Long pause. 

:No, I can't. I don't know if it's just range: 

"Ugh. I'll...try the communication spell? That's not a hard range limit the same way, it'll just be more tiring." 

"Are there people nearby we can ask where we are?"

:There's a farmhouse way down that way: Yfandes gestures with her head. :They're not Mindspeakers, though. We can walk over and ask?: 

"All right." Vanyel sighs, hefts his pack full of magic goodies for Haven, and starts trudging down the muddy corridor between trellises. "I don't like this." 

"I wish we had Mahdi. They don't even have a good way to get here..."

He knocks on the door. "I have Tongues but you have all the cultural context so probably you should do the talking if you know the language."

"Noted." 

The door opens. A woman with nut-brown skin and greying dark hair in braids looks out at them.

"Yes, hello? Are you lost?" 

She says it in a language which Vanyel doesn't understand at all, though it sounds...vaguely a bit like Karsite? And there are some phonemes in there that almost sound Tayledras.

Vanyel glances over at Fazil, shakes his head. 

"Yes, we are, I'm so sorry to inconvenience you. Where are we?"

Politely puzzled look. "Just north of Taven'us'ta. The Grand Forest of Honoured Memory is that way?" She tilts her head at them. "How did you come here without knowing?" 

Vanyel shakes his head again. :I don't think I recognize those place-names, Fazil: 

"I was using a means of magical transportation that sometimes sends people to the wrong place. We were trying to get to Haven, in Valdemar."

She gives them a very bemused look. "Valdemar? I think you are very lost." She points west. "Border is - hundred miles? - that way." 

"Wow! We are very lost. Is it impossible to travel by magic across the border, do you know?"

Furrowed brow. "Oh. Yes, I would think so. Our god Vykaendys protects us." She makes a wide gesture with her hand. "With the might of His will he shields us." The phrase has a rote sound, as though from a prayer or something. 

"Oh." Vanyel tenses. "We're in - Iftel? That must be it. They're our allies, so it should be..."

"That makes sense," he says. "Thank you. I suppose we will travel to the border and cross without magic, then. I am from far away, would you tell me more of Vykaendys?"

The woman starts saying some things about Vykaendys Sunlord, who saved their people in the days after the Cataclysm; again, it has the cadence of some sort of memorized catechism. 

:Um, Van? Fazil?: Yfandes' mindvoice is mostly very level, but with a note of rising alarm. :I think we might– just look, that way: 

Vanyel twists around. "–What?" 

There are shapes in the air, drawing nearer. At first they look like birds of prey, but they're very big, much bigger than any species of bird, and - not quite the right shape to be birds at all. 

And now he's armored in an opaque sheet of force - reaches out and touches Vanyel with something that offers a surge of clarity and magical energy - 

"Thank you," he says to the woman.

"We'll just Plane Shift out, if they're hostile," he says to Vanyel in a different language. " - assuming that works. If it fails I guess we head for the border. Can you use the Eagle Eyes to spot somewhere on the horizon, Gate there, repeat that -"

"Ummmm. Maybe? Leareth could do it, I bet, I'm - less good at Gates - Yfandes thinks I can make it work. It'd be weird if they were hostile, we're allies." 

:Yes, but they don't let Heralds past the shield-wall, remember?: Yfandes cranes her neck. :I think those are gryphons: 

"Huh! Those are real? I guess they are."