Today the basic costume was a high-waisted loose-fitting golden velvet doublet, paned at the chest in front and back to reveal the green silk shirt beneath. The doublet’s wide winged sleeves, similarly paned to the elbow, then close-fitting to the wrists, ended in turned-back lace cuffs partly concealed by handsome gauntlet gloves of crimson leather. His boots, of the same leather, were turned down to reveal green silk stockings.
The boots caused trouble, because they were padded in the sole to add two inches to his height. Prestimion had long ago come to terms with the fact that he was not as tall as many other men, and that mattered not at all to him. Indeed, he rarely gave it a thought. The artificial boosting that these boots provided was offensive to him, and he asked for them to be taken away and replaced by a normal pair. Only after a fifteen-minute delay was it determined that no unpadded boots of a color appropriate to the rest of his costume existed in his closet, and therefore he would have to begin the robing all over again with a doublet of a different shade of gold. Which brought a hot burst of anger from him, because it was too late to start doing that; and in the end he wore the padded boots, although it made him suddenly self-conscious to find himself looking at the world from a height two inches greater than usual.
On his brow, of course, was the grand starburst crown of Lord Confalume, that preposterous intricate confection of emeralds and rubies and purple diniabas and dazzling metal chasings, a thing that announced in a voice of thunder that its wearer was the properly anointed incarnation of the majesty of the realm. And on his chest rested the golden medallion that Confalume had given him at his coronation, with the signet seal of Lord Stiamot in its center. It was, ostensibly, a modern reproduction of the medallion that the Coronals of antiquity had worn. But in fact it was no such thing. Prestimion himself, in conspiracy with Serithorn and the late and no longer remembered Prince Korsibar, had invented the tale of the medallion out of thin air and designed a plausible-looking “reproduction” of the supposedly long-lost original as a gift for Lord Confalume to celebrate his fortieth year as Coronal. Now it had been passed onward to Prestimion himself, and would, he supposed, go marching on down through the centuries from Coronal to Coronal, revered and cherished. After a couple of hundred years it would probably be an unquestioned article of faith that the half-legendary Stiamot himself had worn this very one, an eon and a quarter ago. In such ways, he thought, are potent traditions born.
Lord Confalume also had bedecked the throne-room with the tripods and censers and astrological computing-machines of his court wizards, not because these devices played any part in the official ceremonies of the court, but simply because in his later years he had come to like having such things about him. But Prestimion was a less credulous man than Confalume. He was well enough aware, in a calculating way, of the value and uses of sorcery in modern-day Majipoor, but he had never managed to arrive at a completely comfortable acceptance of the way the public had embraced so much that was mere superstition and chicanery.
Therefore he had banned all of Confalume’s implements of magic from the room. But he did permit a magus or two to be on hand for his receptions, if only to gratify public taste. If they needed to believe that he ruled not just by the grace of the Divine but also with the aid of whichever demons, spirits, or other supernal powers the people of Majipoor currently held in high esteem, he would not deny that to them.
Maundigand-Klimd was the magus on duty today—a Su-Suheris was always valuable for instilling awe—and, at Septach Melayn’s special request, so also were two geomancers from Tidias, complete with their tall brass helmets and shining metallic robes. Lord Confalume had brought them to the Castle in his time, along with a great host of others of their profession, and they all still seemed to be here and on the public payroll, although they had no official function in the administration of the new Coronal. Apparently these two had complained of their idleness to Septach Melayn, a man of Tidias himself; and so they were here, standing sternly on either side of Maundigand-Klimd, impressive brass-helmeted symbols of the realm of supernatural forces that existed side by side with the visible world that was everyday Majipoor. They were not, though, permitted to utter invocations or draw their invisible lines of power on the floor or burn their colored powders of mystic virtue. They were mere decorations, like the clustered masses of moonstones and tourmalines and amethysts and sapphires that Lord Confalume, when he had this room built, had caused at enormous expense to be inserted into the gigantic gilded beams of the ceiling.
“Your lordship,” said the major-domo Nilgir Sumanand. “It’s time for the reception.”
So it was. Prestimion left his robing-chamber and made his way, awkward in his thick-soled boots, through the hallways of the ancient myriad-roomed Castle that he had inherited from his multitude of royal predecessors. He would, he knew—eventually, in the fullness of his years—place his own imprint on the Castle of the Coronal. It was the tradition, after all, for each ruler to make his own additions and modifications.
The series of minor rooms that lay between the robing-chamber and the Confalume throne-room, for instance, seemed like a poor employment of the space they occupied. He had it in mind to clear them all away and construct a great judgment-hall next to the throne-room itself, something huge and grand, with crystal chandeliers and windows of frosted glass. An austere but imposing chapel nearby for the private reflections of the Coronal might be worthwhile, too. The present one was an awkward little afterthought of a room with no architectural merit whatever. And outside the central core, perhaps over by the watchtower of lunatic design that Lord Arioc of long ago had built, Prestimion wanted to erect a museum of Majipoori history, an archive containing memorabilia of the world’s long past, where future Coronals could study the achievements of their predecessors and contemplate their own high intentions. But all that was for the future. His reign had only just begun.
Unsmiling, looking neither to left nor right, walking stiffly in an attempt to avoid tripping over his own troublesome boots, he entered the throne-room, solemnly inclined his head as his subjects greeted him with starbursts, and ascended the many steps of the mahogany pedestal atop which the throne itself was set.
Solemnly. That was the key. He knew better than anyone what empty mummery such a spectacle as this really was. Its prime and perhaps only purpose was to awe the credulous. Yet for all his intelligence and sophistication and that touch of irreverence that he hoped he would never lose, Prestimion was more than somewhat awed by it too. A Coronal must believe his own mummery, he knew, or the people never would.
And that faith in the grandeur and might of the Coronal Lord, rooted in this very pageantry, this showy business of robes and thrones and crowns, had had much to do, he was certain, with the general tranquility and prosperity of this great world over the thirteen thousand years since humans first had come to settle on it. The Coronal was the embodiment of the whole world’s hopes and fears and desires. All of that had now been entrusted to the care of Prestimion of Muldemar, who understood only too well that he was human and mortal, but must nevertheless conduct himself as though he were much more than that. If for the sake of the public good he must don ornately fanciful green-and-gold robes and sit with solemn face upon a gigantic gleaming block of black opal shot through with veins of blood-scarlet ruby, so be it: he would play his part as he was expected to do.