"I don't see what's so funny."

"Is that what's been bothering you and your Aunt for all these months? The two of you have been tiptoeing around me as if I were made out of thin gla.s.s."

"We were afraid the Angaraks might find out, and we didn't dare say anything to you because-"

"Because you were afraid it might make me doubt my abilities?"

Garion nodded.

"Maybe in the long run it wasn't a bad idea at that. I certainly didn't need any doubts plaguing me this morning."

"Was it terribly difficult?"

"Moderately so, yes. I wouldn't want to have to try that sort of thing every day."

"But you didn't really have to do it, did you?"

"Do what?"

"Show the fenlings how to talk. If you've still got your power, then between the two of us, you and I could have opened a channel straight through to the edge of the swamp - no matter what Vordai or the fenlings could have done to try to stop us."

"I wondered how long it was going to be before that occurred to you," the old man replied blandly.

Garion gave him an irritated look. "All right," he said, "why did you do it then, since you didn't have to?"

"That question's rather impolite, Garion," Belgarath chided. "There are certain courtesies customarily observed. It's not considered good manners to ask another sorcerer why he did something."

Garion gave his grandfather an even harder look. "You're evading the question," he said bluntly. "Let's agree that I don't have very good manners, and then you can go ahead and answer anyway."

Belgarath appeared slightly injured. "It's not my fault that you and your Aunt were so worried. You don't really have any reason to be so cross with me." He paused, then looked at Garion. "You're absolutely going to insist?" he asked.

"Yes, I think I really am. Why did you do it?"

Belgarath sighed. "Vordai's been alone for most of her life, you know," he replied, "and life's been very hard to her. Somehow I've always thought that she deserved better. Maybe this makes up for it - a little bit."

"Did Aldur agree with you?" Garion pressed. "I heard his voice when the two of you were talking."

"Eavesdropping is really a bad habit, Garion."

"I've got lots of bad habits, Grandfather."

"I don't know why you're taking this tone with me, boy," the old man complained. "All right, since you're going to be this way about it, I did, as a matter of fact, have to talk rather fast to get my Master to agree."

"You did all of this because you felt sorry for her?"

"That's not exactly the right term, Garion. Let's just say that I have certain feelings about justice."

"If you knew you were going to do it anyway, why did you argue with her?"

Belgarath shrugged. "I wanted to be sure that she really wanted it. Besides, it's not a good idea to let people get the idea that you'll do anything they ask just because you might feel that they have a certain claim on you."

Silk was staring at the old man in amazement. "Compa.s.sion, Belgarath?" he demanded incredulously. "From you? If word of this ever gets out, your reputation's going to be ruined."

Belgarath looked suddenly painfully embarra.s.sed. "I don't know that we need to spread it around all that much, Silk," he said. "People don't really have to know about this, do they?"

Garion felt as if a door had suddenly opened. Silk, he realized, was right. He had never precisely thought of it that way, but Belgarath did have a certain reputation for ruthlessness. Most men felt that there was a kind of implacableness about the Eternal Man - a willingness to sacrifice anything in his single-minded drive toward a goal so obscure that no one else could ever fully understand it. But with this single act of compa.s.sion, he had revealed another, softer side of his nature. Belgarath the Sorcerer was capable of human emotion and feeling, after all. The thought of how those feelings had been wounded by all the horrors and pain he had seen and endured in seven thousand years came crashing in on Garion, and he found himself staring at his grandfather with a profound new respect.

The edge of the fens was marked by a solid-looking dike that stretched off into the misty distance in either direction.

"The causeway," Silk told Garion, pointing at the dike. "It's part of the Tolnedran highway system."

"Bel-grath," Tupik said, his head popping up out of the water beside the boat, "thank-you."

"Oh, I rather think you'd have learned to talk eventually anyway, Tupik," the old man replied. "You were very close to it, you know."

"May-be, may-be-not," Tupik disagreed. "Want-to-talk and talk did ferent. Not-same."

"Soon you'll learn to lie," Silk told him sardonically, "and then you'll be as good as any man alive."

"Why learn to talk if only to lie?" Tupik asked, puzzled.

"It'll come to you in time."

Tupik frowned slightly, and then his head slipped under the water. He came up one more time some distance away from the boat. "Goodbye," he called to them. "Tupik thanks you-for Mother." Then, without a ripple, he disappeared.

"What a strange little creature." Belgarath smiled.

With a startled exclamation, Silk frantically dug into his pocket. Something a pale green color leaped from his hand to plop into the water.

"What's the matter?" Garion asked him.

Silk shuddered. "The little monster put a frog in my pocket."

"Perhaps it was meant as a gift," Belgarath suggested.

"A frog?"

"Then again perhaps it wasn't." Belgarath grinned. "It's a little primitive perhaps, but it might just be the beginnings of a sense of humor."

There was a Tolnedran hostel a few miles up the great causeway that ran north and south through the eastern edge of the fens. They reached it in the late afternoon and purchased horses at a price that made Silk wince. The following morning they moved out at a canter in the direction of Boktor.

The strange interlude in the fens had given Garion a great deal to think about. He began to perceive that compa.s.sion was a kind of love broader and more encompa.s.sing than the somewhat narrow idea he had previously had of that emotion. The word love seemed, as he thought more deeply about it, to include a great number of things that at first glance did not seem to have anything whatsoever to do with it. As his understanding of this grew, a peculiar notion took hold of his imagination. His grandfather, the man they called Eternal, had probably in his seven thousand years developed a capacity for love beyond the ability of other men even remotely to guess at. In spite of that gruff, irntable exterior, Belgarath's entire life had been an expression of that transcendant love. As they rode, Garion glanced often at the strange old man, and the image of the remote, all-powerful sorcerer towering above the rest of humanity gradually faded; he began to see the real man behind that image - a complicated man to be sure, but a very human one.

