“I know your name,” she signed. “The name you wish no one to know.”
“My, my!” He smiled. “Who told you that? Your wanderings must have taken you far, little Starflower, if you came to the lands where people knew Amarok of old. Amarok the shifter. Amarok the loner. No lord was he! No master of men, no director of fates. I was scorned by kings and queens who thought themselves my betters. But Amarok is made of more than dust, and the creatures of dust are subject to his whim!”
He stepped to the edge of his demesne, his feet just within the shadow of the cavern. “Go on, Starflower. Speak my name. It means nothing, for I know yours as well. Or did the people among whom you walked not tell you that side of the story? You can only control the power of a name so long as yours remains secret. And you have no secrets from me, my love. I am your god.”
“I know your true name,” she signed, and her hands shook as they formed the words.
Speak!
A taste like fire but purer, like scalding water, filled Imraldera’s mouth. From her lips, bursting like a liberated fountain and filling the air so that all might hear, she sang out in a loud voice:
“Let me praise the One Who Names Them.
He named this child from the Beginning,
Before the worlds were made!”
The wolf swore. His voice jolted from the inside out, as though his heart were breaking in two, and fire leapt from his eyes. But Imraldera, gazing upon him, declared the truth to the monster’s face. In a whisper, she spoke his true name:
“Beloved.”
———
A howl of rage shook the Circle of Faces. The wolf sprang from hiding, murder in his eyes. How dare she? How dare she speak that vile word, that word that contained slavery to his ears! He would devour her. He would crush her between his jaws and remove all memory of her from the face of the world. And when he returned to the Land, he would put her sister to the same death, and the silent women would be silent forever!
He forgot, for an instant, the Dragonwitch’s vow.
“Know this, my husband, and know it well: The moment you set foot beyond the Circle of Faces will be your last. For I shall send the Black Dogs!”
Midnight smothered the world. Darkness full of tormented dissonance. Whether the Dogs themselves saw the creature upon which they fell, who could say? But they set upon him in a hurricane’s rush, their eyes flashing, their jaws slavering, their teeth stained with the blood of their father.
Imraldera covered her face and cowered from the dreadful sight, unwilling to look. But she could not stop her ears to the screams.
“My own! My own!” cried the Beast.
And the Black Dogs dragged him to the realm of Death.
6
A HUSH FELL upon the world. Not a hush of silence. Gentle noises rang so much clearer following the horror of the Black Dogs’ coming and going. Waves lapped at the isthmus, murmuring. The river, its roar dulled by distance, poured from the mountains into the sea. Clouds gathered, drawing misty rain with them, which fell upon the girl kneeling on that lonely shore, her head cradled in her hands.
It was done. The wolf was slain. Her people saved.
But Imraldera wept for Amarok.
She understood now as she had been unable to before. With each tear that fell, she understood better, and her heart ached with the knowledge it now bore. For she had looked into the face of her enemy and she had loved. And then, she had stood by at his death.
“There is but one thing that separates the living spirit from the brute.”
She looked up into a face she could not recognize in the heavy mist. But the voice she knew.
“Only love sets you apart. Only love makes you more than an animal. Without love, you are no better than the Beast himself.”
The stranger before her knelt down and took her hands in his. She still could not see his face clearly in this gloom. But she saw his eyes. Dark, flecked with gold, full of kindness. His was a gaze in which she might rest.
“Amarok was intended to be more,” said the stranger. “The seed of goodness remained inside where it was planted. Had he submitted to love, that seed would have grown and flourished. As it was, his soul was a dry desert. But you saw, Starflower, if only for that moment, what he was meant for. Love for your sister was not enough. Love for her is as natural to you as breathing! The love you needed, my child, is unnatural and can be learned only with pain. Yet there is power in that love beyond all created understanding!”
Imraldera drew a shuddering breath and let it out with a sob. That final vision filled her mind, that vision of blood and roaring darkness, the pain in the Wolf Lord’s dying voice. What might he be now had he lived a life of submitted humility rather than stolen divinity?