"Good hunting," he said with a faint smile.
"Very funny, Belmakor," I replied dryly.
"One does one's best, old boy. I'll go speak with the twins." And he sauntered off in the direction of the twins' tower. Not much ever ruffled Belmakor--at least not on the surface.
Since speed was important, I decided to change into the form of an eagle and fly north, which proved to be a mistake. I think I've already mentioned the fact that I don't fly very well. I've never really been able to get the hang of it. For one thing, I'm not all that comfortable with feathers, and for another--wings or not--the sight of all that empty air under me makes me decidedly uncomfortable, so I flap a great deal more than is really necessary, and that can become very tiring after a while.
The major problem, however, lay in the fact that the longer I remained in the form of an eagle, the more the character of the eagle became interwoven with my own. I began to be distracted by tiny movements on the ground, and I had fierce urges to swoop down and kill things.
This obviously wasn't working, so I settled back to earth, resumed my own form, and sat for a time to catch my breath, rest my arms, and consider alternatives. The eagle, for all his splendor, is really a stupid bird, and I didn't want to be continually distracted from my search for Belar by every mouse or rabbit on the ground beneath me.
I considered the possibility of the horse. A horse can run very fast for short periods, but he soon tires, and he's not very much brighter than the eagle. I decided against taking the form of a horse and moved on to other possibilities. An antelope can run for days without tiring, but the antelope is a silly creature, and too many other animals on this vast plain looked upon him as a food source. I didn't really have the time to stop to persuade every passing predator to go find something else to eat. I needed a form with speed and stamina and a sufficiently intimidating reputation to keep other creatures at a distance.
After a while it occurred to me that all the traits I was looking for were to be found in the wolf. Of all the creatures of the plain and forest, the wolf is the most intelligent, the swiftest, and the most tireless. Not only that, no sane animal crosses a wolf if he can possibly avoid it.
It took me a while to get it right. Beldin had taught us all to assume the form of a bird, but I was on my own when it came to putting on fur and paws.
I'll admit that I botched it the first few times. Have you ever seen a wolf with feathers and a beak? You really wouldn't want to. I finally managed to put all thoughts of birds out of my mind and came much closer to my idealized conception of what a wolf ought to look like.
It's a strange sort of process, this changing of form. First you fill your mind with the image of the creature you want to become, and then you direct your will inward and sort of melt yourself into the image. I wish Beldin were around. He could explain it far better than I can. The important thing is just to keep trying--and to change back quickly if you get it wrong. If you've left out the heart, you're in trouble.
After I'd made the change, I checked myself over rather carefully to make sure I hadn't left anything out. I'd imagine that I looked just a bit ridiculous groping at my head and ears and muzzle with my paws, but I wanted to be certain that other wolves wouldn't laugh at me when they saw me.
Then I started across the grassland. I soon realized that my choice had been a good one. As soon as I got used to the idea of running on all fours, I found the shape of the wolf quite satisfactory and the mind of the wolf most compatible with my own. After an hour or so, I was pleased to note that I was covering the ground at least as fast as I had when floundering through the air as an eagle. I quickly discovered that it's a fine thing to have a tail. A tail helps you to keep your balance, and it acts almost like a rudder when you're making quick turns. Not only that, when you have a fine, bushy tail, you can wrap it around yourself at night to ward off the chill. You really ought to try it sometime.
I ran north for a week or so, but I still hadn't come across any Alorns.
Then on one golden afternoon in late summer I encountered a young she-wolf who was feeling frolicsome. She had, as I recall, fine haunches and a comely muzzle.
"Why so great a hurry, friend?" she said to me coyly in the way of wolves. Even in my haste, I was startled to find that I could understand her quite clearly. I slowed, and then I stopped.
"What a splendid tail you have," she complimented me, quickly following up on her advantage, "and what excellent teeth."
"Thank you," I replied modestly.
"Your own tail is also quite fine, and your coat is truly magnificent." I admired her openly.
"Do you really think so?" she said, preening herself. Then she nipped playfully at my flank and dashed off a few yards, trying to get me to chase her.
"I would gladly stay a while so that we might get to know each other better," I told her, "but I have a most important errand."
"An errand?" she scoffed, with her tongue lolling out in amusement.
"Whoever heard of a wolf with any errand but his own desires?"
"I am not really a wolf," I explained.
"Really? How remarkable. You look like a wolf, and you talk like a wolf, and you certainly smell like a wolf, but you say that you are not a wolf. What are you, then?"
"I am a man." I said it rather deprecatingly. Wolves have strong opinions about certain things, I discovered.
She sat, a look of amazement on her face. She had to accept what I said as the truth, since wolves are incapable of lying.
"You have a tail,"
she pointed out, "and I have never seen a man with a tail before. You have a fine coat. You have four feet. You have long, pointed teeth, sharp ears, and a black nose, and yet you say you are a man."
"It is very complicated."
"It must be," she conceded.
"I think I will run with you for a while, since you must attend to this errand of yours. Perhaps we can discuss it as we go along, and you can explain this complicated thing to me."
"If you wish." I rather liked her and was glad by then for any company.
