"Do itashimash'te,Ishiyama Jiro-sama," the monk replied softly. "It is we who are honored that the Dragon sends you to grace us with your skill. Be assured that your preparations will not be disturbed. In four hours, I will send Kurita Yorinaga-ji to you."

"Domo arigato."Ishiyama bowed deeply and did not straighten up until the monk had silently departed the chamber. Ishiyama studied the garden. As his eyes followed the path of flat stones leading from the entrance to the tea house, he allowed himself to become absorbed in the beauty the monks had created. The garden, by its artistry and resonance, touched him deeply and peeled away layers of emotion and inner conflicts. The scene restored him to the centered feeling of peace that his trip across seven jump points had stripped away.

Ishiyama forced his mind to the cavern and the garden and his mission. He removed his thick, quilted mittens, stuffed them into his coat pockets, pulled off his boots, and then crossed to where a bamboo rake lay hidden in a shadowed niche. Brandishing it with the care and reverence a warrior might give to his 'Mech, Ishiyama slowly stepped out onto the stone path. Three stones out, he used the rake to gently tease four small pieces of gravel onto that third stone. He did nothing to change or repair how the gravel had fallen, and it might have been only that the last person to rake the gravel had been careless.

Ishiyama allowed himself a brief smile. Deliberately careless.Ishiyama knew that Kurita Yorinaga-ji would immediately spot the small white pebbles on the broad gray steppingstone. He knew, too, that Yorinaga-ji would take them as the first sign that the perfect universe, the universe that had trapped him, was changing.

Ishiyama looked up and concentrated. If the tea house is Luthien, then... He turned to the left and squinted. Reaching out with the butt of the rake, he gently pressed it into the gravel. Mallory's World, the site of Yorinaga-ji's disgrace, would be here.

Ishiyama reversed the rake and used the broad, toothed end to subtly alter the flowing wavelines around the mark he'd made for Mallory's World. Slowly, and with a patience bordering upon the superhuman, he reworked the gravel until one could see, if one knew how to look, minute ripples spreading from that point. Advancing ahead three more path-stones, Ishiyama completed the eleventh concentric ripple-ring—one for each year since Yorinaga-ji had disgraced himself. It was now just over an hour since he had first laid eyes on the garden.

Ishiyama backtracked to the garden's edge, and removed his coat and hat. The chill air sliced through the midnight-blue silken kimono he wore, and Ishiyama unconsciously retied the silver obi a bit tighter. Though difficult to see in the soothing half-light, a dragon figure coiled around the kimono, woven into the garment with slightly darker blue thread.

Ishiyama again studied the tea house and compared it to Luthien's location on the star chart he'd memorized. Further to the left than the mark he'd made for Mallory's World, and just a bit closer to the tea house, he touched one edge of the rake into the sea of pebbles to mark the location of Chara. With benign and skillful care, he flipped the rake over and used its flat edge to smooth away any trace of his original mark on the stones. Only the briefly broken lines of the stone-sea currents suggested that any movement had occurred.

Ishiyama allowed himself another smile. Most would miss it.He shook his head. But not Yorinaga-ji.

Finally, Ishiyama walked the path to the tea house, but he did not enter it. Instead, he carefully walked around the tea house's narrow ledge out onto the ocean of gravel behind it. He sighted a perfect spot to represent the planet Echo, and boldly touched the rake butt into the gravel to mark it. Backtracking, he raked the stones back into their previous pattern. By the time he had returned to the tea house, only the invisible depression representing Echo gave any clue to his passage.

Though Ishiyama knew Yorinaga-ji would never look out behind the tea house to see his work, he also knew it had to be done. It makes the garden mine, and makes thecha-no-yu complete. Yorinaga-ji would expect no less of me, and because of that, he has no need to confirm the presence of the mark.

Ishiyama worked his way back down the stone path, carefully avoiding the four pebbles, and returned the rake to its niche. Gathering up his coat and boots, he carried them to the tea house, where he knelt at the doorway, bowed once, and slid open the door.

He should have expected it, but the tea house's simplicity and beauty took his breath away. The waiting area, built slightly below the interior chamber where the cha-no-yuwould actually take place, had been constructed of hand-fitted woodwork. The pieces of wood had been chosen for their color and grain, and polished to a softly glowing sheen. Though one could make out the seams between the different pieces of wood, the natural patterns in each piece flowed together and provided the illusion that the whole floor and lower walls had been laid in with one huge piece of wood.

The paper used to make the walls seemed, at first glance, to be unadorned. No landscapes or calligraphed snippets of wisdom spoiled the panels' translucent beauty. As Ishiyama slowly slid the door panel shut behind him, he saw that the paper did bear a decoration. It had been worked, with great subtlety and delicacy, as a watermark into the paper itself. Thus did Ishiyama see images of trees and tigers, of waves and fish, of hawks and hares and, of course, of the Dragon.

Silently, out of respect for the setting and because no noise was required, Ishiyama crossed through the waiting area and slid open the door to the raised room where he would perform the cha-no-yu.The two black lacquered cases lay just to the right of the tall brass urn rising up through a square opening in the floor. Ishiyama did not need to see the thin gray ribbons of smoke twisting through the hot air to know that a fire burned within the urn. He could feel the waves of heat washing off the urn itself, and the scent of burning cedar filled the room.

In the center of the room, Ishiyama saw a low, rectangular table. It had been oriented perfectly with the shape of the room, and Ishiyama now changed that. Instead of leaving the table's narrow end to coincide with the narrow parts of the room, he gently slid it around on the polished oaken floor so that it sat almost perpendicular to its earlier position. Still, he did not fully straighten it, but left it canted at a slight angle and pushed off-center. Perfect symmetry traps the mind within the bounds of reality.

Ishiyama knelt down to open the first case. Inside, swathed in thick folds of foam padding, lay the Coordinator's own tea service set. Taking a deep breath to calm himself, Ishiyama fought the panic and weight of responsibility that threatened to crush him from both inside and out. The Coordinator has entrusted me with these items so that I might perform a delicate mission. I will not fail him.

The first things he withdrew from the case were three tatami,the mats on which the participants would kneel during the ceremony. The first, a brilliant red, Ishiyama placed at the wide side of the table that lay deepest in the room. He withdrew a small ruler from inside his kimono and made sure that the red mat lay exactly twenty centimeters from the edge of the table.

On the other side of the table, Ishiyama unfurled the second tatami.This one was a rosy-pink, and he made sure it lay thirty-five centimeters from the table's edge. Finally, at the narrow end of the table closest to the brass charcoal urn, Ishiyama unrolled his own plain mat for the ceremony and placed it forty-five centimeters from the table's black edge. His end of the table, because of the diagonal alignment, placed him below either of the other mats.