Free 2 To Light A Candle.13 by 2 To Light A Candle.13

very long—sash in a slightly brighter shade of green than the overrobe. That had nearly been his undoing, until Idalia had taken pity on him and showed him how to wrap and tie the sash properly.
    Low boots, of a reassuringly normal-looking pale gold calfskin, completed his outfit.
    "I don't look bad," Kellen agreed. And I don't feel silly, he realized with relief. Nobody was asking him to wear earrings, braid jewels into his hair, paint his face, or do any of the other things the Elves did when they got themselves done up for some festive occasion. Now, just as long as nobody asked him to make a speech…
    "Except for your hair," Idalia agreed. "Come over here."
    A few minutes with a comb, and Idalia had pulled Kellen's mop of light-brown curls back into a short twisted braid at the nape of his neck. It felt reassuringly normal—it was the way he wore his hair under his helmet, after all.
    "There. Presentable." She craned around and kissed him lightly on the forehead. "You'll definitely do. I'll just get our raincapes and rainshades, and we can be off. Don't worry—they're bespelled to keep the rain off—and I actually think it's slackening a bit this evening. Not stopping, of course, which is just as well," Idalia said.
    "Where are we going?" Kellen asked, thinking to ask for the first time.
    "The gardens at the House of Leaf and Star. There's no other place large enough to accommodate the guest list—and the unicorns will want to be able to listen—from a distance, of course."
    "Outside? In the rain?"
    Idalia snickered at Kellen's expression.
    "Under canvas—or silk, actually. Relax. Everything that should be dry, will be dry. You look like you're being sent to an execution, not to a banquet."
    All things considered, Kellen would rather have gone to an execution.
    THE formal gardens of the House of Leaf and Star were subtly beautiful, like all the creations of the Elves: the natural world raised to an impossible pitch of perfection.
    He'd never seen the gardens, but then, he hadn't been in Sentarshadeen long, and had gotten most of his tour of it courtesy of Sandalon, who'd shown him the things that Sandalon thought would interest a human stranger… which had not, obviously, included his parents' gardens.
    Kellen looked down, realizing that at some point, without noticing, he and Idalia had gone from the streets of Sentarshadeen to a wide-slatted wooden path laid across the meadow to a path of white gravel.
    This must be the garden, then.
    Tonight it was filled with more lanterns than Kellen would once have been willing to bet were in the entire city of Sentarshadeen. Before the rains came, it had been necessary to keep the lights of evening from starting any accidental fires in a city made tinder-dry by drought. Now it was only necessary to keep the flames from being drowned by the rain. But the Elves—who accomplished far more through clever engineering than humans had ever done through magic— made it look effortless.
    Some of the lanterns shone through tall gauzy windbreaks set up to blunt the force of the blustering, rain-heavy winds, turning them into tall, softly-gleaming rectangles of color. Though they seemed as insubstantial as kites, Kellen doubted they'd fall if the wind blew ten times as hard, though they quivered when the wind struck them. Kellen suspected they were meant to.
    Inside the curving walls of windbreaks, the air was nearly still, and the flames inside the artfully-scattered lanterns—some suspended on tall posts, some nearer the ground—burned steadily. But the towering windbreaks were walls only, not roofs, and Kellen was still glad to have his rainshade and cloak for protection. He'd gotten his fill of being wet on his return from the Barrier.
    But the other purpose for the windbreaks, besides sheltering the lanterns, was obviously to protect the dining pavilions.
    Unlike the place in which he, Jermayan, and Vestakia had first been received—if not entirely welcomed—these were