Chapter 80: The Map on the Wall

Elias was down the stairs before I had the lantern up.

"Wren," he said. "Get back from the stair."

I got back from the stair. I put my hand on the stone and the room was still dark and the light did not come back and above us in the vault the boots stopped and a voice said, "The slab is up. They are down there."

It was Rourke.

"How did he get out?" June said.

"Nobody locked him up," I said. "The tribunal was in the square and the guard was in the square and there was nobody in the pack house."

Elias moved to the side of the stair with his back against the rough wall and I put June and Clara Renn behind me and put my hand in my jacket and found the knife.

The boots came down the stair.

It was Rourke and two men and they came down with lanterns and rifles and Rourke stopped at the bottom and looked around the round room with the stone in the middle of it.

"Well," he said. "There it is."

"Rourke," I said. "There are seven Alphas in this territory and a tribunal in the square and you have walked out of a locked room and come down a stair with a rifle. That is the end of your life as a wolf in any pack in the north."

Rourke looked at me.

"Warden," he said, "I have been the culling officer for nine territories and I have been the Council's man for twenty years and I have never once been in a room like this." He came forward and put his hand on the stone. "This is the heart of the territory. This is what the Council has been looking for since 1891. And I am going to take it to Boise and I am going to put it in the chief clerk's hands and he is going to break it into pieces and scatter it and there will be no circle and no Luna and no claim."

The stone under his hand lit up.

It was white and it was bright and it came out of the mark and it went up his arm and Rourke made a sound and pulled his hand back.

The light went out.

"What did you do?" Rourke said.

"I did not do anything," I said.

He looked at the stone. Then he looked at me.

"You," he said. "You did it. You have the blood."

"I have the blood."

He came at me.

Elias came off the wall and hit him in the side and the two of them went down in the dark and one of the rifles went off and the bullet went into the stone wall and the sound of it in that round room was like a bell. The other man came at me and I put Owen's knife into his arm and he dropped the rifle and I took it.

And then the stone lit up again.

It was not me and it was not Rourke and it was not Elias. It was Hannah. She had come down the stair behind them with Arthur Renn and she had put her hand on the stone and the stone was white and the whole room was white and the light went up the stair and out into the vault and up through the broken floor and into the circle.

Rourke stopped.

The light was on his face and his hands and he was on his knees in the dark with Elias's arm around his throat, and he was looking at the stone with his mouth open.

"What is it?" he said.

"It is the heart," Clara Renn said. "It is the heart of the territory and it has been here since before the founders and it is not a thing you can break with a hammer."

The light went out.

And then there was a noise from the stair.

It was not boots. It was a scraping and a thud and then a voice that was old and thin and out of breath.

"Help me down this stair," the voice said. "I am eighty-eight years old and I am not going to fall down it twice."

Erik Renn came down the stair with a lantern in his hand and a canvas bag over his shoulder.

He stopped at the bottom and looked around the room.

"So," he said. "You found it."

"You took the stone from the circle," I said. "You took the register and the ring and the photographs. And then you came back."

"I took the copy of the stone from the circle," Erik said. "The one the founders buried. I took the register and the ring and the photographs and I put them in my truck and I drove to the mill road and I sat in the cab for an hour and I could not make myself drive." He put the bag down on the floor. "Because the stone in the circle was not the heart and I have known that since 1891 and I have been lying to the Council about it for eighty-eight years."

He put the bag down and opened it and took out a map.

It was a map of the territory and it was old and it was drawn in ink and it had the circle marked on it and the mill and the pack house and the east field. And there was a line on it that went from the circle to the pack house.

"The tunnel," I said.

"The tunnel." Erik put his finger on the line. "It goes from this room to the cellar of the pack house and it was built by the old pack before the founders came and the founders never knew it was there. I found it in 1892 when I was digging in the cellar and I have been using it for eighty-eight years." He looked at me. "And there is a thing on this map that nobody has seen. There is a second tunnel."

He turned the map over.

On the back there was another line. It went from the room we were standing in and it went east and it went under the east field and it came out in a place that was not marked.

"That tunnel goes east," Erik said. "It goes under the field and it comes out in the trees on the north road. And there is a thing at the end of it that the old pack put there before the founders came."

"What thing?" I said.

"The rest of the stone," Erik said. "The old Alpha did not break the heart. He broke a piece off it and he put the heart in this room and the piece in the tunnel and he told the old pack that the two of them together were the territory. And the founders have had the piece in the vault for eighty-five years and they have never had the heart." He looked at the stone. "And now I have brought the piece back."

He took the canvas bag and opened it and took out a flat stone and put it on the floor beside the heart.

The two stones lit up.

The light went through the room and up the stair and out into the vault and up into the circle and out across the field and the trees, and I could feel it in my chest and in my bones and in the mark on my shoulder.

"Two days," Erik Renn said. "The new moon is in two days. And the heart and the piece are together and the circle is whole."

He sat down on the floor with his back against the wall and closed his eyes.

"I have been carrying this for eighty-eight years," he said. "And now I would like to sleep."