"Leareth? I - have something to show you." 

Leareth turns, blinks a couple of times. "I did not realize you had returned from Valdemar." 

"I wasn't– It's complicated. May we speak privately? Er, whenever's a good time for you to take a break here." 

"Now is fine." Leareth excuses himself and they can go back to his room, if Vanyel wants, or Vanyel's room. 

Leareth's room is fine, it probably has better privacy-wards on it. When they've arrived, Vanyel takes out the pile of roughly-organized copied pages of Urtho's journals. 

"We didn't go to Valdemar. We went to Kata'shin'a'in. To - learn more about your past. And then, it's complicated, we - thought we'd check if there was anything left to study around the remains of Urtho's Tower, Hagan has a spell or something for finding things underground. And there's a lower level that survived the Cataclysm. We found these there." 

Vanyel hands them to him in silence. Waits. When it looks like Leareth isn't going to read them right this second, he goes on. 

"Urtho cared about you. You were one of his favourite pupils. He - regretted starting the war, in the end, I think. And he's the one who started it. Not you. He wrote that you were trying to open peace talks with him right until the end. And - the Cataclysm itself was almost entirely not your fault. It was Urtho's weapon, Urtho's Final Strike, and something to do with Urtho's Gate-network." 

Leareth blinks a few times and then sits down, heavily, his fingers loose on the papers. His expression holds the closest Vanyel has ever seen to grief. 

"I had not thought to ever know what happened," he says, his voice distant, weighted. "I - do not even recall his face, anymore."  

Vanyel nods. "We're not sure if there are - mitigating factors, that didn't make it into his personal journal, for why he made the choices he did. But I'm guessing even if you did - do something worse, in the war, than anything he wrote down, you probably don't remember. So we might never know."

He lets his breath sigh out. "Leareth, there were images of him, in the Kata'shin'a'in records. Do - you want me to show you?" 

"- Yes. That would mean a great deal to me." 

Vanyel carefully weaves an illusion, of Urtho's face as he appeared in Ravenwing's memories, a little hazy, but his hawk-like nose and long silver hair and twinkling blue eyes are clear enough. 

And Leareth looks at it for a long time. His face is still hard to read, but his eyes seem a little wet and shiny.

Vanyel keeps the illusion up for a few minutes, and then maybe he'll leave Leareth to absorb that for a while. 

Leareth does that. He puts away the journal entries long before he wants to, resists the temptation to grab a nap, and goes back to researching modifications on the crushing-force spell for potential diamond production. 

Aroden contacts him just before lunch, and he goes back to his room and spends a few minutes talking, and another few minutes sitting and thinking, and then goes in search of Mahdi and Hagan, as the only people aside from Khemet who he can actually speak freely to. 

Mahdi is looking carefully through a book Khemet has which is just large extraordinarily realistic color drawings of alleyways, forests and abandoned buildings in Cheliax.

Hagan is with him.

:Interesting. Is that for teleporting to places in Cheliax? I imagine it would work for my Gates as well: 

:Yeah. You can take a look, if you'd like. It might be safer for Gates than Teleports, actually, because these are years old and Teleport fails worse when the target no longer exists. ...why are we Mindspeaking.:

"Honestly, I think just habit." He sits down. "Did he have that entire book made for - this sort of contingency?" 

"There are also portfolios for Taldor, Qadira, Kelesh, Katapesh, Geb, Nex, Thuvia, Rahadoum, Galt, Andoran, and the Mwangi Expanse." He shakes his head. 

"How prepared." Leareth smiles. "I approve. Anyway. I spoke to Malduoni again, and - it is very frustrating that I cannot speak freely with Vanyel about it." 

"I don't expect you can get him to agree to it, it'd mess him up not to be able to talk with his people in Valdemar."

Sigh. "Which is fair enough, I suppose. I do not prefer being limited in my ability to speak with my people. Anyway. I suppose we can come up with a plan, discuss it with Khemet at least, and then figure out what we can say to Vanyel, or perhaps I can specifically obtain permission from Malduoni." 

Mahdi nods. "Valdemar's only helping out with the Worldwound half of this, right?"

"Yes, and Khemet cleverly re-derived the likely overall shape of Malduoni's plan without needing to ask, which means he can brief them on that requirement. The specific request that Malduoni made today, which is potentially relevant to the Valdemarans, is that it would be helpful to have strong Mindspeakers who could Broadsend to a large number of people at range. To - announce his presence." And identity and return from the dead, that part can go unsaid.

"I have some Mindspeakers among my people, of course, but on average Valdemaran Heralds with Mindspeech tend to be much stronger and have greater range, it is unclear why but likely their Companions are helping. So it would be of particular value to have some of them. Vanyel would be particularly helpful, there, but it would be kind of underusing him, and I have a thought on how he could be even more valuable at the Worldwound."