“How remarkable,” she said with some surprise. Then she responded to the ritual greeting. “One is content.”
“One is pleased to hear that. How is it that you go with the man-things?”
“One has joined their pack for a certain time.”
“Ah.”
“How did you manage to learn the language of wolves?” Garion asked in some amazement.
“You recognized it, then.” The old fellow sounded pleased about that for some reason. He leaned back in his saddle. “Spent most of my life up there where the wolves are,” he explained. “It’s only polite to learn the language of your neighbors.” He grinned. *”Ib be honest about it, though, at first I couldn’t make much out of it, but if you listen hard enough, it starts to come to you. Spent a winter in a den with a pack of them about five years back. That helped quite a bit.”
“They actually let you live with diem?” Zakath asked.
“It took them awhile to get used tome,” the old man admitted, “but I made myself useful, so they sort of accepted me.”
“Useful?”
“The den was a little crowded, and I got them there tools.”
He jerked his thumb at his pack mule. “I dug the den out some
larger, and they seemed to appreciate it. Then, after a while, I
; took to watching over the pups while the rest was out hunting.
38
SEERESS OF KELL
KELL
39
Good pups they was, too. Playful as kittens. Some time later I tried to make up to a bear. Never had much luck with that. Bears arc a standoffish bunch. They keep to theirselves most of the time, and deer are just too skittish to try to make friends with. Give me wolves every time.”
The old gold hunter’s pony did not move very fast, so the others soon caught up with them.
“Any luck?” Silk asked the old gold hunter, his nose twitching with interest.
“Some,” the white-bearded man answered evasively.
“Sorry,” Silk apologized. “I didn’t mean to pry.”
“That’s all right, friend. I can see that you’re an honest man.”
Velvet muffled a slightly derisive chuckle.
“It’s just a habit I picked up,” the fellow continued. “It’s not really too smart to go around telling everybody how much gold you’ve managed to pick up.”
“I can certainly understand that.”
“I don’t usually carry that much with me when I come down into the low country, though—only to pay for what I need. I leave the rest of it hid back up there in the mountains.”
“Why do you do it then?” Dumik asked. “Spend all your time looking for gold, I mean? You don’t spend it, so why bother?”
“It’s something to do.” The fellow shrugged. “And it gives me an excuse to be up there in the mountains. A man feels sort of frivolous if he does that without no reason.” He grinned again. “Then, too, there’s a certain kind of excitement that comes with finding a pocket of gold in a streambed. Like some say, finding is more fun than spending, and gold’s sort of pretty to look at.”
“Oh, it is indeed,” Silk agreed fervently.
The old gold hunter glanced at the she-wolf and then looked at Belgarath. “I can see by the way she’s acting that you’re the leader of this group,” he noted.
Belgarath looked a bit startled at that.
“He’s learned the language,” Garion explained.
“How remarkable,” Belgarath said, unconsciously echoing the comment of the wolf.
“I was going to pass on some advice to these two young fellows, but you’re the one who probably ought to hear it.”
“I’ll certainly listen.”
“The Dais are a peculiar sort, friend, and they’ve got some peculiar superstitions. I won’t go so far as to say they think of
these woods as sacred, but they do feel pretty strongly about them. I wouldn’t advise cutting any trees—and don’t, whatever you do, kill anything or anybody here.” He pointed at the wolf. “She knows about that already. YouVe probably noticed that she won’t hunt here. The Dais don’t want this forest profaned with blood. I’d respect that, if I were you. The Dais can be helpful, but if you offend their beliefs, they can make things mighty difficult for you.”
“I appreciate the information,” Belgarath told him.
“It never hurts a man to pass on things he’s picked up,” the old fellow said. He looked up the track. “Well,” he said. “This is as far as I go. That’s the road to Balasa just on up ahead. It’s been nice talking with you.” He doffed his shabby hat politely toPolgara, then looked at the wolf. “Be well, mother,” he said, then he thumped his heels against his pony’s flanks. The pony broke into an ambling sort of trot and jolted around a bend in the road to Balasa and out of sight.
