"Ack!" Vanyel lands in a crouch with several layers of shields already in place - that wasn't a Gate, he'd know, did someone just kidnap him with Fetching... He stretches out his magical senses, trying to gauge his surroundings. 

:I don't recognize this place at all: Yfandes confirms. 

This place is....desert, in one direction, as far as the eye can see. In the other direction there are crumbling buildings half-buried in sand, and then reeds, and then a river. 

It's dusk.

A lemur with webbed feet and a tail in eight rainbow colors squalls indignantly at the human and the horse, and checks whether the slugs are tasty.

Is there anything that Vanyel's mage-sight can recognize, particularly traps or weapons?

He also casts out his Thoughtsensing, seeking any people within a half-mile radius. 

This was a magic trap! It is unclear what it is meant to do; it's inactive now. There is some magic stuff buried in the room the trap was protecting.

There are no people within a half-mile radius although from the torch-lights vaguely visible on the horizon in the river direction there are some people farther away than that. 

Weird. 

He doesn't seem to be in immediate danger, though, so he puts up some quick shields over the hidden room the trap was protecting, just in case that still matters, and then climbs onto Yfandes' back and heads in the direction of the river, casting a mage-light once it gets dark enough that Yfandes can't see where she's putting her feet. 

A ways along the river from here there is a little village. Really little - it has maybe thirty buildings in the village proper. There are some farmhouses along the way. It seems like the half-mile near the river is very intensively farmed and then farther out than that everything is sand and hopeless to farm at all.

Huh. Not a climate that he particularly recognizes. Vanyel approaches the village, using Thoughtsensing to find where the nearest people are but carefully not actually reading anyone. He reinforces his personal shields just in case, but isn't feeling especially threatened here. Just very confused. 

There are people in the village! Mostly in their houses, now that it's getting dark. 

The village seems to consist of a dock for some large river barges, some stores, some houses, and a temple. The temple has a symbol above its doors - two stylized lines crossing, with a pin at the place where they meet.

Vanyel doesn't recognize that either. This is getting weirder and weirder. 

He finds a door to knock on where the people inside are definitely still awake. 

Someone opens the door. Blinks at him a bit confusedly. 

He'e not Gifted. He is shielded - not well, but more than a random person in Valdemar would be - in the fashion that the non-Gifted can pick up a little bit of shielding with enough exposure.

He says something in a foreign language. He sounds friendly enough.

"I am sorry to interrupt, I wanted to ask where we are?" Vanyel asks in Valdemaran. If that doesn't work he can try half a dozen other languages before running out of ones he has even a few words of vocabulary in. 

This man knows none of those languages! Ethnically he might be Karsite or might be from somewhere even farther south but he doesn't know those languages either. 

Vanyel is feeling very stuck! He tries miming some questions, but miming 'what kingdom are we in' is sort of hard. 

The man shrugs apologetically and then walks out of his house towards the temple, gesturing for Vanyel to follow him.

Vanyel nods and smiles politely and follows him. 

He knocks on the door and fetches a woman of about sixty, in gold-trimmed robes and with a necklace bearing the same symbol. She's not Gifted either but she has shields against Thoughtsensing, better than his. 

They talk. She - looks at Vanyel, and then reaches for the necklace, murmurs something -

- something that shows up to mage-sight, but not as mage-energy, as something that flows similarly but looks - silkier, lighter - 

Vanyel bobs his head and smiles and tries to look the appropriate amount of grateful even though he has no idea what they're doing. 

...He's sort of tired. He mimes laying his head down on a pillow to sleep. 

She nods and beckons them both into the temple.

Yfandes hesitates outside, it's both unclear if there's room for her and unclear if she would be welcome. 

More emphatic gesturing, of course she should come in!!! - it'll be a little crowded but it'd be awfully rude to just leave her outside! 

Yfandes tries to express gratitude as much as she can in horse body language, and follows her Chosen in. 

The temple has shrines to five different unfamiliar gods and after some work by the random villager and the elderly woman also a cot and a...bale of hay? She shrugs apologetically at Yfandes. Introduces herself as Saira, points emphatically at a tile mosaic of a sun on one of the shrines.

"Vkandis?" Vanyel says, just to check, although it doesn't really look like Vkandis iconography. 

Headshake. Then - shrug. 

And she leaves them to sleep.