He took his time over the image, painstakingly remembering every detail of the rocks and trees and water. When the picture was as clear as he could make it, he took a deep breath and gave the power of the sword a slow, twisting pull.

The mountains and the trees and Jack's queer little house faded to gray ghosts, then melted into mist and were gone. An instant later, the mist vanished. They were standing at the edge of the Green Glass Pool.

"Absolutely fascinating!" Telemain said. "That is, without a doubt, the neatest transportation spell I have ever had the pleasure of utilizing. But I thought you said you had some trouble with it."

"He did, last time," Cimorene said.

"Well, you'd better not put your sword away, then," Telemain said. "I can't tell what the problem was until I see it. You'll just have to do the spell again."

Mendanbar, who had already stuck his sword back in its sheath, shook his head. "I never use the sword to move around the Enchanted Forest .

I don't need it."

"By the way, your sword has stopped spraying magic around again," Cimorene said. "I thought you might want to know."

"So it has," Telemain said. "What an intriguing phenomenon."

"That reminds me," Mendanbar said. "The burned-out area I told you about should be right over there. Would you mind taking a look at it, since we're here?"

"Happy to oblige," Telemain replied.

"What about finding Kazul?" Cimorene asked.

"I'll try and locate her while Telemain is examining the clearing," Mendanbar said. "A locating spell takes a while to set up, anyway, so we won't lose any time to speak of, unless looking at the charred spot takes a lot longer than I expect it to."

Cimorene still did not look altogether pleased, but she nodded, and Mendanbar led the way between the enormous trees. There was the burned section, as empty of life and magic as it had been when he had first seen it.

Cimorene's expression changed to one of shock and anger, and even Telemain looked shaken.

"I see why you wanted me to look at this," Telemain said.

"So do I," Cimorene agreed.

Setting the wizard's staff under a tree near the edge of the charred area, Telemain walked slowly forward until he reached the spot where the ashes began. Kneeling, he ran his fingers over the dry, dead earth. After a moment, he rose and moved on, into the burned section itself. Little swirls of ash followed him.

For a few minutes, Mendanbar watched the magician work. Then, remembering his promise to Cimorene, he tore his attention away and turned to his own task.

It was a relief to be back in the Enchanted Forest, where magic was nearly automatic. Quickly, Mendanbar sorted through the invisible threads of power, selecting the ones that ran all the way to the farthest edges of the Enchanted Forest. They made quite a bundle, but it was better to do it all at once than to split them up and risk skipping one by accident.

When he was sure he had all the threads he wanted, he looped them around his right wrist and twined his fingers through the strands as they fanned out in all directions. With his left hand, he caught a free-floating filament and wound it into a small ball. He set the ball on the web of unseen tendrils that radiated out from the bundle at his wrist. In his mind, he pictured Kazul and the wizards as he and Cimorene had seen them in Herman's window. Then he gave the invisible ball a flick and sent it rolling rapidly out along the first of the threads.

The ball picked up speed and vanished. Then it was back, bouncing to the next thread and spinning away along the new path. Out and back it went in the blink of an eye, over and over, eliminating one thread each time.

And then it went out and did not return.

Mendanbar frowned. That wasn't supposed to happen. If the spell-ball didn't find Kazul, it should come back and hop to the next thread, to check along it. If it did find Kazul, it should come back and stop, marking the thread they should follow to lead them to the dragon.

Either way, the spell-ball was supposed to come back.

"What is it?" Cimorene said.

Mendanbar looked up, startled, to find Cimorene watching his face closely. "Something's wrong," he told her. "Wait a minute while I try something."

Gently, he wiggled the last thread down which the spell-ball had vanished.

He felt a vibration travel the length of the thread, and for a moment he hoped that it was the spell-ball returning. Then, with a high, thin sound like a tight wire breaking, the thread snapped, leaving a long end waving loose in the air in front of him.

"What was that?" Telemain said, looking up.

"Something very wrong indeed," Mendanbar said grimly. "You'd better stop that and come over here. We're going to the palace right now."

Both Cimorene and Telemain stared at Mendanbar for a moment. Then Telemain shrugged. "Very well," he said, dusting ashes from his fingers. "I was nearly finished, in any case, though I can't say that I like all this flitting around."

"Mendanbar, what happened?" Cimorene demanded as Telemain walked out of the burned area and crossed to the tree to get the wizard's staff.

"I'm not sure I can explain," Mendanbar replied. "It has to do with the way I work magic. The spell-Telemain, what is it?"

Telemain had picked up the staff and was gazing down at the ground where it had lain. "I think you'd better come and see for yourself," he said without looking up.

Feeling mildly irritated, Mendanbar went over to join Telemain. His irritation vanished when he saw what the magician was looking at. At the foot of the tree, a strip of moss had turned as brown and dead and brittle as the crumbling remnants within the burned-out area a few feet away. And the strip was the exact size and shape of the wizard's staff.

"Wizards again," Cimorene said in tones of disgust. "It figures."

"It looks the same as that part," Mendanbar said cautiously, waving at the dead spot. "But is it?"

"So far as I can determine from a limited visual examination, it is,"

Telemain said. "If you want absolute certainty, you'll have to give me another couple of hours for tests."

"We don't have a couple of hours," Mendanbar said. "How sure are you, right now, that this wizard's staff has done the same thing to this bit of moss as something did to that whole section over there?"

"And have you any idea how it did it?" Cimorene put in.

"The how is very simple," Telemain answered. "The staff is designed to appropriate any unattached magic with which it comes in contact. Magic appears to be a fundamental property of the Enchanted Forest. So when the staff rested for a few minutes in one location, it swallowed up all the magic from that location, leaving it as you see."

"What about that?" Cimorene asked, waving at the burned area.

"What did they do, roll a wizard's staff around on the ground for an hour?"

"Of course not," Telemain said. "It's simply a matter of extending and intensifying the absorption spell. One couldn't maintain such an expansion for very long, but then, one wouldn't have to."

"That's it!" Mendanbar said suddenly.

The other two looked at him blankly. "what's what?" said Cimorene.

"That must be what happened to that locating spell I sent out," Mendanbar explained. "Some wizard's staff sucked it up. That's why it didn't come back."

"Come back?" Telemain said. "You mean your locating spells work on a sort of echo principle? Would you mind demonstrating just how you-" "Not now, Telemain," Cimorene said. She looked at Mendanbar.

"Does that mean you know where the wizards are?"

"No, but I think I know how to find out," Mendanbar said. "Ready or not, here we go."