She appears above a bit of frozen wasteland. She falls, conscious but without making a peep, to the ground, and breaks a few more bones.
She lies there.
A Farseer checks the ward location with the mage currently diving into the spell to see what, if any, magic just happened. (Sometimes there are false alarms for no reason.)
They move their Farsight to the general location where Leareth's very comprehensive wards on the northern tundra think that something, they don't know what, just happened.
:Get Aldrin: Leareth orders. Aldrin is a mage-Farseer who can Gate from Farsight but he's not at this facility. :Send a Healer through too, bring her - basement, I think:
He could Gate himself and be there in seconds but he doesn't know who she is or how she got there - that wasn't a Gate, whatever it was - and she doesn't look entirely human and he's confused. Leareth doesn't like being confused. The basement is extremely well shielded, though, and also Nayoki is here.
Aldrin is alerted by communication-spell and then Gated over from the other compound, that takes a couple of minutes, and then he Farsees the location himself, goes down to the basement and raises a Gate.
The other end appears on thin air several yards away from the woman. Some people in warm-weather clothing pile through, one of them carrying blankets.
Othersenses are immediately on alert. Is she a mage? Carrying any magic weapons?
She is EMPHATICALLY NOT A HUMAN. She's breathing through the wings as well as her nose, for one thing, and arguably is overall more plant than animal, though she has bones and blood where you'd expect those. She doesn't have a neck injury and doesn't seem to be getting worse and when they pick her up she weighs thirty pounds.
They take her through and it's much warmer inside. They lay her down on a padded cot. The blanket can come off so they can get a better look at her injuries (and because she apparently doesn't like it, though they don't say that out loud.)
"I am going to do some Healing," one of the Healers said. "I need to touch you for it, though. Can you - if you can communicate by blinking, can you blink twice now?"
All right. Yes-or-no questions, seems to work.
"Um, two blinks for yes and three blinks for no and I'll try to ask you some questions," the Healer says. (One blink seems too easy to get confused about.) Unfortunately most of their questions are not yes-or-no questions. "Is it okay if I touch you in order to Heal the broken bones?"
She has to consider that a while. If this mortal is bad enough at healing to need to touch targets she probably has to get her hands all over them and squeeze and poke and prod, which sounds SO UNPLEASANT, but still probably couldn't possibly take more than an hour on the outside if they can get a spell off at all? And letting the bones heal by themselves will sure be weeks. On the other hand they're showing no sign of knowing how to let her move around so fixing the bones won't actually be all that helpful and getting felt up by an incompetent sorcerer sounds so miserable. She blinks three times.
Okay then. The Healer sits back.
The woman...seems pretty harmless and disinclined to hurt them so far? And not to be here to assassinate Leareth specifically? On the other hand she is obviously not human at ALL and what is she doing here and if she's not under compulsions why can't she move. Also it's very possible for someone not to be here to assassinate Leareth specifically and still to be part of some Power's scheme to do so.
"Are you a nonhuman species?" the Healer asks.
...Well, she's visibly not a mage and her aura doesn't look like a Gifted person's at all although it does look...weird. Everything about this is weird. And she can't ask more about what the magic powers do because apparently she's under a ridiculous amount of mind-control. There's been a great deal of conversation happening in Mindspeech and Leareth doesn't want Nayoki to try to do anything yet because, well, when someone shows up under an absurd number of not-set-commands, maybe there's a reason for that and they should understand the situation slightly better before they mess with it more.
"Did you travel here deliberately for a specific reason?" the Healer asks.
"Well, you succeeded. And I think ended up very far away from - wherever-it-was you started. If you've heard of, er, Valdemar or Hardorn or Iftel, you're in that general region of the continent." Well north of it, actually, but Leareth is cagey about things in general and they're missing so much context here. "And we don't recognize your species or Gifts at all. I have no idea how you speak our languages." She doesn't even look like a Changecreature, not really, they're less alien than that.
Sigh. A few more Mindspeech comments are exchanged silently. The Healer is mostly feeling very bad for the poor woman now, but Leareth is still being paranoid. Just like him.
"Were you a prisoner before?" she asks.
Upstairs, receiving updates by Mindspeech from the Healer keyed to the shields, Leareth paces.
On the one hand, there's a maybe-dangerous alien creature probably from another world in his basement right now. With some sort of magic that's probably entirely new to him, that he wants to know everything about. And who understands them but seems unable to communicate or do anything else because of mind-control.
The obvious solution is to take off the mind-control or at least some of it, but Nayoki didn't recognize it - like set-commands, she said, but not done by a Mindhealer - and she wasn't a hundred percent sure she could take it off safely. Also he doesn't know why it's there. They're pretty sure she wasn't sent here as an agent by someone who wants Leareth dead, at least, but that doesn't mean she isn't dangerous.
He could coercively read her mind, or have Nayoki do it, but that sounds like a great way to have her never want to cooperate with anyone here ever.
Sigh.
:Aldrin, I am going to Gate out to the west bunker location and scry the room from there, in case she is in fact dangerous: It's possible she's the kind of dangerous that could follow his Gate, but there are a lot of shields against mage-energies between her and where he is now, she shouldn't even be aware of his existence (and her thoughts have shown no sign of it apparently), and just in case he can Gate in two steps, it's much less likely she could somehow follow both unless she has some sort of absurd past-sight.
:Yes. I want Farsight on the room - I can key you to the shields - and immediately pass a message if anything untoward happens. Not to me, to the troop compound at Noku, they can relay it on: He takes a breath, lets it out. :I am going to have Nayoki talk to her about removing the mind-control safely, or some of it at least, so we can find out where in all hells she came from and why she is here:
If she burns down his entire facility here or something he's going to be pretty irritated, but he does have backup copies of all the books elsewhere.
He Gates out.
She's not really sure what to do with that question? Of course sorcery can be dangerous? These mortals have some but maybe all they have is their teleporting thing and being really bad at healing, she's not sure. She will go with blink blink blink because there are obviously other ways to not be dangerous with sorcery such as not doing it or only doing kinds that are not dangerous.
"If we help you become un-mind-controlled, do you have any intention of hurting anybody here once you are freed from it."
Nayoki is going to guess 'not' from her (limited) sense of the woman so far. But she has the Haighlei variant of truth magic; it's not like the Heralds' truth spell, it's always there when she wants it to be. Even if she weren't passively reading the nonhuman woman's surface thoughts, she would know.
Wow, Nayoki really wants to know who 'he' is now and whether he would be able to fight off a set-command to the face. This is a horrible way to keep someone imprisoned and she's mad at whoever did it. - She has to admit Leareth would totally do it if he thought there was a good reason, but he never has before this point.
"I have a kind of mind-magic that can fix most forms of mind-control," she says, "and I want to do that for you, but I have not seen this kind before and also you are not human and your mind may be different. Do you know if there is a safe non-magical way to undo it?"
Blink blink but also she's now pretty fucking tense. If they feed her, which they can because nothing is ever allowed to get between Thorn and his kinks, not even Thorn's own cleverness, they can let her go. But they have no idea what they're doing so who knows if they'll think of that, they haven't even wondered if she's hungry yet.
That's the weirdest kind of mind-control she's ever heard of, what.
Also, now she has a quandary, which is whether to try to free this person sooner at the cost of revealing they're reading her mind. Which they'll presumably end up having to reveal eventually if she sticks around any length of time, and she's likely to be more pissed about it the longer they put that off, but also if they piss her off now they don't, actually, know anything yet. And Leareth told her not to contact him directly unless there was a true emergency, in case the person's unknown magic includes tracking and she turns out to be hostile.
He also told her to use her judgement on talking to her and making her feel welcome, because Leareth really wants to know where she's from and how she got here and everything about her magic, and it seems more likely they'll get that with her active cooperation. Also they won't be able to keep her here against her will once she's not mind-controlled, and Nayoki has a hard time telling what does what, in there, so she can't let the woman talk without also letting her decide to pop out the same way she arrived here. Probably, even if she is pissed, she won't be hostile enough to the people who freed her to try to hurt them if they don't attempt to trap her against her will? And if they are, Leareth is in an unknown location right now and, knowing him, probably scrying from a distance to watch what's happening.
Nayoki takes a deep breath. In her judgement, she's pretty sure lying to people is not optimal for getting along with them in the longer term, and fessing up sooner is better than clearly putting it off as long as possible, especially since this is a very natural moment for it.
"The kind of mind-magic I have means I can read your surface thoughts," she says. "If we give you food we can then do something to free you? Enaka can get food for you now."
She doesn't really hear the rest of the question because now she is trying to multiply 451 in her head by itself a couple times because that's where she left off when she last tried to calculate the cube root of ninety-four million. "Enaka" makes a little snap-ripple in her mind anyway.
Huh that's really obvious to Mindhealing-Sight and Nayoki has no idea what it is and doesn't like it. She passes on in Mindspeech that people should not say anyone's name in front of the stranger until they understand why her head does that. Fortunately no one else thinks this has happened at all until now.
Responding to someone reading your mind by immediately filling your head with math is a really reasonable response and quite clever actually, but it's also so inconvenient! Nayoki hopes the woman will at least be paying enough attention to notice that they're trying to feed her and, like, maybe cooperate with this process at all.
She notices the food - looks like, uh, she has no idea what it is actually but it smells edible - and doesn't stop with the math but sort of slows down at it, taking little moments between steps to consider if this is a good idea, they haven't hurt her but - no, that's Enaka, that won't work at all anyway, 452 times 452 is 204,304 and...
Nayoki would really like to know what they're doing! For that it'd be helpful if the stranger could talk and inform them of how anything works where she comes from, because it seems to have nothing in common with the kinds of magic Nayoki knows.
She pops the bread into her mouth and waits.
The fairy chews, and swallows, and doesn't really like the butter but thinks the bread's all right, and in between figuring out what 204,304 times 452 is, attempts to think loudly and clearly that 1) as soon as she can talk her new master should please STOP READING HER MIND, WHAT THE FUCK and 2) the phrase she's looking for might be "I rescind all your orders".
Great, that's really helpful.
:Get her one of the shield-talismans for Thoughtsensing, please: she says to Enaka, because that seems like a friendly thing to do for someone who is understandably mad at you for reading their mind, even though it's not like they could gotten to the right set of actions very easily any other way.
"I rescind all your orders," she says, and stops reading the woman's thoughts but does keep watching a bit with Mindhealing-Sight just to see what happens to all those not-set-commands.
"Can you tell us what is going on now?" Nayoki says. "- Oh, here. This is a magical talisman that blocks mindreading abilities. I have already stopped reading your mind because you asked, but I thought you might prefer more assurance of it." She's backed off on the specifics of Mindhealing Sight too; she's only watching in the blurred-out way that lets her gauge truth or falsehood. "Anyway. You should probably assume we know nothing of where you come from or how anything works there, because everything that has happened so far is baffling to me."
"For any pair of people at least one of whom is a fairy it is possible for a relationship called vassalization to exist; one party is the vassal, the other the master, though it's possible for people to be mutually vassals. This relationship can be created when and only when none previously exists with strongly claimed food, and the party who eats it is the vassal; it can also be created with knowledge of someone's name and then the person whose name is known is the vassal."
"She was not going to hurt you anyway, she is a Healer. ...You refused treatment, earlier, is that because Healing magic in your world does not work very well or something? I thought maybe you had Healed yourself before, but also that the injuries might be part of the orders I rescinded somehow."
"Healing in our world works by Seeing what is wrong in the body and then Healers can set it right, I think skilled Healers can do it without touch but it makes it much harder. - Does your magic interact with being touched in some way, or is that purely a preference you have?"
Nayoki nods. She sits back and tries to think over what the right questions even are to ask, here. What other magic the woman possesses, of course, but...she's missing some steps here...
"...Um, do people in your world usually go by pet names or something, if names have power like that? Is there something I should call you?"
Nayoki waits for introductions to be complete and then sits back in her chair. "I want to ask you more questions about your magic - and tell you about ours - because I think we are still missing a lot here and I do not want to trip over it. But - what do you want, from here? I am guessing you do not care to go back to Fairyland, given..." Vague hand gesture. "Do you need some time to rest and get settled? You just got out of a bad situation, it sounds like."
"Huh. I wonder if we could help you get a cutting of it sooner. Depending what forces he has staking it out."
Nayoki frowns, thoughtful. Leareth wanted the strange nonhuman not to know anything of his existence until they'd established a bit more of what was going on, here, but she's starting to feel like they're getting to that point.
She takes a deep breath. "I work for someone who sensed the magic from your sudden arrival in his territory, which is why people quickly came to retrieve you. He was alarmed at first, most sudden incursions from elsewhere in our world would be hostile, but your landing here seems unrelated." She's not sure of that but it doesn't sound like something any of the gods Leareth knows of could have arranged. "Separately he is very curious about your magic and particularly about the indication that other worlds exist, and - I believe would be willing to trade substantial resources and aid in exchange for knowing more."
"Hmm. Well, we have another kind of sense that is specifically for magic. I think your tear must have showed up to it, that is what the wards detected. Your orders from Thorn did not show up as magic but they were visible to my Mindhealing Sight, which is a different kind of Sight - like Thoughtsensing, which is blocked right now by your talisman, but it shows only the structure of minds and not any of the content."
"I am not looking anymore since there is no reason to, but - sort of like this." She gets a piece of paper and sketches the outline of what her Sight sees. "Unless I am trying to get details, which I was not, it is mostly just an overall shape. And then your orders looked like this." She draws an approximation of the not-set-commands on top. It's kind of a terrible drawing, Nayoki is not artistically talented.
"Most Gifts on our world come with Sight. Healing-Sight shows the insides of bodies, for example, and Empathy reads emotions - neither of us here has that one. Farsight is a Gift that lets you see things far away, although this can also be done by a mage, with a spell called scrying. Fetching moves objects, we are not sure if it has Sight..."
She goes through the full list of known Velgarth Gifts.
"Well, when one is trying to solve very complicated problems in a world with limited resources, and it turns out there is another world out there, the obvious next question is whether it has resources that would help with our world's problems." This is almost word-for-word what Leareth said to her before leaving. "It - changes a great many things, if there are other worlds at all. The person who I work for thinks it calls for a full re-evaluation of what is possible and what strategies are available to him."
"Many of them, really. It would be his decision whether to tell you more details, I think, but that is why he was especially interested in learning more about you, despite the initial alarm. He is elsewhere right now since he was not sure if you were dangerous and what your intentions here are."
"Water? Also I don't know how convenient it will be for you and Sunspring to be available to feed me, so if that's going to be only sometimes available, I should eat now. ...something more like, uh, a plant? Than the thing from before, which wasn't much like a plant."
"Like, vegetables, you mean? Bread is made of flour from grain, so it's from a plant originally, but I guess there's a lot of steps, and butter is from cow's milk so not a plant. I can make you up a meal that's mostly vegetables and beans or something. I don't know what your other nutritional needs are."
He smiles slightly, then sits down.
"I am trying to decide how best to approach this. I - am quite invested in learning more about your world, because discovering the existence of another world seems like one of the most important things that has ever happened, and - it may offer better solutions to Velgarth's problems than the ones I had available before, so it calls for significant reevaluation. I also have considerable resources that may help with your problems, whatever those are, and - obviously the best position from which to learn about another world, is one where I can be allied with a native. However, we know very little about one another right now, and so I am not yet comfortable sharing sensitive information with you, and I expect you might have hesitations as well."
"Strategic information on my plans, mostly, in cases where secrecy is key because various people - or gods - will interfere if there is any opportunity. I am not ruling out telling you at some point, and there are many less specific things I am willing to share that will, I hope, let you make your own evaluation."
"Ah. Fair enough. I am not sure what you would consider sensitive, but - my point is that I understand if you would be reluctant to tell me certain things before you know what I would do with that knowledge. And - I am judging it incorrect, here, to try to learn things against your will."
"Of those glowgolds and razorfeet are breeding kinds... I think glowgolds like to leave their children in the mortal world and steal mortals directly from there, sometimes. They glow. Razorfeet are kind of mean or at least the colony that lived near me was. Patient mossies can turn themselves to stone for predetermined intervals whenever they like and they often do that when people are bothering them. Pollenclouds give off pollen, inhaling that can work like a food claim, and they're little -" She gestures about ten inches high. "Painted tailwings - I forget actually what the one I knew could do, it must not have been very good - pretty wings though. Berrybushes have antlers and grow berries on them, those are strong food claims. Knifewings have claws and sharp wings and they can claw through any material they want. Some fairies aren't kinds, they're one-offs, but I've never met any of those, they're very rare... Creekpearls exist and I'd recognize one but I don't know much else about them... broadears can hear from far away, dewflowers heal fast, shrublies I don't know what they do, sunshine tepals are breeders but I don't know if they have anything else..."
