Chapter 12: The Last Ashdown

"The Ashdowns," said the healer.

She said it.

"They held Mirefold for nine generations."

"Big, golden, handsome wolves, every one, and the Alpha line had a ring of gold round the black of the eye when the wolf came up."

"You could see it across a room."

"I've never heard of them," I said.

"You wouldn't have. Nobody speaks the name in Mirefold now."

Torin stood behind my chair with a hand on my shoulder.

Torvi leaned against the wall with her arms folded, unusually quiet.

"What happened to them?" I asked.

"The old Alpha Ashdown died of a fever fifteen years ago this winter. Quick, they said."

"Osric MacIlroy was his Beta, and sat beside his bed the whole week." The healer's mouth thinned.

"Three days after the funeral, the Alpha's only child went into the mill-race."

My mouth went dry.

"She was a little thing. Nine years old. Hair the colour of wet sand."

Nobody breathed.

I put a hand up to my hair, the long loose hair I had stopped pinning, and I felt it slide through my fingers.

"They never found her," the healer said. "Mirefold dragged the race for two days. There was a funeral with no body."

"Osric became Alpha by acclaim, because there was nobody else."

"I was nine when it started," I said.

My voice sounded far away.

"The tonic. I was nine. Lorna said I'd been very ill."

"Did you have a fever?"

"I don't remember." I swallowed. "I remember cold water."

The room tilted.

It came back all at once.

Black water over my head.

A roaring in my ears.

Something heavy against my small chest, and a sound like a mill wheel turning, and above me the light of a lantern wobbling on the surface.

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