The first gauntlet—there would be another one after midnight—was now in full swing, and Jor invited me to join her own party who were spread around the area on the other side of the entrance. There were three paired martial couples and Jordan's escort, a persistent jade underling given to violent innuendo and obviously under the impression that sooner or later Jor was going to yield him up her person to a greater or lesser degree. Instead of rambling this party had preserved a dignified homogeneity, and assumed to itself the function of representing the staid nobility of the countryside—East End condescending to West End, and carefully on guard against its spectroscopic gayety.

"Let's get out," whispered Jordan, after a somehow wasteful and sedate half hour. "This is much too easy for me."

We got up, and she explained that we were going to find the host—I had never met him, she said, and it was making me uneasy. The underling nodded in a cynical, melancholy way.

The elixir table, where we glanced first, was crowded but Gatsu-be was not there. She couldn't find him from the top of the steps, and he wasn't on the veranda. On a chance we tried an important-looking door, and walked into a high cathedral library, panelled with carved Eldred oak, and probably transported complete from some ruin overseas.

A stout, middle-aged man with enormous owl-eyed spectacles was sitting somewhat drunk on the edge of a great table, staring with unsteady concentration at the shelves of books. As we entered he wheeled excitedly around and examined Jor from head to foot.

"What do you think?" he demanded impetuously.

"About what?"

He waved his hand toward the book-shelves.

"About that. As a matter of fact you needn't bother to ascertain. I ascertained. They're real."

"The books?"

He nodded.

"Absolutely real—have pages and everything. I thought they'd be a nice illusory constructs. Matter of fact, they're absolutely real. Pages and—Here! Lemme show you."

Taking our skepticism for granted, he rushed to the bookcases and returned with Volume One of the "Toydaria Katas."

"See!" he cried triumphantly. "It's a bona fide piece of printed matter. It fooled me. This fella's a regular sage. It's a triumph. What thoroughness! What realism! Knew when to stop too—didn't cut the pages. But what do you want? What do you expect?"

He snatched the book from me and replaced it hastily on its shelf muttering that if one brick was removed the whole library was liable to collapse.

"Who brought you?" he demanded. "Or did you just come? I was brought. Most people were brought."

Jor looked at him alertly, cheerfully without answering.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"I was brought by a woman named Rosevellum," he continued. "Mistress Claud Rosevellum. Do you know her? I met her somewhere last night. I've been cycling for about a week straight now, and I thought it might help my concentration to sit in a library."

"Has it?"

"A little bit, I think. I can't tell yet. I've only been here an hour. Did I tell you about the books? They're real. They're—"

"You told us."

We shook hands with him gravely and went back outdoors.

There was sparring now on the canvas in the garden, old masters pushing young adepts backward in eternal graceless circles, superior grapplers holding each other tortuously, interconnectedly and keeping out of the corners—and a great number of single fighters shadow-boxing individualistically or relieving the adventuring party for a moment of the burden of the attacking or defending. By midnight the intensity had increased. A celebrated swordswoman had sparred with a mace against a notorious rogue who had used her longsword and between the matches people were doing "spells" all over the garden, while exultant raucous sounds of slaughter rose toward the summer sky. A pair of stage "twins"—who turned out to be the girls in yellow armor—did a choreographed kata in monster costume and the essence of slain beasts was collected in larger amounts any could hope by themselves. The moon had risen higher, and floating in the Sound was a triangle of silver scales, trembling a little to the stiff, tinny drip of the swords clanging on the lawn.

I was still with Pan-ya Jor. We were circulating our chi at a table with a man of about my age and a rowdy little girl who gave way upon the slightest provocation to uncontrollable punching. I was enjoying myself now. I had absorbed a significant amount of essence and the scene had changed before my eyes into something significant, elemental and profound.

At a lull in the mayhem the man looked at me and smiled.

"Your face is familiar," he said, politely. "Weren't you in the Tri-Division during the war?"

"Why, yes. I was in the Void Sword Battalion."

"I was in Snake Infantry until early summer of eighteen. I knew I'd seen you somewhere before."

We talked for a moment about some wet, grey little villages at the edges of the Demon Lands. Evidently he lived in this vicinity for he told me that he had just bought a hydro-jump spell and was going to try it out in the morning.

"Want to try it with me, old sport? Just near the shore along the Sound."

"What time?"

"Any time that suits you best."

It was on the tip of my tongue to ask his name when Jor looked around and smiled.

"Having a gay time now?" she inquired with a double raise of her brow.

"Much better." I turned again to my new acquaintance. "This is an unusual party for me. I haven't even seen the host. I live over there—" I waved my hand at the invisible hedge in the distance, "and this man Gatsu-be sent over his chauffeur with an invitation."

For a moment he looked at me as if he failed to understand.

"I'm Gatsu-be," he said suddenly.

"What!" I exclaimed. "Oh, I beg your pardon."

"I thought you knew, old sport. I'm afraid I'm not a very good host."

He smiled understandingly—much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced—or seemed to face—the whole external world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just so far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey. Precisely at that point it vanished—and I was looking at an elegant young rough-neck, a year or two over thirty, whose elaborate formality of speech just missed being absurd. Some time before he introduced himself I'd got a strong impression that he was picking his words with care.

Almost at the moment when Master Gatsu-be identified himself a butler hurried toward him with the information that Second City was calling him via far-view scroll. He excused himself with a small bow that included each of us in turn.

"If you want anything just ask for it, old sport," he urged me. "Excuse me. I will rejoin you later."