The Dark Citadel (The Green Woman) (17 page)

A pair of eyes watched until the clouds of the
lingering darkness hid the creatures and their prey from view. The watcher
gazed across the river that remained dark and impenetrable, but beyond, colours
were growing out of the shadows. Trees appeared with fluttering leaves, and
beneath their branches, something moved. The watcher heard the faintest
stamping of horses’ hooves, and with a thrill that twisted entrails into a
constricting knot, knew there could be no doubt—they were on their way.
And there was nowhere to hide.

They had been
walking since
nightfall and the shadows, in the darkest hour before dawn, were dense and
still. Deborah could make out nothing beyond the pale sandy path that led
through the overarching rocks of the narrow canyon, but something had shifted
in the quality of the shadows. They were too dense, too solid. The hairs at the
back of her neck rose and her scalp tingled.
 
The air quivered as if an unseen presence was about to
shatter the stillness, and fear lay cold and heavy in the pit of her stomach.

Without a sound, the leading pup slunk back to
Jonah, belly to the ground, ears flat against his skull. The rest of the pack
stopped and melted into the scrubby bushes. Jonah gripped Deborah’s arm, and
she could feel an echo of her fear through his fingertips.

“What is it?” she whispered.

Jonah put a finger to his lips and pointed to where
their path climbed through a narrow pass cut into a rocky escarpment. As
Deborah peered through the dim light, the shadows that gathered in the gap
between the cliffs seemed to shift and spread.

Jonah reached over his shoulder and silently slid
an arrow from the quiver slung at his back. He nocked the arrow and raised the
bow, pulling back the bowstring as he tried to take aim at something he could
not see. The pups cringed silently behind them, huddled together, too
frightened to even whimper. The darkness advanced, and Deborah involuntarily
took a step backwards.

“Jonah,” she breathed and shrank close to his side.

He drew himself up straighter and swallowed the
last of his fear. The hand that drew the bowstring taut ceased trembling; the
arrow pointed straight into the heart of the darkness.

The quivering of the air shattered the stillness
with a shriek of triumph or pain, and the darkness swelled—a
thundercloud. Air whistled through long pinion feathers and two burning eyes
opened in a swirling, shrieking cloud of black feathers that plunged towards
Deborah. She screamed as clawed hands reached down to her out of the shadowy
mass, and in the charred and twisted face, a lipless mouth opened in a snarl.
Or was it to speak?

Her gaze plunged into the inhuman eyes, and she
felt a surge of power or understanding, that linked her to the creature. She
had no need of a weapon, did not even need to point a finger. Something called
out to her from the demon’s depths, and she reached out to grasp it. Power
sizzled and unseen chains burst. She cried out, not knowing what she had
destroyed or created.

The thing rasped out a hoarse cry and crumpled.
Jonah adjusted his aim and, pushing Deborah roughly to one side, let the arrow
fly into the deformed face. But as the demon fell, still screaming, to the
ground before them, Deborah knew the arrow had not been necessary.

The shadows dispersed and revealed a heap of dark
feathers and furrowed, fire-blackened skin that heaved and threshed in an
effort to rise. The demon lifted its head painfully from the ground, the fletching
of Jonah’s arrow, a tuft of bloody feathers, protruding from the base of its
neck. Deborah, with a pang of guilt, knew the physical wound was nothing
compared with what she had broken. The power had leapt out unbidden, and she
had changed the creature somehow, whether it was greater or lesser than before
she could not tell.

Blood seeped around the wound, and the demon’s
breath strained as it hissed from the punctured organ. Jonah nocked another
arrow and drew his bow, but along with the shadows, the sense of evil also
seemed to lift, and Deborah took a tentative step towards the wounded creature.
She almost stopped when the red eyes flicked open, but their expression of
helpless despair gave her the courage to move closer.

“What are you doing?” Jonah grabbed her arm in
fright. “Don’t touch it! Can’t you see it’s not dead yet?”

“Samariel.” The creature’s voice was hoarse and
low. “Not
it.
” The words came out
with difficulty, using up precious strength, and blood frothed at the corner of
the blackened lips.

Deborah felt the hatred and the anger of the
creature pour out and blow away in the desert wind. The evil that gave the
creature its strength had scattered like black rags, and the demon did nothing
to hold it back, letting its life force ebb with the dissipation of the black
cloud. Deborah’s fear ebbed away too, and she knelt down in the sand. She heard
the quick, anxious intake of breath as Jonah reached out to grab her shoulder,
but she took no notice. Her gaze was deep in the glowing eyes of the demon who
called himself Samariel.

“There is nothing to fear,” he hissed, glaring at
Jonah. “She gave me the strength to break my bonds, and I have let him go, the
black fiend. But he has taken my life with him. I am worthless, empty. Unless…”
The demon reached out a hand to Deborah. “You broke my chains, now give me back
what I was! You can. The aura surrounds you. Please,” the dying voice implored.

Deborah was filled with pity at the supplication in
the fallen angel’s ravaged face.

“Please!”

She reached out a hand to the angel’s forehead.

