Dealing with Dragons

"Oh, I'm not reading it," Cimorene said hastily, opening her eyes very wide. "I just thought it would make the library look nicer to have a book or two sitting out on the table. More-more lived-in."
Zemenar nodded, looking relieved and faintly contemptuous. "I think it works very well, Princess," he said. "Very well indeed." Then he looked over at the other side of the room and said sharply, "Antorell! What are you doing?"
Cimorene turned her head in time to see Antorell put out a hand and deliberately tip several books off one of the shelves. "Stop that!" she said, forgetting to sound silly.
"I'm very sorry, Princess," Antorell said. "Will you help me put them back where they belong?"
Cimorene had no choice but to go over and help him. It took several minutes to get everything back in place because Antorell kept dropping things. Cimorene got quite annoyed with him and finally did it all herself.
As she started to turn back to the center of the room, she caught a glimpse of Zemenar hastily closing the Historia Dracorum. Cimorene pretended not to notice, but she made a mental note that he had been looking at something near the middle of the book.
"That was dreadfully careless of you," Cimorene said, frowning at Antorell.
"Very clumsy," Zemenar agreed.
"I don't know what Kazul will say when she finds out about it," Cimorene went on. "Really, it is too bad of you. I did ask you not to touch anything, you know."
"Yes, you did," Zemenar said. "And I wouldn't like to think that we had gotten you in trouble. Perhaps it would be best if you didn't mention to Kazul that we were here at all."
"I suppose I could do that," Cimorene said in a doubtful tone.
"Of course you can," Antorell said encouragingly. "And I'll come back in a few days, to make sure everything's all right."
"I think it's time we were on our way," Zemenar said, giving his son a dark look. "Thank you for showing us around, Princess."
Cimorene escorted them out of the cave and made sure they had left, then hurried back to the library. She spent the next several hours poring over the middle parts of the Historia Dracorum, trying to figure out what Zemenar had been looking at. She was still there when Kazul arrived home and called for her.
"That wizard Zemenar finally came, and he brought his son along with him," Cimorene said as she came out of the library.
"I know," said Kazul. Her voice sounded a little thick, as if she had a cold. "I could smell them the minute I came in."
"Is that why you sound so odd?" Cimorene asked. "You're not going to sneeze, are you?"
"I don't think so," Kazul replied. "Don't worry about it. I'll have plenty of time to turn my head away."
"I wish I could get hold of some hens' teeth," Cimorene said, frowning.
"That fireproofing spell-" "Have you looked in the treasure rooms?"
Kazul asked.
"No," Cimorene replied, startled. She remembered seeing a number of jars and bottles of various shapes and sizes when she had been organizing the treasure, and none of them had been labeled. "I didn't think of it, and besides, it's your treasure."
"You're my princess, at least until someone rescues you or I decide otherwise," Kazul pointed out. "Go ahead and look, and if you find any hens' teeth, use them. Be careful when you're checking the jars, though.
There are one or two with lead stoppers that shouldn't be opened."
"Lead stoppers," Cimorene said. "I'll remember."
"Good. Now, what did those wizards want?"
"I'm not sure." Cimorene explained everything that had happened, including how she had seen Zemenar closing the history book as she turned and how the two wizards had been perfectly willing to leave right after that.
"But just before they disappeared, Antorell said he might come back another time," Cimorene concluded. "So I don't know whether they found what they were looking for or not."
"Do you know which part of the Historia Dracorum Zemenar was reading?"
Kazul asked.
"Somewhere in the middle, a little past my bookmark," Cimorene replied.
"I was just looking at it when you came in. It's the part about how the dragons came to the Mountains of Morning and settled into the caves and chose a king."
"That's the section where the History describes the Caves of Fire and Night, isn't it?" Kazul said.
Cimorene nodded. "There was a whole page about somebody finding a stone in the caves so that the dragons could pick a king. It didn't make much sense to me."
"Colin's Stone," Kazul said, nodding. "We've used it to choose our king ever since the first time. When a king dies, all the dragons go to the Ford of Whispering Snakes in the Enchanted Forest and take turns trying to move Colin's Stone from there to the Vanishing Mountain. The one that succeeds is the next king."
"What if there are two dragons strong enough to move it?" Cimorene asked curiously.
"It's not a matter of strength," Kazul said. "Colin's Stone isn't much larger than you are. Even a small dragon could carry that much weight twice around the Enchanted Forest without any trouble at all. But Colin's Stone has an aura, a kind of vibration. When you carry it, you can feel it humming through your claws, and the humming gets stronger the farther you go until your bones are shaking. Most dragons have to drop it or be shaken to pieces, but there's always one who is… suited to the stone. For that dragon, the stone's humming is just a pleasant buzz, so of course it's easy to get it to the Vanishing Mountain."
"You sound as if you've had experience," Cimorene said.
"Of course," Kazul responded matter-of-factly. "I was old enough to participate in the tests when the last king died." She smiled reminiscently. "I got farther than anyone expected me to, though I wasn't one of the top ten by any means."
Cimorene tilted her head to one side, considering. "I think I'm glad you didn't win."
"Oh? Why is that?" Kazul sounded amused.
"Because you wouldn't have had any use for a princess if you were the Queen of the Dragons, and if you hadn't decided to take me on, that yellow-green dragon Moranz would probably have eaten me," Cimorene explained.
"You mean, if I were the King of the Dragons," Kazul corrected her.
"Queen of the Dragons is a dull job."
"But you're a female!" Cimorene said. "If you'd carried Colin's Stone from the Ford of Whispering Snakes to the Vanishing Mountain, you'd have had to be a queen, wouldn't you?"
"No, of course not," Kazul said. "Queen of the Dragons is a totally different job from King, and it's not one I'm particularly interested in. Most people aren't. I think the position's been vacant since Oraun tore his wing and had to retire."
"But King Tokoz is a male dragon!" Cimorene said, then frowned.
"Isn't he?"
"Yes, yes, but that has nothing to do with it," Kazul said a little testily.
"'King' is the name of the job. It doesn't matter who holds it."
Cimorene stopped and thought for a moment. "You mean that dragons don't care whether their king is male or female; the title is the same no matter who the ruler is."
"That's right. We like to keep things simple."
"Oh." Cimorene decided to return to the original topic of conversation before the dragon's "simple" ideas confused her any further. "Why would the wizards be interested in Colin's Stone if it's only used for picking out the kings of the dragons?"
"I doubt that they are," Kazul replied. "However, Colin's Stone was found in the Caves of Fire and Night, and wizards have always been interested in the caves. But the dragons control most of them, and all the easy entrances are ours, so the wizards have never been able to find out as much as they would like. The Historia Dracorum is one of the few books that talks about the caves at all, and there aren't many copies. I'll wager Zemenar would have stolen it outright if he'd thought he could get away with it."