The Spring Between Us

Chapter 80: A Luna Without a Pack

I did not leave at dawn.

I left at noon, and by then there were eleven more wolves gone.

They went out through the gate in twos and threes with their bags on their backs and they did not look at me and they did not say anything. One of them was a woman I had known since I was a girl. One of them was the warrior who had stood at the gate the night the rider came. One of them was old Tomas's nephew, and when old Tomas saw him go he sat down on the porch step and put his face in his hands.

Twenty two wolves had left the Kızıltaş pack. There were eighteen left.

I stood in the yard with the saddlebag over my shoulder and the first volume inside my jacket and the record and the ruling and the vial and the papers in the bag, and I looked at the eighteen wolves who were still in the yard and said, "I am going to the capital. It is four hundred miles and it is three days if we ride hard and there is no Council soldier on the road who can stop us if we go by the creek bed and the old ore track. Any wolf who comes with me is coming to an open hall to say a thing that the Council does not want to hear. Any wolf who stays is staying in a canyon with no Luna and a Council trustee and a winter coming. I am not going to tell you which is right."

Sten came forward. "I am coming."

Berik came forward. "I am coming."

Cal was already at the gate with his horse.

Old Tomas got up off the step. "Luna. I am too old to ride four hundred miles but I am not too old to stand in a hall. My nephew has gone and I have not. I am coming."

Six more came. Eight more came. By the time I got up on my horse there were fifteen of the eighteen in the yard with their horses and their bags and their faces set.

The other three stayed. One of them was a woman with a baby and she stood at the gate with the baby on her hip and said, "Luna. I cannot ride four hundred miles with a child. But I will hold this house until you come back and I will not let a Council soldier through that gate."

"Then hold it," I said.

We went out of the gate at noon with fifteen wolves and the saddlebags and the first volume, and we went down the long slope to the creek bed and along it to the old ore track and up the track to the north, and we did not go down the mesa road and we did not go past the Council hall at the quarry.

The pack house was behind us before the sun went down.

We rode north for two days. We rode by the creek bed and the old ore track and then by the company road and then by a trail that Owen had drawn on a scrap of paper for me before we left the canyon. We slept in a cave the first night and under a rock shelf the second, and we ate dried apples and hard bread and the horses went slow and steady and nobody complained.

On the second night Cal came and sat down beside me at the fire.

"Luna," he said. "There is a thing I have been meaning to ask you since the pack house."

"I am not the Luna."

"You are the Luna to me and there is a thing I have been meaning to ask you since the pack house." He looked at the fire. "The first volume. It says the pair may set aside a Council that breaks the pact. In the open hall. In front of the packs. And it says the packs shall answer to the pair and not to the Council." He looked at me. "Do you believe it?"

I was quiet for a moment.

"I believe it is written in a book that has been hidden for a hundred and forty years," I said. "I believe the first pair wrote it and the Council took it and put it in a vault and hid the copy in a welling hole. And I believe the spring answered when we read the pact at the change of the moon and a stone came up out of the water with my grandmother's name on it." I looked at him. "So yes. I believe it. And I am going to say it in the open hall and let the Council decide whether it believes it."

Cal nodded. "Then I believe it too."

We came over the last ridge on the third morning and the capital was below us.

It was not a city. It was a town at the meeting of two rivers with a Council hall in the middle of it, a great stone building with a tower and a yard and a wall around it, and there were wagons on the road and horses at the rail and wolves and men going in and out of the gate. And on the road coming up from the south there was a line of wolves and a wagon and a cart and I knew them before I could see their faces.

The Çöl pack.

Hank was at the front of them on his grey horse and he pulled up when he saw me and he did not say anything for a moment and then he said, "You are late."

"You are early," I said.

"I have been here since dawn. The autumn gathering opened this morning and the Council has already read the ruling and the Chancellor has already said the Kızıltaş pack is to be dissolved and the canyon is to be put under a trustee." He looked at me. "And there is a thing you should know before we go down that road. The Council has a new envoy. He came in from the north last night and he is standing in the hall with the Chancellor right now and he has the Council's seal and he has been telling the hall that the pair is a fraud and the first volume is a forgery and the spring is a trick." He gathered his reins. "And his name is Silas."

I looked at him.

"Silas is in a cell in the canyon."

"Silas is in a cell in the canyon. This is another one." Hank's face was set. "Derya. The man in the hall is older than the envoy. He is sixty or seventy and he has silver hair and pale blue eyes and he is the image of the envoy. It is the father. The man who broke the first pact. He is not dead. He has been in the capital for forty years and he has come out of his house to stand in the open hall and finish what he started."

I sat on my horse on the ridge above the capital with the whole of the canyon behind me and the whole of the Council below me.

"Then we go down," I said. "And we finish it in the open hall."

We went down the road at noon with the two packs and the town behind us and the sun on the Council hall, and the gate was open and the yard was full and the hall doors were open and there was a great table at the far end with the Chancellor behind it and twelve Council wolves around it.

And standing in front of the table with his hands folded and his silver hair combed and his pale blue eyes calm was an old man who looked exactly like the envoy in the cell.

He looked at me as I came into the hall.

"Ah," he said. "The girl with the book."