The Heralds probably won't believe him either way. 

Vanyel might. 

....Maybe. Nayoki often suspects that Leareth is giving Vanyel too much credit because of - she would say "personal fondness" except it's Leareth and she's not sure what it is. History. 

:You should ask him if he will attack you with his mace if you go in to talk to him: she suggests. :I would find it very understandable if he did, but - I think he is not going to promise not to and then do it anyway.: She's spent a lot of time staring at his mind by this point and she's fairly sure of that. 

Leareth heads over to the Work Room. Stops at the door, takes a breath. 

:I am: he resists the urge to just introduce himself as 'the evil archmage' since that's what the man is thinking of him by anyway, :Leareth, the one who had you kidnapped. We intend to return you to Valdemar, since you were not responsible for k'Treva and seem disinclined to push for a war.: Given how he has thoughts like war being the most tragic of human endeavors.

:I realize we have no grounds to ask you for favors, but - I believe it would reduce the chances of a war that neither side currently wants if you are willing to bring certain information back to Vanyel. Particularly if any of your god-magic could be used to confirm that I am telling the truth about having no part in the attack on Haven or k'Treva Vale.: 

Nayoki is still reading his mind and very curious how determinedly unhelpful he's going to be about this! 

Oh more complications for the law puzzle. Guid- fuck. Okay. No Guidance on the law puzzle.

So, on the one hand, kidnapping Blai and burying him in enchantments should be a very bad way to do anything. It should just make your life and everything you were trying to accomplish in it worse if you kidnap Blai if Blai can finagle that at all including at disproportionately enormous costs to himself. He would pretty straightforwardly die just to make it be a bad and useless idea to have kidnapped him and would also have done this when he would have gone straight to Hell.

On the other hand, if it would make things go better for Valdemar, who have not kidnapped Blai at all, and let them avoid having a war, he would like to help them out. They might really like a report from Blai about the evil archmage! They should probably not listen to one damn word Blai says because he's been buried in enchantments by an evil archmage('s lieutenant), but it's at least within the realm of possibility that they could, with local magic and their knowledge of it, get a report from him that they would and should trust. It's an almost unique property of communication-from-the-evil-archmage-to-Valdemar, that it could be a thing the evil archmage wanted to accomplish by kidnapping Blai and also worth doing anyway. The fact that the evil archmage should have a fucking embassy like a normal person if he wanted to be able to communicate with Valdemar doesn't obviously change that.

On the mage hand the evil archmage can just say whatever nonsense he wants, they only have Blai's read on Vanyel's impression to go on about him being maybe lawful evil. Blai did not prepare Detect Law or Zone of Truth because those are not spells you prepare when you're anticipating hostile archmage action. Also an archmage could shrug off or deliver a mistaken impression to Blai's spell like it was nothing so it would be kind of farcical to try. (Why didn't they specify that the guy was an enchanter. Blai wouldn't have gone for the Protection from Energy if he'd known he was an enchanter.) He cannot remotely guarantee that this whole shenanigan isn't, say, intended to look like a mutually beneficial communication attempt and actually, via slotless sorcerer bullshit, render Blai into some kind of mind-read-able Sepia Snake Sigil or some utter nonsense like that.

Iomedae would come up with the right thing to say here but Iomedae was Splendid and already half-divine in her mortality and IMMUNE TO ENCHANTMENTS. None of which applies to Blai. So he doesn't have a right thing to say, so he's going to resolve the law puzzle in favor of the first consideration. You get nothing you want this way, fuck you. He has misplaced a rook and starts over again this time with Berolina pawns.

There is some kind of deep irony every time Leareth's enemies end up thinking he's capable of even more impossible things than he actually is. Vanyel does it, though he is at least capable of noticing that if Leareth has every capability they suspect him of having then it's surprising he hasn't already won; the other Heralds definitely do it. Leareth...probably could in principle have Nayoki send the man back with convincing false beliefs, but not with only a few candlemarks to work on it and not undetectably to mage-sight or Mindhealing Sight. Of course, the Heralds are going to assume the worst anyway, and - it might not be unreasonable of them, given what they know. He definitely cannot turn him into a...whatever a Sepia Snake Sigil is???...but it's not like the priest has any way of knowing that. 

...The priest's world does have truth magic. And the ability to directly detect - what is that concept, even - Leareth is desperately intrigued and has also definitely wedged himself into a position where there's no possible way to productively ask. He has fragments, and - can put it together into something that feels coherent, something like -a person's tendency to commit to following a particular decision procedure that in expectation has the results they want? 

The priest has a very optimistic sense of how well embassies work as a method of communication even between normal countries maybe that makes perfect sense, though, if it were standard to be able to check both if someone was telling the truth in a specific case and if they were - in general the sort of person who would act as they said they would - then international diplomacy might go a lot better in general. (A major downside for Leareth of having an embassy in Valdemar is that it opens up more surface area for gods to interfere with his plans, so he would have been reluctant anyway, but still.) 

