LITMIR.BIZ

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her fangs at them.

      ‘And now convey me unto Belar,’ I ordered them.

      The God Belar appeared very young – scarcely more than a boy, though I knew he was much, much older than I. He was a fair-seeming, open-faced God, and the people who served him were a rowdy, undisciplined group, scarcely conscious of the dignity of their Master.

      ‘Well-met, Belgarath,’ he greeted me, though we had never met and I had told my name to no one. ‘How does it go with my brother?’

      ‘Not well, my Lord,’ I told him. ‘Thy brother, Torak, hath come unto my Master and smote him and hath borne away a particular jewel which he coveted.’

      ‘What?’ the young God roared, springing to his feet. ‘Torak hath the Orb?’

      ‘I greatly fear it is so, my Lord,’ I told him. ‘My Master bids me entreat thee to come to him with all possible speed.’

      ‘I will, Belgarath,’ Belar said. ‘I will make preparations at once. Hath Torak used the Orb as yet?’

      ‘We think not, my Lord,’ I said. ‘My Master says we must make haste, before thy brother, Torak, hath learned the full power of the jewel he hath stolen.’

      ‘Truly,’ the young God said. He glanced at the young she-wolf sitting at my feet. ‘Greetings, little sister,’ he said courteously, ‘is it well with thee?’

      ‘Most remarkable,’ she said politely. ‘It appears that I have fallen in with creatures of great importance.’

      ‘Thy friend and I must make haste,’ he told her. ‘Otherwise I should make suitable arrangements for thy comfort. May I offer thee to eat?’

      She glanced at the ox turning on the spit in his great hall. ‘That smells interesting,’ she said.

      ‘Of course,’ he said, taking up a knife and carving off a generous portion for her.

      ‘My thanks,’ she said. ‘This one –’ she jerked her head at me ‘- was in so much hurry to reach this place that we scarce had time for a rabbit or two along the way.’ Daintily she gulped the meat down in two great bites. ‘Quite good,’ she said, ‘though one wonders why it was necessary to burn it.’

      ‘A custom, little sister,’ he laughed.

      ‘Oh, well,’ she said, ‘if it’s a custom.’ Carefully she licked her whiskers clean.

      ‘I will return in a moment, Belgarath,’ Belar said and moved away.

      ‘That one is nice,’ my companion told me pointedly.

      ‘He is a God,’ I told her.

      ‘That means nothing to me,’ she said. ‘Gods are the business of men. Wolves have little interest in such things.’

      ‘Perhaps you would care to return to the place where we met?’ I suggested.

      ‘I will go along with you for a while longer,’ she told me. ‘I was ever curious, and I see that you are familiar with most remarkable things.’ She yawned, stretched, and curled up at my feet.

      The return to the Vale where my Master waited took far less time than had my journey to the country of the Bear-God. Though time is a matter of indifference to them normally, when there is a need for haste, the Gods can devour distance in ways that had not even occurred to me. We began walking with Belar asking me questions about my Master and our lives in the Vale and the young she-wolf padding along sedately between us. After several hours of this, my impatience finally made me bold.

      ‘My Lord,’ I said, ‘forgive me, but at this rate it will take us almost a year to reach my Master’s tower.’

      ‘Not nearly so long, Belgarath,’ he replied 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 standing in the center.

      ‘Most remarkable,’ the wolf murmured, dropping onto her haunches and staring down into the Vale with her bright yellow eyes. I could only agree with her.

      The other Gods were already with my Master in the tower, and Belar hastened to join them.

      My brothers, the other Disciples of Aldur, awaited me at the foot of the tower. When they saw my companion, they were startled.

      ‘Is it wise, Belgarath, to bring such a one here?’ Belzedar asked me. ‘Wolves are not the most trustworthy creatures.’

      My companion bared her fangs at him for that.

      ‘What is her name,’ the gentle Beltira asked.

      ‘Wolves do not require names,’ I told him. ‘They know who they are without such appendages.’

      Belzedar shook his head and moved away from the wolf.

      ‘Is she quite tame?’ Belsambar asked me. ‘I wonder that you had time for such business on your journey, and I know you would not loiter.’

      ‘She is not tame at all,’ I told him. ‘We met by chance, and she chose to accompany me.’

      ‘Most remarkable,’ the wolf said to me. ‘Are they always so full of questions?’

      ‘It is the nature of man,’ I told her.

      ‘Curious creatures,’ she said, shaking her head.

      ‘What a wonder,’ Belkira marveled. ‘You have learned to converse with the beasts. Pray, dear brother, instruct me in this art.’

      ‘It is not an art,’ I said. ‘I took the form of a wolf on my journey. The speech of the wolf came with the form and remained. It is no great thing.’

      And then we sat, awaiting the decision of our Master and his brother Gods regarding the wayward Torak. When they came down, their faces were solemn, and the other Gods departed without speaking with us.

      ‘There will be war,’ our Master told us. ‘My brothers have gone to gather their people. Mara and Issa will come upon Torak from the south; Nedra and Chaldan shall come upon him from the west; Belar and I will come upon him from the north. We will lay waste his people, the Angaraks, until he returns the Orb. It must be so.’

      ‘Then so be it,’ I said, speaking for us all.

      And so we prepared for war. We were but seven, and feared that our Master might be held in low regard when our tiny number was revealed to the hosts of the other Gods, but it was not so. We labored to create the great engines of war and to cast illusions which confounded the minds of the Angarak peoples of the traitor, Torak.

      And after a few battles did we and the hosts of the other peoples harry Torak and his people out onto that vast plain beyond Korim, which is no more.^*

      And then it was that Torak, knowing that the hosts of his brother Gods could destroy all of Angarak, raised up the jewel which my Master had wrought, and with it he let in the sea.

      The sound was one such as I had never heard before. The earth shrieked and groaned as the power of the Orb and the will of Torak cracked open the fair plain; and, with a roar like ten thousand thunders, the sea came in to seethe in a broad, foaming band between us and the Angaraks. How many perished in that sudden drowning no one will ever know. The cracked land sank beneath our feet, and the mocking sea pursued us, swallowing the plain and the villages and the cities which lay upon it. Then it was that the village of my birth was lost forever, and that fair, sparkling river drowned beneath the endlessly rolling sea.

      A great cry went up from the hosts of the other Gods, for indeed the lands of most of them were swallowed up by the sea which Torak had let in.

      ‘How remarkable,’ the young wolf at my side observed.

      ‘You say that overmuch,’ I told

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