He was afraid. The fear grew worse with each passing day until the sour taste of it was always in his mouth. More than anything, he wanted to run, but he knew that he could not. Indeed, he did not even know any place where he could run. There was no place in all the world for him to hide. The Gods themselves would seek him out if he tried and sternly drive him to that awful meeting which had been fated to take place since the beginning of time. And so it was that, sick with fear, Garion rode to meet his fate.
Belgarath, who was not always asleep when he seemed to doze in his saddle, watched, shrewdly waiting until Garion's fear had reached its peak before he spoke. Then, one cloudy morning when the lead-gray sky was as dreary as the moors around them, he pulled his horse in beside Garion's. "Do you want to talk about it?" he asked calmly.
"What's the point, Grandfather?"
"It might help."
"Nothing's going to help. He's going to kill me."
"If I thought it was that inevitable, I wouldn't have let you start on this journey."
"How can I possibly fight with a God?"
"Bravely," was the unhelpful reply. "You've been brave at some pretty inappropriate times in the past. I don't imagine you've changed all that much."
"I'm so afraid, Grandfather," Garion confessed, his voice anguished. "I think I know how Mandorallen felt now. The fear's so awful that I can't live with it."
"You're stronger than you think you are. You can live with it if you have to."
Garion brooded about that. It didn't seem to help much. "What's he like?" he asked, suddenly filled with a morbid curiosity.
"Who?"
"Torak."
"Arrogant. I never cared much for him."
"Is he like Ctuchik was - or Asharak?"
"No. They tried to be like him. They didn't succeed, of course, but they tried. If it's any help to you, Torak's probably as much afraid of you as you are of him. He knows who you are. When you meet him, he isn't going to see a Sendarian scullery boy named Garion; he's going to see Belgarion, the Rivan King, and he's going to see Riva's sword thirsting for his blood. He's also going to see the Orb of Aldur. And that will probably frighten him more than anything."
"When was the first time you met him?" Garion suddenly wanted the old man to talk - to tell stories as he had so long ago. Stories somehow always helped. He could lose himself in a story, and for a little while it might make things bearable.
Belgarath scratched at his short, white beard. "Let's see," he mused. "I think the first time was in the Vale - it was a very long time ago. The others had gathered there - Belzedar, Beldin, all the rest - and each of us was involved in his own studies. Our Master had withdrawn into his tower with the Orb, and sometimes months would pass during which we didn't see him.
"Then one day a stranger came to us. He seemed to be about the same height as I, but he walked as if he were a thousand feet tall. His hair was black and his skin was very pale, and he had, as I remember, greenish-colored eyes. His face was beautiful to the point of being pretty, and his hair looked as if he spent a lot of time combing it. He appeared to be the kind of person who always has a mirror in his pocket."
"Did he say anything?" Garion asked.
"Oh, yes," Belgarath replied. "He came up to us and said, 'I would speak with my brother, thy Master,' and I definitely didn't care for his tone. He spoke as if we were servants - it's a failing he's always had. Still, my Master had - after a great deal of trouble - taught me at least a few manners. 'I shall tell my Master you have come,' I told him as politely as I could manage.
"'That is not needful, Belgarath,' he told me in that irritatingly superior tone of his. 'My brother knows I am here.' "
"How did he know your name, Grandfather?"
Belgarath shrugged. "I never found that out. I assume that my Master had communicated with him - and the other Gods - from time to time and told them about us. At any rate, I led this over-pretty visitor to my Master's tower. I didn't bother to speak to him along the way. When we got there, he looked me straight in the face and said, 'A bit of advice for thee, Belgarath, by way of thanks for thy service. Seek not to rise above thyself. It is not thy place to approve or disapprove of me. For thy sake I hope that when next we meet thou wilt remember this and behave in a manner more seemly.'"
" 'Thank you for the advice,' I told him-a bit tartly, I'll admit. 'Will you require anything else?'
"'Thou art pert, Belgarath,' he said to me. 'Perhaps one day I shall give myself leisure to instruct thee in proper behavior.' And then he went into the tower. As you can see, Torak and I got off on the wrong foot right at the very beginning. I didn't care for his attitude, and he didn't care for mine."
"What happened then?" Garion's curiosity had begun to quiet the fear somewhat.
"You know the story," Belgarath replied. "Torak went up into the tower and spoke with Aldur. One thing led to another and finally Torak struck my Master and stole the Orb." The old man's face was bleak. "The next time I saw him, he wasn't nearly so pretty," he continued with a certain grim satisfaction. "That was after the Orb had burned him and he'd taken to wearing a steel mask to hide the ruins of his face."
Silk had drawn closer and was riding with them, fascinated by the story. "What did you all do then? After Torak stole the Orb, I mean?" he asked.
"Our Master sent us to warn the other Gods," Belgarath replied. "I was supposed to find Belar - he was in the north someplace, carousing with his Alorns. Belar was a young God at that time, and he enjoyed the diversions of the young. Alorn girls used to dream about being visited by him, and he tried to make as many dreams come true as he possibly could - or so I've been told."
