It's one of the worst weeks of Jisa's life, but it's not intolerable and it's going to be worth it. 

I SEE THAT IN THE PURSUIT OF MAGIC YOU HAVE GRAVELY INJURED YOURSELF.

Yep, that sure is exactly the thing that happened, he has a point, now can he please heal her about it. 

I WILL DO WHAT I CAN TO EASE YOUR RECOVERY BUT I THINK IT WILL BE SLOW.

That's understandable, mostly they need to give Stef a chance to not be singing or playing fourteen hours a day, he's extremely tired. 

THAT I CAN DO. 

And he does.

It takes Telumë four months, in total, to cover all the ground between Velvar where he woke up in his distant descendant's body, and the Ice Wall Mountains. Partly this is because it's now the dead of winter. He's also being extremely cautious ever since his first near-capture – though he did end up routing through Karse rather than his original plan, the higher risk seemed mitigated by the fact that it would be less his expected route. And it meant he could pick up some local rumours on the conditions in Valdemar. 

Valdemar has been conquered by Iftel after Haven was nearly destroyed in some kind of complicated three-way fight. It started when Herald Vanyel went to another world and got himself involved in a war between the gods there, and invited retaliation from one of those gods, and they would probably have conquered Valdemar except then Vkandis intervened.

Queen Karis was killed in the fighting, or in one version became part of Vkandis as he fought back the gods of the other world, or in one version betrayed Vkandis and went on the run.

Her daughter, who is seven, is the Queen now in Karse with a priest as regent.

Vkandis teaches that the worlds should remain separate and some people say he is brokering a treaty to that effect with the Arda gods. 

A distant relative of the King is the new King in Valdemar, but he's not a Herald. There are no more Heralds. Herald-Mage Vanyel maybe got himself killed in the fighting or maybe ran off back to Arda when Vkandis sundered the two worlds.

It's pretty convincing. Telumë remembers enough to know it's not true, but - he can see how anyone who wasn't in Haven up close when it happened, and who never went to Arda, could just believe it. 

...It's clearly the work of someone who understands people very, very well. Someone who understands him almost perfectly. Possibly better than he understands himself, right now, three weeks wasn't enough to put together all the shards of himself, and he's been on the run ever since, not daring to even go near his cache locations. 

It didn't take him very long to guess it, once he was alone with his thoughts and not imminently in danger. Arda has binding magical oaths. That much came up in his memory of talking to Melkor. And Velgarth has compulsions. He can vaguely mark out the shape of a conversation he must have had with Maitimo, about how he could have taken over in Arda, if he'd wished. 

Maitimo is still the person he loves. And, if he's right, is also his enemy, for the foreseeable future. Maybe forever. He can't remember if it's possible even in theory to reverse an oath.

Telumë doesn't end up crying over it very often, anymore, only sometimes when he wakes up desperately lonely. Tears won't solve the problem. And - he can't afford not to be ruthless here. He's not willing or ready to give up on caring, yet - he's not sure he can, Maitimo is woven into the fabric of his core self - but he can't act on loving him, right now. Except to focus on winning the war, like the Maitimo he died trying to save would have wanted him to. 

He's skirting uncomfortably close to the shield-wall with Iftel, as he trudges through the foothills of the mountains, hunting for a pass that's still clear of snow even at this time of year. It's very frustrating that he can't blind-Gate that distance, but being frustrated won't make it any less true. He misses the sticky heat of Velvar, which he wouldn't have thought possible at the time. 

Here's a lovely pass through the foothills, still mostly clear.

Telumë is both relieved and very suspicious. Maitimo knew him well enough to guess the placement of his supply caches, at least one of them, that would've given him the directions to the rest. (Can he read his notes? The personal memory records are in code, but almost no code is impossible to break in theory, and Quendi are smarter than humans.)

He stretches out his Othersenses; his mage-sight range is a lot better than before, he can sense ahead almost a mile. Any mages? Artifacts? 

Both. Up ahead. Concealed behind some rocks. 

Sigh. There's not much point continuing on looking for another pass; they'll all have guards. Maitimo isn't stupid. 