“What a delightful old man,” Ce’Nedra said.
“Useful, too,” Polgara added. “You’d better get in touch with Uncle Beldin, father,” she said to Belgarath. “Tell him to leave the rabbits and pigeons alone while we’re in this forest.”
“I’d forgotten about that,” he said. “I’ll take care of it right now.” He lifted his face and closed his eyes.
“Can that old fellow really talk with wolves?” Silk asked Garion.
“He knows the language,” Garion replied.’ ‘He doesn’t speak it very well, but he knows it.”
“One is sure he understands better than he speaks,” the she-wolf said.
Garion stared at her, slightly startled that she had understood the conversation.
. “The language of the man-things is not difficult to learn,” – she said. “As the man-thing with the white fur on his face said, one can learn rapidly if one takes the trouble to listen. One would not care to speak your language, however,” she added critically. “The speech of the man-things would place one’s tongue in much danger of being bitten.”
A sudden thought came to Garion then, accompanied by an absolute certainty that the thought was entirely accurate. “Grandfather,” he said.
“Not now, Garion. I’m busy.”
“I’ll wait.”
“Is it important?”
40
SEERESS OF KELL
“I think so, yes.”
Belgarath opened his eyes curiously. “What is it?” he asked.
“Do you remember that conversation we had in Tol Honeth— the morning it was snowing?”
“I think so.”
“We were talking’about the way everything that happened seemed to have happened before.”
“Yes, now I remember.”
“You said that when the two prophecies got separated, things sort of stopped—that the future can’t happen until they get back together again. Then you said that until they do, we’d all have to keep going through the same series of events over and over again.”
“Did I really say that?” The old man looked a bit pleased. “That’s sort of profound, isn’t it? What’s the point of this, though? Why are you bringing it up now?**
“Because I think it just happened again.” Garion looked at Silk. “Do you remember that old gold hunter we met in Gar og Nadrak when the three of us were on our way to Cthol Mish-rak?”
Silk nodded a bit dubiously.
“Wasn’t the old fellow we just talked with almost exactly the same?”
“Now that you mention it. . .” Silk’s eyes narrowed. “All right, Belgarath, what does it mean?”
Belgarath squinted up at the leafy branches overhead. “Let me think about it for a minute,” he said. “There are some similarities, all right,” he admitted. “The two of them are the same kind of people, and they both warned us about something. I think I’d better get Beldin back here. This might be very important.”
It was no more than a quarter of an hour later when the blue-banded hawk settled out of the sky and blurred into the misshapen sorcerer. “What’s got you so excited?” he demanded crossly.
“We just met somebody,” Belgarath replied.
* ‘Congratulations. *’
“I think this is serious, Beldin.” Belgarath quickly explained his theory of recurring events.
“It’s a little rudimentary,” Beldin growled, “but there’s nothing remarkable about that. Your hypotheses usually are.” He squinted. “It’s probably fairly accurate though—as far as it goes.”
KELL
41
“Thanks,” Belgarath said dryly. Then he went on to describe the two meetings, the one in Gar og Nadrak and the other here. “The similarities are a little striking, aren’t they?”
“Coincidence?”
“Shrugging things off as coincidence is the best way I know of to get in trouble.’ *
, “All right. For the sake of argument, let’s say it wasn’t coincidence.” The dwarf squatted in the dirt at the roadside, his face twisted in thought. ‘ ‘Why don’t we take this theory of yours a step farther?” he mused. “Let’s look at the notion that these repetitions crop up at significant points in the course of events.”
“Sort of like signposts?” Durnik suggested.
“Exactly. I couldn’t have found a better term myself. Let’s suppose that these signposts point at really important things that are right on the verge of happening—that they’re sort of like warnings.”