“The dragon saw that she was sad and alone once her parents were gone. He tried to make it up to her, but she said, ‘I am lonely without my kind; there are none of them left except in the dream, and those are only for a night.’
“‘I shall teach you how to make a dream of your own,’ he said, and took her to the pits where the raw dream matter lies.
“‘Take up a handful,’ he said, and she did so. ‘Now let your mind go quiet, and you shall see the desire of your heart.’
“In her hands the matter twisted and writhed, and she looked at her dragon, afraid. ‘Do not fear,’ he said, ‘or we shall have a nightmare to deal with.’ She listened to him, and from the matter a lovely thing was formed, the shape of a young man. Broad shoulders had he, and hair as golden as hers was dark, a smile as bright and blinding as sunlight on water. He was only tiny, not life-sized, but alive and real and warm in her hands.
“‘Do you wish for him to live?’
“For the first time in her life Allel felt tears upon her cheeks. Yes, she wanted for this perfect thing to live. She could not understand what it was that she felt, only that once in existence she didn’t want for the man to die.
“And so the dragon created a bubble around the little man, and blew with his fiery breath, and the bubble floated away and vanished. Allel cried out to see the man float away, but the white dragon showed her how to find that Dreamworld, so that she might visit whenever she wished.
“But it was against the dragon lore to teach such things to a human, and a summons came that both the white dragon and the girl should present themselves to the Dragon King. When he saw Allel, clothed only in the fall of her own hair and gazing at him with sheer delight in her silver eyes, he was enchanted.
“All of the dragons were assembled, but Allel was not frightened by the glittering throng. She stood quietly before them, self-possessed, and only inclined her head, ever so little, to show respect but not fear.
“And the King was moved by her beauty and the clearness of her eyes and the quickness of her mind. Within him stirred a new emotion—a hot and writhing thing. He had no name for it but could not bear to lay his eyes on the white dragon as he stood there beside the maiden.
“‘The law has been broken and there must be consequence,’ he said.
“The white dragon moved to stand between the maiden and the King. ‘You shall not harm her. The fault was mine.’
“‘Precisely,’ said the King. ‘And yet we cannot allow her to return now into the world, to share what she has learned. She will stay here, not as a punishment but as a precaution. You shall bear all the penalty of what you have done, and that penalty is death.’
“A silence followed such has never been known before or after that time. The sound was sucked from the trees, the river, and even the sky. Breath and birdsong, breeze, flowing water, the scurrying feet of a mouse, even the inaudible flicker of a dragonfly wing went silent. And through the minds of the dragons, thoughts traveled from one to the next. Some thoughts were loyal to the King—whatever he did must be right. Others disagreed that the life of a human should be held sacred over the life of a dragon.
“And then the King set upon the white dragon and killed him.
“Through the ranks of the dragons ran a murmur of dissent. ‘This is wrong. We will not be ruled in this way. We are a free people.’
“Others, accustomed to following the King’s thoughts and deeds, cried out against the rebellion. A war broke out then, dragon against dragon. Allel stood unscathed in a swirl of battling dragons on sky and land, for all were agreed on the one point that she should not be harmed.
“But in that moment a great and lasting hatred was born within her heart—for the King, and for all those dragons who served him.
“At last the King came to his senses. ‘Enough!’ he cried. ‘We must not fight among ourselves. Those who do not wish to honor an allegiance to me may go; the others may stay. Make your choice and make it well, for there will be no turning back.’
“Fully half of the dragons took to the air and flew away. Allel stood beside the body of the white dragon and watched them go. There shall be reparation for this, she thought, but she kept her thoughts unto herself, buried deeply within her heart.
“And so when the Dragon King shifted his form by magic to appear to her as a golden-haired young man, she smiled at him and allowed him to believe that little by little he won her love. At night, though, she vanished into the Dreamworlds still—visiting the man that she had made and telling him the tale of all her wrongs. Although Allel’s hatred fell only upon the dragons of the Forever, and especially upon the King, her tales took on a life of their own in the breast of the man she had created.
“‘They are all alike,’ he said. ‘Marauding, cruel, and evil.’ His hate grew until, in time, he began to hunt them, as did his sons, and the sons of his sons. The dragons were strong and many of the dragon hunters died, so that the seed of Allel’s first Warrior was very nearly extinguished.
“But not quite—for it is said that in every generation, still, one Warrior will be born.
“As for the dragons outcast from Forever, they kept largely to the mazes of the Between. It was not that they could not enter the Dreamworlds, as much as that they did not care for the strangeness and unreality. They loved to fly, to hunt, to eat. Although they retained the ability to speak to one another, mind to mind, they lost the ability to speak aloud. Much of the magic and the lore was forgotten, for dragons are long lived but do not live forever, and what was passed from generation to generation grew less and less.
“Allel bided her time, and one starlit night she allowed the Dragon King to make love to her beside the golden river. Her body began to swell with child. In all that time she kept her thoughts to herself. For the Dragon King she would only smile, allowing him access to her physical self but keeping the rest of her—the part that he desired to know and possess—a secret unto herself. He grew increasingly jealous, confining her to a single room so that she would not wander away. And with this also she complied, only with the exception that at night she vanished utterly away, and try as he would he could not hold her.
“At last, within the silken prison cell he had made for her, she gave birth to a child—a daughter, with her own dark hair lighted by gold, and silver eyes. And the King was moved by awe and wonder and great love for the tiny creature. Still, Allel waited and watched. She allowed him to grow more and more attached, and then one night she took her daughter with her into the Dreamworld and did not bring her back.
“The Dragon King waited, believing that she would return as she always had. But days went by, and then weeks, and months. Strange things began to happen. Dark shadows found their way into his kingdom, at first by night and then by day. They took the form of monstrous bears and wolves with jaws of iron. There were creatures that were a travesty of dragons—things of bloated bellies and bulging eyes with dragon wings and scales. They crept through the land, banding together to attack full-grown dragons, or attacking the young when unattended.
“The dragons all waited for the King to grow wrathful and lead a war against the invasion, but instead he wandered for hours by the golden river, often in his human form, pining for the woman and for his child. At length he did grow angry and led invasions out into the Dreamworlds, seeking what he had lost and wreaking destruction along the way.
“Word came at last to the Queen of the Giants, in those days the wisest and most just of all living beings, and she saw that if this war continued it could lead to the destruction of all the worlds. So it was that the giants went to work to craft doors of adamantine to block the entrance to the Forever. One by one, each of the lesser doors by which Allel had traveled into the Dreamworlds were sought out and sealed. The only connection left between the worlds was a single cave that bordered on the pits of raw dream matter, so that it might flow into the Dreamworlds and back again as needed.