Chapter 137: Fiadh's Bloodline

I came down the drop.

There was no point in doing anything else. He had seen me and he had called up to me and there was a barrel of powder on the far side of the pool and four wolves with their hands on their knives. I came down the stone and into the chamber and Ronan came after me and the priestess came after him and Oisin came last.

Callum watched us come.

"The drain," he said. "I have known about the drain for twenty years. It is in the keepers' plans and it is in the old maps and nobody has ever used it because it is two feet wide and full of water." He looked at me. "You are the first wolf to come down it in a hundred years."

"Put the taper down, Eamon," I said.

Eamon did not move.

He was standing by the barrel with the lamp in one hand and the taper in the other and his face was the face of a wolf who has not slept in three days.

"Luna," he said. "If you come one step closer I will light it."

"Then you will die in this chamber."

"I am sixty eight years old and I have been a keeper since I was twenty and I have nothing left to lose." Eamon's hand was shaking. "The spring is the last of it. If the spring goes there are no more binders and no more keepers and no more house in the north and everything I have done since I was twenty years old is for nothing."

"Everything you have done since you were twenty years old is for nothing," I said. "You have been keeping children in a house and breeding wolves like cattle and you have been doing it because an old man in a chair told you it was for the good of the north."

Eamon's hand shook.

"Put the taper down," I said. "And I will tell this Council that you came down here to stop him."

"You said that before."

"And you put the knife down and it worked." I came a step closer. "Eamon. There are twelve wolves in this town who walked out of that house last night and there are seven more in it and there is a woman in a room at the top who has been there for seventy years. You have been going up and down that house for forty years and you know every one of their names."

Eamon's face worked.

And then Callum moved.

He moved fast. He crossed the chamber and took the taper out of Eamon's hand and he had it in the lamp before anyone had moved.

"Nobody move," he said.

The chamber went still.

"Lord Callum," I said.

"Luna." Callum held the taper up. "You have been in this since the day you got off the bus and you have been winning since the day you got off the bus. You have a claim and a book and a seal and a ledger and twelve wolves in a square and a priestess and a Council that has lost its head." He looked at me. "And you have forgotten the one thing that matters."

"What is that?"

"The spring belongs to the north and the north belongs to the keepers and the keepers belong to the founding families." Callum smiled. "And I am a founding family. I have been a founding family since before your line came out of the mountains and there has never been a founder on this coast who did not answer to Ravenscar."

"There has never been a founder on this coast who answered to Ravenscar," I said. "You have been trying to marry into the line for two hundred years and both times the children died in infancy."

Callum's smile did not move.

"The children did not die in infancy," he said. "The children were taken north and the record was amended. And the second child was called Mairi and she is in a room at the top of the house of the north and she has been there for seventy years."

The chamber went silent.

"Then you knew," I said.

"I knew." Callum held the taper up. "I have known since I was twenty years old and my father told me on his deathbed. And I have been waiting forty years for the founders to come back and when they did they came back as a healer from Galway with a case of tins."

And then the priestess stepped forward.

She stepped forward with her staff in her hand and she put herself between Callum and the pool.

"Callum of Ravenscar," she said. "I am a priestess of the moon and I have been a priestess for fifty years and I have seen three marks in my life. And I am going to say a thing in this chamber and it is going to be in the record and the whole of the north is going to hear it."

"Say it," Callum said.

"The mark on that wolf's chest is the mark of the founder's line," the priestess said. "It is the old mark and it is the true mark and it has not been seen on this coast in a hundred and twenty years. She is the fourth of the line and she is the heir and I say it as a priestess of the moon and I will say it in front of any Council in this world."

The chamber was silent.

"And there is a thing you have forgotten," the priestess said. "The fourth does not answer to Ravenscar. The fourth breaks the chain. And the chain is the spring."

She turned round and put her staff into the pool.

The water went white.

It went white all at once and the light of it came up out of the pool and filled the chamber, and every mark on the walls lit up gold, and the spiral on the stone and the circle with the wolf's head in it and the four lines going out to the corners.

Callum dropped the taper.

The taper went into the water and it went out.

And in the chamber under the northern seat the chain broke.

I felt it. It went through me like a wave and it went out through the stone and up the keeper's stair and into the northern seat and out into the square and down to the harbour. And every false bond that had ever been made with the water of that spring came undone at once.

Every one.

And in the chamber, on the floor, Callum of Ravenscar put his hands on his chest and looked at me with an expression I had never seen on a living face.

"What have you done?" he said.

And down the keeper's stair, a long way above us, the whole of the northern seat began to scream.