“I have many names,” the old man said, scratching his white beard. “Almost as many names as I have years.”
“I’ve only got one,” Garion said.
“So far.”
“What?”
“You only have one name so far,” the old man explained. “In time you may get another – or even several. Some people collect names as they go along through their lives. Sometimes names wear out just like clothes.”
“Aunt Pol calls you Old Wolf,” Garion said.
“I know,” the old man said. “Your Aunt Pol and I have known each other for a very long time.”
“Why does she call you that?”
“Who can say why a woman such as your Aunt does anything?”
“May I call you Mister Wolf?” Garion asked. Names were quite important to Garion, and the fact that the old storyteller did not seem to have one had always bothered him. That namelessness had made the old man seem somehow incomplete, unfinished.
The old man looked at him soberly for a moment, and then he burst out laughing.
“Mister Wolf indeed. How very appropriate. I think I like that name better than any I’ve had in years.”
“May I then?” Garion asked. “Call you Mister Wolf, I mean?”
“I think I’d like that, Garion. I think I’d like that very much.”
“Now would you please tell me a story, Mister Wolf?” Garion asked.
The time and distance went by much faster then as Mister Wolf wove for Garion tales of glorious adventure and dark treachery taken from those gloomy, unending centuries of the Arendish civil wars.
“Why are the Arends like that?” Garion asked after a particularly grim tale.
“The Arends are very noble,” Wolf said, lounging back in the seat of the cart with the reins held negligently in one hand. “Nobility is a trait that’s not always trustworthy, since it sometimes causes men to do things for obscure reasons.”
“Rundorig is an Arend,” Garion said. “He sometimes seems to bewell, not too quick of thought, if you know what I mean.”
“It’s the effect of all that nobility,” Wolf said. “Arends spend so much time concentrating on being noble that they don’t have time to think of other things.”
They came over the crest of a long hill, and there in the next valley lay the village of Upper Gralt. To Garion the tiny cluster of gray stone houses with slate roofs seemed disappointingly small. Two roads, white with thick dust, intersected there, and there were a few narrow, winding streets besides. The houses were square and solid, but seemed almost like toys set down in the valley below. The horizon beyond was ragged with the mountains of eastern Sendaria, and, though it was summer, the tops of most of the mountains were still wrapped in snow.
Their tired horse plodded down the hill toward the village, his hooves stirring little clouds of dust with each step, and soon they were clattering along the cobblestoned streets toward the center of the village. The villagers, of course, were all too important to pay any attention to an old man and a small boy in a farm cart. The women wore gowns and high-pointed hats, and the men wore doublets and soft velvet caps. Their expressions seemed haughty, and they looked with obvious disdain at the few farmers in town who respectfully stood aside to let them pass.
“They’re very fine, aren’t they?” Garion observed.
“They seem to think so,” Wolf said, his expression faintly amused. “I think it’s time that we found something to eat, don’t you?”
Though he had not realized it until the old man mentioned it, Garion was suddenly ravenous. “Where will we go?” he asked. “They all seem so splendid. Would any of them let strangers sit at their tables?”
Wolf laughed and shook a jingling purse at his waist. “We should have no trouble making acquaintances,” he said. “There are places where one may buy food.”
Buy food? Garion had never heard of such a thing before. Anyone who appeared at Faldor’s gate at mealtime was invited to the table as a matter of course. The world of the villagers was obviously very different from the world of Faldor’s farm.
“But I don’t have any money,” he objected.
“I’ve enough for us both,” Wolf assured him, stopping their horse before a large, low building with a sign bearing a picture of a cluster of grapes hanging just above its door. There were words on the sign, but of course Garion could not read them.
“What do the words say, Mister Wolf?” he asked.
“They say that food and drink may be bought inside,” Wolf told him, getting down from the cart.
“It must be a fine thing to be able to read,” Garion said wistfully. The old man looked at him, seemingly surprised. “You can’t read, boy?” he asked incredulously.
“I’ve never found anyone to teach me,” Garion said. “Faldor reads, I think, but no one else at the farm knows how.”
“Nonsense,” Wolf snorted. “I’ll speak to your Aunt about it. She’s been neglecting her responsibility. She should have taught you years ago.”
“Can Aunt Pol read?” Garion asked, stunned.
“Of course she can,” Wolf said, leading the way into the tavern. “She says she finds little advantage in it, but she and I had that particular argument out, many years ago.” The old man seemed quite upset by Garion’s lack of education.
Garion, however, was far too interested in the smoky interior of the tavern to pay much attention. The room was large and dark with a low, beamed ceiling and a stone floor strewn with rushes. Though it was not cold, a fire burned in a stone pit in the center of the room, and the smoke rose errantly toward a chimney set above it on four square stone pillars. Tallow candles guttered in clay dishes on several of the long, stained tables, and there was a reek of wine and stale beer in the air.
“What have you to eat?” Wolf demanded of a sour, unshaven man wearing a grease-spotted apron.
“We’ve a bit of a joint left,” the man said, pointing at a spit resting to one side of the fire pit. “Roasted only day before yesterday. And meat porridge fresh yesterday morning, and bread no more than a week old.”
“Very well,” Wolf said, sitting down. “And I’ll have a pot of your best ale and milk for the boy.”
“Milk?” Garion protested.
“Milk,” Wolf said firmly.
“You have money?” the sour-looking man demanded.
Wolf jingled his purse, and the sour man looked suddenly less sour.
“Why is that man over there sleeping?” Garion asked, pointing at a snoring villager sitting with his head down on one of the tables.
“Drunk,” Wolf said, scarcely glancing at the snoring man.
“Shouldn’t someone take care of him?”
“He’d rather not be taken care of.”
“Do you know him?”
“I know of him,” Wolf said, “and many others like him. I’ve occasionally been in that condition myself.”
“Why?”
“It seemed appropriate at the time.”
The roast was dry and overdone, the meat porridge was thin and watery, and the bread was stale, but Garion was too hungry to notice. He carefully cleaned his plate as he had been taught, then sat as Mister Wolf lingered over a second pot of ale.
“Quite splendid,” he said, more to be saying something than out of any real conviction. All in all he found that Upper Gralt did not live up to his expectations.
“Adequate.” Wolf shrugged. “Village taverns are much the same the world over. I’ve seldom seen one I’d hurry to revisit. Shall we go?” He laid down a few coins, which the sour-looking man snatched up quickly, and led Garion back out into the afternoon sunlight.
“Let’s find your Aunt’s spice merchant,” he said, “and then see to a night’s lodging-and a stable for our horse.” They set off down the street, leaving horse and cart beside the tavern.
The house of the Tolnedran spice merchant was a tall, narrow building in the next street. Two swarthy, thick-bodied men in short tunics lounged in the street at his front door near a fierce-looking black horse wearing a curious armored saddle. The two men stared with dull-eyed disinterest at passers-by in the lane.
Mister Wolf stopped when he caught sight of them.
“Is something wrong?” Garion asked.
“Thulls,” Wolf said quietly, looking hard at the two men.
“What?”
“Those two are Thulls,” the old man said. “They usually work as porters for the Murgos.”
“What are Murgos?”
“The people of Cthol Murgos,” Wolf said shortly. “Southern Angaraks.”
“The ones we beat at the battle of Vo Mimbre?” Garion asked. “Why would they be here?”
“The Murgos have taken up commerce,” Wolf said, frowning. “I hadn’t expected to see one of them in so remote a village. We may as well go in. The Thulls have seen us, and it might look strange if we turned now and went back. Stay close to me, boy, and don’t say anything.”