"It leaks," Silk declared, pointing at the inch or so of water that had collected in the bottom of the boat as they poled away from the reeking village.
"All boats leak, Silk," Belgarath replied calmly. "It's the nature of boats to leak. Bail it out."
"It will just fill up again."
"Then you can bail it out again. Try not to let it get too far ahead of you."
The fens stretched on interminably, a wilderness of cattails and rushes and dark, slowly moving water. There were channels and streams and quite frequently small lakes where the going was much easier. The air was humid and, in the evenings, thick with gnats and mosquitoes. Frogs sang of love all night, greeting spring with intoxicated fervor-little chirping frogs and great, booming, bull-voiced frogs as big as dinner plates. Fish leaped in the ponds and lakes, and beaver and muskrats nested on soggy islands.
They poled their way through the confused maze of channels marking the mouths of the Aldur and continued northeasterly in the slowly warming northern spring. After a week or more, they crossed the indeterminate border and left Algaria behind.
A false channel put them aground once, and they were obliged to climb out to heave and push their boat off a mudbank by main strength. When they were afloat again, Silk sat disconsolately on the gunwale regarding his ruined boots that were dripping thick mud into the water. When he spoke, his voice was filled with profound disgust. "Delightful," he said. "How wonderful to be home again in dear old mucky Drasnia."
Chapter Eighteen
ALTHOUGH IT WAS all one vast swampland, it seemed to Garion that the fens here in Drasnia were subtly different from those farther south. The channels were narrower, for one thing, and they twisted and turned more frequently. After a couple of days poling, he developed a growing conviction that they were lost. "Are you sure you know where we're going?" he demanded of Silk."I haven't the vaguest idea," Silk replied candidly.
"You keep saying that you know the way everywhere," Garion accused him.
"There isn't any certain way here in the fens, Garion," Silk told him. "All you can do is keep going against the current and hope for the best."
"There's got to be a route," Garion objected. "Why don't they put up markers or something?"
"It wouldn't do any good. Look." The little man put his pole against a solid-looking hummock rising out of the water beside the boat and pushed. The hummock moved sluggishly away. Garion stared at it in amazement.
"It's floating vegetation," Belgarath explained, stopping his poling to wipe the sweat from his face. "Seeds fall on it, and it grows grass just like solid earth - except that it isn't solid. It floats wherever the wind and current push it. That's why there aren't any permanent channels and there's no definite route."
"It's not always just wind and current," Silk added darkly. He glanced out at the lowering sun. "We'd better find something solid to tie up to for the night," he suggested.
"How about that one?" Belgarath replied, pointing at a brushy hummock that was somewhat higher than those surrounding it.
They poled their way to the clump of ground rising out of the surrounding water, and Silk kicked at it experimentally a few times. "It seems to be stationary," he confirmed. He stepped out of the boat and climbed to the top, frequently stamping his feet. The ground responded with a satisfactorily solid sound. "There's a dry spot up here," he reported, "and a pile of driftwood on the other side. We can sleep on solid ground for a change, and maybe even have a hot meal."
They pulled the boat far up onto the sloping side, and Silk took some rather exotic-seeming precautions to make certain that it was securely tied.
"Isn't that sort of unnecessary?" Garion asked him.
"It isn't much of a boat," Silk replied, "but it's the only one we've got. Let's not take chances with it."
They got a fire going and erected their single tent as the sun slowly settled in a cloudbank to the west, painting the marsh in a ruddy glow. Silk dug out a few pans and began to work on supper.
"It's too hot," Garion advised critically as the rat-faced little man prepared to lay strips of bacon in a smoking iron pan.
"Do you want to do this?"
"I was just warning you, that's all."
"I don't have your advantages, Garion," Silk replied tartly. "I didn't grow up in Polgara's kitchen the way you did. I just make do the best I can."
"You don't have to get grumpy about it," Garion said. "I just thought you'd like to know that the pan's too hot."
"I think I can manage without any more advice."
"Suit yourself - but you're going to burn the bacon."
Silk gave him an irritated look and started slapping bacon slices into the pan. The slices sizzled and smoked, and their edges turned black almost immediately.
"I told you so," Garion murmured.
"Belgarath," Silk complained, "make him leave me alone."
"Come away, Garion," the old man said. "He can burn supper without any help."
"Thanks," Silk responded sarcastically.
Supper was not an absolute disaster. After they had eaten, they sat watching as the fire burned down and purple evening crept across the fens. The frogs took up their vast chorus among the reeds, and birds perched on the bending stalks of cattails, clucking and murmuring sleepily. There were faint splashes and rippling sounds in the brown water about them and occasional eruptions of bubbles as swamp gas gurgled to the surface. Silk sighed bitterly. "I hate this place," he said. "I absolutely hate it."
That night Garion had a nightmare. It was not the first he had suffered since they had left Riva; and as he sat up, sweat-drenched and trembling, he was positive it would not be the last. It was not a new nightmare, but rather was one which had periodically haunted his sleep since boyhood. Unlike an ordinary bad dream, this one did not involve being chased or threatened, but consisted rather of a single image - the image of a hideously maimed face. Although he had never actually seen the owner of the face, he knew exactly whose face it was, and now he knew why it inhabited his darkest dreams.
The next day dawned cloudy with a threat of approaching rain. As Belgarath stirred up the fire and Silk rummaged through his pack for something suitable for breakfast, Garion stood looking out at the swamp around him. A flight of geese swept by overhead in a ragged V, their wings whistling and their muted cries drifting, lonely and remote. A fish jumped not far from the edge of the hummock, and Garion watched the ripples widening out toward the far shore. He looked for quite some time at that shore before he realized exactly what it was he was seeing. Concerned, then a bit alarmed, he began to peer first this way and then that.