. Then he unwrapped two small loaves, a lump of curd, and a half a rabbit
stuffed with the pungent brown accompaniment the Dananns called mushrooms.

He shook the bag. There was something else lying in
the bottom. He took out a small circular object, a case with a transparent lid.
A compass! He remembered the theology lesson when the teacher had demonstrated
how evil worked even within inanimate objects, drawing a simple metal needle
towards the north, the region where the demons lived, where the Serpent Witch
had fled.

Demonic or not, Zachariah picked up the compass and
pressed it to his lips. The little needle showed him the north. He stared at
the sandy plain with its rocks and its dry, brittle vegetation. North. He let
the word take shape in his head—mountains, green forests, the Garden.
North. At last he knew which way to go.

* * * *

Zachariah peered at the Yellow Rock glowing in the gathering gloom. It
stood tall and menacing over the grey sand of the plain where it soaked up the
last feeble rays of light and threw them back to where the boy crouched in his
cavern, waiting for darkness. He had plotted a path with his compass that led
him across the pitted plain. His landmarks were the rim of a crater and a
monumental butte. He would follow the crater around a quarter of its circumference,
then he would head for the butte that reared out of the desert, its flat top
easily recognisable among the pinnacles and jagged peaks that littered the
landscape. He had no idea how much he would be able to see in the night, but he
trusted the butte would prove massive enough to make a mark against even the
dreary dust-clouded sky of the wasteland.

As the shadows lengthened, fear of what lay hidden
in the darkness of the tunnel returned, and Zachariah crouched in the cave
mouth, his eyes fixed on the top of the scree slope. The opening through which
he had slithered had seemed tiny in the daylight, but now, in the faint light
of evening, it yawned, ominous and black. Rising winds rustled dry leaves and
whispered through the canyons and dry gullies like dead voices.

He crept even closer to the rock wall at his back
and began to long for the security of four walls and the night watch patrol.
When even the Yellow Rock began to fade into night, he collected his things
together to leave. Reluctant to turn his back on the dark-filled tunnel mouth,
he edged his way backwards until he felt chill fingers on his spine, and a
nameless fear made him spin round.

The caves peppering the walls of the Yellow Rock
appeared to be seething and bubbling like flies covering a piece of rotting
meat. Zachariah threw himself to the ground with a low moan and crawled deeper
into the shadows. As he watched in horror, black shapes detached themselves
from the moving mass and threw themselves into the air where they glided and soared,
round and round, in ever widening circles about the rock. Then they rose, still
turning, and a scream burst from their throats that raised the hairs on the
back of his neck.

The light dimmed until he could barely see the
winged shapes moving away, and the distance swallowed up their hoarse
screaming. But not until the darkness was complete did he dare move from his
hiding place.

Deborah and
the
dog boy waited for the pup to return from leading Cerberus far out of
their way then, with the pack, they left their hiding place and set off into
the desert. They walked in silence, the pups scouting ahead, returning on
soundless pads to guide them along paths that gave the best cover, keeping to
the shadow of mountain-like stones and ridges, and the rubble of smashed rock
formations. Sometimes they dipped into craters filled with boulders and scrubby
bushes. Sometimes they followed the course of canyons cut out by extinct rivers
or split open by some apocalyptic seism.

They were in one such canyon when the sky began to
pale and the dog boy called a halt. A half dozen of the pups went off to look
for a resting place, while others scattered to hunt.

Deborah threw herself into the shadow of an
overhanging rock ledge. “
Pffff!
I’ve
never walked so far in my life.”

“Far? We haven’t even set off yet! We’ve just been
doing a few circuits of Providence to shake off old Cerberus.”

Deborah’s jaw dropped, and she felt the blood drain
from her face.

“Joke!” The boy raised his arms above his head as
if to protect himself. “Don’t you have any sense of humour at all, Princess?”

“I come from Providence, remember. Not Disneyland.”

“What’s that?”

Deborah shrugged. “I don’t know, something I saw in
a dream once. It looked like fun. Why not tell me about yourself? I don’t even
know your name. Your life’s been one great barrel of laughs, I suppose?”

