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.
“Belgarath!” 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. Wolves 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.