It's lonely being a wolf sometimes.
"I must warn you though, that I run very fast," I cautioned her.
She sniffed.
"All wolves run very fast."
And so, side by side, we ran off over the endless grassland in search of the God Belar.
"Do you intend to run both day and night?" she asked me after we had gone several miles.
"I will rest when I grow tired."
"I am glad of that." Then she laughed in the way of wolves, nipped at my shoulder, and scampered off.
I began to consider the morality of my situation. Though my companion looked quite delightful to me in my present form, I was almost positive that she would seem less so once I resumed my proper shape. Further, while it's undoubtedly a fine thing to be a father, I was fairly certain that a litter of puppies might prove to be an embarrassment when I returned to my Master. Not only that, the puppies would not be entirely wolves, and I didn't really want to father a race of monsters. But finally, since wolves mate for life, when I left my companion--as I would eventually be compelled to do--she would be abandoned, left alone with a litter of fatherless puppies, and subject to the scorn and ridicule of the other members of her pack. Propriety is very important to wolves. Thus, I resolved to resist her advances on our journey in search of Belar.
I wouldn't have devoted so much time and space to this incident except to help explain how insidiously the personalities of the shapes we assume come to dominate our thinking. Before we had gone very far, I was as much or more a wolf as my little friend. If you should ever decide to practice this art, be careful. To remain in a shape too long is to invite the very real possibility that when the time comes to go back to your own form, you may not want to. I'll quite candidly admit that by the time the young she-wolf and I reached the realms of the Bear God, I'd begun to give long thoughts to the pleasures of the den and the hunt, the sweet nuzzlings of puppies, an
d the true and steadfast companionship of a mate.
At length we found a band of hunters near the edge of that vast primeval forest where Belar, the Bear God, dwelt with his people. To the amazement of my companion, I resumed my own shape and approached them.
"I have a message for Belar," I told them.
"How may we know this to be true?" one burly fellow demanded truculently. Why is it that Alorns will go out of their way to pick a fight?
"You know it's true because I say it's true," I told him bluntly.
"The message is important, so quit wasting time flexing your muscles and take me to Belar at once."
Then one of the Alorns saw my companion and threw his spear at her. I didn't have time to make what I did seem natural or to conceal it from them. I stopped the spear in mid-flight.
They stood gaping at that spear stuck quivering in the air as if in the trunk of a tree. Then, because I was irritated, I flexed my mind and broke the spear in two.
"Sorcery!" one of them gasped.
"Amazing level of perception there, old boy," I said sarcastically, imitating Belmakor at his best.
"Now, unless you'd all like to live out the rest of your lives as cabbages, take me to Belar at once. Oh, incidentally, the wolfs with me. The next one of you who tries to hurt her is going to spend the rest of his life carrying his entrails around in a bucket." You have to be graphic to get an Alorn's attention sometimes. I beckoned to the wolf, and she came to my side, baring her fangs at them. She had lovely fangs, long and curved and as sharp as daggers. Her display of them got the Alorns' immediate and undivided attention.
"Nicely done,"
I snarled admiringly to her. She wagged her tail, her lip still curled menacingly at those thick-witted barbarians.
"Shall we go talk to Belar, gentlemen?" I suggested in my most civilized manner on the theory that sometimes you have to beat Alorns over the head.
We found the God Belar in a rude encampment some miles deeper into the forest. He appeared to be very young--scarcely more than a boy, though I knew that he was very nearly as old as my Master. I have my suspicions about Belar. He was surrounded by a bevy of busty, blonde-braided Alorn maidens, who all seemed enormously fond of him. Well, he was a God, after all, but the admiration of those girls didn't seem to be entirely religious.
All right, Polgara, just let it lie, will you?
The Alorns in that crude encampment in the woods were rowdy, undisciplined, and--by and large--drunk. They joked boisterously with their Master with absolutely no sense of decorum or dignity.
"Well met, Belgarath," Belar greeted me, though we'd never met before and I hadn't told any of those belligerent hunters my name.
"How goes it with my beloved elder brother?"
"Not well, my Lord," I replied rather formally. Despite the tankard he held in one hand and the blonde he held in the other, he was still a God, so I thought it best to mind my manners.
"Thy brother Torak came unto my Master and smote him and bore away a particular jewel that he coveted."
"What?" the young God roared, springing to his feet and spilling both tankard and blonde.
"Torak hath the Orb?"
"I greatly fear it is so, my Lord. My Master bids me entreat thee to come to him with all possible speed."
"I will, Belgarath," Belar assured me, retrieving his tankard and the pouty-looking blonde.
"I will make preparations at once. Hath Torak used the Orb as yet?"
"We think not, my Lord," I replied.
"My Master says we must make haste, ere thy brother Torak hath learned the full power of the jewel he hath stolen."
"Truly," Belar agreed. He glanced at the young she-wolf sitting at my feet.
"Greetings, little sister," he said in flawless wolfish.
"Is it well with thee?" Belar had his faults, certainly, but you could never criticize his manners.
"Most remarkable," she said with some amazement.
