This was the native territory of the four Skandars, who had been born in Piliplok and began their careers on circuit through the inland towns of the huge province, ranging as far upriver as Stenwamp and Port Saikforge, a thousand miles from the coast. This familiar countryside brightened them, these rolling tawny hills and bustling little cities of wooden buildings, and Zalzan Kavol spoke lengthily of his early career here, his successes and failures — very few of those — and of a dispute with an impresario that led him to seek fortune at the other end of Zimroel. Valentine suspected that there was some violence involved, perhaps some embroilment with the law, but he asked no questions.

One night after much wine the Skandars even broke into song, for the first time in Valentine’s time with them — a Skandar song, mournful and lugubrious, sung in a minor key as the singers shuffled about and about in a slump-shouldered circling march:

The song was so unrelievedly gloomy, and the enormous Skandars looked so absurd as they lurched about chanting it, that it was all that Valentine and Carabella could do to hold back laughter at first. But by the second chorus Valentine actually found himself moved by it, for there seemed real emotion in the song: the Skandars had met death and woe, and though they were close to home now, they had spent much of their lives far from Piliplok; and perhaps, Valentine thought, it was a harsh and painful thing to be a Skandar on Majipoor, a shaggy-pelted creature moving ponderously in the warm air among smaller and sleeker beings.

The summer now was over, and in eastern Zimroel it was the dry season, when warm winds blew from the south, vegetation went dormant until the spring rains, and, so said Zalzan Kavol, tempers became short and crimes of passion common. Valentine found this region less interesting than the jungles of the mid-continent or the subtropic floribundance of the far west, though he decided after a few days of close observation that it did have a certain austere beauty of its own, restrained and severe, quite unlike the riotous lushness of the west. All the same, he was pleased and relieved when, after day upon day on this changeless and seemingly unending river, Zalzan Kavol announced that the outskirts of Piliplok were in view.

—3—

PILIPLOK WAS ABOUT AS OLD and about as large as its counterpart port on the farther shore of the continent, Pidruid; but the resemblance went no deeper. For Pidruid had been built without a plan, a random tangle of streets and avenues and boulevards winding around one another according to whim, whereas Piliplok had been laid out, untold thousands of years ago, with rigid, almost maniacal, precision.

It occupied a promontory of great magnitude on the southern shore of the mouth of the Zimr. The river here was of inconceivable width, sixty or seventy miles across at the point where it flowed into the Inner Sea, and carrying the burden of silt and debris accumulated in all its swift seven-thousand-mile flow out of the far northwest, it stained the blue-green waters of the ocean with a dark tinge that, it was said, could be seen hundreds of miles out. The north headland at the river-mouth was a chalk cliff a mile high and many miles wide, which even from Piliplok was visible on a clear day, a shining white wall dazzling in the morning light. There was nothing over there that could in any way be used as a harbor, and so it had never been settled, but was set aside as a holy preserve. Devotees of the Lady lived there in a withdrawal from the world so total that no one had intruded on them in a hundred years. But Piliplok was another matter: eleven million people occupying a city that radiated in stern spokes from its magnificent natural harbor, A series of curving bands crossed the axis of these spokes, the inner ones mercantile, then zones of industry and recreation, and in the outer reaches the residential neighborhoods, fairly sharply delimited by levels of wealth and to a lesser degree by race. There was a heavy concentration of Skandars in Piliplok — it seemed to Valentine that every third person on the waterfront belonged to Zalzan Kavol’s people — and it was a little intimidating to see so many giant hairy four-armers swaggering about. Here, too, lived many of the aloof and aristocratic two-headed Su-Suheris folk, dealers in luxury commodities, fine fabrics and jewelry and the rarest handicrafts of every province. The air here was crisp and dry, and, feeling the unyielding southerly wind hot against his cheeks, Valentine began to understand what Zalzan Kavol had meant about the short tempers kindled by that wind.

"Does it ever stop blowing?" he asked.

"On the first day of spring," said Zalzan Kavol.

Valentine hoped to be elsewhere by then. But a problem immediately appeared. With Zalzan Kavol and Deliamber he went to Shkunibor Pier at the eastern end of Piliplok harbor to arrange transport to the Isle. For months now Valentine had imagined himself in this city and at that pier, and it had taken on an almost legendary glamour in his mind, a place of vast perspectives and sweeping architecture; and so it disappointed him more than a little to get there and find that the chief place of embarkation for the pilgrim-ships was a ramshackle, dilapidated structure, peeling green paint on its sides, tattered banners flapping in the wind.

Worse was in store. The pier seemed deserted. After some prowling Zalzan Kavol found a departure schedule posted in a dark corner of the ticket house. Pilgrim-ships sailed for the Isle the first of every month — except in autumn, when sailings were spaced more widely because of prevailing unfavorable winds. The last ship of the season had departed a week ago Saturday. The next left in three months.

"Three months!" Valentine cried. "What will we do in Piliplok for three months? Juggle in the streets? Beg? Steal? Read the schedule again, Zalzan Kavol!"

"It will say the same," the Skandar declared. He grimaced. "I am fond of Piliplok beyond any place, but I have no love for it at wind-time. What foul luck!"

"Do no ships at all sail in this season?" Valentine asked.

"Only the dragon-ships," said Zalzan Kavol.

"And what are they?"

"Fishing vessels, that prey on the sea-dragons, which come together in herds to mate at this time of year, and are easily taken. Plenty of dragon-ships set forth now. But what use are they to us?"

"How far out to sea do they go?" Valentine asked.

"As far as they must to make their catch. Sometimes as far as the Rodamaunt Archipelago, if the dragons are swarming easterly."

"Where is that?"

Deliamber said, "It is a long chain of islands far out in the Inner Sea, perhaps midway from here to the Isle of Sleep."

"Inhabited?"

"Quite heavily."

"Good. Surely there’s commerce between islands, then. What if we hire one of these dragon-ships to take us on as passengers, and carry us as far as the Archipelago, and there we commission some local captain to transport us to the Isle?"