‘Why so great a hurry, friend?’ she said to me coyly in the way of wolves. Even in my haste, I was startled to find that I could understand her quite clearly. I slowed, and then I stopped.
‘What a splendid tail you have,’ she complimented me, quickly following up on her advantage, ‘and what excellent teeth.’
‘Thank you,’ I replied modestly. ‘Your own tail is also quite fine, and your coat is truly magnificent.’ I admired her openly.
‘Do you really think so?’ she said, preening herself. Then she nipped playfully at my flank and dashed off a few yards, trying to get me to chase her.
‘I would gladly stay a while so that we might get to know each other better,’ I told her, ‘but I have a most important errand.’
‘An errand?’ she scoffed with her tongue lolling out in amusement. ‘Whoever heard of a wolf with any errand but his own desires?’
‘I am not really a wolf,’ I explained.
‘Really? How remarkable. You look like a wolf, and you talk like a wolf, and you certainly smell like a wolf, but you say that you are not a wolf. What are you, then?’
‘I am a man.’ I said it rather deprecatingly. Wolves have strong opinions about certain things, I discovered.
She sat, a look of amazement on her face. She had to accept what I said as the truth, since wolves are incapable of lying. ‘You have a tail,’ she pointed out, ‘and I have never seen a man with a tail before. You have a fine coat. You have four feet. You have long, pointed teeth, sharp ears, and a black nose, and yet you say you are a man.’
‘It is very complicated.’
‘It must be,’ she conceded. ‘I think I will run with you for a while, since you must attend to this errand of yours. Perhaps we can discuss it as we go along, and you can explain this complicated thing to me.’
‘If you wish,’ I rather liked her and was glad by then for any company. It’s lonely being a wolf sometimes. ‘I must warn you though, that I run very fast,’ I cautioned her.
She sniffed. ‘All wolves run very fast.’
And so, side by side, we ran off over the endless grassland in search of the God Belar.
‘Do you intend to run both day and night?’ she asked me after we had gone several miles.
‘I will rest when I grow tired.’
‘I am glad of that.’ Then she laughed in the way of wolves, nipped at my shoulder, and scampered off.
I began to consider the morality of my situation. Though my companion looked quite delightful to me in my present form, I was almost positive that she would seem less so once I resumed my proper shape. Further, while it’s undoubtedly a fine thing to be a father, I was fairly certain that a litter of puppies might prove to be an embarrassment when I returned to my Master. Not only that, the puppies would not be entirely wolves, and I didn’t really want to father a race of monsters. But finally, since wolves mate for life, when I left my companion – as I would eventually be compelled to do – she would be abandoned, left alone with a litter of fatherless puppies, and subject to the scorn and ridicule of the other members of her pack. Propriety is very important to wolves. Thus, I resolved to resist her advances on our journey in search of Belar.
I wouldn’t have devoted so much time and space to this incident except to help explain how insidiously the personalities of the shapes we assume come to dominate our thinking. Before we had gone very far, I was as much or more a wolf as my little friend. If you should ever decide to practice this art, be careful. To remain in a shape too long is to invite the very real possibility that when the time comes to go back to your own form, you may not want to. I’ll quite candidly admit that by the time the young she-wolf and I reached the realms of the Bear-God, I’d begun to give long thoughts to the pleasures of the den and the hunt, the sweet nuzzlings of puppies, and the true and steadfast companionship of a mate.
At length we found a band of hunters near the edge of that vast primeval forest where Belar, the Bear-God, dwelt with his people. To the amazement of my companion, I resumed my own shape and approached them. ‘I have a message for Belar,’ I told them.
‘How may we know this to be true?’ one burly fellow demanded truculently. Why is it that Alorns will go out of their way to pick a fight?
‘You know it’s true because I say it’s true,’ I told him bluntly. ‘The message is important, so quit wasting time flexing your muscles and take me to Belar at once.’
Then one of the Alorns saw my companion and threw his spear at her. I didn’t have time to make what I did seem natural nor to conceal it from them. I stopped the spear in mid-flight.
They stood gaping at that spear stuck quivering in the air as if in the trunk of a tree. Then, because I was irritated, I flexed my mind and broke the spear in two. ‘Sorcery!’ one of them gasped.
‘Amazing level of perception there, old boy,’ I said sarcastically, imitating Belmakor at his best. ‘Now, unless you’d all like to live out the rest of your lives as cabbages, take me to Belar at once. Oh, incidentally, the wolf’s with me. The next one of you who tries to hurt her is going to spend the rest of his life carrying his entrails around in a bucket.’ You have to be graphic to get an Alorn’s attention sometimes. I beckoned to the wolf, and she came to my side, baring her fangs at them. She had lovely fangs, long and curved and as sharp as daggers. Her display of them got the Alorns’ immediate and undivided attention. ‘Nicely done,’ I snarled admiringly to her. She wagged her tail, her lip still curled menacingly at those thick-witted barbarians.
‘Shall we go talk to Belar, gentlemen?’ I suggested in my most civilized manner on the theory that sometimes you have to beat Alorns over the head.
We found the God Belar in a rude encampment some miles deeper into the forest. He appeared to be very young – scarcely more than a boy, though I knew that he was very nearly as old as my Master. I have my suspicions about Belar. He was surrounded by a bevy of busty, blonde-braided Alorn maidens, who all seemed enormously fond of him. Well, he was a God, after all, but the admiration of those girls didn’t seem to be entirely religious.
All right, Polgara, just let it lie, will you?
The Alorns in that crude encampment in the woods were rowdy, undisciplined, and – by and large – drunk. They joked boisterously with their Master with absolutely no sense of decorum or dignity.
‘Well met, Belgarath,’ Belar greeted me, though we’d never met before and I hadn’t told any of those belligerent hunters my name. ‘How goes it with my beloved elder brother?’
‘Not well, my Lord,’ I replied rather formally. Despite the tankard he held in one hand and the blonde he held in the other, he was still a God, so I thought it best to mind my manners. ‘Thy brother, Torak, came unto my Master and smote him and bore away a particular jewel which he coveted.’
‘What?’ the young God roared, springing to his feet and spilling both tankard and blonde. ‘Torak hath the Orb?’
‘I greatly fear it is so, my Lord. My Master bids me entreat thee to come to him with all possible speed.’
‘I will, Belgarath,’ Belar assured me, retrieving his tankard and the pouty-looking blonde. ‘I will make preparations at once. Hath Torak used the Orb as yet?’
‘We think not, my Lord,’ I replied. ‘My Master says we must make haste, ere thy brother Torak hath learned the full power of the jewel he hath stolen.’
‘Truly,’ Belar agreed. He glanced at the young she-wolf sitting at my feet. ‘Greetings, little sister,’ he said in flawless wolfish, ‘is it well with thee?’ Belar had his faults, certainly, but you could never criticize his manners.
‘Most remarkable,’ she said with