This book is a story of stories.
It is fitting to begin with one of which there are so many variations.

     Somewhere where there was a wood, far away and long enough ago not to matter to people who thought that way of getting rid of problems best, a little child found a bird on a woodland floor. The child was a boy; it could have been a girl, too, for it was just a common child.
     But the bird was a majestic thing, which storytellers would later call the Simurgh Phoenix. It was crowned with glory, with wings like the sun, and all birds were made in its image.
     It was a powerful bird, like an eagle, falcon or a hawk, that saw all things.
     It was like a sparrow, very full of joy, that chirruped so that anyone with kindness would kneel to nest it in his hand.
     It was like a magpie, that looked sharply at everyone, with a mind quicker than anything.
     It was like a raven, wiser than an owl, and it knew all the things that gods knew.
     It was like a dove, gentle and humble.
     Whatever there was that was best in birds, that bird possessed it to infinite degree.
     It was wounded, bleeding deep from its breast
     It said,
     Little Child, I stand at the edge of your hearth. Take me into your house, and I will sup with you, and you with me.
     The child agreed with it, delighted that it talked so kindly, and pitying it, for it had no place to nest its head,and it was beginning to rain. He gathered it up and ran the way home.
     Before he opened the door to his house, however, he thought that perhaps he had imagined the bird’s speech, because everyone knew that birds do not talk.
     “Say something,” he said to it, but it just looked at him, and said nothing.
     I must have imagined it, he thought, and thought no more on it.

     The bird was taken into the house, and laid beside the fire, covered with his second best blanket. He had one of his elder sisters dress the drenched and silent bird, and he set about getting it food, a bowl of water and another of unshorn wheat that he placed beside its new nest. Then he went to sleep.
     While it boded in his home, the boy took care of it, minding the cats and dogs when they came too close, filling the two bowls every day, for the bird always emptied both, and talking to it.
     It still did not talk back. His siblings laughed out at him, because his pet was ugly, and not so smart as a dog or pig. “You waste your time. It is not as if it were listening. You’re just being a big baby,” they said.
     By the time of the harvest, the bird’s injury seemed to have faded into a scarlet mark on its breast. One day, while the boy was alone with it, it hopped out of its nest.
     Boy, it said, you have done well to nurse me when I am alone, injured, cold and hungry. Thank you.
     The boy was fascinated and went closer, for he believed his ears.
     “You spoke. I thought I had imagined it, but you speak.”
     I do.
     “Why did you not speak before, when my brothers and sisters made fun of me?”
     They are like tares and black wheat; because of their unbelief I will do few miracles. In their presence I will not even speak.
     But you, for having the faith the size of a mustard seed, are like a Tree of Eden.
     “What is a Tree of Eden like?”
     And the bird told him:
     In another world, there is a garden called Eden, which God made. The garden had many Trees, including the one forbidden Tree, and also the Tree of Life, and many other Trees besides, all of which were made before Manne was made, from the dust of the earth.
     Then God made Manne, and said to him,
     “I have made you in my image; I allow you all things, all power, all freedom, and you may bow even Angels to your command, should you so wish. Behold, I make you as gods; this garden is your dominion. Take care of it.
     “So that through Law you may understand Freedom, and so that you may know that I am God above you, I give you this one commandment:
     “Do not eat of this Tree of Moral Knowledge, lest you die.”
     When the commandment was given, God looked upon all that was created, Eden, the Trees, the Beasts and Manne, and saw that all of it was good.
     Boy, your care has made me remember the Trees of Eden, it said, and took one last backward glance at its caretaker before flying away. What was left behind on the windowsill was a small pile of dung. The boy was made to clean it up; it was his bird, and his siblings would surely have none of it.
     He felt something solid within the foulness as he gathered it up in leaves: there was a seed in there. One that had a living green in it, upon which the play of daylight showed all the colors of the sky, and tendrils, frail and gentle things, that constantly wove like tides. He had to plant it, to see what fruit would grow.
     He buried the seed, along with the dung, in the beginnings of the wilderness near his home. When he was asked, he told them what he was doing out so far away from the house and the hearthlight, and he was laughed at again.
     “What seed? And you say your bird talked? We don’t believe you. You’re telling big ones again, and I’m telling.”And so he was made ashamed of the seed he knew was planted in the forest, and did not visit it.
     In the days after, with all the mysteries and mischiefs of childhood, and the cruel force of shame that made him make himself forget, the seed was forgotten.
     The seed grew on its own, and the land at the edge of the forest became rich: locusts, aphids, cankers, grew little, while the bounties that were sought by Men on their lands, by tilling and planting, burgeoned in the forest unnoticed.

     The day the seed bloomed, fragrance preceded the morning, and at first light there were waves of petals, the texture of which like of the violet and the white rose. They all remembered it: it was a wonder to behold the colored breeze.
     It was found that the petals came from a single flowering Tree at the edge of the forest, and they were sweet and had rare medicinal properties. The boy then wondered, as the villagers did, what manner of fruit would come from that pillar to the sky. By then he was a grown man, but he remembered about the bird, and remembered it to his siblings, but they forced him down.
     “High and mighty now, is we? Where’s your poppycock bird, then? I tell you: this Tree was not YOUR seed. Don’t you think for an instant we’d let you drive us out; the land the Tree is in is our land, not yours.” So he was soon made to decide that his memory was just a strange dream, the unwanted fragments of an overworked mind, and the conviction that the Tree was his by right were the opinions of a narrow, selfish and intolerant soul.

     The wizens cautioned them regarding the poison that might be in the fruits (for no pest was found in the great tree), but none were truly prepared to believe or disbelieve them, for the fruits were very beautiful.
     It was a wandering beggar, a poor man, hungry beyond caution, who discovered that the fruits were good for food, and also that they were without seed.
     It was also he who found that the higher one went, the more delicious the fruit became. The tale soon spread about this man, how he climbed ever so high and came into another world so rich and wonderful that he never returned, but the truth was that he one day climbed so high, so fast, and so carelessly, that he fell, and made a pit for himself.

     The ownership of the tree was apparent, for its yield was greatest when the man who had planted the tree tended it. With the fruits it yielded, this man’s father grew rich, and in his turn, when be bore the name of his family, it made him rich as well, as it did all his other siblings. Year after year, at the harvest, nobles and princes, even kings, would set aside their swords and chariots to come to the feast held at the base of this tree, for it was true that none wanted so great an enemy at their heels and over their heads.
     At the time when the little boy was old, gray at the temples, with lines of laughter and worry etched deeply upon his face, there came a season when the Tree failed to bear fruit.
     People saw this, but picked it unmindfully, and soon the lower fruits were gone. They began to fight even over the unripe of these, but no one dared to climb higher, for all the platforms human hands could build could go no further up, and the nets of moss and vines and branches, so long the safe-guards of those who were clumsy, began to shrivel up and die.
     The Tree’s fruit continued to fail under their best efforts to resuscitate its abundance, and many fell away from the burden of fruitless labor, but the one man who loved it still took care of it, as tenderly as he could a thing so big. His relatives thought less of the Tree than he, for they were sensible people, and had to make plans for the future in light of the present. The Tree had no fruit, so they drew away from it.
     The life in the Tree still held firm, but he saw a new deadly color here and there, and began to believe that the Tree was going to die. No one knew, truly, what was the cause of this, but the man, who was a farmer by profession, thought it was a worm. He could find no proof of his suspicions, and could not cure it, but he toiled on, because he was the true gardener, and would give up his life for his Tree.

     He saw the worm one day; he glimpsed its tail. Though none of their kind had been seen for so many generations in that land, he knew it for what it was: a dragon. There was such anger that came boiling out of him, through the hollows of his face and chest, that he did not understand fear or caution, and was soon back from his house with an axe, the largest of its make that ever he held, and began an aimless assault at the Tree.
     The dragon came down like a solid stream of earth-oil, and so noiselessly and unobtrusive it was, though equally vast, that the man only began to remember dragon Lore when it was close upon him: dragons possessed wisdom of age, their scales made the finest armor, a the curse of their life would lay on the sword that killed them, and their spilt blood blots the land with poison so that only a desert would grow in its soil.
     It stopped before him: what eyes! windows through which deathless embers burned from within the immortal worm; what breath! that seemed the gates of a furnace that burnt even black to nothing; what expression! that was as Hell peering through the mask of Death.
     “Who are you, mortal?” The man drew himself tall, for he was a man of the Tree, and spoke loudly to the dragon:
     “I am the owner of this Tree, and I command you, despoiler, to get you gone!”
     The dragon blinked, quickly, and at once its voice changed.
     “Owner of the tree. Yes, I see so. But I am not the one who spoiled the tree. This tree has become old, and it is as tired as I. It is dying.”
     The farmer did not believe those words. What tree that could grow to such size die so soon of age?
     “You lie. Be shut up, and be gone!”
     The dragon seemed to weaken, and its head began to bow, its eyes lose luster, but its voice was thrice as enchanting as before.
     “O man, all things come to life ill, and their way is to go to death. It is but nature. You of all your kind should know full well.
     “If you would grieve for death, should you not also grieve for birth?
     “Ah. Now I see. You see your own mortality in the mortality of your precious tree. Do not worry. I am not here to kill you. To have your peace, I shall give you a gift for the use of this tree, for I am old, and I will soon depart from this place to the place where dragons die. It is a pittance. Payment.”
     “I cannot sale this Tree. It is not right to trade the gifts of Heaven, even the strength of my soul, for things of gold and silver.”
     “Rest easy; gold and silver I have none, but what I have, I freely give.”
     Thus saying, the worm breathed into its forepaws, which it covered with its wings, too torn and tattered for flying.
     In them, like a grain of sand in a human hand, was the largest, most brilliant jewel the farmer ever had ever seen, even beside all the riches those visiting kings and princes wore when they came to call. The red was as veins of fire and the green that was contained in the red was the color of aspic poison. The gem sparkled in its own false light, and the farmer never knew such desire for it as he had felt when he first laid eyes on it.
     “See: I give you a pearl of great price, for dragons as I have no tears, save one; it is the one they shed for themselves. This one was mine. You may have it.”
     The farmer took it.
     “Is it a seed?”
     “I do not know what a seed is, but it will germ and bloom. Keep it close.”
     With that, it slithered up and disappeared.

     The dragon was roused again not long after, for now there was another disturbance in its domain.
     “You.”
     All the rose and honey in its voice faded in the inflection of its enmity.
     Yes, I. I have heard all your words. Miscreant and recreant villain, how could you find it in yourself to do such a thing? To tell such lies to him?
     “Faugh. Save your high eyed prattle for some weaker other. I lied to him because it amused me more to do so than to eat him, all skin and bones that he is. You are never welcome where I make my nest. Depart before I am forced into discourtesy.”
     Here the slits of its eyes opened, the two, and the four hidden, and the vehemence that had not shown in its voice shone like lanterns beneath its lids.
     “The mortal whelp angered because of his hope. He thinks of the Tree and its fruit night and day; so like me, he was ready to deny me a place to rest had I not recompensed him.
     “Much good will it do him.”
     The bird shrieked, a sound that made the dragon shy.
     I made the Tree; the right of it and the right to give was mine.
     I gave him the Tree; the right to receive was his, for he earned it of me and eats of it through the sweat of his brow.
     Have you the same right?
     You steal the fruit, you kill the Tree, and now you wish to destroy this man, as has been your way from the beginning.
     He is nothing like you, and shame on you, to resort to such subtleties on a creature so small and foolish!
     The dragon snarled and wreathed itself tightly about the Tree, snapping the branches and crushing the vines in its passage, for it refused for the sake of rebellion, not reason.
     “I am the Serpent. As I will, I will. The tree is mine, by right of conquest, which is the greatest right. Now go away, before again I have to affix you to a leafless tree. Do you not remember what happened to you when you tried to stop me the last time?”
     The bird lifted one wing, and its eyes were full of light.
     You framed me in a wooden cage, braided me with thorns, and pierced me with metal. But here is the arrow, Serpent, with which you tried to kill me that time, the last time, and the uncounted numbers before that.
     “So you rose from the dead. Is that accounted much? You bleed, and are not invincible. What else can the wound mean but weakness?
     It means witness, Snake, so that you know it is I, and not another in my exact likeness who comes against you.
You have not killed me, and you cannot; the harmless harm you have visited upon me proves it so.
     “Words and words and words.
Little wonder that your minions call you the Living Word.
     “Tell me, instead, why you want so badly to stop me, when easily you can raise a whole forest of such trees.
Appear reasonable, if you ever can, and justify yourself.”
     I have promised that the children of the righteous shall not go hungry; I will not give you food.
     I have promised long life and great honor to those who work good; I will deny you both.
     I promised blessing to peacemakers, who are called my children; you enemy of peace, I know you not.
     If you will not accept these reasons, hear the reasoning of a manne, who is beneath your contempt, yet who understands your nature completely:
     You are a tyrant, and power corrupts you; should I allow you absolute power, you would be corrupted absolutely.
     The Creature sneered against the last reason and sought to destroy it, for there were no weaknesses in the promises of Elyon.
     “So you halter and stifle my freedom for my sake? You have not the goodwill, and you lie.
     “You can raise a whole forest of such trees? You have not the power, and you lie.
     I never lie, and neither you nor any other can ever tempt me against myself.
     “If you will not heed my advice, and will rather hold me back and down, are you not yourself a tyrant?
     “If I am the more corrupt the more I seize power, are you not now the most corrupt, because you have the most power?
     “But that aside; I want no answers to those questions, because I know you; you will deign to answer them. Tell me instead the answer to this: that man has taken the gem of my heart, and it will make him mine; can you kill me when to do so would kill one of those you so dearly love?”
     I will kill you, if only to free him of you.
     I will kill him, if only to free him of you.
     I will kill me, if only to free him of you.
     For you are Sin, and I am God.
     “You are mad, and jealous.”
      I am Elyon.
      The bird spread its wings and left.

