Quietly he said, “You need not show me every one, my lord.”
“I thought you were interested.”
“I am, up to a point. But only up to a point.” In a tone that was quieter still, Septach Melayn said, “Prestimion, just why have you gone slinking away by yourself to this room just now? Surely not to gloat over your gifts. That’s never been your nature, to covet and fondle mere objects.”
“They are very fine and curious objects,” said Prestimion staunchly.
“No doubt they are. But you should be dressing for tonight’s feast now, not prowling around by yourself in this storehouse of strangenesses. And your peculiar words of a few minutes past—that cry of pain, that bitter lament. I tried to ignore it as some odd aberration of the moment, but it keeps echoing in my mind. What did all that mean? Were you sincere, crying out against the burden of the crown? I never thought to hear such things from your lips. You’re Coronal now, Prestimion! The summit of any man’s ambition. You will rule this world in glory This should be the most splendid day of your life.”
“It should be, yes.”
“And yet you withdraw to this dismal hall, you brood in solitude, you distract yourself with these silly pretty trinkets in your own great moment of attainment, you cry out against your own kingship as though it’s a curse someone has laid upon you—”
“A passing mood.”
“Then let it pass, Prestimion. Let it pass! This is a day of celebration! It’s not two hours since you stood before the Confalume Throne and put the starburst crown on your forehead, and now—now—if you could see your own face, now, my lord—that look of gloom, that bleak and tragic stare—”
Prestimion offered Septach Melayn an exaggerated comic smile, all flashing teeth and bulging eyes.
“Well? Is this better?”
“Hardly. I am not in any way fooled, Prestimion. What can possibly distress you this way, on this day of days?” And, when Prestimion made no response: “Perhaps I know.”
“How could you not?” And then, without giving Septach Melayn a chance to answer: “I’ve been thinking of the war, Septach Melayn. The war.”
Septach Melayn seemed caught by surprise for an instant. But he made a quick recovery.
“Ah. The war, yes. The war, of course, Prestimion. It marks us all. But the war’s over. And forgotten. No one in the world remembers the war but you and Gialaurys and I. All those who are gathered here at the Castle today for your coronation rites: they have no memory whatever of that other coronation that took place in these halls not so long ago.”
“We remember, though. We three. The war will stay with us forever. The waste, the needlessness. The destruction. The deaths. So many of them. Svor. Kanteverel. My brother Taradath. Earl Kamba of Mazadone, my master in the art of the bow. Iram, Mandrykarn, Sibellor. And hundreds more, thousands, even.” He closed his eyes a moment, and turned his head away. “I regret them all, those deaths. Even the death of Korsibar, that poor deluded fool.”
“You have left one name unspoken, and not a trivial one,” said Septach Melayn; and delicately he provided it, as if to lance an inflamed and swollen wound. “I mean that of his sister the Lady Thismet.”
“Thismet, yes.”
The name that could not be avoided, hard as Prestimion had tried. He could hardly bear to speak of her; but she was never absent long from his mind.
“I know your pain,” said Septach Melayn softly. “I understand. Time will heal you, Prestimion.”
“Will it? Can it?”
They were both silent for a time. Prestimion let it be known by his eyes alone that he wished not to speak further of Thismet now, and so for the moment they spoke of nothing at all.
“You know that I do rejoice in being Coronal,” said Prestimion finally, when the strain of not speaking out had grown too great. “Of course I do. It was my destiny to have the throne. It was what I was shaped by the Divine to be. But did there have to be so much bloodshed involved in my coming to power? Was any of it necessary? All that blood pollutes my very accession.”
“Who knows what’s necessary and what is not, Prestimion? It happened, that’s all. The Divine intended it to happen, and it did, and we dealt with it, you and I and Gialaurys and Svor, and now the world is whole again. The war’s a buried thing. We saw to that ourselves. No one alive but us has any idea it ever took place. Why dredge it all up today, of all days?”
“Out of guilt, perhaps, at coming to the throne over the bodies of so many fine men.”
“Guilt? Guilt, Prestimion? What guilt can you mean? The war was all that idiot Korsibar’s fault! He rebelled against law and custom! He usurped the throne! How can you speak of guilt, when he alone—”
“No. We must all have been at fault, somehow, to bring down a curse like that upon the world.”
Septach Melayn’s pale-blue eyes went wide with surprise once again. “Such mystic nonsense you speak, Prestimion! Talking so seriously of curses, and allowing yourself to take even a scintilla of blame for the war on yourself? The Prestimion I knew in other days was a rational man. He’d never utter such blather even in jest. It would never enter his mind.—Listen to me. The war was Korsibar’s doing, my lord. Korsibar’s. Korsibar’s. His sin alone, his and no one else’s. And what’s done is done, and you are Majipoor’s new king, and all is well on Majipoor at last.”
“Yes. So it is.” Prestimion smiled. “Forgive me this fit of sudden melancholy, old friend. You’ll see me in a happier frame of mind at the coronation feast tonight, I promise you that.” He walked up and down the room, lightly slapping at the sealed crates. “But for the moment, Septach Melayn—these gifts, this warehouse full of stuff—how it all oppresses me! These gifts weigh upon me like the weight of the world.” He said, with a grimace, “I ought to have it all taken out and burned!”
“Prestimion—” said Septach Melayn warningly.
“Yes. Forgive me again. I fall too easily into these lamentations today.”
“Indeed you do, my lord.”
“I should be grateful for these presents, I suppose, instead of being troubled by them. Well, let me see if I can find some amusement in them. I’m much in need of amusement right now, Septach Melayn.” Prestimion moved away and went rambling once more through the aisles of stacked-up boxes, pausing to peer into those that lay open. A fire orb, here. A sash of many colors, constantly shifting its hues. A flower fashioned from precious bronze, from whose petaled depths came a low humming song of great beauty. A bird carved from a vermilion stone, that moved its head from side to side and squawked at him indignantly. A scallop-edged cauldron of red jade, satin-smooth and warm to the touch. “Look,” said Prestimion, uncovering a scepter of sea-dragon bone, carved with infinite cunning. “From Piliplok, this is. See, here, how well they’ve encircled it with—”
“You should come away from here now,” said Septach Melayn sharply. “These things will wait, Prestimion. You need to dress for the banquet.”
Yes. That was so. It was wrong to sequester himself in here like this. Prestimion knew he must throw off the altogether uncharacteristic access of sadness and desolation that had overtaken him in these past few hours, rid himself of it like a cast-off cloak. He would have to show the banqueters this evening the radiant look of contentment and fulfillment that was proper and befitting to a newly crowned Coronal.
Yes. Yes. And that he would do.
2
Prestimion and Septach Melayn went from the Hendighail Hall together. The two great burly Skandar guards on duty outside the storeroom offered Prestimion an excited flurry of starburst salutes, which he acknowledged with a nod and a wave. At a word from Prestimion Septach Melayn tossed a silver coin to each of them.