Leareth slightly notices that he is confused about this response, but is mostly thinking about the meeting he needs to have tomorrow and hasn't spent tonight planning for at all. "Yes, sure," he says absently, "pleased to have met you..." And he heads off to his room, which is down the hall, snagging the barmaid and making sure he's paid his tab first. 

Okay apparently it was not which was hopefully not the most excruciatingly embarrassing event of his life.

Levris goes to bed and puts his head under a pillow and decides to pretend that he has never even MET Leareth.

Leareth is up early and slightly underslept; he's oddly tempted to leave a note for the interesting Valdemaran Mindhealer, but on reflection setting up correspondence with random Valdemarans (who are very unlikely to be recruitable) is kind of a fraught idea, so he decides against with a faint note of wistfulness about it. 

He heads out for his other meeting. 

Lev wakes up in the morning and pokes at his brain. 

...Thaaaaaaat's new.

Shortly after his second meeting, Leareth is riding a rented horse deeper into Baires. It's not that he can't concentrate today, exactly, but as soon as his mind is less occupied it starts drifting back to Levris again, the research he would be doing if he had time for it, his circuit logistics - it's so odd that he's even finding that interesting... 

Leareth is still pretty attentive to his surroundings but perhaps not quite as much as usual. 

The library that is Levris's mind has grown a secret passageway behind one of the bookshelves. (You open it by taking out the book that has his meeting with Leareth in it.)

That's not supposed to be there.

Lifebond!!! He has a lifebonded!!! His lifebonded is so handsome and kind and tolerant and probably his lifebonded would have all those traits regardless, because of the lifebond, but Levris is still very excited about these facts being true.

He decides to head in Leareth's general direction and hope that once he's closer he'll be able to find Leareth through Thoughtsensing and share the good news.

Leareth is perhaps a couple of miles ahead of him at this point, riding up the local minor road that runs alongside a river. There's a bridge ahead, which he needs to cross to reach the larger road that heads in the direction of Qorthes, the capital of Baires. 

He's kind of daydreaming as he turns, paying just enough attention to be sure that there aren't any minds within a mile of him or any offensive magic. He can sense some sort of magic in the vicinity of the bridge, but practically everything is magical in Baires, they're swarming with mages, they must have the highest per capita rate of mage-gift outside the Tayledras. Half their buildings are maintained with magic in some shape or form. 

Leareth turns his horse onto the bridge–

–and a damaged maintenance-spell on the stone fails, and fails in such a way that there's an energy-backlash with ripples out and destabilizes one of the other structural spells - and if Leareth were paying attention he could have caught it in time, but his mind is half-occupied wondering when Levris' circuit-route would take him near a border and if they might run into each other again...

The bridge collapses in a groaning screech of stone-on-stone and Leareth goes down in the middle of it, along with his poor horse - his shield-talisman isn't really specced against several hundred pounds of stone trying to crush him, the spell valiantly holds off most of it before crumpling, and he's kind of stunned as he hits the water. 

- he flails for the surface, gets half a breath, starts trying to reinforce his personal shields, and then slams into the rapids that are right downstream of the bridge. There are several very painful collisions with rocks, and then one of them strikes his head, and there goes any chance of doing more magic right now. Leareth clings to consciousness for a few seconds longer, trying to get out a Mindspeech call for help - for some reason he's instinctively reaching for Levris in particular - and then everything goes vague and shapeless before fading to black. 

Leareth is hurt.

It is the worst thing, it is the most horrible thing he could imagine, and he has heard about people being able to do amazing things like lift up rocks that weigh ten times as much as they do when there's a surge of adrenaline and it seems like this is probably true because Levris can gallop without falling off his horse and he isn't even worried about falling because his whole mind is consumed with Leareth, Leareth, Leareth has to be okay--

When he gets closer he starts yelling :Leareth! Leareth!: in Mindspeech.

Leareth does not answer him because he's currently unconscious in the river, being tugged along in the current. Not very fast at this point, because the river widens out and slows right after the rapids. Levris will still be able to sense him a little. 

