"She looks human," Garion objected, still staring at the princess.

"The Dryads are so closely related to humans that the differences are hardly significant," Wolf said. "That probably explains why they didn't go mad like the other monsters did when Torak cracked the world."

"Monsters!" Ce'Nedra protested loudly.

"Your pardon, Princess," Wolf apologized. "It's an Ulgo term used to describe the non-humans who supported Gorim at Prolgu when he met with the God UL."

"Do I look like a monster to you?" she demanded, tossing her head angrily.

"A poor choice of words, perhaps," Wolf murmured. "Forgive me."

"Monsters indeed!" Ce'Nedra fumed.

Wolf shrugged. "There's a stream not far ahead, if I remember right. We'll stop there and wait until word of our arrival reaches Queen Xantha. It's not a good idea to go into the territory of the Dryads without the queen's permission. They can get quite nasty if they're provoked."

"I thought you said they were gentle," Durnik said.

"Within reason," Wolf told him. "But it's not a good idea to irritate people who communicate with trees when you're in the middle of a forest. Unpleasant things have a way of happening." He frowned. "That reminds me. You'd better stow your axe away out of sight. Dryads have strong feelings about axes - and fires. They're most unreasonable about fire. We'll have to keep our fires small and only for cooking."

They rode in under a colossal oak beside a sparkling stream purling over mossy rocks, dismounted and set up their dun-colored tents. After they had eaten, Garion wandered around feeling bored. Mister Wolf was napping, and Silk had lured the others into a dice game. Aunt Pol had seated the Princess on a log and was stripping the purple dye from her hair.

"If you don't have anything else to do, Garion," she said, "why don't you go bathe?"

"Bathe?" he asked. "Where?"

"I'm sure you'll find a pool somewhere along the stream," she said, carefully lathering Ce'Nedra's hair.

"You want me to bathe in that water? Aren't you afraid I'll catch cold?"

"You're a healthy boy, dear," she told him, "but a very dirty one. Now go wash."

Garion gave her a dark look and went to one of the packs for clean clothing, soap, and a towel. Then he stamped off upstream, grumbling at every step.

Once he was alone under the trees, he felt even more strongly that peculiar sense of being watched. It was not anything definable. There seemed to be nothing specific about it, but rather it felt as if the oaks themselves were aware of him and were passing information about his movements among themselves with a kind of vegetative communication he could not begin to understand. There seemed to be no menace in it, merely a kind of watchfulness.