"Yes. I'm sure she has a system for doing it, even though I don't know exactly what it is. She's got to be at least as clever as Thorn - even with her power you have to hold the upper hand, and she's done it for thousands and thousands of years. But her reputation suggests that she's not as sadistic and the upside potential is also greater."

"The upside potential of - overthrowing her rather than overthrowing Thorn directly?" 

"You get Thorn you get Thorn. You get the Queen you get Fairyland."

Nod. "That makes sense. So - what are your ideas so far? Or what are the challenges that you would like my help in solving?" 

"I think humans can, perhaps with Fetching, get her on a food claim, and then between her and compulsions get the rest of the court to stand down. It'll obviously be more complicated than that, but I've never been to her court and don't have real intel, just extrapolation based on a few clues and knowing she's smart. She won't be expecting Gifts, and she won't be expecting it to be possible to open a gate to Fairyland, since it's understood that sorcery doesn't work in the usual mortal world. Unless, of course, she's known about Velgarth all along, but it'd be a very well kept secret."

Nod. "Do you know the location of her court on a map, even approximately? We can perhaps obtain intel in advance with scrying or Farsight, like we did for your tree." 

"Yes, it's on the same continent as mine, north of the tree, west a little, I can point it out on the map I drew you before if I didn't mark it then."

"- Oh, you may well have marked it, I will have someone retrieve the map for me." 

He Mindspeaks Sunspring about it. A couple of minutes later, one of his staff comes up with the map retrieved from his office, and Leareth unfolds and checks it. Did Promise in fact mark the location of the Queen's court? 

Yes, there it is, in a summer and dawn intersection, near a bay on the north coast.

"Ah, perfect." Where is it located relative to Promise's two fairy gates, the one high above the middle of the ocean and the one on Valley Continent? 

Valley Continent is way way way off to the west, too far for any normal range of Gift. The one above the ocean is only a little farther from Queenscourt than from Promise's tree.

"All right. This is in scrying range, and I can Gate someone to within Fetching range once we know more about the surrounding terrain. Do you think that scrying and Farsight on the area ought be the next step here?" 

"I think so, yeah. If she has anything warding against them that's enough information to want to abort."

"Well, that part will be very quick to check and involve minimal risk. If you want to open the ocean gate for me, I can do it right now." 

She nods. She goes to the near end of the ocean gate and opens it.

Leareth, still holding the map, aims a scry at the location where Queenscourt is marked; since it's going to be pretty approximate, he places the scrying point high above the ground so he can see for a wide distance around, and looks for the nearest sign of habitation or buildings. 

There's a palace, over there. It's tall and beautiful and shining.

Sharing the image of a scry over Mindspeech with a non-Mindspeaker is hard, so Leareth describes it briefly to Promise. "Does that sound like the right place?" 

"Yeah, that sounds like it."

"Well, it appears it is not warded against scrying. I can start drawing a map in more detail?" 

"Sounds like a good place to start. I could maybe identify what kinds of fairies are around with good enough descriptions."

Then Leareth will contentedly spend the next few candlemarks scrying various features up closer and drawing a map of the terrain, including any magical elements he notes with mage-sight, and describing the appearance of any fairies he notices to Promise so they can keep a list of the kinds of fairy present. 

Promise knows what the Queen looks like, and as a one-of-a-kind she should be unique, but it transpires she has body doubles, which will complicate things. She fills in her notes about what kind magic they'll need to expect.

The terrain around Queenscourt has a sourceless waterfall just pouring from the sky for no reason, and one of those floating islands tethered by a silk rope to a stake in the ground, and a lot of magically interesting plants and a cave system under the palace full of glowy crystals.

It's beautiful, and fascinating, and Leareth is slightly awed. 

Also it's a pretty long way for scrying and after two candlemarks of it he's getting tired. He asks Promise if she wants to keep looking, if so he'll hand it over to another mage. (No one is as good at scrying as Leareth, but he can give a fellow Mindspeaker an image of a starting point, and an Adept mage can manage quite a lot of scrying at this range if they take breaks, even if they're not as efficient as he is.) 

"I think I'm still getting useful information out of this."