“I should have guessed,” Morwen said. She turned back to the mirror. “Zemenar,” she said, and breathed on the glass once more. Then she motioned to Cimorene to come and look.

Cimorene obeyed, and Alianora and the stone prince crowded closely behind her. The mirror showed a blurry, wavering picture of the Ford of Whispering Snakes. As Cimorene watched, the picture moved slowly along one bank of the river, past the waiting dragons and the immense trees of the Enchanted Forest and on down the river.

“Can’t it go any faster?” Alianora whispered.

“There’s no need to whisper, and no, it can’t,” Morwen said. “Not if you want to be sure of finding these wizards of yours on the first try, and it doesn’t sound as if you have time to waste on mistakes.”

The picture in the mirror continued to creep along the bank. Cimorene pulled the third and last feather out of her pocket and brushed it nervously across her fingers while she waited.

“What’s that?” the stone prince said suddenly.

The mirror-picture stopped, then moved up the bank, away from the river toward a thicket of blackberry brambles. Cimorene saw the tip of a wooden staff poking up above the thicket. Tensely, she waited for the mirror to show the far side of the brambles.

“It’s them!” Alianora said. She sounded frightened and excited at the same time. “Oh, dear!”

Cimorene took a good look at the picture in the mirror. Five wizards were standing in an opening behind the blackberry thicket, leaning on their staffs and looking at the sky. Suddenly, one of the wizards pointed. The others peered upward, nodded, and raised their staffs.

“Get the buckets!” Cimorene said. Cats scattered in all directions as the stone prince pounded across the porch behind Cimorene and Alianora. “Hang on; here we go. I wish—”

“Not without me you—” Morwen said, grabbing Cimorene’s shoulder.

“—we were at the blackberry thicket where the wizards are,” Cimorene said, and dropped the feather.

“—don’t,” Morwen finished as the porch winked out and was replaced by blackberries.

The five wizards were standing in an arc just in front of the bramble. Each of them held his staff so that the lower end was about a foot above the ground, pointing at something hidden in the moss at their feet. An unpleasant yellow-green light dripped from the ends of the staffs, and the moss where the wizards were standing was brown and dead. The wizards’ backs were toward Cimorene and her friends.

“Now!” Cimorene cried. As the wizards began to turn, she set one of her buckets on the ground and lifted the other in both hands. Taking careful aim, she flung the soapy water over a black-haired wizard in the center of the arc.

“Charge!” yelled the stone prince, and threw one of his buckets at the nearest wizard.

“Take that, you cheats!” said Alianora, dumping the first of her buckets over another.