Trakor squatted on his haunches and watched the cave lord with wide,
wondering eyes. For several minutes Tharn moved slowly about the cleared
ground, his powerful body bent low, his unbelievably keen eyes searching
every inch of earth. Gradually his companion began to understand there
was nothing aimless in his movements: he was circling in a gradually
narrowing spiral toward the exact center of the camp site.

After a while Trakor tired of watching and went back to the river to
drink. He was on his way back when a sharp exclamation from his friend
caught his attention.

He was amazed to find Tharn on his hands and knees sniffing at the
ground. Those nostrils appeared to quiver, to expand and contract, like
an animal's when it picks up a fresh spoor.

A prickling sensation tugged at Trakor's scalp. Was it possible that
this god-like human could actually scent, and _recognize_ that scent,
where a man or woman had stood days before? No human nose had any
business being that efficient!

Tharn looked up to find him standing there. "She slept here for several
hours," he said. On hands and knees he began to move in a straight line
across the ground, swerved to one side near the former location of the
fires, then on again across the wide ribbon of open ground between the
heaps of ashes and the forest's edge. At the base of a large tree, he
stood up and beckoned to Trakor.

"Sadu chased her to this tree," he explained, his voice as confident as
though he had witnessed the entire proceedings instead of reconstructing
them through the mediums of sight and smell. "He did not get her. Come."

Lightly Tharn swung himself into the branches, Trakor close behind him.
To the cave lord this was an engaging sport--a sport made more
interesting because happiness for him depended on his ability to follow
a cold trail.

Here a bit of lint from Dylara's tunic had caught beneath a segment of
bark; there a newly budded shoot had been crushed by a naked foot. A
speck of green moisture on an adjoining branch marked where that same
foot had come to rest a little later; and further on a scuffed section
of bark, almost too small to be detected, showed where a foot had
slipped slightly.

To Tharn, guided by uncanny powers of perception and a woodlore second
not even to the beasts themselves, all these marks were as evident and
recognizable as words on a printed page to a scholar.

Dylara's progress had been snail-like that night as she