but she saw, Wet with the mists and smitten by the lights, The Dragon of the great Pendragonship Blaze, making all the night a steam of fire. And even then he turn’d; and more and more The moony vapor rolling round the King, Who seemed the phantom of a Giant in it, Enwound him fold by fold and made him gray And grayer, till himself became as mist Before her, moving ghostlike to his doom. Our Beast snarled at us, whispered to us, a low ticking that rose and assaulted our ears as we came—shaking us with the power of its voice. Vivien had come: she clung to the doorway with a kind of demented fixation on the sound. She had become entranced with her destruction, but that noise got to the bones and put shivers into the flesh, and Viv was right now close to sanity, in sheer fright. The crew headed for their places, but Lance laid hands on Modred to stop him. “Let him go,” Griffin said, and Lance looked at Dela, and did what he was told. I stood by shivering, physically shivering in the horrid sound.
