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 why not?’

‘Because an Ulgo’s still a man. Belgarath’s wolf doesn’t form words the way we do because she doesn’t think the way we do.’

‘I don’t think the way an Ulgo does either,’ Belmakor objected. ‘I think it would work.’

‘You’re wrong, it wouldn’t.’

That particular argument persisted off and on for about a hundred years. The notion of trying it and finding out one way or the other never occurred to either of them. Now that I think of it, though, it probably did. Neither of them was so stupid that he wouldn’t have thought of it. But they both enjoyed arguing so much that they didn’t want to spoil the fun by settling the issue once and for all.

The wolf curled up and went to sleep while the rest of us waited for the decision of our Master and his brothers about the wayward Torak. When the other Gods came down from the tower, their faces were somber, and they left without speaking to us.

Then Aldur summoned us, and we went upstairs. ‘There will be war,’ our Master told us sadly. ‘Torak must not be permitted to gain full mastery of the Orb. They are of two different purposes and must not be joined, lest the fabric of creation be rent asunder. My brothers have gone to gather their people. Mara and Issa will circle to the east through the lands of the Dals that they might come at Torak from the south of Korim. Nedra and Chaldan will encircle him from the west, and Belar will come at him from the north. We will lay waste his Angaraks until he returns the Orb. Though it rends my heart, it must be so. I will set tasks for each of ye that ye must accomplish in mine absence.’

‘Absence, Master?’ Belzedar asked.

‘I must go even unto Prolgu to consult with UL. The Destinies which drive us all are known, though imperfectly, to him. He will provide guidance for us, that we do not o’erstep certain limits in our war upon our brother.’

The wolf, quite unnoticed, had gone to him and laid her head in his lap. As he spoke to us, he absently - or so I thought at the time - stroked her with an oddly affectionate hand. I knew it was improbable, but I got the strong impression that they somehow already knew each other.

Chapter 6

Our Master was a long time at Prolgu, but we had more than enough to keep us occupied, and I’m certain the peoples of the other Gods were just as busy. With the possible exception of the Alorns and the Arends, war was an alien concept to most of the rest of mankind, and even those belligerent people were not very good at the kind of organization necessary to build an army. By and large, the world had been peaceful, and such fights as occasionally broke out tended to involve just a few men pounding on each other with assorted weapons which weren’t really very sophisticated. Fatalities occurred, of course, but I like to think they were accidental most of the time.

This time was obviously going to be different. Whole races were going to be thrown at each other, and nothing had prepared us for that. We relied rather heavily on Belsambar’s knowledge of the Angaraks in the early stages of our planning. That elevated opinion of themselves which Torak had instilled in his people had made them aloof and secretive, and strangers or members of other races were not welcome in their cities. To emphasize that, Angaraks had traditionally walled in their towns. It was not so much that they anticipated war - although Torak himself probably did - but rather that they seemed to feel the need for some visible sign that they were separate from and superior to the rest of mankind.

Beldin sat scowling at the floor after Belsambar had described the wall surrounding the city where he’d been born over a thousand years before. ‘Maybe they’ve discontinued the practice,’ he growled.