     From the day he had the gem, the old boy found that it slowly became larger in his possession, and that when he beheld it in his hands, he was filled with serpent wisdom.
     He could prove all things with his new power, with the smiting rod of reason, with long numbers and with great words, and fixed the truth mounted on paper as though it were a great beast that he had tracked and killed. There was no more need for faith, held and cherished deep in the heart. Here was the truth!
     His power was proved utterly in his own vindication, so that the Tree’s ownership was no longer a wish and a belief in his heart, but a certainty and a fact in his head, and therefore he laughed at his brothers and sisters, and they feared his laughter. They were fools! All of them! Did he not tell them the truth when he was little? And did they not spit at it because he was little? Did they not despise it, and make him despise it with the tool of shame? Now cower, because it was the truth!
     And with his new and mighty craft he stripped them of all they had, and forced their souls to die. He made them without friends in all the land, and their children to go hungry, and their houses empty but for wood and stone. He tore their garments from them, so that their nakedness was seen from every housetop. Then he took their names from them, so that he alone was called of his father’s house, and they were sent away blind and begging.
     All the wizen and the scholars of the land were awed at his proving, and none could gainsay his presentation of the truth. He made it so that no one saw that what he did was vile and merciless, but justice indeed. All admired him, for all, even the evil, thought that themselves victims of some injustice, and all wished to bend the Law against the Law, and so they cried out to him, give us Justice! And he bowed to their will, smiling and saying, I am your humble servant.
     Lords and kings came to him seeking advice, and he gleefully gave them what they wished, for he told no difference between liar and lawyer, and so caused many bloodless wars that made slaves of many nations. They called him the Dragon Lord of Law, and every evil manne served his power, just as every good one became outlaws.
     As the gem and its light grew ever more enchanting, a bloom in its season, a part of him grew more fearful, while another part rejoiced in what was quite certainly the most wonderful thing in his life.
     He forgot the Tree, and in his absence, it grew foul, spined and evil, producing new fruit, things of barbs and poison, and more resembled a giant weed than a tree, no longer straight or upright, but crooked and sprawling, turning the forests gray and full of deadly shadows. There were some who judged the Dragon Lord of Law by his fruit, but he had made himself judge supreme, and they learned to judge not, lest they be judged.
     He made for himself a house on a hill, to escape the view of the beastly thing that could not be cut or burnt faster than it grew back, and as soon as he saw or remembered anything of the monstrosity that lurked outside his window, his thoughts would turn to drapes and curtains and colored glass, high backed chairs, and velvet carpets on his stairs.  

