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little more than canopies suspended on poles. Even in the rain, the entire garden was lit as brightly as the common room of Kellen's house, and very little of it was really open to the falling rain. Their cloaks were taken from them as they arrived at the edge of the garden, leaving them their light and elegant rainshades. The garden was already filled with Elves, their rainshades making them look like fabulous flowers.
    "Like it?" Idalia said, gesturing around.
    "Everyone's already here," Kellen said uneasily. "Are we late?"
    "No. The honored guests arrive last. And of course, having spent all day putting this together, they certainly expect you to take some time to admire it before the banquet begins. Let's look around."
    Idalia put her free hand on his arm and led Kellen forward. He didn't see much of the garden as it normally was—but he did see a lot of dining pavilions, and oiled-paper lanterns, and people he knew. All of Sentarshadeen was here tonight indeed, and he and Idalia stopped several times to speak politely to people that Kellen knew from the time he'd spent on the work crews watering the forest, and to several of Idalia's friends as well.
    All the time his sense of dread grew. Everything seemed so quiet, so… formal. He wouldn't be able to get through this evening without making some terrible error. He knew it.
    "We'll be sitting over there, under that green awning," Idalia said, when their slow meander finally brought them within range of the canopies.
    In the back of his mind, Kellen had been wondering where everyone was going to sit. Under the tents, obviously, but surely there weren't enough tables and chairs—not to mention plates and cups—in the city to host a banquet for its entire populace? Unless the Elves had built them all—but in two days? He sort of thought that would take greater magic than they claimed to possess.
    He glanced around.
    He was surprised to see that what was under the awnings wasn't large, long banquet tables—such as he would have seen in Armethalieh—but instead an assortment of tables in various shapes, sizes, and woods. All harmonious, of course, in the Elven fashion, but certainly not giving the impression they'd all been built for the occasion. In fact…
    He was sure he recognized some of the furnishings. Surely that table under the rose-colored canopy was from the House of Leaf and Star? Yes, he was sure of it. He'd eaten dinner at it his first night in Sentarshadeen, alone with Ashaniel, Lairamo, and Sandalon.
    Suddenly Kellen realized why the tables and chairs—and the tableware as well—were a harmonious assortment instead of an harmonious whole. It might be held in the gardens of the House of Leaf and Star, but the tables and chairs were from nearly every home in Sentarshadeen.
    Andoreniel and Ashaniel weren't giving this banquet. The entire city was.
    Kellen felt himself relax at last. He realized he'd been thinking of tonight in Armethaliehan terms—of this banquet as an event meant to crush spectators and participants with its magnificence and to inspire them with thoughts of their own unworthiness to attend it. But if Elves thought that way, the House of Leaf and Star would be a cold and forbidding palace, terrible in its majesty.
    No.
    When the Elves said that this was a welcoming banquet, that was exactly what it was. Their ways might be strange, and their code of etiquette difficult for a human to understand or to follow, but that was what they meant. For all the garden's daunting and ethereal beauty, tonight had far more in common with the party the Centaurs and farmers had held back in the Wildwood to bid him and Idalia farewell than it did with anything that might ever occur in the Golden City!
    "The Elves are like no other people in the world," Idalia said quietly, watch-ing his face. "You read the Histories, back in the City? Where they talk about the Other Races? Do you remember what they say about the Elves?"
    "That they make living into Art?"