It's maybe not the best time to interrupt, then, and Vanyel hesitates - can he hear what they're saying? 

He can hear them as clearly as if he were in the room.

"–word from k'Treva?" Randi is saying. He looks...very tired, and stressed, and unhappy. 

"Well, they're pretty alarmed," Savil answers. She also looks tired, the worry-lines on her brow and around her mouth deeper than usual. "It'll be a much longer negotiation, in terms of whether they can offer us military help, but I think once Starwind has a chance to talk to the elders, probably they'll agree to offer you and a few others sanctuary." 

Vanyel is frozen, rigid, too shocked and confused to even consider interrupting. What? Did something go terribly wrong in the tentative alliance with Karse...? But even without him there, it doesn't seem like Karse ought to be able to press a war with Valdemar, weakened as they are after the last four years–

"And Karis?" 

Keiran is the one who answers. "She's scared. She encouraged us to all evacuate to Sunhame now, if we want." 

What? 

"I think that's at least somewhat premature. Randi, we haven't seen anything on the border yet, and we've got just about all our Foreseers deployed there now." 

"Honestly, how do we know he can't just Gate directly to Haven? If he's got Van..." 

Savil looks down, doesn't answer. 

If who has me? 

...It takes Vanyel an embarrassing length of time before it falls into place. Oh, no. 

"I mean, we're not going to win, right?" Randi says, looking as exhausted as Vanyel has ever seen him. "It's possible we should just evacuate now." 

"...I'm not sure he can't just Gate to k'Treva too. Or Sunhame. Van's been to both." 

Vanyel should say something to them? Probably? 

But it's too hard to think of what - he can't even figure out what's happening, here, he talked to Savil not that long ago and it was fine– okay, maybe not, she was obviously concerned...he had assumed she was concerned he had lost his mind...

He lets go of the spell and turns away from the crystal ball. If any of the others are looking, it's very obvious from his expression that something is badly wrong. 

He looks up when Van turns around and then jumps to his feet in the second after that. "- what happened -"

"I - I..." He almost can't form words. 

Yfandes, who was watching over his shoulder the whole time, collects herself first. :Our kingdom has jumped to some wrong, er, conclusions about Vanyel's disappearance. In, um, a way that's going to be hard to correct, because...they think Van was kidnapped by a mage we were expecting to end up at war with. Although, honestly, they don't know a tenth of it. Van, want to explain Leareth?: 

Vanyel sags to the floor, suddenly too overwhelmed to keep his footing. "I...don't even know that they're completely wrong... He obviously didn't kidnap me but he might be taking this as an excuse to attack, if he knows I'm mysteriously gone..." 

(He doesn't at all want to explain Leareth. That also feels way too hard right now.) 

"Should we be planning to try imitating an interplanetary teleport with two Plane Shifts over the Elemental Plane of Air tomorrow."

"Maybe. Probably?" Vanyel covers his face with his hands. "I can't believe I didn't think of this. How it would look if I suddenly vanished. Of course it seems more likely to them that Leareth kidnapped me than that another world with different magic exists - and, gods, it must've made them even more suspicious when I didn't want to come home... I'm such an idiot." 

:Stop it, love: Yfandes sends privately, then pulls in the others. :Leareth is an immortal mage and Vanyel's had a Foresight dream about being destined to fight him since the first week he had Gifts at all. Also - and this is really strange for Foresight - Van can talk to him in the dream. The rest of the Heralds don't know this because, er, the Groveborn - the leader of the Companions' herd - had a bad feeling about it, and so did I–:

"And now he's dead. Goddamnit, this is the worst timing! They have no idea about all the rest..." And now he's stuck on words again. 

:Er, for context, Leareth is immortal and claims to be trying to fix all the problems in the world, although he admits this is via a plan that would by default involve invading Valdemar. Though he's been trying to convince Vanyel for the last decade that maybe we can work something else out instead: