"Mmm. And you have sorcery there, right? Which can do healing, I assume, and other things, but I didn't get a full rundown in Leareth's letter. Do you have any sense so far of how that compares to our world's magic, in terms of its strengths and weaknesses?" 

"Sorcery is better for healing, about equal for light, drastically worse for defense, slower but I think harder-hitting for offense, better for plants, kind of a tossup for stuff in the material object crafts genre, worse for communication and moving stuff around."

"And anyone can learn it?" 

"Yes."

"Hmm." She's quiet for another few moments, thinking; there are Mindspeech looks shared. One of the Heralds is taking notes. 

"I'm still confused about the, er, political situation in Fairyland," Wingsister says finally. "I guess the relevant question is, if people in Fairyland found out about our world, what are they likely to do about it? And how much does that vary depending on which polity someone makes contact with?" 

"Fairyland does not have politics like your politics. If typical individual fairies found out about your world they'd ignore it. If some fairies found out about it they'd do various things that weren't ignoring it and might or might not have courtsful of other fairies to bring along on the project."

"Do you think there are any fairies who would want to invade us, and have the resources to conquer our kingdom - or Leareth's forces, I suppose?" 

"Some of them would, I imagine, and it would depend a lot on how they opened the attempt. Fairy conflicts aren't won with firepower. They're won with names, and food claims - the latter is very hard intra-fairy but very easy with a mortal."

"Hmm. So - knowing what we need to watch out for might help, but I still wouldn't want to risk fairies showing up somewhere in Valdemar, we can't protect everyone in the whole Kingdom from that. I suppose we can't stop Leareth from risking contact if he wants." 

"So far the only contact is that I've been trading carefully selected fiction to a library for books on sorcery and stuff."

"Do the fairies there know that you're getting the books from another world?" 

"They have most likely assumed it's from the other mortal world."

"Hmm. I suppose that decreases the risk." Shrug. "If it were up to you, what would you advise? It - does sound like Fairyland is pretty unpleasant. I'm not sure if the, er, magical slavery situation can be fixed, but, well..." She lifts a hand, vaguely, lets it fall. "I'd want to help if I could." 

"I have a general idea of what I'd do. I'm - not ready."

"Mmm." Wingsister doesn't ask. 

One of the other Heralds, who introduced herself earlier as Alchemist, has some more specific questions about sorcery, which covers the next while. 

Promise can demo things. She will turn stuff into gold and make lights and purify water and whatnot. Would any of these people like to be younger, the meeting's been long enough she can do that now.

Oh! She can do that? Yes, Wingsister is very interested! 

Another older man who had introduced himself as Astronomer will line up to go next. 

"Somebody stop me when I have it about right, I'm not perfect at mortal age targeting yet," she says, and she youthens them.

"Whooooooa!" Wingsister breathes as her face grows younger. "- All right, you can stop there. If I look twenty again no one will take me seriously." 

"Okay. Maybe by the time you're old again more people around here will know how to do it."

Young Astronomer is quite handsome, it turns out! 

Alchemist is giving him an intrigued, considering look. 

"I can do that more but I need a while to look at whoever I'm targeting with that sort of magic. Same deal with healing."