The sheer volume of all this, the great size of the offering, was overwhelming. His mind could not take it all in.
To Prestimion it seemed as if this great piled-up mass of objects was Majipoor itself in all its size and complexity: as if the entire massive world, largest planet in the galaxy, had somehow forced its way into this one room today. Standing in the midst of his mounds of gifts, he felt dwarfed by the lavishness of the display, the dazzling extravagant prodigality of it. He knew that he should be pleased; but the only emotion he could manage, surrounded by so much tangible evidence of his new grandeur, was a kind of numbed dismay. That unexpected and baffling sense of hollowness that had been mounting in him throughout the lengthy formalities of the rite that had made him Coronal Lord of Majipoor, leaving him mysteriously saddened and somber in what should have been his hour of triumph, now threatened to engulf his entire soul.
As though in a dream Prestimion wandered around the hall, randomly examining some of the packages that his staff had already opened.
Here was a shimmering crystal pillow, within which could be seen a richly detailed rural landscape, green carpets of moss, trees with bright yellow foliage, the purple roof-tiles of some pretty town unknown to him, everything as vivid and real as though the place portrayed were actually contained within the stone. A scroll attached to it declared it to be the gift of the village of Glau, in the province of Thelk Samminon, in western Zimroel. With it came a scarlet coverlet of richly woven silken brocade, fashioned, so the scroll said, of the fine fleece of the local water-worms.
Here was a casket brimming with rare gems of many colors, which gave off a pulsating glow in gold and bronze and purple and crimson like the finest of sunsets. Here was a glossy cloak of cobalt blue feathers—the feathers of the famous fire-beetles of Gamarkaim, said the accompanying note, giant insects that looked like birds and were invulnerable to the touch of flame. The wearer of the cloak would be as well. And here, fifty sticks of the precious red charcoal of Hyanng, which when kindled had the ability to drive any disease from the body of the Coronal.
Here, an exquisite set of small figurines lovingly carved from some shining translucent green stone. They depicted, so their label informed him, the typical wildlife of the district of Karpash: a dozen or more images of unfamiliar and extraordinary beasts, portrayed down to the tiniest details of fur and horns and claws. They began to move about, snorting and scampering and chasing one another around the box that held them, as soon as Prestimion’s breath had warmed them to life. And here—
Prestimion heard the great door of the hall creaking open behind him. Someone entering. He would not be allowed to be alone even here.
A discreet cough; the sound of approaching footsteps. He peered into the shadows at the far end of the room.
A slender, lanky figure, drawing near.
“Ah. There you are, Prestimion. Akbalik told me you were in here. Hiding from all the fuss, are you?”
The elegant, long-legged Septach Melayn, second cousin to the Duke of Tidias, it was: a peerless swordsman and fastidious dandy, and Prestimion’s lifelong friend. He still wore his finery of the coronation ceremony—a saffron-hued tunic embroidered in golden chasings of flowers and leaves, and gold-laced buskins tightly wound. Septach Melayn’s hair, golden as well and tumbling to his shoulders in elaborately arranged ringlets, was bedecked with three gleaming emerald clasps. His short, sharply pointed yellow-red beard was newly trimmed.
He came to a halt some ten feet from Prestimion and stood with arms akimbo, looking around in wonder at the multitude of gifts.
“Well,” he said, finally, in obvious awe. “So you’re Coronal at last, Prestimion, after all the fuss and fury. And here’s a great pile of treasure to prove it, eh?”
“Coronal at last, yes,” said Prestimion in a sepulchral tone.
Septach Melayn’s brow furrowed in puzzlement. “How dour you sound! You are king of the world, and yet you don’t sound particularly pleased about it, do you, my lord? After what we’ve been through to put you here!”
“Pleased? Pleased?” Prestimion managed a half-chuckle. “Where’s the pleasure in it, Septach Melayn? Tell me that, will you?” He felt a sudden strange throbbing behind his forehead. Something was stirring with him, he knew, something dark and furious and inimical that he had never known was in him at all. And then, pouring out of him uncontrollably, came a most surprising cascade of singularly intense bitterness. “King of the world, you say? What does that mean? I’ll tell you, Septach Melayn. Years and years of hard work face me now, until I’m as dried out as an old piece of leather, and then, whenever old Confalume finally dies, I go to live in the dark dismal Labyrinth, never to see the light of day again. I ask you: What pleasure? Where?”
Septach Melayn gaped at him in amazement. For an instant he seemed unable to speak. This was a Prestimion he had never seen before.
At length he managed to say, “Ah, what a dark mood is this for your coronation day, my lord!”
Prestimion was astounded himself by that eruption of fury and pain. This is very wrong, he thought, abashed. I am speaking madness. I must do something to change the tone of this conversation to something lighter. He wrenched himself into some semblance of his usual self and said, in an altogether different manner, consciously irreverent, “Don’t call me ‘my lord,’ Septach Melayn. Not in private, anyway. It sounds so stiff and formal. And obsequious.”
“But you are my lord. I fought hard to make you so, and have the scars to prove it.”
“I’m still Prestimion to you, all the same.”
“Yes. Prestimion. Very well. Prestimion. Prestimion. As you wish, my lord.”
“In the name of the Divine, Septach Melayn—!” cried Prestimion, with an exasperated grin at that last playful jab. But what else could he expect from Septach Melayn, if not frivolity and teasing?
Septach Melayn grinned as well. Both of them now were working hard to pretend that Prestimion’s startling outburst had never happened. Extending a pointing hand toward the Coronal, a lazy, casual gesture, he said, “What is that thing you’re holding, Prestimion?”
“This? Why, it’s—it’s—” Prestimion consulted the scroll of tawny leather that had come with it. “A wand made of gameliparn horn, they say. It will change color from this golden hue to a purplish-black whenever waved over food containing poison.”
“You believe that, do you?”
“The citizens of Bailemoona do, at any rate. And here—here, Septach Melayn, this is said to be a mantle woven from the belly-fur of the ice-kuprei, that lives in the snowy Gonghar peaks.”
“The ice-kuprei is extinct, I think, my lord.”
“A pity, if it is,” said Prestimion, idly fondling the thick smooth fabric. “The fur is very soft to the touch.—In here,” he went on, tapping a square bale bound in ornate seals, “here we have an offering from someplace in the south, strips of the highly fragrant bark of the very rare quinoncha tree. And this handsome cup is carved from the jade of Vyrongimond, which is so hard that it takes half a lifetime to polish a piece the size of your fist. And this—” Prestimion struggled with a half-opened crate out of which some shimmering marvel of silver and carnelian was protruding. It was as though by rummaging so frantically amongst these crates he might somehow pull himself out of the edgy, half-despondent mood that had driven him to this room in the first place.
But he could not deceive Septach Melayn. Nor could Septach Melayn maintain his studied indifference to Prestimion’s earlier show of anguish any longer.
“Prestimion?”
“Yes?”
The swordsman came a step or two nearer. He towered over Prestimion, for the Coronal was a compact man, strong-shouldered but short in the leg, and Septach Melayn was so slim and lengthy of limb that he seemed almost frail, though in fact he was not.