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 some amazement. ‘It appears that I have fallen in with creatures of great importance.’
‘Thy companion and I must make haste,’ he told her. ‘Otherwise I would make suitable arrangements for thy comfort. May I offer thee to eat?’ You see what I mean about Belar’s courtesy?
She glanced at the ox turning on a spit over an open fire. ‘That smells interesting,’ she said.
‘Of course.’ He took up a very long knife and carved off a generous portion for her. He handed it to her, being careful to snatch his fingers back out of the range of those gleaming fangs.
‘My thanks,’ she said, tearing off a chunk and downing it in the blink of an eye. ‘This one’ – she jerked her head at me – ‘was in so much hurry to reach this place that we scarce had time to catch a rabbit or two along the way.’ She daintily gulped the rest of the meat down in two great bites. ‘Quite good,’ she noted, ‘though one wonders why it was necessary to burn it.’
‘A custom, little sister,’ he explained.
‘Oh, well, if it is a custom – ’ She carefully licked her whiskers clean.
‘I will return in a moment, Belgarath,’ Belar said and moved away to speak with his Alorns.
‘That one is nice,’ my companion told me pointedly.
‘He is a God,’ I told her.
‘That means nothing to me,’ she said indifferently. ‘Gods are the business of men. Wolves have little interest in such things.’ Then she looked at me critically. ‘One would be more content with you if you would keep your eyes where they belong,’ she added.
‘One does not understand what you mean.’
‘I think you do. The females belong to the nice one. It is not proper for you to admire them so openly.’ Regardless of my reservations about the matter, it was fairly obvious that she had made some decisions. I thought it might be best to head that off.
‘Perhaps you would wish to return to the place where we first met so that you may rejoin your pack?’ I suggested delicately.
‘I will go along with you for a while longer,’ she rejected my suggestion. ‘I was ever curious, and I see that you are familiar with things that are most remarkable.’ She yawned, stretched, and curled up at my feet – being careful, I noticed, to place herself between me and those Alorn girls.
The return to the Vale where my Master waited took far less time than my journey to the land of the Bear-God had. Although time is normally a matter of indifference to them, when there’s need for haste, the Gods can devour distance in ways that hadn’t even occurred to me. We set out at what seemed no more than a leisurely stroll with Belar asking me questions about my Master and our lives in the Vale while the young she-wolf padded along sedately between us. After several hours of this, my impatience made me bold enough to get to the point. ‘My Lord,’ I said, ‘forgive me, but at this rate, it’ll take us almost a year to reach my Master’s tower.’
‘Not nearly so long, Belgarath,’ he disagreed 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 in the center.
‘Most remarkable,’ the wolf murmured, dropping to her haunches and staring down into the Vale with her bright yellow eyes. I had to agree with her about that.
My brothers had returned by now, and they were waiting at the foot of our Master’s tower as we approached. The other Gods were already with my Master, and Belar hastened into the tower to join them.
When my brothers saw my companion, they were startled. ‘Belgarath,’ Belzedar objected, ‘is it wise to bring such a one here? Wolves are not the most trustworthy of creatures, you know.’
The she-wolf bared her fangs at him for that. How in the world could she possibly have understood what he’d said?
‘What is her name?’ the gentle Beltira asked me.
‘Wolves don’t need names, brother,’ I replied. ‘They know who they are without such appendages. Names are a human conceit, I think.’
Belzedar shook his head and moved away from the wolf.
‘Is she quite tame?’ Belsambar asked me. Taming things was a passion with Belsambar; I think he knew half the rabbits and deer in the Vale by their first names, and the birds used to perch on him the way they would have if he’d been a tree.
‘She isn’t tame at all, Belsambar,’ I told him. ‘We met by chance while I was going north, and she decided to tag along.’
‘Most remarkable,’ the wolf said to me. ‘Are they always so full of questions?’
‘How did you know they were asking questions?’
‘You, too? You are as bad as they are.’ That was a maddening habit of hers. If she considered a question unimportant, she simply wouldn’t answer it.
‘It’s the nature of man to ask questions,’ I said a bit defensively.
‘Curious creatures,’ she sniffed, shaking her head. She could also be a mistress of ambiguity.
‘What a wonder,’ Belkira marveled. ‘You’ve learned to converse with the beasts. I pray you, dear brother, instruct me in this art.’
‘I wouldn’t exactly call it an art, Belkira. I took the form of a wolf on my journey to the north. The language of wolves came with the form and remained even after I changed back. It’s no great thing.’
‘I think you might be wrong there, old chap,’ Belmakor said with a thoughtful expression. ‘Learning foreign languages is a very tedious process, you know. I’ve been meaning to learn Ulgo for several years now, but I haven’t gotten around to it. If I were to take the form of an Ulgo for a day or so, it might save me months of study.’
‘You’re lazy, Belmakor,’ Beldin told him bluntly. ‘Besides, it wouldn’t work.’
‘And
