‘It is beyond thine understanding, my son,’ our Master said. ‘To thee and to other men it may seem that my brothers and I are limitless, but it is not so. And, I tell thee, my sons, I would not unmake the jewel even if it were permitted. Look about thee at the world in its childhood and at man in his infancy. All living things must grow or they will die. Through this Orb shall the world be changed and shall man achieve that state for which he was made. This jewel which I have made is not of itself evil. Evil is a thing which lies only in the minds and hearts of men—and of Gods also.’ And then my Master fell silent, and he sighed, and we went from him and left him in his sadness.
In the years which followed, we saw little of our Master. Alone in his tower he communed with the spirit of the jewel which he had made. We were saddened by his absence, and our work had little joy in it.
And then one day a stranger came into the Vale. He was beautiful as no being I have ever seen was or could be, and he walked as if his foot spurned the earth.
As was customary, we went to greet him.
‘I would speak with my brother, thy Master,’ he told us, and we knew we were in the presence of a God.
As the eldest, I stepped forward. ‘I shall tell my Master you have come,’ I said. I was not all that familiar with Gods, since Aldur was the only one I had ever met, but something about this over-pretty stranger did not sit quite well with me.
‘That is not needful, Belgarath,’ he told me in a tone that sat even less well than his manner. ‘My brother knows I am here. Convey me to his tower.’
I turned and led the way without trusting myself to answer.
At the foot of the tower the stranger looked me full in the face. ‘A bit of advice for thee, Belgarath, by way of thanks for thy service to me. Seek not to rise above thyself. It is not thy place to approve or disapprove of me. For thy sake when next we meet I hope thou wilt remember this and behave in a manner more seemly.’ His eyes seemed to bore directly into me, and his voice chilled me.
But, because I was still who I was and even the two thousand years I had lived in the Vale had not entirely put the wild, rebellious boy in me to sleep, I answered him somewhat tartly. ‘Thank you for the advice,’ I said. ‘Will you require anything else?’ He was a God, after all, and didn’t need me to tell him how to open the tower door. I waited watching closely for some hint of confusion.
‘Thou art pert, Belgarath,’ he told me. ‘Perhaps one day I shall give myself leisure to instruct thee in proper behavior.’
‘I’m always eager to learn,’ I told him.
He turned and gestured negligently. The great stone in the wall of the tower opened, and he went inside.
We never knew exactly what passed between our Master and the strange, beautiful God who met with him. They spoke together for long hours, and then a summer storm broke above our heads, and we were forced to take shelter. We missed, therefore, the departure of the strange God.
When the storm had cleared, our Master called us to him, and we went up into his tower. He sat at the table where he had labored so long over the Orb. There was a great sadness in his face, and my heart wept to see it. There was also a reddened mark upon his cheek which I did not understand.
But Belzedar, ever quick, saw at once what I did not see. ‘Master,’ he said, and his voice had the sound of panic in it, ‘where is the jewel? Where is the Orb of power which thou hast made?’
‘Torak, my brother, hath taken it away with him,’ my Master said, and his voice had almost the sound of weeping in it.
‘Quickly,’ Belzedar said, ‘we must pursue him and reclaim it before he escapes us. We are many, and he is but one.’
‘He is a God, my son,’ Aldur said. ‘Thy numbers would mean nothing to him.’
‘But, Master,’ Belzedar said most desperately, ‘we must reclaim the Orb. It must be returned to us.’
‘How did he obtain it from thee, Master?’ the gentle Beltira asked.
‘Torak conceived a desire for the thing,’ Aldur said, ‘and he besought me that I should give it to him. When I would not, he smote me and took the Orb and ran.’
A rage seized me at that. Though the jewel was wondrous, it was still only a stone. The fact that someone had struck my Master brought flames into my brain. I cast off my robe, bent my will into the air before me and forged a sword with a single word. I seized the sword and leapt to the window.
‘No!’ my Master said, and the word stopped me as though a wall had been placed before me.
‘Open!’ I commanded, slashing at the wall with the sword I had just made.
‘No!’ my Master said, and it would not let me through.
‘He hath struck thee, Master,’ I raged. ‘For that I will slay him though he be ten times a God.’
‘No,’ my Master said again. ‘Torak would crush thee as easily as thou would8 crush a fly which annoyed thee. I love thee much, my eldest son, and I would not lose thee so.’
‘There must be war, Master,’ Belmakor said. ‘The blow and the theft must not go unpunished. We will forge weapons, and Belgarath shall lead us, and we shall make war upon this thief who calls himself a God.’
‘My son,’ our Master said to him, ‘there will be war enough to glut thee of it before thy life ends. The Orb is as nothing. Gladly would I have given it unto my brother, Torak, were it not that the Orb itself had told me that one day it would destroy him. I would have spared him had I been able, but his lust for the thing was too great, and he would not listen.’ He sighed and then straightened.
‘There will be war,’ he said. ‘My brother, Torak, hath the Orb in his possession. It is of great power, and in his hands can do great mischief. We must reclaim it or alter it before Torak learns its full power.’
‘Alter?’ Belzedar said, aghast. ‘Surely, Master, surely thou wouldst not destroy this precious thing?’
‘No,’ Aldur said. ‘It may not be destroyed but will abide even unto the end of days; but if Torak can be pressed into haste, he will attempt to use it in a way that it will not be used. Such is its power.’
Belzedar stared at him.
‘The world is inconstant, my son,’ our Master explained, ‘but good and evil are immutable and unchanging. The Orb is an object of good, and is not merely a bauble or a toy. It hath understanding—not such as thine—but understanding nonetheless—and it hath a will. Beware of it, for the will of the Orb is the will of a stone. It is, as I say, a thing of good. If it be raised to do evil, it will strike down whomever would so use it—be he man or be he God. Thus we must make haste. Go thou, my Disciples, unto my other brothers and tell them that I bid them come to me. I am the eldest, and they will come out of respect, if not love.’
And so we went down from our Master’s tower and divided ourselves and went out of the Vale to seek out his brothers, the other Gods. Because the twins Beltira and Belkira could not be separated without perishing, they remained behind with our Master, but each of the rest of us went forth in search of one of the Gods.
Since haste was important, and I had perhaps the farthest to go in my search for the God, Belar, I travelled for a time in the form of an eagle. But my arms soon grew weary with flying, and heights have ever made me giddy. I also found my eyes frequently distracted by tiny movements on the ground, and I had fierce urges to swoop down and kill things. I came to earth, resumed my own form and sat for a time to regain my breath and consider.
I had not assumed other forms frequently. It was a simple trick without much advantage to it. I now discovered a major drawback involved in it. The longer I remained in the assumed form, the more the character of the form became interwoven with my own. The eagle, for all his splendor, is really a stupid bird, and I had no desire to be distracted from my mission by every mouse or rabbit on the ground beneath me.
I considered the horse. A horse can run very fast, but he soon grows tired and he is not very intelligent. An antelope can run for days without growing weary, but an antelope is a silly creature, and too many thing
s upon the plain looked upon the antelope as food. I had not the time it would take to stop and persuade each of those things to seek food elsewhere. And then it occurred to me that of all the creatures of the plain and forest, the wolf was the most intelligent, the swiftest, and the most tireless.
It was a decision well-made. As soon as I became accustomed to going on all fours, I found the shape of the wolf most satisfactory and the mind of the wolf most compatible with my own. I quickly discovered that it is a fine thing to have a tail. It provides an excellent means of maintaining one’s balance, and one may curl it about himself at night to ward off the chill. I grew very proud of my tail on my journey in search of Belar and his people.
I was stopped briefly by a young she-wolf who was feeling frolicsome. She had, as I recall, fine haunches and a comely muzzle.
‘Why so great a hurry, friend?’ she said to me coyly in the way of wolves. Even in my haste I was amazed to discover that I could understand her quite easily. I stopped.
‘What a splendid tail you have,’ she complimented me, quickly following her advantage, ‘and what excellent teeth.’
‘Thank you,’ I replied modestly. ‘Your own tail is also quite fine, and your coat is truly magnificent.’
‘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 laughed. ‘Who ever heard of a wolf with any errand but his own desires?’
‘I’m not really a wolf,’ I told her.
‘Really?’ she said. ‘How remarkable. You look like a wolf and you talk like a wolf and you certainly smell like a wolf, but you say you are not really a wolf. What are you, then?’
‘I’m a man,’ I said.
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 said. ‘I’ve 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 tell me you are a man.’
‘It’s very complicated,’ I told her.
‘It must be,’ she said. ‘I think I will run with you for a while since you must attend to this errand. Perhaps we can discuss it as we go along and you can explain this complicated thing to me.’
‘If you wish,’ I said, since I rather liked her and was glad by then for any company, ‘but I must warn you that I run very fast.’
‘All wolves run very fast,’ she sniffed.
And so, side by side, we ran off over the endless grassy plains 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 it is needful,’ I told her.
‘I’m glad of that,’ she said. Then she laughed, nipped at my shoulder and scampered off some distance.
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 she would be less so once I resumed my proper shape. Further, while it is undoubtedly a fine thing to be a father, I was almost certain that a litter of puppies would prove an embarrassment when I returned to my Master. Not only that, the puppies would not be entirely wolves, and I had no desire to father a race of monsters. But finally, since wolves mate for life, when I left her—as I would of necessity be compelled to do—my sweet companion would be abandoned, betrayed, left alone with a litter of fatherless puppies, subject to the scorn and ridicule of the other members of her pack. Propriety is a most important thing among wolves. Thus I resolved to resist her advances on our journey in search of Belar.
I would not have devoted so much time here to this incident were it not to help explain how insidiously the personality of the shapes we assume begin to take us over. Let any who would practice this art be cautious. To remain in a shape too long is to invite the very real possibility that when the time comes to resume our proper form, we will not desire to do so. I must quite candidly admit that by the time my companion and I reached the land of the Bear-God, I had begun to give long thoughts to the pleasures of the den and the hunt and 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 the 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, thy God,’ I told them.
‘How may we know this to be true?’ they asked me.
‘Ye may know it to be true because I say it is true,’ I told them. ‘The message is important, and there is little time to delay.’
Then one of them saw my companion and cast his spear at her. I had no time to make what I did appear normal nor to conceal it from them. I stopped the spear in mid-flight.
They stood gaping at the spear stuck in the air as if in a tree. Irritated, I flexed my mind and broke the spear in two.
‘Sorcery!’ one of them gasped.
‘The wolf is with me,’ I told them sternly. ‘Do not attempt to injure her again.’ I beckoned to her and she came to my side, baring her fangs at them.
‘And now convey me unto Belar,’ I ordered them.
The God Belar appeared very young—scarcely more than a boy, though I knew he was much, much older than I. He was a fair-seeming, open-faced God, and the people who served him were a rowdy, undisciplined group, scarcely conscious of the dignity of their Master.
‘Well-met, Belgarath,’ he greeted me, though we had never met and I had told my name to no one. ‘How does it go with my brother?’
‘Not well, my Lord,’ I told him. ‘Thy brother, Torak, hath come unto my Master and smote him and hath borne away a particular jewel which he coveted.’
‘What?’ the young God roared, springing to his feet. ‘Torak hath the Orb?’
‘I greatly fear it is so, my Lord,’ I told him. ‘My Master bids me entreat thee to come to him with all possible speed.’
‘I will, Belgarath,’ Belar said. ‘I will make preparations at once. Hath Torak used the Orb as yet?’
‘We think not, my Lord,’ I said. ‘My Master says we must make haste, before thy brother, Torak, hath learned the full power of the jewel he hath stolen.’
‘Truly,’ the young God said. He glanced at the young she-wolf sitting at my feet. ‘Greetings, little sister,’ he said courteously, ‘is it well with thee?’
‘Most remarkable,’ she said politely. ‘It appears that I have fallen in with creatures of great importance.’
‘Thy friend and I must make haste,’ he told her. ‘Otherwise I should make suitable arrangements for thy comfort. May I offer thee to eat?’
She glanced at the ox turning on the spit in his great hall. ‘ That smells interesting,’ she said.
‘Of course,’ he said, taking up a knife and carving off a generous portion for her.
‘My thanks,’ she said. ‘This one—’ she jerked her head at me ‘—was in so much hurry to reach this place that we scarce had time for a rabbit or two along the way.’ Daintily she gulped the meat down in two great bites. ‘Quite good,’ she said, ‘though one wonders why it was necessary to burn it.’
‘A custom, little sister,’ he laughed.
‘Oh, well,’ she said, ‘if it’s a custom.’ Carefully she licked her whiskers clean.
‘I will return in a moment, Belgarath,’ Belar said and moved away.
‘That one is nice,’ my companion told me pointedly.
‘He is a God,’ I told her.
‘That means nothing to me,’ she said. ‘Gods are the business of men. Wolves have little interest in such things.’
‘Perhaps you would care to return to the place where we met?’ I suggested.
‘I will go
along with you for a while longer,’ she told me. ‘I was ever curious, and I see that you are familiar with most remarkable things.’ She yawned, stretched, and curled up at my feet.
The return to the Vale where my Master waited took far less time than had my journey to the country of the Bear-God. Though time is a matter of indifference to them normally, when there is a need for haste, the Gods can devour distance in ways that had not even occurred to me. We began walking with Belar asking me questions about my Master and our lives in the Vale and the young she-wolf padding along sedately between us. After several hours of this, my impatience finally made me bold.
‘My Lord,’ I said, ‘forgive me, but at this rate it will take us almost a year to reach my Master’s tower.’
‘Not nearly so long, Belgarath,’ he replied pleasantly. ‘I believe it lies just beyond that next hilltop.’
I stared at him, not believing that a God could be so simple, but when we crested the hill, there lay the Vale spread before us with my Master’s tower standing in the center.
‘Most remarkable,’ the wolf murmured, dropping onto her haunches and staring down into the Vale with her bright yellow eyes. I could only agree with her.
The other Gods were already with my Master in the tower, and Belar hastened to join them.
My brothers, the other Disciples of Aldur, awaited me at the foot of the tower. When they saw my companion, they were startled.
‘Is it wise, Belgarath, to bring such a one here?’ Belzedar asked me. ‘Wolves are not the most trustworthy creatures.’
My companion bared her fangs at him for that.
‘What is her name,’ the gentle Beltira asked.
‘Wolves do not require names,’ I told him. ‘They know who they are without such appendages.’
Belzedar shook his head and moved away from the wolf.
‘Is she quite tame?’ Belsambar asked me. ‘I wonder that you had time for such business on your journey, and I know you would not loiter.’
‘She is not tame at all,’ I told him. ‘We met by chance, and she chose to accompany me.’
‘Most remarkable,’ the wolf said to me. ‘Are they always so full of questions?’
The Rivan Codex Page 3
