The Rivan Codex: Ancient Texts of THE BELGARIAD and THE MALLOREON (The Belgariad / The Malloreon)

by Eddings, Leigh;Eddings, David

  I would not have devoted so much time here to this incident were it not to help explain how insidiously the personality of the shapes we assume begin to take us over. Let any who would practice this art be cautious. To remain in a shape too long is to invite the very real possibility that when the time comes to resume our proper form, we will not desire to do so. I must quite candidly admit that by the time my companion and I reached the land of the Bear-God, I had begun to give long thoughts to the pleasures of the den and the hunt and the sweet nuzzlings of puppies and the true and steadfast companionship of a mate.

  At length, we found a band of hunters near the edge of the 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, thy God,’ I told them.

  ‘How may we know this to be true?’ they asked me.

  ‘Ye may know it to be true because I say it is true,’ I told them. ‘The message is important, and there is little time to delay.’

  Then one of them saw my companion and cast his spear at her. I had no time to make what I did appear normal nor to conceal it from them. I stopped the spear in mid-flight.

  They stood gaping at the spear stuck in the air as if in a tree. Irritated, I flexed my mind and broke the spear in two.

  ‘Sorcery!’ one of them gasped.

  ‘The wolf is with me,’ I told them sternly. ‘Do not attempt to injure her again.’ I beckoned to her and she came to my side, baring her fangs at them.

  ‘And now convey me unto Belar,’ I ordered them.

  The God Belar appeared very young—scarcely more than a boy, though I knew he was much, much older than I. He was a fair-seeming, open-faced God, and the people who served him were a rowdy, undisciplined group, scarcely conscious of the dignity of their Master.

  ‘Well-met, Belgarath,’ he greeted me, though we had never met and I had told my name to no one. ‘How does it go with my brother?’

  ‘Not well, my Lord,’ I told him. ‘Thy brother, Torak, hath come unto my Master and smote him and hath borne away a particular jewel which he coveted.’

  ‘What?’ the young God roared, springing to his feet. ‘Torak hath the Orb?’

  ‘I greatly fear it is so, my Lord,’ I told him. ‘My Master bids me entreat thee to come to him with all possible speed.’

  ‘I will, Belgarath,’ Belar said. ‘I will make preparations at once. Hath Torak used the Orb as yet?’

  ‘We think not, my Lord,’ I said. ‘My Master says we must make haste, before thy brother, Torak, hath learned the full power of the jewel he hath stolen.’

  ‘Truly,’ the young God said. He glanced at the young she-wolf sitting at my feet. ‘Greetings, little sister,’ he said courteously, ‘is it well with thee?’

  ‘Most remarkable,’ she said politely. ‘It appears that I have fallen in with creatures of great importance.’

  ‘Thy friend and I must make haste,’ he told her. ‘Otherwise I should make suitable arrangements for thy comfort. May I offer thee to eat?’

  She glanced at the ox turning on the spit in his great hall. ‘ That smells interesting,’ she said.

  ‘Of course,’ he said, taking up a knife and carving off a generous portion for her.

  ‘My thanks,’ she said. ‘This one—’ she jerked her head at me ‘—was in so much hurry to reach this place that we scarce had time for a rabbit or two along the way.’ Daintily she gulped the meat down in two great bites. ‘Quite good,’ she said, ‘though one wonders why it was necessary to burn it.’

  ‘A custom, little sister,’ he laughed.

  ‘Oh, well,’ she said, ‘if it’s a custom.’ Carefully she licked her whiskers clean.

  ‘I will return in a moment, Belgarath,’ Belar said and moved away.

  ‘That one is nice,’ my companion told me pointedly.

  ‘He is a God,’ I told her.

  ‘That means nothing to me,’ she said. ‘Gods are the business of men. Wolves have little interest in such things.’

  ‘Perhaps you would care to return to the place where we met?’ I suggested.

  ‘I will go along with you for a while longer,’ she told me. ‘I was ever curious, and I see that you are familiar with most remarkable things.’ She yawned, stretched, and curled up at my feet.