Okay. Okay. Levris is going to-- go to the river, and not freak out about how his lifebonded might be DEAD, and-- try to get Leareth out, and put him on the horse and take him to a Healer and everything will be fine.

Leareth coughs and splutters as he's fished out of the water, half wakes up for a few seconds, tries to get the rest of the way there but everything hurts a lot and - and for some reason he has the absolute conviction that he's safe, which is a feeling he would normally be pretty suspicious of but he's way too groggy to question it, so he relaxes and focuses on breathing, which is hard for some reason, and pretty quickly slips into unconsciousness again. 

His lifebonded (!!!) is NOT DEAD which is the most exciting and important fact in the entire world. 

Levris will ask someone where to find the Houses of Healing and get directions and take his lifebonded (!!!) there. 

There's a House of Healing in the town they just left, and the person he flags down on the road also knows where one of the Healers who's off-duty today lives and can rush off to grab them, and so even before he gets back to the town, someone is running out to meet him. "What happened?" 

"He fell into a river, I didn't see what happened before that."

"Slow down a moment, let me..." The Healer stands up on tiptoes beside Levris' horse and very quickly examines Leareth. "Looks like he got a good knock on the head, and some internal injuries - you'd better go ahead to the House of Healing, I'll catch up, just try not to jostle him too much." 

"Okay."

This horse is going to go as carefully as possible to the House of Healing. This is painfully slow (because his lifebonded might DIE) but Levris can tolerate it.

The off-duty Healer must have Mindspoken ahead because some more people are running out to meet him, they can help to carefully get Leareth down from the horse and carry him inside and lay him down on a bed. 

"What's his name?" someone is asking. "Has he been conscious at all?" 

"Leareth," Levris says, "and he was conscious for a few seconds as soon as I pulled him out but not since."

(Does this mean his lifebonded is going to DIE?)

Everyone is ignoring him rather than telling him whether or not Leareth is going to die! One of the Healers is saying his name and asking him to open his eyes, which Leareth is not doing, although he does moan and grimace when someone tries to peel back his eyelid, and again when they work on getting him out of his soaking-wet clothes and bundling him in heated blankets. Several of the Healers have gone quiet, presumably in a Healing-meld.

Someone is talking at him and this is very unpleasant, Leareth's head hurts and he can't really think and it hurts to breathe too, which seems unfair - where is he - there's someone familiar...

:????: he sends at Levris in very flaily Mindspeech. 

:It's okay: Levris sends in a comforting tone. :You fell into a river and the Healers are going to treat you now. You're going to be all right. Everything's fine.:

Levris decides to save the !!! exciting news !!! for when Leareth is more conscious.

And finally someone thinks to talk to Levris. "He's going to be fine but it'll be a rough few days - were you traveling together? Are you able to stay here with him? You sound Valdemaran - is there anyone back in Valdemar we should notify? Oh, I'm sorry, I forgot to even ask your name." 

"Uh," Levris says, "I'm Levris, I'm his lifebonded, I can stay here with him, I can take care of notifying people."

(That last bit is technically true, the Healers would have to wait for Leareth to wake up to notify anyone anyway.)

 "Huh!" That gets him a startled look, and several of the other Healers seem kind of weirded out, presumably by the concept of two men being lifebonded; no one makes any further comment though.

"Well, that's good," the person who was addressing him said with forced cheerfulness, "he'll make a quicker recovery having you nearby; if you notice you're more tired than usual, it's probably because he's drawing energy from you to heal, I had a lifebonded patient once and that happened. Anyway. He should rest now, but please let someone know if he starts waking up more. Oh, and he's a mage, yes? He might do some accidental magic if he wakes up confused, that happens sometimes, if it does it'll probably hurt because of the head injury - usual advice is to avoid startling him, make sure he knows you're there, say what you're going to do before touching him. Sometimes the trainees forget, so it might be good to remind whoever's on night duty."