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And he started up the hill,absolutely no sound as he went Garion floundered along behind hily until he began to catch the secret of it Silk nodded approvingly once, but said nothing

The trees ended just at the crest of the hill, and Silk stopped there The valley beloith the dark road passing through it was empty except for two deer who had corass

"We'll wait a while," Silk said "If Brill and his hireling are following, they shouldn't be far behind"

He sat on a stump and watched the e the road toward Winold It looked tiny in the distance, and its pace along the scar of the road seeher, and they squinted into its full htness

"Silk," Garion said finally in a hesitant tone

"Yes, Garion?"

"What's this all about?" It was a bold question to ask, but Garion felt he knew Silk well enough now to ask it

"All what?"

"What we're doing I've heard a few things and guessed a few more, but it doesn't really uessed, Garion?" Silk asked, his s's been stolen-so very important - and Mister Wolf and Aunt Pol - and the rest of us - are trying to get it back"

"All right," Silk said "That much is true"

"Mister Wolf and Aunt Pol are not at all what they seereed, "they aren't"

"I think they can do things that other people can't do," Garion said, struggling with the words "Mister Wolf can follow this thing - whatever it is - without seeing it And last week in those woods when the Murgos passed, they did so - I don't even kno to describe it, but it was almost as if they reached out and put my mind to sleep How did they do that? And why?"

Silk chuckled

"You're a very observant lad," he said Then his tone beca in momentous times, Garion The events of a thousand years and more have all focused on these very days The world, I' happens, and then in a few short years events of such tremendous iain"

"I think that if I had my choice, I'd prefer one of those quiet centuries," Garion said glu back in a ferretlike grin "Now's the time to be alive - to see it all happen, to be a part of it That makes the blood race, and each breath is an adventure"

Garion let that pass

"What is this thing we're following?" he asked

"It's best if you don't even know its name," Silk told him seriously, "or the na to stop us; and what you don't know, you can't reveal"

"I'os," Garion said stiffly

"It's not necessary to talk to the theht out of your mind"

"That isn't possible," Garion said

"Who's to say what's possible and what isn't?" Silk asked And Garion remembered a conversation he had once had with Mister Wolf about the possible and the impossible