'But it is, really,' Ingold said easily, prodding at the ashes of their tiny fire. 'You yourself know that one does not turn oneself into a wolf - for to transpose your personality into the heart and brain of a wolf, aside from being very dangerous in terms of the structure of the universe, might prove too great a temptation to you.'

Distantly, the wolves answered his words, their faint howling riding down the night wind. In the darkness of their arroyo camp, Rudy caught the bright, hard glitter of Ingold's eyes and heard the dreamy edge to his voice.

'Wolves love what they are, Rudy. To be strong - to kill - to live with the wind and the pack - it would call to the wolf in your own soul. There would always be the danger, you see, that you would not want to come back. And as for slaying dragons,' he went on in a milder tone, 'well, dragons are really rather timid creatures, tricky and dangerous, but only likely to attack humans if driven by hunger.'

'You mean - there are dragons? Real live dragons?'

The wizard looked startled at the question. 'Oh, yes, I have actually even slain a dragon. Rather, I acted as decoy and Lohiro did the sword work. As for the rest of it -blasting down walls and walking on water...' He smiled. 'Need has simply not arisen.'

'You mean,' Rudy said uneasily, 'that - you could? If you had to?'

'Walk on water? I could probably find a boat.'

'But if there wasn't a boat?' Rudy pursued.

Ingold shrugged. 'I'm quite a good swimmer.'

Rudy was silent for a time, his head pillowed on his hands, staring up into the black and featureless sky, hearing the belling of the wolves on their hunting trail, sweet with distance and incredibly lonely, and remembering the men he had known who had chosen to live as human wolves on a hunting trail of steel and gasoline. To live with the wind and the pack... That he understood. That mind he knew.