Melody comes in. "I heard some people at Cuivienen were terribly rude hosts to you." 

Leareth smiles a bit despite himself. "That is a way to put it." 

"I can imagine that must've been awful for you. How are you feeling now?" 

"Less upset than before." He glances at Maitimo. "Still - not safe. I tried to use magic, it was an instinct, and it did not work and I - I am not even sure I panicked, so much as...completely gave up. I felt very helpless." He looks down, twists a handful of the blankets between his hands. "I still do." 

"I think that the risks of giving him back some access to magic look tolerable from our perspective. The things I am very motivated to avoid are anything that endangers the recovery of the other escapees, and anything that endangers the humans here. I don't know if you can go Gift-by-Gift or what, but -"

"Hmm." Melody glances around, folds her hands in her lap. "I can definitely block one Gift and not the other, though it's more fiddly; presumably in that case we'd want to give him Mindspeech back, that can't blow up the island – sorry, Leareth, I have no expectation at all that you would do that. But you might accidentally cause a minor earthquake or start a fire or something if you had a bad nightmare, and that'd scare people."

She frowns. "The difficulty is that ideally we'd give him mage-sight. Can't be used offensively, but it'd mean he could check the wards and his shield-amulet even if he's not doing the magic himself, I imagine that'd be reassuring. Also, honestly, I'm worried about the projective aspect of Mindspeech. It's more common for people to project with Mind-Gifts during a nightmare than to accidentally throw magic around. I guess we could get Van to shield the room but it'd still hit you, if you were here." 

Thoughtful look. "I could try unblocking just the sensory part for both Gifts? But I can't See what I'm doing in there nearly well enough on my own. The last time I tried something fiddly, I borrowed senses from someone with mage-sight." 

"I don't really mind him projecting at me during nightmares, should I? I can read most of the other survivors during nightmares and I try not to for their privacy but I don't expect it to upset me that awfully."

"Mindspeech projection can be...loud. I'm not sure if osanwë does the same thing. But it won't hurt you, and I guess if you don't think the content would upset you that awfully, that might be acceptable." 

She frowns. "...The only person on the island right now with mage-sight is Vanyel. Leareth, how do you feel about getting his help, here? He'd just be sitting by, not doing anything, but - realistically he'd get some of my Sight."

Leareth thinks for a moment. He's any amount tense about being around Vanyel, for stupid reasons, but... "It does not bother me. He has seen it already, when presumably my mind looked much worse." 

Van, do you want to come help Melody give Leareth some of his magic senses back?

:Of course! Are we doing that now?: 

I think so, if it's a good time for you.

:I'll be right there: He could use the distraction, honestly, he's still mysteriously upset for no discernible reason. 

He's there within two minutes; he looks around for a chair and then drags one in from the library. 

Melody reaches out to mesh her shields with Vanyel's so that he can share his mage-sight with her, then bounces the bewildering overlap of both to Maitimo if he wants it.

The tapestry is there, and somehow linked to it, in a way that can't possibly work within three-dimensional space, are a couple of - the best visual metaphor is of vaguely like riverbeds except made of porcelain. They're curled up like snail-shells right now, one end terminating in...somewhere that isn't here...and the other goes into the tapestry at some point, in a deeper layer of it that Melody has to dive down to find. 

That entire section of the tapestry has been smothered in a sort of opaque fog. 

- he has no idea how to interpret that. Maybe he'll ask Melody later.

The fog part, at least, Melody explains about ten seconds later. :Here's where it's currently blocked. I think the best way to get a neat partial block in there is to undo everything first – I was not being neat when I did this originally – but, er, that does involve giving him an active mage-gift back for at least five minutes. Does that seem all right?: 

I think so. 

He is pretty sure he has not been catastrophically misjudging Leareth for the last several months and Leareth does not currently seem inclined to, say, disable all three of them and then run off to explode things.

:If it seems like something catastrophic is going to happen I can knock him out: 

Melody gets started. Getting rid of the fog is easiest. "All right. Leareth, you should have everything back right now. I want you to use mage-sight now." 

(Leareth nods, and an irregular-shaped section of the previously blocked area seems to light up and ripple.) 

"Good. Now do some really small magic, I don't know, a light or something."

This hits a much bigger area. 

"Hmm. I'll have a go at blocking that. I'm going to work very slowly so I can get it nice and precise, avoid leaving you with Sight that only half works. This is going to take a while. I might ask you to try things again at various points so I can find my place or check how I'm doing, but you can have a conversation or something in the meantime."

"How common are mage-gifts, back in Velgarth?"

It takes Leareth a moment to realize this is presumably addressing him because Melody and Vanyel are both occupied. "It varies a great deal by region. Starwind and Moondance's people, the Tayledras, have a very high rate of mage-gift. At least one in ten people, as high as one in four in some Vales. In the Eastern Empire, about one in fifty people are mages, though most are very weak. Rethwellan is lower but they have several thousand mages, in a country of a million people, so, one in five hundred perhaps? Though this is partially counting mages who hail from other countries, since they have a great many well-known schools there. Valdemar...has an oddly low rate per population, despite having more Mindspeakers and Healers than is common outside the Tayledras, and also a very high relative prevalence of Bardic Gift. I think only about one in five thousand of their people become active mages. There are likely ten times as many with the Gift in potential, not awakened." 

"Huh. If someone moves between kingdoms are their children likely to match the place they're from or the place they live?"

"I do not have any good census-data on that to analyze. My not-fully-informed suspicion is that the rate of potential Gifts would match where they are from originally, because I think this is carried in the blood, but that potential Gifts are more likely to become active in places where magic is used very heavily around the child. This is likely much of the difference between the Eastern Empire and other places; most people have gone through Gates many times by the age of ten, whereas I suspect most Valdemaran children have never seen a Gate."  

"Huh. - seems like that'd make for an enormous political advantage -"

"Having more mages? Yes. Valdemar does startlingly well with fewer, but - they have extremely good coordination, thanks to the Companions. Which are themselves magical." 

"Oh, are they the only place with Companions?"