  The return to the Vale where my Master waited took far less time than had my journey to the country of the Bear-God. Though time is a matter of indifference to them normally, when there is a need for haste, the Gods can devour distance in ways that had not even occurred to me. We began walking with Belar asking me questions about my Master and our lives in the Vale and the young she-wolf padding along sedately between us. After several hours of this, my impatience finally made me bold.

  ‘My Lord,’ I said, ‘forgive me, but at this rate it will take us almost a year to reach my Master’s tower.’

  ‘Not nearly so long, Belgarath,’ he replied 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 standing in the center.

  ‘Most remarkable,’ the wolf murmured, dropping onto her haunches and staring down into the Vale with her bright yellow eyes. I could only agree with her.

  The other Gods were already with my Master in the tower, and Belar hastened to join them.

  My brothers, the other Disciples of Aldur, awaited me at the foot of the tower. When they saw my companion, they were startled.

  ‘Is it wise, Belgarath, to bring such a one here?’ Belzedar asked me. ‘Wolves are not the most trustworthy creatures.’

  My companion bared her fangs at him for that.

  ‘What is her name,’ the gentle Beltira asked.

  ‘Wolves do not require names,’ I told him. ‘They know who they are without such appendages.’

  Belzedar shook his head and moved away from the wolf.

  ‘Is she quite tame?’ Belsambar asked me. ‘I wonder that you had time for such business on your journey, and I know you would not loiter.’

  ‘She is not tame at all,’ I told him. ‘We met by chance, and she chose to accompany me.’

  ‘Most remarkable,’ the wolf said to me. ‘Are they always so full of questions?’

  ‘It is the nature of man,’ I told her.

  ‘Curious creatures,’ she said, shaking her head.

  ‘What a wonder,’ Belkira marveled. ‘You have learned to converse with the beasts. Pray, dear brother, instruct me in this art.’

  ‘It is not an art,’ I said. ‘I took the form of a wolf on my journey. The speech of the wolf came with the form and remained. It is no great thing.’

  And then we sat, awaiting the decision of our Master and his brother Gods regarding the wayward Torak. When they came down, their faces were solemn, and the other Gods departed without speaking with us.

  ‘There will be war,’ our Master told us. ‘My brothers have gone to gather their people. Mara and Issa will come upon Torak from the south; Nedra and Chaldan shall come upon him from the west; Belar and I will come upon him from the north. We will lay waste his people, the Angaraks, until he returns the Orb. It must be so.’

  ‘Then so be it,’ I said, speaking for us all.

  And so we prepared for war. We were but seven, and feared that our Master might be held in low regard when our tiny number was revealed to the hosts of the other Gods, but it was not so. We labored to create the great engines of war and to cast illusions which confounded the minds of the Angarak peoples of the traitor, Torak.

  And after a few battles did we and the hosts of the other peoples harry Torak and his people out onto that vast plain beyond Korim, which is no more.9

  And then it was that Torak, knowing that the hosts of his brother Gods could destroy all of Angarak, raised up the jewel which my Master had wrought, and with it he let in the sea.

  The soun
d was one such as I had never heard before. The earth shrieked and groaned as the power of the Orb and the will of Torak cracked open the fair plain; and, with a roar like ten thousand thunders, the sea came in to seethe in a broad, foaming band between us and the Angaraks. How many perished in that sudden drowning no one will ever know. The cracked land sank beneath our feet, and the mocking sea pursued us, swallowing the plain and the villages and the cities which lay upon it. Then it was that the village of my birth was lost forever, and that fair, sparkling river drowned beneath the endlessly rolling sea.

  A great cry went up from the hosts of the other Gods, for indeed the lands of most of them were swallowed up by the sea which Torak had let in.

  ‘How remarkable,’ the young wolf at my side observed.

  ‘You say that overmuch,’ I told her, somewhat sharply.

  ‘Do you not find it so?’

