The Spring Between Us

Chapter 66: Silas Smells the Bond

Silas did not move.

The shout went up to the roof and came down again and the hall was full of it, and Silas stood in the middle of the floor with his hat in his hand and his face going from pleasant to something else entirely.

"The town has voted," I said. "The Kızıltaş has voted. The Çöl has voted. The bond is sworn in front of both packs and the town under the old law of this canyon, and the pack book has the names in it, and the Council has suspended you and confined you to this canyon under the guard of the two packs." I came around the table. "So you can stand in this hall and tell me what the old law says, and I will tell you that I have read it too, and that I read it in the third volume of the Council records in the record room of this pack, and that it says a bond sworn in front of the packs and the town is a bond that stands."

Silas looked at me. Then he did a thing I had not seen him do before. He laughed.

It was not a pleasant laugh. It was short and dry and it came out of him like a cough.

"The old law," he said. "You have read the old law and you have read it in a Council record and you think you know what it says." He came toward the table. "Luna. I have been reading the old law of this canyon for thirty years. I have read it in the capital and in the Council hall and in a vault under the Council hall where nobody has been in forty years. I know what it says better than any wolf in this canyon. And it says one thing that you have not read, because it is not in the third volume. It is in the first."

The hall was silent.

"The first volume is the oldest," Silas said. "It is a hundred and forty years old and it is written in a hand nobody can read anymore and it is kept in the vault with the rings. And it says that a bond between the Alphas of rival packs shall be declared in the open hall of the Council of Alphas, before the Council, and that the declaration shall be made by the pair themselves, in the presence of the healer and the clerk and the whole Council, and that the mark shall be examined and recorded and the bond entered in the Council book." He put his hat on the table. "The old law of this canyon and the law of the Council are the same law, Luna. The canyon wrote it and the Council kept it. And you have sworn your bond in a pack house in front of a pack and a town and you have not declared it in the Council hall and the Council has not examined the mark and the bond is not entered in the Council book." He looked at me. "So the bond is sworn in this canyon and it is not sworn in the Council, and the Council will not recognize it, and when you go to the autumn gathering in three weeks the Council will look at your mark and say, this bond was not declared before us and it is not in our book, and it is void."

I stood at the table with my hand on the pack book.

"Then we will declare it at the autumn gathering," I said.

"You will declare it at the autumn gathering and the Council will examine it and the Council will record it and the Council will enter it in the book." Silas smiled. "And then the Council will look at the pair and the Council will ask itself a question. A pair that is bonded is one wolf in the eyes of the old law. One wolf cannot hold two packs. So which pack does the pair hold?" He put his hand on the table. "The Kızıltaş or the Çöl? Because a pair that holds both packs is a pair that has made itself an Alpha over the whole canyon, and the Council of Alphas was made to prevent exactly that. The Council will declare the bond and then the Council will declare that the pair must give up one of the two seats. And if the pair will not give up a seat, the Council will give up both seats for them."

The hall made a sound.

"The pair is one wolf," I said.

"The pair is one wolf," Silas said. "And one wolf cannot sit in two chairs. It is in the first volume, Luna. It has been in the first volume for a hundred and forty years and nobody has read it because nobody has ever been foolish enough to swear a bond between two packs in a pack house in front of a town." He picked up his hat. "So you have won today. You have won the vote and the town and the spring and the stone and the tank. And in three weeks you will go to the autumn gathering with all of it, and the Council will examine your mark and record your bond and then it will take one of your seats, and whichever seat it takes there will be a pack in this canyon that has no Luna and no Alpha and a Council trustee sitting in the chair before the year is out."

He walked to the door. Sten stepped in front of him.

"Beta," Silas said. "I am confined to this canyon by order of the Council and I am going back to my hall at the quarry to pack my papers. You may guard me there. You may not stop me going there."

Sten looked at me. I nodded.

Sten took him out. The hall was silent for a long moment.

Hank was beside me. "He is right," he said quietly. "I have heard of the first volume. It is in the vault in the capital. My father talked about it once and my mother would not speak of it."

"Then we find out what is in it." I turned. "Nora. The first volume. Do you know it?"

Nora came forward with her white hair and her dark brown eyes. "I know of it. My mother knew of it. She said the first volume was written by the first pair themselves in the year they swore the pact, and that the Council took it and put it in a vault a hundred years ago and no wolf outside the Council has read it since." She looked at me. "But there is a thing my mother told me once that she should not have told me. She said the first volume is not the only copy. She said the first pair wrote it twice and the second copy went to the Çöl pack and was kept in the spring house and that it was there when she was a girl."

The spring house.

The hall went very quiet.

"The spring house," I said. "The copy is in the spring house."

"The copy was in the spring house," Nora said. "My mother said it was kept in a box under the floor. And then the Council came and the first pair died and my mother was a girl and she was frightened, and she took the box out from under the floor and she hid it somewhere else and she never told me where."

I stood in the hall with the pack book open on the table and the stone and the pact and the two rings, and I thought about a spring house with a stone floor and a welling hole, and a stone that had come up out of the water with writing on it.

"Nora," I said. "Your mother hid it. Where would a frightened girl hide a box in a spring house?"

Nora's face changed.

"The welling hole," she said. "There is a ledge in the welling hole under the water. My mother told me about it. She said there was a ledge in the rock and that the old women put things on it and that the water kept them."

I was out of the hall before she finished.