"I’ll be careful."

He chose a route along the stomach wall, groping in the half-darkness, pausing twice to hang on through inrushes of water, and calling out constantly in the hope that someone might reply. No replies came. Her excavation was enormous now; he saw her deep within the dragon’s flesh, still hacking away. Gobbets of severed meat were piled on all sides and thick purplish blood stained her entire body. She was singing cheerfully as she cut.

"How far do you think it is to the outside?" he asked.

"Half a mile or so."

"Really?"

She laughed. "I suppose ten or fifteen feet. Here, clear the opening behind me. This meat’s piling up faster than I can sweep it away."

Feeling like a butcher, and not enjoying the sensation much, Valentine seized the chunks of severed flesh and hauled them back out of the cavity, tossing them as far as he could. He shivered in horror as he saw the fleshy whips of the stomach floor seize the meat and sweep it blithely on toward the digestive pond. Any protein was welcome here, so it seemed.

Deeper, deeper they traveled into the dragon’s abdominal wall. Valentine tried to calculate the probable width of it, taking the length of the creature at no less than three hundred feet; but the arithmetic became a muddle. They were working in close quarters and in a foul, hot atmosphere. The blood, the raw meat, the sweat, the narrowness of the cavity — it was hard to imagine a more repellent place.

Valentine looked back. "The hole’s closing behind us!"

"Beast that lives forever must have tricks of healing," the giantess muttered. She thrust and gouged and hacked. Uneasily Valentine watched new flesh sprouting as if by magic, the wound healing with phenomenal speed. What if they became encapsulated in this opening? Smothered by joining flesh? Lisamon Hultin pretended to be unworried, but he saw her working harder, faster, grunting and moaning, standing with colossal legs planted far apart and shoulders braced. The gash was sealed to their rear, pink new meat covering the hole, and now it was closing at the sides. Lisamon Hultin slashed and cut with furious intensity, and Valentine continued his humbler task of clearing the debris, but she was plainly wearying now, her giant strength visibly diminished, and the hole seemed to be closing almost as fast as she could cut.

"Don’t know if I — can keep — it up—" she muttered.

"Give me the sword, then!"

She laughed. "Watch out! You can’t do it!" In wild rage she returned to the struggle, bellowing curses at the dragon’s flesh as it sprouted around her. It was impossible now to tell where they were; they were burrowing through a realm without landmarks. Her grunts grew sharper and shorter.

"Maybe we should try to go back to the stomach area," he suggested. "Before we’re trapped so—"

"No!" she roared. "I think we’re getting there! Not so meaty here — tougher, more like muscle — maybe the sheath just under the hide—"

Suddenly sea-water poured in on them. "We’re through!" Lisamon Hultin cried. She turned, seizing Valentine as though he were a doll, and pushed him forward, headfirst into the opening in the monster’s flank. Her arms were locked in a fierce grip around his hips. She gave one tremendous thrust and he barely had time to fill his lungs with air before he was projected out through the slippery walls into the cool green embrace of the ocean. Lisamon Hultin emerged just after him, still gripping him tightly, now by his ankle and then by his wrist, and they rocketed upward, upward, rising like corks.

For what seemed like hours they flew toward the surface. Valentine’s forehead ached. His ribs soon would burst. His chest was on fire. We are climbing from the very bottom of the sea, he thought bleakly, and we will drown before we reach the air, or our blood will boil the way it does in divers who go too deep in search of the eyestones off Til-omon, or we will be squeezed flat by the pressure, or—

He erupted into clear sweet air, popping nearly the full length of his body out of the water and falling back with a splash. Limply he floated, a straw on the waters, weak, trembling, struggling for breath. Lisamon Hultin floated alongside. The warm beautiful sun blazed wonderfully, straight overhead.

He was alive, and he was unharmed, and he was free of the dragon.

And he bobbed somewhere on the breast of the Inner Sea, a hundred miles from anywhere.

WHEN THE FIRST MOMENTS of exhaustion had passed, he raised his head and peered about. The dragon was still visible, hump and ridge above the surface, only a few hundred yards away. But it seemed placid and appeared to be swimming slowly in the opposite direction. Of the Brangalyn there was no trace — only scattered timbers over a broad span of ocean. Nor were other survivors in view.

They swam to the nearest timber, a good-sized strip of the hull, and flung themselves across it. For a long while neither of them spoke. At length Valentine said, "And now do we swim to the Archipelago? Or should we simply go straight on to the Isle of Sleep?"

"Swimming is hard work, my lord. We could ride on the dragon’s back."

"But how guide him?"

"Tug on the wings," she suggested.

"I have my doubts of that."

They were silent again.

Valentine said, "At least in the belly of the dragon we had a fresh catch of fish delivered every few minutes."

"And the inn was large," Lisamon Hultin added. "But poorly ventilated. I think I prefer it here."

"But how long can we drift like this?"

She looked at him strangely. "Do you doubt that we’ll be rescued, my lord?"

"It seems reasonably in doubt, yes."

"It was prophesied to me in a dream from the Lady," said the giantess, "that my death would come in a dry place when I was very old. I am still young and this place is the least dry on all of Majipoor, except perhaps the middle of the Great Sea. Therefore there is nothing to fear. I will not perish here, and neither will you."

"A comforting revelation," Valentine said. "But what will we do?"

"Can you accomplish sendings, my lord?"

"I was Coronal, not King of Dreams."

"But any mind can reach any other, with true intent! Do you think only the King and Lady have such skills? The little wizard Deliamber talked into minds at night, I know that, and Gorzval said he spoke with dragons in his sleep, and you—"

"I am barely myself, Lisamon. Such of my mind as is left to me will send no sendings."

"Try. Reach out across the waters. To the Lady your mother, my lord, or to her people on the Isle, or to the folk of the Archipelago. You have the power. I am only a stupid swinger of swords, but you, lord, have a mind that was deemed worthy of the Castle, and now, in the hour of our need—" The giantess seemed transfigured with passion. "Do it, Lord Valentine! Call for help, and help will come!"

Valentine was skeptical. He knew little of the network of dream-communication that seemed to bind this planet together; it did appear that mind often called to mind, and of course there were the Powers of the Isle and of Suvrael supposedly sending directed messages forth by some means of mechanical amplification, but yet, drifting here on a slab of wood in the ocean, body and clothes filthied with the flesh and blood of the giant beast that lately had swallowed him, spirit so drained by unending adversity that even his legendary sunny faith in luck and miracles was put to rout — how could he hope to summon aid across such a gulf?