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.