Upon reaching the base-line Prestimion paid homage, as all the earlier archers had done, to the high Powers of the Realm who were looking on. He bowed first to the Pontifex Confalume, who was seated in a great gamandrus-wood throne at the center of the grandstand along the right-hand side of Vildivar Close. The ceremony by which a Pontifex chose a new Coronal was essentially one of adoption, and so, by the custom of Majipoor, it was proper for Prestimion now to regard Confalume as his father—his true father was long dead, anyway—and behave with appropriate reverence.
Prestimion’s next bow of obeisance went to his mother, the Princess Therissa. She sat on a similar throne in the left-hand grandstand, with her predecessor as Lady of the Isle of Sleep, the Lady Kunigarda, beside her. Prestimion swung about then and saluted his own vacant seat in the third grandstand, by way of making an impersonal acknowledgement of the majesty of the Coronal, a gesture to the office itself, not to the man.
Then he took the great bow firmly in hand, Kamba’s bow, the bow that he had cherished so long. It was a source of distress to Prestimion that the good-hearted, ever-cheerful Kamba, that supreme master of archery, was not here to take part in this contest today. But Kamba was one of those who had thrown in his lot with the usurping Korsibar, and he had died for it, with so many other brave warriors, at Thegomar Edge. The spells of the mages had been able to cause the war itself to be forgotten, but they could not bring fallen soldiers back to life.
Standing quietly at the base-line, Prestimion held himself altogether still for a time. He was often impulsive, but never when he stood before a target. With narrowed eyes he scrutinized his goal until at last he felt his soul at perfect center. He raised his bow then, and sighted along the waiting shaft.
“Prestimion! Prestimion! Lord Prestimion!” came the cry from a thousand throats.
Prestimion was aware of that great roar, but it was of no consequence to him just now. The thing that mattered was staying attuned to the task at hand. What pleasure there was in this art! Not that sending a shaft through the air was of any great importance in itself; but to do a thing with supreme excellence, to do it perfectly, whatever that thing might be—ah, there was joy in that!
He smiled and released his arrow, and watched it travel straight and true to the heart of the target, and heard the satisfying thump as it embedded itself deep.
“There’s no one to equal him at this, is there?” asked Navigorn of Hoikmar, who was sitting with a group of men of high rank in one of the boxes on the Coronal’s side of the field. “It isn’t fair. He really ought to sit back and let someone else win an archery title, just for once. Quite aside from the fact that it’s of somewhat questionable taste for a Coronal to be competing in his own coronation games.”
“What, Prestimion sit back and allow another to win?” said the Grand Admiral of the Realm, Gonivaul of Bombifale. Gonivaul, a dour man whose dark beard was so dense and his thick black hair so low across his forehead that the features of his face could scarcely be seen, offered Navigorn a look that was in fact the Grand Admiral’s version of a smile, though a stranger might have taken it to be a scowl. “It’s just not in his nature, Navigorn. He seems a decent well-bred sort, and so he is, but he does insist on winning, does he not? Confalume saw that in him right away, when he was only a boy. Which is why Prestimion rose through the Castle hierarchy as quickly as he did. And why he’s Coronal of Majipoor today.”
“Look at that, now! He has no shame,” said Navigorn, more in admiration than criticism, as Prestimion split his first arrow with his second. “I knew he’d try that trick again. He does it every time.”
“I understand from my son,” said Prince Serithorn, “that Prestimion isn’t actually competing for the prize today, but is performing only for the pure pleasure of the art. He’s asked the judges not to calculate his score.”
“And that means,” Gonivaul said sourly, “that the winner, whoever he turns out to be, must understand that he’s simply the best archer on the field who happens not to be Prestimion.”
“Which taints the glory of winning a bit, wouldn’t you say?” asked Navigorn.
“My son Glaydin made a similar comment,” said Serithorn. “But you show the man no mercy. Either he competes and, most likely, wins, or he disqualifies himself and thereby casts a shadow on the winner. So what is he to do?—Pass the wine, will you, Navigorn? Or do you mean to drink it all yourself?”
“Sorry.” Navigorn handed the flask across.
On the field, Prestimion was still running through his flamboyant repertoire of fancy shooting, to the accompaniment of uproarious approval from the crowd.
Navigorn, a powerfully built dark-haired man of impressive stature and confident nature, watched Prestimion’s performance with ungrudging approval. He appreciated excellence wherever he encountered it. And he admired Prestimion immensely. For all his lordly bearing, Navigorn himself had never had royal ambition; but it did please him to be near to the fount of power, and Prestimion had told him just yesterday that he had chosen him to be a member of the incoming Council. That had been unexpected. “You and I have never been particularly close friends,” Prestimion had said. “But I value you for your qualities. We need to come to know each other better, Navigorn.”
Prestimion at last yielded up his place on the field, to thunderous applause. He went running off, grinning, in a bouncy, boyishly jubilant stride. A slim young man wearing tight blue leggings and a brilliant scarlet-and-gold tunic typical of the distant west coast of Zimroel came forth next.
“He looked so happy just now,” Prince Serithorn observed. “Far more so than he was at the banquet the other night. Did you see how preoccupied he seemed then?”
“There was a black look about him that night,” said Admiral Gonivaul. “Well, he’s never happier than when he’s at his archery. But perhaps his long face at the banquet was meant to tell us that he’s already begun to take a sober view of what being Coronal actually involves. Not just grand processionals and the cheers of the admiring multitudes. Oh, no, no, no! A lifetime of grueling toil is what’s in store for him now, and the truth of it must be starting to sink in.—You know what ‘toil’ means, don’t you, Serithorn? No, why would you? The word isn’t in your vocabulary.”
“Why should it be?” replied Serithorn, who despite his considerable age was smooth-skinned and trim, an elegant, light-hearted man, one who rejoiced unabashedly in the enormous wealth that had descended to him from a whole host of famous ancestors going back to Lord Stiamot’s time. “What work could I possibly have done? I never thought I had much to offer the world in the way of useful skills. Better to do nothing all one’s life, and do it really well, than to set out to do something and do it badly, eh, my friend? Eh? Let those who are truly capable do the work. Such as Prestimion. He’ll be a marvelous Coronal. Has real aptitude for the job. Or like Navigorn here: a natural-born administrator, a man of genuine ability.—I hear he’s named you to the Council, Navigorn.”
“Yes. An honor I never sought, but am proud to have received.”
“Plenty of responsibility, being on the Council, let me tell you. I’ve put in more than my share of time on it. Prestimion’s asked me to stay on, matter of fact. What about you, Gonivaul?”
“I long for retirement,” the Grand Admiral said. “I am no longer young. I will return to Bombifale and enjoy the comforts and pleasures of my estate, I think.”