What sort of books would you prefer?

"...Historical books? Um, maybe aimed at someone who doesn't have much context, so, introductory. Other than that I don't really know what different kinds of books would be available." 

He can get A History of the Eldar by a Rúmil, describing the awakening of a bunch of Elves near a lake as fully grown adults and their development of Endorë civilization, the terrorization under Melkor, the Valar's quelling thereof, and the transit of some Elves to Valinor.

Vanyel finds a booth, sits down, and reads through most of it, only stopping to ask Bar for another mocha; he has a tendency to get very absorbed in books. Outside, the moon rises. Yfandes leaves him alone, until eventually she politely asks for a break, and Vanyel sits with his back against the door and keeps reading.

Vanyel surfaces when he runs out of both book, and paper to keep notes. He politely asks Cam for a folio or something to keep his notes, but maybe he'll take a break for a little while to play the lute (not one of the godawful songs written about him during the war). 

Cam can give him a notebook.

Vanyel can play his duplicate-lute for a while until the sun rises. "Cam? Were you going to check your mail again? Leareth might've answered by now." 

"Sure." Check.

Cam will find the following message. 

Letter to Cam
I would not normally be so forthright with a stranger whom I have little reason to trust. However, Herald Vanyel is well known to me, and if he is telling the truth rather than mad, then I definitely wish to know more, and I very likely will wish to aid you in your difficulties. Your specified method of communication is one that, according to my understanding of the world, most definitely should not work; if it does, my understanding of reality is fundamentally wrong, and ‘there are other worlds’ is among the simpler explanations. It is not full confirmation that Vanyel is being honest or that his understanding of the situation is correct rather than misled, so I do intend to take precautions and will not yet share everything. (Although, of course, if your abilities are what I think they are and you are not friendly to my goals, I suspect you can learn it anyway.) 

As I am sure Vanyel will have said, it is not clear from your perspective that you ought to trust me either. This is reasonable and I will have to earn that trust. To give some background from my side of things: many centuries ago, in a kingdom that does not exist anymore, I decided that a number of problems were unacceptable. (An incomplete list: extreme social inequality and an entrenched nobility, the near-complete lack of an education system, high levels of infant mortality and death from illness due to a severe lack of trained Healers or skilled un-Gifted medics, minimal state policing of roads leading to excessive robbery and crime rings.) I became an advisor to the King, and made some headway on addressing these issues, and then events intervened and I did not succeed in my goal. Fortunately, I had already laid plans for immortality, since it was immediately obvious that one lifetime would never be enough and, given the history I saw behind me, I did not trust that anybody else would continue this work. It is a frustrating task in a world of meddling gods that, at this point, clearly do not wish for any mortal to succeed in changing the status quo. I sympathize with your situation, facing gods who sound significantly worse.

Also, you are someone who has fought a god and won, albeit at an agonizing cost. Given the analogs to my situation here in Velgarth, I would also appreciate your advice. 

If your method for receiving this message works as I theorize it must, then the following list of further resources ought to be easily obtainable. Vanyel has already worked to verify many of my factual claims. 

Yours sincerely,

Leareth

...

And then Leareth gives a list of books on various subjects, which he states are mostly written by him under other names, such as his work designing education systems, a history of the Eastern Empire, and further treatises on said Empire's supply chain logistics, economic policies, and examination-based selection of government workers, as well as his theories regarding his world's laws and behavior of magic. 

He also provides a map and specifies a location where Cam can leave a return letter. Vanyel can confirm that said place is just outside the Valdemaran border, but less than fifty miles away to the northwest. 

"He gave me a heck of a reading list."

Vanyel can’t help but smirk slightly. “He’s got a habit of that - and it’s a lot harder for me to hunt down his rare old book recommendations. Anyway, I’ve read most of those, if you trust my summary. Not recently though.”

"Maybe you can give me an idea of what order to read in, and I can catch up on all this with the door closed so I look very fast."

"Hmm. In terms of guessing whether our world has magic that can help you, obviously his treatise on magical theory – which I haven't read and I'm very curious if he's told me everything in it or held some back. If you want to get a sense of how he thinks, maybe the one on education? Or skim the early Eastern Empire history. He founded it, so a lot of the early decisions were ones he made or influenced, but he moved on to other things and its current state is less relevant. The rest are more specific so I'd save them for a deeper dive if you think that's worthwhile."

Vanyel grins briefly. "And, yes, it'll impress him to no end if you seem to read all of this in an hour. Though I don't put it past him to somehow guess about the time-pausing effect soon." 

"How is he expecting me to put something in this place? I can't see it. I can aim for it blind but I won't be able to hit a very precise spot."

Vanyel shrugs. "I don't know that he expects it to be convenient for you. We kind of wrecked one of his main courier systems within Valdemar a while back, so it may just be the most feasible for him. Or could be he's guessing at what your magic does and trying to test it. Anyway, I can ride there in, um, not no time but much faster than you'd expect, Companions aren't normal horses. Oh, and actually I've been to that border town – I can just Gate." 

And then he makes a face that he quickly tries to hide. "I wouldn't say I'm fond of Gating, but it's not far." 

"I could send a drone and use it to aim, I just wasn't expecting him to know that."

"...I can't imagine he's guessed that specifically, no, but I imagine he's wondering if magic that can pluck a letter from one place to another given just the first line and sender – which is really all I implied about yours – can also put it in an arbitrary location, and whether it comes with Sight to aim, and I'm not worried about an ambush but I do wonder if he'll have a spell set up to see if actually I just show up on 'Fandes." And infer what he infers from that, probably holding some skepticism that they're concealing Cam's full power. 

He's starting to relax, now that it sounds like he might be able to avoid Gating. "If what you need is something to aim for, I can find it with Farsight and then scry it for you – er, I could share the Foresight directly, I'm a strong enough Mindspeaker, but that involves some unavoidable level of mindreading even if I'm very careful not to actually look at your thoughts. Um, that's assuming you do want to let Leareth make guesses about how powerful you are, beyond the access to other worlds part." 

"I don't know if the scrying trick would work. Cameras don't - those are devices that can show a picture of a location in another location in real time."

Vanyel nods. "How do these 'drones' work, then, and why is that different? Would it be like, I don't know, sending a trained falcon and scrying from a focus around its neck the whole route, so you've seen all of it?" 

"So there's two ways I could do it with a drone - I could send the drone already carrying the letter, like a carrier pigeon, and have it drop it off, using a camera to steer. No making anything at a distance. Or I could have the drone fly there, steering to the right place with a camera, and then tell me exactly in what direction and precise distance it is relative to me - or, rather, my computer - and I can use that. But without a visual or proprioceptive direct lock on the place, or a really exact figure like 'fifty miles thirty-seven feet six inches, and another ten feet up in elevation' - I can't be sure I won't land the letter in a mountain, or worse in the middle of somebody waiting for it."

...That's a gruesome mental image. It does give him another idea, though. 

"I can combine Farsight and Fetching," he says. "Since I'm doing both. Farseeing from a map starts with something like aiming blindly down a bearing, and then once I've found the place, it gives me something like what I think you mean by 'proprioceptive direct lock'. On the one hand I don't have the strongest Fetching Gift and I've never tried fifty miles, but on the other, a letter doesn't weigh much. I'll be exhausted after but if I rest with the door shut and it won't matter."

He shrugs. "Your method would work as well, either way, if you're fine with him making some wild guesses about how your magic works based on it. Probably wrong guesses, since this is a machine and not a magical artifact, but still." He really needs to ask Bar for recommendations of books about computers sometime. 

"Making a drone has the advantage of being non-exhausting. Is it bad if he figures out how I work?"

"...Let me think about that." Vanyel closes his eyes, bringing his hands to both temples. "It's...not bad if he decides to help you. Which I think is, ummm, at least eight in ten odds? Maybe nine in ten?" He shrugs. "It only matters in cases where he decides to cause problems for you, specifically, instead. Which would be hard to pull off. If his goals aren't what he claims, he can definitely make my life a nightmare, but all you have to do is kick me out and close the door, and he can't get at you even in principle. Not to mention, I'm pretty sure your power has him outclassed no matter how much he knows about it. I'm in the habit of not revealing anything to him without a good reason, but that's mainly because I'm in a relatively vulnerable position." 

He frowns. "In case I'm missing some obvious vulnerability that he'll see and exploit because he's smarter than I am."

:'Fandes?: He's not sure he actually wants her advice, she's been strange and prickly about all of this, but he can feel her simmering unease even through his shields and he really ought to ask. 

She doesn't answer at first. 

:Leareth as good as told us he intends to fight the gods: she sends finally, mindvoice tense. :Doesn't actually matter what for – I'm not sure we should be giving him any more weapons for that: 

It's the same stupid argument they've been having for two years, and if he spends much longer at it, Cam is going to notice him staring into space again. :'Fandes, you know how I feel about it. It's really up to Cam, if he wants to help. I just want Cam to be able to bring back his dead people – is that really too much to ask?:

:He destroyed a planet and all the living things on it: Acid in her mindvoice. :Chosen, I know how you feel – it's done, he had a good reason, worth it, and now that's the world we're in and it's better if the million dead people can get resurrected. But, just... I don't know how to feel about helping him: 

...Is that what she's been upset about this entire time? It's not the ideal response, but Vanyel doesn't know what to say or do about it, so he blocks her, and returns his eyes to Cam, trying to look attentive. "Um, any thoughts?" 

"In my original world billions of people have known about daeva for more than a hundred years and have given some thought to what to do about how powerful we are. There are ways to inconvenience us but that boils down to not letting him see a summoning circle, and even if he did, there'd be more steps to inconvenience me personally about it."

"Huh. Then I guess you don't need to worry and the drone plan seems best. Honestly, I'm used to being the single most powerful person on this planet aside from him and still needing to worry, but you're in another league." 

(Vanyel wonders whether a Valdemaran god could inconvenience Cam, remembers what happened to the last god that was doing something he disliked, and quickly tightens his shields just in case Yfandes is listening, hoping that Cam doesn't notice his sudden wince.) 

If he sees it he does't comment on it.