Snuggles are good! 

Whenever Belrun has a block of time available between her classes and egg duty, Leareth can dig out his notes and they can cover some afterlife info. 

"So besides Companions, when does reincarnation happen - and how do you know it happens with Companions, for that matter?"

"For Companions, this is mostly deductions and hearsay. They are born already knowing language and context on Heralds; records show that Companions often turn up with names matches Heralds from several centuries ago, with minor phoneme alterations. Also, I spoke to the Groveborn at the time, Taver, shortly after the Founding of Valdemar. He did not quite come out and say it but he gave some hints." 

"Hints like what? What were you two talking about?"

"Whether the new style of government recently set up for Valdemar would last, mainly. It was obviously problematic in several ways, including the mind-control part but also the fact that they did not set up any way for magic or Gifts generally to be used outside of state institutions such as the Heralds and the other Collegia. Rethwellan is full of independent mage-schools that attract immigrants, and various businesses; Valdemar is not and as a result their magic use is, in my opinion, much less optimized. Anyway, I was curious whether it would at least be stable, and Taver was surprisingly willing to talk to me at the time. I think we considered making a bet on it but cannot recall if we actually did; I have records of the conversation somewhere but did not re-memorize all of it. I did set up something on the same visit in case I ever wanted to prove my advanced age to someone in Valdemar centuries later. It turned out this did eventually come in handy with Vanyel."

"What had you visiting Valdemar in the first place?"

“I am not sure I remember! I may have been simply passing by the region. Valdemar was more of a small city-state than a kingdom at the time, there was nothing at all north or west of Haven since it was still all Pelagirs.”

"I keep reminding myself you are two thousand years old but 'ah yes I swung by Valdemar when it was a small city-state' - even though I know that was less than one thousand years ago - still keeps jarring me."

Leareth chuckles. “Fair enough.”

"And he wasn't hostile at the time? Did you have a different project then?"

“I mean, I did not tell him what my project was! I was not working any particular scheme in that lifetime, I think, more simply exploring the world as it was then. If the gods were suspicious of my activities, it seems they did not pass this on to him directly on the same day that I was visiting.”

"Do you have a guess at the upper range on Foresight?"

“In terms of length of time seen into the future?”

"Yeah."

"It is difficult to judge but I think the upper range for predicting specific events is probably a century, unless it is a very deterministic natural process - for example, even human astronomers can predict solar eclipses with reasonable fidelity for centuries into the future. For the level of detail needed to engineer precise 'coincidences', I think it is not more than a few years? This is, of course, hard to judge. Human Foresight almost never shows events more than a decade into the future - my dream with Vanyel might be an exception, since I was not planning an invasion within the decade after it started, but it is also...odd...in a number of ways." 

"The timeframe, the lucidity, the communication aspect, me popping into it, anything else?"

"The sheer number of times it has recurred, with exactly the same initial setting. Most Foresight visions do not show up hundreds of times over many years." 

"Do they show up multiple times and just not that many?"

"Showing up multiple times is common for long-range Foresight, yes. Short-range Foresight is best considered as a separate phenomenon. But the average number, according to the documentation I have access to, would be - three to ten, perhaps? Twenty would already be very unusual. Also I do not actually have the Gift of Foresight as usually considered, though that is not universally necessary to have precognitive visions." 

"It's not? Is it... necessary to have precognitive visions more or less on one's own as opposed to when a god shoves them at you?"

"I believe so though I am not certain there are no exceptions there. I think that priests of religious groups with a high level of involvement from the god in question will not uncommonly receive visions, or occasionally speak prophecies. Vkandis has been particularly fond of that in Karse, in the past." 

"I wonder if Vkandis has developed the skill of having conversations! Is he one of the ones you've tried talking to?"

"I have, yes. I had an extremely confusing and unhelpful conversation with a priest who could supposedly speak as a mouthpiece for Vkandis. On a different occasion I tried something similar and got set on fire. Also I tried to obtain an audience with one of their Suncats - have you heard of them? They are a little like Companions, except cats, and are in much closer communication with the god behind their creation. Anyway, they are frustratingly elusive and apparently did not wish to talk to me." 

She squeezes him a little tighter when he mentions being set on fire. "I don't think I've heard of them."

"There are a much smaller number of them than there are Companions and they have a less public facing role. I have heard reports that their current Queen Karis has one with her."