All Chapters of Bound to a Dying Man: Chapter 121 - Chapter 130

Padraig did not get the pot.He stood in the middle of the room with his stick in his hand and his white beard flat against his chest and he looked at me."Healer," he said. "I am not going to get the pot.""Padraig.""I have been a healer for forty years and I have done a thing to you that I have been sorry about every day since and I am not going to do another one." He came forward. "The black pot is a keeper's thing. Your mother put it in that cave because it was the one thing in the world that could hold a false bond and she wanted it there for the day a founder wolf came to break one. It was not put there for a healer to use on her own mate in a bedroom with a silver wound in his shoulder.""It is the only thing that will work.""It is the only thing that will kill you." Padraig sat down heavily on the chair by the window. "Healer. I have watched you for three months. You have been in a cave and a Council chamber and a boat and a mountain and a hall. You have broken a blood ritua

I did not go down to Lorcan.I sent Oisin down with the writ and the ledger and the letters under his coat and told him to take them to the envoy at the gate and to say that the Luna of the Blackthorn Pack would speak to him at dawn and not before.Then I shut the door of the Alpha's room and put my back against it.Ronan was sitting up in the bed."You did not go down," he said."No.""He has come with a white flag and a writ and the whole of the north behind him and you sent a smuggler to the gate.""I sent a smuggler to the gate because I have been up all night and there is blood on my hands and I am not going to stand in a yard at five in the morning and argue with a Council envoy." I came away from the door. "And because there is a thing I have been wanting to do since the ridge went quiet and it is not talking to Lorcan."I sat down on the edge of the bed.Ronan looked at me."Fiadh," he said. "Your hands are shaking.""I know.""You have not slept in two days.""I know.""You h

We put Lorcan in the room at the top of the west stair with two wolves on the door and the shutters barred, and then we went down to the kitchen and Padraig put the kettle on."Right," I said. "There is a wolf in this pack who has been feeding Soren since the spring. Who is it?"Padraig poured the tea."It is not one of the nine," he said. "I have been watching the nine since the trial and they are as surprised as we are. It is not Colm and it is not Nessa and it is not the woman who signed Maeve's paper.""Then who?"Padraig sat down at the table."Healer," he said. "There is a thing I have been putting off for a week and I have been putting it off because I did not want to believe it.""Padraig.""The night the rogues came over the border and the night the tea was poisoned and the night the keeper Eamon rode out of the north gate. There is one wolf who was in all three places and I have been telling myself it was a coincidence." He looked at me. "It was Oisin."The kitchen was silen

I took the paper.It was folded twice and it was soft at the creases and there was a date at the top in Lorcan's neat hand and there was a name under it.Soren.I read it.It was short. It said that the Alpha of the Blackthorn Pack had signed the paper and the bond had been placed and the binder had left the coast. It said that the Alpha was failing and that the pack would be ready for a steward by autumn. And it said that the Beta of the pack had been of great service and was to be confirmed in the seat when the territory was settled.I read it twice."Maeve," I said.Maeve stood in the gate with her copper curls loose and her hands folded."It is not what it looks like," she said."It is a letter from the Council envoy to the elder Soren and it says the Beta of the Blackthorn Pack has been of great service." I looked up. "It is dated the spring. It is dated before the false bond was placed."The yard went up.It went up in a roar and the four guards at the gate came forward and the

We went down the keeper's stair at dusk.There were six of us. Ronan and I, and Oisin with a lantern, and Ilsa who would not be left behind, and two Council guards with spears. Padraig had wanted to come and I had told him no and he had not argued, which told me more about how tired he was than anything he had said.The stair went down under the northern seat and it went down a long way.It was old. Older than the building above it. The steps were worn hollow in the middle and the walls were dry and there was a smell coming up out of the dark that I knew.Old blood and green water and something sweet at the end of it."Blood ritual," I said."Yes," Ilsa said.We came out at the bottom into a chamber under the earth.It was not a spring. There was water in it, a black pool at the far end with a stone lip round it, but the rest of the chamber was a room and the room had shelves and the shelves had boxes and there was a table and there was a chair.And there was a wolf in the chair.He w