Chapter 177: The Peak Begins

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

Lorcan stood on the bottom step of the cellar stair with the paper in his hand and the forty wolves in grey coats turned round.

"The letter is signed," Lorcan said. "By Ilsa and by Rannoch and by the grey wolf with the broken nose. And it has a seal on it and it has been in my coat for four days and I have been waiting for a founder to come down a stair so that I could read it out in front of the whole of the north."

Soren looked at him.

"Envoy," he said. "You have been my envoy for twenty years."

"I have been your envoy for twenty years and I have signed thirty one orders and I have written down everything you told me to write down." Lorcan's jaw worked. "And I have been a coward for all of it. 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."

The forty wolves did not move.

"Read it," Soren said.

Lorcan read it.

It was short. It said that the elder Soren had been stripped of his seat and his name and his claim on the north and that he was to be taken into custody and held for trial on the charge of the taking of nineteen children and the binding of thirty one wolves. And it said that any wolf who stood with him would answer to the same charge.

The cellar was silent.

"Put the spears down," Lorcan said.

The forty wolves put the spears down.

Soren stood in the middle of the cellar with his hands together and his old face quiet.

"You have been a good envoy," he said. "And you have been a poor one. And I have known for twenty years that you would do this in the end."

"I know," Lorcan said.

"I have known it since the spring and I have been writing letters to keep you busy and I have been letting you read them and I have been waiting for you to do it." Soren looked at him. "And now you have done it and there is a thing I have to say to you that I have been saving for the last hour."

"What?"

"The door behind the second pool was opened four days ago," Soren said. "It has been open since the night I died in my cell and it has been open while the whole of the north was in a square and it has been open while a founder was walking up a hill."

The cellar went silent.

"And there is a thing that has been coming through it since," Soren said. "And I have been sitting in this cellar for four days and I have been watching it come."

The second pool went black.

It had been still and it had been grey and it had been a pool of water in a stone ring at the far end of the cellar. And now it went black and it went deep and there was a thing coming up out of it.

It came up slowly. It was a shape and it was a coat and it was a face and the face was thin and white and the eyes in it were the colour of the stone in my pocket.

The first of the old blood.

It came up out of the second pool and it stood in the middle of the cellar and it looked round at the forty wolves and at Lorcan and at Soren and then at me.

"Founder," it said.

Its voice was the sound of a door opening in a house that has been shut for a long time.

"Say what you have come to say," I said.

"I have been behind the door for two hundred years and I have been listening," it said. "And I have been let out by a keeper who has been dead for four days and who has been sitting in this cellar watching me come."

"You have been let out," I said.

"I have been let out." It looked at me. "And there is a thing I have to say to the fourth of my line and I am going to say it before the sun goes down."

"Say it."

"I made the rites," it said. "And I made them to right a wrong. And then the keepers took them and the Council took the keepers and two hundred years of wolves have been bound and drained and kept in a house in the north." It looked at me. "And I have been behind a door and I have not been able to stop it. And now I am out of the door and there is a thing I can do that I could not do behind it."

"What thing?"

"I can close the door," it said. "And I can take the rites with me."

The cellar was silent.

"What does that mean?" I said.

"It means there are no more bindings and there are no more breakings and there are no more reversals." It looked at me. "And it means there is no more founder's line. And there is no more gold wolf. And there is no more fourth of the line."

I stood at the bottom of the cellar stair.

"And Ronan?" I said.

"Your mate is whole," it said. "The mark you made in the room at the top of the house has closed him. And he will be whole for the rest of his life and there will be no bond and no mark and no thread between the two of you."

The cellar was silent.

And through the bond, in the back of my head, burning and clear, Ronan said, Fiadh. Do not.

I turned round.

He was standing on the bottom step of the cellar stair with his hand on the rail.

"Ronan," I said.

"Do not," he said. "Do not let it take the bond."

I stood in the cellar with the first of the old blood in front of me and my mate on the stair behind me and the whole of the north in the square above us.

And down in the square, a horn sounded.