That seems to be all Yfandes wants to ask about right now, though if Blai seems to want to talk more, she's listening.

Stef feels like he's extracted all the juicy gossip he can for now, or at least everything that Yfandes is willing to participate in. He's going to get some sleep after all. 

Guidance. Guidance. Guidance.

Eventually Yfandes relays that Vanyel is on his way back. The weather is somewhat better but it'll probably still be another couple of candlemarks; she thinks he'll get back just before dawn. (And presumably be exhausted, but she can wake Jisa at that point so Van can get some sleep.) 

:It's all right if you want to sleep some: she tells Blai. :I'm perfectly capable of keeping watch.: Probably moreso than he is; neither of them has mage-sight but she's at least a Thoughtsenser, and has the usual touch of Foresight that Companions do. :I can wake you ten minutes before dawn again if you need time to think about the spells you're asking for today.: She can't see the sky from here, obviously, but Companions tend to have a very accurate internal sense of time. 

:It would be a little safer to pick them now so that if something comes up and I am awoken by dawn's arrival instead I'm not caught guessing. I imagine I want a Detect Law, is there anything else in particular?:

:I guess you get the healing either way and you can convert more of your magic into healing in an emergency? The spell that makes you - immune to weather, or whatever it is - would be pretty nice to have, at least for the humans, Enara and I will be fine. And - do you have a way to do shields? More generally than just against fire, I mean. It doesn't seem impossible we'll run into more, er, trouble. If it's a god nudging us to just get really unlucky, I could imagine - I don't know, earthquake, landslide, wild animals, maybe running into bandits...: 

Pause. 

:I don't know if this should be a priority, but if you have room for it, and we expect you to be meeting with Leareth anyway, the prophecy spell on him might be interesting.: 

:I have a lot of protective spells I could prepare but they are generally shorter duration and much more specific than the shields mages do, and I can't get them up as quickly. Four Endure Elements, a Minor Prophecy, maybe a Snow Shape, maybe an Owl's Wisdom, and I'll do the alignment check by Aura Sight, it's a bit more informative.:

:Owl's Wisdom is for - thinking better? That seems like it could be a very good idea. If we're lucky we'll have - time to go somewhere safe and think and make our next decisions - but I don't know if we're going to be lucky.: 

:I could do two of those and lose the Snow Shape, I'm probably thinking about Snow Shape because if I'd had it today I would have used it.:

:It would definitely have been useful today but it wasn't critical that you didn't have it or anything. I think - being able to think about this clearly is probably more important.: 

Yfandes has an eidetic memory and can remember the whole list he decided on and remind him in the morning in case he wakes up groggy after his two and a half candlemarks of sleep. And he should really probably try to sleep now before it turns into even less sleep than that. 

She's not wrong. He wads up some of the cloak to rest his head on and lies down and sleeps.

The storm blows itself out a candlemark before dawn. The kyree pulling Vanyel are able to make somewhat faster progress. 

Twenty minutes later, just before Vanyel reaches the records cache, one of the nalaar catches up with him with a letter. 

If Blai is a light enough sleeper, he'll probably be woken by an extremely exhausted Vanyel letting himself into the records cache. He's been warned that everyone is sleeping and is trying to be quiet, but after all the sled-riding today he can barely walk in a straight line. 

Blai is in fact a pretty light sleeper, but after a moment to refresh his light and see it's just Vanyel all he's going to do about it is ask :Channel?: and if declined roll over and resume sleeping.

Vanyel will read the letter from Leareth - all it says is that he received the message from Feniss, is still committed to negotiations and will not operate against Valdemar in the meantime, and Vanyel can send a reply with the nalaar. 

He's torn on whether to wait for Blai to have prepared spells for the morning and discuss next steps before he responds, but - there are some things that are time-sensitive to convey to Leareth. Like Iftel's army, and he should explain that they sent the messenger to Haven even though prooooobably Leareth was able to observe this - he's got to have Farseers watching Waymeet - and can infer why. 

He writes up a letter using the paper in his saddlebags, tells Yfandes to wake him when Blai is done preparing spells, and sends it and then curls up for a very brief nap. 

Blai wakes with the dawn. He wraps his hand around his holy symbol but doesn't need to sit up or anything, or even open his eyes, to pray. Maybe he'll get to go back to sleep after but maybe they're in a terrible hurry, he doesn't know.

If Vanyel were awake, he would probably be inclined to treat it as a terrible hurry and wake everyone else for a meeting. 

...This is likely to take days to play out, though, and they're all underslept. Yfandes is making an executive decision to not wake Vanyel, and let Blai get some more sleep. She'll wake them all at noon or if a reply comes from Leareth, whichever happens first. 

No reply by noon. It probably takes the nalaar a while to get over the mountains even in good weather. 

Then she'll nudge everyone awake at noon. It's not quite the equivalent of a full night's sleep for everyone, especially not Vanyel, but hopefully they can be a little better rested and more clearheaded for whatever happens today. 

Okay, he's up, what's the plan.

:We need to arrange where to actually have you meet Leareth. And I suppose how to get there, though hopefully the kyree can do it.: They're hanging around outside the records cache, apparently not at all bothered by the weather. :I think we want somewhere outside the Web - if only so no one gets spooked by a Web-alarm - and the trouble with the pass is that apparently if we meet there we get attacked by gryphons. I think I would rather we're the ones to propose a place, but I don't actually know any good places north of Valdemar's official border.: 

:I mean, if we all have Endure Elements and we assume Leareth can take care of himself, we don't have to meet somewhere that provides shelter. Could just randomly select a spot on the map and send it to him.: 

:I'm a little worried that there would be an opportunity to just - not actually manage to find each other. Especially if we're splitting up. It just feels like the sort of plan that has a lot of opportunities for bad luck.: 

:Hot Springs Clan is north of the border. I think I could persuade them to host. According to the prophecy they end up involved anyway. And they're in a cave system, I think gryphons would have a lot of trouble attacking us there.: 

:I have four Endure Elements prepared.:

:That gets the humans, now that Feniss isn't with us, and I think the Companions will be all right for a trip. Stef, why don't you ask the kyree if they're either willing to have Leareth come to their caves - er, we should maybe specify conditions, like whether he can bring anyone with him? - or at least whether they have any other ideas for landmarks.: 

Sigh. :I really want to arrange this today, but I already sent the nalaar back with a letter telling him about the gryphons and explaining why we sent Feniss to Haven. I think it can probably find us even if we're on the move but I'm not totally sure of that - I was nearly back here when it caught up to me this morning. And there aren't that many candlemarks of daylight left, at this time of year.: