"Dragons ho!" came the lookout’s cry.

This was the greatest school yet, hundreds of them, spiny humps rising above the water everywhere. For two days the Brangalyn moved among them, slaughtering at will. On the horizon other ships could be seen, but they were far off, for strict rules governed impinging on hunting territory.

Gorzval seemed to glow with the success of his voyage. He himself took frequent turns in the boat-crews, which Valentine gathered was unusual, and once he even made his way to the cupola to wield a harpoon. The ship now was settling low to the waterline with the weight of dragon-flesh.

On the third day dragons were still close about them, undismayed by the carnage and unwilling to scatter. "One more big one," Gorzval vowed, "and then we make for the islands."

He selected an eighty-footer for the final target.

Valentine had grown bored, and more than bored, with the butchery, and as the harpooner sent his third shaft into the prey he turned away, and walked to the far side of the deck. There he found Sleet, and they stood by the rail, peering off to the east.

"Do you think we can see the Archipelago from here?" Valentine asked. "I long for solid land again, and an end to the stink of dragon-blood in my nostrils."

"My eyes are keen, my lord, but the islands are two days’ sailing from here, and I think even my vision has limits. But—" Sleet gasped. "My lord—"

"What is it?"

"An island comes swimming toward us, my lord!"

Valentine stared, but with difficulty at first: it was morning and a brilliant fiery glare lit the surface of the sea. But Sleet took Valentine’s hand and pointed with it, and then Valentine saw. A ridged dragon-spine broke the water, a spine that went on and on and on, and below it a vast and implausible bulk was dimly visible.

"Lord Kinniken’s dragon!" Valentine said in a choked voice. "And it comes straight at us!"

KINNIKEN’S IT MIGHT BE, or more likely some other not nearly so great, but it was great enough, larger than the Brangalyn, and it was bearing down on them steadily and unhesitatingly — either an avenging angel or else an unthinking force, there was no knowing that, but its mass was unarguable.

"Where is Gorzval?" Sleet blurted. "Weapons— guns—"

Valentine laughed. "As easily stop a rock-slide with a harpoon, Sleet. Are you a good swimmer?"

Most of the hunters were preoccupied with their catch. But some had looked the other way now, and there was frantic activity on deck. The harpooner had whirled round and stood outlined against the sky, weapons in every hand. Others had mounted the adjoining cupolas. Valentine, searching for Carabella and Deliamber and the others, caught sight of Gorzval rushing madly toward the helm; the Skandar’s face was livid and his eyes were bugging, and he looked like one who stood in the presence of the ministers of death.

"Lower the boats!" someone screamed. Winches turned. Figures ran about wildly. One, a Hjort black-cheeked with fear, shook a fist at Valentine and caught him roughly by the arm, muttering, "You brought this on us! You should never have been allowed on board, any of you!"

Lisamon Hultin appeared from somewhere and swept the Hjort aside like so much chaff. Then she flung her powerful arms around Valentine as if to protect him from any harm that might come.

"The Hjort was right, you know," said Valentine calmly. "We are an ill-omened bunch. First Zalzan Kavol loses his wagon, and now poor Gorzval loses—"

There was a ghastly impact as the onrushing dragon crashed broadside into the Brangalyn.

The ship heeled over as though it had been pushed by a giant’s hand, then rolled dizzyingly back the other way. An awful shudder shook its timbers. A secondary impact came — the wings hitting the hull, the thrashing flukes? — and then another, and the Brangalyn bobbed like a cork. "We’re stove in!" a desperate voice cried. Things rolled free on the deck, a giant rendering cauldron breaking its moorings and tumbling over three hapless crewmen, a case of boning-axes ripping loose and skidding over the side. As the ship continued to sway and lurch, Valentine caught a glimpse of the great dragon on the far side, where the recent catch still hung, unbalancing everything; and the monster swung around and headed in for another attack. There could be no doubt now of the purposefulness of its onslaught.

The dragon struck, shoulder-side on; the Brangalyn rocked wildly; Valentine grunted as Lisamon Hultin’s grip became an almost crushing embrace. He had no idea where any of the others might be, nor whether they would survive. Clearly the ship was doomed. Already it was listing badly as water poured into the hold. The tail of the dragon rose nearly to deck-level and struck again. Everything dissolved into chaos. Valentine felt himself flying; he soared gracefully, he dipped and bobbed, he plunged with elegance and skill toward the water.

He landed in something much like a whirlpool and was drawn down into the terrible turbulent spin.

As he went under Valentine could not help but hear the ballad of Lord Malibor ringing in his mind. In truth that Coronal had taken a fancy for dragon-hunting some ten years back, and had gone out in what was said to be the finest dragon-ship in Piliplok, and the ship had been lost with all hands. No one knew what had happened, but — so it came out of Valentine’s spotty recollections — the government had spoken of a sudden storm. More likely, he thought, it had been this killer-beast, this avenger of dragonkind.

And now a second Coronal, successor but one to Malibor, would meet the same fate. Valentine was oddly unmoved by that. He had thought himself dying in the rapids of the Steiche, and had survived that; here, with a hundred miles of sea between him and any sort of safety, and a rampaging monster lashing about close at hand, he was even more surely doomed, but there was no use bemoaning it. The Divine had clearly withdrawn its favor from him. What grieved him was that others whom he loved would die with him, merely because they had been loyal, because they had pledged themselves to follow him on his journey to the Isle, because they had tied themselves to a luckless Coronal and a luckless dragon-captain and now must share their evil destinies.

He was sucked deep into the heart of the ocean and ceased to ponder the tides of luck. He struggled for breath, coughed, choked, spat out water and swallowed more. His head pounded mercilessly. Carabella, he thought, and darkness engulfed him.

Valentine had never, since awakening out of his broken past to find himself near Pidruid, given much thought to a philosophy of death. Life held challenges enough for him. He recalled vaguely what he had been taught in boyhood, that all souls return to the Divine Source at their last moment when the release of life-energy comes, and travel over the Bridge of Farewells, the bridge that is the prime responsibility of the Pontifex. But whether there might be truth in that, whether there was a world beyond, and if so of what sort, Valentine had never paused to consider. Now, though, he returned to consciousness in a place so strange that it surpassed the imaginings of even the most fertile of thinkers.

Was this the afterlife? It was a giant chamber, a great silent room with thick moist pink walls and a roof that was in places high and domed, supported by mighty pillars, and in other places drooped until it nearly touched the floor. In that roof were mounted huge glowing hemispheres that emitted a faint blue light, as if by phosphorescence. The air in here was rank and steamy, and had a sharp, bitter flavor, unpleasant and stifling. Valentine lay on his side against a wet slippery surface, rough to the touch, deeply corrugated, quivering with constant deep palpitations and tremors. He put the flat of his hand to it and felt a kind of convulsion deep within. The texture of the ground was like nothing he had known before, and those tiny but perceptible motions within it made him wonder if what he had entered was not the world after death but merely some grotesque hallucination.