All Chapters of Bound to a Dying Man: Chapter 101 - Chapter 110

The trial was at noon and the hall was fuller than it had ever been.There were wolves on the benches and wolves standing at the back and wolves in the doorway and wolves in the yard outside listening through the open doors. The Ravenscar wolves were at the back in their own colours. The highland wolves were on the wall. The nine who had signed Maeve's paper were on the left-hand benches and every one of them was looking at me.Ilsa sat at the top of the hall with the four elders behind her and the seal of the Council on the table in front of her.I stood in the middle of the floor."Fiadh," Ilsa said. "You are charged with claiming the founder's bloodline without proof and with using that claim to take the Luna's seat of the Blackthorn Pack. How do you answer?""I answer that the claim is true," I said. "And that I will prove it.""Then the Council will hear the evidence against you first."Lorcan stood up.He was thinner than he had been and his coat was not brushed and there were t

The cold in the stone spread up my arm and into my chest and I put my hand in my pocket and closed my fingers round it.Ilsa was still speaking."The Council has heard the charge and dismissed it," she said. "But the Council has also heard a thing it cannot dismiss. There is a claim of the founder's bloodline standing in this hall and it has been stood on by a keeper and withdrawn by a keeper in the space of three days. That is not a thing a Council can leave open. Until the claim is tested before a full Council with the keepers present, the healer will be marked and she will be removed from this territory."The hall went up.Ilsa struck the table."The mark is a formality," she said. "It is the old law for a claim that is in dispute. It does not say she is guilty. It says she is unproven. And an unproven claimant cannot hold a seat in a pack.""Elder," I said. "You are putting a silver mark on my skin and sending me out of my own house.""I am putting a silver mark on your skin and s

I went down.The hall was full at dawn and every wolf in the pack was in it.Ilsa was at the top with the silver in her hand. It was a thin chain with a small disc on it and the disc was silver and it had a wolf's head on it, and it was old and it had been used before."Hold out your wrist," she said.I held out my wrist.She put the chain round it and closed the clasp and the silver went against my skin and it burned.I have been burned before. I have put my hand on a stove and I have had a tincture spill on my arm. This was not that. This was cold and it was hot at the same time and it went up my arm and into my shoulder and the wolf in my chest stood up and howled.I did not make a sound."Fourteen days," Ilsa said. "You will present yourself at the northern seat on the fourteenth day and the mark will be removed when the claim is proved."She turned and went out.The hall sat in silence.And then Maeve stood up.She was on the left-hand benches with the nine who had signed her pap

We were three hours out of the harbour when the wind turned and Oisin put the boat into a cove under the cliffs to wait it out.I sat in the bow with my back against the mast and the silver on my wrist and the stone in my pocket and watched the coast go grey.Padraig came and sat down beside me."Healer," he said. "There is a thing I have been carrying since the mill and I have not told you because there was always a trial or a reading or a war and there was never a good moment.""There is never a good moment. Tell me now."He put his hand into his coat and took out a folded paper."This is a copy," he said. "The original is in the north and it is in the keepers' house and it is the thing your mother meant when she wrote that the proof was in the keepers' house and the keepers' house was not in the north."I looked at him."Padraig. What is this?""It is the old pact." He unfolded it. "The founders of the Council and the first keepers made an agreement two hundred years ago and it was

They did not take me to the chamber.They took me to a room at the top of the northern seat with a window that looked out over the harbour and a bed and a fire and a lock on the door, and they said the ceremony would be at moonrise."What ceremony?" I said."The ceremony of presentation," the wolf said. "The Luna of the Blackthorn Pack will be presented to the Council before the trial. It is the law."He shut the door and locked it.I sat down on the bed with the box in my lap.Ronan came through the bond before the door was even cold.Fiadh. Can you hear me.I can hear you.They have put you in the room at the top of the east stair.They have. There is a lock on the door and a fire and a bed and a window with a view of the harbour. It is the best room I have been in since the Council town.Fiadh. The ceremony is a trap.I know it is a trap. What kind of trap?There are four elders in the chamber and two of the keepers and the whole of the north is coming to watch. And Maeve is here.