clean. The Alorns who were washed out to sea were so pleased with that
turn of events that they didn’t even swear at Riva–at least not very
much.
Now that Riva had his sword, I was finished with the things I was
supposed to do on the Isle of the Winds. I could finally go home. I
spent a day or so giving Riva and his cousin Anrak their instructions.
Anrak was a little too fond of good brown ale, but he was a
good-natured fellow, popular with the other Alorns. He was the perfect
second-in-command.
Some of the orders Riva was going to have to give his people wouldn’t
go down very well. Anrak, with his boisterous, good-humored laughter,
was the perfect one to make them palatable. I sketched in Riva’s
throne room for him and told him how to fasten his sword to the wall
behind the throne. It was a little difficult to keep his attention,
since he wanted to talk about the girl in his dream. Then I wished
them good luck and went off down the beach until I was out of sight.
There was no real point in upsetting Riva’s people any more than they
already were.
I chose the form of an albatross for my return to the mainland. A
seven-foot wingspan is very useful when you fly as badly as I do. After
I was a few miles out to sea and had picked up some altitude, I learned
the trick of simply locking those great wings out and coasting along on
the air.
What a joy that was! No flapping. No floundering. No panic. I even
got to the point where I liked it. I think I could have soared like
that for a solid month. I actually took a few short naps on my way.
It was almost with regret that I saw the coast of what’s now Sendaria
on the horizon.
You wouldn’t believe how different Sendaria was in those days.
What’s now farmland was an untamed forest of huge trees, and just about
the only part of it that was inhabited was a stretch along the north
bank of the Camaar River that was occupied by the Wacite Arends.
Because I was really in a hurry to get back to the Vale, I took the
familiar form of the wolf and loped off through the forest.
This time I didn’t have to wait periodically for any Alorns to catch up
with me, so I made very good time. It was summer by now, so I had good
weather. I angled down across Sendaria in a southeasterly direction
and soon reached the mountains.
After a bit of consideration, I decided not to waste time with a
tiresome detour, but to cut straight across the northern end of
Ulgoland.
I didn’t really think that the monsters would be a problem. They were
interested in men, not wolves; even Algroths and Hrulgin avoided
wolves.
I gave some thought to swinging by Prolgu to advise the current Gorim
of what had happened in Mallorea, but I decided against it. My Master
knew about it, and he’d certainly have advised UL before he and his
brothers had departed.
That was something I didn’t really want to think about. My Master had
been the central fact of my life for four thousand years, and his
departure left a very large hole in my concept of the world. I
couldn’t imagine the Vale without him.
Anyway, I bypassed Prolgu and continued southeasterly toward the Vale.
I saw a few Algroths lurking near the edge of the trees, and once a
herd of Hrulgin, but they wisely chose not to interfere with me. I was
in a hurry, and I wasn’t in any mood for interruptions.
I loped across a ridge-line and descended into a river gorge. Since
all the rivers on this side of the mountains of Ulgo flowed eastward to
empty into the Aldur River, the quickest way to reach the Vale would be
simply to follow the river until it reached the plains of Algaria.
Notice that I was already thinking of that vast grassland in those
terms.
I can’t exactly remember why I chose to resume my own form when I
reached the river. Maybe I thought I needed a bath. I’d been on the
go for six months now, and I certainly didn’t want to offend Poledra by
showing up in our tower smelling like a goat. Perhaps it was because I
wanted a hot meal. As a wolf, I was quite satisfied with a diet of raw
rabbit or uncooked deer or even an occasional field-mouse, but I was
not entirely a wolf, and periodically I grew hungry for cooked food. I
pulled down a deer, anyway, resumed my own form, and set to work
building a fire. I spitted a haunch, set it to roasting over the fire,
and bathed in the river while it cooked.
I probably ate too much. A wolf on the move doesn’t really spend too
much time eating–usually no more than a few bites before he’s off
again –so I’d definitely managed to build up quite an appetite.
Anyway, after I’d eaten, I dozed by my fire. I really don’t know how
long I slept, but I was awakened quite suddenly by a kind of mindless
hooting that sounded almost like laughter. I cursed my in
attentiveness
Somehow a pack of rock-wolves had managed to creep up on me.
The term “rock-wolf is really a misnomer. They aren’t really wolves
but are more closely related to hyenas. They’re scavengers, and they’d
probably caught scent of my deer. It would have been a simple thing to
change back into a wolf and outrun them. I was comfortable, though,
and I certainly didn’t feel like running on a full stomach. I was also
feeling just a little pugnacious. I’d been sleeping very well, and
being awakened that way irritated me. I built up my fire and settled
my back against a tree to wait for them. If they pushed me too far,
there’d be one less pack of rock-wolves in the morning.
I saw a few of the ugly brutes slinking along at the edge of the trees,
but they were afraid of my fire, so they didn’t come any closer. That
went on for the rest of the night. The fact that they neither attacked
nor went off to find food somewhere else was a bit puzzling. This was
not the way rock-wolves normally behaved.
Dawn was just touching the eastern sky when I found out why.
I’d just piled more wood on my fire when I caught a movement at the
edge of the trees out of the corner of my eye. I thought it was
another rock-wolf, so I took hold of a stick that was burning quite
well, turned, and drew back my arm to throw the burning brand at the
beast.
It wasn’t a rock-wolf, however. It was an Eldrak.
I’d seen Eldrakyn before, of course, but always from a distance, so I
hadn’t realized just how big they are. I silently berated myself for
not going wolf while I had the chance. Changing form takes a little
while, and the huge creature wasn’t very far away from me. If he were
totally mad, as the Hrulgin and Algroths had been, he wouldn’t give me
nearly enough time.
He was shaggy and about eight feet tall. He didn’t have what you’d
really call a nose, and his lower jaw stuck out. He had long yellow
tusks like a wild boar, and they jutted upward out of that protruding
lower jaw. He had little, pig-like eyes sunk deep under a heavy brow
ridge, and those eyes burned red.
“Why man-thing come to Grul’s range?” He growled at me.
That was a surprise. I knew that the Eldrakyn were more intelligent
than Algroths or Trolls, but I didn’t know that they could talk.
I recovered quickly. The fact that he could talk raised the
possibility of a peaceful solution here.
“Just passing through, old boy,” I replied urbanely.
“I didn’t mean to trespass, but I didn’t realize that this range
belongs to you.”
“All know,” His voice was hideous.
“All know this is Grul’s range.”
“Well, not everybody, actually. I’m a stranger here, and you don’t
have the boundaries of your range clearly marked.”
“You eat Grul’s deer.” He said it accusingly. This wasn’t going too
well. Being careful to conceal what I was doing, I slipped my long
Alorn dagger out of its sheath and hid it in my left sleeve, handle
down.
“I didn’t eat it all,” I told him.
“You’re welcome to the rest of it.”
“How are you called?”
“The name’s Belgarath.” Maybe he’d heard of me. The Demon-Lord in
Morindland had, after all. If my reputation extended all the way to
Hell, maybe it’d penetrated these mountains, as well.
” “Grat?” he said.
“Belgarath,” I corrected.
” “Grat.” He said it with a certain finality. Evidently the shape of