"It appears that I have fallen in with creatures of great importance."
"Thy companion and I must make haste," he told her.
"Otherwise I would make suitable arrangements for thy comfort. May I offer thee to eat?" You see what I mean about Belar's courtesy?
She glanced at the ox turning on a spit over an open fire.
"That smells interesting," she said.
"Of course." He took up a very long knife and carved off a generous portion for her. He handed it to her, being careful to snatch his fingers back out of the range of those gleaming fangs.
"My thanks," she said, tearing off a chunk and downing it in the blink of an eye.
"This one--" She jerked her head at me "--was in so much hurry to reach this place that we scarce had time to catch a rabbit or two along the way." She daintily gulped the rest of the meat down in two great bites.
"Quite good," she noted, "though one wonders why it was necessary to burn it."
"A custom, little sister," he explained.
"Oh, well, if it is a custom--" She carefully licked her whiskers clean.
"I will return in a moment, Belgarath," Belar said, and moved away to speak with his Alorns.
"That one is nice," my companion told me pointedly.
"He is a God," I told her.
"That means nothing to me," she said indifferently.
"Gods are the business of men. Wolves have little interest in such things." Then she looked at me critically.
"One would be more content with you if you would keep your eyes where they belong," she added.
"One does not understand what you mean."
"I think you do. The females belong to the nice one. It is not proper for you to admire them so openly." Regardless of my reservations about the matter, it was fairly obvious that she had made some decisions. I thought it might be best to head that off.
"Perhaps you would wish to return to the place where we first met so that you may rejoin your pack?" I suggested delicately.
"I will go along with you for a while longer." She rejected my suggestion.
"I was ever curious, and I see that you are familiar with things that are most remarkable." She yawned, stretched, and curled up at my feet-being careful, I noticed, to place herself between me and those Alorn girls.
The return to the Vale where my Master waited took far less time than my journey to the land of the Bear God had. Although time is normally a matter of indifference to them, when there's need for haste, the Gods can devour distance in ways that hadn't even occurred to me.
We set out at what seemed no more than a leisurely stroll with Belar asking me questions about my Master and our lives in the Vale while the young she-wolf padded along sedately between us. After several hours of this, my impatience made me bold enough to get to the point.
"My Lord,"
I said, "forgive me, but at this rate, it'll take us almost a year to reach my Master's tower."
"Not nearly so long, Belgarath," he disagreed pleasantly.
"I believe it lies just beyond that next hilltop."
I stared at him, not believing that a God could be so simple, but when we crested the hill, there lay the Vale spread before us with my Master's tower in the center.
"Most remarkable," the wolf murmured, dropping to her haunches and staring down into the Vale with her bright yellow eyes. I had to agree with her about that.
My brothers had returned by now, and they were waiting at the foot of our Master's tower as we approached. The other Gods were already with my Master, and Belar hastened into the tower to join them.
When my brothers saw my companion, they were startled.
"Belgarath," Belzedar objected, "is it wise to bring such a one here? Wolves are not the most trustworthy of creatures, you know."
The she-wolf bared her fangs at him for that. How in the world could she possibly have understood what he'd said?
"What is her name?" the gentle Beltira asked me.
"Wolves don't need names, brother," I replied.
"Th
ey know who they are without such appendages. Names are a human conceit, I think."
Belzedar shook his head and moved away from the wolf.
"Is she quite tame?" Belsambar asked me. Taming things was a passion with Belsambar. I think he knew half the rabbits and deer in the Vale by their first names, and the birds used to perch on him the way they would have if he had been a tree.
"She isn't tame at all, Belsambar," I told him.
"We met by chance while I was going north, and she decided to tag along."
"Most remarkable," the wolf said to me.
"Are they always so full of questions?"
"How did you know they were asking questions?"
"You, too? You are as bad as they are." That was a maddening habit of hers. If she considered a question unimportant, she simply wouldn't answer it.
"It's the nature of man to ask questions," I said a bit defensively.
"Curious creatures," she sniffed, shaking her head. She could also be a mistress of ambiguity.
"What a wonder," Belkira marveled.
"You've learned to converse with the beasts. I pray you, dear brother, instruct me in this art."
"I wouldn't exactly call it an art, Belkira. I took the form of a wolf on my journey to the north. The language of wolves came with the form and remained even after I changed back. It's no great thing."
"I think you might be wrong there, old chap," Belmakor said with a thoughtful expression.
"Learning foreign languages is a very tedious process, you know. I've been meaning to learn Ulgo for several years now, but I haven't gotten around to it. If I were to take the form of an Ulgo for a day or so, it might save me months of study."
"You're lazy, Belmakor," Beldin told him bluntly.
"Besides, it wouldn't work."
"And why not?"
"Because an Ulgo's still a man. Belgarath's wolf doesn't form words the way we do because she doesn't think the way we do."
"I don't think the way an Ulgo does, either," Belmakor objected.
"I
think it would work."
"You're wrong, it wouldn't."
That particular argument persisted off and on for about a hundred years. The notion of trying it and finding out one way or the other never occurred to either of them. Now that I think of it, though, it probably did.
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