Chapter 176: The Rogue King's Fall

The horn was a Council horn and it came from the square and it came three times and stopped.

I knelt on the floor of the room at the top of the house of the north with Bran's head in my lap and his blood on my hands and I did not move for a long time.

The room was quiet. The four Council guards were on the floor around us and the window that did not open was open and there was glass on the boards and a cold wind coming in through it. Bran's sword was on the floor by the bed with blood on the blade and his coat was open and there was a wound in his chest that had gone through the mended cloth and the old shirt underneath and had not stopped.

Ronan got up off the bed.

"Fiadh," he said.

"He is dead."

"I know."

"He held the door." I looked up. "He was a rogue for thirty years and he bought wolves and boats and he waited for a seat and he held the door."

Ronan knelt down beside me.

"He held the door," he said.

I sat on the floor with the rogue king's head in my lap and the four Council guards on the floor around me and the window that did not open open behind me and the wind coming in.

I have been a healer for ten years and I have lost patients. I have lost a miner in a cold room in the north and a fisherman on a slip in the rain and an old woman in a rented room in Galway with a case of tins beside the bed. I have never once lost a wolf who died for me.

And then I got up.

"Padraig," I said. "The stone."

Padraig came across the room with his stick and his bag.

"The mark is made," I said. "Ronan is whole. And there is a door in the cellar under this house and there is a thing behind it and I am going to close it."

Padraig looked at me.

"Healer," he said. "There is a thing in the book about the closing."

"Tell me."

"The door behind the second pool was made by the first of the old blood and it was made to be opened by a founder of the blood and it was made to be closed by the same." Padraig looked at me. "And it takes three things. A willing founder's mark. A wolf who has been bound and is whole. And the stone."

I put my hand into my pocket and took out the stone.

It was warm.

"Then we go down," I said.

We went down.

The house of the north was quiet. The twelve were in the room at the bottom of the house with a Council guard on the door and the seven were above them and there was a lamp burning in the corridor and nobody in it. The stairs were empty and the corridor was empty and there was a smell in the air that had not been there in the morning.

It was old blood and green water and something sweet at the end of it.

The cellar stair was dark and the door at the bottom of it was open and there was a light coming up from the second pool.

The cellar was full of wolves.

There were forty of them. They were in grey coats and they had spears and they were standing in a ring round the second pool and there was a wolf in the middle of the ring with his hands behind his back.

Soren.

He was not dead. He had never been dead. He had been in a cell in the north for a fortnight and he had written letters every day and every letter had gone out with a keeper and every one of them had said a different thing, and then he had died in his cell and the whole of the north had believed it.

And he was standing in the cellar of the house of the north with forty wolves round him.

"Luna," he said. "You are early."

"Elder," I said. "You are dead."

"I am dead and I have been dead for four days and there is not a wolf in the north who has looked for me since." Soren put his hands together. "It is a very restful thing to be dead. I have been in this cellar for four days and I have been reading the books and I have been waiting for a founder to come down that stair."

The cellar was silent.

"What do you want?" I said.

"I want to open the door." Soren looked at the second pool. "I have been trying to open it for forty years and I have been in a chair and I have been in a cell and I have been dead, and I am going to open it now."

And down at the top of the cellar stair, a wolf came down.

It was Lorcan.

He came down the stair with his grey coat and his notebook in his hand and he stopped on the bottom step.

"Elder," he said.

"Envoy." Soren did not turn round. "You are late."

"I have been in the square." Lorcan looked at the forty wolves and then at Soren. "There are four hundred wolves in the square and the whole of the north is in it and there is a founder at the bottom of this stair."

"Then the north will see a door opened."

"The north will see a door opened and there will be no more bindings and no more keepers and no more Council." Lorcan came down off the step. "Elder. I have been your envoy for twenty years and I have signed thirty one orders and I have been a coward. And I am standing on the bottom step of a cellar stair and I am not going to be a coward for the last hour of it."

Soren turned round.

"Envoy," he said.

Lorcan put his hand into his coat and took out a paper.

"This is a letter," he said. "It is signed by three elders and it strips you of your seat and your name and your claim on the north. And it was written four days ago when you were dead and it has been in my coat since."

The cellar was silent.

"You have been writing letters for a fortnight, Elder," Lorcan said. "And I have been writing one."

And down in the square, a horn sounded.