The Curse of the Beta のすべてのチャプター: チャプター 51 - チャプター 60

We went out at eight with the water going off the sand and the moon coming up over the hills and the whole of the pack behind us.There were forty wolves on the shore and there were Rook's men on the point with the box from the ship, and there were lanterns on every rock, and there was Thomas with his boat drawn up at the channel and Bram with his hook and Agnes with her keys and Father Callum's copper wolf on a chain between two of the boatmen and Marcus in his coat with the collar up and his copper red hair loose and his face grey but steady.Clara walked beside me with her shawl round her shoulders and her boots in her hand and the mark on her wrist dull grey in the moonlight.We crossed the channel at the lowest of the low tide and went up onto the shingle and round to the south side, and the shelf was bare and black and wet and the door was at the bottom of it with the crack in it where the priest had put his chisel and the crescent mark broken at the corner.Nina went down first

We put the fragments in the well.Rook brought the box down the stair himself with two of his men behind him and he set it on the rock at the edge of the pool and opened it, and there were three pieces of grey stone inside it, each the size of a man's fist, and each of them was warm and humming."Three," Nina said. "And the fourth is in the priest and the fifth is in the girl and the sixth is still out there somewhere.""The sixth can wait," Rook said. "Three is what I have and three is what goes in."Nina took the fragments out of the box one at a time and said the words over them in the old tongue and put them in the water. They went down through the clear water and they came to rest on the rock beside the great wolf and the light in the pool got a little brighter.Then she turned to Clara."The fifth is in you," she said. "It has been in you since the night you shifted and it is in the mark now and the mark is in both of you. It has to come out of the mark and into the well and it

The byre was empty when we got there.The two men on the door were sitting on the ground with their backs against the wall and their heads down and the lantern between them, and they were not asleep. They were breathing and they were warm and they were not asleep, and when I shook the first one by the shoulder he opened his eyes and looked at me and said, "The priest brought us a cup of tea.""Which priest?""The one in the byre. He said he was cold and he said he had a kettle and he asked us if we would like a cup and we said yes." The man sat up and put his hand to his head. "He brought the tea out himself with the chain on his wrist and he gave us a cup each and he said, drink it, it will keep the cold off, and then I do not remember anything after that."I went into the byre. The chain was on the floor with the cuff open and the lock picked, and the kettle was on the stove and there were two cups on the step and a third cup on the floor with a little of the tea still in it."He is

The chapel was quiet after Clara said it.I looked at the slate in her hand and the wolf on it with the heavy jaw and the ridge along the spine and the mark on its shoulder, and I thought about a copper wolf in a byre and a copper wolf on the sand and a copper wolf on the old Alpha's stone with a man's voice coming out of it."That is Marcus," I said. "That is Marcus's wolf and it has the curse on it and the priest made it out of the cup and the silver and the old blood.""The girl has been dreaming about the Council ship since the spring," Nina said. "She has been dreaming about a wolf in a cage and a wolf in a good coat, and the wolf in the good coat has the mark on its hand. If she is dreaming true, then the wolf in the good coat is not a man on the Council with a mark on his hand. It is Marcus, or it is the thing the priest made out of Marcus, and it has been on that ship all winter.""It cannot have been on that ship all winter," I said. "Marcus has been in this village all winte

I stood on the deck of the Council ship in the shape of a wolf with the sea water running off me and the copper wolf at my shoulder, and the man in the good grey coat came down the stair and stopped three paces off."Change back," he said. "I am not going to talk to a wolf."I did not change. I stood there with my head low and my shoulder up and the thing from the well looking out of my eyes at him.He looked at me for a moment and then he shrugged."Then listen as a wolf," he said. "You will understand it either way. I am Aldous. I sit on the Council of Alphas and I have sat on it for thirty years and my name is on the wall of that island with the mark beside it. My mother was of the old blood and my father was a merchant in Leith and I have been looking for the well since I was a young man." He put the lamp down on the deck. "The well is closed. I know it is closed. The priest has told me everything and he has told me that a wolf of the old blood took the fragment out of the water a