“Not really.” The boy’s face clouded over. “My
name’s Jonah, though no one has called me by it in years. I’ve been out here
since I was a kid, eight years old, maybe nine. First, my father was killed in
a mining accident. My mother was expecting a baby. When they brought the news
that he was dead, the shock brought the baby on. It was the time when the
Ignorant quarter was quarantined, do you remember? Some nonsense about disease.
My mother was alone with me when it started. The wise woman only lived a few
streets away, but we weren’t allowed out. I didn’t know what to do. Ma tried to
keep calm, but the baby wasn’t the right way round, it couldn’t get out, and in
the end she couldn’t prevent the screams. I screamed too, but the Black Boys
still wouldn’t let the wise woman come to her.”

Jonah looked straight ahead as he spoke of his
mother, his green eyes hardened and shone, but no tears fell.

“I watched her die. It was all I could do. Wipe the
sweat from her eyes and stroke her hair, and wait for the baby to die inside
her too. When it was over, I went numb, wouldn’t speak, couldn’t eat. I should
have gone to live with my cousins, but I ran away. I don’t know why now. I
liked my cousins. I went down into Underworld and just kept going, beyond where
the lights ended and into this awful tunnel. If I hadn’t been blinded by tears,
I’d have been scared shitless. It was black as hell in there! When I ended up
Outside, I seemed to calm down. The harshness and cruelty of the place jolted
me back to reality, maybe. Then the pups found me. If it hadn’t been for them I
would certainly have died.”
     

“I’m sorry. About your parents.” A distant memory
of a dream, hearing an unhappy child, weeping on a riverbank, came back to her.
She remembered as a little girl, floating away from Providence, trying to find
the child in her dreams to share his unhappiness. She had glimpsed him once,
before the dream faded, but she had never found him.

Jonah attempted a dismissive shrug. “It was a long
time ago.” Then his eyes lit up again, and his face broke into a grin. “Now I
have a mission, to snatch damsels from the jaws of Cerberus. Especially when
the damsels are beautiful and—” He blushed.

Deborah felt herself blushing too and changed the
subject. “What are the pups? I mean, where did they come from?”

Jonah’s brow furrowed. “The bombs brought back a
darkness that grew on the carnage and destruction. It has grown into an entity,
a sort of distillation of evil that calls itself Abaddon. It has taken on an
animal shape and styles itself god of the desert chaos and king of the demons,
or just plain Destroyer. I’ve felt its presence sometimes.” His eyes clouded,
turned inward to a chilling memory. “Big as a mountain, darkness moving. Or
filling a hollow with cold shadows. It whispers, and everything listens, even
the stones.” He shivered. “Anyway, this Abaddon called up the dogs of war, and
they had to go to him. It’s their destiny, you see, to fight. They had no
choice. These are their pups. Haven’t you heard about the hosting of the Iron
Horde?”

“How? The world could end and we wouldn’t hear
about it in Providence. Not until the Wise God put his fist through the crystal
Hemisphere, fed most of us to the demons, and whisked the Elders off to an
eternity of bellyaching. Anyway, this Abaddon character, who’s he going to war
against?”

Jonah lowered his voice. “The Green Woman has the
Memory, and they say she has found the seeds of the tree of life. Abaddon wants
the tree for himself. He will destroy her to get it.”

“Mother?”

Jonah nodded gravely. In a gesture she would not
have imagined herself capable of a few days before, Deborah took Jonah’s hands
in hers and clasped them hard.

“We have to find her, before he does.”

“Don’t worry, of course we will,” Jonah replied
equally earnestly.

As they gazed at one another, neither of them asked
themselves what possible help to the Green Woman they could be. The important
thing was they were going north, and they were going together.

Two figures
stood
side-by-side looking down
across the broad, moonlit plain that spread before the rath, the High King’s
ringfort. Two figures a man and a woman almost equal in height, waited. They
waited in silence—the man, Oscar, for the decision of his queen. The
queen, Medb, raised her eyes to the dark sky and listened, as if the music of a
distant land could pass between the stars. Slowly she nodded her head and
turned to her nephew.

“I
hear it too. The call is faint, but it will grow. We must not wait until it
becomes a cry of distress so loud the dead will hear.”

