The Crimson Ring Crown

Set into the summit of the high tower at the center of the capital is a Crimson Ring Crown. It is the emblem of the dynasty — the throne, the crowning, the center to which the Seven Great Houses must outwardly submit: all of it hangs upon that crown.

It is not ordinarily worn upon any head. What the present king wears from day to day is the administrative consort-crown; the Crimson Ring Crown hangs at the tower's summit and is taken down only for the crown's formal rites. Its weight is set down in no register, and those who have carried it do not speak of it outside.

Seen from the ridge outside Graycrown, at a distance of some three li, the eye ought not to make out any detail, and yet there is always a very faint gleam upon its metal surface. The cloud lies thick in the Solstice Month; by evening the direct light is long gone and only scattered light is left in the sky, and still that gleam holds steady — it does not flicker, it does not shift, as though it were seeping outward from the inner side of the metal. Once inside the city, wherever a street mouth gives a clear line to the tower's summit, one has only to look up to see it; let a five-story building stand in the way, and it is gone entirely.

Concerning this crown, a number of unseemly sayings go about the capital. That those who put it on do not seem to live long, for one. That upon the crest of Blacktower Academy the topmost of the seven rings is empty — and that the empty one answers exactly to the crown's place. The rite-officials will not take up such talk; their account is that seven rings stand together and there the kingly way abides, and that the crown at the tower's summit signifies that all seven houses are still in their own places. The version the caravans that run the highroad tell among themselves is a good deal coarser: the thing is hung up there to hold something down, and whoever takes it off will come to grief. Before the little shrine of the White Tower church at the village mouth stand half-burned sticks of incense, and when the crown is asked after, the one who sets the incense only shakes his head.

It is very heavy. The man who carried it said only one thing: heavier than it looks. It is this that the Seven Great Houses contend for, and yet no one is willing to say plainly what they mean — is what they contend for a throne, or a lid that no one ought to lift?