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while he slept instead of listening to her important message. She frowned for half a second, then brightened with the prospect of their journey. She wondered if her hollows were packed with the appropriate supplies for this adventure.
    She skipped beside the man she was charged to guide, inform, and protect. A wizard would know what to pack. She wouldn’t waste time worrying. Her duty would be easy and great fun. Winkel had said they deserved each other when she handed out the assignments. Hollee laughed and did cartwheels. Facing The Grawl would be nothing with a wizard by her side.

8
Misdirection
    Hollee had lost Wizard Fenworth, but it didn’t worry her much.
    He’d been sitting very still while vines sprouted from his beard. His skin and robes took on the appearance of bark. After a long while, he looked just like the other trees. How could he spy when he’d turned himself into a tree?
    She admitted the tree thing was a very good disguise, so much so that she tripped off to get a closer look at the bisonbecks. But then she’d seen The Grawl, and that sent her scurrying back to her wizard. To her momentary dismay, she couldn’t find the Fenworth tree when she returned. The alarm lasted only until the marvel of being the assistant to a wizard popped back in her mind.
    As soon as Fenworth moved, she’d find him. Was he asleep? Was he still spying? Probably asleep. Most old people took naps.
    She climbed a tree and sat on a branch, comfortable in the knowledge that the beast wouldn’t be able to see her if he came looking. From her perch on a limb, she could see everything that went on in the enemy camp, and she could see the part of the woods where she thought Wizard Fenworth hid.

    The Grawl sat still, in control of every muscle in his body. He trained all his senses on the erratic movement of a kimen in the forest around the camp. The kimen presented no problems, but what had happened to the creature who had come with the kimen?
    Around him, bisonbeck soldiers joked with one another as they prepared a deer carcass to butcher. Their chatter annoyed him. The smell of blood as they sliced the meat from the bone covered the other scents of the forest and made it harder to keep track of the kimen. She flitted about the forest in an irregular manner, and that brought a snarl to his lips. He didn’t like unpredictable creatures.
    He rose to his seven-foot height and glared at the three soldiers. Without a word, he stalked out of the camp. He would be able to hear their conversation long after he was out of their sight.
    Brox growled, “What’s the matter with him?”
    The one named Gorse answered. “I don’t know, and I don’t much care. He makes me think of swamps, snakes, and those drooling quiss suckers.”
    “I’ve never seen a quiss. Have you?” asked Brox.
    Gorse muttered, “No, but I thought about them a lot when we came in on the boat.”
    Kulson turned the conversation back to The Grawl. “He probably doesn’t like the fact that we’ll cook some of the meat and dry the rest. He prefers his dinner to be warm because he just killed it, not because it was spitted and roasted over a fire.”
    “Yeah,” said Gorse. “I’ve never seen him do anything other than snatch up his prey and devour it.”
    A small smile tilted the corner of The Grawl’s mouth. Perhaps these bisonbecks did understand how inferior they were to him. But he wasn’t interested in the soldiers. He already knew too much about them from their travels together. Their odor almost choked him when in closed quarters. Wet goats smelled better.
    He stopped and allowed his senses to center on the kimen. He didn’t understand her movements. If she’d come to spy on them, why hadn’t she hunkered down to do some observing? He focused on the other entity, the one he’d lost. The nerve endings in his skin quivered.With heightened awareness, he shivered as he sought but could not find the powerful o’rant who had walked like an old man