Oscar’s
face glowed in the silvery light. He felt so elated he would have taken Medb in
his arms and kissed her if she hadn’t been his mother’s sister. They would tell
the High King the Green Woman was calling, and he would send messengers to the
four corners of the land to call up the Fianna. It would be a hosting such as
the tribes had never witnessed since the island was claimed from the fairy
people. At this thought, another came to trouble him.

“And
the Sidhe?”

Medb
nodded gravely. “The fairy people too will answer the call. They bear us no
grudge. Well, most of them anyway,” she added with a thin smile.

“The
Sidhe too.” Oscar could hardly contain the excitement welling up inside him.
“What a hosting this will be!”

“The
greatest,” Medb agreed and, with an unqueenly gesture, squeezed his arm.

Sand sifted
into
his shoes, dragging at Zachariah’s feet, each step requiring the effort of
two. The desert noises were strange and eerie, flutterings and whisperings made
by things the darkness obscured. Treacherous winds whipped sand into his eyes
and howled around his head, and strange rock shapes loomed in front of him,
invisible until he was almost upon them. Worst of all was the nagging
impression that someone was following him. There was nothing precise, it was
too dark to see anything, and the sand covered the sound of footfalls. But at
times he could have sworn someone or something was close behind.

Each time he stopped to check that he was still
heading north, Zachariah listened. What sounded like the swish of sand could
have been anything; the wind, a small animal, the rustling of dry branches. But
as the lonely night wore on, he became increasingly uneasy, and at the first
glimmer in the sky, he looked about for a place to hide.

When he found the right place, a small crater
half-filled with a tumble of boulders with dark sandy spaces between, he
perched just below the lip of the depression and looked back the way he had
come. At first, there was too little light to see anything, but as the daylight
increased, he could make out the steep scree slope and the black cavern that
marked the end of the tunnel that led to Underworld. It looked far away now,
almost as far as he could see, and it stared at him like an unblinking eye.

Suddenly the growing light caught a movement,
something scuttling up the slope, something dark with lots of legs that dashed
up the loose rocks and disappeared into the darkness of the tunnel. Zachariah
crouched lower into his foxhole, the hair at the back of his neck standing on
end, and turned to face the flat-topped butte that had come to feel familiar
and reassuring in the nightmare landscape of the wilderness.

Beyond the butte, far to the north, he thought he
saw a pale green rim to the waste of sand and rock. It was such a pale green as
to be hardly distinguishable from the yellow of the dried shrubs that cluttered
the desert, but Zachariah was convinced it was green, and it undulated with the
promise of hills, and beyond, perhaps the hope of a mountain. It seemed so far
away, in another world.

Zachariah reckoned he had enough water for another
three days. After that he would have to hope he came across a spring. And he
would be reduced to eating the spiky, rebarbative-looking fruits that grew
begrudgingly on the sparse bushes.

He had just ducked down into the shelter of the
boulders when he heard the unmistakable sound of something creeping along the
crater’s edge. A pebble skittered down to chink against the rocks before him;
loose scree scrunched beneath a furtive footfall. He held his breath and
crouched back as far as he could into the shadow of his hiding place. Another
pebble fell further away, then there was nothing but the cruel sounds of the
desert, scourging wind, and the wailing of a sandwraith. Whatever it was had
passed by.

Zachariah was too terrified to move. He just
watched the patch of sand before him change from grey to dirty yellow as the
day advanced. No shadow fell across the patch of light; no more sounds
interrupted the scratchings and scrabblings of the desert plants and animals.
The temperature rose, and he was enveloped in a suffocating heat, like being
wrapped in a thick, dusty blanket. Fatigue got the better of him, and without
daring even to open his water bottle, Zachariah dropped off to sleep.

When he woke, the light was dimmer but not dark
enough for him to venture outside his den. The air was still parched, and he
needed to drink. He swallowed a few mouthfuls of the warm, stale water in his
bottle and broke a piece of dry bread, smearing it with the mushroom sauce to
moisten it. When he had finished, the last of the daylight had caught the peaks
of the tallest rocks, and Zachariah noticed with a shiver that the Yellow Rock
was still in view. The distance and the dimness of the light did not allow him
to see if the winged shapes were beginning their nocturnal prowlings. But an
ominous silence had settled on the desert waste, settled on Zachariah like
fear, and he left his hiding place reluctantly, despite the hopeful sight of
greenery.

* * * *

How many more than three days went by, Zachariah couldn’t remember. He had
been hungry and thirsty forever, it seemed. More often than not the pools he
came across contained an oily liquid that was not water and hissed with the
release of noxious gases. The waterholes that he did find were thick with mud,
and no matter how carefully he let the sluggish dampness trickle over the lip
of his water bottle, it inevitably filled with a mixture more mud than liquid.
His lips were so dry they cracked and split, and stung when he bit into the
acid flesh of the desert fruits. Scabs crusted round his eyes until the green
horizon grew even fuzzier, became even more of a mirage.

He rubbed his eyes, rubbing in grit, making them
sore and puffy. He started at movements that flickered and dodged in and out of
his vision when he peered after them through lashes clotted with a mixture of
sand and mucus. Only his dogged belief in the Dananns’ dream kept him plodding
on, screwing up irritated eyes in the half-light of morning and evening,
willing the green vision to grow.

One evening, he couldn’t remember which, he had
been about to leave his hiding place among a clump of thorn bushes when a movement
caught his eye and he blinked, struggling to keep it in focus. His path north
led across a slight sand-filled depression, and the sand was moving.

Zachariah slunk back into the bushes and watched as
the smooth surface buckled and swelled like waves on the sea in the Danann cave
painting. More prosaically it made him think of the surface of a pan of gruel
as it thickens and begins to bubble and heave. The light grew dimmer by the
instant, and he strained to see exactly what was emerging from the sandpit. The
heaving turned to thrashing as long, scaly tails and necks broke free, like
monstrous worms wriggling in a bucket, with dull skin that flaked and shed like
tattered shrouds.

Coiling and uncoiling as they emerged from the
ground, the worms swung their open jaws. Flickering tongues tasted the air,
belching a stench of open graves. The still air was filled with the sounds of
hissing and scraping as the creatures opened and closed their dry, creaking
wings, dust-dry skin cracking and tearing as they struggled.

Pressing himself into the stony ground, so close he
could feel every sharp rock as he squirmed over it, Zachariah crept backwards
into the bushes. Cold waves rolled over him, and he ground his jaws to prevent
the noise of his chattering teeth giving him away. The stink was nauseating,
and he knew if he were sick the creatures would smell him in an instant. Hot
tears stung the corners of his eyes as he struggled to control the retching of
his stomach and the urging of his bladder. With a last desperate gulp, he tried
to hold back the bitter bile that rose in the back of his throat, and he almost
managed it. But not quite.

A head, long and narrow with flaring horse-like
nostrils, swung in his direction, its small, dark eyes fixed on the clump of
thorn bushes. A long ribbon of a tongue flicked in and out; the jaws opened,
tasting the air. Zachariah shrank back even further, digging with his knees and
elbows into the unyielding ground. The head darted, snapping; its thick,
evil-smelling body followed, propelled by stubby back legs. Zachariah closed
his eyes.

Another scaly head appeared and the grave worm
stretched its sinuous neck out taut, uttering a high-pitched scream as jaws
sunk into its flank. Zachariah’s eyes opened wide, and he gasped in horror and relief
as yet another pair of jaws clamped onto the neck, rigid with pain, and shook
it. The worm reared, and a rippling motion overtook the coiled nest as other
worms, excited by the hot smell, snatched at wings and limbs, tearing and
rending. In a few moments the sand was black as it soaked up the spilled gouts
of blood.

It was almost completely dark before the
unfortunate worm was nothing more than bloody rags and brittle yellow bones,
and the sounds of frenzied feeding changed to the rush and rustle of parchment-dry
wings as the nest of grave worms took to the sky. Zachariah watched them go,
flapping their creaking wings and shrieking with the cruel voices of birds of
prey. He had not heard the voice that called them away, did not know it was not
his tracks they were seeking. But he felt faint with relief when the abominable
creatures departed.

He drank greedily from his water bottle and crawled
out of the bushes, scratched and bleeding at the knees and elbows. Stumbling to
his feet, he set a course that took him on a detour through the rocks, avoiding
the churned and bloodied sand nest. The night was deep and cold before he
returned to the plain and his path northwards.

