Chapter 78: The Grain Land

I put the deed on the table and turned it over and read the annex again.

The parcels were listed in a column. The grain land on the north line, four hundred acres. The east field, two hundred and eighty acres. The mill road, sixty acres. The mill itself, two acres with the buildings and the cellar and the tunnel. And at the bottom, in a separate line with its own parcel number, the founders' circle.

One dollar.

"Erik said the vault was built from the circle," I said. "He said the founders built it and they built it from the circle and the chimney comes up in the mill. And the circle is in the trees on the north end of the east field."

"The circle is the heart of the territory," Ada said. "The old pack made it and the founders buried it and the Council has been trying to find it since 1891." She put her hand on the deed. "And they have been buying the land around it for eighty-five years so that no wolf in this territory would ever stand in it again."

"Why?" I said. "What is in the circle that the Council is afraid of?"

Ada looked at me for a long moment.

"The Alphas have a record of their own," she said. "It is not the founders' record and it is not the Council's register. It is the record of the Council of Alphas and it goes back to the first Council in 1802. And there is a page in it that every Alpha is shown when she takes her seat." She put her stick on the floor. "The page says that the old pack of the Palouse built a circle of stones at the heart of its territory and that the circle is the seat of the Luna and that whoever stands in the circle at the new moon and speaks the words of the old tongue can claim the territory and the pack and the curse together."

I sat very still.

"The Alphas know about the circle," I said.

"The Alphas have known about the circle since 1802," Ada said. "We did not know where it was. The founders buried it in 1891 and the Council has kept the location secret and the Alphas have been asking for it for eighty-five years." She looked at the six Alphas behind her. "And the Council has told us every year that the circle was lost and that the territory could not be claimed in the old way and that the Alphas would have to leave the land to the Council."

"Then the Council has been lying to the Alphas too," I said.

"The Council has been lying to the Alphas since 1891," Ada said. "And the Alphas have been signing the Council's paper and taking the Council's money and not asking where it came from." She looked at the square. "That is what this tribunal is about. Not the murder of one wolf. Not the fire at the co-op. The whole of it. The Council has been running this territory and eleven others for eighty-five years and the Alphas have been letting it because it was easier than asking."

She stood up.

"Gamma," she said. "Take this tribunal to the circle."

We went out of the pack square at noon with the seven Alphas and the whole pack behind us and we went up the ridge and across the east field and into the trees.

The circle was where it had been. The standing stone was there and the ring of stones was there and the stone with the Luna's mark was there and the stairs went down into the vault.

But the circle was not the same.

The stones were gray and they were cold and the moss was brown and the trees around the circle were dead. They were not dead in the way a tree dies in winter. They were dead in the way a tree dies when the ground under it has been poisoned. The branches were black and the needles were on the ground and the trunks were split.

And the stone with the Luna's mark on it had been broken.

It was in two pieces. It had been struck with something heavy and the mark was split down the middle and the two halves of the stone were lying apart in the moss.

I went down on my knees.

"When?" I said. "When did this happen?"

"Last night," Clara Renn said.

She had come up the ridge with the pack. She was in her coat with her white hair down and her old face was gray and she came and stood beside me and looked at the broken stone.

"Erik came to my house last night and took the box and the papers and the ring. And then he came here." She put her hand on the broken stone. "He had a hammer and a chisel and he broke the stone and he broke the seal and he went down the stairs into the vault and he took the register and the photographs and everything that was in it and he put it in his truck."

"The register is in the vault," I said. "I saw it this morning."

"The register that is in the vault is the copy," Clara Renn said. "The original was in my mother's box and it has been in my house since 1932 and Erik took it last night." She looked at me. "Warden, he has taken the whole of it. The register and the Luna files and the photographs and the ring. And he has taken the stone."

"What stone?"

Clara Renn pointed at the standing stone in the middle of the circle.

It was not a standing stone any more. It was a stump. The top of it was gone and it had been struck off with a chisel and the cut was clean and white.

"The stone that the founder's curse was tied to," Clara Renn said. "The flat stone in the east field was a copy and the stone under the wall was a marker. This was the stone. And Erik has taken it and he has taken the register and he has taken the ring and he is gone."

Ada came and stood beside me.

"Where would he go?" she said.

I looked at the broken circle and the dead trees and the cold stones.

"He would go to Boise," I said. "He would go to the chief clerk and he would give him the stone and the register and the ring and he would tell him the Luna is coming home and he would ask him to destroy it." I stood up. "And the chief clerk is in Boise and he has already written to this tribunal and offered to give evidence. He is not going to destroy anything. He is going to put the stone in a vault and the register in a fire and he is going to tell the Alphas that the circle was never there."

Ada looked at the broken stone.

"Then we go to Boise," she said.

"There is no time," I said. "Boise is three hundred miles and Erik has a truck and a night's start and the new moon is in two days." I looked at the circle. "If the stone is in Boise on the new moon the curse has nothing to hold it here and the land is not claimed and the Council keeps everything."

"Then what do we do?" Ada said.

I stood in the broken circle with the seven Alphas and the whole pack and my mate at the edge of the trees and the mark on my shoulder warm and steady.

"We do not need the stone," I said. "We need the circle."

"The circle is broken," Ada said.

"The circle is the ground," I said. "The stone is the marker. The ground is still here and the ground is what the old pack claimed and the ground does not move." I looked at Hannah and at Arthur Renn and at Clara Renn. "Three Lunas and the ground. That is what the old Alpha's bargain was. Not the stone. The ground and the Luna's blood."

Ada looked at me for a long time.

"Then stand in it," she said.