Tantras nods to her without smiling at all. 

"I'm Belrun Sujana. This is my father, Chalan Sujana."

He nods to the Heralds.

"Um, and if he could get reassigned to me we'd appreciate that but it wasn't one of my conditions, just a request."

"That makes sense, and we'll definitely take it into consideration. We deeply appreciate your coming out here." 

Herald Tantras doesn't look entirely happy with this, but says nothing. 

"Follow me, the guest room we set up is this way." Herald-Mage Savil gets up on her Companion stallion as well, and Belrun is escorted by Heralds on several sides of her, keeping a polite distance. 

Chalan drives on. Belrun musters a little curiosity about the Palace; she's never been inside before.

The buildings they pass are all stone, mostly long low wings, and almost all very, very old-looking. They're in good repair but it doesn't look like the Palace gets a lot of new construction. There are well-kept ornamental gardens, lots of trees, a few statues most of which also look ancient. 

The wing they eventually stop at does look newer - at least, it looks less than a century old, rather than 'probably as old as Valdemar itself'. 

"Help me down, Dad?" she says when they're at the right building.

"Aren't you a Fetcher?"

"I am a very nonthreatening Fetcher and you are right there."

Chalan dismounts and goes around to help her down from the wagon.

Another couple of people are waiting outside the wing; both of them are wearing green Healers' robes.

"I'm Melody," one of them says, stepping forward. She's tall and sturdily built, not quite plump, with red hair in a knot and green eyes. "I'm the Mindhealer in Haven and I'm told I'm supposed to Look at you for literally five seconds and confirm that you are, in fact, lifebonded, and then I will not use my Gifts including my Sight at all ever again, unless you ask for it for some reason. May I?" 

Belrun doesn't let go of her dad's hand but she does nod.

Melody's eyes go out of focus for about three seconds. "Yup. That's a lifebond." 

"I'm Gemma," the woman next to her says, smiling warmly. "Assistant to the dean of Healers'." 

"...okay?"

"Oh, right - I'm here because Melody wanted to ask someone else with good judgement in general for decision-making help on, er, your situation. We've known each other for a very long time, and Shavri, the King's lifebonded, trained under me as a Healer." 

"All right. It's nice to meet you, Gemma."

"Likewise. I read your paper! It was fascinating. I realize this isn't the main reason you're here but Shavri is going to be very excited to talk to you. We had no idea how much Healing research was happening in Rethwellan, it's incredible." 

"Anyway, I'm guessing you'd like a chance to get settled and rest a bit after the journey. Your room is this way." Melody points and starts walking. 

Belrun lets go of her father and follows. "Which paper?" she wonders.

“The one with the dysentery microbe dividing? How do you get in that close with Healing-Sight, Shavri is miles ahead of the rest of us there and she couldn’t get in close enough. Although she tried looking at skin microbes like in that other paper, since we don’t have any dysentery patients.”

"Some translator must have been very busy. Or she reads Rethwellani, I guess. Uh, it's mostly just practice and - concentration? You should be able to get it if you just keep - looking for smaller and smaller life, or you might have an easier time trying to get to the same scale on a person or animal, just keep trying to get a good look at what it's all made of. Not bones, those are different."