"Not if I can help it," Silk muttered darkly to Garion.

They had broiled trout for supper that evening. After Durnik and Toth had finished setting up their encampment, they had adjourned to the riverbank with their poles and lures. Durnik's recent elevation to disciplehood had changed him in some ways, but had not lessened his appetite for his favorite pastime. It was no longer necessary for him and his mute friend even to discuss these excursions. Any time they camped in the vicinity of a lake or stream, their reaction was automatic.

After supper, Polgara flew off into the shadowy forest, but when she returned, she reported having seen no sign of the large beast the she-wolf had warned them about. It was cold the following morning, and there was a trace of frost in the air. The horses' breath steamed in the mountain air as they set out, and Garion and the others rode with their cloaks wrapped tightly about them.

As Beldin had predicted, they reached the snow line late that afternoon. The first windrows of white in the wagon ruts were thin and crusty, but farther on ahead they could see deeper drifts. They made camp below the snow and set out again early the following morning. Silk had devised a sort of yoke for one of the packhorses, and trailing on ropes behind the yoke were a dozen or so head-size round rocks. The little man critically examined the tracks the rocks made in the snow as they started up the track into the world of perpetual white. "Good enough," he said in a self-congratulatory tone.

"I don't quite see the purpose of your contrivance, Prince Kheldar," Sadi confessed.

"The rocks leave trails that look about the same as wagon tracks," Silk explained.

"Horse tracks by themselves might make the soldiers coming up behind us suspicious. Wagon tracks on a caravan route aren't going to look all that remarkable."

"Clever,'' the eunuch said, "but why not just cut bushes and drag them behind us?"

Silk shook his head. "If you brush out all the tracks in the snow, it looks even more suspicious. This is a fairly well-traveled route."

"You think of everything, don't you?"

"Sneaking was his major field of study at the academy," Velvet said from the little carriage she shared with Ce'Nedra and the wolf pup. "Sometimes he sneaks just to keep in practice."

"I don't know if I'd go that far, Liselle," the little man objected in a pained tone.

"Don't you?"

"Well, yes, I suppose so, but you don't have to come right out and say it—and 'sneak' has such an ugly ring to it."

"Can you mink of a better term?"

"Well, 'evasion' sounds a bit nicer, doesn't it?"

"Since it means the same thing, why quibble over terminology?" She smiled winsomely at him, her cheeks dimpling.

"It's a question of style, Liselle."