The Dark Citadel (The Green Woman) (19 page)

Deborah
thought fast.
She could make out the kelpies now, as they plunged
out of the river, and hear the sucking sound as they dragged their heavy hooves
free of the clinging river mud. They tossed their manes and bared long teeth in
a cry that was more like a predator’s howl. Behind the black water horses, the
lindworms, two-headed and venomous, crawled their sinuous way across the mud.
Dragon heads swung from left to right, and flaring nostrils sniffed the night
air noisily for the scent of warm blood. Jonah could not kill all the
creatures, even supposing an arrow could kill them, and Deborah’s only weapon
was the Memory.

Concentrating hard, Deborah chased all other
thoughts from her head, looking for inspiration, looking for a place to hide.
She pushed aside her fears of the demons making their way across the mudflats
before them, of the unseen terror bearing down on them from the desert behind,
and searched her mind for memories of the riverbank. Images flitted behind her
closed lids, too fast to seize upon, but she knew she had found them. She saw
vegetation rippling down to the water, strange trees growing tall and thick,
mangroves dangling tentacular roots over the water’s edge, then mud, grass, and
reeds reappearing as the river changed its course.

The memories flicked past, of skies charged with
thunderclouds, rain that fell in torrents, then the blinding, flickering
whiteness of blizzards. Sun blazed from a brazen sky, and rampant greenery
covered the riverbanks. Huge reptiles waded through the deepest part of the
river. The river spread and became a lake, stretching green and opaque almost
to the horizon. The lake shrank to a huge river again, and long grasses rippled
across the plain where waves had once run before the wind. Hunters wearing
skins and carrying spears stalked grazing animals through the waving grass. The
images accelerated—a flickering film of a handful of huts became a town
growing and spreading. The town sprouted tall warehouses, cranes and aerials,
threw out roads filled with cars. It boxed in the river and filled it with
cargo ships.

The scenes unfolded and changed so fast it was like
flying at high speed, and when they stopped, Deborah felt as though she had
been thrown from a colliding vehicle. Her head spun, but it was there! The
memory of the riverbank in the last days before the bombs rained down.

In bewilderment, she struggled to make sense of the
images that appeared, slower now, more focused, inviting her to find what she
was looking for. The river was still there but channelled through concrete
banks, and a huge port with container ships bringing building materials for
Providence. The port was guarded with anti-aircraft missiles mounted on heavy
vehicles, a radar tower, and soldiers waiting.

All was beneath the mud now. She watched as
soldiers scuttled to their posts, rockets streaked skywards, trap doors slid
open, and dockworkers leapt inside an underground bunker. The doors slid closed
behind them. The bunker was there, closed tight against the mud.

“Get the pups digging, quickly,” Deborah whispered
furiously, her head still reeling from the shockwave of images. She crouched
and ran back through the sedge, away from the river. The pups followed
enthusiastically. “There!”

The pups dug. Jonah and Deborah wrenched the sedge
out by the armful until Deborah heard the scratching of claws against metal.
Scrabbling aside the earth, they found the metal door. She pressed the button,
and the door slid open just a little before it stuck. But it was enough to let
skinny adolescent bodies and scrawny wolf-dog pups through. And quite enough to
let out the stale, dry air that had not been replenished in a more than a
century.

Jonah put a hand on Deborah’s shoulder. “Let me go
first.”

She hesitated, and Jonah slipped past and through
the narrow gap. Deborah cast a fearful glance over her shoulder. “Be quick,
Jonah. Please.”

The baying of hounds was getting louder, and the
water horses were champing on the edge of the reed beds, making their way along
the water line, casting about for a scent, their heavy heads dripping cold
water. The pups whined but dutifully followed Jonah into the black hole. A
reptile hissed, too loud and too close. Waiting no longer, Deborah kicked the
earth back over the metal and strewed it with reeds. She backed through the
narrow gap and stuffed the rest of the reeds in the opening, not daring to
close the door completely.

The smell was musty and putrid. She turned in the
dark, her feet edging across the concrete of the floor, pushing aside objects
littered across it. Jonah’s hand reached out to her, their fingers entwined and
he pulled her close. She could feel his heart pounding and saw, over his
shoulder, the shadows piled high against the wall.

“There’s something horrid in here. What is it?” she
whispered.

Jonah pressed his mouth to her ear. “Don’t look.
Corpses. Loads of them.”

So, of course, Deborah looked. The back wall of the
bunker was a mass of shadow, and she could make out nothing distinctly. But she
could sense what the shadows contained, and her flesh crept. She felt sick.
Hounds bayed and their call was answered by the carnivorous whinnying of the
water horses, closing in now, their champing and snarling almost as close as
the sibilant reptile noises.

Jonah released Deborah and crouched down, rummaging
about on the floor among the objects the workmen had dropped. His fingers found
what he was looking for and curled around a flashlight. He darted the feeble
beam about the concrete box and swore as it flickered and dimmed, the batteries
corroded, useless.

There was nothing for it; he would have to do it
blind. He moved towards the back wall, and gulping back the taste of bile in
his throat, grabbed at a coat collar among the tumbled heap of rags. Deborah
heard the sigh and the dry rustling as the pile moved and shifted, and clapped
her hands over her mouth. Jonah felt green. The coat came away, bringing with
it the corpse that was wearing it.

Fighting back the waves of nausea, Deborah reached
out to help, to share the awfulness, and fumbled for a sleeve to shake it. The
shrivelled thing that had been a workman—a father, brother, some woman’s
son or husband—tumbled out of it.

Without a word, Jonah took the coat and stuffed it
in the doorway with Deborah’s reeds. He wiped his hands on his trousers and
just looked at them. Deborah put her arms around him to ease the sadness and
the horror from his body. Together, they waited.

Hissing breath filtered through the makeshift
barrier, more poisonous and corrupt than the air inside the bunker. Hooves
trampled heavily overhead, and the thud of great dog-paws and the swish of
thickly muscled bodies pushing through the reed beds came closer. Suddenly the
pad of giant paws stopped dead, and the hooves scuffled to silence. Deborah
screwed her eyes tight and pressed her face against Jonah’s shoulder. The sound
of sniffing grew louder, more excited. Claws tugged at the flimsy screen. Jonah
pushed Deborah away from him and reached slowly for an arrow.

When
Zachariah recovered
his wits he was lying in a dark cell, his ankles
manacled to a heavy ring set in the wall. He was faint from lack of food and
trembling with the cold of shock, though the air in the cell was close and
muggy. His wound hurt horribly and his shirt was stuck in the blood so if he
moved the bleeding started again. With trepidation he touched his throat and
felt the welts left by the fox-like monster’s grip. His nostrils were full of
the rank stink the creature gave off and the stench of decay and decomposition
that hung in a miasma about the demons.

He tried to recall what exactly he had said. Had he
betrayed his friends? He wondered who was the girl the Dananns were supposed to
be harbouring, and tried to remember if Ezekiel had mentioned her. He sighed.
No, Ezekiel had never spoken about a girl.

He
wouldn’t have though, would he? Not if the Dananns didn’t entirely trust me,
Zachariah thought
bitterly. Wolfmen were to take him back to Providence, the fox-faced monster
had made that much clear. To have come so far for nothing! Despite the
disastrous situation, he clutched at straws of hope. Perhaps, once he was back
in the city he could escape from the wolfmen and warn the Dananns. Or he could
make up for his betrayal by fighting alongside them.

Zachariah had a confused idea that some kind of
conflict was preparing, a conflict that would pit the Dananns against the vile
creatures of the desert. What he could not understand was the role of the
Witch. The fox creature seemed to imply she was his enemy, and that she was an
ally of the Dananns. The Dananns wouldn’t have allied themselves with the
Serpent Witch, would they? Perhaps this enemy of the fox’s really was the Green
Woman who Maeve had spoken of. The more he thought about it, the more convinced
he became that the evil he feared to find in the Garden was in fact stalking
around it still trying to get in. And he had walked right into its lair.

He was not left to ponder on the question for long.
With a rustle of dark plumes, Azrael returned and freed Zachariah’s manacled
legs.

“Get up.”

He scrambled to his feet.

“Out.”

He limped to the door of the cell and waited.

“Move!”

A powerful hand pushed him forward, and he almost
fell. Stumbling to regain his balance, he hurried as best he was able, up a
winding stair and into one of the dark, whispering chambers that had so
frightened him when he arrived.

The chamber had a high vaulted roof, too high to
make out in the darkness, full of shadows that seemed to hang from the walls.
The air throbbed with a muttering or twittering, so low it was more like
vibrations than sounds uttered from a living throat. The sounds grew louder,
gasping and panting, and the shadows stirred. Zachariah took a step backwards
but Azrael pushed him again and he fell forward onto his hands.