"I've never heard that about him." Silk seemed startled.
"Perhaps it's only gossip," Belgarath admitted.
"Did you find him?" Garion asked.
"It took me quite a while. The shape of the land was different then. What's now Algaria stretched all the way to the east - thousands of leagues of open grassland. At first I took the shape of an eagle, but that didn't work out too well."
"It seems quite suitable," Silk observed.
"Heights make me giddy," the old man replied, "and my eyes were continually getting distracted by things on the ground. I kept having this overpowering urge to swoop down and kill things. The character of the forms we assume begins to dominate our thinking after a while, and although the eagle is quite splendid-looking, he's really a very stupid bird. Finally I gave that idea up and chose the form of the wolf instead. It worked out much better. About the only distraction I encountered was a young she-wolf who was feeling frolicsome." There was a slight tightening about his eyes as he said it, and his voice had a peculiar catch in it.
"Belgarathl" Silk actually sounded shocked.
"Don't be so quick to jump to conclusions, Silk. I considered the morality of the situation. I realized that being a father is probably all well and good, but that a litter of puppies might prove embarrassing later on. I resisted her advances, even though she persisted in following me all the way to the north where the Bear-God dwelt with his Alorns." He broke off and looked out at the gray-green moors, his face unreadable. Garion knew that there was something the old man wasn't saying -something important.
"Anyway," Belgarath continued, "Belar accompanied us back to the Vale where the other Gods had gathered, and they held a council and decided that they'd have to make war on Torak and his Angaraks. That was the start of it all. The world has never been the same since."
"What happened to the wolf?" Garion asked, trying to pin down his grandfather's peculiar evasion.
"She stayed with me," Belgarath replied calmly. "She used to sit for days on end in my tower watching me. She had a curious turn of mind, and her comments were frequently a trifle disconcerting."
"Comments?" Silk asked. "She could talk?"
"In the manner of the wolf, you understand. I'd learned how they speak during our journey together. It's really a rather concise and often quite beautiful language. Wo
lves can be eloquent - even poetic - once you get used to having them speak to you without words."
"How long did she stay with you?" Garion asked.
"Quite a long time," Belgarath replied. "I remember that I asked her about that once. She answered with another question. It was an irritating habit of hers. She just said, 'What is time to a wolf?' I made a few calculations and found out that she'd been with me for just over a thousand years. I was a bit amazed by that, but she seemed indifferent to the fact. 'Wolves live as long as they choose to live,' was all she said. 'Then one day I had to change my form for some reason or other - I forget exactly why. She saw me do it, and that was the end of any peace for me. She just said, 'So that's how you do it,' and promptly changed herself into a snowy owl. She seemed to take a great delight in startling me, and I never knew what shape I'd see when I turned around. She was fondest of the owl, though. A few years after that she left me. I was rather surprised to find that I missed her. We'd been together for a very long time." He broke off and once again he looked away.
"Did you ever see her again?" Garion wanted to know.
Belgarath nodded. "She saw to that - though I didn't know it at the time. I was running an errand for my Master somewhere to the north of the Vale and I came across a small, neatly thatched cottage in a grove of trees by a small river. A woman named Poledra lived in the cottage - a woman with tawny hair and curiously golden eyes. We grew to know each other, and eventually we were married. She was Polgara's mother - and Beldaran's."
"You were saying that you met the wolf again," Garion reminded him.
"You don't listen too well, Garion," the old man said, looking directly at his grandson. There was a deep and ancient injury in his eyes - a hurt so great that Garion knew it would be there for as long as the old man lived.
"You don't mean-?"
"It took me a while to accept it myself, actually. Poledra was very patient and very determined. When she found out that I couldn't accept her as a mate in the form of a wolf, she simply found a different shape. She got what she wanted in the end." He sighed.
"Aunt Pol's mother was a wolf?" Garion was stunned.
"No, Garion," Belgarath replied calmly, "she was a woman - a very lovely woman. The change of shape is absolute."
"But - but she started out as a wolf."
"So?"
"But " The whole notion was somehow shocking.
"Don't let your prejudices run away with you," Belgarath told him. Garion struggled with the idea. It seemed monstrous somehow. "I'm sorry," he said finally. "It's unnatural, no matter what you say."
"Garion," the old man reminded him with a pained look, "just about everything we do is unnatural. Moving rocks with your mind isn't the most natural thing in the world, if you stop and think about it."
"But this is different," Garion protested. "Grandfather, you married a wolf - and the wolf had children. How could you do that?"
Belgarath sighed and shook his head. "You're a very stubborn boy, Garion," he observed. "It seems that you're never going to understand until you've been through the experience. Let's go over behind that hill, and I'll show you how it's done. There's no point in upsetting the rest of the caravan."
"Mind if I come along?" Silk asked, his nose twitching with curiosity.
"Might not be a bad idea," Belgarath agreed. "You can hold the horses. Horses tend to panic in the presence of wolves."
They rode away from the caravan track under the leaden sky and circled around behind a low, heath-covered hill. "This should do," Belgarath decided, reining in and dismounting in a shallow swale just behind the hill. The swale was covered with new grass, green with spring.
