"Good for them. Uh, if you're up for - listening to concerts, stuff like that - the palace has plenty, we could fill a week that way -"

"I, um, maybe I could manage that. I...might embarrass you, though. If I start crying or something." 

"You're clear on how I hate all these people and if they judge my friends that will make me feel better about my taste in friends, right? Also I think musicians are usually delighted when they move their audience to tears."

Vanyel giggles. Looks embarrassed again. "Sorry." 

"Van, I don't quite get what's going on but we're not judging you or Yfandes for it. Really. If someone gets hit with a horrible magic curse you go fix that, you don't go - I'm so cool, I made my Will save -"

Vanyel glances over at him, manages a watery smile. "Thank you." 

"What is a Will save?"

"Resisting mind-affecting magic is easier if you're more magically powerful yourself, and it's easier with shielding, and it's easier with practice, but a significant component is - the way your mind is ordered? You can make it harder to angle a spell precisely enough to affect you. It's also the trait that helps throw off crystal ball scries. It affects a lot of things. - both of you are at a glance going to be very good at it, that's why if I were going to fight you I'd try turning you into a frog or something instead of ordering you to go jump off a cliff. - also I don't personally do enchantments but in general."

"Hmm." What Leareth is thinking is that this might explain why some people here are mysteriously harder to read with Thoughtsensing than others, despite not having what he would call typical shields. (The pharaoh was shielded, impressively so, and was impossible to read at all even passively. Leareth wouldn't have dreamed of trying actively while in the nervewracking Dome.) 

"The spell that increases intelligence doesn't do anything to your Will save but there's a corresponding one that increases wisdom, and it does."

"Interesting. You think of those as - discrete, separate traits, in your world?" 

"Yes, mostly because the spells for them are separate. They're correlated in the general population, obviously, most desirable traits are because most of them go with having had enough to eat as a child. And they run in the blood, intelligent men have intelligent sons."

"It is the same in my world. The traits are not as obviously separate concepts, but - in colloquial usage, 'intelligence' gestures more at, hmm - quick thinking, speed of learning, ability to juggle complex concepts. Likely something that peaks in young adulthood. Wisdom tends to refer to accumulated knowledge, both explicit and in terms of implicit heuristics and decision procedures, and is something that is thought to increase over a lifetime, such that the elderly have the most wisdom." 

"Intelligence spells help with - holding more of your thoughts in your head, propagating ideas, noticing when you're missing something - and wisdom spells help with emotional equanimity, noticing what your motivations are and where they're not serving you, being present in your immediate environment and noticing if anything's off about it. There are also charisma spells; those help with social skills, verbal fluency, ability to command attention."

"Fascinating. That certainly sounds useful." 

"The crown does all three. For three standard deviations from the population average, the spell we showed you is two."

"I see. No wonder the pharaoh is so - impressive." 

"Don't say that to him, last thing he needs." And then he looks up at the stairs to the cliff face; someone's descending them.

(They prostrate themselves, with a worried glance at Vanyel.)

Vanyel freezes. :Am I, um, supposed to do that too...?: 

Well, Leareth appears to be doing it even though he must hate doing that kind of thing, so Vanyel will self-consciously follow suit. 

"Please sit comfortably," the pharaoh says, sounding maybe slightly apologetic, once he's close enough they can hear him without his raising his voice. "I -" was going to tell you the results of trying to find Tylendel's soul but am rapidly getting the sense I should not do that in front of Vanyel -" wanted to update you on the progress of negotiations among our gods."

Leareth sits up. "Yes?" 

"Your gods are very frustrating! - I am translating for Abadar, here, He doesn't quite use concepts like that, but still. They're very powerful, they can do some things ours cannot do - Abadar absolutely could not put up a shield wall around an entire country and vet everyone who entered it and make everyone everywhere else not care about this, unless He decided that was His one goal in life - but they're very frustrating. They seem pleased to be rid of you," he adds to Leareth. "A permanent interworld portal probably cannot be arranged, there are various forces in Golarion that'd be opposed and none of your gods like the idea, but we do not expect Plane Shifts to be interfered with. There are discussions ongoing about afterlife jurisdictions. Obviously we'd like to keep our own no matter where they die, and we'd also like to keep yours when they die here, which might be possible to negotiate because your gods seem more local than ours."

"Abadar and I are in agreement about the 'frustrating' part," Leareth says wryly. "I am glad it is possible to communicate at all. There are some questions and requests I might wish Abadar to convey to them later, if he is willing of course - they were very unwilling to speak to me, in the past, Vkandis once set me on fire for my trouble when I tried to petition Him in one of His temples. That is not very urgent, though." 

Vanyel is both trying to listen and trying not to listen at the same time.