He also abruptly has huge numbers of questions about the goddess who...used...to be mortal...? (And also, or at least he's guessing from the priest's thoughts, would have, if put in this situation, wanted to find a way to de-escalate. It feels like that...should be significant, it feels like he should have enough fragments here to put together more than he realizes so far...) 

He would like to file a complaint with the universe that the priest of a formerly-mortal god from another world with different magic happened to coincidentally arrive at the most suspicious possible time that is not how anything works. He made a decision based on the information he had at the time. It was probably the wrong decision. This is still the position he's starting from now. 

It does not seem productive to try to have a conversation with the priest now. 

What options does he have. 

...Most of the remaining chances of this not being a disaster rest on Vanyel. Who is probably being nudged as hard as possible toward concluding that Leareth was lying about his motives all along, but - if Leareth's interpretation is right then this priest is just as out-of-context for the Velgarth's gods as for him. And might be harder for Them to push in a specific direction. 

If he sends the priest back, even that by itself is a message. The Heralds will obviously suspect a plot, but - he thinks Vanyel will be confused, and try to resolve that confusion. Even if the gods are blocking the dream - which, on reflection, seems more likely than Vanyel doing it - he can keep sending messages. Vanyel has enough context on what Leareth wants realize why another world is gamechanging for him.

Leareth does not like the feeling of making a move that puts most of how this goes next out of his control. But that doesn't mean it's not still worth trying. 

:Fair enough. I expect we will return you to Valdemar within a candlemark, once some logistics are arranged.: He would rather not accidentally spook Vanyel into, say, casting at a distance at something he assumes is an attack and killing the priest in the process. 

To Nayoki, :- do you think you could figure out how to unblock specifically the one spell he keeps trying to cast in order to think better?: 

She's spent long enough watching him instinctively try to reach for it over and over that she's pretty sure she can do that, yeah. 

(It might be fine to give him all of his magic back? There's no indication that his spells include a Gate or anything that lets him leave a locked room, and also, well, if he manages to escape back to Valdemar then maybe that just saves Leareth a step. ...But it's not impossible he could do something that makes the situation worse somehow, and Nayoki thinks he would probably just not engage with the question if they asked whether he would agree not to attacking anyone if they gave him all his magic back.) 

He can get Guidance back, though. 

He doesn't notice right away but then he tries to cast it, completes the motion, immediately spends it on trying to "make a save", casts another one, tries creating water, and can't do that. Is this the part where they make him cast Guidance on all their guys, the only a thing worse than being enchanted not to cast Guidance would be if Iomedae won't let him keep it at all because it's being used against Her purposes...

...Honestly Nayoki is pretty intrigued by the spell but, no, they are not going to make him cast it on Leareth's people. They are going to leave him alone and not ask him for anything while Leareth goes and figures out where they can safely put him back without spooking Vanyel into setting any buildings on fire. 

:We can bring you water if you want: she offers, not that she's really expecting him to take her up on that. :We are not going to force you to use magic for us before putting you back.: He of course shouldn't be expected to believe anything she says just because she said it, but they aren't, and hopefully it'll take less than a candlemark to figure out logistics. 

He can't take water from his captors, that would be legitimizing the situation far too much.

...Sure, she's not making him. 

Report on Haven from the people he has watching things evolve: the Heralds are absolutely on high alert. 

There are, uh, also suddenly around a dozen new non-Valdemaran mages around? The Gate to bring them in wasn't directly observed, it was probably in a Work Room, but going off the sheer quantity of weather disturbance in Haven right now, there were probably multiple long-range Gates this morning. At a wild guess the new mages are mostly Rethwellani and probably Valdemar is urgently bringing in their allies. 

Leareth is not delighted about raising a Gate anywhere near Haven with that many mages nearby and on a hair-trigger. Even if he does it himself - he can probably drop the priest through a horizontal Gate in half a second and have it down again - there's too high a chance that Vanyel or Savil is waiting to blast the first hint of a Gate-signature. (He would survive it even if he's casting a freestanding Gate, he has better shields than the Heralds know are possible, but now is a pretty bad time to be unconscious with backlash.) If he has one of his other mages do it, their chances are even worse, and of course the priest himself might end up caught in the blast radius. 

He has other underground shielded Gate-locations, but none of them are that close to Haven. Probably that's what he should do - send the priest, send an un-Gifted messenger with orders to surrender immediately - but then he has to separately send a message to the Heralds telling them where to pick the priest up, and the Heralds will suspect a trap and might just ignore it. He could send a Mindspeaker with the priest, but strong Mindspeech can be used offensively, so it's plausibly more likely to look like a trap, and also it wouldn't be obvious to them who to contact, they might have to spend a long time searching for the nearest Gifted Herald... 

Update: Gate-signature in - uh, northern Valdemar, they're having to consult a map to figure out what the town is called - in a town they think is called Havenbeck? 

What now can they get Farsight coverage immediately please. 