     One night, as with most of his nights since he became the Dragon Lord of Law, he sat at his table, a mahogany fortress, and played with his quill and ink, thinking dragon thoughts.
     There was a tapping at the window, then a cry that made him start. It was a raven at the window. He rubbed his eyes awake. Then he saw that it was bleeding.
     It hopped in and fluttered to the desk, standing right beside the strongbox that held the jewel. The Dragon’s Heart blazed angrily within the box to be so close to its enemy, but the bird issued a word, and the light in the box was muted. Then it looked upon the man, and said,
     Son of man, hear me. You were sinless in the beginning, but now your soul is in peril.
     As a man would when he feels himself dreaming, he answered.
     “I am listening.”
     Your sins judge you. The cries of those you have crushed ring in my ears night and day. Are you not sorry? Do you feel no remorse?
     He was about to say that he did not when the blood, pooling over the table now, began to show things. Each drop that rippled it was a cry for help.
     “I... do not know.”
     You have chosen not to see. The reaper stands at the gate. Tonight is the last night for evil, and if evil is all you are, you will perish with it; you will belong and be lost to the Dragon's Tear forever.
     “Who are you? What do you want of me?”
     I am the Lord High Sun, the Son of the All Father. Be still.
     You, in taking the Tear, have taken after the Dragon; your heart is stained, and the Tear will not release itself from you; it is hungry for blood, and your mortal red will not satisfy it forever. Mine, eternal, will. By my giving of it, you will be free. Will you accept my gift, and me as your rightful Lord?
     Here the Dragon’s Tear shone against the Lord High Sun, and Dragon Lord of Law spoke with a dragon’s stubborn cunning:
     “Why need I call you Lord? You were the one who gave me the capacity to sin, because you gave me the Tree, which attracted the Dragon, which gave me its Tear. You were the one who allowed me to sin while I was in my foolish recklessness, because you did not stop me. Your Father was the one who made the Dragon, if indeed he is the All-Father, for this is the truth of all true mystics: evil is the left hand of God. It is but right that you pay this debt, and you are but my equal. Why need I submit to you as Lord?”
     Indeed? Let us reason: let us assume what you have said is true, and as all origins are mine and my Father’s, I shall and must die for you; who but I gave you the Tree that you so foolishly bartered for the tool of your own demise?
     And verily I will mete that justice for being the ultimate cause of your wickedness, even against myself. I will accept the final fruit of your choice because I allowed it to happen. Let it be as you say: it is merely Justice, and vengeance is mine; I will repay.
     But now you have also sinned because of the Dragon’s Tear; you have stolen, murdered and destroyed, like your father in Hell, for you are the Dragon Lord of Law.
     “The Tear made me do those things. It is not my fault.”
     It sinned through you and you through it. The wage of sin is death, and death divided is death still.
     Will you take responsibility for what you did under the influence of the Tear and be destroyed together, or will you let me take responsibility, and call me your Lord?
     The man seized upon a desperate straw: “Aha! Have you just confessed to me that you are the prime cause of sin?”
     I have not. I say these things to answer reason for reason; in truth your ways are not my ways, and your reason not my reason.
     I reason with you according to your understanding:
     You say that I am the origin of sin, so will you let me take the responsibility for all things, and therefore call me Lord?
     Or will you take responsibility for the fruit that Adam ate, and therefore eat it yourself?
     Here the Dragon’s pride swayed the man, so that he said, “I am my own lord, serf to no other.”
     Then savior save thyself.
     The Lord High Sun withdrew its word, and the Dragon’s Tear took fresh hold of its victim, and in his very sight ate up his soul: he was evil as he would be if he had done according to every evil desire had he but opportunity, as evil as his every idle thought, as evil as the pleasure he took from thinking, doing and being a Dragon. Just as for people who cultivate goodness to do good for the sake of it being good, he was wholly aligned to do evil for the sake of it being evil. This happened the moment he rejected the Lord and took Him lightly, to disdain and deny amazing grace, for that moment the Dragon entered into him.
     The decay of his soul made complete, the man recognized that he was ugly, and the part of him that was still human told him that he deserved to die.
     “I…” here he bled, a stain on his lips, though he felt no pain. The thing that was in him choked him.
     “I repent. I…will call you Lord.”
     He coughed, and his chest seized, and onto the floor rolled a small and blood red gem, spattered with his own dark blood.
     Then leave your house and the strength of your soul, for tonight these things are required of you. Leave, not a backward glance, not one spare cloak, staff or sandal. Go.
     But he did glance, and he saw the bird bald itself of feathers, as an eagle tears off plumage and visage when it tires of the old, and raise wreaths of fire as it was balded. The wound deep in its side bled down onto both his and the dragon’s heart.
     The fire caught what it touched, and so quickly that had he been but a little more weighed with fat he would surely have been caught and consumed.
     When the fire died, he could see that nothing was left of the house, and knew in his heart that he would find no trace of the Dragon’s Tear.
     That fire is the only certainty in the story, for after it, many things are said about that boy, man, and Dragon Lord of Law.
     It has been said that thereafter he lived out the rest of his days peacefully and died in his own chair, in front of his own fire.
     It has also been said that he sired one more child, a son, who later buried him in the graves of his fathers, and it was this son who grew to become the Conqueror of the Twin Thrones, the Tamer of the Black Lions.
     The Conqueror’s name was Khohal, and the rock he held was the Rock of Thunders, the cornerstone upon which so many tales, including those in this book and testament, center themselves.
     As for the Tree, it once again became green, and the forest followed suit, but the Tree never again bore fruit. The dragon, for its part, died as its heart died, and its body of bones draped across the branches, spread out and hideous in its nakedness. The Tree, now one part a crown of spring, and the other, a crown of death and ice that grew gems and flooded mist from its skull, become a walkway between realms.

                                                *

     That is the story that I wrote to introduce the Book of Sojourns, the Testament of Xyfel.
     To those to whom the story is merely told, let them believe that there are dragons.      
     To those to whom the story is taught, let them understand that dragons can be slain.