Chapter 159: Padraig's Return

The horn was a boat horn and it came from the harbour.

Eamon stood up.

"That will be the keeper," he said.

I crossed the room and put myself between him and Ronan.

"Get out," I said.

"Luna. I have been in this house for two days at the request of the Council and I have been reading to the Alpha and I have done nothing wrong."

"You have been in this house for two days and the Alpha has stopped eating and stopped speaking and you have been sitting in a chair by his fire with a book in your hands." I came a step closer. "Get out of this room."

Eamon looked at me for a long moment.

Then he put the book down on the chair and went out.

I turned round.

Ronan was still sitting on the edge of the bed with his hands in his lap.

"Ronan," I said. "Look at me."

He lifted his head.

His eyes came up and they found mine and they were the pale green they had always been and they were not there at all.

"Fiadh," he said.

"I am here."

"You are in the north."

"I was in the north. Nessa came and found me in a cove and told me you had stopped eating." I sat down on the bed beside him. "Ronan. What has he done to you?"

He looked at me.

"He read to me," he said.

"Every day?"

"Every day. In the morning and in the afternoon and in the evening." Ronan's voice was flat. "He read me a book about the founder's line and the fourth generation and the woman in the room at the top of the house. And every day he read a little further and every day the book said a thing that was true."

I sat on the bed.

"What did the book say?" I said.

"It said the founder who breaks the chain does not come out of the cellar the same wolf who went in." Ronan looked at the floor. "It said the fourth generation is the last generation and there is nothing after it. It said the founder's line ends with the wolf who breaks the pact and the wolf who breaks the pact ends in a room at the top of a house in the north."

I put my hand on his face.

"Ronan."

"He read it to me for two days and I sat in this room and I could not find the thing that was wrong with it." He looked up. "And then I stopped eating because I could not find the thing that was wrong with it."

I sat on the edge of the bed.

"Ronan," I said. "There is a thing that is wrong with it."

"Tell me."

"It is not in the book." I took his face in both hands. "The book is a book the keepers wrote and the keepers wrote it two hundred years ago and they wrote it so that a founder who breaks the chain will sit in a room and stop eating."

Ronan looked at me.

"The founder's line does not end with me," I said. "I have a pack and a coast and a mate and twelve wolves who came out of the house of the north and seven more who came out at midnight. And there is a woman of ninety one in a chair in the pack house and there is a priestess in the north and there is a rogue king on the coast road who has been holding a border for a fortnight." I put my forehead against his. "The line does not end with me. The keepers wrote that so that it would."

Ronan sat on the bed.

And then he did a thing I had not seen him do in a fortnight.

He cried.

He put his face in his hands and he cried the way a wolf cries when he has been holding it for a fortnight and has finally been given leave to put it down, and I sat on the bed with my arms round him and I did not say anything at all.

When it was done he wiped his face on his sleeve.

"Fiadh," he said.

"I am here."

"Eamon."

"Eamon is gone. He went out of the door when I told him to." I looked at him. "Ronan. Padraig is not in the northern isles. Padraig has been with me since the border."

Ronan looked up.

"Then who was in this room for two days?" he said.

I stood up.

"Somebody who has been reading a keeper's book to an Alpha who has been declared a rogue," I said. "And somebody who knew that if the Alpha stopped eating and stopped speaking there would be nobody on this coast to hold it when the Council came."

And the door opened and Padraig came in with his bag in his hand and his old face grey.

"Healer," he said. "I came up from the harbour. There was a keeper on the stairs and he went out of the gate and down the road."

"Let him go." I turned round. "Padraig. The book. The one Eamon was reading. What is it?"

Padraig picked it up off the chair and opened it and read a page.

And then he sat down heavily on the chair.

"Healer," he said. "This is a keeper's book and it is two hundred years old and it is the book my grandmother had. I have been looking for this book for forty years."

"What does it say?"

"It says what I told you in the mill and it says more." Padraig turned the pages. "It says the chain can be broken by a willing founder's mark and the pact can be broken in the cellar of the house of the north. And it says there is a third thing and I have never read it before."

"What third thing?"

"The reversal." Padraig looked up. "Healer. A false bond that has been broken can be reversed. The bond that came out of your mate in the Council chamber and went into you and out of you into the pool can be brought back."

The room was quiet.

"Bring it back?" I said.

"Bring it back into a wolf and break it again and this time break it clean. It is the only way to undo a bond that was tied to a life." Padraig looked at me. "And it needs a founder-blooded wolf's willing mark."

I stood in the room.

"Padraig," I said. "That is the thing we have been looking for since the cave."

"It is the thing we have been looking for since the cave and it was in a book on a chair in a room in a house on this coast for two days while a keeper read it to an Alpha." Padraig closed the book. "And there is a thing I have to tell you and I have been carrying it since I came up the hill."

"Tell me."

Padraig looked at me.

"Soren is not dead," he said. "The rider was wrong. And there is a boat on the water and it is going north with a keeper on it and a book and a barrel of powder."

The room was silent.

"The spring," I said.

"The spring," Padraig said. "He is going to destroy the spring."