“Ridiculous!” Roxim replied with vigor. “A wizard wouldn’t dare come through this part of the mountains. They know what we’d do to ’em, by George! Beg pardon,” he added to the silver-green dragon next to him, who appeared to have been rather shocked by his language.

“I’m afraid you’re wrong there,” Kazul said. “Cim­orene met one today, less than a two-minute flight from my cave.”

“What? What?” Roxim said. “You’re sure?”

“That’s done it.” The purple-green dragon rolled his head in an irritated gesture, so that his scales made a scratching noise as they rubbed together. “You’ll never get him to quit talking about it now.”

“Quite sure,” Cimorene assured Roxim, after glancing at Kazul to make sure she was expected to answer Roxim’s question for herself. “He made two bits of the ledge I was standing on turn invisible so I would think it wasn’t safe to keep going.”

“Certainly sounds like a wizard to me,” the dragon at the far end commented.

“What did he look like?” asked the silver-green dragon.

Cimorene described the wizard as well as she could, then added, “He said his name was Zemenar.”

“Zemenar? That’s ridiculous!” Woraug snorted. “Zemenar was elected head of the Society of Wizards last year. He wouldn’t waste his time playing games with somebody’s princess.”

“Not unless he had a great deal to gain by it,” the thin dragon said in a thoughtful tone. She turned her head and looked speculatively at Cimorene.

“Such as?” Woraug said. He waited a moment, but no one answered. “No, I can’t believe it was Zemenar. The girl’s made a mistake; that’s all.”

“Perhaps it wasn’t him,” Cimorene said, holding on to her temper as hard as she could. “I’ve never met Zemenar, so I wouldn’t know. But that’s who he said he was.”

“And wouldn’t it be amusing if she were right?” the purple-green dragon said, showing some interest in the proceedings for the first time.

“I don’t see that it matters,” the silver-green dragon said. “The important thing is that he was a wizard, poking around smack in the middle of our mountains. What are we going to do about it?”

“Tell King Tokoz,” Roxim said. “His job to handle this sort of thing, isn’t it?”

“What can Tokoz do about it?” Woraug said, and there was a faint undercurrent of contempt in his tone.

“He could use the King’s Crystal to find out what the wizards are really doing,” the thin dragon said in a prim tone.

“He won’t use the crystal for anything less than a full-fledged war,” Woraug said. “And why should he? What could Tokoz do even if he did find out some wizard was preying on poor defenseless dragons like Gaurim?”