He thinks Aria's likeliest contribution would be to help organize the treants. This is plausible, but he has no idea what she can and cannot do on her own.

<Can you tell me more of Saruman's power? You have said he has a tower; what magic is Saruman capable of, and what are his tower's defenses? Why does he need so much firewood for forges that a whole forest is at stake?>

<As for the firewood - He is raising an army and forging new weapons for all of them, which might well demand a forest in itself.  And he is likely doing more as well - I know he has been forging magical rings; they in themselves would probably not demand much more wood than nonmagical rings, but that is merely the trifle he has let me learn.>

Gandalf sighs.

<I have not been in his counsels for... I do not know how long anymore.  I know the walls of his tower are impregnable to any material force, and he has fortified walls and moats outside them.  I am sure he has other defenses beyond those - including now from the air, after he has seen me escape on an eagle's wings.  But especially beware his voice; he will make his words seem wise and reasonable to those who hear him, and often lure them into agreeing with him without their better judgment.>

This description doesn't slot neatly into her preconception of what wizards of different power levels are capable of, but she knows by now that the local 'wizards' are better understood as some new kind of mage. Gandalf (and his cousin Radagast) remind her of rangers; Saruman might be a song-sorcerer for all she knows.

Making a tower literally impregnable to all but magic certainly sounds very impressive to someone from Avistan. Only the grandest and most storied fortresses boast such defenses; wizard towers usually don't, because any wizard powerful to do that uses private demiplanes instead. The local 'wizards' can't even teleport, but that doesn't mean they're not formidable in other ways; she'll be sure to stay on her guard.

Nevertheless, when a wizard is raising an army, one naturally tries to bypass the army and assassinate the wizard. <What of his personal defenses? Does he leave his tower, can he be lured out of it? Is he vulnerable to poison or disease, in this strange world without clerics? Is he vulnerable to physical attack from an ambush, since local wizards cannot teleport away? Would he notice immediately if a creature was imbued with magic, and at what range? How good is he at throwing off spells that attack his body - I assume he is good at throwing off those that attack his mind ->

Gandalf will remain blissfully ignorant that she's assuming Saruman built Orthanc himself.

<He does not leave it often.  In theory he could be lured out, but I do not know anymore what could lure him, save> - the briefest pause - <something he feared his servants would steal if he sent them for it.  He can be physically attacked, and in theory I believe he could be taken ill or a spell cast on his body - as could I, but it has been many years since the last time I was in fact ill, and I am very good at throwing off spells and Saruman also did it well.>

<What about noticing magical creatures? On Golarion there is a trivial spell every mage knows that detects magic, within sixty feet after looking at something for a round (*), but it requires concentration. So you cannot cast other spells while using it, and few people use it constantly if they do not expect danger. And there is another, much stronger spell, which powerful wizards can make permanent, which lets them always see magic, with much greater detail and at greater range as well.>

(*) A round is a small unit of time, equal to twice the casting time of most well-formed spells known on Golarion. The word's origins are obscure; ritual casting, with a group of mages standing in a circle, is a form of magic that does not happen in an small, exact number of half-rounds.

<Strange... We do not have any such spell to detect magic.  Sometimes I've wished I've known one.>  That would have made it much easier to identify Bilbo's magic ring.  Or at least it would have if the spell had been precise enough.  <... And I sometimes I am glad we do not know such a spell; Saruman would scarce have left me as much as he did if he had been able to notice everything I had.>  Such as the Ring of Fire.

<How much does your spell tell you about the magic you're seeing?  I would be curious to watch it on, say, my sword?>

Assuming she agrees, he'll draw Glamdring to show it to her.

(Saruman had declined to take Glamdring or his staff.  A sword forged with spells against Orcs was little use to a leader of an army of Orcs, and Gandalf could only guess that Saruman hadn't taken his staff in hopes that he'd eventually join him if not left completely bereft.  But Narya the Ring of Fire, he'd hidden.  That, Saruman would have taken had he been able to.)

This, more than anything else, convinces Aria that Gandalf isn't lying. 

She can imagine a country without clerics, like Rahadoum or a more radical Razmiran. She can imagine peasants from a random (or, perhaps, a carefully selected) village in that country having no idea that clerics even exist. Something like that could easily exist in Arcadia or Tian Xia without her knowledge.

