he regarded the dragon drawn up upon the Vitr’s strand, directly opposite him and interceding itself between him and the hovering, crackling gate of Starvald Demelain. The gate had been born, in rupturing fury, far to the south, where it had spilled out a broken storm of dragons, but it had since migrated here, sung close by his mistress’s siren call, and day after day she strengthened the anchors now holding the gate in place.
