The Dream Thief

ALSO BY SHANA ABÉ

THE SMOKE THIEF

THE LAST MERMAID

THE SECRET SWAN

INTIMATE ENEMIES

A KISS AT MIDNIGHT

THE TRUELOVE BRIDE

THE PROMISE OF RAIN

A ROSE IN WINTER

THE
DREAM THIEF

A Bantam Book / October 2006

Published
by Bantam Dell

A
Division of Random House, Inc.

New York, New York

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters,
places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are
used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events,
or locales is entirely coincidental.

All
rights reserved

Copyright © 2006 by Shana
Abé

Bantam Books is a registered trademark of Random
House, Inc., and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Abé,
Shana.

The
dream thief / Shana Abé.

p.
cm.

eISBN-13:
978-0-553-90300-3

eISBN-10:
0-553-90300-4

I. Title.

PS3551.B329D74
2006

813'.6—dc22

2006048449

www.bantamdell.com

For beautiful,
amazing Stacey, who had the strength to pull me through. I love my sister.

Shauna Summers,
Annelise Robey, and Andrea Cirillo: boundless gratitude for your patience and
kindness. It made all the difference.

Mom and Dad, Ted
and Jen, Bob, Mandy, all the kids, the rabbits and the crazy dog: you make my
life better. Thanks.

PROLOGUE

O
nce, there were more
of us.

Once we roamed the
skies unfettered, masters of the four winds. We chased the sun and devoured the
moon, sprinkled across the heavens like fierce, relentless stars. That was our
right and our destiny, and none could survive our bright-eyed devastation.

We were splendor and
smoky death. We were
drákon
.

Our home was the raw,
misted mountains, and then a castle, built with hands and claws and laboring
hearts; frosted white, wreathed with sky, it rose into a snow-crystal
reflection of our might. We had no need of Others. We had no need to conquer.
Already we ruled every realm of true worth.

Clouds pillowed our
slumber. Stones sang us ballads from deep within the earth, begged us to gather
them in our fists and keep them close. We pressed diamonds into the walls of
our castle. We dined on plates of jasper and drank from goblets of quartz.
Copper and gold graced our hair, warmer and more lovely than sunlight after
storm.

And at night, in the
sparkling dark, we would fly.

But such glories cannot long go unnoticed by the lesser beings.
The Others looked up and envied us our castle and our wings. They swarmed our
forests and mountains, determined to steal what was ours. Base and coarse and
made of mud, they possessed one single, terrible weapon that we did not:
ambition.

They burned the
trees. They scorched the fields. They riddled our bodies with arrows.

And we fell apart.

Our
once
was
taken from us, and we split into two peoples: those who remained in the castle,
and those who fled for safer skies.

For generations, we
who remained suffered the fate of those who choose to survive at any cost.

For generations we
plotted, learning to blend in with the Others, using our wealth and Gifts to
devise a new method of devouring the enemy: that of slow, inexorable seduction.

We became them. We
walked among them. We wrapped ourselves in their scents, their habits, their
small lives. When they invoked a human word for our mountains—
Carpathians
—we
adapted again and whispered to the wind a name for our castle—
Zaharen Yce
—and
then ourselves.

The Zaharen.

We pretended to be of
mud instead of stars. We pretended not to fly.

And the people below
us pretended to believe.

In this fashion, over
time, we began to prosper. We unearthed new diamonds for the walls of our
castle. We discovered new ways to bend the Others to our needs. Eventually they
even accepted us as the dread leaders our blood and our hearts demanded we be;
we commanded their armies and reclaimed our lands.

We made towns and
mines and the finest of vineyards. We became
my lord, my prince, beloved
grace.
Once again we shone with copper and gold.

And all was lush and
good, until the loss of the dreamer’s diamond. Until the loss of
Draumr.

EXCERPTED FROM

Dr. Hansen’s
Encyclopedia of Eastern Fables, Derived from His Travels Through the Lands of
Hungary, Romania, Transylvania, and the Empire of Russia

Published London,
1794

…and, in fact, one of
the most enduring legends among the peasants of the Carpathian Mountains is
that of the supposed “dragon-people.” It is a testament to the overwhelming
dread spawned by these imaginary beasts that it required a good fortnight and a
hefty sum from my purse to discover a shepherd who would even mutter the proper
name of the monsters into my ear:
drákon.

The
drákon
, then, are magnificent, terrifying creatures who
have the ability to exist as humans but may transform into dragons at will,
especially at night. The popularity of these tales may be observed from hearth
to hearth across the Carpathian range, where they are recounted with either
fear, scorn, or admiration, but always with heartfelt sincerity. To the
credulous, simple folk of these alpine villages, the dragon-people are real.
Indeed, as I traversed farther into the mountains, I found the steeper the
elevation of the hamlet, the less likely I was to observe any man or woman at
night with eyes lifted above the ragged edge of the horizon. It is believed by
the serfs that to observe a dragon in flight is an omen of extreme ill fortune.
By piecing together this and that of the various anecdotes, I was able to
deduce several facts regarding the
drákon
:

As humans, they are
dangerously convincing. The only physical aspect that betrays them is their
extraordinary beauty, said to bewitch even the most jaded of rogues.

As dragons, they are
fearsome hunters and fighters, reigning supreme over all other beasts.

And as both humans
and dragons, they are easily entranced by gemstones. The finer the stone, the
deeper the spell it will hold upon these creatures. A very many of the serfs I
met carried with them white chunks of the native quartzite, believed to deflect
the evil dragon eye.

The best-known legend
of the
drákon
involves a medieval dragon-princess, a fair damsel
spirited away by a clever, brutish peasant boy and forced to wed him. One might
indeed wonder how a peasant would handle a bride who was destined to turn into
a beast each evening, and the answer involves a mysterious diamond given the
name
Draumr
[rough translation: the dreaming diamond], a magical stone
with the unique power to enslave the
drákon
and leave them, essentially,
at one’s command.

I was informed over a
meal of
gulyás
and sweet red wine that
Draumr
belonged once to
the dragon-people, who—most prudently!—guarded it from mankind, but it was
stolen along with the princess. With the magical diamond in his pocket, the
peasant was able to keep his bride and defy her family, who perished one by one
as they attempted to steal the girl back.