She cannot imagine any part of Golarion being without detect magic, at least not stably so without being promptly overwhelmed by foreign mages. It changes the rules of the game completely. As Gandalf just told her, being in possession of a very powerful magic ring that his jailer could not find. (She had assumed he'd swallowed it in captivity.) 

She has a feeling she might soon find out for herself how true that is, because the only thing that lies between a druid and some powerful people dying in their sleep is said druid's lack of a permanent mind blank.

<If I were a trained and capable wizard, it might tell me a lot. It clearly shows what is magic, and its strength, and separates different spell effects, but I do not have the knowledge or training to tell what they do, other than recognizing very common spells that I have seen many times before. It also sometimes assigns a spell to one of eight magical schools, but that division comes from a tradition of magic that is not universal even on Golarion, so I do not expect it to be of much help here.>

<Your sword has two spells on it, both of moderate strength. One is divination, the school for finding out or understanding things. And one is conjuration, which is a broad school that covers teleportation, summoning creatures from other planes, and healing, and I have no idea how those are related.>

<I can also see that your staff is magic, with no school identified. And you have a very powerfully magic ring, with an abjuration effect, which is the school of - protection and warding.>

(Aria has not yet fully internalized the fact that, without detect magic, Gandalf might not have intended to test her on finding his ring. To her, it's just obviously there.)

Gandalf notices Aria's surprise and her brief appraising expression - and then she describes his ring.

He doesn't bother hiding his shock.

<Protection and warding indeed!  Maybe a dozen people in Middle-Earth know I wear this ring.  Now you are one of them - and I would ask that you spread it no further; Saruman is among them, but the Dark Lord may not yet know it.  It was made by the Elven-smiths of Eregion almost five thousand years ago, to ward off the decay of time...  There are few like it.>

Hopefully she won't ask about the other Rings, but if she does, there are some things he can safely tell her.

(Someone who appears to be calculating her power - no matter how deserved it is - should probably not find out about the One Ring just now.)

<The sword was forged by the Elves of Gondolin, mere centuries after the Sun first rose.  It bears spells for the bane of orcs.  I found it in the hoard of some Trolls, though I know not how it came to them.>

A 'wizard' bearing an orc-bane sword? This man is clearly a ranger. 'Sword and staff' normally refers to two different people, not a combination... whatever he is.

(It is perhaps a curious coincidence that both magic items were made by elves.)

<I will keep your secret,> she tells him, <so long as I have no reason to call you enemy.>

<I am inclined to go straight to Fangorn Forest, to offer my aid.> And to ask the treants a lot of questions, so she has a second source of information to compare to Gandalf's story before she does anything drastic. <Do you think there is anything else I would regret not doing first, or along the way?>

If this whole story is a ploy to set a druid on his enemy then Gandalf has succeeded, but as long as it's true that Saruman is felling a forest, Aria considers it a favor to have been told about it. Unless an even greater tragedy is unfolding somewhere nearby, in which case she might be quite cross with Gandalf for not telling her about it.

<And I have urgent business in the North as well, once I befriend Shadowfax.>

Anything she'd regret not doing first...

<That is a dangerous question you have asked - and I can scarce guess how to answer it.  One person might regret not speaking to Saruman first - a foolish regret, I would say, but a regret.  Another might regret not speaking with the Men of Rohan.  But with what I have seen of you, I cannot place any particular regret.>

<Perhaps I will yet speak with Saruman, if it seems prudent, but I certainly will speak with the treants of Fangorn Forest first. But I have not heard anything about the men of Rohan that would interest me, and that would not still be true a year from now.>

<I had wondered at first how you intended to befriend a wild horse without suitable magic; but with telepathy, it is clear you can at least talk to him. You are not like any wizard I have ever met; in Golarion we would name you a new and different kind of mage, I think. I hope there has been no other misleading translation between us.>

<You recognized us as tigers. The humans here seem normal, and you seem human too, or something very close to it.> Unfamiliar races can be very hard to tell apart; Gandalf might be mentally rounding 'dire tiger' to 'tiger with longer fangs' for all she knows. <An army is cutting down a forest; that is easy to understand. Maybe there are mistakes, but probably not as important as that.>

<Indeed; I am sure there have been many misunderstandings here.  This is one reason the Elves rarely use this form of osanwe when they can use words instead.>

And their delight in the beauty of words - he can remember bright eager Feanor -

<But I am sure none as important as Saruman felling the forest and his other ill-deeds.  Farewell; may we meet again in a less worried time.>

<Farewell, then. I also hope we meet again, and that the times become less troubled. And I am glad we met this once.> Greetings and goodbyes are very important to humans, which means they differ wildly between cultures, so her best bet here is 'bland repetition'.