Before he could raise himself up, a foot crushed
his right hand, and he stifled a scream. The foot was heavy and man-like, with
long toes that ended in cruel curved claws. The sole was hard and divided into
pads like a dog’s, and Zachariah shuddered at the touch of the bristly hairs
that covered the entire foot and ran up the sinewy leg. His head was suddenly
wrenched back, and he found himself staring at something from the nightmare
world that lies between the human and the bestial. The face was covered in
bristling hair, and the nose and mouth ran together into a dog-like muzzle.
Pointed canines gleamed in the dark gums, but the eyes were the eyes of a
madman.

Neither
Deborah nor
Jonah drew breath for what seemed like an eternity. Then there was a
sneeze followed by a low growl, and the sniffing stopped. Another second and
they heard the trampling of hooves. Minutes passed and the irritated, confused
baying of hunting hounds that have lost a scent moved away, growing less and
less distinct. Deborah let herself slide to the ground and sobbed with relief.

That sudden slackening of the taut cord of tension
got the better of them, and they slept a brief, exhausted sleep, huddled
together on the floor of the bunker. They woke when the night was almost at an
end, in a heap of wriggling wolf-dog pups whining to be away. Jonah got to his
feet and parted the reeds that still blocked the doorway. The air inside the
bunker had begun to filter through the narrow gap, and the musty smell of slow
corruption, bottled up for so many decades, was dispersing into the atmosphere.
The eastern horizon was already a luminous pearl grey; dawn was not far away.

Jonah listened. The only sound was the distant
lapping of water. Carefully he pulled away the tangle of reeds, and the coat dropped
through to lie by his feet, stiff and anonymous. Ignoring the reflex of
disgust, he picked up the jacket and carried it over to the mummified remains
of its owner. The workman—father, husband, son—lay in a shrivelled
heap, one arm out-flung in a hopeless gesture to ward off the death that fell
from the sky.

Almost reverently, Jonah covered the pathetic body
with the coat. “Thanks, mate,” he murmured.

Pulling themselves out of the bunker, they looked
around at the churned ground. The reeds that partially concealed the trap door
had been trampled. The pile of earth kicked up by the pups was scattered about
and flattened by huge hooves. Deborah hugged her arms across her chest and
shivered though the morning breeze was not cold. Her hands, clothes, and hair
stank from days and days of not washing, and her nostrils were full of the
rotten stink of the air raid bunker. She hugged herself closer, but the smell
of death clung to her. She still felt as if she stood on the edge of the grave.

“Why didn’t the…whatever they were…dig through the
bunch of reeds and find us?”

“The smell of death. The hounds and the kelpies and
the worms were searching for warm blood. Here they could only smell corpses.
That poor sod’s coat alone probably buried our scent.”

Deborah looked back at the dark crack in the door
that wouldn’t open any further and shivered. But her voice, when she finally
spoke, was soft and warm. “Thank you. Whoever you were.” Then she turned her
back on the bunker and gazed across the river, a look of intense concentration
on her face. Jonah found a patch of dryish sedge and sat down, waiting to hear
what Deborah suggested they do next.

“People built roads once, and roads were full of
cars and things. I saw it in the vision—so much movement and bustle!
People and cars, and huge cars and…and other things on wheels, everywhere! This
was an important port, so they must have had a way of crossing the river.” Her
voice was a monotonous murmur, like running water, and Jonah knew he was not
required to participate. He just listened.

“And not that stupid little rowboat either! There
must have been…Jonah!” Deborah called shrilly. “I can see it!”

The flash of Memory lit up the river from side to
side. Green water curled past reed-covered banks. A grassy meadow undulated
back from the far bank, rising to meet low woodland that climbed higher into
denser forest. The forest in turn climbed up the foothills of mountains that
shimmered pearl and pink in the morning light. Across the river, nine stone
arches soared, and the stone arches carried a road.

“Holy Mother, a bridge,” she gasped, but already
the stone was losing its solidity.

“Where?” Jonah asked in astonishment.

Deborah concentrated as hard as she could, harder
than she had ever concentrated before. Her head swam, river and roads blurring
in a confusion of colour. She staggered and Jonah grabbed her before she fell.
Stone piled on stone and arched out of the river waves, and Deborah slumped
back in his arms. Gently Jonah lowered her to the ground and laid her head in his
lap. The spinning world slowed, and the ground gradually stopped lurching. The
shimmering vision stabilised into real stone piers and graceful arches that in
the morning light would gleam golden and warm.

“There,” she said in a voice so faint as to be barely
audible. “Now we can cross.” Her eyes rolled, and her head fell back in a
faint.