How to train your dragon (16 page)

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shield, strangely changed by a rich encrusting of jewel-like barnacles and cold-water coral, with an eight-foot tooth sticking right out of the middle of it. I reach out and the edge of that tooth is still so bitingly sharp after all these years that just a gentle brush with the fingers might send a rain of blood down on these pages. And I bend my head, not too close, and I am sure I can just hear very, very faintly:

Once I set the sea alight
with a single fiery breath---

Once I was so mighty that I thought

my name was Death---

Sing out loud until fou re eaten,
song of melancholy bliss, For the mighty and the middling

all shall come to THIS....

The Supper is still singing.

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