“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 gait 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?”
“Who else? Men seem to have a need to classify things and put names on them. I think they overlook some very important things that way.”
“How is it that you’re here? Aren’t you—well—?”
“Dead, you mean? Don’t be afraid of the word. It’s only a word, after all. I suppose I am, though. It doesn’t really feel all that much different.”
“Doesn’t somebody have to do something to bring you back?” he asked. “Like what Aunt Pol did that time when we were fighting with Grul in the mountains of Ulgo?”
“It’s not entirely necessary. I can be summoned that way, but I can manage it myself if I have to.” She looked at him quizzically. “You’re really confused by all this, aren’t you?”
“All of what?”
“Everything. Who you are; who we are; what you have to do.”
“A little,” he admitted.
“Let me see if I can explain it. Take him for instance. I never really saw him as a man, you know. There’s something decidedly wolfish about him. I always rather thought that his being born in man-shape had been a mistake of some kind. Maybe it was because of what he had to do. The shape doesn’t really matter, though.”
“It doesn’t?”
“Did you really think it did?” She almost seemed to laugh. “Here. Let me show you. Let’s change.” She shimmered into air and was standing before him then in the form of a tawny-haired woman with golden eyes. Her gown was very plain and brown.
Garion shrugged himself back into his natural form.
“Am I really any different, Belgarion?” she asked him. “Am I not who I am, whether as wolf or owl or woman?”
And then he understood. “May I call you Grandmother?” he asked her, a bit embarrassed.
“If it makes you happy,” she replied. “It’s a bit inaccurate, though.”
“I know,” he said, “but I feel a little more comfortable with it.”
“Have you finally accepted who you are?”
“I don’t have much choice, do I?”
“But you’re afraid of it and what you have to do, is that it?” He nodded mutely.
“You’re not going to be alone, you know.”
He looked at her sharply. “I thought the Codex said—”
“The Codex doesn’t really say everything that’s involved,” she told him. “Your meeting with Torak will be the coming together of two enormous, opposing forces. The two of you are really just the representatives of those forces. There’ll be so much power involved in your meeting that you and Torak will be almost incidental to what’s really happening.”
“Why couldn’t somebody else do it then?” he asked quickly. “Somebody better suited to it?”
“I said almost incidental,” she said firmly. “It has to be you, and it’s always been Torak. You are the channels through which the forces will collide. When it happens, I think you’ll be surprised at how easy it all is.”
“Am I going to win?”
“I don’t know. The universe itself doesn’t know. That’s why you have to meet him. If we knew how it would turn out, the meeting wouldn’t be necessary.” She looked around. “Belgarath’s coming back. I’ll have to leave you now.”
“Why—”
“My presence pains him—more than you could ever know.”