:Van, did you have to give me that mental image: 

"Did you at some point get a demonstration of the spell Disintegrate. You can do a Resurrection off that, but it's not - mixed, and I think that might make it impossible."

"That makes sense. It seemed worth checking." 

"If, er, pure cremated remains work, though, I can get a list of Heralds for Resurrection. And add some for True Resurrection in case that - ends up making sense. Mardic and Donni would be really good to have back, but that's four True Resurrections, for them and their Companions. Um, they were two lifebonded mages I trained with, they're both much less powerful than me individually but they were incredibly effective as a unit. And they have years of combat experience, and retrained as spies afterward." 

(Also he misses them almost more than words can convey. He can't have Tylendel back - that's a hedge of thorns he's going to stop poking at NOW - but maybe...) 

"If I can only do one per day it's going to be very inconvenient for the Companion/Herald thing but - if we win the war we can get your friends eventually." Sigh. "I asked Abadar if he could just give me more power but - they have all these balancing agreements, right, if He makes a bunch of powerful clerics Asmodeus does the same thing and wars are actually much worse with lots of powerful casters on both sides -"

"Also they're lifebonded so that's tricky, but - Mardic and Donni might be the best equipped to handle that, actually, Mardic lost his Companion years before he died, he's one of the only people who ever survived it. And Donni outlived him, too, not by long but - as long as she needed to, if it'd been a day I think she'd have managed. It's - not intolerable, the broken soulbond thing, and I think it'd have to be more bearable if you knew it was temporary."

It's getting hard to speak so he should probably stop poking at the entire subject now. 

"If you bring me Taver's body tomorrow I will see what I can do. In order to do that I should now get some sleep, though." His smile is convincing but the Ring of Sustenance undermines it.

"Of course." Leareth waits for the formal dismissal, giving Vanyel a look when he seems like he might be about to say more. 

He dismisses them. Heads out.

"I want to try a medium size diamond," Vanyel says as they're walking back. "Think I've got the energy for that now. After I contact Savil - we should ask them to, um, retrieve his remains and bring them somewhere convenient. And I guess you could teach me the inter-world Gate?" 

"I will do that, but given that you are the only diamond-maker we have, I think you ought save your energy. I can Gate somewhere if you share a memory of it by Mindspeech." 

"Guess that makes sense. Don't you have a lot to do too...?"

"Yes. I am going to be extremely busy." Probably it'll make sense for Leareth to just leave with Malduoni after that meeting. "But one Gate will not take too long, and if I am right that the cleric spell I have restores what Lesser Restoration does not, then I ought have quite a number of Gates in me. It would be convenient if they could have it ready very early in the morning." He's going to be headed to bed pretty early anyway, he suspects, his ability to focus is definitely flagging. 

(He feels a lot of sympathy right now for Khemet's inevitable many hours of awful headache.) 

Vanyel learns the Gate-technique from Leareth - he practices it once, very briefly, with a very tiny Gate, just to make sure he can do it without tiring himself any more than necessary - and he contacts Savil with the crystal ball to leave a very odd request, and makes sure she can be ready to hand over what's left of Taver early the next morning. They cremated him in Horn rather than cart a dead horse all that way, but he's in an urn in the Heralds' cemetery somewhere. They might as well try to drag a cohort of Heralds across too, if Leareth is Gating to Haven. 

(Giving Leareth a Gate-location in Haven would have seemed so unthinkable until so recently, and now it's hardly worth noting.) 

He manages to crank out two intermediate sized, Resurrection-grade diamonds, and then goes to bed. 

In the morning Khemet sends someone to tell Leareth that he's ready to do Aroden's contingent spell. There's a work room they can use; he has temporarily changed the anti-Teleportation and anti-Plane Shift protections on the palace to let people out, though not in; he's made it clear to his people not to interrupt him and Leareth (unless spells which would warn them if he's under attack are triggered). 

Leareth wants to get his Gate to Velgarth for Vanyel out of the way first, since it may be logistically simplest for him to just leave with Malduoni afterward. (His brain still does a very weird thing every time someone says 'Aroden'.) It shouldn't take long. If it's all right with the pharaoh, he wants to bring some of the assembled Heralds over at the same time, it won't require holding the Gate much longer and the highest energy cost is in casting a threshold of a given size at all. He thinks it makes sense for them to stage here, with Vanyel, and leave with him, rather than setting up in Rahadoum which isn't even close to the Worldwound. 

A servant relays that this is fine with the pharaoh and he'll expect Leareth in an hour.

Then a bunch of Heralds can make a very, very fast rush across a Gate anchored on the Heralds' Temple in Haven. 

Savil comes through first. She's carrying an urn wrapped in a blanket. "Leareth. We're very grateful for your help. - Van, gods, I missed you. Sorry, I would hug you, but..."

"I missed you too." He gives her an awkward one-armed hug around the urn and then hauls her out of the way so the others can come through. 

Leareth gets thirty Heralds across in less than ten minutes, and dismantles the Gate, and hangs around a bit longer to make sure they're getting oriented all right, but Vanyel seems to have that under control, so he takes a brief rest in his room, contacts Malduoni with a warning of an imminent Gate appearing in his shielded office, and then heads over to join the pharaoh in the shielded work room. 

"Are you going to head out with him?"

"Afterward? I suspect so. We had not decided for sure since when we spoke the timing of his visit was not finalized." 

He nods. "How will it be communicated when they should get up to the Worldwound?"

"I can use a Velgarth communication spell with Vanyel. It is theoretically not secure but - it will hardly matter at that point, and it will be a very brief message. I think he ought to be able to Gate there from someone's memory, if you have someone who has been there before." 

"We can arrange that. It's more than fifteen hundred miles from here, does he have a range limit?"