“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.
“They 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.
Neither of them was so stupid that he wouldn’t have thought of it. But
they both enjoyed arguing so much that they didn’t want to spoil the
fun by settling the issue once and for all.
The wolf curled up and went to sleep while the rest of us waited for
the decision of our Master and his brothers about the wayward Torak.
When the other Gods came down from the tower, their faces were somber,
and they left without speaking to us.
Then Aldur summoned us, and we went upstairs.
“There will be war,” our Master told us sadly.
“Torak must not be permitted to gain full mastery of the Orb. They are
of two different purposes and must not be joined, lest the fabric of
creation be rent asunder. My brothers have gone to gather their
people. Mara and Issa will circle to the east through the lands of the
Dals that they might come at Torak from the south of Korim.
Nedra and Chaldan will encircle him from the west, and Belar will come
at him from the north. We will lay waste his Angaraks until he returns
the Orb. Though it rends my heart, it must be so. I will set tasks
for each of thee that thou must accomplish in mine absence.”
“Absence, Master?” Belzedar asked.
“I must go even unto Prolgu to consult with UL. The Destinies that
drive us all are known, though imperfectly, to him. He will provide
guidance for us, that we do not overstep certain limits in our war upon
our brother.”
The wolf, quite unnoticed, had gone to him and laid her head in his
lap. As he spoke to us, he absently–or so I thought at the
time–stroked her with an oddly affectionate hand. I knew it was
improbable, but I got the strong impression that they somehow already
knew each other.
CHAPTER SIX
Our Master was a long time at Prolgu, but we had more than enough to
keep us occupied, and I’m certain the peoples of the other Gods were
just as busy. With the possible exception of the Alorns and the
Arends, war was an alien concept to most of the rest of mankind, and
even those belligerent people were not very good at the kind of
organization necessary to build an army. By and large, the world had
been peaceful, and such fights as occasionally broke out tended to
involve just a few men pounding on each other with assorted weapons
that weren’t really very sophisticated. Fatalities occurred, of
course, but I like to think they were accidental most of the time.
This time was obviously going to be different. Whole races were going
to be thrown at each other, and nothing had prepared us for that.
We relied rather heavily on Belsambar’s knowledge of the Angaraks in
the early stages of our planning. That elevated opinion of themselves
which Torak had instilled in his people had made them aloof and
secretive, and strangers or members of other races were not welcome in
their cities. To emphasize that, Angaraks had traditionally walled in
their towns. It was not so much that they anticipated war–although
Torak himself probably did–but rather that they seemed to feel the
need for some visible sign that they were separate from and superior to
the rest of mankind.
Beldin sat scowling at the floor after Belsambar had described the wall
surrounding the city where he’d been born over a thousand years
before.
“Maybe they’ve discontinued the practice,” he growled.
“They hadn’t when I went down to have a look at them five centuries