  ‘I do,’ I said, ‘but one should not say it so often lest one be thought simple.’

  ‘I will say as I wish to say,’ she told me. ‘You need not listen if it does not please you; and if you think me simple, that is your concern.’

  Who can argue with a wolf?—and a she-wolf at that?

  And now were we confounded. The broad sea stood between us and the Angaraks, and Torak stood upon one shore and we upon the other.

  ‘And what now, Master?’ I asked Aldur.

  ‘It is finished,’ he said. ‘The war is done.’

  ‘Never!’ said the young God Belar. ‘My people are Alorns. The ways of the sea are not strange to them. If it be not possible to come upon the traitor Torak by land, then my Alorns shall build a great fleet, and we shall come upon him by sea. The war is not done. He hath smote thee, my dear brother, and he hath stolen that which was thine, and now hath he drowned this fair land in the death-cold sea also. Our homes and our fields and forests are no more. This I say, and my words are true, between Alorn and Angarak shall there be endless war until the traitor Torak be punished for his iniquities—yea, even if it prevail so until the end of days.’

  ‘Torak is punished,’ my Master said quietly. ‘He hath raised the Orb against the earth, and the Orb hath requited him for that. The pain of that requiting shall endure in our brother Torak all the days of his life. Moreover, now is the Orb awakened. It hath been used to commit a great evil, and it will not be used so again. Torak hath the Orb, but small pleasure will he find in the having. He may not touch it, neither may he look upon it, lest it slay him.’

  ‘Nonetheless,’ said Belar, ‘I will make war upon him until the Orb be returned to thee. To this I pledge all of Aloria.’

  ‘As you would have it, my brother,’ said Aldur. ‘Now, however, must we raise some barrier against this encroaching sea lest it swallow up all the dry land that is left to us. Join, therefore, thy will with mine and let us do that which must be done.’

  Until that day I had not fully realized to what degree the Gods differed from men. As I watched, Aldur and Belar joined their hands and looked out over the broad plain and the approaching sea.

  ‘Stay,’ Belar said to the sea. His voice was not loud, but the sea heard him and stopped. It built up, angry and tossing, behind the barrier of that single word.

  ‘Rise up,’ Aldur said as softly to the earth. My mind reeled as I perceived the immensity of that command. The earth, so newly wounded by the evil which Torak had done, groaned and heaved and swelled; and, before my eyes, it rose up. Higher and higher it rose as the rocks beneath cracked and shattered. Out of the plain there shouldered up mountains which had not been there before, and they shuddered away the loose earth as a dog shakes off water and stood as a stern and eternal barrier against the sea which Torak had let in.

  Sullenly, the sea retreated.

  ‘How remarkable,’ the wolf said.

  ‘Truly,’ I could not but agree.

  And the other Gods and their people came and beheld that which my Master and his brother Belar had done, and they marveled at it.

  ‘Now is the time of sundering,’ my Master said. ‘The land which was once so fair is no more. That which remains here is harsh and will not support us. Take thou therefore, my brothers, each his own people and journey even unto the west. Beyond the western mountains lies a fair plain—not so broad perhaps nor so beautiful as that which Torak hath drowned this day—but it will sustain thee and thy people.’

  ‘And what of thou, my brother?’ asked Mara.

  ‘I shall return to my labors,’ said Aldur. ‘This day hath evil been unleashed in the world, and its power is great. Care for thy people, my brothers, and sustain them. The evil hath come into the world as a result of that which I have forged. Upon me, therefore, falls the task of preparation for the day when good and evil shall meet in that final battle wherein shall be decided the fate of the world.’

  ‘So be it, then,’ said Mara. ‘Hail and farewell, my brother,’ and he turned and the other Gods with him, and they went away toward the west.

  But the young God Belar lingered. ‘My oath and my pledge bind me still,’ he told my Master. ‘I will take my Alorns to the north, and there we will seek a way by which we may come again upon the traitor Torak and his foul Angarak peoples. Thine Orb shall be returned unto thee. I shall not rest until it be so.’And then he turned and put his face to the north, and his tall warriors followed after him.

  That day marked a great change in our lives in the Vale. Until then our days had been spent in learning and in labors of our own choosing. Now, however, our Master set tasks for us. Most of them were beyond our understanding, and no work is so tedious as to labor at something without knowing the reason for it. Our Master shut himself away in his tower, and often years passed without our seeing him.

  It was a time of great trial to us, and our spirits often sank.

  One day, as I labored, the she-wolf, who always watched, moved slightly or made some sound, and I stopped and looked at her. I could not remember how long it had been since I had noticed her.

  ‘It must be tedious for you to simply sit and watch this way,’ I said.

  ‘It’s not unpleasant,’ she said. ‘Now and then you do something curious or remarkable. There is entertainment enough for me here. I will go along with you yet for a while longer.’

  I smiled, and then a strange thing occurred to me. ‘How long has it been since you and I first met?’ I asked her.

  ‘What is time to a wolf?’ she asked indifferently.

  I consulted several documents and made a few calculations. ‘As closely as I can determine, you have been with me somewhat in excess of a thousand years,’ I told her.

  ‘And?’ she said in that infuriating manner of hers.

  ‘Don’t you find that a trifle remarkable?’

  ‘Not particularly,’ she said placidly.

  ‘Do wolves normally live so long?’

  ‘Wolves live as long as they choose to live,’ she said, somewhat smugly, I thought.

  One day soon after that I found it necessary to change my form in order to complete a task my Master had set me to.

  ‘So that’s how you do it,’ the wolf marveled. ‘What a simple thing.’ And she promptly turned herself into a snowy owl.

  ‘Stop that,’ I told her.

  ‘Why?’ she said, carefully preening her feathers with her beak.

  ‘It’s not seemly.’

  ‘What is “seemly” to a wolf—or an owl, I should say?’ And with that she spread her soft, silent wings and soared out the window.

  After that I knew little peace. I never knew when I turned around what might be staring at me—wolf or owl, bear or butterfly. She seemed to take great delight in startling me, but as time wore on, more and more she retained the shape of the owl.

  ‘What is this thing about owls?’ I growled one day.

  ‘I like owls,’ she explained as if it were the simplest thing in the world. ‘During my first winter when I was a young and foolish thing, I was chasing a rabbit, floundering around in the snow like a puppy, and a great
white owl swooped down and snatched my rabbit almost out of my jaws. She carried it to a nearby tree and ate it, dropping the scraps to me. I thought at the time that it would be a fine thing to be an owl.’

  ‘Foolishness,’ I snorted.

  ‘Perhaps,’ she replied blandly, preening her tail feathers, ‘but it amuses me. It may be that one day a different shape will amuse me even more.’

  I grunted and returned to my work.

  Some time later—days or years or perhaps even longer— she came swooping through the window, as was her custom, perched sedately on a chair and resumed her proper wolf-shape.

  ‘I think I will go away for a while,’ she announced.

  ‘Oh?’ I said cautiously.

  She stared at me, her golden eyes unblinking. ‘I think I would like to look at the world again,’ she said.

  ‘I see,’ I said.

  ‘The world has changed much, I think.’

  ‘It’s possible.’

  ‘I might come back some day.’

  ‘As you wish,’ I said.

  ‘Goodbye, then,’ she said, blurred into the form of an owl again, and with a single thrust of her great wings she was gone.

  Strangely, I missed her. I found myself turning often to show her something. She had been a part of my life for so long that it somehow seemed that she would always be there. I was always a bit saddened not to see her in her usual place.

  And then there came a time when, on an errand for my Master, I went some leagues to the north. On my way back I came across a small, neatly thatched cottage in a grove of giant trees near a small river. I had passed that way frequently, and the house had never been there before. Moreover, to my own certain knowledge, there was not another human habitation within five hundred leagues. In the house there lived a woman. She seemed young, and yet perhaps not young. Her hair was quite tawny, and her eyes were a curious golden color.