David and Leigh Eddings – Belgarath the Sorcerer

definitely get noticed when you walk into an Arendish village or a

Tolnedran town with a full-grown wolf at your side, and her presence

did tend to make people listen to me.

Arranging marriages in those days wasn’t really all that difficult. The

Arends–and to a somewhat lesser degree the Tolnedrans–had patriarchal

notions, and children were supposed to obey their fathers in important

matters. Thus, I was seldom obliged to try to convince the happy

couple that they ought to get married. I talked with their fathers

instead. I had a certain celebrity in those days. The war was still

fresh in everybody’s mind, and my brothers and I had played fairly

major roles in that conflict.

Moreover, I soon found that the priesthood in both Arendia and Tolnedra

could be very helpful. After I’d been through the whole business a

couple of times, I began to develop a pattern. When the wolf and I

went into a town, we’d immediately go to the temple of either Chaldan

or Nedra. I’d identify myself and ask the local priests to introduce

me to the fathers in question.

It didn’t always go smoothly, of course. Every so often I’d come

across stubborn men who for one reason or another didn’t care for my

choice of spouses for their children. If worse came to worst, though,

I could always give them a little demonstration of what I could do

about things that irritated me. That was usually enough to bring them

around to my way of thinking.

“One wonders why all of this is necessary,” my companion said to me as

we were leaving one Arendish village after I’d finally persuaded a

particularly difficult man that his daughter’s happiness–and his own

health–depended on the girl’s marriage to the young fellow we had

selected for her.

“They will produce young ones,” I tried to explain.

“What an amazing thing,” she responded dryly. A wolf can fill the

simplest statement with all sorts of ironic implications.

“Is that not the usual purpose of mating?”

“Our purpose is to produce specific young ones.”

“Why? One puppy is much like another, is it not? Character is

developed in the rearing, not in the blood line.”

We argued about that off and on for centuries, and I strongly suspect

her of arguing largely because she knew that it irritated me.

Technically, I was the leader of our odd little pack, but she wasn’t

going to let me get above myself.

Arendia was a mournful sort of place in those days. The melancholy

institution of serfdom had been well established among the Arends even

before the war with the Angaraks, and they brought it with them when

they migrated to the West. I’ve never understood why anyone would

submit to being a serf in the first place, but I suppose the Arendish

character might have had something to do with it. Arends go to war

with each other on the slightest pretext, and an ordinary farmer needs

someone around to protect him from belligerent neighbors.

The lands the Arends had occupied in the central part of the continent

had been open, and the fields had long been under cultivation. Their

new home was a tangled forest, so they had to clear away the trees

before they could plant anything. This was the work that fell to the

serfs. The wolf and I soon became accustomed to seeing naked people

chopping at trees.

“One wonders why they take off their fur to do this,” she said to me on

one occasion. There’s no word in wolfish for “clothing,” so she had to

improvise.

“It is because they only have one of the things they cover their bodies

with. They put them aside while they are hitting the trees because

they do not want them to be wounded while they work.” I decided not to

go into the question of the poverty of the serfs or of the expense of a

new canvas smock. The discussion was complicated enough already. How

do you explain the concept of ownership to a creature that has no need

for possessions of any kind?

“This covering and uncovering of their bodies that the man-things do is

foolishness,” she declared.

“Why do they do it?”

“For warmth when it is cold.”

“But they also do it when it is not cold. Why?”

“For modesty, I suppose.”

“What is modesty?”

I sighed. I wasn’t making much headway here.

“It is just a custom among the man-things,” I told her.

“Oh. If it is a custom, it is all right.” Wolves have an enormous

respect for customs. Then she immediately thought of something else.

She was always thinking of something else.

“If it is the custom among man-things to cover their bodies sometimes

but not others, it is not much of a custom, is it?”

I gave up.

“No,” I said.

“Probably not.”

She dropped to her haunches in the middle of the forest path we were

following with her tongue lolling out in wolfish laughter.

“Do you mind?” I demanded.

“One is merely amused by the inconsistencies of the man-side of your

thought,” she replied.

“If you would take your true form, your thought would run more

smoothly.” She was still convinced that I was really a wolf and that

my frequent change of form was no more than a personal idiosyncrasy.

In the forests of Arendia, we frequently encountered the almost

ubiquitous bands of outlaws. Not all of the serfs docilely accepted

their condition. I don’t like having people point arrows at me, so

after the first time or two, I went wolf as soon as we were out of

sight of the village we’d just left. Even the stupidest runaway serf

isn’t going to argue with a couple of full-grown wolves. That’s one of

the things that’s always been a trial to me. People are forever

interfering with me when I’ve got something to attend to. Why can’t

they just leave me alone?

We went down into Tolnedra after a number of years, and I continued my

activities as a marriage broker, ultimately winding up in Tol

Nedrane.

Don’t bother trying to find it on a map. The name was changed to Tol

Honeth before the beginning of the second millennium.

I know that most of you have seen Tol Honeth, but you wouldn’t have

recognized it in its original state. The war with the Angaraks had

taught the Tolnedrans the value of defensible positions, and the island

in the center of the Nedrane–“the River of Nedra”–seemed to them to

be an ideal spot for a city. In may very well be now, but there were a

lot of drawbacks when they first settled there. They’ve been working

on it for five thousand years now, and I suppose they’ve finally ironed

out most of the wrinkles.

When the wolf and I first went there, however, the island was a damp,

marshy place that was frequently inundated by spring floods. They’ve

built a fairly substantial wall of logs around the island, and the

houses inside were also built of logs and had thatched roofs–an open

invitation to fire, in my opinion. The streets were narrow, crooked,

and muddy; and quite frankly, the place smelled like an open cesspool.

My companion found that particularly offensive, since wolves have an

extremely keen sense of smell.

My major reason for being in Tolnedra was to oversee the beginnings of

the Honethite line. I’ve never really liked the Honeths. They’ve an

exalted opinion of themselves, and I’ve never much cared for people who

look down their noses at me. My distaste for them may have made me a

little abrupt with the prospective bridegroom’s father when I told him

that his son was required to marry the daughter of an artisan whose

primary occupation was the construction of fireplaces. The Honeth

family absolutely had to have some hereditary familiarity with working

in stone.

If it didn’t, the Tolnedran Empire would never come into existence, and

we were going to need the empire later on. I wouldn’t bore you with

all of this except to show you just how elemental our arrangements in

those days really were. We were setting things in motion that wouldn’t

come to fruition for thousands of years.

After I’d bullied the bridegroom’s father into accepting the marriage

I’d proposed for his son, the wolf and I left Tol Nedrane–by ferry,

since they hadn’t gotten around to building bridges yet. The ferryman

overcharged us outrageously, as I recall, but he was a Tolnedran, after

all, so that was to be expected.

I’d finally finished the various tasks my Master had given me, and so

the wolf and I went eastward toward the Tolnedran Mountains. It was

time to go home to the Vale, but I wasn’t going to go back through Ulgo

land. I wasn’t going to go near Ulgoland until I found out what had

happened there. We tarried for a while once we got into the mountains,