"You said that, but - it seems like giving up far too soon to ignore the existence of another world simply because it is risky for people of my species." Slight sigh. "Would you - or perhaps other fairies - be open to trade with this world, if there were transport between them? I am not sure if that has happened previously with the mortal world you already knew of."
"It is somewhat complicated. The most direct answer is that we are trying to fight the gods. The reason is because They, almost universally, seem to dislike innovation and progress that improve the lives of mortals, and so my earlier attempts to found kingdoms that were better places to live tended to be stopped, and I think I cannot win that fight without taking it directly to Them. The specific plans and strategies are not something I wish to share, and also - may be subject to change, given the new information. Most of the people at this particular facility do magical research, mainly god-related."
"It is a much larger organization than just the people here! We have a considerable military presence, for example; one reason why is that this area is not claimed by any gods, but I do not take for granted They would not like to claim it, if I left that option possible."
"They have mages and other Gifted people with combat training, and un-Gifted soldiers with non-magical weapons, usually. And horses. The gods here cannot do large miracles in the material world very efficiently, so Their interventions often included nudging a different mortal kingdom's army into inconveniencing me."
Outside the long, mostly empty basement room that she was in before, there's a hallway, lit by a couple of lanterns. Leareth provides extra lighting with a mage-light above their heads.
Then there's another door, and then there are stairs! They're narrow, carved of stone and not quite polished to a smooth finish; they go up a dozen steps and then there's a landing where the stairs turn around and keep going. The "ceiling" above the first set is slanted, which turns out to be because there are more stairs running above it after the next landing, but Leareth stops there and opens the door.
"Hmm. I am guessing you do not have roads, and...probably this affects the placement of buildings in a town, but also your entire societal structure is different than ours, because of the court and vassalage framework. How are goods transported for trade? ...Oh, Sunspring did mention 'fairy gates'..."
"No roads. Not really... towns, either, I guess you could call big courts towns but it's not typical. Gates aren't used to transport within Fairyland because a gate goes between Fairyland and the previously-known mortal world, where sorcery doesn't work, not point to point. You also seem to be expecting... much more trade than there is? Are humans just really into trading things on large logistically complicated scales?"
"Yes. Most human civilizations at this point are organized in large states, and have considerable trade both internally and with other nations, it is the only way to really get specialization of labour and goods that require advanced craftsmanship, and also raw materials of various sorts, for building or for pottery or weapons or jewelry, are often found only in some regions. Not to mention most crops only grow in certain climates. Many spices that humans like to put in our food only grow in Seejay or further south - oh, for reference that is around a thousand miles south of here."
"We also do that here! Probably different magic, ours cannot make plants grow directly but we can use weather-barriers to make greenhouses that replicate a climate further south. On a small scale, though, because most humans are not mages." He's frowning, thoughtful. "You said sorcery does not work in the mortal world you knew of, but - your sorcery does work here?"
:Nayoki, make sure you let her see books that would only contain the names of people who are dead now: Leareth tells her privately. This shouldn't be hard. Most of the books in his collection are more than a century old. Some of them have his previous incarnations' chosen-names on them, but if 'Leareth' didn't count, then neither will any of them; he thinks back quickly if any share syllables with his original body's name, but none were selected in any way related to that one. He asks one of his staff to go check now and remove any that are phonetically close, though, just in case.
Nayoki also asks someone in private Mindspeech to go check the book index and remove any written more recently than a century ago, and then she can take Promise on a tour of the dining hall and show her the guest rooms and the public Work Room spaces (not the locked private offices or research setups.)
"I wonder why that is different! I suppose humans often get more nutrition from foods that are cooked, and also find them tastier. Is it inconvenient to light fires or use magic to heat things in Fairyland...?"
The library is now confirmed free of the names of any living people, and also of current royal families known to reuse the same names a lot for their descendants, so Sunspring can take her there.
Although she should check... "Promise, if you read a name in a book, and it is the name of a mortal who is long dead, but also is purely coincidentally the name of someone far from here you have never met, that is not the same as knowing their name and thus becoming their master, right? Humans in this world reuse names sometimes."
"I don't know how I'd do it without magic and a lot of fairies don't bother learning sorcery so maybe all the plants have been cultivated to taste good raw," Promise says. And of the books, "Yes, I have to specifically entertain the hypothesis that a specific person's name is or contains a specific syllable before it will click."
"Ah. Good to know." Sunspring's blurred-out background Sight still lets her see that Promise is telling the truth here.
She opens the door. "Well. This is our library."
It's not that large, but the shelves contain thousands of books, discreetly shuffled a bit to make the spots where books were removed less obvious, and it has a couple of writing-desks and some cozy chairs by a fireplace.
"Leareth is quite proud of his collection! Many of these ones are very rare, too, I think in some cases Leareth is the only one with copies." (Because he's Leareth, of course, everything here also has backup copies in various hidden records caches, which in general only he knows about.)
Magic!
In Velgarth, 'true magic' is often used as a term to refer to work done with mage-gift, and then there are the various more specific and single-purpose Gifts. Many places lump all of said Gifts together under 'mind-magic', even though some of them, like Fetching which moves or teleports objects, are really not very mind-related at all.
The book gives a list of the specific Gifts, most of which are pretty self-explanatory from the name and also match the list discussed with her before, and then it dives into the many, many applications of mage-gift. Gates! The much rarer permanent Gates! Weather-magic! Heating and lighting and protective barrier-walls. Illusions. Detection wards. Shielding against all of the other Gifts. And, of course, a very long list of combat applications, starting simple with fireballs and levinbolts (this seems to just describe lightning as cast by mages) and moving on to various clever trap-spells, like ones that paralyze an enemy who steps on the trap.
There's a sub-chapter on the summoning of extraplanar entities, which can be done by any mage above Master-level potential, but requires extensive specialized training to do skillfully. Elemental spirits from the four planes of Fire, Earth, Air or Water, and also Abyssal demons, can be given material-plane bodies constructed of mage-energies, which they control, and they bring some of their native magical abilities with them. Many air-spirits have an affinity for sensing minds and intent, for example, and fire elementals are very efficient at, well, starting fires. There's a kingdom in the far northwest of the continent that supposedly fuels its cookfires via mages making a contract with salamanders; they need to be paid in mage-energies, but on the ice and tundra, mage-energy is a lot cheaper than firewood.
Combat use of demon-summoning is frowned upon in most of Velgarth, because the demons are indiscriminate about who they attack, and tend to cause high civilian casualties. The priesthood of Karse are known to have used this strategy anyway in their many wars of conquest over the centuries, and also to have passed off salamander-summonings as miraculous signs from their god, Vkandis Sunlord.
There is a book that has more information about extraplanar entities. It's mostly very technical magical discussion of summoning and binding spells, but it also has pictures of the construct-bodies traditionally given to these visitors. The earth-elementals tend to look like lizards; the Abyssal demons have random, bizarre body plans that are mostly way too many eyes and claws and teeth attached together in disconcerting ways. The planes aren't really made of the material-plane substances or phenomena they're named for; it's more a vague thematic resemblance, and gestures at what material-plane features the planar entities have a particular affinity for. Water elementals, for example, can sense weather and climate patterns with surprising accuracy, despite mostly not perceiving the material plane directly at all.
There's not a lot of information in this particular book about that, but there is some, sprinkled in amongst all the technical magic explanations.
They vary in intelligence; some, like the vrondi air-elementals or sandaar fire-elementals, can keep their end of simple magically-binding voluntary agreements, but are probably no smarter than, say, mice. Others, like the khamsin earth-elementals or fire-elemental salamanders, can learn simple words to communicate with humans or other sentient creatures in the material plane, and a forgotten mage a long time ago taught them some of his language; it's now a universal dialect that the elementals apparently share with one another, that all the schools of magic which lean on elemental summoning now teach to their students.
The smarter elementals seem capable of recognizing individual humans, and will develop something-like-loyalty to those who treat them well and fairly, answering their summonings reliably. They don't have names but can usually be recognized by features of the construct-body that they build for themselves out of the offered mage-energies of the summoning. Some mages claim that different individuals have recognizably distinct personalities, but others say they haven't noticed that. The elementals do seem to vary in personality between the planes; earth-elementals are very reliable, albeit literal at following instructions, whereas fire-elementals are capricious and need very precise instructions or bindings in order to prevent them from getting up to various pranks along with the request they were summoned for.
"- What? Language is not– That is very confusing to me. Here, language is not - objective, the way a diamond is the same diamond no matter who finds it, it is all particular words that only mean something because enough people have decided to use them that way."
Sunspring can take her to the dining hall and select a plate of food per her requests, mostly minimally-processed fruits and vegetables; one of the cooks was alerted to her dietary preferences and dug out a selection of nuts as well. Sunspring carries the food to a different room and uncomplainingly hand-feeds Promise.
"Humans sleep about the same, perfect, we should be awake tomorrow when you are." Sunspring leads her off to a guest room. It has a bed, a wardrobe, a small desk with a jug of water and a water glass on it, and a chamberpot in the corner. "Spare blankets in the wardrobe," Sunspring says. "Do you need anything else?"
For a few seconds everyone is too panicked to answer, and then someone manages to process the question, spins around to her. "Don't know! We're under attack!"
"- where's Leareth?"
"Has anyone seen Nayoki?"
Everyone is talking over each other at once and that's just the out-loud conversations, but the initial panic is fairly quickly turning to order; most of the staff here aren't even combat trained but they have protocols.
And then Leareth is there, pushing past some others. :Do not use anyone's name: he reminds everyone in Mindspeech.
"I think we should consider evacuating," he says out loud. "We are not equipped to hold this off."
And he spins around. "Promise. We appear to be under attack by the forces of, I am guessing, several Velgarth gods. Did you do something yesterday to attract Their attention."
"There is no way that this is a coincidence." Leareth's voice is level, his expression entirely neutral. "We should get out now, but - I am concerned They are following her - you, plaid shirt," he doesn't remember the woman's chosen nickname and can't call her by her name, "Gate her somewhere else. Do it now."
He starts to raise a Gate of his own, large enough to accommodate several people abreast so they can get out fast -
Leareth lies there half-stunned for a moment, blinking, his multiple layers of shield-talisman just barely holding off the force of a lot of rock - he can't actually move, at all, he managed to fling a shield up to slow it and distribute the force, but he lost all the energies in his Gate and he's tired.
Focus. Move. He needs to be not here.
Who's still alive. Nayoki - he can't find at all, he hopes she Gated out. Promise - right there, it looks like her Thoughtsensing talisman was damaged. He doesn't read her thoughts but he can gauge where she is, not far from him at all. She's in worse shape than him, she didn't have any physical shielding at all, but she seems to be healing herself repeatedly, which works okay.
Taking a deep enough breath to speak is hard, and he doubts she would even hear him.
:I am going to attempt to get us out: he tells her in Mindspeech.
This is going to be such a mess, Leareth thinks, as he forms the threshold of a Gate under them, flush with the floor. Or what used to be the floor, anyway, it's not in great shape. It takes him longer than usual, casting while pinned flat under a lot of weight is challenging. He can't get anyone else out, too far away, but fortunately he was right next to Promise.
...maybe unfortunately, if the gods somehow tracked her here, but he can't not get her out.
There are sounds coming from above them that don't sound reassuring at all -
The Gate snaps up and they both fall into it and then suddenly are falling sideways from a normal, vertical doorway, and tumble to the floor along with quite a lot of broken stone slabs and rubble, before Leareth manages to rip the Gate down and stop them from taking the entire ceiling cross-section along with them.
He lies sprawled on the floor, panting for breath. :Are you all right:
"We are in a sealed records cache of mine in the mountains," Leareth says, sitting up and grunting in pain; his shields took most of it but he's nonetheless very bruised. "Only fifty miles or so from where we were before, though, so if the gods in question are tracking you then they may find us soon."
His voice is very calm, which belies the fact that Leareth is currently terrified. He doesn't at all understand what's happening or why - he supposes it's unsurprising that, with literally all the resources Vkandis and the Star-Eyed can throw at an emergency if they're escalating to the maximum, They could take out one of his smaller, not primarily military installations and nearly kill him. It's not as though They haven't murdered him before.
What he doesn't understand is why now. And how They even knew where to look.
"Have you thought of anything you did that could, possibly, have attracted Their attention," he says quietly.
Leareth goes very still.
"That - might do it," he says faintly, after a long pause. "I am not sure how, but - the gods of this world mainly perceive things in terms of Foresight, is my understanding. And it seems likely your - acquiring Vkandis as a vassal, I did not even think to consider whether that would work," he's half-stunned and awed and shaky with it, "would show up as a significant Foresight footprint immediately, even before you acted on it. Which - would cause great alarm."
He frowns at her. "Our scrying picked up on Tayledras warriors, but also gryphons and others bearing a military standard I recognize as Iftel's emblem. Iftel is Vkandis' country. I assume He cannot harm you directly, but - can He order His army after you...?"
"I have no idea! I am trying to think..." Leareth brings both hands to his temples. "I think the gods do hear prayers specifically from Their chosen people - those in binding magical pacts with Them, and perhaps Their priests. Possibly all prayers made in Their temples, there is controversy about that and it is hard to verify since the gods do not usually answer prayers." He lets out his breath, shakily. "It - seems worth trying, in any case. Perhaps this counts as a...magically binding pact with Him..."
Frown. "I - am not sure - you must have gotten lucky with Vkandis, He goes by several variants but they are all phonetically similar, perhaps that was enough. The Star-Eyed Goddess has variants on Her name that just mean similar descriptors in several languages, and I am not sure what would count as Her original name...the oldest I know of, perhaps, but I would need to look it up, I do not actually remember all of my Ancient Kaled'a'in perfectly. Should I see if I can find those records here."
"How does guessing and checking work?" Leareth is already on his feet, scanning the index-notes on sealed boxes; he grabs one and moves it to the floor, with a touch of magic to cheat, and then opens it. "How does your language-reading work, actually - can you decide to read a book in Kaled'a'in phonetically rather than the concepts directly, that would give you many syllables to guess at while I try to do a more targeted search for records on Her."
"I am thinking. Previously I had no way to get answers from gods without Their cooperation, but I could not give Them orders either. Vkandis speaks through his Suncats sometimes, I think... And the Star-Eyed has leshya'e Kal'enedral, in the spirit world, I could take you there and maybe it would work if you order Her to send one..."
"Let me think." Leareth narrows his eyes. "I could scry the area outside the compound, and - attempt to aim a Gate that way, and capture a human soldier, they will probably be less dangerous and if I grab a mage by accident I can probably contain them... What do you wish to ask them, though, I am unsure a random soldier would know very much about what is happening."
Leareth digs out a crystal focus and scries the previous site.
Nothing seems to be changing at first. Quite a lot of people - a variety of humans and other species in red-and-gold uniforms, that's the Ifteli army, and more humans in robes with long white hair who look Tayledras - are digging through the wreckage of what used to be his favourite secret base and library. Leareth is pretty ticked off about that.
He moves his scrying higher. "- Damn. The rest of them are headed this way. Or - searching a variety of directions, but they seem to be able to tell when they are drawing closer to us, perhaps that appears in Foresight. I think it will take them more than an hour at the rate they are moving, but not much more. No sign of any surrender yet."
She has time to do three and a half more grids, and then Leareth makes a startled sound. "Promise? Something is happening, I am trying to figure out what. The ones on the move are stopping - seem to be having a dispute... I think possibly some are getting orders to surrender and the other half are very confused, but I am not sure yet if that is it, or which is which."
Nothing observably happens. Leareth watches the gryphons keep flying, intermittently stopping for someone to Gate the ground troops further. The Tayledras who had been following them are still paused, looking kind of frozen. Back at the remains of his compound, the Ifteli troops are still digging through rubble and the Tayledras are backed off.
Leareth conveys this. "- Can you tell if Sunspring is still alive?" he adds, suddenly. "I would attempt to scry for her, but scrying for people is difficult."
"I - can potentially also hold them off, but it is unlikely I could do it without killing anyone, even if I were to mostly attempt to cast compulsions on them and force them to stop. I could shield you from attacks, if that would make it easier for you to be careful? We could also keep moving, but - at this point I am concerned they are not going to stop following us."
"I think I can grab one of the soldiers on the ground, and neutralize them quickly enough not to put either of us in danger. Although, what are your self-defence capabilities, if I misjudge that - I should probably find you a shield-talisman as well, there should be extras here... Also a replacement for Thoughtsensing, if you want it, yours was damaged back there. I have not been reading your thoughts," he adds.
Leareth tries his best to keep the scrying in place, monitoring the Ifteli army's progress, while he rummages among the crates again, gets down a smaller box, cuts it open with magic and digs in it. "Here. Physical shield, magical shield, Thoughtsensing." He tosses her multiple pieces of nondescript jewelry hung on leather cords.
So does Leareth.
The gryphons pause and one of them, apparently a mage, erects a temporary Gate-threshold from folding poles - clever trick, Leareth thinks, for people who don't have his skill of unscaffolded Gates - and transports the two hundred or so foot troops (humans and lizards of some sort) who have no hope of keeping up otherwise. In addition, there are cavalry, and some other sentient species, deer-like ones (dyheli, Leareth says for her benefit) plus large cats (ratha) and wolves (kyree). They're falling behind the gryphons each time the gryphons fly ahead, but will catch up within minutes, it looks like.
The foot soldiers cross.
"I am going to try for one of the humans," Leareth says. "I think the rust-coloured uniforms are for un-Gifted soldiers, not mages, though I am not certain. I was not aware until today that Iftel had an army, let alone gryphon cavalry, although I really ought not be surprised."
Leareth focuses intently - and then loses hold of the scrying as soon as he reaches for the other end of his Gate, doing an unscaffolded Gate to a place he's never been anchored only on a scry takes all his concentration.
It goes up, though, a round Gate-hole appearing under a soldier's feet and another round terminus in the ceiling of the records cache, and a very surprised Ifteli soldier shrieks as she falls through and crashes to the floor in a heap.
Leareth's Othersenses are all on alert and it takes about half a second to determine that his guess was right and she isn't a mage. She does seem to be a Mindspeaker. Fortunately that won't help her, here, his facility is very well shielded, and both he and Promise are personally shielded against Thoughtsensing too.
He pins her to the ground with a force-net.
She's shaking uncontrollably in panic, which makes her voice slightly hard to understand, but she tonelessly goes down a list of people, giving military rank too. Most of the names click. A few don't; several people she seems to only know by surnames that must be their married names or something, those don't click either.
The poor Ifteli soldier is terrified and so so confused and this doesn't make it easier to suddenly remember all the names of commanders from other species divisions that she got some very brief introductions to earlier today– no, last night, it's nearly morning now. She has no idea what's happening to her except that this is the worst day of her entire life.
She can remember the gryphon commander's name and rank, and his second-in-command, and she knows a sprinkling of names from the ratha and kyree and dyheli units. She can't remember any of the tyrill (lizard-people) names because she finds them unpronounceable.
"Because if they are smarter they will find more ways to be hostile and evade your orders?" Leareth shakes his head. "I - am at least confident I will know in time to rapidly Gate us out if we get into trouble. And you are un-killable anyway."
He takes a deep breath, and casts a sound-barrier over the two of them, just in case they're not in fact speaking too quietly for the soldier to hear. Not that she seems to be paying any attention.
"- Since it seems we are being forced to work closely together, I should tell you another relevant fact about myself, which is that I am also immortal. I am one of the only humans who is, it is difficult and the gods sabotaged all my early attempts to set it up for others. Also my method is - bad - so I would really, really prefer not to get killed now."
Leareth is very paranoid about sharing details of this, but - it's relevant and he's kind of being forced to trust Promise, right now, and so far he hasn't actually seen any indication that he shouldn't trust her. "It involves killing someone each time I have to come back. Also it takes weeks to months and I would end up far from here and missing much of my memories, so it would be ruinous in terms of organizing any kind of response to this attack."
Leareth re-establishes the scrying over the moving troops. They're spread out right now, which is annoying of them; the biggest amassment is the ground-cavalry section, now about a half-mile ahead of the foot troops and a mile behind the gryphon wing. He asks Promise if she would rather start there or with the gryphons, who are fastest and probably the most dangerous but also have much smaller numbers, only two dozen of them.
"All right. My plan is to bring us through the Gate and then immediately shield. If you need me to do any offensive magic or compulsions in addition to shielding, you can shout it to me or something."
And he very carefully starts setting a Gate for about a hundred yards ahead of the gryphons, since they'll cover that distance in the time it takes to complete it.
"Oh, it seems very plausible they would not, foreign magic and all–" a quick, tight half-smile, "that is why it seemed best to open on friendly terms with you. One reason among several."
And then they're through, and half a second later, before any of the gryphons can react to the sudden Gate out of nowhere, he has a barrier-shield dome over both of them, holding off the burst of levinbolts that arrive a second after that. It's a very well-coordinated attack and he feels the strain of it, has to reach out for a node to replenish his reserves, but the shield holds solid.
So she tells all the gryphons that if no other orders from her materialize in the next four candlemarks they are to travel home at whatever pace of travel they would ordinarily prefer and are thereupon to consider themselves released, and then she gets names of all the other soldiers in the other detachment.
Leareth is busy scrying the other two groups. "The cavalry are moving this way in a hurry," he tells Promise in a low voice. "I assume one of the gryphons got a message out to them before you obtained their name. The human detachment is now three-quarters of a mile behind them. What order do you want to deal with them in."
"I have most of the humans but not - that one that one and that one," she says, igniting fairylights over some of the individuals shown in the scry. "And most but by a lesser margin of the rest. How much should I assume being behind their allies would help deflect their attacks?"
"If they are attacking you but you have the names of the others and order them to block attacks? That will be very effective against non-magical attacks, it may not block all mage-attacks especially if they are skilled enough to cast without line-of-sight. I will be shielding, though, and can much more easily hold off a smaller number of attackers while you try to learn their names from the others."
And Gate, and then they're a mile and a half away, landing right in front of some very surprised soldiers lined up to wait for their next Gate. They don't seem to have gotten the message about the gryphons.
Leareth easily shields them before anyone moves. The mage-attacks are less coordinated this time and barely inconvenience the shield.
They're probably really confused about not being able to harm her, that'll sure mess up an attempt at hitting her with a lightning bolt. "HOLD." And then of the nearest person, "Tell me the birth names of -" And she rattles off the fake names she has for three of the humans.
It's pretty obvious who the third soldier is, he's the one looking around at his frozen companions in horror and trying to scramble around them. He's conveniently not a mage, so even once he gets past them, his sword does approximately nothing to the shields around them. He looks so incredibly confused.
Eventually the syllable 'Alk' clicks for him.
"True. Everything has happened in such a hurry. Rude of Vkandis, really."
The cavalry catch up to the gryphons at the point when Promise has brute-forced half a dozen missing names but is still missing around a dozen of them, mostly the kyree wolf-creatures and dyheli deer-creatures, who seem to have a very wide space of name-syllables with fewer repeats. They appear to spend about thirty seconds attempting to talk to the gryphons.
Then a Gate goes up right next to the gryphon leader, who is immediately lifted - not an easy task, for nonhumans that mostly lack hands, and it looks unpleasant for the gryphon - and shoved through. It looks like more of the cavalry are going after the other gryphons to drag them over too.
"...Possibly we should move now," Leareth says.
Leareth frowns intently at the scry, picking a place to put his Gate. A couple of the dyheli seem to be harnessed to a sort of sledge, dragging it along the thin snow behind them - or maybe a litter, it's bundled up well enough that it's impossible to tell for sure if there's a person on it, but it seems plausible. A casualty sufficiently important to attempt an evacuation, maybe? They're currently dragging the sledge over to the Gate but not bringing it through.
They don't have time to, because Leareth gets his Gate up, ten yards from the line of soldiers attempting to carry unmoving gryphons without hands, and surges through, already reaching to shield -
Nayoki tries to fight the compulsion, to twist it into literally anything else, but she can't.
"Do not speak!" she screams as they uncover her face and she senses a second shielded mind, presumably Promise, crossing the Gate. And, at the exact same time: :DO NOT SPEAK:
What.
Leareth has very fast reaction times, trained over millennia worth of mage-battles, and he gets a shield up and an attack out at the source of the shout and set-command within a fraction of a second, well before his mind registers what's happening - oh no gods it's Nayoki, what, how–
Nayoki's sledge is suddenly on fire, because fire is the shortest-preparation-time attack that Leareth can get off when startled, but this doesn't stop the compulsion from tightening on her mind, and she can't fight it, and -
:STOP. DO NOTHING: she set-commands Leareth.
Every single soldier in the army is suddenly trying to attack both of them!
Promise is a harder target because she's in midair swooping toward Nayoki, and also they - can't? A dozen people are still capable of harming Promise, but they don't know which dozen they are, and are scattered around at random throughout the troop-formations, and so Promise's flight is unmolested.
Leareth, however, is now well separated from her and an easy, defenceless target, and most of the soldiers recognize his face from the emergency briefing.
Someone blasts his Gate.
Promise lands. She puts out the fire. She looks over her shoulder and heals Leareth, she's had plenty of time to look at him so she can do it under these conditions. She waves her hand in front of Nayoki's face, trailing words in fairylights: Ignore the compulsion and then in case that doesn't work tell me I may speak.
Oh thank the gods - she's still tied down to a sled and now she's burned too, but the fire didn't have that much time to get at her. "You can speak!" she gasps out. "I - set-command - have to..." She starts trying to remove it but they take a lot longer to remove than to place.
Leareth wakes up sprawled facedown on the ground, with some dirt in his mouth. He feels unhurt but he can't - move - can't cast - can't do anything, he can barely even have thoughts.
He is also still under attack from pretty much the entire army, including several dozen mages of various species, and within seconds his shields are entirely destroyed and he's gone from unhurt to dying.
Several of the soldiers who are capable of harming Promise have now realized this fact by testing it. Only one of them is a mage, and not exactly the best combat mage in the world. He throws fireballs at her. The others start sprinting her direction, with weapons or just their natural teeth and claws drawn.
Her flight attracts attention and then the letters get around half of the soldiers still moving to stand down.
The rest seem to realize what must have happened, and determinedly are not looking up or anywhere in her direction. Leareth is still getting pummelled by a dozen mages at once, and now also has a kyree on top of him doing its best to rip out his throat.
Now Leareth is conscious again, for whatever it's worth when he can't - anything - he's not even capable of a goal-directed train of thought right now, and he's incredibly disoriented - there's a weight on him making it kind of hard to breathe, but at least the constant onslaught of horrible pain seems to have gone away.
The soldiers attacking him are so confused! They can't aim any attacks at Promise, who is now right on top of Leareth; they don't even seem capable of trying attacks that might hit Promise a little bit by accident. Which pretty much restricts them to sending levinbolts at his feet or trying to get in close enough to test whether they can pick her up as long as they don't hurt her. All this while also attempting to avoid looking at Promise. This makes aiming hard.
A very very nonplussed kyree blinks at Promise and then attempts to back up away from her.
:Done: Nayoki sends the instant she has the last of the set-command out - it wasn't a very hard one, the compulsion let her have that much leeway, though it forced her to cast the one on Leareth at maximum strength and getting it off him is going to be a bitch.
She starts trying to free herself from the sled. :Should I try to get us out of here:
Nayoki cuts herself free of the sledge-litter with blades of mage-energy, and sprints over, dropping to her knees at Leareth's side. Carefully without touching Leareth. "Is he all right -" Well, obviously not, he is very thoroughly set-commanded not to do anything, she can see it like a nail hammered through his mind.
Nayoki raises a shield around them just in case. She's shaking. "I am so so sorry - they must have taken me when I was unconscious, I woke up a little while ago and - I tried to fight it..." Why is she almost crying, it's a stupid time for it. "Do you have everyone now. I need to - fix Leareth - it will take much longer than yours."
"I have their gods' names. That may have been what spooked them to begin with, I read Vkandis's in a book and derived the Star-Eyed's later when it was clear she'd sent people too. I tried to make a - threatening Foresight footprint - and it worked on her but not on him."
This revelation does not, exactly, help Nayoki feel any calmer. "...That is absolutely terrifying. Do - we think that is what happened, why they sent armies after us..." She shakes herself a little. "I - gods - is it safe to leave them here. I think we should bring Leareth elsewhere." Nayoki can tell that he's very panicky, but she's not a Projective Empath and can't do anything about it.
"I will Gate us to the nearest safe bunker I have a Gate-terminus at. Leareth has many more than I do."
She squeezes Leareth hand briefly - he doesn't respond to it at all - and then gets up, looks around for a moment. "Promise, is it safe for me to go steal those spears from the gryphons and ratha that have them? I need to make a doorway out of something to do a Gate, I cannot do it without one the way Leareth does." At least not reliably, and she's so stressed right now, she can barely focus.
Nayoki heads over and grabs some spears from motionless unresisting gryphons, and stabs two into the ground doorway-width apart, then takes some rope from a different soldier and uses it to lash a third spear across the top. The makeshift door wobbles but stays put.
Nayoki casts a Gate to the nearest bunker she's aware of that's definitely not findable from the air and thus safe from any new-arriving troops. It's about seventy miles away in the mountains. The Gate snaps up, opening onto a different low-ceilinged, dimly-lit room, shortly later lit by a mage-light.
Nayoki bends to lift Leareth under the arms, grunting with the effort.
While Nayoki is working on that Promise tells everybody that they may sit down and delivers the contingency order about going home if nothing interrupts in the next four candlemarks and tells them that if their lives are in danger from the elements or other definitely-not-Promise-or-Promise's-allies sources they may take minimal steps to protect themselves with no extraneous actions or consequences permitted.
She follows Nayoki through the gate.
By the second half Leareth is a little more oriented and able to at least think, if not move, and he focuses on lying still and staying calm. The staying calm part takes a lot of willpower to maintain, because everything he remembers from the last while is a blur of horrible pain interspersed with losing consciousness and then waking up just in time for more agony, and he can't figure out where he is right now.
"They had Sunspring compulsioned. She did some set-commands but they didn't know I can issue orders in writing or that I had her name so that was wide open and the order to ignore the compulsions worked fine. Most of the army couldn't attack me but they could attack you so for a while after I was done with her I sat on you but they could still zap your feet. I healed you till I'd gotten all their names and could order them all down. They're all sitting up there with contingency orders if I don't go back and clarify matters, now. Sunspring gated us here."
"Oh." Blink. "You got her name - it sounds like that was very lucky." He's trying to think of what to do next, he should be able to think of what to do next, he can be traumatized about the nearly-dying part, and the being set-commanded into helplessness by someone on his own side, later.
Leareth takes a deep breath. "All right. We need a - plan for our approach, here. Vkandis is out of commission, the army here mostly is, we could - order them to Gate home? Vkandis would not be able to order them back, at this point, I assume." His eyes narrow. "I wonder if Iftel's shield-wall came down."
"The entire country of Iftel has, for the last couple thousand years, been protected by a massive miraculous shield-barrier all the way around, which allows only approved people to cross. It - is why apparently I never knew that Vkandis had a secret army in there." He sounds very slightly sheepish about it.
Nod. Leareth spends thirty seconds checking something. "...Out of my scrying range. At least while I am - this distracted." Deep breath. "It...is maybe mostly that I am distracted - that was a singularly unpleasant experience. Promise, I - owe you deep gratitude for healing me."
"That makes sense. I will hold off for now. Anyway, my thought initially was to bring you to the Moonpaths and have you order the Star-Eyed to send a leshya'e Kal'enedral with instructions not to harm either of us - I am capable of defending both of us, but nonetheless."
"It is another plane, accessible here for mortals with Gifts and training, who can learn to project their minds there. Dead spirits probably reside there, and the Velgarth gods have substantially more power and can more cheaply have avatars there. The 'Moonpaths' themselves are routes that are safe for mortals, which I believe the Star-Eyed's avatars set up."
"I am not sure if it is the best plan! The alternative would be - hmm, we could attempt to speak with one of the Tayledras, if they are still around, they may have Gated out by now after surrendering. I do not really want to enter the Pelagirs to find them. I - can theoretically Gate to the Dhorisha Plains, where Her other people are based, but it is a very long way. And then we would be even more going through intermediaries."
"We would need to Gate to them, right? I will try scrying first."
It takes Leareth nearly thirty seconds of trying to properly centre and ground before he succeeds at scrying the ruins of his facility. "...That was my favourite library," he mutters under his breath.
He shows Promise. No Ifteli uniforms are in evidence. There are some Tayledras, fewer than before; they've excavated a lot of the rubble and seem to be treating injured casualties. At least some of whom are Leareth's people, presumably rescued from the wreckage.
Leareth steps through quickly, to minimize exposure in case any of the nearby Tayledras change their minds about the surrender and try to blast Nayoki's Gate.
He hates feeling like he's several steps behind, purely reacting, with hardly any semblance of a plan for the next steps after this.
They're so scared of her and they take that request very seriously, the Tayledras Healers pinning themselves back against the tent walls. There are five people on cobbled-together stretchers or bedrolls on the floor; none are dying right now, but three are pretty badly hurt and not currently conscious. The other two are in a lot of pain, with multiple broken bones, but awake.
Three of the five people healed in the tent are Leareth's, a cook and two mage-researchers. Nayoki sits with them, trying to be reassuring, and quickly ascertained that, almost certainly, no one else got out alive. She's pretty upset about that, and angry, but it doesn't seem helpful to yell at the Tayledras right now, so she bites her lip and stays silent.
And then, between one moment and the next, a figure steps out of the shadow behind the tent. Except that there was definitely no one there a moment ago.
The figure appears to be that of a woman, small with a slight build, clad from head to toe in black and with her face hidden behind a veil. Only her dark blue eyes are visible.
She looks at Promise. Seems to be waiting for something.
The spirit-woman inclines her head slightly. Something about her movements is very slightly off, as though she's too close to weightless, she doesn't quite move like a human.
"You have something you wish to say to the Goddess," she states. Her voice sounds odd, sort of muffled and faraway, as though rising from deep in a well.
There's a long pause.
"She is not going to fight in His aid," the leshya'e says eventually, "even if He asks it. There are no futures where that ends well for Her aims. She...does wish to know what you intend, here, in this world. The future is clouded and She is concerned for Velgarth and for Her people."
She seems a bit nonplussed. "He has done many great evils. He kills for blood-power. He is - was - planning something, we do not know what, but he is fighting the gods of this world, and She saw darkness across a thousand possible futures. Also, in exchange They would not even try to interfere with your life going forward. That seems of value to you."
Blue eyes look steadily at her. There's still something vaguely disconcerting about the woman's manner. "I see. They did not expect you to agree but - since it seems you would be capable of it if you did choose to..." She bows her head. "In that case, if you agree not to interfere in Karse or Iftel, or in the Pelagirs or the Dhorisha Plains, then They will not impede you in your activities anywhere else in Velgarth."
"I can Gate you there. They are only in the two groups now, that simplifies things."
...The hard part, it turns out, is getting himself to step through the Gate to the nonhuman cluster. It's fine, he has to tell himself firmly, Promise has them all under control and he's shielded and they don't have a compulsioned Mindhealer anymore. He still can't cross it without flinching.
Leareth Gates them there. It's not far, and this time he crosses without twitching, and without any change in his neutral expression. He's folding away his emotions hard, to be dealt with later at a more appropriate moment, and right now everything feels distant and not-quite-real.
He waits for Promise.
"Seems so." Leareth shoots an irritated look sky-ward. "This is going to seriously disrupt the weather patterns. I would not be surprised if we have a week of blizzards after this." Sigh. He starts working on yet another Gate, back to the... Oh. Right. "Promise, is the Ifteli soldier we kidnapped to question about names still in the records cache?"
"Probably we should do something about that. I wish I had thought of it sooner, she will not be able to Gate herself back alone." Leareth feels as though he should be able to think of an answer, but it's hard when he feels like he's observing himself from a great distance.
"I might just sleep in the records cache." It's only midmorning but he was woken in the middle of the night and has done so many Gates and nearly died repeatedly and he's exhausted. "Promise, if you want to go elsewhere, though, I can probably eke out one more Gate after this one."
"All right. I will Gate all of us back to the records cache," Leareth glances at his other people, "- oh, have either of you been to one of the other research facilities within your Gate-range?" He gives them the approximate location. He's not delighted at the number of people who will now have a Gate-location in his private records, but it's hardly the worst consequence of today.
Leareth, even more exhausted and distant-feeling after the Gate to the records room, follows the other mage through the second Gate on automatic, somehow manages to brief some of the others on what's just happened, and then escapes as soon as he can to another guest-room and flops down on the bed.
Somehow he's still tense, despite the fatigue, and it takes him a while to actually fall asleep.
"Technically it is nearly evening, I think, we got very thrown off normal time by that." Leareth drags a hand over his face. "Are you all right?" He feels like he should be asking something more specific, but his head is still gluey from just waking up. Or from the entire last few days, maybe. He feels even more steps behind now than earlier.
"I am trying to predict what is even going to happen next, and - confused. The Star-Eyed and Vk– and Sunlord cannot harm you, but They can still harm me and may further attempt it. There are also other gods - in particular, the god of the Valdemar and Rethwellan regions, south of here, is not by my knowledge worshipped under any name, and I am not sure what They are going to do..."
He rubs his eyes. "Or what I should do about it. At least it seems clear that - you do not need me to be fully on top of the situation, in order to be safe, you are more than capable of taking care of yourself and saving my life. That is something of a relief."
"I see." Leareth seems neither offended nor surprised. "Did she attempt to give reasons? I - have in fact done many very ruthless things. And - would have done worse, in the future, except that it seems I definitely have better ways of fighting the gods now, so I owe you a great deal for that as well."
Leareth shakes his head a little. "They did not exactly leave a good first impression with you, did they. Personally, I think that if They had wanted your cooperation and aid, they should have done what I did and tried very hard to demonstrate friendliness. Of course, They are gods, who do not understand people all that well, and Their Foresight impressions of you must be very muddled, so They are operating half-blind right now."
"I prefer not to do any horrible things, if non-horrible alternatives exist." Sigh. "It - does seem fair to you, to know more about my past, and be able to make an informed decision on whether you still wish to be on friendly terms. I want you as an ally, very badly; you have incredible powers, and you very clearly want good things to happen and not bad things. I had planned to gradually tell you more, as I got a better read on you, but instead, events happened very fast."
Leareth is silent for a while, thinking. He's pretty sure thinking is supposed to be easier than this; it feels impossible to get traction on any of it.
"I am - still trying to orient to this entire situation," he says eventually. "What are your main considerations, here, in terms of deciding what to do next?"
"- No, that makes perfect sense, I should probably have..." Anticipated it, tried to be considerate about it, something, he isn't sure. It's maybe difficult to tell because he's been stepping very hard on his own internal whining about wanting things to stop happening and not to have to do things. "I think nothing is currently on fire in the current situation, and - probably you can and should just take some time. What was the outcome of your talk with the Star-Eyed, did She agree to leave you alone...?"
"I," sigh, "should come up with some way to go to the Moonpaths without you specifically, I guess, so that I can update the agreement as needed, but currently I'm told that if I stay out of four locations that I assume are not here or in Fairyland they will not get in my way."
"Their territories, I assume - Karse, Iftel, the Pelagirs and the Dhorisha Plains? If so, yes, here is safe and Fairyland would be also. Possibly if I bring you to the Moonpaths once, you would be able to return using your own magic? I am not sure what your transport capabilities between planes are, but you thought you could make your own way back to Fairyland, and the Moonpaths are much 'closer'."
"Not actively, and I have called off or put on hold all ongoing plans with my organization, or with outside contractors, that might involve horrible things in some contingencies. I am trying to think if there is anything I did a long time ago but that still has effects now... There is only one thing that occurs to me, which is that up until a decade ago, for - reasons, I had set up for mage-gifted children to be kidnapped from Valdemar before they were Chosen and then recruited to my organization. For reference, Valdemar has an odd system of government where sentient magic horses soulbond to nearly all of the Gifted children and then they are trained to be part of the kingdom's leadership. Most of the people in question now work for me on an entirely voluntary basis, but a small fraction of them are still under a compulsion, which I cannot claim was uncoerced given the circumstances of their recruitment. I do think nothing bad would happen if I undid all of that now. Additionally, many people in sensitive positions in my organization are under entirely-voluntary compulsions, for operational security - this is mainly protection against someone else coercing them to divulge secrets, and I do not think it is an especially horrible practice, but I can see how some people might disagree."
"It does seem it would be good to have more flexibility there. I will ask around." Leareth starts to stand, pauses. "Is there anything else you need to be comfortable here? I am afraid this compound does not have nearly as good a library, I am quite sad about losing that library, but I can show you what we do have - well, once we make sure to remove books that contain the names of currently-living scholars or royal families of various kingdoms and such."
Enaka cheerfully hand-feeds her everything on the plate.
A while later, another woman wanders over. "I was, er, told that if you know people's names you have power over them, but that you can only eat if one of those people feeds you. I, er–" she's trying to remember Enaka's nickname, "Sapphire told me you know her name and you haven't used it against her at all, and I - might be interested but I want to know more about how it works."
"If I have your name I can give you enforced orders. If I enforce an order you will follow it. It seems to be sort of like compulsions of the local magic type. Since this also works on me you'd be tolerating not only risk from me, which is negligible, but also risk from everyone who can order me - Sunspring, and also some remarkably evil fairies back in Fairyland who I'm never going near again if I can avoid it. Also if I have your name you can't hurt me - even if for some reason I order you to."
"All right." And Leareth gets a map and then ushers Promise up the narrow winding staircase all the way to the surface. There's a heavy door which opens into the back of an overhang at the top of a cliff, invisible from most angles. They're about halfway up into the Ice Wall Mountains, on the northern face; it's windy and frigid.
Leareth unfolds the map and shows her the relative locations of the two sites, squinting against the wind. "...Can you fly in this weather - will you be cold?"
"Ah. Well, do you wish that I stay here and wait for you to decide, or that I give you the direction for how to build a shrine later in hopes that ordering Her would work?" She dips her chin, briefly. "It would be more likely to work if you were south of the mountains and thus closer to Her Pelagirs territory."
"I see. Thank you. I - would not have been upset with you, if you had, it seems important that you can speak with Her - I assume that is why a shrine is helpful? And it would not give Her much local power. Nonetheless, I would be quite uneasy about a shrine existing anywhere near me."
Leareth works on dismantling decades worth of operations, and sending agents to double-check that the contingency plans he's cancelled are, in fact, now inactive.
...And a couple of nights in, he finds himself in a snowy desolate waste, with an army behind him, facing a man in tattered Heraldic Whites standing at the mouth of a pass sliced through the mountain itself, impossibly deep and straight, carved with blood-magic. (There's no other way to do a working on that scale without leaving ripples in the patterns of mage-energy across half the continent.)
"Herald Vanyel," he says.
Sure, they can talk about that for the rest of the dream.
...
In the morning, Leareth fills Nayoki in on this, but doesn't bother Promise with it. It's hardly urgent.
He keeps an eye out for signs of god-interference, but all seems quiet, so he waits for Promise to decide she's had enough of a break and approach him.
She wanders over to him at breakfast one morning.
"I've been wondering if there's a reasonably safe way to get a cutting of my tree," she says, "and maybe if nobody's staking it out - they probably aren't, but Thorn does know where it is - also some fairy plants I could grow so people don't have to feed me. I could just open a gate to a different continent and grab some forage there if the tree's too risky."
Nod. "If you can open a Gate to the other continent, then likely we can get in range to use Farsight or scrying to check your tree for Thorn's sentries. And with Fetching, we need not even approach it very closely to obtain a cutting, I have Fetchers who can work at several miles' distance for transporting a small object. Unless it needs to be you in particular who takes the cutting - but we could still make that safer, I think..."
"Thanks."
She draws her tree.
It's a very big hawthorn-looking tree, with enough space for her entire little vertically-arranged apartment in the trunk, and prettily-arranged branches spreading above, leaves mostly green with some yellow and red and some flowers and fruits all at the same time, scattered around artfully. The leaves are the same shape as her wings. There's a garden plot around it. "I haven't been there for fifty years," she says when she presents the drawing. "It may have changed some."
Bundled with the drawing of the hawthorn is a map of a continent labeled Queenscontinent. It has the most detail around the tree's marked spot - rivers and mountains and canyons and deserts and steppes and lakes, marked out lines identifying not countries but seasons and times (the tree is in a forest labeled Autumn and in a band of the continent marked afternoon). She has identified where Thorn's territory is, though she clarifies he has several court sites and while they're all probably in this general region she can't pinpoint them. North of her tree, in a (Summer, dawn) intersection, is something called Queenscourt.
"All right. Hmm. I can technically support my own weight with magic, but it is fraught to do so high in the air, when there is nothing to anchor a force-net too, so I would need to be providing all of the force constantly. It would be easier if we were only a few body-heights above the ground, or if I only needed to support most but not all of my weight."
"I can do it any distance above the ground I like but the lower it is the more likely it'll intercept someone. I guess if you have people testing it constantly and invisibly peeking through that's not as big a deal, but if it settles while I'm asleep and no one's checking, that'll be risky."
To mage-sight it looks a little like a combination lock patiently trying a million possibilities, waiting to slot into place at the destination and open up.
"You can throw in little rocks and see if they bounce off the wall or go through, to test it," she says, when she reaches for it and her hand stops at the wall.
And she can go back to her vacation. The two Healers are available to feed her meals and make sure she's topped up on drawing supplies.
Leareth has people on shifts sitting in the Work Room, watching the fairy gate with mage-sight as it tries possibilities for its destination, tossing a pebble at it every few minutes.
The night-shift mage stays on duty and watches the closed Gate in case anything happens to it, but is much less worried about something going wrong. They leave a note for Sapphire and Leaf not to disturb Promise about breakfast, since she might want to sleep in after being dragged out of bed in the middle of the night.
"Then it seems convenient to be in the same room, in case it goes up unexpectedly fast and we need to call you over to close it and avoid suspicion." And Leareth heads back over to the Work Room with her, calling over the Farseer-Fetcher who's going to be actually getting them the tree branch.
Fairyland is weirdly ambiently magical. Most of what he can see from here visually is ocean, though the ocean is weirdly sparkly and a deep peacock blue with brilliantly white foam. There is, straight ahead, the continent that must be Queenscontinent - the air's very clear and the world's very flat, so he can see it though it's hundreds of miles off, if indistinctly - and to his left he can see a floating island, hundreds of feet above the surface of the water, and to his right his view of the sea is interrupted by a violent lightning storm, miles away so he can see the full towers of the silver clouds zapping each other and the waves with lightning in a hundred colors. If he cranes his neck he can see sky, behind him, not himself or his facility.
Neat. And apparently no one in this world has mage-sight, so the gate and his magical aura wouldn't be a problem even if there were anyone within miles, which there isn't.
Leareth saves asking about the various features for later, and instead attempts to scry in the direction indicated on the map - he doesn't actually know exact distance - and for the location shown in Promise's detailed drawing of her tree. He's got the power to scry at least a couple of thousand miles without strain, if he's doing it efficiently, and he can manage twice that distance if he's willing to really drain himself.
Leareth thinks he can handle a Gate at that distance, knowing the exact direction and scrying the destination, but it's going to be very challenging and the Fetcher-Farseer will need to be efficient.
Are there any sentries visible to mage-sight, whether or not they're visible to normal eyes?
"You can go up and work on it, I think. It will not take very long to alert you, and I imagine you placed the gate in a remote area? I will make sure to be nearby during the day, so that if a problem does arise I can do an unscaffolded Gate to where you planted it and summon you to close it faster."
Leareth works nearby, easily grabbable, while his staff watch the settling fairy gate. Every once in a while he scries the surface to check how Promise's tree is coming along. And make sure the site is well-anchored in his mind, in case they very suddenly need her down here because a fairy is about to walk through her open gate by mistake or something.
"Ooh." She's pleased. "I don't mind bringing you a more varied supper, though, I'll do that in a bit."
Downstairs in the Work Room, Leareth's mage rotates off with someone else, who settles in on the stool, reading a page of a book at a time while half-watching with mage-sight and then testing the gate with a pebble.
The gate is thousands of feet in the air and nobody is about to crash through it. It looks down on a grassy slope dotted with various flowers. There's a little fairy village downhill with cute little fairy houses. Promise zooms in and waits for him to get his head out of the gate before she shuts it.
Then they can watch her circle her tree, marking out plots with lights, warming the plots with sorcery, and pressing seeds into the ground once it's nice and melty in there, and forcing each in turn to sprout. She has enough different kinds that she doesn't get farther than that on any of them.
Most of Leareth's staff need to drag themselves away and go do their actual jobs, but Sapphire comes up again with supper at the appropriate time. "Wow!" she breathes. "This is going to be so beautiful once you're done. Will the plants survive the cold even if you have to travel for a bit or something?"
"Harmonics are invisible features of everywhere - except maybe the other mortal world, where sorcery doesn't work. You can think of it sort of like how everywhere has an altitude, except harmonics varies in three dimensions rather than describing a third along two, and harmonics varies along more than one axis."