"The whole trick is to create the image of the animal in your mind," Belgarath explained, "down to the last detail. Then you direct your will inward - upon yourself - and then change, fitting yourself into the image."
Garion frowned, not understanding.
"It's going to take too long if I have to explain it in words," Belgarath said. "Here - watch - and watch with your mind as well as your eyes."
Unbidden, the shape of the great gray wolf he had seen on occasion before came into Garion's mind. He could clearly see the gray - shot muzzle and the silver ruff: Then he felt the surge and heard the hollow roaring sound in his mind. For an instant, the image of the wolf curiously mingled with an image of Belgarath himself - as if the two were trying to both occupy the same space. Then Belgarath was gone and only the wolf remained.
Silk whistled, then took a firmer grip on the reins of their startled horses.
Belgarath changed back again to an ordinary - looking old man in a rust-brown tunic and gray, hooded cloak. "Do you understand?" he asked Garion.
"I think so," Garion replied, a bit dubiously.
"Try it. I'll lead you through it one step at a time." Garion started to put a wolf together in his mind.
"Don't forget the toenails," Belgarath told him. "They may not look like much, but they're very important."
Garion put the toenails in. "Tail's too short."
Garion fixed that.
"That's about right. Now fit yourself into it."
Garion put his will to it. "Change," he said.
It seemed almost as if his body had grown somehow fluid, shifting, altering, flowing into the image of the wolf that he had in his mind. When the surge was gone, he sat on his haunches panting. He felt very strange.
"Stand up and let's have a look at you," Belgarath told him. Garion rose and stood on all four paws. His tail felt extremely peculiar.
"You made the hind legs a bit too long," Belgarath noted critically. Garion started to object that it was the first time he'd ever done it, but his voice came out in a peculiar series of whines and yelps.
"Stop that," Belgarath growled. "You sound like a puppy. Change back."
Garion did that.
"Where do your clothes go?" Silk asked curiously.
"They're with us," Belgarath replied, "but at the same time they're not. It's kind of hard to explain, actually. Beldin tried to work out exactly where the clothes were once. He seems to think he's got the answer, but I never understood the whole theory. Beldin's quite a bit more intelligent than I am, and his explanations are sometimes a bit exotic. At any rate, when we return to our original shape, our clothing is always just as it was."
"Even Garion's sword?" Silk asked. "And the Orb?"
The old man nodded.
"Isn't it sort of dangerous having it floating around out there - unattached, so to speak?"
"It isn't really unattached. It's still there - but at the same time it's not."
"I'll take your word for it," Silk conceded dubiously.
"Try it again, Garion," Belgarath suggested.
Garion switched back and forth several times until his wolfshape satisfied his grandfather.
"Stay with the horses," the old man told Silk. "We'll be back in a little bit." He flickered and shimmered into the great gray wolf. "Let's run for a bit," he said to Garion. The meaning of what he said was conveyed directly from his mind to Garion's, aided only slightly by expressions and positions of his head and ears and a few brief barking sounds. Garion suddenly understood why the bond of the pack was so strong in wolves. Quite literally, they inhabited each others' minds. What one saw, they all saw; and what one felt, they all felt.
"Where do we run to?" Garion asked, not really surprised at how easily the speech of wolves came to him.
"No place in particular. I just need to stretch out a few kinks." And the gray wolf bounded away with astonishing speed.
The tail was a definite problem at first. Garion kept forgetting that it was there, and its swishing back and forth kept jerking him off balance. By the time he got the hang of it, the old wolf was far out ahead of him on the gray-green moors. After a while, however, Garion found himself literally flying across the ground. His paws scarcely seemed to touch the earth as he bunched and stretched his body in great bounds. He marvelled at the economy of the running ga
it of the wolf. He ran not with his legs alone, but with his entire body. He became quite certain that, if need be, he could run for days without tiring.
The rolling moors were different somehow. What had seemed as desolate and empty as the dead sky overhead was suddenly teeming with life. There were mice and burrowing squirrels; in scrubby brown thickets, rabbits, petrified with fright, watched him as he loped by with his toenails digging into the springy turf. Silently he exulted in the strength and freedom of his new body. He was the lord of the plain, and all creatures gave way to him.
And then he was not alone. Another wolf ran beside him - a strangely insubstantial-looking wolf that seemed to have a bluish, flickering light playing about her.
"And how far will you run?" she asked him in the manner of wolves.
"We can stop if you'd like," Garion replied politely, dropping back into a lope and then a trot.
"It's easier to talk if one isn't running," she agreed. She stopped and dropped to her haunches.
Garion also stopped. "You're Poledra, aren't you?" He asked it very directly, not yet accustomed to the subtleties of the language of wolves.
"Wolves have no need of names," she sniffed. "He used to worry about that, too."
It was not exactly like the voice that had been in his mind since his childhood. He didn't actually hear her, but instead he seemed to know exactly what she wanted to say to him. "Grandfather, you mean?"
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