All Chapters of Bound to a Dying Man: Chapter 161 - Chapter 170

The boat came into the harbour and the keeper Eamon came off it with four Council guards and a paper and a lantern, and I went down to the slip to meet him."Luna," he said. "You are not supposed to be in this territory.""I have been hearing that a great deal lately," I said. "Say what you have come to say."Eamon held up the paper."The Council has ordered the Alpha of the Blackthorn Pack to be examined by a Council physician. There has been word in the north that he has not been eating and has not been speaking and there is a keeper's book in this house that has been read to him for two days." He looked at me. "The Council is concerned that the Alpha has been the subject of a keeper's interference."I stood on the slip."The keeper's interference was you," I said."The Council does not know that and the Council will not know it because there is no proof and there is a keeper's book with no name in it and an Alpha who stopped eating." Eamon's jaw worked. "I have come to examine him

The horn was a Council horn and it came from the bottom of the glen.Maeve was on her feet."That will be the keeper," she said. "He has been on this road since the harbour. He knew you would come to the bothy.""How did he know?""Because I told him." Maeve's jaw worked. "I have been in the north for three days and I have been in a room with Eamon and a paper and a pen and he has been asking me where the founder would go to ground. And I told him the bothy in the glen because I knew you would not go there."I stood in the doorway."Maeve," I said."I have been a fool since the spring and I have been trying to be something else since the cellar and I am not going to be a fool again." She came across the bothy. "The keeper is in the glen with twenty wolves and he has a paper and a warrant and he is going to take you north. And I have been sitting in this bothy for two days with a paper in my hand that I have not shown anyone.""What paper?"Maeve held it up."It is a letter from the Co

I sat at the mouth of the cave with the whole of the north below me and the fire behind me and Maeve beside me with her copper curls loose and her hands in her lap."Say it again," I said."I told him where the spring is," Maeve said.The camp was quiet. The fire cracked and a wolf at the far end of it stopped talking and the whole of the fold of the hill went still."Maeve," I said. "The spring is under the northern seat and the northern seat is full of Council wolves and the whole of the north knows where the spring is.""The spring is under the northern seat," Maeve said. "But the chain is not. The chain was in the water and the water was in the pool and the pool is under the seat and every wolf in the north knows that." She looked at me. "But there is a second pool."I turned round."What second pool?""There is a second pool in the house of the north." Maeve's voice was flat. "It is under the cellar floor where your grandmother was buried. It is the older one and it is the one th

The horn was a Council horn and it came from the square.I sat on the edge of the bed with the keeper's hand in mine."Say that again," I said."Your grandmother," the keeper said. "The door behind the second pool is the place where the rites are made and there is a thing behind it that Soren has been trying to open since before you were born. And the thing behind it is the first of the old blood."I sat very still."The first of the old blood," I said. "The healer who made the rites two hundred years ago.""The first." The keeper's breath was going in short pulls. "He did not die. The book says he died and the book is a lie. He went behind the door and he has been behind it ever since and the keepers have been keeping the door shut and Soren has been trying to open it."The room was quiet."Why?" I said."Because a founder who is behind a door is a founder who cannot be born," the keeper said. "And a line that cannot be born is a line that can be kept in a house and bred like cattle

Eamon came up the cellar stair at a run and there was a thing behind him.It came up out of the dark of the cellar and into the light of the yard and it was not a wolf and it was not a man.It was old. It was older than anything I have ever seen. It was a shape in a coat that had been a keeper's coat two hundred years ago and it had a face and the face was thin and white and the eyes in it were the colour of the stone in my pocket.The first of the old blood.It stopped at the top of the cellar stair and it looked round the yard. The forty rogues on the steps went back a step. The Council guards at the gate put their spears up and then thought better of it and put them down again.And then it looked at me."Founder," it said.Its voice was the sound of a door opening in a house that has been shut for a long time."Say what you have come to say," I said."I have been behind a door for two hundred years," it said. "And I have been listening. And there is a thing I have to say to the fou