Two days later in clearing weather, they reached Boktor.

Chapter Twenty.

THERE WAS AN open quality about Boktor that Garion noticed immediately as they rode through its broad streets. The houses were not for the most part over two storeys high, and they were not jammed up against each other as they were in other cities he had seen. The avenues were wide and straight, and there was a minimum of litter in them.

He commented on that as they rode along a s.p.a.cious, tree-lined boulevard.

"Boktor's a new city," Silk explained. "At least relatively."

"I thought that it has been here since the time of Dras Bullneck."

"Oh, it has," Silk replied, "but the old city was destroyed by the Angaraks when they invaded, five hundred years ago."

"I'd forgotten that," Garion admitted.

"After Vo Mimbre, when the time came to rebuild, it was decided to take advantage of the chance to start over," Silk continued. He looked about rather distastefully. "I don't really like Boktor," he said. "There aren't enough alleys and back streets. It's almost impossible to move around without being seen." He turned to Belgarath. "That reminds me of something, by the way. It probably wouldn't be a bad idea to avoid the central marketplace. I'm rather well-known here, and there's no point in letting the whole city know we've arrived."

"Do you think we'll be able to slip through unnoticed?" Garion asked him.

"In Boktor?" Silk laughed. "Of course not. We've already been identified a half dozen times. Spying is a major industry here. Porenn knew we were coming before we'd even entered the city." He glanced up at a second floor window, and his fingers flickered a quick rebuke in the gestures of the Drasnian secret language. The curtain at the window gave a guilty little twitch. "Just too clumsy," he observed with profound disapproval. "Must be a first-year student at the academy."

"Probably nervous about seeing a celebrity," Belgarath suggested. "You are, after all, something of a legend, Silk."

"There's still no excuse for sloppy work," Silk said. "If I had time, I'd stop by the academy and have a talk with the headmaster about it." He sighed. "The quality of student work has definitely gone downhill since they discontinued the use of the whipping post."

"The what?" Garion exclaimed.

"In my day, a student who was seen by the person he was a.s.signed to watch was flogged," Silk told him. "Flogging's a very effective teaching technique, Garion."

Just ahead of them a door to a large house opened, and a dozen uniformed pikemen marched out into the street, halted and turned to face them. The officer in charge came forward and bowed politely. "Prince Kheldar," he greeted Silk, "Her Highness wonders if you'd be so good as to stop by the palace."

"You see," Silk said to Garion. "I told you she knew we were here." He turned to the officer. "Just out of curiosity, captain, what would you do if I told you that we didn't feel like being so good as to stop by the palace?"

"I'd probably have to insist," the captain replied.

"I rather thought you might feel that way about it."

"Are we under arrest?" Garion asked nervously.

"Not precisely, your Majesty," the captain answered. "Queen Porenn most definitely wishes to speak with you, however." He bowed then to Belgarath. "Ancient One," he greeted the old man respectfully. "I think that if we went around to the side entrance, we'd attract less attention." And he turned and gave his men the order to march.

"He knows who we are," Garion muttered to Silk.

"Naturally," Silk said.

"How are we going to get out of this? Won't Queen Porenn just ship us all back to Riva?"

"We'll talk to her," Belgarath said. "Porenn's got good sense. I'm sure we can explain this to her."

"Unless Polgara's been issuing ultimatums," Silk added. "She does that when she gets angry, I've noticed."

"We'll see,"

Queen Porenn was even more radiantly lovely than ever. Her slimness made it obvious that the birth of her first child had already occurred. Motherhood had brought a glow to her face and a look of completion to her eyes. She greeted them fondly as they entered the palace and led them immediately to her private quarters. The little queen's rooms were somehow lacy and feminine with rubies on the furniture and soft, pink curtains at the windows. "Where have you been?" she asked them as soon as they were alone. "Polgara's frantic."

Belgarath shrugged. "She'll recover, What's happening in Riva?"

"They're directing the search for you, naturally," Porenn replied. "How did you manage to get this far? Every road's been blocked."

"We were ahead of everybody, Auntie dearest." Silk grinned impudently at her. "By the time they started blocking roads, we'd already gone through."

"I've asked you not to call me that, Kheldar," she admonished him.

"Forgive me, your Highness," he said with a bow, though still grinning mockingly.

"You're impossible," she told him.

"Of course I am," he answered. "It's part of my charm."

The queen sighed. "What am I going to do with all of you now?"

"You're going to let us continue our journey," Belgarath replied calmly. "We'll argue about it, of course, but in the end that's the way it will turn out."

She stared at him.

"You did ask, after all. I'm sure you feel better now that you know."

"You're as bad or worse than Kheldar," she accused.

"I've had more practice."

"It's quite out of the question," she told him firmly. "I have strict orders from Polgara to send you all back to Riva."

Belgarath shrugged.

"You'll go?" She seemed surprised.

"No," he replied, "we won't. You said that Polgara gave you strict orders to send us back. All right, then, I give you strict orders not to. Now where does that leave us?"

"That's cruel, Belgarath."

"Times are hard."

"Before we get down to serious squabbling, do you suppose we might have a look at the heir to the throne?" Silk asked.

His question was artful. No new mother could resist the opportunity to show off her infant, and Queen Porenn had already turned toward the cradle standing in the corner of the room before she realized that she was being cleverly manipulated.

"You're bad, Kheldar," she said reprovingly, but she nonetheless pulled back the satin coverlet to reveal the baby that had become the absolute center of her life.