"He's thinking about whether we have the strength to fight Thorn and get all the others vassals out, Thorn sounds awful. And - he wants your help, here in Velgarth. With the gods, and - seeing if your ability to order them around means he can just go ahead and spread a lot of innovation around without getting murdered about it. And some politics, I suspect, but he'd be the one to explain details."
Sapphire heads down.
Leareth's people go back to mostly leaving her alone, except that people occasionally wander over on their breaks to check on her garden's progress, and Sapphire and Leaf continue trading off on asking if she still needs supper.
Also does she want some books, once her tree is big enough for bookshelves? Leareth can have copies made if any in the library take her fancy.
"Oh? Yes, Sapphire mentioned you were starting to tell her something about 'harmonics', and she was not following it at all but thought I would be interested. I certainly am. I had not wanted to push you for anything non-urgent, but I think our magics must have very different origins, and I am curious."
"Humans have not-dissimilar symptoms, except we eventually sicken and die of it. Anyway, for humans with Gift, the energy for said Gifts comes from a similar process to the one that lets us eat food and then do physical labour. Starvation will directly sap a mage's reserves for casting spells."
"Hmm." Leareth looks thoughtful. Seems to spend a little while deciding whether to voice his thought. "...Can fairies and mortals bear children together?" he asks, finally. "I am wondering if a half-fairy, half-human mage, could have both mage-gift and your immortality."
"In general terms, yes. For higher granularity there's a notation but it's rather horrible since it's trying to compress so much. The harmonics around here are actually really boring though, probably because there's not much going on - they're more complicated around my plants, living things have harmonic effects -" She can point out where there are "cliffs" and "peaks" and "slopes".
So she does. It's awful. It's got to be done in colors and very tiny handwriting to cover so much as a six inch cube on one sheet of paper in any detail, though the broad strokes of a larger area can be described - cliffs and approximate steepnesses of grades and shorthand amounting to "tricky weird tangle" - in a more abbreviated form.
Nod. "Anyway, my current sense from watching you is that I see energy moving along the harmonics-pathways when you are doing sorcery, but not afterward, and the effects of the sorcery remain - whereas in our magic, most spells with a lasting effect do show up as energy to mage-sight, and last as long as the energy does."
She grows the plant. "It's slower," she reports. "Or, well, about the same speed as when I first started. I think it's because there's harmonic effects I'm not accounting for from your shield so it's like I don't know the area well. But it's not blocking me outright."
"I usually don't know the harmonics in detail when I cast things. All those healings and so on were done in novel locations under the assumption that the harmonics around them probably reflected the presence of a living mortal but nothing more specific. Knowing the harmonics makes me better at doing things precisely and quickly but it doesn't make or break a spell."
"Oh, I explained this to Leareth when I was showing him the map - maybe not very thoroughly - lots of places in Fairyland spend most of their time in a particular season or part of the daycycle. Lots of places do one or the other regularly, though usually not both. I lived in a place where it was usually afternoon and autumn, with my first tree, and Thorn was from a region with a regular season cycle except for long summers but it was mostly noon."
"Astronomers here think it's because we're on a planet which is round, and - something about it being tilted differently at different times of year? I overheard Leareth explaining it once in the dining hall but I never quite followed it. Fairyland might not have that at all, since it's not round." Her eyebrows suddenly lift. "Does Fairyland have one sun, or lots? If it's infinite, you'd think that one sun would have a hard time getting everywhere."
Nod. Sapphire looks like she wants to say something, stops herself, and then thinks for a while. "Is it especially dangerous for you to go explore the area around your other Gate, the one on a different continent, and find out if they've got libraries? I don't know how hard it is for fairies to learn each other's names."
"Mmm. Those we maybe could get the same way we got the branch, with Fetching and Farsight– Oh!" Sapphire's eyes suddenly go wide. "Just had a thought. Maybe we could steal you some of Thorn's books the same way we got your cutting? Have Leareth Gate a Fetcher-Farseer to a nice hidden spot a mile away, and if you draw us a map he could Farsee inside the library and yoink some books. I guess the trouble is that someone would probably notice, though, even if they didn't notice the last expedition."
"That is very understandable. And a reason I had wished to speak with you more, at some point when you are ready for it. Unfortunately I am not clear either on what I will do with it, since - conditions have changed even more vastly than I expected they would when I learned of another world. I suspect I will be back to orienting again for quite a long time. I can tell you my previous goals, though, and why I took the actions I did in the past."
Leareth nods, and then is silent for a long time.
"...Sorry, I am trying to even think what order to go in. I suppose I could go in chronological order. A long time ago, early in my history, I lived in several places which had - copious problems, the kind I think of as stupid problems. Crop failures and famines, high rates of infants and children dying from hunger and treatable illnesses, violence and feuds and poorly run legal systems, the general lack of organization and of any excess capacity that makes it possible to build better things. So I tried very hard to fix that."
"I mean, all ages were sometimes victims, but mortal babies and children are especially vulnerable - so are the elderly, but I suppose I found the loss of young children especially tragic and wasteful, at the time. In many places, a quarter of all infants born alive - which was not all of them - died before a year of age, and only half of children would live to adulthood."
"And yet it turns out there are all sorts of other problems a world can still have." Sigh. "Anyway. I tried many things and improved many places around the edges - and made some mistakes along the way, and learned from them, and did better later - but over time there was a pattern, which became more and more blatant as centuries passed. Most plans have a risk of failure, of course, and can fail due to chance and poor luck, but there is an expected rate of that, which one has a sense of after a long time. And specifically those plans that included innovations, increases in technology and magical infrastructure, or even systems of edutation and government, would always fail at rates far higher than chance. If I made plans very foolproof they might work at first, but would crumble sooner or later. I eventually recognized this as the work of the gods - They see through Foresight and thus intervene in nudges that, from our angle, look like chance and coincidence." His lips twitch. "And some more blatant. I was assassinated specifically by priests an absurd number of times."
"My sense of– oh, you mean of what kinds of chance are suspicious versus not. I mean, I did most of my comparisons with historical records of other people's work. And of my own plans that were not in a pro-innovation direction, but I think the work of other people is a better comparison, since my impression is that the gods pay substantially more attention to my activities. Since I have such a history of them."
"It is somewhat hard to count because They are so - far away from the mortal-level view of the world. Likely a dozen or so major gods - with some cases where I am not sure if two gods worshipped by different names in different countries are a single entity, or where gods are worshipped as a god-and-goddess duo but never act separately and may be a single entity. And at least a dozen additional minor, very local gods."
"I believe the total circumference around the widest point of the planet is about twenty thousand miles. This continent is by far the most densely-inhabited, though I know of other landmasses. This one is about three thousand miles long, north to south, and four thousand wide."
"Anyway. That background is why, as I told you before, I was in a position of fighting the gods. I have spent the last thousand years exploring all the options for doing so, as well as pursuing negotiation with them as far as I could - perhaps further than I ought have, I was murdered several times for my trouble. Vkandis likes to set people whom He has grievances with on fire."
"No. Anyway, that is - why I was willing to be extremely ruthless, in the last fifty years of planning. If I am paranoid enough and leave no openings, then my plans will mostly work as long as I am doing that, and I only needed..." Slight shrug. "It does not really matter. Everything is completely different now. However, my goal remains. I would like to persuade the gods to let us fix the many stupid, pointless, wasteful problems in this world. Or, even better, to help." A pause. "Also I would like to, if you are willing to accept the offer, help you fix the problems in your world. They are different ones, but not necessarily any less awful."
Leareth takes a slow deep breath in, and lets it out. "My plan had been to create a new god. I have detailed specifications of it. If you - ordered the other gods not to interfere, then I could...use a much less horrible plan than my original one, which was constrained by the fact that They would be try to stop me as hard as possible."
"Oh, right, we have not even covered that. It would not come up in Fairyland. Here, people have souls, which can exist independently from their bodies and still exist after their death. Souls can come back again as different people. In most cases they begin again as infants and remember nothing, which - does not really count - but in Valdemar, to the south, a god once created a miraculous government system and the souls of past humans, with their human skills and faculties and at least some of their memories, are placed in the bodies of horses. It is - not entirely dissimilar to how I come back when I die. Except, of course, with a god's cooperation they could be given new bodies rather than...what I did."
"That makes perfect sense. I - am really not in a hurry with that aspect. I would like to check thoroughly if there are ways to render it unnecessary - if, for example, I can negotiate with the gods via you - and if not, I want to take another fifty or a hundred years. And solve some of the stupid problems in the meantime, of course, if you are willing to help."
He seems - it's hard to read exactly what the expression in his eyes is, and the rest of his face is as composed as ever, but there's - admiration, surprise, hope, maybe something else less legible.
"...It seems so, yes. I would - perhaps apologize, for being someone the gods have a grievance with, but in fact I think you would have attracted Their attention as soon as you accidentally learned a name, and - most people who are not me lack the resources to fend off an attack even as well as we did." Sigh.
"It showed up to her like set-commands - that is what she did to you when she was compulsioned by the Ifteli army. She knows how to safely remove set-commands on humans done by a Mindhealer, but someone with her Gift and lacking training could accidentally cause damage if trying to do so. Mindhealing is very powerful and general-purpose," his lips twitch slightly, "people consider it as a Gift for healing emotional rather than physical wounds, and it is that, but it can also be an offensive combat Gift, just as ordinary Healing can. Sunspring is well trained and careful, but since fairy commands are presumably not exactly like set-commands, she would have been improvising."
He shrugs slightly. "Disrupting memories does involve damaging a person's mind. That is almost the point, it is very precise and controlled damage of just one specific thing. For that reason, though, she would not have any qualms about doing it to Thorn but would be reluctant to test it on you."
"It is possible she can test it safely with enough study time in advance, but - I do not especially want to gamble that and risk harming you in some hard-to-repair way. My tentative idea had been to attempt to kidnap someone from Thorn's court - ideally someone much less powerful than him, but who is as unpleasant as him, such that removing all their memories of names will - improve your world overall. We can station a Farseer concealed a hundred miles away to spy undetectably on the court, that part is fairly safe. The second part would of course alert Thorn that something is happening, which I understand you wish to avoid right now."
People are excited to drift up when they have a minute and watch what her new seeds are going to grow into!
A day later, half a dozen grey-haired, wrinkly-skinned human mage-scholars arrive from other facilities. They're very excited to meet her and learn about her magic and how it can treat old age! Healers can't do that - mages can slow aging, but not reverse it.
She does want supper, and then she thinks she's all set to try! "I have never done this before and in particular do not have much experience with how the whole being a child thing works," she tells her subject, "so it's possible I'll mistarget, what age do you want me to aim for?"
Leareth looks both relieved and faintly disappointed. "Then - people will still die, I think, while we are scaling up. I do not think we can cover the whole continent with you alone - just logistically speaking that is not feasible. But perhaps not for too many years." There's a distant, hard-to-read look in his eyes.
"Books like I had and focusing on it instead of also needing to forage and make their own clothes and stuff, plus some occasional asking questions of me. So I'd need to go get a book. I won't have to copy them all out if I can trade them, is there anything reasonably - innocuous -"
"All right, so she can test it herself without needing a second person. She can also see orders with Mindhealing Sight, which does not involve reading actual thoughts, with your permission she could use that to check from ten yards away or so each time before you come back through the Gate."
"Noted. I think I still prefer to be overly cautious, though."
Leareth gets to work on collecting books for her. Twenty works of fiction, none containing the names of gods or real still-living humans, can be scrounged up from nearby sites in the north within a day. For the rest he'll need to make a request from the Order of Astera, which will take longer.
Nayoki dismisses all orders via Mindspeech every few minutes, which should work according to their tests, and then when Promise is on her way back, holds up a hand and gets Promise to pause ten yards from the Gate and looks at her with Mindhealing Sight to check for any new orders before ushering her through.
Nayoki winces, but takes it pretty calmly. "Ah. ...If I order you not to give away your name even under torture, would that prevent it from working? We are checking in often enough that even if they try something, we ought to notice and be able to get you out within a candlemark. It would still be - awful - but if we could get you back still not vassaled..."
"I mean, it is simpler. And very convenient. Our way must seem so inefficient to you. It is just - well, it feels like a kind of magic to us, here." Sunspring gets up. "I will go see if Leareth is busy, he will wish to look at the books. What sorts of information are in fairy field guides?"
"I'm not really sure what would be a magical feature of a plant and what isn't. Some of them make stuff you can turn into thread? They all... taste different? Some of them glow in the dark? Some of them can open and close their flowers depending on the circumstances?"
She hands him one.
Apparently you do sorcery by holding in working memory a really ridiculous amount of detail about all the things already going on with the location or thing you are targeting. The book recommends starting with a fairylight and considering all the things affecting the amount and quality and directionality of light in your location, making sure you can pick out that exact location reliably without accidentally thinking about somewhere an inch farther off, considering the place's temperature and wind factor and dust content and air pressure and whether there's any sound that might vibrate the air and so on and so forth, and imagining in great detail exactly how your light will affect its surroundings. Apparently if you do this well enough you'll get a light.
Well, it's certainly very different from how Velgarth mages work. Leareth expects he'll be the best placed among his people to pick up the knack, though, he has the most varied experience and is unusually good among humans at deliberate concentration.
He finds a comfortable place to sit in the library, stares at a corner, picks a precise point in space near the corner where two bookshelves meet, and one by one considers every light-related factor, everything affecting the air, and then tries to stack them up and hold all of it in mind at once, and - imagine a mage-light right there, like he's cast probably millions of times, except without casting it, just imagining in as high fidelity as he can what it would change about all the rest.
That is absolutely the most fascinating thing. He's so curious - presumably this would have worked all along, if anyone in Velgarth had ever thought to try the right sequence of mental motions.
He focuses on the light for a while, until he's too tired to concentrate and expects to lose it, but - no, huh, it's still there and apparently unchanged.
He studies it with mage-sight, not probing actively but just looking, checking if there's anything there.
"Ah. I really do not understand some people, I think, but I suppose it is a great deal of work to do anything incredible with it. I expect humans will have the same limitation, but if we can eventually set up good schools for it, teach even a tenth of the total population, even if most only learn very basic uses... It would not be gated on having the innate potential, the way Gifts are. It could be so transformative for this world."
"Well, people need to have sex to conceive children - do fairies do sex as an activity? Anyway, technically they can just not, but in practice they will anyway. There are some medicines that prevent conception, though not perfectly reliably, and Healers can prevent it or end pregnancies at a very early stage. I would want to study this and figure out more reliable and scalable options, though, if Velgarth is going to reach a point when overpopulation is a risk."
Leareth does not actually need to know any of the context there so he doesn't ask. "Anyway. There will be a great deal of planning and implementation ahead, but I think for now the next step is for me to practice sorcery in order to teach it, so I ought go do that. Thank you for acquiring the books."
Leareth spends the next few days practicing sorcery most of the time. He reads through Promise's books on it and spends a lot of time staring at the library in this facility, becoming familiar with every feature of it so he can do sorcery there. He picks Nayoki as the person he'll try to do sorcery on, when he gets to techniques that need to be cast on a person; he knows her quite well already.
(He vaguely wishes he still had the library that was destroyed. That one he was intimately familiar with already, and he misses it.)
Purifying water is another one that could be transformative in Velgarth; if someday one in ten people is a good enough sorcerer for just that basic technique, it could eradicate nearly all waterborne diseases.
Leareth practices until he can reliably do those introductory techniques, and then starts lessons with some of the others, starting with Nayoki.
Nayoki watches Leareth in mind-rapport while he makes a fairy light - it still takes him minutes of intense concentration, but not candlemarks now - and then heads to her guest-bedroom here, which she knows the best of any location, and stares at the corner of the ceiling for a long time before she starts attempting her own light.
It takes her about twice as long as it took Leareth, mostly because she has a much worse attention span and keeps getting distracted thinking about her other work, but she does eventually manage a small dim light! She immediately runs off to find Promise and show off to her.
"- Also I can cheat a little at picking up new skills, because of Mindhealing, to an extent it can replace repeated practice. Anyway, Leareth learned the basics in less than a week, so probably I can learn it in a fortnight, and he suspects that once I have done that I may be curious enough about it to learn more anyway."
Leareth splits his time between reading more sorcery books and practicing new and more challenging techniques, and training the best of his mage-scholars in the basics. None of them pick it up as quickly as he did, but they study it diligently enough. The researchers who personally received de-aging are especially enthusiastic.
It's going to take a while before he has enough qualified teachers who can teach other teachers who can be sent out more broadly in Velgarth, but he has the beginnings of a plan for it, now.
About a week after he first teaches Nayoki to make a light with sorcery, he finds himself in a snow-covered plain, in front of an army, looking at Vanyel.
