Chapter 178: The Ritual Reversed

I turned round on the cellar stair.

"Ronan," I said. "Come down."

He came down.

We stood together at the bottom of the stair with the first of the old blood in front of us and the forty wolves in grey coats round the walls and Lorcan on the step behind us and Soren in the middle of the floor with his hands folded.

"Say the whole of it," I said. "Not the half of it. Say what you will do and say what it will cost."

The first of the old blood looked at me.

"I will close the door and I will take the rites with me," it said. "And there will be no more bindings and no more breakings and no more reversals. And there will be no more founder's line."

"And the bond?"

"The bond is not a rite," it said. "The bond is a thing that two wolves make between them and it is older than the rites and it is older than the Council and it is older than the door. I cannot take it and I would not if I could."

The cellar was silent.

"Then take the rites," I said.

Ronan turned round.

"Fiadh," he said.

"Ronan. The rites are the thing they have been using for two hundred years. They are the binding and the breaking and the reversal and the whole of the network and they are in the water of that pool and in the stones of that cellar and in the walls of the house of the north." I looked at him. "And if it takes them there is no more ritual. There is no more false bond. There is no more keeper in a room at the top of a house."

"And there is no more founder's line."

"There is no more founder's line." I looked at him. "And I have been trying to give it away since the northern seat and I have been giving it away in pieces and there is a thing at the bottom of that pool that can take the whole of it at once."

Ronan stood in the cellar.

"Do it," he said.

I turned round.

"Take them," I said.

The first of the old blood put its hand into the second pool.

And the cellar resisted.

It came up out of the floor. It came up out of the stone and out of the water and out of the walls of the house of the north, and it was the whole of two hundred years of bindings and breakings and reversals and it had been in that house since before the Council was made.

The walls went black. The water went black. The forty wolves in grey coats went down on their knees and the light in the cellar went out.

And the rite began.

I saw it. I do not know how to describe it. It came up out of the floor in lines, in spirals, in the shapes that were carved on the walls of the cave on the Blackthorn coast. They went round and round and they went into the first of the old blood and they did not go easily. The air in the cellar went cold and then it went hot and then it went cold again and the stone under my feet hummed like a struck bell.

The first of the old blood staggered.

"It is resisting," it said. "It has been in this house for two hundred years and it does not want to go."

"What do I do?" I said.

"You are the founder of the line and the rites are of your line." It looked at me. "Give it something. Give it a thing that is older than the rites."

I stood in the cellar.

And in the back of my head, burning and clear, Ronan said, Fiadh. What is older than the rites?

I do not know, I said.

You do. You have been carrying it since the day you got off the bus.

I stood in the cellar with the walls going black and the whole of two hundred years coming up out of the floor and I thought about a healer with a case of tins and a mother in a rented room in Galway and a woman who had been in a room at the top of a house for seventy years.

And I thought about a girl of nineteen sitting on the floor of a room at the top of a house, talking to a woman about the sea. Elara. Who had been a binder's apprentice and had been frightened and had done what she was told, and who had come back sixty years later and sat on the floor of that room again and talked about the sea.

And I thought about Bran, who had held a door.

And I put my hand into the second pool.

The water was cold. It was colder than the sea in winter and colder than the rocks below the headland and it went up my arm and into my chest.

And I said the thing that is older than the rites.

I said my mother's name.

And then my grandmother's.

And then the name of every wolf on the list of nineteen and the list of thirty one and every name in the ledger of the bindings that I had ever read out loud in a chamber.

The cellar went white.

I do not remember the next part. I remember the light and I remember the sound of forty wolves on their knees and I remember Ronan's voice in the bond, close and loud and frightened.

And then I was on my knees on the floor of the cellar with my hand still in the water and there was nothing under it at all.

The rites were gone.

I could feel it. It was like a rope that had been round a coast's neck for two hundred years and had suddenly gone slack.

I sat back on my heels.

And in the cellar there was nothing but a pool of water and a ring of stone and a wolf on his knees beside me.

"Ronan," I said.

"Fiadh." He got his hands on my face. "Fiadh, look at me."

"I am here."

"Your hair."

I put my hand up.

It came away with gold on it.