* * * *

In the course of those endless days, the impression of being followed never
left Zachariah, and the fear of being heard made him clamp his jaws tight
together when he surprised himself muttering his disjointed thoughts aloud.
Each time his clothes snagged on a spiny bush, he stopped and listened. Each
time a small creature scuttled out of his path, he held his breath, though he
heard nothing else above the crying of the wind. He sniffed the wind like an
animal, straining after the putrid stench of the grave worms, flinching each
time a branch above his head creaked or a night bird called.

Anguish was the only sensation until, as one
interminable night neared its end, he remembered what hope felt like. Zachariah
found that his feet trod firmer earth, and in the earth, low plants grew here
and there. There was a new smell in the air, moister, less gritty. As he drank
it in, the air slid into his lungs almost as cool and luscious as water. It no
longer rasped its way down his throat like a metal file. The plants grew
taller, thicker, and eventually came the sound he had been hoping for.

 
It was
the sound of running water, a low whispering through the plants along its
banks, and the clap clap of little river waves as they lapped the shore. He
waded now through damp mud and pushed through reeds and grasses that reached to
his shoulder. The sky grew brighter and cleared of the sand and dust pall of
the desert wasteland. Zachariah found a firm place and stamped the reeds flat,
making a little nest for himself, then, narrowing his eyes against the growing
daylight, he tried to order his chaotic thoughts.

As he feared, the Yellow Rock, though well behind
him now, was still not as far away as he would have liked. Far to the south he
could make out little as the swirling desert sands hid Providence and the
surrounding wastes from his view. Before him lay what he knew to be a river,
and on the other side, a wide undulating plain of long grasses and slender
trees. Far away in the distance, the trees thickened, grew closer together and
became a forest. The forest climbed higher in great steps, shaggy and green,
until it gave way to meadows, then the bare rock of the mountains.

Mountains! They rose before him, massive and
magnificent, strung along the horizon, pink and violet, orange and blue, like
living marble. Zachariah rubbed his crusted eyes and gasped in awe at the
sight. All his doubts fell away, he believed. The Garden had to be there.

He scrambled awkwardly from his hiding place to the
water’s edge. He leaned forward and plunged his head into the cool water,
snatching great mouthfuls of it as if it were solid food, shivering with
pleasure as he washed the grit and sand from his face and neck. His waterlogged
lashes stuck together, blinding him completely, and he doused his head again
and again, rubbing gently until the dried crusts softened and washed away.

Once he had splashed and soaked himself
sufficiently, he dipped his empty bottle below the surface and smiled at the
optimistic gurgling sound as it filled up with the clear, cold river water. He
raised it to his lips and drank again, slower this time, savouring the
sensation of quenching thirst, letting water run down his chin and over his
shirt. He bent to fill the bottle again and froze in terror. There was
something in the river.

As he watched wide-eyed and helpless, the water
boiled and bubbled. It broke with a great sucking noise as a head appeared,
huge and grey, that split open with a roar revealing a red throat as wide as a
man’s body and white fangs like tent pegs. Zachariah was petrified with fear.
His legs would not move; his hand still held the water bottle in the river.
Then the beast roared again and began to heave its glistening grey bulk out of
the water.

Zachariah turned and ran, crashing through the
reeds, away from the river. As if in answer to the roar of the river beast, a
scream came from overhead. Zachariah snatched a terrified glance upwards but
saw nothing except a confusion of black limbs and scaly wings, tipped with
cruel hook claws. Arms, with hands strong as steel cables, gripped him beneath
the armpits and yanked him off the ground. He gave a cry of terror and
struggled frantically as the ground receded beneath him, and the wind in his
face blew away the stench of the creature holding him.

* * * *

The watcher on the riverbank parted the reeds as Zachariah was snatched into
the air by the demon. More reptile than bird, the creature’s muscles strained
to keep its ungainly bulk in the air. The dark shape was joined by a second.
Flapping wings of naked skin, they both wheeled about and turned towards the
Yellow Rock that was just beginning to reveal its pinnacles and sheer facets
after the obscurity of the night.