Competitive people are fun! If he beats them they just keep coming back for more without him having to wheedle them or have something to punish them for!

Stef was already very invested in the peace efforts but it's extra motivation that they need to resolve this so he can come back having thought about it a lot more - maybe he can teach Van and they can play against each other - and he can come back and WIN. 

Jisa is back shortly after nightfall with two fist-sized quartz-and-metal artifact-focuses in a pouch for Blai. She can explain how to activate them; there's a loop of silver wire embedded in a groove, with a bead that can be grabbed, and he has to tug it free and twist it until it snaps, which will break the part of the set-spell that tells the artifact not to start working. At that point it will run down its stored mage-energy within about fifty seconds and will, during that time, replicate the form of a Thoughtsensing-based communication-spell, though Blai does need to speak out loud because...something something this is how the artifact knows what to send rather than trying to send literally everything in his surface thoughts.

Jisa would not have thought you could DO that. Apparently even for Leareth it's a very very very complicated working and Blai should keep in mind that each of these is, like, almost a year of work for one of a handful of mages who have the training to do it at all, all of whom are in high demand for a huge number of other projects – so, he should absolutely still send a message immediately if he judges it's relevant to de-escalating and time-sensitive and he's otherwise unable to get in contact. 

The message should not be considered to be particularly secure - some communication-spell variants have additional obfuscation but there's a limit to how much complexity you can cram into an artifact - but intercepting communication-spell messages in the middle is very difficult and would probably require that whoever was doing it already knew his location and approximately when he was going to send it, so he shouldn't worry too much about it. 

A YEAR? Yikes. Scrolls don't take anywhere near that long. This is like fifty scrolls of Sending all glued together.

Is it insecure like it can be listened to or like it can be altered in transit, those are extremely different.

It's really hard to make artifacts that un-Gifted people can use at all and extremely hard to imitate the receptive component of Thoughtsensing even in this low-resolution form. Jisa is impressed Leareth can do it at all. 

That’s a very important distinction! And no, it can’t be intercepted and sent onward in an altered form, or blocked (except for shields that block all magic of that kind in and out at the source, which Valdemar isn't known to have), just intercepted and listened in on. 

(The explanation she got was a lot more technical and was not exactly “it’s impossible”, but Leareth would not be able to do it and believes that past godplots would have looked very different if gods could interfere with mage-work in that fine-grained a way, which is enough for Jisa. She doesn't think Blai needs the ten-minute version.) 

Okay. Fifty scrolls of Sending glued together, can be eavesdropped on including by methods that are not "mindread Blai" but that honestly doesn't seem like that weighty a concern here.

Enara has her own setup; it took longer to place, which is why Jisa got to hang out asking questions for ten minutes. They're not mentioning it to Blai because part of the point here is that very shortly the Heralds will know everything he does, and - mostly they expect that to improve matters - but Leareth and Vanyel agreed it was worth having something in reserve that the Heralds wouldn't know to interfere with if they panic over something. 

She now has four tiny quartz talismans carefully embedded in each of her hooves. They're undetectable to mage-sight, unlike Blai's artifacts, which are glaringly obvious. They're a lot simpler; they only send one message each, set in advance, to be triggered by a particular Mindspeech command.

Left front hoof: to indicate that she is out of communication with Yfandes and not being provided with alternatives by the Heralds, and Blai isn't being allowed to use his comms artifacts or send a letter via Waymeet, but things are otherwise going fine. This amounts to "non-urgently requesting that Vanyel consider other methods to re-establish communication." 

Right front hoof: out of communication with Yfandes et cetera, things otherwise not going fine, urgently requesting that Vanyel and/or Leareth find her a way to get a message out and also try other methods to find out what's going on in Haven.

Left back hoof: out of communication with Yfandes et cetera, and also prevented from Mindspeaking Blai, meaning that she wouldn't necessarily know exactly how things are going, but this in itself wouldn't be a good sign. Requesting that Vanyel try to find out if Blai is okay and needs help. 

Right back hoof: she believes negotiations have irreparably broken down and she and/or Blai are in imminent danger. She should NOT activate this one unless she wants Leareth to try to rescue them directly from Haven, with all the attendant consequences. 

They'll be arriving in a shielded Heralds' Waystation a couple of miles outside Haven; Enara can cover that distance quickly and also alert the Groveborn (Rolan, the somewhat unique Companion of the Monarch's Own, currently Dara, who Jisa can't remember if Blai has met) of their arrival. Probably the Heralds will sent a party out to meet them.

