Chapter 81: Padraig's Gift

Ilsa came in and shut the door behind her and stood there with the lamp in her hand.

"He is gone," she said. "Soren. He went out through the back door an hour ago with a bag and a driver and he did not tell the guard at the gate where he was going."

"Then he is running," I said.

"He is not running. He is an old man who has been on that Council for forty years and he has never once been challenged and he is not going to run." Ilsa set the lamp down on the table. "He is going north to the seat. He has a house there and a clerk and a room full of papers, and he will be sitting in it by morning writing letters to every elder on this coast."

"Letters about what?"

"About a founder wolf who broke a bond in a Council chamber and a healer who stood in front of five elders and told them what the law was for." Ilsa sat down in the chair by the fire. "I have known him thirty years. He does not fight in a room. He fights in writing and he does it slowly and by the time you have noticed he has already won."

I sat on the edge of the bed with my hand on Ronan's chest.

"Then we do not let him get to the seat," I said.

"You cannot stop a car on the north road with a pack of wolves and a healer with a grey thread on her hands." Ilsa looked at my hands. "What is that?"

I looked down.

The grey thread was still there, wound round my wrists and my fingers, and in the lamplight it was easier to see. It was thin and it was grey and it went up my arms and into my chest, and where it lay on my skin the skin was cold.

"It is the false bond," I said. "It came out of him and it did not go into the box. It went into me."

Ilsa's face changed.

"Healer," she said. "A false bond that is not in a box and not in a wolf is a thing that will look for a wolf to be in."

"I know."

"And you have a true bond on your chest and a mate in that bed and a grey thread in your hands that is looking for somewhere to go." She stood up. "You have until morning. After that it will start to work on you the way it worked on him."

She went out.

Padraig had not said a word through any of it. He was sitting on the other side of the bed with his stick across his knees and his white beard flat against his chest.

"Padraig," I said. "What does she mean?"

He looked up.

"The false bond is a thing that takes," he said. "It takes strength and it gives it to whoever holds the other end. It was in Ronan for seven months and it was taking from him and giving to Elara and then to Lorcan and then to whoever was at the top of it. Now it is in you and there is no other end and it is going to take from you and give to nobody." He wiped his mouth. "You have got until it works out that there is no one holding the other end. Then it will turn round and start taking from you for its own sake."

"How long?"

"A few days. A week at most."

I sat on the edge of the bed.

"Then we do not have a week," I said. "We have until morning."

I got up.

"Healer," Padraig said. "Sit down."

"I cannot sit down. Soren is on the north road and the bond is in my hands and Ronan cannot get out of that bed and there is a pack in the market and a Council that has lost its head." I looked at him. "What am I supposed to do?"

Padraig got up out of his chair.

He went to the door and opened it and spoke to Oisin in the corridor, and Oisin went away and came back a minute later with Padraig's bag.

Padraig put the bag on the table and opened it and took out a small wooden box, and out of the box he took a thing wrapped in oilcloth.

He unwrapped it.

It was a stone. It was grey and smooth and about the size of a fist and there was a hole through the middle of it.

"Your mother gave me this," he said. "On the night she came to my cottage. She gave me the book and she asked me to do the thing and then she took this out of her coat and she gave it to me and she said, if the child ever comes back to you, give her this and tell her it is the thread stone."

I looked at it.

"What does it do?"

"It holds a thread." Padraig put it on the table. "A healer of the old blood puts the thread through the hole and holds the stone in her hand and the stone takes the thread and keeps it until she is ready to let it go. It is the oldest thing in my bag and I have never once used it and I do not know whether it will work."

I picked it up.

It was warm in my hand. It had not been warm on the table.

I looked at the grey thread on my wrists and I put my hand out and I pushed the end of the thread through the hole in the stone.

It went through.

The thread came off my wrists and off my fingers and out of my chest and it went into the stone and the stone went cold and then it went still.

I stood in the middle of the room with the stone in my hand.

"It worked," I said.

"It worked."

I sat down on the edge of the bed and put the stone in my lap and put my hands over my face.

Padraig sat down beside me.

"Healer," he said. "There is a thing I have not told you and I am going to tell you now because we are both too tired to be careful about it."

"What?"

"Your mother did not only give me the stone. She gave me a letter for you. It has been in my bag for twenty two years and I have never opened it and I have never given it to you because I was afraid of what was in it." He reached into the bag and took out a folded paper, old and soft and sealed with wax. "Here. It is yours. I am sorry it took me twenty two years."

I took the letter.

And down in the street below, a horn sounded, and then another, and then Oisin was at the door with his knife in his hand.

"Healer," he said. "There is a car coming up the market with a Council flag on it and it is not Soren's car. There is a wolf on the running board with a lantern and he is shouting your name."