:I should make better time from here.: 

Still at least two candlemarks. Maybe more like four, the weather isn't awful but it won't be safe for Yfandes to really push her fastest pace. 

Time to wait some more. And FRET. 

Enara and Blai wait for about ten minutes by the side of the road, and are passed by a cart full of sacks of probably-grain and an elderly woman on a donkey who yells something at Blai about how he's not dressed for the weather, in Valdemaran so he won't actually understand it until Enara translates, by which point the woman is past them. 

And then a party comes out to meet them. There are several Heralds he hasn't met before, a dozen blue-uniformed Guards on regular horses, another four brown-robed people also on regular horses, a red-haired woman in green robes, and a Companion without a rider. 

Enara seems disconcerted. 

:This - seems kind of unnecessary - they must be really on edge. And they've sent Melody, I guess to check you for hostile Mindhealing. Um. I sent Rolan the basics but he'll probably want to hear it from you -: 

:Select Blai.: Somehow it's obvious in the Mindspeech that the riderless Companion is the one speaking. His mindvoice isn't quite like that of Yfandes or Enara; it has a ringing quality and feels less human. :What brings you here?: 

:I was kidnapped and have been released and am here for a debriefing about the events that followed.:

Rolan looks piercingly at him and does not say anything. 

Enara is SO UNEASY. 

:I think something is wrong: she sends to Blai, privately. :Everyone is really tense and they're - not telling me why - maybe just try not to make any sudden moves...: 

:Melody: Rolan sends. 

:I think she's coming to check you for hostile Mindhealing - it's fine: it SHOULD be fine at least, :we know they're not going to find anything...: 

Melody has her orders and is not happy about it. She is not even technically in Rolan's chain of command but she suspects it would - go badly - if she picked this exact moment to argue that. 

She approaches Blai, and on the way over she reads his mind.  

He can hold so still and not cast Guidance even though he would rather like to. Sometimes you have to make somebody stand in the cold (at least he isn't cold) while you rustle up some people who have Detect Chaos and Detect Magic available to check them because it's been less than a month since there was a succubus sighting. It's probably like that. Van et al were also pretty concerned he'd been enchanted, it's clearly a live concern on this planet. Is he committing a faux pas by sitting on a Companion, is there a thing where you only do that in exceptional circumstances and he's just encountered a lot of those. What if Guidance-ing Jisa for her ritual thingy was actually a terrible plan and it will ruin it or disqualify her or something. What if lightning strikes Yfandes. What if the kyree were actually super resentful of all the help they offered and they're going to want something unconscionable or at an inconvenient time.

Yfandes????? 

That seems important, actually, this was already confusing and that seems like it could be a key - something - but it's not like Rolan is wrong, that the priors on what's happening here are...very bad. 

She touches Blai's arm and, without warning to either Enara or Blai, uses Mindhealing to slam him into unconsciousness.

(One of the White Winds mages with specific training is feeding her node-energy and she's putting in a lot more force than she should have to, because multiple people commented before Blai is weirdly hard to mindread, and who knows if Leareth could have put additional shields on him.) 

Melody tries to catch him before he can fall off Enara's back but he's heavy. 

:Could use some help over here -: 

Should she run - she can't run with Blai, it hadn't occurred to her to suggest he belt himself in because why would it - and also it's objectively stupid, Rolan can run faster than her. 

:Why–: she starts. 

Some of the Guards will dive in to help catch Blai before he topples off onto the road. 

:Are you: Rolan sends coldly, :going to do anything ill-advised.: 

Why is this happening????? Enara had considered a variety of ways this could go wrong but for some reason it hadn't occurred to her that they would incapacitate Blai before even hearing him out. 

:We have a really important message–: 

Rolan is now shielding her out entirely. 

Something is wrooooooooong and the fact that they're refusing to talk to her either indicates that they must be worried Leareth got his hands on Jisa and may have compromised her and/or Enara. 

