"You already travel more than most people, I think." Leareth tries to make his eyes focus on the mage. "Outskirts of Petras. Please. Near another temple of Astera, if you can." 

The mage can do that, to a spot a few blocks again from said temple, Gating from outside so they can bring Levris' horse. 

...And now they're in Rethwellan. 

Leareth is leaning heavily on Levris. He feels absolutely terrible again, which isn't surprising. "Need to pass a message," he manages. "The temple... Then I want to lie down." 

"Okay." Levris offers him support in walking to the temple.

:We need to not visibly be together: Leareth remembers to tell Levris. :Rethwellan is deeply hostile to same-sex relationships: He still leans on Levris to walk to the temple, because that's not obviously romantic in nature and also he's too dizzy to keep his balance unaided. 

Leareth is with it enough, barely, to ask for the senior priest himself - he gets someone significantly higher in the overall hierarchy, Petras is a far more central, happening place than the outskirts of Baires - and to recite the relevant passcodes, which gets him more shocked near-awe and a promise that messages will be going around in realtime within the next few candlemarks. Also they have a back room for visiting priests, where he can lie down, and they'll lend him a mage to guard it. 

When they get in the back room, Levris says: "...who are you?"

"It is complicated and a long story...can I tell you later, please..." Leareth desperately just wants to sleep. He feels bad enough that it's overriding his habitual paranoia; he doesn't even check the other mage's wards himself. 

(Possibly it helps that he has a lifebonded who can and will use Mindhealing offensively if something happens while he's asleep.) 

"Okay. Sleep."

Levris can't kiss him because Rethwellan but he can imagine kissing him quite vividly and then send it.

Aww. Leareth wishes with surprising intensity that he could fall asleep holding Levris' hand or perhaps snuggling him. He falls asleep still thinking wistfully about it. 

And within two candlemarks, the priest is politely sticking his head in, clearing his throat to get Levris' attention. "We, er, someone's on the way to pick you both up, I'm told." 

"Thank you," Levris says, and hopes there is not something else he's supposed to say about it. 

The priests waits for a few seconds, but it's not clear if he's waiting for Levris to say something more. When Levris doesn't, he ducks out. 

And a few minutes later, footsteps approach. A woman who doesn't look like she's from anywhere that Levris has ever heard of stops in the doorway. She's beaming at him. 

She seems about to speak, but spares a glance for the Rethwellani mage and priest, and reaches out in Mindspeech instead. :You are his lifebonded? Wonderful! I am delighted to meet you: 

"My name is Nayoki," she says out loud. 

:It's nice to meet you too.:

"I'm Levris. We've had an... interesting... couple of days."

"I had heard! Well, hopefully it will be less interesting for a while!" She frowns at Leareth, still asleep. "I think we ought to wake him at least to cross. He will be alarmed if he wakes up halfway through being carried across a Gate." 

"Hey, Leareth," Levris says, "wake up. We have to Gate."

Leareth drags himself toward consciousness, momentarily disoriented, but calm about it because the first thing he can sense is that Levris is nearby. "All right." He struggles to get to his feet. 

Levris helps him in a way that he hopes the Rethwellans will perceive as suitably heterosexual. 

The locals are far too distracted by the fact that Leareth is a very important person to care about how heterosexual the helping-him-across-the-Gate looks. 

Nayoki helps support him on the other side as soon as she's taken down her Gate. "We ought get him settled in the infirmary - it is just this way..." 

"Okay-- is there a way I can be nearby--"

"Of course! I was about to ask you if you were willing to stay. I will bring a cot in for you tonight." 

All right! At least he is not going to immediately wind up in a dungeon because of some sort of premediated lifebonded protocol. 

It would probably, he comforts himself, be a very nice dungeon. With servants and books and good food.

Leareth immediately heads for the cot and flops. Then turns and looks sort of hopefully at Levris. Everything is spinning and saying words is too hard. 

Does Leareth want forehead kisses?

(Maybe he will wind up the sex slave of a mysterious and powerful man? This is probably (?) an improvement on dungeons, however nice, because he can probably persuade Leareth to send people in and let him poke at their brains.)