“No! Princess, don’t touch it, you don’t know…”

His voice died as Deborah laid the tips of her
still trembling fingers between the heavy brows. “Samariel? What were you?”

The brow creased with pain, the burn scars crept
and contracted like thick scaly worms.

“We…I was a creature of the upper air. I fell,
plunged into the eternal flames, following a mad, rotten dream. I want…to go
back, not into the dark fire. Send me back to the light. You can.”

Deborah smoothed the wrinkles with her fingers, and
the carbonised flesh changed, glowing as if with an inner light. The night
shadows were no longer about them, and Deborah had to shade her eyes from the
brilliance that grew into a climbing path, spiralling upwards until it was lost
in a searing ball of light. Beneath her soothing fingers the muscles of the
ruined face relaxed into a radiant smile.

With a tremendous effort, the angel turned his eyes
to Deborah, eyes in which the red fire had died leaving a calm blue-green
light. With his last strength he breathed, “Samariel walks the path of light
once again.” The head sank, and the light in the sea-coloured eyes dimmed.

Two tears dropped onto the blackened cheeks before
Deborah turned away and wiped her eyes. “What did I do?” she whispered to the
silent Jonah.

“You gave him back his past,” he said.

The night
ended
and Jonah found them a place to hide from the light. He was still shocked
at what he had seen Deborah do, shocked and excited. He remembered the voice
that had drawn him back to the citadel to wait, the green magic that had
protected him from the desert demons. He had known as soon as he saw her,
standing like a dummy in the path of the mutant dog, that this was the girl he
had been waiting for.

It had seemed simple at first. The voice of the
green magic, the comforting mother-voice, had sent him to protect someone,
someone important. He had accepted the role willingly. That was what his years
of wandering in the wasteland had prepared him for. But the girl, the dummy
from Providence, was more than he had imagined. Much more. He remembered the
touch of her hand. It never left him. She had bound him to her, and all he
wanted was for the touch to stay with him, to grow deeper and stronger. It
became his future, his life. Nothing else mattered.

He watched her now, as she sat, thinking about what
she had done. He could read the expression in her face. It was as clear as
river water. She was as shocked as he was, but she was exhilarated and proud
too. He wondered if she felt the touch of his hand still, or if it had faded
with the bolt of power that broke the demon’s chains.

Deborah sat with her arms wrapped around her knees,
her face aglow. She tingled all over with her awakening powers, and the
increasing conviction that she would be able to share her mother’s work.
Whatever it was. On an impulse she reached out and took Jonah’s hand.

“Tell me about her,” she asked, suddenly realising
how little she knew of her own mother. “Tell me what exactly having the Memory means.
My father said the Memory had passed to me too, and that I was in danger in
Providence. He also said I could help my mother. But he didn’t explain what the
danger was, or how I could help. The Ignorants, sorry, the Dananns, know more
about the Memory than I do.”

Jonah held the hand, letting its warmth course
through him, and he knew Deborah too felt the link that bound them together. He
smiled wryly. “The Ignorants are the most inappropriately named creatures I
ever came across.”

Deborah laughed, a frank, open laugh. As Jonah
stared down at their hands, Deborah pulled hers away. He still felt a tingling
of the skin where their fingers had touched.

“The Queen is using the Memory of the world to
rebuild it as it ought to have been,” he said, with a slight tremor of emotion
in his voice, “and she is doing it alone. Sometimes she must be afraid. Perhaps
she needs you to shoulder some of the burden.”

Deborah’s thoughts were focused on her mother and
their joint powers. She did not notice how Jonah refused to meet her gaze and
stared at his hands as if he yearned to take something in them. She could not
see the longing in his eyes.

But Jonah was first and foremost her protector and
guide, and an unpleasant thought had struck him. He forced his turbulent emotions
to be still. “Princess?” His expression was pensive. “Your mother escaped from
Providence, and Abaddon is doing everything in his power to find her.”

“I know that,” Deborah interrupted impatiently.

“Well then? You escaped too, didn’t you? And he
must know by now. He has spies everywhere. Like Samariel.”

Deborah understood the concern in Jonah’s face, and
her eyes widened. She thought of the winged demons who haunted the desert
nights and the clammy, whispering shadows that lurked in every unlit corner of
Providence. Fear of those shadows that filled the streets after dark and seeped
under doors and up unlit stairwells, came back with a violence that made her
start physically. But she forced the fear back and locked it away. That was
behind her now. Now she knew where she was going.

“Then the sooner I find Mother the better. And you
promise you’ll come with me?” There was a determination in the question that
made it more like a statement.

“We’ll take you to the river. Beyond you will find
more friends than enemies.” Jonah hung his head in confusion. “I would go with
you to the mountains, to the Queen herself, but the pups will never cross the
river.”

“Oh.” Deborah looked crestfallen.

“Their parents are in the desert with the Iron
Horde. The pups never stray far from their scent.”

Deborah sighed. “Perhaps they’ll change their minds
when we get there,” she said finally, confident of her powers of persuasion.

“Perhaps,” Jonah said, and this time his eyes
betrayed the longing in his heart. “But right now, it’s time to sleep.”

The pups curled up into tight balls of soft fur
with only their noses showing. Deborah snuggled against them, wrenching off her
headscarf, and shaking the sand out of it. Her hair fell about her shoulders
and lay lightly across her cheek. She fell immediately into a deep sleep.

Jonah watched as the unseen sun rose in a sky hung
with veils of thick cloud, transfixed by the beauty of that deep red hair. He
had seen the same colour before, in the autumn leaves of the trees on the far
bank of the Great River. Every autumn he and the pups would go to the river to
watch the trees on the other side of the water as they changed from green to
yellow, to gold and finally to red. Now he could see that the trees had been
taking on the colour of Deborah’s hair.

Gently, with slightly trembling fingers, he touched
the fiery strands and moved them away from her cheek. Her eyelashes fluttered
for a moment, she gave a sigh, and settled back into her dreams. Jonah held his
breath. He had never seen anything so beautiful. Beautiful enough to die for.

* * * *

At nightfall, Jonah woke Deborah and presented her with something to eat.
She looked suspiciously at the pale slivers on the flat stone.

“Holy Mother, that looks like soggy bandages. What
on earth is it?”

“Lizard. Sorry it’s cold, but I daren’t make a
fire. Too risky.”

Deborah stared in disbelief. “Not only is it
reptile filets,” she grimaced, “it’s
raw
reptile filets!”

Jonah flicked his hair out of his eyes and raised
his hands in a shrug. “Sorry. If I’d known you were such a gourmet I wouldn’t
have let the pups have all the innards.”

Deborah gingerly picked up a piece of the meat. “Is
there any salt?”

Jonah laughed and squeezed a thick-skinned fruit
over the food. “The juice is okay, but the pips are like pebbles.”

The sound of Jonah’s laughter echoed in Deborah’s
head, stirring memories. In her loveless home within the grey confines of a
loveless city, she had often cried herself to sleep. Sometimes her mother’s
voice whispered to her and a soft, invisible hand wiped away her tears.
Sometimes a gale of throaty laughter had made her smile in her loneliness. She
had often wondered who offered her the comfort of his good humour. She had
never thought the weeping child of her small-girl dreams could be the same as
the boy who laughed as if the world was full of happiness. She looked into
Jonah’s eyes and for a moment thought the brightness was clouded with sadness.
He grinned back at her and the impression, the cloud, vanished.

* * * *

Dusty day followed the wearisome trudge of dusty night, and both Deborah
and Jonah felt the strain. Despite their fatigue, they found it impossible to
adapt to sleeping during the day and spent most of the daylight hours awake,
starting at every shadow and rubbing their eyes sore, straining into the
shifting desert sand clouds. It was difficult for Deborah to pick out any
changes at all in the everlasting desert wilderness. But they left the ponds of
poisonous slime behind after the first few days, and Jonah assured her,
pointing out clustered plants around a damp hollow, that they were not far now
from the Great River.

As always, the pups trotted in front at a steady
lope, their bushy tails held low. One night, in the darkest hour before dawn,
they stopped, hackles raised. As Jonah and Deborah listened to the throbbing
darkness, they heard a shriek, like the call of a giant bird. The call was
answered, again and again.

“What is it?” Deborah whispered.

“Wyverns hunting.”

“Wyverns?”

“Some people, the desert wanderers, call them grave
worms.”

Jonah clicked his tongue to warn the pups and
pulled Deborah beneath a clump of spiny bushes where they huddled together, not
daring to breathe. The air turned icy cold, rushing over their faces with the
beating of giant wings. The wind passed but they were aware of a presence
hovering above them. Their flesh crept in revulsion, and an icy trickle of fear
made its way down their backs. They could see nothing, but they could hear a
reptilian hissing and the sound of sniffing. The steady flapping of broad wings
sent waves of fetid air to rattle the bushes of their hiding place.

Deborah felt sick with terror.
This can’t be right,
she thought in a panic;
this can’t be where it ends.

Jonah pulled Deborah down with him into the sand.
“Close your eyes,” he hissed. “Whatever happens, don’t look up.”

Suddenly, there was the swoosh of displaced air,
and a piercing bird-shriek was followed by a cry that might have been the
beginning of a bark and ended in a scream of agony. Jonah drew Deborah’s head
into the shelter of his shoulder, grinding his clenched teeth. The cold air
quivered, viscous and evil smelling, and the presence departed. They lay,
clinging together until the darkness began to break up.

* * * *

“What is a wyvern?” Deborah’s voice trembled. “I mean, what does it look
like?”

“Ugly. A great winged serpent,” Jonah’s voice too
was unsteady, “two-footed and venomous. It got one of the pups, the filthy
vermin! They smell warm blood; they see body heat. Nothing escapes them.” He
shook his head to clear the nascent tears and tried a feeble smile. “It’ll be
light soon, we should find somewhere better to hide.”

But he didn’t move, just carried on gazing at
Deborah’s face. With her finger, she touched away the damp beneath his eyes
then kissed the place where the tears had been. As they got slowly to their
feet, Deborah slipped her hand shyly into his.