Don't some people have the ability to view past events with magic?

:The Tayledras have a spell for it which they taught Van and Savil. And Leareth would've separately reinvented it because he knows everything. I don't know if Iftel has it. I suppose it's possible but if they do it's not clear how we'd avoid it: 

Yeah. It's worth trying not to have any witnesses and - and I guess asking Maitimo whether they have a way to find out anyway.

And they prepare.

Jisa gets the inter-world Gate down. Does a couple of tiny practice ones. Collects Vanyel and sends him to Lórien. Uses the opportunity for one final conversation with Moondance, to coordinate on their plan - he has to be ready every day for a candlemark around noon, since they don't know what day they'll arrive within a reasonable range - and to check that he's sure. He is. There are hugs and tears and gratitude and then she puts it out of her mind, she can hurt about it afterward, right now she has to focus on preparing. 

The Quendi songs for faster reflexes do help with Gating and Stef can push it even harder with a bit of discreet Bardic and they get it to the point that he only needs around five seconds of song and it doesn't have to be loud. Jisa practices threshold-less Gates. Gets it down to two seconds or so without any reflex aids. With the song it's one second, and if it's below her at the moment she and Stef manage to tackle Maitimo then they'll be through it less than half a second after that. She can keep her mage-gift concealed until the instant before she starts. 

Fëanáro makes her an artifact. It triples her comfortable Mindhealing range and gives her almost the same precision at the edge of it as she has from right up close. It's not exactly the same thing as doing it through shields, which she attempts to practice using someone inside Van's Work Room while she's outside. The shields in the way reduce her effective range but she can still do a simple set-command, and more to the point a subtle and hard-to-notice one, at twenty yards.

Maitimo's assistant Larya helps her find a few volunteers who are willing to risk dying, despite Mandos' current absence, in order for her to test her set-command. It works. She practices that one in particular until she can scream it out in Mindspeech in about a quarter of a second, even Maitimo shouldn't be able to react that fast.

Stef trains his Bardic 'Sight' as well. Drills his Bardic 'shield' over and over again, holding aggressive boringness over himself and Jisa. Jisa practices concealing her own Gifts. 

Six weeks later they can Gate to a small town in Rethwellan and travel out into the country to meet a down-on-his-luck merchant named Arnat, who will take them in his slightly decrepit wagon and introduce them on the road as his two nephews helping out the struggling family business. (Jisa, with her chest bandaged flat and short hair bleached to a rather hideous ginger and enough dirt on her face, can pass as a slightly chubby boy of fourteen or so whose voice hasn't broken yet. Stef's red hair also gets hacked off and dyed an ugly mud-brown, which is almost the worst part, but everyone is making some sacrifices here.)

They make it past the border with Valdemaran almost without remark - no, Arnat didn't know his nephew was Bardic-Gifted, that's wonderful! And he's always heard Valdemar is the best place for Bards, too, good thing they're headed to the capital, maybe the boy can meet some. He hears things are so much better here since Vkandis helped with the war against the foreign invaders. 

And then it's only another week to reach Haven. 

Leareth hasn't attacked yet. Maitimo is starting to contemplate whether to try to draw him out. Not now, right now the reprieve is appreciated and there's time to train Iftel's mages to better handle the sorts of things Leareth is going to throw at them and Rethwellan's coming along nicely and Haven is once again adequately pretty and the researchers are making progress on their project to access the Void so Leareth's resurrection method can be destroyed, there. 

But in six months, if the fight still hasn't started, he's going to want to start it. He's not sure how. He's starting to wonder if Vanyel is dead, which at first had seemed implausible optimism. 

Outside the temple, a couple of children, dressed in clothes that indicate genteel poverty, are walking together. They are staring in obvious awe at the beautiful city. They're also very, very boring. Possibly the most boring children in the city. Country bumpkins, stunned by the fancy capital. 

They drift to a stop beside an elaborate fountain, sit down, point at the gold-leaf bas relief of Vkandis Sunlord in battle on the wall and whisper to each other.

The ginger-haired boy's hand goes into his pocket.

...Maitimo will remember that the statue was a bit dirty, this morning, whenever he isn't busy he ought to poke his head out the door and check that the Palace workers got it cleaned up, it's really unacceptable to leave birdshit on statues even overnight. 

He's busy at that exact moment, reviewing some letters, but then he will wander out to do that. 

(There are people who check him for compulsions. He is not compulsioned, so they see nothing.)

The statue is clean and sparkling in the sun, but there are two very boring-looking children (with awful hair, both of them) and not particularly clean clothes, clearly poor and foreign, sitting and talking, and - hmm he'd better go politely tell them to behave themselves...

Instinctively, by long standing habit, he stands still for a second instead, to see whether the impulse lets him do that.

It lets him. 

Then he will walk over towards the foreign children - foreign from where -

Style of dress looks Rethwellani, and their ethnicity matches. They don't seem to have seen him yet. 

- he reaches the statue and then something feels - suspicious - he has no idea what but he trusts that intuition and he turns around and -

Several things happen very fast in the next three seconds or so. 

:DON'TKILLYOURSELF: the boy, who it turns out is actually a girl and a familiar one, screams in his mind, it's like Mindspeech but not, it grabs him in a very obvious way, :DON'TUSEOSANWË–:

The other youngster starts singing, quietly but very fast, what is recognizably a Quendi song–

They both leap up from the bench and dive at him. 

- Jisa - and Stef - 

- he screams and tries to kick them, mostly Stef, which will draw out Vanyel - how did Vanyel get here -

There's no sign of Vanyel, actually. Stef doesn't stop singing even when Maitimo's foot connects with his side. 

There is, however, very suddenly a glow underfoot, which half a second later resolves into a threshold, and then the Gate is up and he's falling with both children hanging off him like limpets. 

At this point kicking Stef's face in won't even help but he tries anyway because it'll be cover maybe for a bit more time to think before they surely do something about the fact he is thinking, which is not in their interests at all -

"I swear," he says very quickly in a language Jisa hopefully doesn't speak -

Stef has deliberately made his face not reachable by dint of wrapping his arms very tightly around Maitimo's torso. 

Jisa can't understand what he's saying but her attention is fixed on the pattern of his mind and she - isn't sure what but she doesn't like it, and she can't knock him out for another second or two, has to get the stupid Gate down first. :Stef distract him–:

Stef is not in an ideal position for that, exactly, but he headbutts Maitimo in the stomach as hard as he can, driving the air out of his lungs. 

And then a white-haired Tayledras man brushes past them and jumps through the Gate and the three of them land hard in a tangle of limbs on flagstones. 

"- not to have conscious thoughts or understand language -" but it doesn't take, maybe you can't be interrupted like that - "I swear not to -"