Chapter 135: The Priestess of the Moon

The bell was the town bell and it was ringing because a wolf had come down from the north road.

I went out into the corridor and Ilsa was there with her shawl half on and her face set.

"Luna," she said. "There is a woman at the north gate and she has come on foot and she has a staff and a grey cloak and she says she is a priestess of the moon."

"A priestess."

"There has not been a moon priestess on this coast in fifty years." Ilsa looked at me. "She says she was summoned."

"Summoned by who?"

"She would not say. She said she would say it to the founder."

I went down to the north gate.

The woman was old and she was tall and she had a staff of black wood in her hand and a grey cloak over her shoulders. Her hair was white and it was braided and there was a silver crescent on a cord round her neck.

"Fiadh," she said. "Founder of the line. I have been walking for eleven days."

"Who summoned you?"

"An old man with a white beard and a bad memory who has been sending me letters for three months." She smiled. "His name is Padraig and he is my cousin and he has been telling me about a gold wolf in the south."

I stood at the north gate.

"Come in," I said.

We took her up to the room at the top of the east stair and Padraig was there and he stood up when she came in and put his hand out and she took it.

"You took your time," he said.

"I have been walking for eleven days and I am seventy six years old." She sat down by the fire and put her staff against the wall. "Now. Let me see the mark."

I pulled the collar of my shirt aside.

The priestess looked at the silver crescent on my chest for a long time.

And then she did a thing I did not expect.

She got down off the chair and knelt in front of me.

"Priestess," I said. "Get up."

"I have been a priestess of the moon for fifty years and I have seen three marks in my life," she said. "One was a false mark on a wolf who died of it. One was a true mark on a wolf who was killed in the north. And one is the mark of the founder's line that has not been seen on this coast in a hundred and twenty years." She looked up at me. "You are the fourth. The books say the fourth would come with a gold wolf and a silver mark and a stone in her pocket and you are all three."

I got her up off the floor.

"Sit down," I said. "And tell me what the books say."

The priestess sat down.

"The books say the founder's line was made to hold the old rites," she said. "Naming and the laying of the dead and the binding of a mate and the breaking of a bond. The first of the old blood was a healer and he made the rites and his daughter carried them and her daughter after her. And the line has been broken three times and every time it has been mended by a wolf who came out of the north with a gold wolf and a silver mark."

"And the fourth?"

"The fourth was written in the books as the one who would end the keepers." The priestess looked at me. "There is a line in the old book and it says, the fourth will come and the fourth will break the chain and the chain will be the spring."

Ronan came and stood beside me.

"The spring," he said.

"The spring under the northern seat." The priestess looked at him. "The spring is not a spring. The spring is the source of the rites and it has been there since before the Council and it is the thing the keepers have been guarding for two hundred years. A false bond cannot be made without the spring and a false bond cannot be broken without it. And a keeper who wants to keep the binders in this world will do anything to keep the spring."

"Do anything," I said.

"Anything." The priestess looked at me. "Luna. I have been walking for eleven days and I have been hearing things on the road. There is a keeper called Eamon who has been going up and down this coast since the trial and he has been buying wolves and boats and powder."

"Powder?"

"Powder." The priestess's mouth was a hard line. "I have been a priestess for fifty years and I know what a wolf buys when he is going to burn a thing and not fight for it."

I stood in the room at the top of the east stair.

"He is going to destroy the spring," I said.

"He is going to destroy the spring." The priestess looked at me. "If the spring goes, every rite goes with it. The bindings and the breakings and the old marks and the marks that were made before the Council. And there will be no more founder wolves and no more gold wolves and no more fourth of the line."

Ronan turned round.

"Then we go down to the spring now," he said. "We go down tonight and we put a guard on it and we do not let Eamon near it."

The priestess looked at him.

"Alpha," she said. "The spring is under the northern seat and the northern seat is full of keepers and Council wolves and a Ravenscar lord with a flag on the roof. You cannot put a guard on it tonight."

"Then what do we do?"

The priestess looked at me.

"We do what the book says," she said. "The fourth will break the chain and the chain will be the spring. We go down to the spring and we open it and we break the chain and we do it before Eamon gets there."

I stood in the room.

"Then we go down tonight," I said.

And down in the corridor, a bell began to ring.

It was not the town bell this time. It was the bell of the northern seat and it was ringing the alarm.