This was the season when the sea-dragon herds made their annual journey up the eastern side of the continent, heading out into the waters between Piliplok and the Isle of Sleep, where they would bear their young.
The coast below Piliplok was the only place on Majipoor where it was possible to get a good view of the dragons without going to sea, for here the pregnant cows liked to come close to shore, and feed on the small creatures that lived in the dense thatches of golden seaweed so widespread in those waters. So each year at dragon-passage time the dragon watchers arrived by the thousands, from all over the world, and set up their tents. Some were magnificent airy structures, virtual palaces of soaring slender poles and shimmering fabric, that were occupied by touring members of the nobility. Some were the sturdy and efficient tents of prosperous merchants and their families. And some were the simple lean-tos of ordinary folk who had saved for years to make this journey.
The aristocrats came to Gihorna in dragon time because they found it entertaining to watch the enormous sea dragons gliding through the water, and because it was agreeably unusual to spend a holiday in such a hideously ugly place. The rich merchants came because the undertaking of such a costly trip would surely enhance their position in their communities, and because their children would learn something useful about the natural history of Majipoor that might do them some good in school. The ordinary people came because they believed that it brought a lifetime of good luck to observe the passage of the dragons, though nobody was quite sure why that should be the case.
And then there were the Liimen, to whom the time of the dragons was a matter neither of amusement nor of prestige nor of the hope of fortune's kindness, but of the most profound significance: a matter of redemption, a matter of salvation.
No one could predict exactly when the dragons would turn up along the Gihorna coast. Though they always came in summer, sometimes they came early and sometimes they came late; and this year they were late. The five Liimen, taking up their positions on the little headland each morning, saw nothing day after day but gray sea, white foam, dark masses of seaweed. But they were not impatient people. Sooner or later the dragons would arrive.
The day when they finally came into view was warm and close, with a hot humid wind blowing out of the west. All that morning crabs in platoons and phalanxes and regiments marched restlessly up and down the beach, as though they were drilling to repel invaders. That was always a sign.
Toward noon came a second sign: up from the heaving surf tumbled a great fat pudding of a rip-toad, all belly and mouth and saw-edged teeth. It staggered a few yards ashore and hunkered down in the sand, panting, shivering, blinking its vast milky-hued eyes. A second toad emerged a moment later not far away and sat staring malevolently at the first. Then came a little procession of big-leg lobsters, a dozen or more gaudy blue and purple creatures with swollen orange haunches, that marched from the water with great determination and quickly began to dig themselves into the mud. They were followed by red-eyed scallops dancing on wiry little yellow legs, and little angular white-faced hatchet-eels, and even some fish, that lay helplessly flopping about as the crabs of the shore fell upon them.