"I really am a witch, Prince Kheldar. I could demonstrate if you wish, but I don't think you'd like it very much. People seldom do."
"That isn't really necessary, Vordai," Belgarath said. "What is it that you want exactly?"
"I was coming to that, Belgarath," she replied. "After I escaped into the fens, I discovered my little friends here." She affectionately stroked the side of Poppi's furry little face, and Poppi nuzzled at her hand ecstatically. "They were afraid of me at first, but they finally grew less shy. They began bringing me fish - and flowers - as tokens of friendship, and I needed friends very badly at that time. I altered them a bit out of gratitude."
"You shouldn't have, you know," the old man said rather sadly.
She shrugged. "Should and shouldn't have very little meaning to me any more."
"Not even the Gods would do what you did."
"The Gods have other amusements." She looked directly at him then. "I've been waiting for you, Belgarath - for years now. I knew that sooner or later you'd come back into the fens. This meeting you spoke of is very important to you, isn't it?"
"It's the most important event in the history of the world."
"That depends on your point of view, I suppose. You need my help, though."
"I think we can manage, Vordai."
"Perhaps, but how do you expect to get out of the fens?"
He looked at her sharply.
"I can open the way for you to the dry ground at the edge of the swamp, or I can see to it that you wander around in these marshes forever - in which case this meeting you're concerned about will never happen, will it? That puts me in a very interesting situation, wouldn't you say?"
Belgarath's eyes narrowed.
"I discovered that when men deal with each other, there's usually an exchange of some kind," she added with a strange little smile. "Something for something; nothing for nothing. It seems to be a sensible arrangement."
"Exactly what did you have in mind?"
"The fenlings are my friends," she replied. "In a very special way, my children. But men look upon them as animals with pelts worth the taking. They trap them, Belgarath, and they kill them for their fur. The fine ladies in Boktor and Kotu dress themselves in the skins of my children and give no thought to the grief it causes me. They call my children animals and they come into the fens to hunt them."
"They are animals, Vordai," he told her gently.
"Not any more." Almost without seeming to think, Vordai put her arm about Poppi's shoulders. "It may be that you were right when you said that I shouldn't have tampered with them, but it's too late now to change it back." She sighed. "I'm a witch, Belgarath," she continued, "not a sorceress. My life has a beginning and an end, and it's approaching its end, I think. I won't live forever, as you and Polgara have done. I've lived several hundred years already and I'm growing very tired of life. As long as I'm alive, I can keep men from coming into the fens; but once I'm gone, my children will have no protection."
"And you want me to take them into my care?"
"No, Belgarath. You're too busy; and sometimes you forget promises you don't care to remember. I want you to do the one thing that will make it forever impossible for men to think of the fenlings as animals."
His eyes widened as what she was suggesting dawned on him.
"I want you to give my children the power of speech, Belgarath," Vordai said. "I can't do it. My witchcraft doesn't reach that far. Only a sorcerer can make it possible for them to talk."
"Vordai-"
"That's my price, Belgarath," she told him. "That's what my help will cost you. Take it or leave it."
Chapter Nineteen
THEY SLEPT THAT night in Vordai's cottage, though Garion slept very little. The ultimatum of the witch of the fens troubled him profoundly. He knew that tampering with nature had far-reaching effects, and to go as far as Vordai wished might forever erase the dividing line between men and animals. The philosophical and theological implications of that step were staggering. There were, moreover, other worries. It was entirely possible that Belgarath could not do what Vordai demanded of him. Garion was almost positive that his grandfather had not attempted to use his will since his collapse months before, and now Vordai had set him an almost impossible task.What would happen to Belgarath if he tried and failed? What would that do to him? Would the doubts then take over and rob him of any possibility of ever regaining his power? Desperately Garion tried to think of a way to warn his grandfather without arousing those fatal doubts.
But they absolutely had to get out of the fens. However reluctantly Garion had made the decision to meet Torak, he now knew that it was the only possible choice open to him. The meeting, however, could not be delayed indefinitely. If it were put off too long, events would move on, and the world would be plunged into the war they were all so desperately trying to head off, Vordai's threat to trap them all here in the fens unless Belgarath paid her price threatened not only them, but the entire world. In a very real sense, she held the fate of all mankind in her uncaring hands. Try though he might, Garion could not think of any way to avoid the test of Belgarath's will. Though he would reluctantly have done what Vordai wished himself, he did not even know where to begin. If it could be done at all, his grandfather was the only one who could do it-if his illness had not destroyed his power.
When dawn crept through the misty fens, Belgarath arose and sat before the fire, brooding into the crackling flames with a somber face.
"Well?" Vordai asked him. "Have you decided?"
"It's wrong, Vordai," he told her. "Nature cries out against it."
"I'm much closer to nature than you are, Belgarath," she replied. "Witches live more intimately with her than sorcerers do. I can feel the turning of the seasons in my blood, and the earth is alive under my feet. I hear no outcry. Nature loves all her creatures, and she would grieve over the obliteration of my fenlings almost as much as I. But that's really beside the point, isn't it? Even though the very rocks shrieked out against it, I would not relent."
Silk exchanged a quick look with Garion, and the little man's sharp face seemed as troubled as Belgarath's.
"Are the fenlings really beasts?" Vordai continued. She pointed to where Poppi still slept, her delicate forepaws open like little hands. Tupik, moving stealthily, crept back into the house, carrying a handful of dew-drenched swamp flowers. With precise care, he placed them about the slumbering Poppi and gently laid the last one in her open hand. Then, with an oddly patient expression, he sat on his haunches to watch her awakening.