(Telumë feels a surge of affection. Maitimo is very smart and very competent and knows him incredibly well, and - all of those are good things, even if right now they're very inconvenient for his purposes. Someday he's going to fix this and they can be good things again.)

He mostly hasn't been walking under an illusion, since it drains his reserves, which are low anyway thanks to being cold all the time and low on rations, and mostly this area is deserted. He redoes one now, though, and tightens his shields. Creeps forward, making as little sound as possible; there's a breeze, whistling through, that should conceal his footsteps. They're going to notice him at some point, if they're good, and he has to assume they're good, but - he's really not very far from the point where that won't matter anymore. 

It takes them a while; he's approached pretty far into the pass. But then there's a sudden flurry of movement behind their shields, and then the distinctive feeling of a Gate nearby -

They're fast. Clearly a well-planned operation, here, and Telumë knows who he has to thank for that. 

(Distantly, some part of him notes that this level of competence is pretty sexy, actually. What an incredibly pointless thing to be noticing right now, but, of course, he has to deal with a fifteen-year-old boy's libido on top of everything else.)

He's not about to risk a frantic sprint, and he's ready, his eyes are fixed on the opposite end of the pass. His well-used Gift is trending up in strength, still Master-level, not strong enough to use nodes, but he can grab from the nearest ley-line. And he's been practicing this technique in particular, because it's the one application of Gates likely to be of use before he gets his Gift-strength all the way to Adept. 

In about five seconds, hopefully before the newly-Gated-in reinforcements can orient on him, Telumë casts an unscaffolded Gate, not blindly, but from two yards ahead of where he is now to the most distant point of the pass within his line of sight, it can't be more than a half-mile and won't exhaust him, and he dives through without breaking his stride and snaps it down behind him and keeps running. 

There's a moment of confusion - a cry when they spot him - some bolts of fire and lightning -

He dodges. Winces when a fireball passes rather close to his ear. His shields against mage-attacks are already as strong as he can realistically manage, some of the mages back there have to be Adepts, that was a long-range Gate. 

–And then he's on the downslope again, skidding, falling, scrambling up and running more, but at least they don't have line-of-sight anymore until they make it up the slope and that'll give him a brief reprieve, which he uses to concentrate on his communication spell. He's gambling that his organization remains solidly in control of all the territory actually to the north of the mountains, and anyone he reaches will be either friendly or neutral. 

<HELP! UNDER ATTACK!> 

The reprieve before they're back in line of sight lasts about twenty seconds, and then there's another flurry of firebolts, a barrier in front of him, another less sloppy one landing right behind that one - 

<...Leareth?> someone answers. He doesn't recognize them, but, he wouldn't. 

<Yes under attack pass can you triangulate my location and Gate me out NOW> He tries to slice his way through the barrier with a dagger of focused mage-energy. He's broadsending communications to anyone in range, almost certainly more than one person is picking it up and hopefully they can talk to each other–

<On it. Keep talking> 

The barrier goes down. There's one behind it. 

There's now more than a handful of his pursuers who can make a shot at this range, which means there are more firebolts and levinbolts flying.

Fling up a shield to cover his back, cutcutcut at the barrier, and he shouts out some geographical features of the pass through the communication spell and then just starts counting because he can't multitask this much yet–

Some of the bolts slam into the shield. This one is stronger than his shield and goes through it and hits him, in the shoulder.

Ow and he goes down, face-first in the snow, he tries to roll over but his vision blacks out and his shoulder screams in agony. He can't keep talking anymore along the communication-spell, he just has to hope that he gave them enough and his extremely competent staff are about to Gate in and pull him out of this situation, and if not–

"I surrender!" he shouts as loudly as he can manage, his lungs aren't letting him draw in a full breath. "Please - don't - I surrender!" It is not hard to sound like a terrified child, right now.

(He has no intention of surrendering but it might buy him thirty seconds. Time to gauge whether a rescue is coming or whether he'd better Final Strike and start over. He really doesn't want to pick the second option; with all his supply caches guarded, his chances of making it north again are a lot slimmer; but better than being taken alive.)