So had the Dragonwitch said. And she had given Imraldera, as though bestowing a gift, the name by which the Beast was known in the worlds beyond.
Amarok. Imraldera rolled the word around in her mind. Though the language was foreign to her, the meaning translated itself: Ravenous. Cunning. Cruel. How could Wolf Tongue have any other name? It was too accurate to be doubted. She had gazed into his eyes. She had seen the desire. She had watched through all the years of her life how he feasted upon the fat of her land and grew strong, and she knew he had been at this feast since long before she was born.
Amarok. Her hands tried to form the word, to make the signs. There was no word quite like it in her vocabulary. She signed hungry. That wasn’t true. She signed brutal. That too was incorrect. She frowned. The shadow cast by the central stone fell across her face. But her hands could not form the name.
“Say his name,” Hri Sora had said, “and he will do your bidding.”
Imraldera clenched her fists and drew a long breath. She stood in the middle of a bloodstain, whether human or animal she could not know. In her mind’s eye, she gazed upon her future, the path she must follow. She saw only death. Her death, perhaps. Perhaps the death of her enemy. But death, one way or the other. Could such an end be right? Could such an end be pure? Or was holiness always bloody?
The mountain growled.
Imraldera felt rather than heard the reverberations beneath her feet. The stone Teeth quivered to their roots, and Imraldera herself stumbled and nearly fell from the stone. She caught hold of the nearest rock, clutching its sharp contours to support herself. And she gazed down into the valleys below.
He was coming. She could not see him. But she knew beyond doubt.
The Beast was returning to Bald Mountain.
The god of the Land ran across the long expanse of his demesne. His head was low, his claws tearing the turf in painful gouges, scarring the countryside in his wake. He covered miles in a stride, his eyes fixed on the point beyond the horizon where his prey awaited his coming.
The Land shuddered at his passing. The people, his worshippers, hid their faces, weeping at what they thought was their imminent doom. But he passed them by without a glance. He had but one purpose in his heart.
Her! The escaped one! The one who fled through the watery pass she could not have known, following some guide whom she trusted more than she trusted him!
But she had returned to him. She waited for him now. She had passed into the worlds beyond and found them more dreadful than the love he offered. He would have her at last! He would have her and keep her as he had been unable to keep Ytotia. Ytotia’s flame could not be suppressed forever. This girl was mere mortal dust—but not for long. He would transform her into one such as he, and if her mortal frame could withstand the change, she would be a worthy consort to his godhood.
So he ran, and Bald Mountain watched his coming, and watched also the girl standing upon its slopes, small among those jagged teeth on the sacrificial stone. It did not watch the orange cat streaking just ahead of the hunting wolf, for in the grand poetry of the story playing out below, that creature played no role. Only the girl and the wolf, a tale as old as Time itself. Girl and wolf; maid and monster. The dead mountain knew the symmetry of the worlds, the fixed laws of stories being lived. It had watched them all since it was Lady Whitehair, tall and glorious.
So the mountain paid no attention to the Bard of Rudiobus making that last mad, exhausted scramble up the secret Paths to the Place of the Teeth. And Imraldera, as she stood waiting—every muscle tensed to run, forcing herself to stand—did not see him until he sprang suddenly onto the stone and collapsed at her feet.
“Run now!” he gasped, his form flickering between cat and man. “The wolf is upon you!”
The sun sank, staining the sky red, hurling shadows across the mountain. Imraldera stared down at the cat. Her eyes, memory dazed, saw her father lying in a pool of blood.
“Run!” he had said, his last word. And she had obeyed, leaving him behind, leaving Fairbird, leaving her people. She had deprived the Beast of his due, and what price had her people paid in her absence?
“Run!” Eanrin cried. “It’s our only chance!”
And what of Fairbird?
Her mouth twisting in a silent scream, she whirled about and leapt from the stone. Even as her bare feet scrabbled in the soil, the wolf appeared below and in a single, powerful leap, landed among the Teeth. Imraldera heard his sharp intake of breath, and her limbs froze. She turned and stared at the monstrous form—large as a horse, black as sin, her oppressor, her god.
“Starflower!”
The Eldest’s daughter gazed into the face of the wolf and, just as she had that night under the cold moonlight, she saw death there. Tears filled her eyes, even as her heart refused to beat and her legs refused to obey her and run.
“Starflower!” the Beast cried. “You have returned to me!”