Chapter 68: The Council Summons

The grey coats came down the ridge in a line with a lantern at the front, and Oisin stood in the doorway with his knife and Ronan stood beside him.

"Put the knife away," Ronan said. "If they have come to take us there are four of them and there are six of us and it will be a fight in a bothy on a mountain and nobody wins that. Let them come to the door."

Oisin put the knife away.

The grey coats came to the door and stopped. There were four of them and the one at the front was a woman of forty or so with a broad face and a sealed paper in her hand.

"I am looking for the Alpha of the Blackthorn Pack," she said.

"I am the Alpha."

"Then this is for you." She held out the paper. "It is a summons from the Council of Alphas, called by the elder Soren, to a formal trial at noon tomorrow in the elders' chamber of the Council house. You are required to attend and to bring with you the healer known as Fiadh and all papers and goods relating to the matter of the false bond." She looked at me. "If you do not attend, the Council will declare the Blackthorn territory vacant and appoint a steward in the Council's name, and the healer will be named a fugitive and hunted under Council law."

Ronan took the paper.

"And if we do attend?" he said.

"Then you will be heard." The woman's face did not change. "The trial is open to the town. Any wolf may speak. The elder Soren has ordered it."

I came out of the bothy and stood beside Ronan.

"Who ordered the cell under the chamber?" I said.

The woman looked at me.

"There is no cell under the chamber."

"Elara has seen it. There are iron rings in the wall and a bolt on the outside of the door."

The woman was quiet for a moment.

"I have been a guard of the Council for eighteen years," she said, "and I have never been told there is a cell under the chamber. If there is one, I do not know of it and I would not be told of it." She looked at Ronan. "Noon tomorrow, Alpha. The door will be open from eleven."

She turned and went back up the ridge with the three behind her.

We watched them go.

"Right then," I said. "Noon tomorrow."

Ronan turned round.

"You are not going."

"Ronan."

"You heard what Padraig said. The salve is put on the hands of the third one after the rite. Your mother did not write that the healer who holds the thread must survive it." He had the paper in his hand and it was crumpled. "You are not going into a chamber where the one thing that can save us is you giving your life for it."

"Then what do you want me to do? Run? Go north with Oisin and hide in a cove and let them take the territory and the pack and you?"

"I want you to live."

"And I want you to live." I put my hand on his chest. "You have been dying since April and I have been keeping you alive with tins and stubbornness and I have not once asked you to give up. And now you are asking me to give up and I will not do it." I looked up at him. "We go to the trial and we put the box on the table and we tell them the truth. And if it comes to the rite, it comes to the rite, and we will deal with after when after comes."

He stood there with the wind in his ginger hair.

"You are the most stubborn woman I have ever met," he said.

"I know."

"Padraig," Ronan said. "Is there anything in that book about the third one surviving?"

Padraig came to the door with his stick.

"There is a line," he said. "I read it in the cave and I did not read it properly and then I read it properly on the mountain. It says the thread is held by the third one and the third one is held by the bond. If the bond is true and the mate is living and the mark is on both of them, the thread is held by two and not by one."

The bothy was quiet.

"Two," I said.

"Two. The healer and the mate. If the mate is marked and the bond is true and the mate is standing beside the healer with his hand on her, then the strength that goes out of her goes into him and comes back." Padraig looked at me. "That is what I should have told you in the cave and I did not because I did not read the line properly and I am an old man with bad eyes and a bad memory."

I turned to Ronan.

"Then we do it together," I said. "You take the mark. The true one. And then we do the rite together and we hold the thread together."

Ronan looked at me.

"That is a great deal of risk," he said.

"Everything we have done for a month has been a great deal of risk." I took his hand. "Mark me. Tonight. Before the trial. And then in that chamber, whatever Soren does, we will be standing there with a true bond and a box and a page, and there will be nothing he can do about it."

He looked at me for a long moment.

"Padraig," he said. "What do we need?"

"A knife and the moon and the two of you," Padraig said. "And a place where the Council cannot see us."

Ronan looked at me.

"The bothy," he said.

"The bothy."

We went back inside and shut the door and Padraig got his bag and Oisin and Nessa went out to keep watch on the ridge.

Padraig lit the fire and set a bowl of water on the hearth and took out his knife.

"Alpha," he said. "Hold out your hand."

Ronan held out his hand.

"Fiadh," Padraig said. "Hold out yours."

I held out mine.

He cut us both across the palm, quick and clean, and then he put our hands together and closed his own old hands round them.

"Say the words," he said. "You will know them. They are the oldest words there are and every wolf knows them and you do not need a book."

Ronan looked at me.

"You are my mate," he said. "You are the one I have been waiting for and I did not know I was waiting. I give you my mark and my name and my strength and I will hold the thread with you for as long as there is a thread to hold."

I looked at him.

"You are my mate," I said. "You are the one I ran to when I had spent ten years running from everything. I give you my mark and my name and my strength and I will hold the thread with you for as long as there is a thread to hold."

Padraig put his hand on Ronan's chest and said something in the old tongue.

And the mark came.

It came up on my chest over my heart, a small silver crescent, and it did not hurt. It was warm and it was silver and it was the truest thing I have ever felt.

Ronan's chest had the same mark on it.

He put his hand on mine and I put my hand on his and the bond between us closed like a door that had been open all its life and had finally been shut.

"Right then," I said. "Now we go to the trial."