Herald-Mage Vanyel and his Companion, accompanied by the King's personal Bard, appear to have Gated into Havenbeck directly. They look like they're equipped for a journey. They seem to be headed further north. 

Which could mean several different things. It's compatible with both "Vanyel is heading north to open communications with Leareth" (which is an arrangement they had discussed), and also "Vanyel is headed north to try to assassinate Leareth" (which is a stupid plan but Vanyel can empirically be wedged into stupid plans and also they work more often than they have any right to) or "Vanyel is making an attempt to rescue the priest" (unclear what his exact plan would be, he doesn't know where Leareth is keeping the man, but Leareth isn't the only one who's been holding back his full capabilities; maybe Vanyel thinks he has a way of locating the priest.) 

...It also feels like luck going Leareth's way for once, because Havenbeck is actually quite close to one of his records caches. He could drop the priest off within a mile of Vanyel, in the process sending up enough of a Web-alarm to attract his attention but not enough to give him a chance to blast the Gate while it's still up. 

Luck appearing to go Leareth's way automatically makes him suspicious, of course. 

He could Gate the priest to Haven anyway - it's safer without Vanyel there - but that leaves open way too much opportunity for Vanyel to fail to find out that he put the man back. ...He could Gate the priest somewhere else and separately send a messenger to meet Vanyel? That - seems probably excessively complicated - he wishes he knew for sure one way or another if Vanyel received the first letter he sent. He did send a redundant copy with one of the nalaar and it should have arrived well before Vanyel left - and Valdemar captured some of his people, probably alive, and could have questioned them and gotten a matching story - but he does not have actual confirmation of any of that happening, and of course Vanyel wouldn't have taken it at face value. 

But the worlds where this goes well are almost entirely counting on Vanyel having as much information as possible. 

...He doesn't need that long to make a decision. 

:I am going to undo the blocks on your god-magic and then we are going to Gate you back to a location in Valdemar along with a messenger carrying a message for Vanyel: Nayoki tells the priest. From safely outside the room. :If you use your god-magic to attack the mage who is going to Gate you, that would be inconvenient and Leareth will probably decide we need to keep you unconscious and then try again. ...If you use your god-magic to try to escape on your own without hurting anyone then I think this also makes it more difficult to return you to Valdemar promptly, but Leareth thinks it would be unreasonable to expect you not to given the circumstances, and he does not intend to make returning you to Valdemar conditional on you being cooperative about the process.: 

She will start undoing blocks. With the areas she thinks are minor spells first, like the creating-water one (which is really not a minor spell from a Velgarth perspective but he clearly thinks of it that way.) 

He thinks it's pretty patently impossible for him to make a meaningful dent in an archmage('s forces) and it would be kind of petty to punish the only acceptable thing there is to do with Blai from this point in the decision process (returning him to Valdemar), which they might, conceivably, be actually planning to do. If she is not totally bullshitting him it would be useful to know what conduct the messenger is expected to display.

Wow, he's at all capable of being reasonable that's probably unfair. Leareth seems to feel like the man's commitment to being as unhelpful as possible so that kidnapping him is always a bad strategy was reasonable of him, and Nayoki isn't sure she thinks it was a good idea but it's abstractly admirable. 

:The messenger was originally briefed to travel overland to Haven from a Gate-location, surrender to the Heralds, and cooperate with being questioned in whatever way the Heralds chose; she has context on Leareth's long term plan, but not military tactics. She is also un-Gifted and unarmed. ...We are in fact going to send you to a location in northern Valdemar because Vanyel just Gated there, either to try to talk to Leareth or try to kill him or possibly he has no decided which one yet. We will be dropping you off in a supply cache, which is shielded enough that Vanyel will not be able to blast the Gate and kill you if he is startled, but the messenger has orders to immediately go to the surface and be mindreadable so that Vanyel can find you more easily.: 

She can say all of this while removing blocks, it doesn't even slow her down. 

It's going to be so awkward if Vanyel can't lawfully accept a surrender but it doesn't matter if Blai likes it and he doesn't have a better idea.

It's possible Vanyel is sufficiently pissed off to kill a messenger, but it seems unlikely to Nayoki; he's absolutely going to suspect a trap but it would be out of character for him to kill someone over it. She thinks the worst he would do is refuse to talk to them and ride away, and he's probably less likely to do that if they're also returning the priest at the same time. The mission is definitely a dangerous one for the messenger in question, but Leareth thought the greater risk was godshenanigans in Haven, not the Heralds having a policy against accepting surrenders (???) And that should actually be a lower risk in the north, which at least isn't within a mile of a Heartstone.

She doesn't bother trying to explain that, just double-checks that she's gotten all of the mind control off. 

:Some people are coming into the room in a moment: she warns the priest. :The messenger and also a mage who will be doing the Gate but staying behind.: Hopefully he'll be willing to at least get up and walk through a Gate, but it wouldn't be the end of the world if they have to physically carry him through.