<May you find good fortune on your hunts and in your friends,> adds Tora, who cares much less about local cultural norms and more about just saying what she feels.

Sometimes things are simple. If Gandalf hasn't lied, then he's a ranger who was imprisoned by an evil traitor wizard to stop him from helping his treant friends whose forest the wizard is cutting down -

(- not that Gandalf has said all of this, precisely, but it's the simplest story that fits, and so, why not assume the best of people you like, because she's been getting seriously Good vibes from Gandalf -)

- anyway, if that's all true, then she wishes him all the best and will help his treant friends in his absence! It's what Aria would do.

(And it's what Aria will do, since Aria is here, but Tora would do it anyway, so.)

This doesn't even mostly fit into even a wordless telepathy message, because explaining chains of thought is harder than just following them on her own, but some overtones probably leak across.

<And you as well,> Gandalf replies to the tiger with a deep nod.

Sometimes things are simple for Gandalf too, but not today.

As he walks over the hill following Shadowfax, he glances back at Aria and Tora.  They seem to be something like the Ents, but their concerns - at least, Aria's - are broader.  And, he doesn't think he's gotten his head around them yet.  She was asking all sorts of questions (sensibly enough), and she has magic he's never seen before in Middle-Earth...  Hopefully he won't come back to see her as the new mistress of Isengard?

... well, even if Aria does that, she'll have a lot of groundwork to catch up with Rohan and Dunland and orcs before she's as dangerous as Saruman.  Probably.

If he sees an Eagle again, maybe he can send a message about her to... Galadriel, probably.

And the One Ring is more important.  Where are the Nazgul?  Where has Frodo gotten to by now?

Oh, there's the Grey Wandering Two-Legs again!  Smelling just a little of Cat!

Maybe he warned them away?  That'd be friendly!  He can come closer this time!

As promised, they do not follow and spook off the horse. They'll find another herd; it's often better to hunt at night. For now, they'll head north.

Aria and Tora do not hurry terribly, but neither do they dally. They observe the land and its inhabitants as they go, and try to learn a little about the new world they find themselves in.

Aria talks to animals and asks questions of the birds; and she can turn into a bird herself, and an eagle's eyesight is proverbial.

Will they come to Fangorn Forest if they head straight north, or are they closer to the Isen river and Isengard itself?

The rolling plains of Rohan are largely deserted of men and elves; Aria can occasionally see a herdsman in the distance.  There are lots of animals, though if they don't care to steal from a human's herd, it might take a couple days before they find a meal big enough to be worth the chasing.  But snacks are available.

Up ahead, the hills grow larger until they turn into the tail end of a mountain range.  It looks like this's the east arm of the mountain valley Gandalf drew on his map - in which case the wizard's tower is in that valley, and further east is Fangorn Forest.

But before they reach the mountains - they come across a stretch of ground where the animals are terribly frightened!  Some dreadful creatures galloped west just a little while ago!  They looked maybe like horses?  Maybe someone was on them?  But all the animals were too terrified to give a clear description!

Huh. That sounds almost like - a fear aura? But one that extended much farther than usual; the reports do not come from a neat track one or two hundred feet wide.

Most animals do not care much about, or even notice, those who are not their predators or prey or competitors or mates. It is unusual for an animal to be scared of something and not be able to give a clear description why they're scared.

Aria turns into an eagle, and flies up to try to catch sight of these creatures. On the plains, when the weather is good, one can see until the curve of the world, and that is far away indeed as the eagle flies.

She can see a lone horseman coming south from the valley with the wizard's tower.  He looks like an ordinary rider.

There're some other horsemen to the southwest who also look like ordinary horsemen, not moving in any definite direction.

And there're also a group of what might be orcs north of them, carting felled trees around the shoulder of the mountains.

Aria supposes 'horsemen with a large-radius fear aura' would fit the facts, except why. Also, they're not galloping away from where she started.

Anyway, she's not going to fly near some horsemen just in case they turn out to be supernaturally scary up close; that sounds like a self-defeating enterprise.

Her search frustrated, she flies back down.

Meanwhile, Tora has been sniffing around for any trail the scary creatures may have left! What can she find?

The trail looks like some galloping horses!  Not that many; maybe nine of them?  They were headed west, toward the river or the wizard's tower or somewhere around there.