Chapter 131: The Truth About the Debt

Ronan was alive.

I got my hands on his chest and there was a heartbeat under them and it was weak and it was fast and it was not steady but it was there.

"Padraig," I said. "Somebody get Padraig."

"He is at the top of the stair," Oisin said. "He would not stay behind. He is sitting on the top step with his stick."

"Then get him down here."

Ilsa went.

I got Ronan's shirt open and looked at the wound. It was the same wound. The same shoulder, the same clean deep cut, and the silver was in it and the blood coming out of it was dark and it was not closing.

I put my hands on it and pressed.

"Ronan," I said. "Ronan, answer me."

His eyes came open.

"Fiadh," he said.

"I am here."

"You have got your healer face on."

I laughed, and it came out wrong, and I put my forehead against his.

"You have been stabbed in the same shoulder twice in a fortnight," I said. "You are going to have to stop doing this."

"It is the only shoulder I have got."

I sat on the floor of the chamber under the northern seat with my hands on his wound and the lamp on the table and the pool going black at the far end of it, and Ilsa came down the stair with Padraig and Padraig came and knelt down beside us and looked at the wound and did not say anything.

"Padraig," I said.

"Healer," he said. "It is the same wound and it has not closed and it is not going to close. Not with comfrey and not with honey and not with the green tin."

"Then what will close it?"

"The spring."

I looked at the black pool at the far end of the chamber.

"That is the spring," I said.

"That is the spring." Padraig put his hand on my shoulder. "Healer. You have a false bond in your chest that is cold and a true bond on your heart that has gone quiet. The spring will close the silver and it will take the false bond out of you and put it in the water. And there is a thing in the water already that is older than the Council and it will hold it."

I got up.

"Then get him to the water," I said.

We got him up.

It took four of us and it took a long time and Ronan did not make a sound. We got him across the chamber to the lip of the pool and we laid him down on the stone and I got my hands under his shoulders and pulled him to the edge.

The water was black and it was still and it did not smell of anything at all.

"Fiadh," Padraig said. "You have to go in with him."

"I know."

"Both of you. The bond is between you and it will not come out of one without the other." He took my arm. "Healer. Listen to me. When the water takes the false bond it will take the true bond with it if the true bond is not held. You have to hold it. You have to hold the true bond with everything you have got while the water takes the other one."

"How?"

"With your hands on him and your mark on his chest and your mind on the bond." Padraig looked at me. "And with the wolf."

I looked at the water.

"Right then," I said.

I got into the pool.

It was cold. It was colder than the sea in winter and colder than the rocks below the headland and it came up to my waist and then to my chest and then to my shoulders, and I got my arms under Ronan and pulled him in after me.

He gasped.

"I know," I said. "I know. Hold on to me."

He got his good arm round my neck.

I put my hand flat on the silver mark on his chest and I put my other hand flat on the silver mark on my own and I said the words Padraig had taught me in the cave and I held the true bond with everything I had.

And the water took the false bond.

I felt it go. It came up out of the bottom of my chest and it went out through my hands and into the water, and it was cold and it was grey and it pulled at me as it went and it tried to take the true bond with it.

I held on.

I held on to Ronan and I held on to the mark and I held on to the bond, and the water pulled and pulled and I did not let go.

I do not know how long it took.

When it was over I was on my knees in the shallows with Ronan in my arms and my chest empty and my whole body shaking and the water black and still behind me.

Ronan moved.

He put his hand up and put it on my face.

"Fiadh," he said.

"I am here."

"Your hands are shaking."

"I know."

"You are crying."

"I know." I put my forehead against his. "The wound. Ronan. Look at the wound."

He looked.

The wound in his shoulder was closed. The skin was whole and it was clean and there was not a mark on it.

And on my chest, the silver crescent was still there, and it was bright.

Padraig came down to the edge of the pool.

"Healer," he said. "It is done."

"It is done."

"Then get out of the water before you freeze."

We got out of the water.

And in the chamber under the northern seat, on the floor by the empty chair, there was a thing I had not seen before. It was a box. It was a small box and it had fallen out of the blanket when Soren stood up.

I picked it up.

It was iron and it was worked all over with spirals and there was a hole in the bottom of it.

It was the same box. The same size and the same spirals and the same hole.

And inside it there was a folded paper.

I opened it.

It was my mother's handwriting.

And at the top of it, in a hand that was not steady, she had written: the debt was not for money. The debt was for you.