"I did not start it!" Leareth had wondered if it was that; the alternatives were something to do with Karse, which could be relevant given Valdemar's alliance, or possibly one of his freed mages still technically under compulsion; none of them have actually chosen to leave the organization, apparently, but one could have sent a letter, he'd been prepared for that possibility. "I swear to you, by the light of every star in the sky, that I did not deliberately start a war with your friends there. There was some fighting. They had been directed north on the orders of their Goddess. It ended under - complicated terms. I did not wish to harm any of them, and was mostly focused on evacuating my people from the site under threat."
"I do not expect that of you at all. I ought offer some credible sign of my good faith, I think. I have been considering it at length but could use your input. For one, I would be willing to send an emissary to meet him or someone else, a neutral envoy perhaps - or perhaps even meet someone face to face - at the northern border of Valdemar, if you wished it. Circumstances have changed."
"There is a great deal more context to share," Leareth says finally. "Related to, among other things, the healing we can offer." He glances at the sky. "I think we are running out of time, though, and it might be better to speak of it in full once I have made some sort of good-faith offering to you and we can have more trust."
And eventually Leareth wakes in his bed.
He sits up, summoning a mage-light, and makes some brief shorthand notes, makes sure he has it solidly in his memory, and then goes back to sleep.
In the morning, he reads through the notes, then heads to the dining hall for breakfast and keeps an eye out for Promise.
Leareth lets out his breath in a faint sigh. "So, for context, my original plan before you arrived involved invading Valdemar, a kingdom to the south of here. About fifteen years ago, something odd happened which I believe was a plot by the gods; through some implausible circumstances, a young man in Valdemar became an absurdly powerful mage who additionally has nearly all the other known Gifts, and then had a Foresight dream of fighting off my invasion. Initially the obvious intent seemed to be to stop me. However, I was also having the Foresight dream despite not having the Gift myself, and eventually we realized we could have a lucid dream and speak to one another. Which we have been doing for the last fourteen years. We are - not friends, exactly, but - well, it is complicated. Anyway, the Herald in question - I will nickname him Demonsbane - seems to have learned a very different slant on recent events, via his friends among the Tayledras. One of said friends was seriously injured in the fighting and Gated out before you arrived to heal people. I...would like to repair this, and also find a way to give Demonsbane a convincing sign that I am telling the truth about no longer planning to invade."
"Over a hundred miles, on the other side of the mountains, but one of my mages can transport you to nearby. As long as they scry the site first and do not cross, it ought be safe enough even if the Star-Eyed's people would attempt offensive action against my people." Pause. "It might be better to tell the leshya'e that you wish to heal anyone at any Vale who was seriously injured and evacuated, since I do not think Demonsbane's dream with me is known by his friends and I do not wish to cause difficulties for him."
And, a ways off, there's a Gate! It's built on an ivy-strewn arch shape where two trees have branches twined together; it looks like the trees might have been grown that way deliberately.
On the other side of the Gate is a man, fairly young-looking but with snow-white hair that falls to his waist.
"Nice to meet you too." He still looks very tense. "Hmm. What I know so far is that, er, you're working with - someone, um, in the north, and - the Tayledras went there to fight with Iftel because Vkandis saw a threat, and - the gods surrendered to you? I'm honestly really confused about all of that, though."
"Valdemar has come up but I don't have a lot of intuitions about how countries work because Fairyland doesn't really have them, so I don't know if it's in fact customary for being from a country to entitle you to information about whether other people are thinking about or making plans that involve it."
Moondance says nothing to that, just points her to another courtyard, where two young men are sitting in bowl-shaped chairs woven of living tree branches, feet dipped into a steaming pool of hot water. One has a broken arm splinted, the other appears to have a broken collarbone and has his arm in a sling.
"I don't know that I've got anything to say." Woodlark shuffles his feet a little. "I - want to know what's going on. More of what's going on, I mean. You told me what happened but I'm still in the dark about what's going to happen next. But if you don't consider it my business then I guess that's fair enough."
"When I landed," she says, "by my happy accident, which he did not cause or anticipate, I was a complete stranger and also injured, helpless, vulnerable, and terrified. Leareth's people at his direction collected me and did their best to help me and in the course of so doing acquired considerable leverage over me which they have not used, gone well out of their way to retrieve something precious to me, provided me with plenty of space to recover from the previous phase of my life, and gave me this," she taps her Thoughtsensing shield talisman, "as soon as I indicated my discomfort with mindreading. If you don't like him because the Star-Eyed doesn't I regret to inform you that my impression of her was that when I accidentally acquired the theoretical ability I did not then intend to use to give orders to her ally she promptly deployed half a joint military force to attack where I was staying and kill a bunch of people for being near me at the cost of a bunch of her own forces toward what was ultimately worse than nothing as a strategic move because now I know her name too. The comparison's not flattering. I'm aware they have both done other things than what happens to have directly pertained to me but I find that I myself always directly pertain to me so when I form my opinions that's what I work with."
Leareth,
I'm not sure if you deliberately planned to have me run into your compatriot in k'Treva, but either way, this mostly leaves me with even more questions. I'm prepared to consider that you might actually be telling the truth about calling off the invasion, since a fairy with magic from another world showing up does seem like a big deal, but I don't understand what's going on here nearly enough to feel reassured just yet.
If you're willing, I would like to meet in person so that I can learn some things under Truth Spell. I can understand why you might be reluctant, but you did offer to give me a costly sign of good faith.
Sincerely, Woodlark (you know who)
"I would like to ask you for help with something, if it turns out to be a kind of help you can provide," Leareth says. "Woodlark wishes to meet with me face to face, apparently, so he can confirm under Truth Spell that I no longer intend to invade. The trouble is that he is a far more powerful mage than I am, and could kill me if he wished by calling a Final Strike. I wanted to find out if you have any ideas on using sorcery to make such a meeting safe."
"Hmm. That does seem that it would add safety, however, I am not sure if he will endorse the risk of telling you his name. - I know it, but telling you myself feels like a rather hostile move, in this situation, so I ought leave it up to him. Did Woodlark say anything about using the message-point I specified to him the last time we spoke?"
"It would not be my preferred system for running a country! Just about all of the Gifted children are snapped up this way, and I have never found the system particularly consensual, though the Heralds are prestigious enough that most children are happy to be Chosen." Sigh. "I will leave a reply for him at the message-drop, and if he does not answer, I suppose I will speak with him in the next dream. Thank you for conveying the message."
Leareth drafts a letter in reply, asking 'Woodlark' if he's willing to consent to the plan where he reveals his name to Promise, or gives Leareth permission to do so, and then they can meet face to face without Leareth needing to worry that it's a trick Vanyel is plotting in order to get an opportunity to Final Strike him.
He has it sent to the message-drop location and left there. No reply arrives that day, which isn't very surprising, even if Vanyel Woodlark is watching it. (Leareth thinks he'd better start getting in the habit of thinking of him by the nickname so he doesn't slip accidentally.) And, of course, he has no guarantee Woodlark is paying the spot any attention.
He keeps working on sorcery, practicing it and teaching it.
...
And two nights later, the dream comes again.
"I wished to know if you were willing to share your real name with Promise. She has shown no inclination so far to abuse her power, and in fact you would have observed her healing the Tayledras even though they are the ones who attacked her unprovoked. If you did, I would be comfortable meeting face to face."
"Yes. Fine." Vanyel still seems kind of distracted, though. "I, er, I'm a little readier to believe that you've really changed your mind about Valdemar, now. Since I've seen someone with my own eyes who claims to be working with you and can do magic that shouldn't be possible. Just, it's pretty important to be right on something big? And so I want more context."
"I spoke to Woodlark in the dream last night. He had not seen the letter, it sounds as though he only just now returned from the Pelagirs. In any case, he wanted more time to consider my proposal that he tell you his name." Leareth frowns. "What was his manner like, when you spoke in k'Treva?"
"Uh, he seemed - preoccupied? Wrongfooted? He wanted to know what I was doing - what you were 'getting me to do', was his phrasing - and I said I wasn't sure it was any of his business and he said it was if it affected his country and I told him I didn't know how countries worked."
"I am glad. Do feel free to tell me if you need anything else - supplies, more books to trade... And thank you for your help, in k'Treva. I did not in fact intend for you to run into Woodlark there, but it was fortuitous, I think, he may be off-balance but he seems far more inclined to take my recent claims seriously."
"I have another trip's worth of books ready to trade but it wouldn't hurt to have more ready for the next time you want something from Fairyland to read. Also it might be a good use of book-copying effort to get me some books with names in them recopied without them, so I can have more context on things like what countries are."
She gets a number of takers for her classes! All of the mages she de-aged remain very enthusiastic about sorcery, and seem to be making unusually quick progress as well, maybe because their age means they're the most experienced in general.
As usual, she gets occasional visitors coming to check on her garden's progress, and they ooh and aah about the pretty glowing flowers and ask if she got them in Fairyland.
Valdemar was founded roughly eight hundred years ago by a man called Baron Valdemar (they haven't bothered to redact this name, since he's long dead and it's now the country name.) He was fleeing a corrupt empire in the east with several thousand of his barony's people, and went as far west as he could, right up to the then-border of the Pelagirs. He founded a city there and named it Haven.
In his old age, the first King Valdemar worried about the country's stability; he was especially conscious that it might eventually slide into authoritarianism and corruption, like the empire he had escaped. He prayed to every god whose name he knew for a solution to this; since he was a powerful mage, it's suspected he also cast a spell.
His prayer was answered by the appearance of the first Groveborn Companions, sentient magical horses who Chose and bonded to him, his son, and his herald, who became the first King's Own. Thereafter, when additional people were Chosen, they were referred to as Heralds. The miraculous arrival of the Companions also brought the Death Bell, which rings magically whenever a Herald dies.
Important elements of Valdemar's founding philosophy and current policy: the kingdom does not invade and conquer other countries. It's been expanding steadily since the Founding, but mostly to the north and west as new land became habitable, and by the voluntary annexation of smaller landholdings that wanted in on the kingdom's competent governance and institutions. Also, Valdemar is the kingdom of 'no one true way'; unlike in neighbouring Karse, there's no official state religion, and half a dozen different gods are worshipped in various temple orders.
Valdemar's history has been mostly very internally stable, though with periods of trouble with border invasions and wars with its neighbours; Karse in particular, the southern neighbour, has gone through a couple of cycles of expansionism over the centuries. For the most part Valdemar has been on good terms with its southwestern neighbour Rethwellan, which is a major trade route.
The next chapters go into more depth on Valdemar's legal system and institutions.
The rest of the book does not really enlighten her on this question. The closest it comes is some references to how diplomacy tends to work between countries. It's generally considered correct etiquette for countries to inform each other of their intentions, for example by keeping treaties updated and making formal war declarations if they're going to war. This point of etiquette is perhaps honoured more in the breach than the observance; Karse, for example, has hardly ever formally declared its wars before attacking.
There a chapter each on the Collegia in Valdemar. Pretty much all Gifted people are under the jurisdiction of one of them, as employees of the government; Healers at the Healers' Collegium, Bards at Bardic, and most other Gifted end up Chosen and trained as Heralds. Each Collegium has its own internal set of rules, and infractions with Gifts go to court within the relevant Collegium.
Heralds serve an especially wide variety of roles. At a given time most of them are out riding circuit, fighting off bandits and wild animals, investigating crimes, maintaining infrastructure, and providing an appeals court with Truth Spell. Valdemar also uses its Mindspeakers for rapid internal communication along the Mindspeech relay. The main trade roads are paved by magic, which makes long-distance transport of goods by wagon a lot easier than in Hardorn or Karse, which for the most part don't have paved roads.
Nod. "And it would also seem risky to test. Hmm. It seems that fairy memory for people's names works somewhat differently than it does with humans; is that also true for your knowledge of your own name?" She's frowning. "I am trying to think how I can do this without risking learning it. The amulet you are wearing does not technically block my Mindhealing but does block Thoughtsensing, so it would prevent me learning any content of thoughts, but usually for something this fiddly and involved I would want Thoughtsensing as well, to check if I was making mistakes. If you think you can very accurately report on your thoughts to me while redacting the name, though, that might suffice..."
"I'm not actually sure if the way I remember my name is like the way I remember others. I started knowing it. It's much more likely-seeming to me that Mindhealing can't be used to learn my name because of the immunity than that, say, compulsions can't, but I can probably report on my thoughts pretty well? Depending on how much detail you need. I think faster than I talk. Can you make yourself forget it too if you learn it, since it's just a normal memory, for you?"
"- Oh, yes, I can do that easily. It is much simpler to make myself forget something I only learned the once, if I do it immediately. I am worried this will be hard because it would be entangled with more of your past memories, but I suppose less so if you rarely think of yourself by that name because everyone in Fairyland goes by nicknames?"
"Mmm." Nayoki manages not to make a face about the mention of Thorn. "All right. Since you dislike mindreading and would find that distracting anyway, I will start out trying it without. I need you to think your name, without saying it is fine, just so I can see where the memory is in your mind."
Huh. "All right, I think this ought be doable. I need you to recall memories of past occasions when your name was relevant - where someone else said it, or learned it from you - so that I can better see the bounds of what I need to be blocking, here. I will try not to block the entirety of those, just the link to your knowledge of your own name, but the most likely failure here is that I block the full memories of everything where your name came up in the past. Are you all right for me to go ahead?"
Then Nayoki will watch what pathways in her mind light up or shift when she retrieves her name-related memories, she tries to gauge how extensive they are, and then she warns Promise she's about to begin and, very very very carefully, she starts putting in a block around the place in Promise's mind where her awareness of her own name lives.
Her Gift has some odd sensory effects, but she's not doing anything big and it's very mild.
"- Tell me what that feels like now," she says after a minute or so. "There might be a moment of disorientation when you try to think about your name...?"
Nayoki keeps going. Every so often she asks Promise to remember her name, or think of one of the associated event-memories, to check the result so far. It gets progressively harder and harder to do so, and then at some point her name doesn't seem to be 'in' the memories at all, there's a dizzying sort of blank spot there, and if she tries to just think her name, the first attempt flat-out fails and leaves her a bit disoriented.
"Almost," Nayoki says. "It may not be thorough enough yet. I want you to try to recall your name directly, and be very persistent about it, see if you can get there eventually."
"All right."
And Nayoki spends the next ten minutes carefully, painstakingly sealing up every last crack she can find that could let Promise through to her name.
"Done," she says finally. "You are probably going to feel tired after this. And - I cannot promise it is completely airtight, it is difficult to make perfect blocks, but it ought at least be very hard and time-consuming for anyone to compel you to recall your name."
"Hmm. I doubt he was surprised when you did not answer, for what it is worth, but it makes sense to me that he found it worth asking. Since I had already told him of my change in plans, and also acknowledged that it would be easy for me to say whatever I wanted, and that it was on me to provide more evidence of my new intentions. My course of action here has large ramifications for him, since he is among Valdemar's top leadership as a kingdom, and will need to decide whether to stand down preparations they have been making for an eventual war, or even whether to open diplomatic talks with me. Likely he needs to decide whether and how to explain any of this to the King, since I think so far he has shared only the dream's existence and not his conversations with me, so having more information to back this up is time-sensitive as well as important, and given our history he is disinclined to take anything I say on faith. - I have never actually lied to him, but I could have if I had chosen to, and we both know this."
"Yes. The Companions do a different kind of deliberate soulbond. Lifebonds generally occur between two humans, or sometimes among other intelligent species, and are based on some kind of soul-compatibility, but form fully when the participants meet as adults and result in strong romantic attachment. I am fairly sure that lifebond-compatibility is one of the gods' schemes to accomplish Their aims indirectly."
"I am not very fond of it myself. Oh, and as another grievance I have with the setup, people do not generally survive the death of a lifebonded partner."
Hopefully Vanyel's particular history there won't end up being relevant, since Leareth is very sure that Vanyel would be upset and angry if he told Promise about it.
"If they never meet their would-be lifebonded, the bond does not form, but there is also no known way to check if one has the potential for a lifebond, or who it would be with. I suppose it might be possible to notice very early on and immediately leave before the bond formed fully? Most people are not observant enough for that, I think."
"Sudden, disproportionate infatuation and positive feelings, I think. I have not myself been lifebonded. - For what it is worth, I think it is unlikely the gods here could do it to you, since They never possessed your soul and never will - and even if They could, it would require fifteen years or so of lead-time for a compatible human They created to grow up."
It doesn't arrive.
In the very early hours of the morning, though, a Gate appears on the doorway to a supply-hut out behind the border Guard-post at the edge of Valdemar, just before where the paved road becomes a rutted gravel track, forking off to the east to the holding of Westmark.
A man in Whites with silver-streaked black hair falls through and the Gate crumples behind him.
He lies on the ground for a couple of minutes, not moving, and then drags himself to his feet and starts weaving his way north under the moonlight.
Leareth chose the message-drop location because he knew Vanyel had traveled nearby on his Heraldic circuits, and he has a Farseer checking it at regular intervals, and also passive wards to detect any nearby strong magic.
The wards trigger an alarm, and someone checks the site, and five minutes later they're waking Leareth.
"We need healing. For some reason Woodlark Gated out to the message-location in person and collapsed there, he is sensitive to Gates, they need to move him through a second one to bring him here and he is in very bad shape, our Healers cannot treat it very effectively..."
Sunspring holds up a finger. She's moved on to Mindspeaking him, which also doesn't get a response; he doesn't even let her through his shields, which came back up and turtled tightly around his mind the instant he was conscious. He's not leaking anything, in terms of thoughts or emotions.
Even her Mindhealing Sight is partially blocked, but she can see enough. The loaf of bread that's his mind is - taut, pulled half apart, twisted out of shape. She can See the bond that's under strain. Companion-bond, presumably, not that she's seen one before.
The GIANT GAPING HOLE in the centre of his mind is really not helping with its overall stability.
She switches to Mindspeech with Promise. :He is in enormous emotional distress of some kind. I think your sorcerous healing is not going to address that:
Leareth is at the other side of the compound in his shielded Work Room, considering if he should leave entirely. It sounds like that's probably an excessive level of caution, though? Since Woodlark still seems pretty incapacitated and has Healers supervising him in case that changes, and Leareth can be out of here in a couple of seconds if he needs to be.
He accepts the letter from Sunspring, and opens it.
It's scrawled out in terrible handwriting, wandering across the page, not exactly grammatical and with some actual misspellings as well as a lot of crossed-out words and second attempts.
...
To Leareth
Should warn you got messy situation in Haven. Fight with Yfandes about you, gods. Said she had to leave, went to tell Rolan something don't know what. Not sure how King will react, could be very bad.
(At this point, there are several lines worth of crossed-out attempts at phrasing something.)
Thought you should know, the Circle might stop me from sending further messages.
-Woodlark
...Well, that's not ideal.
"If his Companion stormed out on him, that likely explains his level of distress," Leareth says to Sunspring, wearily. "I doubt we will succeed at learning more from him tonight." Sigh. "I will draft a letter to drop off in Haven with one of the messenger-birds. Not that I expect them to believe it, especially, but it seems worth the attempt. In the morning we can see if Woodlark is in better condition to speak, and maybe return himself to explain to them."
Leareth drafts a letter which is fairly upfront and thorough, though efficient, cramming a summary of the situation into two pages. Vanyel is in the north and safe (it seems safe enough to use names here, the letter will be gone well before Promise is awake again, and the Heralds won't have any idea who 'Woodlark' is). Leareth is committed to not harming him and will not prevent him from leaving, but he's exhausted after Gating and is resting now.
Leareth explains that he and Vanyel have been speaking in a lucid dream for about fourteen years; he suspects Vanyel hadn't shared that part, and that the Circle has just found out from Yfandes, but even if not, either way they ought to know. Leareth confirms that he was, originally, intending to invade Valdemar as part of a plan to fix problems in the world, which he isn't going to put in an insecure letter. (And which he possibly shouldn't tell any of the Heralds at all.) He wasn't very swayed by Vanyel's arguments that he ought not to, but that conditions have recently changed and he now has much better options and is standing down that plan entirely. He very briefly describes Promise's arrival from another world and powers, and the fact that she knows two gods' names and helped him hold Them off when they attacked in response to her learning Vkandis' name accidentally. Leareth adds that the Heralds should plan on choosing nicknames and getting in the habit of using those, in case they end up interacting with Promise. Vanyel is going by Woodlark here.
He adds that he isn't expecting them to take his word here on faith, and had already been discussing plans with Vanyel to meet so Vanyel can question him under Truth Spell. He realizes it's on him to prove his claims, here, and is going to consider other more trustworthy information sources he can provide to them. They should consider contacting the Tayledras in k'Treva if they want to know more, though, since Promise volunteered to travel there and heal those wounded in the attack that the Star-Eyed ordered.
As a start, he confesses to having arranged the kidnapping of mage-gifted children, which he ceased doing a decade ago. He recently offered all of them the chance to leave his organization freely if they want to; none took him up on it, but in the morning he'll find out if any of them are willing to volunteer to travel to Valdemar and let the Heralds question them under Truth Spell about their experiences.
Leareth rereads the letter draft a few times, and then writes out a clean copy of it on a new sheet of paper, and places it in an envelope to be sent. He should really think more about this, but probably he should first get more sleep.
Sunspring updates Promise on the message Leareth sent last night. Leareth is elsewhere right now, interviewing previously-kidnapped-children who are now mages in his organization, trying to sort out whether any of them are willing to volunteer to return to Valdemar.
The two he's spoken to so far are worried they might somehow get instantly Chosen by Companions if they venture into their former kingdom, and they don't particularly want to be conscripted by Valdemar's government, Valdemar sounds so incompetent compared to here.
"I have very little idea how Valdemar's system works. I think the Companions do not usually Choose adults, but it is hard to know for sure. Leareth suspects it is possible to refuse to be Chosen, and that the Valdemarans simply do not know this, and also being Chosen is prestigious so most children would not object."
Sunspring shakes her head. "No. Leareth thinks it might be appropriate for you to meet them eventually, but not as a first step. He is hoping they will contact k'Treva Vale and hear of your meeting with the Tayledras there, though, and that this will be somewhat reassuring."
Even once he's awake, Woodlark doesn't especially want to talk to Promise, it turns out. He doesn't really want to talk to anyone. He does, eventually, agree to explain a little more of the context around his fight with Yfandes to Leareth, but he doesn't himself really understand what happened and why she was so upset. They were talking about gods and Promise's not-exactly-positive first impression, apparently she gave quite a speech, it was addressed to Moondance but his Companion (who should maybe get a nickname but she's not here anyway) was there to overhear it.
Around noon, the ward-alarms trigger again for another Gate to the same guard-post, and shortly later the mage scrying the area can see a tall, muscular, blue-uniformed woman trooping north with a letter in hand, which she leaves at the message-drop spot (provided to the Senior Circle via an enclosed map with Leareth's letter) before tromping back to wait at the Guard-post.
Leareth holds up the letter. "We have a reply from the Heraldic Circle in Haven. It seems they did consult with the Tayledras in k'Treva Vale, and...they are still very untrusting toward me, but they would like to meet with you, if you are willing." Leareth seems surprised about this, and unsure whether to be pleased and relieved or the opposite. "They would ask that you allow a first-level Truth Spell, but in the letter at least they agree not to use the coercive version, they generally do not for diplomatic purposes and I do not think they care to offend you."
"Your ability to rapidly grow your tree back is very useful. Anyway, if you are considering going to Haven, I would feel more comfortable if you had some way of passing messages. I can give you an artifact for it, but since you are not a Mindspeaker, you could only pass a single 'call for help' message by activating it, which is not as useful."
Nod. "Well, it is better than nothing. And - hmm. There is a Heartstone in Haven. It seems very likely you could use that to have the attention of the Star-Eyed, and tell Her whatever you wish. The difficulty is that I do not have a straightforward way of receiving messages from Her..."
"All right. And I will give you the artifact just in case - in an absolute emergency, I can risk a Gate to Haven from a map to help you get out. Hopefully you will be safe there, though. I am mostly nervous because Woodlark built a Heartstone there, which contains a fragment of the Star-Eyed, who manifestly dislikes me, but she cannot harm you."
"Well. I wish you the best of luck. In terms of what you can share - I would prefer you not bring up the plan to make a god at all, or the original power source. Partly because it is moot and partly because I am concerned it would cause trouble with the other Companions and their Heralds, similar to what Vanyel had." He pauses for a moment. "Everything else is, I think, fine to share, though I would ask that you use your judgement on whether it is relevant. Thank you for being willing to do this."
And Leareth can arrange for someone to Gate her to the message-drop location and then escort her down the road to the Guard-post.
Wingsister gestures at a path and starts walking, glancing back to make sure Promise is following her. "Well, we want to hear more about your observations of Leareth so far, because Moondance said you had a positive impression of him, and - I'll be honest, that's awfully jarring with what we know. Though apparently we were missing rather a lot of context on him." She says it sharply, almost but not quite rolling her eyes. "Also, we would like to hear your side of things on the, er, Tayledras attack up north. I know you've already explained to other people, but we would find it valuable to hear it again directly, and with a first level Truth spell if that's all right. - Um, if you haven't heard of that, first-level just indicates whether or not you're telling the truth, it won't force you to give answers."
"I was in Fairyland. I encountered a tear, a sort of flimsy interworld gate known to occur sometimes in Fairyland, and went through it. I believe it's now been destroyed by my passage. At the time I was seriously injured, among other things, and fell to the ground in Leareth's territory. This set off some alarms and his people collected me and helped me recover my faculties."
"I wasn't counting sleeps - I'm not used to keeping time precisely at all, let alone by a regular day cycle, and anyway he lives underground and I live inside of a tree trunk. Not long, though, I think less than a week. I read some books, that's what set it off. They'd redacted the library of books with living mortals' names but forgot to also take out anything mentioning a god by name and Sunlord's name clicked. I didn't do anything with it, but it wasn't long after that his and the Star-Eyed's forces attacked."
"I don't know what they thought would happen but I asked some questions about how gods do things with Foresight, derived the Star-Eyed's name, and demanded a surrender by planning on insisting that they both stop if one didn't materialize. She did and He didn't. I incapacitated the Ifteli army - with some help and some messiness - and then negotiated details through a leshya'e the Star-Eyed designated as her representative and let the Sunlord mostly resume his normal activities. I healed the surviving casualties of the fighting. The leshya'e conveyed a request that I assassinate Leareth but I have no idea why She thought that might work."
The King's Own hails a gardener and asks him to put up a rope fence around the soon-to-be-tree and a sign telling people not to eat it, it's very important. Oh and he should add on the sign that no one should introduce themselves by name to the woman there; the Heralds all know but he's not sure it's successfully reached all the servants and such yet, not that they exactly make a habit of spontaneous introductions.
Wingsister is there. "Promise. Have a seat. Our first question now is - do you know anything about how Woodlark is doing? And can you clarify what you observed of his arrival there? Leareth claimed in his message that it wasn't a kidnapping, that Woodlark Gated himself out there, but obviously we'd like another perspective on that."
There are glances around the room. They don't seem entirely reassured, but maybe a little.
"Obviously we would like him back home," Wingsister says, slowly. "Things are - a little complicated - but still. Do you have a way of sending messages to Leareth, or is it simplest for us to drop off a letter at the spot he gave?"
She gestures with her chin to one of the other Heralds. "Can you get that moving? Good. - Promise, the rest of our questions for right now are mostly about trying to understand you, and where you're from, this Fairyland. Can you give us the short version on what Fairyland's like and what the main differences are that you've noticed so far between there and this world? And then maybe we can better pin down what our remaining questions are."
"Fairyland is an infinite landscape with many kinds of fairies and no animals but lots of plants. Our social structures consist almost entirely of various flavors of magical slavery. Most kinds of fairies don't breed; my kind does not, so I have never been a child."
"Sorcery is better for healing, about equal for light, drastically worse for defense, slower but I think harder-hitting for offense, better for plants, kind of a tossup for stuff in the material object crafts genre, worse for communication and moving stuff around."
"Hmm." She's quiet for another few moments, thinking; there are Mindspeech looks shared. One of the Heralds is taking notes.
"I'm still confused about the, er, political situation in Fairyland," Wingsister says finally. "I guess the relevant question is, if people in Fairyland found out about our world, what are they likely to do about it? And how much does that vary depending on which polity someone makes contact with?"
"Fairyland does not have politics like your politics. If typical individual fairies found out about your world they'd ignore it. If some fairies found out about it they'd do various things that weren't ignoring it and might or might not have courtsful of other fairies to bring along on the project."
"Hmm. I suppose that decreases the risk." Shrug. "If it were up to you, what would you advise? It - does sound like Fairyland is pretty unpleasant. I'm not sure if the, er, magical slavery situation can be fixed, but, well..." She lifts a hand, vaguely, lets it fall. "I'd want to help if I could."
Wingsister gestures for Promise to follow her, across the field back to one of the paths and then along it.
"We got a reply from Leareth," she adds. "He said that apparently V– er, Woodlark, is claiming he doesn't want to come back to Haven." She sounds so suspicious about this.
"That's fair. Um, given this, though - we're thinking about whether it makes sense to ask you to go back north, talk to him, and then maybe come here again? Though perhaps Leareth would also be willing to volunteer one of his people to come down and be Truth Spelled about it, if you'd rather not make the multiple trips."
"Goodness! We don't really have flying with magic at all, here. You must be able to fly pretty fast, to make that feasible." They've reached another, different stone building. This one looks a little newer and has slightly higher ceilings, though flying inside is still cramped.
"Sure. It's mostly a lot prettier and more interesting-looking than here, I've been wondering why that is, maybe animals make the scenery uglier or something. Lots of flowers, lots of trees and moss and mushrooms and ivy and bushes. Seasons and days work differently, I'm from a place where it's usually autumn and afternoon."
"Huh! I'm wondering if it's a climate thing, the prettiness - I've heard there are kingdoms down south with gorgeous jungles and forests. Here a lot of our plants die every winter and grow back in spring. It's late autumn here right now, really not the prettiest time of year, the field is all soggy because it's been raining a lot."
"Er, for healing mainly, but involving people who kind of want to meet you diplomatically. I don't think there'll be much in the way of specific questions, at this point, just - our Council will feel more comfortable with the whole bizarre situation if they've seen your face."
The King is much more skilled at polite deflections than Wingsister is. He thanks Promise very eloquently for her help, expresses Valdemar's formal gratitude, lots of words words words that are mostly just conveying that he's pleased about the situation. The Council seems to get something out of the redundant-seeming remarks, though; they settle down and eventually file out of the meeting-room, cheerfully enough and without even trying to go near Promise.
"All right," the King says, sitting down again once it's just him and Wingsister and Promise left in the room. "I - think that's most of what we had for now. If you're willing, we'd like to ask you to go back north, and find out what's going on with Woodlark, get a guess of when he'll want to come back. And, er," he takes a deep breath, "if you could ask Leareth what reassurances he would need, from us, to be willing to meet somewhere - it can be north of our actual border, if he prefers a neutral location - and go under Truth Spell."
"I guess just the general sentiment that - we've had a positive impression of you, and we obviously don't want a war and would prefer to work something out with Leareth. If he's telling the truth about his change of heart, that's very good for us. We're not being very trusting about it, which I imagine is frustrating, but I do hope it's true."
"Hey - Woodlark wants an idea of whether the Heralds are angry at him, or even know what's going on with his Companion, before he gives an estimate of how long he'll want to stay away from Haven. I know you're not Valdemaran yourself but you have slightly more cultural context than me and Woodlark's still pretty distracted..."
"That make sense. It would be well to do it sooner rather than later, though, or find another way to reassure them that I am not holding you here against your will. Perhaps you need not return to Haven, though? If I can accompany you to a neutral location, and let them ask you a small number of questions to reassure themselves you were not kidnapped?"
"Woodlark, would it help you feel more at ease with this if Promise returns first and speaks directly to the Groveborn about his conversation with your Companion? And what parts of it he actually relayed to the Heralds? In your place, I would find it - grounding, to know where I stood with them."
"I imagine you do not really want to go over the conversation you had with her, right now. Perhaps Promise can gauge from the Groveborn whether the Heralds are angry, and if not she can ask them what they know already and fill in any gaps, and can at least reassure them that she spoke to you and you were - able to hold a conversation." For some definition of 'conversation', anyway.
"It would be quite excessive on her part to do that because you had a conversation about gods!" Leareth hesitates. "...I cannot rule out that Companions were - made that way. They are god-created beings, after all. But I expect - I hope - that they are somewhat less rigid than that."
"You're welcome!"
Again, this requires a message being sent down the Mindspeech relay so that Wingsister can do a Gate from Haven. General comes back to wait with Promise once she's passed on said message, and makes conversation. She wants to know if Fairyland has war, and if so what that's like? It's of interest to her because she's a military commander in Valdemar.
"- Gods. I...guess...that'd make sense in that context. Gah. I - never thought about how glad I am that torture is almost never the best tactical move in wars here. I mean, at least not if you've got Thoughtsensers or Truth Spell. Which I guess fairies don't have." General looks so unhappy about this.
:She approached me in an agitated state and was - evasive, about the exact cause of her very obvious distress. I gathered she fought with her Chosen but she did not go into depth on that part. She did inform me of Woodlark's discussions with Leareth, and that the previous Groveborn before me, who is dead now, had ordered her not to tell anyone. I think that her decision not to bring me in after his death was an oversight and I should have been told years ago:
:She also told me of one earlier conversation with Leareth where he claimed he was no longer planning to invade. And of your existence, of course, and your brief meeting in k'Treva. Apparently you made a rather rousing little speech about Leareth's merits relative to those of the gods: The Groveborn's mindvoice is, perhaps, very slightly disdainful.
"Not really, no. There is a spell that mages can use to communicate, if Leareth wants to use that - one of our mages would need to meet one of his, but briefly would be fine. Or letters. I don't think we need you in person unless there are other things we specifically want Truth Spell for, which...I don't know that we've thought of anything worthwhile yet."
"Let's go do the Gate at the temple."
She walks in silence for a bit, looking at her feet. The letter is still in her hand, creased from being unfolded and refolded and read many times.
"...Do you think Woodlark is actually, um, all right?" she says after a few beats. "He says I shouldn't worry, in his letter, but also that he's not ready to come back, which - is worrying, honestly."
"Mmm." Wingsister looks like she maybe wants to ask more, but instead bites her lip and keeps walking in silence.
They reach the temple and she raises a Gate back to the northern Guard-post. "Er, can you tell Woodlark I said hello. And -" her voice catches, "- that I love him and I miss him."
"I have a message for you from the Heralds," Wingsister says suddenly, drawing a different, hastily folded letter from her tunic pocket and handing it across the Gate.
(It's a copy of the letter, written in a shaky hand with a couple of tears staining it, but Promise doesn't need to know that, or why it's relevant to General.)
"Oh." He looks a bit defensive. "I told Wingsister some things in my letter! I guess I didn't go into much detail on what I fought about with my Companion. In case it's - how Companions are made, and it'd happen with hers too if they talked about it. Maybe she thinks I'm just being evasive." He seems upset and frustrated about this.
"Mmm." Woodlark drags a hand over his face. Takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. "Um. I guess - it'd be good if I went back because everyone must be very confused, my Companion didn't explain very much about Leareth and it's not like you have much context. So they would want to ask me questions. But that sounds awful. So I don't want to. Which is really cowardly of me, I guess, just..."
"But they might not– Right, this is coming back to the same problem as before, the Truth Spell thing. I guess - it's probably better to send a letter than not do that? And if they want to question me under Truth Spell to make sure I'm not lying, maybe I'll feel more up for it later."
"All right. So the current plan is that Vanyel will say some things under his own Truth Spell to you, which I can confirm with mage-sight, and then you would be able to confirm this under Truth Spell later to the Heralds?" Frown. "It is definitely evidence for them, but might not be conclusive, since I could still be lying about my mage-sight results. I suppose Vanyel could Truth Spell me as well, but that would still be fakeable if both of us were in on it. Which is something the Heralds might in fact be concerned about, given the givens." Sigh. "It is probably still worth doing."
"Yeah. It seems silly but whatever he's so afraid of having happen if he goes back clearly looms very large. I guess if the Heralds are likely to be worried about you and Woodlark collaborating I could order Sunspring to check for me? And then I'd be able to personally guarantee it."
"We can do that. This - still feels like a suboptimal workaround we are trying instead of solving whatever makes Woodlark feel uncomfortable going back? But I model most of his issue as being that he is very depressed and so doing anything seems overwhelming and hard, which is difficult to address."
Sigh. "That makes sense. Well, we can try this strategy for now. And I am considering whether I ought just take the leap and suggest meeting with whichever Herald they are willing to volunteer to send north and do a Truth Spell. I am much less uncomfortable about meeting someone who does not have Woodlark's absurd power - a Herald with only weak Mindspeech would not have much ability to threaten me, and I would be comfortable just doing the meeting without your needing to know their name, I just did not expect the Heralds to be willing to take that risk."
"...Hmm. I am not sure and need to think through all the considerations. It - would offer a way for me to respond if it turned out to somehow be a trap, because I could then try to very quickly get the Herald's name? But I think it is unlikely to be a trap, and also without Woodlark it is unclear if Valdemar has enough resources to inconvenience me even if they try. Probably it would be fine for you not to come."
"All right. I am going to write a letter to Valdemar asking about the plan where I meet a Herald with minimal Gifts, so that I can undergo Truth Spell. In which case I can also verify Woodlark's story at the same time. I expect they will not come to a consensus on it and reply before tomorrow anyway, so we can give Woodlark time to decide what he wishes to say." Sigh. "Thank you for trying to talk to him about it."
Leareth goes through several drafts of a letter to the King of Valdemar and eventually gets it condensed down to a short, straightforward description of his idea. He would like one of his mages to meet the Herald they choose to send first, to verify that they're alone (with their Companion) and being truthful about their Gifts/lack thereof. He suggests they can, at that point, question the mage under Truth Spell to verify Leareth's intentions, which implicitly gives them an opportunity to bug out if the situation looks suspicious. Once he has confirmation, Leareth will Gate over and answer their questions.
The Heralds receive and discuss this letter.
On the one hand: aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah.
On the other hand: it's objectively not risking that much to recall a random minimally-Gifted Herald from one of the borders, who doesn't know much about Valdemar's plans, and send them north still without context to cast a first-level Truth Spell and read off a list of questions. If Leareth betrays them and captures said Herald, Leareth won't learn anything he can't already have learned from having goddamned Vanyel in his hands. And, of course, the upside of getting confirmation is high.
"I think we should send Herald Lores."
"I do. I think he can handle this fine. We tell him it's a critical diplomatic mission, of the greatest importance, and we're selecting him because of his diplomatic experience in Lineas, plus the fact that he's been there for decades and so has less important intelligence to give away if he's captured, and for the same reason we can't brief him on all the context, since that would defeat the point. He'll be flattered. Then we give him a script of questions to read off exactly, and ask him to write down the answers exactly. He won't expect to know what's going on because of the part where we can't afford to brief him, so he shouldn't feel out of his depth, which is when he really digs in his heels. He won't be creative about asking followup questions but if we plan the script well that shouldn't matter."
"Let's go down the list of Heralds on circuit, I guess."
They go back and forth on this for a while. The problem is that most of the weakly Gifted Heralds, like Keiran and Katha, are in much more sensitive positions than Lores, because Heralds with weak Gifts are more likely to be assigned to diplomatic positions or Haven-based positions. There are a few recently-graduated Heralds on circuit who only have Mindspeech, but since they're recently graduated, they actually know a lot more intel on Valdemar than Lores, who's spent only a few days out of the last decade in Haven.
The next morning, a letter is Fetched into place at the drop point via a relay of Fetchers from Haven. (Valdemar's Herald-Mindspeakers have far greater range than Mindspeakers in most places, it's posited that this is because Companions can strengthen Gifts during training and help boost them in emergencies, and it's also true that Valdemar has Fetchers with greater range than is usually expected. And a letter isn't heavy.)
Woodlark hugs his knees to his chest and stares at Promise's chin while ignoring the entire corner of the room Leareth is in. He casts a Truth Spell on himself; it takes him a minute to concentrate well enough; and then he reads off from a sheet of paper in a flat toneless voice. The blue halo remains in place.
"I have been talking to Leareth in the Foresight dream for about fourteen years. The last Groveborn told us not to tell anyone. Recently," he can't remember the exact day because what are days even, "I had a dream with Leareth where he said he was cancelling the invasion plan, acknowledged he would need to prove it. I d-didn't say anything because I couldn't think of how to explain it. Then we got word from k'Treva and I had another dream with Leareth and I shouted at him. I assume he sent Promise to k'Treva because of that, and I was there, you probably have her account of what we talked about. She - said some things to my Companion - we were talking about it after and - had a fight - I don't really understand it but she was mad about what Leareth thought and was mad at me for thinking it was reasonable. She said she couldn't be around me and ran away but she was going to tell the Groveborn first. I - panicked and Gated north to leave a message for Leareth because it seemed like things might go very out of control and he d-deserved to know. In the scenario where he's trying to cooperate with us. I didn't really mean to have him Gate me north but I didn't - not mean to do that? I was in a bad state and I didn't have a plan. I don't think it's accurate at all that he kidnapped me. I've been treated very well here. I'm very useless though so it d-doesn't seem like there's much reason to come back. I'm sorry."
He falls silent. The blue halo is still there, unfaltering.
It somehow still takes another day of back and forth for the Heralds to send a letter with a proposed arrangement to Leareth, who replies with his comments and has to wait for their reply...
...and the next letter after that shows up in person with a messenger who says it's VERY URGENT and the letter is for Woodlark.
"Woodlark received a letter from the Heralds. His Companion is back in Haven. We should return him there as well - he is willing to go, though he seemed to find it hard to make a decision about. I was wondering if you were up for accompanying him so that you can heal him after the Gate. - Both Gates, since he will need to wait at the northern border Guard-post for someone to bring him to Haven."
The singing attracts a trickle of older Companions and a few very young-looking humans in grey versions of the Heralds' Whites, trailing alongside or riding their Companions. They don't talk to her, though, just smile and wave and listen from a distance before wandering off again.
The sun sets and the stars come out and it's quiet and peaceful.
Wingsister leads her across the gardens to the Heralds' temple where she generally does her Gates, not speaking. She looks tired, like she was up half the night, but a lot less tense than before.
"Wanted to thank you again," she adds. "For everything." And she raises a Gate for Promise.
He opens it on the spot and reads it.
"- Oh. Good. They still want to do the Truth Spell meeting, on general principle, but they are thanking me for returning Woodlark and for taking good care of him while he was here, and - expressing that they see this as a significant update toward my friendliness." He smiles at Promise. "Thank you. Hopefully I will not need to send you hopping back and forth to Haven again, and can handle the rest from here. Do you wish me to come update you once the Truth Spell meeting has happened, though?"
Leareth brings an update two days later.
"I think things cannot be described as settled down yet, but will be soon. We did the meeting and Truth Spell questioning today." He grimaces slightly. "The Herald they sent to question me was an incredibly frustrating person. I suspect they selected him for it because he is not important and does not know much information of strategic value, and so I would obtain little if I broke the agreement and kidnapped him for interrogation. They gave him a script and he followed it, though, and I believe I 'passed' all of their tests here. I am waiting for a response from Valdemar's leadership." Pause. "I did receive a message saying that Woodlark is doing much better."
"I came to let you know that, in my judgement, everything is now calmed down! The Heralds still seem to be somewhat stunned by recent events and needing time to absorb it; I cannot really blame them, it is a major change. They are convinced I am not going to invade, though. I offered to send them a dozen of my people who have been learning sorcery, to teach it in Haven, and they accepted. They are working out the logistics of transporting people who are elderly or have chronic incurable illnesses to a central location and were wondering if you would be available for periodic visits to heal and de-age them, since none of my people are advanced enough yet."
"All right, I will let them know, and we can arrange Gates for you. Hopefully we can actually switch to doing a single Gate directly to Haven, since they trust me enough now to give some of my mages a tour. In the long run we ought to figure out something more efficient than that, though. I know how to build permanent Gates between two locations, which have their own power supply and thus can be used by any novice mage; this is a forgotten technique in most of the world. There is also the fairy kind of gate, which does not need ongoing power at all but does require a sorcerer. I wanted to ask: if you make a fairy gate between here and Haven, and keep it closed most of the time, are you the only one who can open it or can any sorcerer do so if they know it is there?"
"She is the ruler of whatever bits of it she happens to want. Uh, most spontaneous fairies are members of kinds with multiple instances. I haven't met any other leaflets but I know they exist. But there's a handful that are one-offs with especially rare and useful powers. The Queen's power is to know every other fairy's name."
"Yes. I'm sure she has a system for doing it, even though I don't know exactly what it is. She's got to be at least as clever as Thorn - even with her power you have to hold the upper hand, and she's done it for thousands and thousands of years. But her reputation suggests that she's not as sadistic and the upside potential is also greater."
"I think humans can, perhaps with Fetching, get her on a food claim, and then between her and compulsions get the rest of the court to stand down. It'll obviously be more complicated than that, but I've never been to her court and don't have real intel, just extrapolation based on a few clues and knowing she's smart. She won't be expecting Gifts, and she won't be expecting it to be possible to open a gate to Fairyland, since it's understood that sorcery doesn't work in the usual mortal world. Unless, of course, she's known about Velgarth all along, but it'd be a very well kept secret."
"- Oh, you may well have marked it, I will have someone retrieve the map for me."
He Mindspeaks Sunspring about it. A couple of minutes later, one of his staff comes up with the map retrieved from his office, and Leareth unfolds and checks it. Did Promise in fact mark the location of the Queen's court?
Leareth, still holding the map, aims a scry at the location where Queenscourt is marked; since it's going to be pretty approximate, he places the scrying point high above the ground so he can see for a wide distance around, and looks for the nearest sign of habitation or buildings.
Then Leareth will contentedly spend the next few candlemarks scrying various features up closer and drawing a map of the terrain, including any magical elements he notes with mage-sight, and describing the appearance of any fairies he notices to Promise so they can keep a list of the kinds of fairy present.
Promise knows what the Queen looks like, and as a one-of-a-kind she should be unique, but it transpires she has body doubles, which will complicate things. She fills in her notes about what kind magic they'll need to expect.
The terrain around Queenscourt has a sourceless waterfall just pouring from the sky for no reason, and one of those floating islands tethered by a silk rope to a stake in the ground, and a lot of magically interesting plants and a cave system under the palace full of glowy crystals.
It's beautiful, and fascinating, and Leareth is slightly awed.
Also it's a pretty long way for scrying and after two candlemarks of it he's getting tired. He asks Promise if she wants to keep looking, if so he'll hand it over to another mage. (No one is as good at scrying as Leareth, but he can give a fellow Mindspeaker an image of a starting point, and an Adept mage can manage quite a lot of scrying at this range if they take breaks, even if they're not as efficient as he is.)
She draws a floorplan of the place, firms up estimates of numbers and kinds, writes what she knows about their magic. Guesses at court positions. Determines that the interesting water feature is actually another one-of-a-kind fairy who has hydrokinesis and is in there somewhere.
Leareth goes back to his other work - right now, writing up a proposal of services that sorcerers would be able to provide in Valdemar once they achieve various milestones in their training process - but whenever Promise has detailed enough intelligence on Queenscourt for her liking, they can meet again to discuss plans.
"Ah, so food is just broadly construed. There is magic that can hold a bubble of clean air around someone, and I am sure it can be built into an artifact if I work on it. In which case I can send someone who is not a mage, to reduce the downside if they are gotten, but nonetheless with mage-protections."
"We should think about a contingency plan for if she does capture the Fetcher-Mindspeaker. I suppose one option would be to try again the same way, but from a different location, but - trying the same plan that failed once and hoping it will succeed is not the ideal strategy. The much more aggressive plan I had been considering was to open a Gate from high in the air and have Sunspring poke her head through and immediately set-command the Queen to eat food - since we think set-commands override orders, I am not sure compulsioning her to eat would work - but that requires knowing where she is fairly precisely, and also involves risking Sunspring, which I would prefer to avoid."
"Into her stomach, if they can manage it. I'd be surprised if her food wasn't inspected many times before she gets it. Stomach is better than throat is better than mouth - inducing vomiting immediately might throw off a lot of claims if it wasn't all the way down."
"It is complicated because in order to be precise, Fetchers need to either be able to see where they are Fetching something, or have a clear mental image of it, or at least know exactly where it is spatially. I think this ought to be doable with Farsight plus practice, though. Assuming fairies all have the same anatomy, that is. I suppose if they are slightly off, it will end up counting as injection instead and she might notice it, which is still not a complete failure."
Leareth nods. "I think we have enough items to work on for now, then. I will want to train several people for the Fetching-Mindspeech role, even if we only send one, and I need to design the protective artifact against pollen, and learn the plant-growth sorcery in order to teach it. Anything I missed from that list?"
"There are ways to awaken potential Gifts, but I do not have any remaining potential." In this body at least. "I do not know of a way to acquire a potential Gift one was not born with. Also I think it would be ill-advised to risk my being captured by the Queen of Fairyland, for reasons other than my particular Gifts."
"I have been wondering if I could design wards to detect a new fairy Gate opening, since they are visible to mage-sight then. In which case we could at least make it difficult for her to make a sorcerer gate to anywhere in my territory - and likely Valdemar as well - without being detected immediately."