Should she use any of her talismans - the issue is that 'out of context with Yfandes' isn't even informative, they're expecting her to be in range in two to four candlemarks. She's technically out of contact with Blai right now but they haven't actually separated the two of them, and it's possible they just want to get Blai to a secure location before checking him for compulsions and Mindhealing (and are in the meantime applying the maximum possible level of paranoia.) 

It feels like an incredibly doomy start but - she can't unsend any messages she sends now. It's entirely possible they'll put her in a cell-or-whatever with Blai and let him wake up once he's confirmed free of Mindhealing and she'll be able to update Yfandes normally, and - the way to get the highest chance of that is to not escalate. 

She will meekly follow Rolan. 

The Guards get Blai draped over one of the horses, and Melody has to dismount in the snow and walk alongside because she needs to be in near-constant contact to make sure he's going to stay out. (He fought her harder than she expected - not in a way that even felt like shields - and she's worried that if he wakes up and is forewarned he could get luckier a second time.) 

Fortunately the walk is only as far as the nearest structure that one of the mages can do a short-range Gate from, and then they'll bring Blai directly to a Work Room. Someone must have used the last ten minutes to haul in a mattress and put it on the stone floor, and the Guards slide Blai's limp body off the horse, carry him through, and lay him out. 

There's even a stool for her. 

None of this actually makes Melody happier about the situation, but she sits down and fully opens her Sight. 

(Enara is not invited through the Gate. She can be escorted on foot - well, on hoof - by Rolan personally and a posse of mages and Heralds.

...She does recognize the Work Room, though, and Jisa has used it before and arranged for Enara to be keyed to the shields. It would be hard work, but she could contact Blai in theory, if he were conscious.)

A tapestry is normally woven with the warp threads under tension. The tension isn't bad for it; it's what keeps the whole thing from falling apart, keeps it organized and straight while it's being knotted into its final form, at which point a normal tapestry would be given a border or a fringe or something and be ready to hang.

This mostly-red tapestry has not been taken off the loom, and doesn't look like it's ever supposed to be; but a big chunk of the loom broke at some point and was later replaced. He's been diligently at work putting everything square again with the new heddles. Large black and grey bits are in the process of being unpicked and replaced with white and gold. It looks like the natural sort of reweaving that takes place when someone has a major worldview shift, though, not artificial.

It has some beads sewn on it, and they look in-place where they sit, but the material's not native.

---

It's a candlemark later. 

A Healer is keeping Blai unconscious (the transition seems to have worked fine, though who knows if he could have flung it off if he had a chance to fight it.) Melody is in an adjacent Work Room, because they didn't want her going far enough away from him to reach any meeting-room that was actually comfortable. 

She's not sure she has ever been this exasperated in her entire life. 

"Look," she's saying to a visibly exhausted Dara. "I recognize his mind is weird, but we have every reason to think it already was when Jisa had a look at him before either of them had even left Haven. Yes, I wish she had bounced it to me at the time or at least written down a clear description, but - we know she saw some kind of unusual structure but decided it was intrinsic to him, not imposed from the outside. Which my Sight agrees with. The part that isn't native isn't directly tied to beliefs or memories or motivations, it's - an action he can take, I think. It makes perfect sense for it to be his spells. Also, did you not hear me the first time when I said nothing looks new to my Sight? The modification to the structure is newish but it's - months old, I would say, not days. Any Mindhealing that was done to him was fully removed and it's all had time to settle by now, which is exactly what we would expect from the timeline we got in the message asking for help." 

And, yes, it looks unfortunate that she kept that from them on Jisa's instruction for multiple candlemarks. In hindsight, maybe that was a mistake. Or maybe it wasn't, with what they knew at the time, no one had been expecting - well, any of this. 

(Melody would be having emotions right now if she hadn't put half a dozen strong redirects on herself because now is absolutely not a time when she can afford to have emotions.)