Well, she can't do anything about that from here and two days feels like a VERY LONG TIME but she will try to distract herself and let Amshalan run them along at a pushed but not ludicrous pace. She will think about what she will do as Queen and all the mage stuff she wants to learn instead. Comment on the scenery now and then.

Amshalan makes her own occasional scenery comments to pass the time.

:Figure you could tap some nodes and feed me energy?: she asks eventually, when the sun is halfway down the sky. :I'm cheating at endurance using magic, more or less, and having more magic will help me go longer without being so tired after: 

:Oh! Yeah, I can try, that hadn't occurred to me but it makes sense - how do I do it -:

:Almost exactly what you were doing when we helped that poor mage out, but I'll keep the energy instead of relaying it on: 

Belrun reaches for a node. Wonders how long it'll take her hair to go white.

:Darker hair can take a while, Van's been at it for ten years and he's still only halfway to white, but you'll probably get streaks soon. I bet it'll look amazing on you: 

:Thanks:

With a steady infusion of node-energy (during which Belrun can accumulate more practice at using nodes in the first place), Amshalan maintains a gallop until sundown. :All right, should probably stop at the next inn unless you're up for giving me a mage-light to see by: 

:Don't know how. Is that one I might work out without being taught?:

:I think it's one of the first techniques you'd learn, but I don't know how to teach it to you: 

Belrun will fumble with her new Gift a bit to see if there's anything obvious. She's caught fireflies to stare at before and the plant cell wall metaphor seemed to work really well?

It takes a few tries, but one way of shaping the energies gives her a (very flickery) light. 

She will work on that and see if she has it suitable for galloping to before they reach an inn. If it's flickery she probably needs to be - steadier? With the energy? Either that or give it more oomph.

Both feeding it in more smoothly and giving it more oomph reduce the flickeriness, though it still has a tendency to fade in and out a bit as her concentration wavers. She can't manage both a light and feeding Amshalan node-energy at the same time. 

"Okay, I guess we'll stop," she concludes when she's pretty sure that won't yield to another few minutes of practice. "And try to be on the road again at dawn."

:We can do that: 

Amshalan, impatient, Mindspeaks directly to the stablehand when he doesn't immediately do what she wants. She shoos Belrun off. :I'll figure it out here. Go sleep: 

They've covered about a third of the distance to Haven and the lifebond tug is noticeably louder. There are a couple moments when it feels like Leareth is trying to reach for her; this both makes the strain of distance more noticeable and also strengthens the hints of pain leaking through. 

She's coming, she's coming, she'll be there tomorrow -

She pays for her room and crashes hard.

Amshalan is awake in the morning when she is. :Grab breakfast for the road, maybe?: 

:Yeah: She gets some, what do they have here, bread and hardboiled eggs, fine. She gets on Amshalan and goes. Fetches the egg out of its peel rather than try to pick at it on the road.

Amshalan's gallop is a lot smoother than a normal horse's, so it's not too hard to eat in the saddle, but Fetching rather than egg-peeling will probably go better. 

The feeling-of-Leareth has gone back to feeling sort of muted and hard to reach. 

Well, maybe he's gone from out-of-it-enough-to-be-confused to out-of-it-enough-to-not-even-be-confused, that might be a mercy.

Amshalan runs. She's pretty well-rested after the night, and she's lathered within minutes but otherwise shows no sign of tiring. She asks Belrun to feed her node-energy again. 

They cover more than half the remaining distance before Amshalan requests a quick break to graze and drink some water, recommends Belrun do the same. (Well, not the grazing part precisely.)

Amshalan thinks they can reach Haven in another two, three candlemarks. They're expected; she's actually in Mindspeech range of the Companions in Haven, now, if she pushes it hard. She can confirm that there were no deaths among the Heralds from the fire, though there were other deaths, the estimate is now a couple of hundred. Thousands injured. Leareth's condition is bad but not life-threatening, he's getting a lot of Healing-attention. 

Belrun eats bread and cheese and an apple while Amshalan clips the grass. :That's a big bite out of our force. - or possibly out of the civilian population, was it mostly one or the other?: