All Chapters of Bound to a Dying Man: Chapter 131 - Chapter 140

We came up the keeper's stair at midnight with the box in my coat and the paper inside it and Ronan walking beside me on his own two feet.He walked slowly. He had been stabbed twice in the same shoulder in a fortnight and he had been in a pool of black water for an hour and he was not a well wolf. But he walked, and he did not lean on me, and when we came out into the corridor at the top of the stair he stopped and put his hand on the wall and stood there for a moment with his eyes shut and his breath going in and out of him."Ronan.""I am all right.""You are not.""I am all right." He opened his eyes. "Fiadh. The bond is quiet."I put my hand on my chest.It was. The pull that had been between us since the bothy was still there and the silver mark was still bright and the wolf in my head was still there. But the thing at the bottom of my chest that had been cold for a month was gone and there was nothing in its place but warmth."It is quiet," I said."It is quiet and it is warm."

We went down to the gate at dawn.Elara was standing on the step with her green scarf round her head and her bag at her feet and her face grey with tiredness. She had been riding for three days. I could see it in her boots and in the way she held herself and in the mud on the hem of her coat."Luna," she said."Elara.""I have come from the keepers' house." She looked at me. "I went there after the trial. I went because there was a thing I had to see and I have been in it for a week and I have come to tell you what is in it.""Come inside," I said.We took her up to the room at the top of the east stair and she sat down by the fire and I got her a cup of tea and she held it in both hands and did not drink it."The false mate," she said. "You want to know about the false mate.""I know about the false mate. There was no false mate. There was a letter and a ritual proxy and a name that was taken off a list of old families.""There was a proxy." Elara looked at the fire. "But there was a

The bell of the northern seat was ringing the alarm and we went down the east stair at a run.The corridor at the bottom was full of Council wolves and keepers and clerks and everybody was talking at once. There were guards with spears and a clerk with a satchel of papers and two of the keepers standing by the wall with their hands folded and their faces grey. Ilsa was in the middle of it with her shawl round her shoulders and her face set."Elder," I said. "What has happened?""The keeper Eamon has been in the room under the chamber." Ilsa turned round. "He went down at midnight with four wolves and a lamp and a barrel and he has been in the room under the chamber for three hours and he has sent word up that he will burn the spring at dawn."The corridor went quiet."He will burn it," I said."He will burn it." Ilsa looked at me. "He has a barrel of powder and he has four wolves and he has barred the keeper's stair from the inside. And he has sent word up that if any wolf comes down

The screaming went on for a long time.We came up the keeper's stair with Callum between two Council guards and Eamon behind him with his hands bound, and the corridor at the top was full of wolves on their knees.That is what the breaking of the chain did. It took the false bonds out of wolves who had carried them for twenty years and it left them on the floor of a corridor in the northern seat, and there were clerks and guards and a keeper and two elders among them.Ilsa was on her feet. She had never been bound and she stood in the middle of the corridor with her shawl round her shoulders and her face white and she looked at me."Luna," she said. "What have you done?""I have broken the chain," I said. "Every false bond that was ever made with the water of that spring has come undone and every wolf who was carrying one is on the floor of this building."The corridor was full of wolves on the floor."Then there are more," Ilsa said."There will be more. There will be wolves in every

The horn was Ravenscar and it came from the bottom of the square and it did not stop.Callum had not gone to the coast. He had gone round the back of the town and come up the hill on the other side, and the twenty wolves he had brought in the night had been joined by forty more from the coast road.They were in the streets.Ilsa came down the steps of the northern seat at a run with her shawl slipping off her shoulders."Luna," she said. "They have taken the east quarter and the harbour and they are on the road to the house of the north.""The house of the north," I said."Twelve children walked out of it last night and seven are still in it and there is a keeper on the door." Ilsa looked at me. "If Callum gets to that house before we do he will have seven children and a bargaining counter."I turned round."Ronan.""I heard." He was already moving. "Oisin. Get the twelve out of the house at the bottom of the hill and bring them to the northern seat. Colm. Get every Council guard in t