The Dark Citadel (The Green Woman) (9 page)

Deborah’s
blood froze.
If she ran, she could perhaps reach the women’s wards before anyone else
understood what the two doctors were shouting about. But she couldn’t hurtle
through the entire infirmary like a mad bull without being stopped. The
imperious voice lashed at her again. Her brisk walk slowed and dragged to a
halt.

“Hey, will you turn round and look at me when I’m
speaking to you?”

Deborah turned and walked slowly back. The doctor
who had called her glared angrily, his hands on his hips.

“Since you’re here, there’s a job you can do first.
Come on then, girl, get a move on, or the secure ward will be awash in blood.”

Deborah stared helplessly at the stupid tray.

“And put down those bandages!” The doctor’s voice
rose with impatience. “A mop and bucket will be more use for what you have to
do.” He pointed to a door that opened into a utility room.

With trembling hands, Deborah grabbed a bucket from
beneath the sink and filled it with water.

“Disinfectant,” the voice barked, and muttered
something about filthy Ignorants.

Deborah picked up the plastic bottle next to the
tap and squirted a dose of evil-smelling gel into the bucket. The doctor
watched with a disdainful curl of his lip.

“Through the doors at the end of the ward. And be
quick, it’s like an abattoir in there.”

Deborah gulped as the doors opened briefly to let
out a white-coated figure spattered in blood and carrying what looked like a
meat cleaver.

“Sanitation,” one of the doctors shouted before
letting the doors swing closed behind him.

Fighting back a desire to be sick, Deborah walked
the length of the ward, trying not to listen to the moans and laboured
breathing of the sick men. Suddenly she felt it, taking her breath away, the
pulsating muttering of the shadows. It was here, inside! The evil that lurked
in the darkness was here, all about her.

Her feet dragged slowly, as in a nightmare, and she
stopped at the door to the secure ward. With a trembling hand she knocked and a
guard opened. She said nothing; her mouth was too dry. She just held up her mop
and bucket. The guard nodded and let her in.

The doctors and nurses left, leaving only the guard
and an orderly in a room that contained six beds, of which only two were
occupied. The blood had run almost to the door and formed a pool beneath one of
the beds where a man lay, attached by the wrists to the bed frame. One leg was
heavily bandaged from the knee downwards, the white of the dressing beginning
to stain pink at the end of the leg where his foot had been.

The man’s face was pouring with sweat, and his
breath rasped through clenched teeth. The idea that the anaesthetic had been at
best perfunctory made Deborah feel sick. The guard leaned over the bed and
peered with interest at the bloody stump. Deborah watched in horror as the
prisoner tried to raise himself on his forearms and kicked out with his good
leg.

The guard raised his hand menacingly. “You going to
be a good boy, now? Or shall we bring back the nice man with the cute little
axe? Well hold still then,” he shouted.

The prisoner raised his head and fixed the guard
with a look of pure hatred, but he lowered his leg and lay still. With a shiver
of revulsion, Deborah dipped her mop into the pool of blood. The orderly held
up a syringe and squirted a small quantity of liquid into the air, then grabbed
the man’s thigh and plunged the needle into it. The man hissed through clenched
teeth and tried to pull away. The orderly ignored him and turned to Deborah,
shaking his head in mock despair.

“They never think of other people when they run
away, do they? Nor the mess it makes for you women to clean up.” He winked and
said to the guard, “That’s my shift finished. He’ll be out cold in a minute or
two. Fancy a stroll outside to see Thor’s patrol? They’ve got in some siroya
confiscated from one of the Ignorants in the kitchens. They know how to brew
powerful booze, the Ignorants, I’ll give ’em that, and this stuff is the dog’s
bollocks!”

The guard chortled and called over his shoulder to
Deborah, “When you’ve finished clearing up in here, you take your bucket and
report to the supervisor of B ward. They’re a filthy lot in there, always
plenty of muck to clean up.”

Gurgling like a pair of drains, the two men left,
and Deborah went back to her grisly job. The prisoner’s breathing grew
gradually more regular, and he stopped tossing from side to side. The walls of
the ward seemed to vibrate with an audible pulse, or perhaps it was the racing
of Deborah’s heart. She dabbed at the splashes under the bed and moved round to
the other side. Only then did she notice that the prisoner in the next bed was
watching her. She ducked her head and mopped vigorously, clattering the mop in
the bucket. She could feel the prisoner’s eyes boring into the back of her
head, and her movements grew more energetic, more flustered, until, leaning a
little too far to reach under the bed, her headscarf slipped to one side
revealing a lock of red hair.

The prisoner shifted over onto his right elbow and
gasped in a whisper, “Deborah?”

Deborah started and almost dropped her mop. The
prisoner sat up straight, his eyes wide with astonishment.

“I was right. It is you!”

She had been recognized! Now he would call the
guard and they would take her back to her cell, or worse. She swung round to
face the man, her mouth open ready to plead with him to be silent, when the
familiar blinding flash of a vision exploded around her. The man was no longer
in a hospital bed but leaning over a child’s cot, his arms outstretched to pick
up a child, a little girl who was bouncing up and down, laughing. The man was
smiling, and the child raised her hand to touch the bristles on his cheek. The
child was Deborah.

She stared at the prisoner, stared at his hollow,
malnourished cheeks, at his straw-dry, russet brown hair. His blue eyes were
like none she had encountered before…except possibly in a far-off memory.

“Father?” she cried in a tiny, little girl’s voice
that had been hers the last time she called that name. “Father, is it really
you?”

“Ten years,” the man said, his voice breaking and
tears filling his eyes, “but I knew I would see you again. For an instant I
thought you were your mother, you look so like her. I was
half-expecting—” He shook his head to clear his eyes. “But this is what
she meant. This is why I am here.”

Deborah caught hold of his outstretched hand
timidly, scarcely daring to touch it. The dam broke, and with a great cry of
relief and joy, she threw her arms around his neck. There were a million
questions on her lips. Was he ill, maimed even? Where was her mother? How could
they get to her? What had her parents done? But as she struggled to ask them
all at once, her father put his finger to his lips. They both cast their eyes
in the direction of the prisoner in the other bed, but he was snoring in a
deep, drug-induced sleep.

“We haven’t much time. In all these years, I have
prepared what I had to say to you. If there’s any time left you can ask me your
questions.” Her father took a deep breath as Deborah plumped down on the bed beside
him, squirming but silent. “You must go to your mother. She is waiting for you,
Outside. You must find the way yourself, unlock your memory, find your way back
before the war, when the Hemisphere was still just a brilliant idea, remember
Providence when it was just a huge building-site. Find the door the workmen
used, that they forgot to block up when the Hemisphere was finished. It is
still there, but forgotten.”

“But where—?”

He placed a finger on her lips.
 
His eyes had a haunted look, as if he
too could feel the presence of evil all about them, undermining the foundations
of the city. He frowned, struggling to remember. He sighed and shook his head.
“It was too long ago and I am too tired,” he murmured. “But it is there, she
found it, your mother, in the wasteland behind the Ignorant quarter. Ask their
old ones, they have only ever half-belonged to Providence; they stick close to
what they remember of before. Go quickly and go silently. They say the Serpent
Witch is closing in, and I don’t know whether to be afraid or to rejoice.”

“Who is—?”

Her father frowned. “Who knows for sure? Maybe
Abaddon, the evil Serpent. Maybe the good Green Woman; probably both. The
Elders fear everything beyond the confines of Providence. They know the stories
the Ignorants tell about the Green Woman who will free them from bondage. They
know about Abaddon, the angel of the bottomless pit, king of the demons and the
desert chaos. The desert crawls with evil, the creatures of the demon king. But
more than Abaddon, the Elders fear the Green Woman.”

He paused and Deborah felt excitement surging from
the pit of her stomach to set her toes, her fingertips, and the roots of her
hair tingling. “But why? I don’t understand. How could anything be worse than
the king of the demons?”

“Because, dear daughter, the Elders must choose
between one or the other, and their Wise God has more in common with Abaddon
than they care to admit. The Green Woman is the descendant of Mother Eve, and
she is the keeper of the Memory of the world. When she releases the memories of
all that was good and magical, they will sweep away the Elders and their
corrupt regime. The world Outside is changing. She is ordering the chaos.” His
voice dropped to a reverent whisper. “Your mother escaped because she has the Memory,
Deborah. She must be the Green Woman—no other explanation is possible.”

“Mother?”

Her father nodded. “And you must have inherited the
Memory, too.”

“Me?”

“You, your mother, her mother too. It’s in the
bloodline, from Eve, the first mother. Your mother was the first to understand
what her visions meant. The others before her probably thought they were mad.”

“So, the things I see, they’re…real? Memories of
things I’ve never seen?”

“Bright, growing things? Green places, sunlight,
people? Trees, clouds, birds?”

Deborah’s eyes opened wide as realisation dawned.

Her father’s face lit up with an eager smile. “They
are all memories, memories you can make real.” The brief smile faded. “You must
find your mother, Deborah. She needs your help; the Memory is a heavy burden.
Help her to bring back the memories of the world as it should have been, and
destroy this rotten regime. Go now, before the Elders use you as a hostage to
stop your mother’s work.”

“They call me
Serpentspawn
,
Father,” she whispered.

Her father reached out a hand and gently touched
her face. He shook his head to clear the tears that misted his eyes. “I’m
sorry, little girl, I’m sorry the plan didn’t work. When the Elders found out
about your mother, we tried to leave, tried to get Outside, across the desert
and to the mountains. But we failed, you and I. Only your mother managed to
escape, with the unborn baby she was carrying.”

He lay back with a groan of pain, struggling to
catch his breath. Deborah waited, breathless, and gripped his hand tightly. She
struggled to clarify her fuzzy early memories, her mother’s bulky shape, the
slow way she walked that used to make the child Deborah boil over with
impatience.

“What baby?” She watched his face expectantly,
waiting for him to speak again. But he just lay there, white and drained. It
was all too much for her to take in. “But why.... but how...where will...?” she
stammered.

Her father touched her cheek again and smiled. “You
will know the way when you find it, just use your memory. You will remember
things you have never even seen before. Just try, learn to know yourself.”

“But why can’t we go together? Why can’t you come
with me?”

He shook his head sadly. “I have been ill, so ill I
thought I would die. So ill they brought me here.” He gave Deborah a rueful
smile. “I am probably the only prisoner in the One-Gated House the Elders can’t
afford to let die. But I am still too weak to walk far. We would be caught
before we even left this ward.” Deborah started to protest, but her father put
his finger to her lips again. “Time is too short; you must leave now. The
Elders are looking for you. I have heard the whispered rumours. They are
preparing something, something monstrous. Evil is already here, I can feel it.”

“All the more reason then to—“

“Soon, I promise. There are strange times coming,
Deborah. The Ignorants have felt the change. The people are waking from their
trance.” His eyes shone. “Only yesterday they brought in a woman for sedation
who was insisting she be given back the son who was taken from her years ago.
Imagine if all the mothers rose up and claimed their rights!”

“But what about us, you, me, and Mother?” Deborah
almost screamed, completely indifferent to what the other citizens of
Providence thought about anything. “Are you sure Mother is still alive? Did she
have the baby?”

Her father’s face clouded over. “All I know is the
Elders are afraid, and they want to keep hold of her daughter as a hostage.
Your mother must be alive. The world is hurtling towards the abyss if she is
dead.”