Chapter 77: Fiadh's Wolf Speaks

Soren did not answer.

I did not need him to.

"The ritual is called the binding of the second mark," I said. "It is done with a knife and a pot of black salve and words that are not in any language on this coast. It puts a mark on the chest of a wolf that is not a mate mark and it takes the strength out of the one who is bound and gives it to the one who binds. And when it is finished there is a second mark and after the second mark the bond and the wolf are one thing and it cannot be broken."

The chamber was silent.

"There is a room in the northern seat where the old papers are kept," I said. "There is a list of names of wolves who were bound and died of it. One of them is the wife of a wolf called Tomas who is standing at the back of this chamber and has been standing there since the door opened. There are eleven names on his list and there are more in the room and every one of them was bound without their leave by a binder of this Council."

I reached into my coat and took out the paper and put it on the table.

"That is the law this Council should be applying," I said. "And it has been sitting in a room under this chamber for a hundred years while the Council applied the other one to wolves who could not fight back."

Soren's voice came out quiet.

"Take the healer into custody," he said.

Nobody moved.

"Take her," Soren said again, and his voice went up a notch, and the two Council wolves at the door came forward.

And then the wolf in my chest came out.

I did not shift. There was no pain and there was no change of bone or skin. But the wolf came up out of the dark room in my head and took the front of my mind and stood in it, and when I opened my mouth to speak it was the wolf that spoke.

"You will sit down," the wolf said.

The words came out of my mouth in a voice that was not my voice. It was lower and it was slower and it had a growl in it, and every wolf in that chamber heard it, and every wolf in that chamber knew what it was.

Soren's hands came off the table.

"You will sit down and you will listen," the wolf said. "I have been asleep for twenty two years and I have missed a great deal and I am told that in that time this Council has been binding wolves without their leave. I am the founder wolf of this line and I am the oldest thing in this room and I have not been asked a single question since I woke."

The chamber went completely silent.

The two Council wolves at the door had stopped. They were standing in the middle of the floor with their hands out and their faces white and they were looking at me the way a wolf looks at a fire that has just been lit.

"That is enough," Soren said. "That is a trick."

"It is not a trick," the wolf said. "It is a wolf. You have been sitting in that chair for forty years and you have never once had a founder wolf in this chamber and you do not know what to do with one." I felt my own face move. "I will tell you what to do with one. You will sit down and you will let the healer finish speaking."

Soren sat down.

I do not know whether he meant to. I do not know whether the old man in that chair decided that the room was against him or whether he simply could not stand up any longer. He sat down and put his hands flat on the table and did not say a word.

The wolf drew back.

I felt it go, the way a hand goes out of water, and then I was myself again with my hands on the table and my heart going and the whole chamber looking at me.

"Fiadh," Ronan said quietly, beside me. "Are you all right?"

"I am all right."

"Your eyes were gold."

"I know."

I looked up at the five elders.

"Elder Ilsa," I said.

The old woman with the white hair came up straight in her chair.

"You have been on this Council for thirty years," I said. "And you have never once voted against Soren. And you had a daughter who was bound by a binder thirty years ago and who died of it, and it is in the record, and nobody talks about it." I looked at her. "I am not going to ask you to vote against him. I am going to ask you to look at the paper on this table and tell me whether the names on it are what I think they are."

Ilsa's hands were shaking.

She got up out of her chair.

She came round the table and picked up the paper and held it close to her face and read it.

She read it for a long time.

Then she put it down and looked at Soren.

"Elder," she said. "There is a name on this list that I know."

The chamber was very quiet.

"Which name?" Soren said.

Ilsa's mouth worked.

"Bríd," she said. "Bríd of the Blackthorn Pack. Bound in the year of the sickness eight years ago and dead within the year." She looked at Ronan. "She was my daughter's daughter. She was my granddaughter. And I was told she died in the north in the snow bringing a family out."

Ronan stood very still.

"She did die in the north in the snow," he said. "I found her myself. I carried her home."

"You carried home a wolf who had been bound," Ilsa said, "and nobody in this Council told me." She turned to Soren. "You told me it was the sickness."

Soren did not answer.

Ilsa sat down in her chair.

"I will hear the rest of it," she said. "And then I will vote."

The doors of the chamber opened at the back and a wolf in a grey coat came up the aisle and put a paper into Lorcan's hand. Lorcan read it and his face changed and he looked at Soren.

"Elder," he said. "There is a car at the gate. The wolf who has come in it is asking to be heard."

"Who is it?" Soren said.

Lorcan looked at the paper.

"His name is Bran," he said. "And he says he has a claim on this Council seat."