LITMIR.BIZ

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efforts to run Cherek and his sons into the ground every day accomplished two things. We reached Morindland in less than a month, and my Alorn friends were in peak condition when we got there. You try running as fast as you can all day every day for a month and see what it does to you. Assuming that you don’t collapse and die in the first day or so, you’ll be in very good shape before the month is out. If there was any fat left on my friends by the time we’d reached Morindland, it was under their fingernails. As it turned out, that was very useful.

      When we came down out of the north range of mountains that marks the southern boundaries of Morindland, I resumed my own form and called a halt. It was the dead of winter, and the vast arctic plain where the Morindim lived was covered with snow and darkness. The long northern night had set in, although as luck had it, we’d reached Morindland early enough in the lunar month that a half-moon hung low over the southern horizon, providing sufficient light to make travel possible – unpleasant, but possible. ‘I don’t know that we need to go out there,’ I told my fur-clad friends, gesturing at the frozen plain. ‘There’s not much point in holding extended conversations with every band of Morindim we come across, is there?’

      ‘Not really,’ Cherek agreed, making a face. ‘I don’t care that much for the Morindim. They spend weeks talking about their dreams, and we don’t really have time for that.’

      ‘When Algar and I were coming back from the land bridge, we stuck to these foothills,’ Riva told us. ‘The Morindim don’t like hills, so we didn’t see very many of them.’

      ‘That’s probably the best way to do it,’ I agreed. ‘I could deal with an occasional band of them if I had to, but it’d just be a waste of time. Do you know how to make curse-markers? And dream-markers?’

      Iron-grip nodded gravely. ‘A combination of those two would sort of make them keep their distance, wouldn’t it?’

      ‘I don’t understand,’ Dras rumbled with a puzzled look.

      ‘You would if you’d come out of the taverns in Val Alorn once in a while,’ Algar suggested to him.

      ‘I’m the eldest,’ Bull-neck replied a bit defensively. ‘I have responsibilities.’

      ‘Of course you do,’ Riva said sardonically. ‘Let’s see if I can explain it. The Morindim live in a different kind of world – and I’m not just talking about all this snow. Dreams are more important to them than the real world, and curses are very significant. Belgarath just suggested that we carry a dream-marker to let the Morindim know that we’re obeying a command that came to us in a dream. We’ll also carry a curse-marker that’ll tell them that anybody who interferes with us will have to deal with our demon.’

      ‘There’s no such thing as a demon,’ Dras scoffed.

      ‘Don’t get your mind set in stone on that, Dras,’ I warned him.

      ‘Have you ever seen one?’

      ‘I’ve raised them, Dras. Aldur sent me up here to learn what I could about these people. I apprenticed myself to one of their magicians and learned all the tricks. Riva’s got it fairly close. If we carry dream-markers and curse-markers, the Morindim will avoid us.’

      ‘Pestilence-markers?’ Algar suggested. Algar never used more words than he absolutely had to. I’ve never fully understood what he was saving them for.

      I considered it. ‘No,’ I decided. ‘Sometimes the Morindim feel that the best way to deal with pestilence is to stand off and shoot the infected people full of arrows.’

      ‘Inconvenient,’ Algar murmured.

      ‘We won’t encounter very many Morindim this far south anyway,’ I told them, ‘and the markers should make them keep their distance.’

      As it turned out, I was wrong on that score. Riva and I fashioned the markers, and we set out toward the east, staying well up in the foothills. We hadn’t traveled for more than two days – nights, actually, since that was when the moon was out – when suddenly there were Morindim all around us. The markers kept them away, but it was only a matter of time until some magician would come along to take up the challenge.

      I didn’t sleep very much during the course of our journey along those foothills. The north range is riddled with caves, and I’d hide the Alorns in one of them and then go out to scout around. I very nearly froze my paws off. Lord! it was cold up there!

      It wasn’t too long until I started coming across counter-markers. For every curse, there’s a counter-curse, and the presence of those counter-markers told me louder than words that magicians were starting to converge on us. This was puzzling, because Morind magicians are all insanely jealous of each other and they almost never cooperate. Since the magicians control all aspects of the lives of their assorted clans, a gathering such as we were seeing was a virtual impossibility.

      The moon, of course, ignored us and continued her inevitable course, waxing fuller and fuller every night until she reached that monthly fulfillment of hers. Cherek and his sons couldn’t understand why the moon kept coming up even though the sun didn’t. I tried to explain it to them, but when I got to the part about the real orbit of the moon and the apparent orbit of the sun, I lost them. Finally I just told them, ‘They follow different paths,’ and let it go at that. All they really had to know was that the moon would be in the arctic sky for about two weeks out of every month during the winter. Anything more would have just confused them. To be honest about it, I’d have been just as happy if the sun’s baby sister had dropped below the horizon before her pregnancy started to show. Once she became full, it was as bright as day up there. A full moon over a snow-covered landscape really puts out a lot of light, and that was terribly inconvenient. I suppose that was what the Morindim had been waiting for.

      I’d hidden Cherek and the boys in a cave just before moon-set as usual, and then I went out to scout around. No more than a mile to the east of the cave, I saw Morindim – thousands of them.

      I dropped to my haunches and started to swear – no mean trick for a wolf. The unnatural gathering of what appeared to be every clan in Morindland had completely blocked us off. We were in deep trouble.

      When I finished swearing, I turned, loped back to the cave where the Alorns were sleeping, and resumed my own form. ‘You’d better wake up,’ I told them.

      ‘What’s the matter?’ Cherek asked, throwing off his fur robe.

      ‘All of Morindim is stretched across our path no more than a mile from here.’

      ‘They don’t do that,’ Riva protested. ‘The clans never gather together in the same place.’

      ‘Evidently the rules have changed.’

      ‘What are we going to do?’ Dras demanded.

      ‘Could we slip around them?’ Cherek asked.

      ‘Not hardly,’ I told him. ‘They’re stretched out for miles.’

      ‘What are we going to do?’ Dras said again. Dras tended to repeat himself when he got excited.

      ‘I’m working on it,’ I started thinking very fast. One thing was certain. Somebody was tampering with the Morindim. Riva was right; the clans never cooperated with each other. Someone had found a way to change that, and I didn’t think it was a Morind who’d done it. I cudgeled my brain, but I couldn’t come up with any way to get out of this. Each of the clans had a magician, and each magician had a pet demon. When the moon rose again, I was very likely to be up to my ears in creatures who normally lived in Hell. I was definitely going to need some help.

      I have no idea of where the notion came from –

      Let me correct that. Now that I think about it, I do know where it came from.

      – Are you in there? – I asked silently.

      – Of course. –

      – I’ve got a problem here.

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