"Possibly," Deliamber said.

"There’s no rule requiring all pilgrims to arrive by pilgrim-ship?"

"None that I know of," said the Vroon.

"The dragon-ships will not care to bother with passengers," Zalzan Kavol objected. "They never carry any such trade."

"Would a few royals arouse their interest in doing so?"

The Skandar looked doubtful. "I have no idea. Their trade’s a lucrative one as it is. They might consider passengers a nuisance, or even bad luck. Nor would they necessarily agree to haul us out to the Archipelago, if it happens to lie beyond this year’s hunting track. Nor can we be sure, even if we do reach the Archipelago, that anyone there would be willing to carry us farther."

"On the other hand," Valentine said, "it might all be quite easy to arrange. We have money, and I’d rather use it persuading sea-captains to give us passage than spend it on lodgings and food for the next three months in Piliplok. Where can we find the dragon-hunters?"

An entire section of the waterfront spanning three or four miles was set apart for their use, pier after pier after pier, and there were dozens of the huge wooden vessels in harbor, being outfitted for the new hunting season just beginning. The dragon-ships were of one design, and an ominous and morbid one it was, Valentine thought, for they were great bloated things with flaring outbellying hulls and enormous fanciful three-pronged masts, and terrifying toothy figureheads at their prows and long spiky tails at their sterns. Most were decorated along their flanks with bold scarlet-and-yellow eye-patterns or rapacious-looking rows of white teeth; and high abovedecks were bristling cupolas for the harpooners and mammoth winches for the nets, and bloodstained platforms where the butchering took place. To Valentine it was incongruous to make use of such a killer-vessel in reaching the peaceful and holy Isle of Sleep. But he had no other way.

And even this way soon began to seem doubtful. From ship to ship they went, from wharf to wharf, from drydock to drydock, and the dragon-captains listened without interest to their proposal and made swift refusals. Zalzan Kavol did most of the speaking, for the captains were mainly Skandars and might give sympathetic ear to one of their own kind. But no persuasion would sway them.

"You would be a distraction to the crew," said the first captain. "Forever stumbling over gear, getting seasick, making special requests for service—"

"We are not chartered to carry passengers," said the second. "The rules are strict."

"The Archipelago lies south of our preferred waters," the third declared.

"I have long believed," said the fourth, "that a dragon-ship that goes to sea with strangers to the guild on board is a ship that will never return to Piliplok. I choose not to test that superstition this year."

"Pilgrims are no concern of mine," the fifth told them. "Let the Lady waft you to the Isle, if she will. You won’t get there aboard my ship."

The sixth also refused, adding that no captain was likely to aid them. The seventh said the same. The eighth, having heard that a party of drylanders was wandering the decks looking for passage, refused even to speak with them.

The ninth captain, a grizzled old Skandar with gaps in her teeth and faded fur, was more friendly than the others, though just as unwilling to make room for them on her vessel. She did, at least, have a suggestion. "On Prestimion Pier," she said, "you will find Captain Gorzval of the Brangalyn. Gorzval has made several unlucky voyages and is known to be short of funds; I heard him in a tavern just the other night trying to arrange a loan to pay for repairs to his hull. It may be that some extra revenue from passengers would be useful to him now."

"And where is Prestimion Pier?" Zalzan Kavol asked. "The farthest in this line, beyond Dekkeret and Kinniken, just west of the salvage-yard."

A berth close by the salvage-yard seemed appropriate for the Brangalyn, Valentine thought bleakly an hour later, upon having his first view of Captain Gorzval’s vessel. It looked about ready to be broken up for scrap. It was a smaller and older ship than the others he had seen, and at some point in its long history it must have suffered a staved hull, for in its rebuilding it had become malproportioned, with mismatched timbers and an oddly sloping look to starboard. The painted eyes and teeth along the waterline had lost their luster; the figurehead was awry; the tailspikes had been snapped off eight or ten feet from their mountings, perhaps in a petulant swipe by an angry dragon; the masts had lost some of their yards also. Crewmen with a sluggish and dispirited look to them were at work, but not in any very effective way, caulking and coiling ropes and mending sail.

Captain Gorzval himself seemed as weary and worn as his vessel. He was a Skandar not quite as tall as Lisamon Hultin — virtually a dwarf among his race — with a cast in one eye and a stump where his outer left arm should be. His fur was matted and coarse; his shoulders were slumped; his entire look was one of fatigue and defeat. But he brightened immediately at Zalzan Kavol’s query about taking passengers to the Rodamaunt Archipelago. "How many?"

"Twelve. Four Skandars, a Hjort, a Vroon, five humans, and one — other."

"All pilgrims, you say?"

"All pilgrims."

Gorzval made the sign of the Lady in a perfunctory way and said, "You know it’s irregular for passengers to travel on a dragon-ship. But I owe the Lady recompense for past favors received. I’m willing to make an exception. Cash in advance?"

"Of course," said Zalzan Kavol.

Valentine quickly released his breath. This was a miserable dilapidated ship, and Gorzval probably a third-rate navigator dogged by bad fortune or even downright incompetence; nevertheless, he was willing to take them, and no one else would even entertain the idea.

Gorzval named his price and waited, with obvious tension, to be haggled with. What he asked was less than half what they had unsuccessfully offered the other captains. Zalzan Kavol, bargaining out of habit and pride, no doubt, attempted to cut three royals from that. Gorzval, plainly dismayed, offered a reduction of a royal and a half; Zalzan Kavol appeared ready to shave another few crowns, but Valentine, pitying the hapless captain, cut in quickly to say, "Done. When do we sail?"

"In three days," Gorzval said.

It turned out to be four, actually — Gorzval spoke vaguely of some need for additional refitting, by which he meant. Valentine discovered, patching of some fairly serious leaks. He had not been able to afford it until his passengers had hired on. According to the gossip in the dockside taverns, Lisamon Hultin reported, Gorzval had been trying to mortgage part of his catch to raise the money for carpenters, but found no takers. He had, she said, a doubtful reputation: his judgment was inferior, his luck poor, his crew ill-paid and shiftless. Once he had missed the sea-dragon swarm entirely and returned empty to Piliplok; on another voyage he had lost his arm to a lively little dragon not quite as dead as he thought; and on this last one the Brangalyn had been struck amidships by an irritated beast and nearly sent to the bottom. "We might do better," Lisamon Hultin suggested, "by trying to swim to the Isle."

"Possibly we’ll bring our captain better luck than he’s had," said Valentine.

Sleet laughed. "If optimism alone could carry one to the throne, my lord, you’d be on Castle Mount by Winterday."

Valentine laughed with him. But after the disaster in Piurifayne he hoped he was not leading these folk into new catastrophe aboard this ill-favored vessel. They were following him, after all, on faith alone, on the evidence of dreams and wizardry and an enigmatic Metamorph prank: it would be shame and pain for him if, in his haste to reach the Isle, he caused them more grief. Yet Valentine felt powerful sympathy for the bedraggled stump-armed Gorzval. An unlucky mariner he might be — but a fitting helmsman, perhaps, for a Coronal so frowned upon by fortune that he had managed to lose throne and memory and identity all in a single night!