Then he said to the maid, "Tie your belt around the dragon's neck, and be not afraid."
When she had done so the dragon followed her meekly. She led him into the city, and the people fled in fear.
- from The Golden Legend
- abstracted by D.L. Ashliman
Young warlock, have you ever wondered how your soul and mine came to be kin? How it is that a human could command a dragon with naught but his Voice? Had your father raised you he would have told you this as his heir, just as my own dragon-mother sang to me and my brothers this tale when I was but a nestling.
Dragonlords had not always been men like you, with dragon-souls and the Voice to command all dragons. Dragonlords- or Dragon-kings as they were known at the time- used to be true dragons, born into their role and brought into it by their father's death just as you were.
In those days, long, long ago, beyond even the memory of my dragon-mother's mother, the world was ruled not by men but by dragons. Men came next after dragons in the hierarchy of creatures that walked, crawled, swam, or flew over the earth. Men were the most plentiful after all, and the most resourceful. More than any other creature, they had the intelligence that most closely matched those of the dragons.
But even though there were a million men to a single dragon, those humans lived short, frail lives and died of old age or illness in what seemed to my dragon-kin the span of a breath and a flame. We acquired power and knowledge and hunting territories while men lived and died and accomplished little in their lifetimes beyond sustaining their own lives and their comfort and providing for those of their blood. Or at least, that was what it seemed to my dragon-kin at that time.
Thus it was that through our power and our wisdom, that is to say the might of our breath, claw, and wing, together with our centuries of knowledge, and of course, our powerful magic, we the dragons ruled over mankind. We enforced order, laid down laws to be obeyed, protected them from the elements and from each other, taught them how to raise crops, how to heal difficult illnesses, how to read the stars and the planets. We taught them the harmony of geometry and mathematics and led them to discover their human version of music.
We were the lords of the earth. It was only natural that we thought ourselves above men; thought ourselves entitled to our power over them, entitled to their reverence and their allegiance. But most of all, we took it for granted that the men who lived in our territory owed us their tribute, meager offerings of livestock and gold in addition to whatever else we desired in exchange for our protection and our guidance. It was this tribute that eventually led to the rebellion of humankind and the end of dragon-rule. To us it was our due, but to the little people who yearly offered wagon-loads of wealth to the dragon-patrons of their kingdom, it was a tyranny they dared not try to stop.
All this changed when a new Dragon-king, whose name no one remembers now- and I will tell you why later, but for now let us call him Pyr- was called into his blood-right a thousand years too early. His dragon-father was already far-too old when his heir was finally ready to hatch from its egg.
At that time, the eggs hatched on their own when their time was ripe. The naming of newborn dragons occurred after their hatching. Their parents give them a temporary birth name, usually related to the hatchling's appearance, then later, when they come of age, they are named by others to commemorate their greatest or worst deeds.
Little Pyr, though, for reasons unknown even to Pyr himself, spent nearly two thousand years sleeping in his egg. His great dragon-father and his dragon-mother waited and waited for his only heir to hatch, but in the end, it was up to Pyr himself to hatch when he was ready. In some fell stroke of fate or chance, Pyr hatched on the same human day as the death of his old dragon-mother, whose name meant, in human translation as "she-of-the-golden-fields."
Thus, it was that when the old Dragon-king breathed his last flame one bright winter's evening, it did not come as a surprise to anyone. Young Pyr had been groomed and prepared urgently for this event from the moment of his hatching and he received the power of the Dragon-king's Voice with the full council of elders, his mentors all, to witness the succession of their newest lord.
It is at this point, at the start of the reign of the young Dragon-king Pyr, that Dragon-singing, the legends and history of our kind, become linked to the grossly twisted myths of mortal men. There is very little the legends of men preserved of the true story.
The legends speak of a fair princess who was offered to the dragon as tribute in exchange for the survival of the kingdom, brought to ruin by the young Dragon-king's reign of terror which the human legends say to be foul dragon-breath poisoning their water sources- the idea is too ludicrous to even consider. It is in this dire situation that Sir George rides into the kingdom just in time to encounter the crying maiden, left all alone and waiting for her death. Moved with pity, he pledged himself to her aid and slew the young dragon although not without first subjugating it into obedience.
Many human legends, although warped and misshapen by time and numerous retellings, hold at least a grain of truth in them. It is the same with this legend of the knight George, the princess, and the young Dragon-king Pyr. For in the true story, as it was passed down from dragon to dragon throughout the generations, the princess was the hero who overthrew the millennia-old reign of dragons and freed her race from their bonds of servitude. She defeated the arrogance of young Pyr with her wisdom and her strength of heart alone. Later on she became the mother of the first human to carry the blood of the Dragon-kings. When Pyr died without any dragon heir, his power and his Voice was passed down to a human boy, the first dragonlord.
As to how the love of those two young pioneers of change, those twin souls, came about, well, the details were not passed down. Perhaps the older Pyr who related this tale to his council felt that what had transpired between him and the princess (long dead by that point) were memories too sacred to be told to others. Perhaps the council of dragons deemed their relationship too scandalous and inappropriate to be retold to the next generation. Whatever the case may be, we will never truly know, but we can certainly guess. . . as your imagination seems already to be doing for you, young warlock, judging by the flush creeping up your neck and ears. Tales of forbidden romance not your type of entertainment? I thought humans loved those kinds of stories.