“The Lady Carabella, cousin, is the consort of your present king,” said Mirigant sharply, turning on Divvis with more anger than Elidath had ever seen that kindly man display. “And also, I remind you, she is the wife of your father’s brother. For two reasons, then—”
“All right,” Elidath said wearily. “Enough of this foolishness. Are we going to run this afternoon?”
Divvis laughed. “If you’re not too tired from all this Coronaling you’ve been doing.”
“I’d like nothing better,” said Elidath, “to run down the Mount from here to Morvole, taking maybe five months of good easy striding to get there, and then to spend the next three years pruning my orchards and—ah! Yes, I’ll come running with you. Let me finish just this one last paper—”
“The Lady Carabella’s birthday holiday,” said Divvis, smiling.
“A patent of nobility,” Elidath said. “Which will, if you’ll keep quiet long enough, give us a new Knight-Initiate, a certain Hissune son of Elsinome, it says here, resident of the Pontifical Labyrinth, in recognition of his high merit and—”
“Hissune son of Elsinome?” Divvis whooped. “Do you know who that is, Elidath?”
“Why should I be expected to know any such thing?”
“Think back to Valentine’s restoration ceremony, when he insisted on having all those unlikely people with us in the Confalume throne room—his jugglers and the Skandar sea-captain with the missing arm and the Hjort with orange whiskers and the rest. Do you remember a boy there too?”
“Shanamir, you mean?”
“No, an even younger boy! A small skinny boy, ten or eleven years old, with no respect for anybody, a boy with the eyes of a thief, who went around asking embarrassing questions, and wheedling people into letting him have their medals and decorations, and pinning them all over his tunic and staring at himself endlessly in mirrors? That boy’s name was Hissune!”
“The little Labyrinth boy,” said Mirigant, “who made everyone promise to hire him as a guide if they ever came to the Labyrinth. I remember him, yes. A very clever rascal, I’d say.”
“That rascal is now a Knight-Initiate,” Divvis said. “Or will be, if Elidath doesn’t tear up that sheet of paper that he’s staring at so blankly. You aren’t going to approve this, are you, Elidath?”
“Of course I am.”
“A Knight-Initiate who comes from the Labyrinth?”
Elidath shrugged. “Wouldn’t matter to me if he was a Shapeshifter out of Ilirivoyne. I’m not here to overrule the Coronal’s decisions. If Valentine says Knight-Initiate, Knight-Initiate he is, whether he be rascal, fisherman, sausage peddler, Metamorph, dung sweeper—”
Quickly he inscribed the date beside his signature. “There. Done! Now the boy’s as noble as you are, Divvis.”
Divvis drew himself up pompously. “My father was the Coronal Lord Voriax. My grandfather was the High Counsellor Damiandane. My great-grandfather was—”
“Yes. We know all that. And I say, the boy is just as noble as you are now, Divvis. This paper says so. As some similar paper said for some ancestor of yours, I know not how long ago and certainly not why. Or do you think being noble is something innate, like Skandars having four arms and dark fur?”
“Your temper is short today, Elidath.”
“So it is. Therefore make allowances for me, and try not to be so tiresome.”
“Forgive me, then,” said Divvis, not very contritely.
Elidath stood and stretched and peered out the great curving window before the Coronal’s desk. It afforded a stupendous view into the open abyss of air that dropped away from the summit of Castle Mount on this side of the royal complex. Two mighty black raptors, wholly at home in these dizzying altitudes, flew in great arrogant arcs about one another out there, sunlight rebounding dazzlingly from the crest of glassy feathers on their golden heads, and Elidath, watching the easy unfettered movements of the huge birds, found himself envying their freedom to soar in those infinite spaces. He shook his head slowly. The day’s toil had left him groggy. Elidath of Morvole, High Counsellor and Regent—
Six months this week, he thought, since Valentine had set out on the processional. It felt like years already. Was it like this to be Coronal? Such drudgery, such captivity? For a decade, now, he had lived with the possibility of becoming Coronal in his own right, for he was the clear and obvious next in line. That had been plain almost from the day Lord Voriax had been killed in the forest and the crown had so unexpectedly passed to his younger brother. If anything were to happen to Lord Valentine, Elidath knew, they would come to him with the starburst crown. Or if the Pontifex Tyeveras ever actually died and Valentine had to enter the Labyrinth, that too could make Elidath Coronal. Unless he was too old for the job by the time that occurred, for the Coronal must be a man of vigorous years, and Elidath was already past forty, and it looked as though Tyeveras would live forever.
If it came to him, he would not, could not, consider refusing. Refusing was unimaginable. But each passing year he found himself praying more fervently for continued long life for the Pontifex Tyeveras and a long healthy reign for the Coronal Lord Valentine. And these months as regent had only deepened those feelings. When he was a boy and this had been Lord Malibor’s Castle, it had seemed the most wondrous thing in the world to him to be Coronal, and his envy had been keen when Voriax, eight years his senior, was chosen upon Lord Malibor’s death. Now he was not quite so sure how wondrous it might be. But he would not refuse, if the crown came to him. He remembered the old High Counsellor Damiandane, father to Voriax and Valentine, saying once that the best one to choose as Coronal was one who was qualified for the crown, but did not greatly want it. Well, then, Elidath told himself cheerlessly, perhaps I am a good choice. But maybe it will not come to that.
“Shall we run?” he said with forced heartiness. “Five miles, and then some good golden wine?”
“Indeed,” said Mirigant.
As they made their way from the room, Divvis paused at the giant globe of bronze and silver, looming against the far wall, that bore the indicator of the Coronal’s travels. “Look,” he said putting his finger to the ruby sphere that glowed upon the surface of the globe like a rock-monkey’s bloodshot eye. “He’s well west of the Labyrinth already. What’s this river he’s sailing down? The Glayge, is it?”
“The Trey, I think,” said Mirigant. “He’s bound for Treymone, I imagine.”
Elidath nodded. He walked toward the globe and ran his hand lightly over its silken-smooth metal skin. “Yes. And Stoien from there, and then I suppose he’ll take ship across the Gulf to Perimor, and on up the coast as far as Alaisor.”
He could not lift his hand from the globe. He caressed the curving continents as though Majipoor were a woman and her breasts were Alhanroel and Zimroel. How beautiful the world, how beautiful this depiction of it! It was only a half-globe, really, for there was no need of representing the far side of Majipoor, which was all ocean and scarcely even explored. But on its one vast hemisphere the three continents were displayed. Alhanroel with the great jagged spire of Castle Mount jutting out into the room, and many-forested Zimroel, and the desert wasteland that was Suvrael down below, and the blessed Lady’s Isle of Sleep in the Inner Sea between them. Many of the cities were marked in detail, the mountain ranges, the larger lakes and rivers. Some mechanism Elidath did not understand tracked the Coronal at all times, and the glowing red sphere moved as the Coronal moved, so there could never be doubt of his whereabouts. As though in a trance Elidath traced out with his fingers the route of the grand processional, Stoien, Perimor, Alaisor, Sintalmond, Daniup, down through the Kinslain Gap into Santhiskion, and back by a winding course through the foothills to Castle Mount—