Yfandes decided to get a head start, but it's a long way, and hard going until she reaches Waymeet and the North Trade road. Once she's on the road she should make better time, and almost certainly be within range to reach Enara before midnight, which is around six candlemarks from now. 

Does Blai need anything else before Jisa does the Gate? 

No, he's all set.

Then Jisa will deliver them to outside Haven! 

It's going to set off a Web-alarm, but with the shielded room it should be a nonspecific enough alarm that no one will panic-blast it, and Enara will be in range of Rolan and able to explain before anyone has a chance to get too alarmed. That's the theory, anyway. They go through and the Gate is down again before Jisa has a chance to be affected by any of this. 

She's not even tired! Jisa loooooooooooooooves being a White Winds Adept and is going to go play with illusion-spells now; they've got a while to wait before they're likely to find out how it's going. 

It's very cold and snowy but Blai has Endure Elements and Enara is a Companion, so neither of them should be too inconvenienced by this. 

He can sit on Enara and go where she takes him without it being a problem that it's winter, yep.

(It's pretty dark, can Blai do the thing where he makes his holy symbol glow again?) 

Enara continues to be very easy to ride even for someone inxperienced at riding horses, and can take him from the mostly-wooden barn/hut sort of building where they were dropped off back down a surprisingly recently-cleared trail to the main road, which is also impressively clear of snow. There's some traffic, even this late and with the wind whipping eddies of falling snow diagonally around them; mostly no one on foot, but even with the snow meaning they can only see twenty yards in either direction, they emerge onto the road in view of a covered wagon pulled by two placid plowhorses. 

...Enara trots for a minute or two and then stops. 

:Rolan wants us to wait here. I - guess they're sending someone out to escort us?: Her mindvoice is faintly uneasy, though. 

He can actually make anything glow if the most convenient location for a lamp isn't "around her rider's neck", but sure, Light. :Should I dismount?:

(Enara is not keeping that close track of Blai's exact spell capabilities, and a light around her rider's neck is pretty equivalent to a light in her rider's hand, which is how Jisa generally does mage-lights.) 

:I don't think you need to unless whoever comes to meet us asks you to.: He'll have a harder time getting back on her than Jisa would, especially with the ground being icy, and Enara feels like it would make the most sense for her to carry him in rather than making him walk a mile to the city wall and however much further to wherever they're actually going in Haven. 

So he sits on her and waits.

Back in the north, Stef is going to start whittling himself a set of pieces for Blai's game, since they don't have Blai there to make it with magic. 

"Wait, hang on, I want to try - I'm supposed to be able to make illusions with physical substance that last for days now - let me try..." 

Jisa has a near-eidetic memory when she feels like it, thanks to mildly irresponsible use of Mindhealing on herself, and can start working on making an almost perfect replica of the gamepieces. Blai isn't here but she can play it with Stef now! 

Vanyel paces and frets. 

And Yfandes reaches the Valdemaran border. 

:Van? We...might have a problem I wasn't expecting.:

That is OMINOUS and Vanyel doesn't like it!

:What: 

:I think I'm locked out of the Web? I don't - Savil must have done something, but I didn't even know you could do that.: 

Vanyel hadn't expected Savil to be going around directly modifying the Web at all! He's always been the one to do it. Before him, no one had modified it in eight hundred years. Savil could probably have the strength for it if she were doing it in concert with a few other Adepts, but - he's not even sure how you would go about revoking Web permissions for one specific Companion-Herald pair, let alone why. 

:That's - concerning.: 

:I don't like it! ...It'll decrease my effective Mindspeech range, too, but - I think not by enough that our plan won't work at all.: A mental sigh. :There aren't any Herald-Mages in Waymeet to ask. Or anyone on the Senior Circle, which I suppose is reasonable, if they're expecting to be attacked from the north anytime. I don't know any of the Companions here well, and they won't tell me anything! I think the Senior Circle must have clamped down very hard on information security.: Pause. :Herald Shasmen is here and I think he's a strong enough Mindspeaker that you could reach him. Worth trying every few minutes - I think the Heralds up here must all be meeting behind bloody White Wind shields right now but they've got to use the privy at some point.: 

Vanyel isn't hopeful. :I'll try.: