It's a skillfully done Gate, but not nearly as fast as Leareth's work. 

Within twenty seconds of the first glow, though, the threshold suddenly clears. A man in simple robes, with brown skin and long white-streaked black hair in a braid, is standing on the other side and peering through warily at them. 

"Are you the one who sent the message?" he says, in the same Tantaran language she had the letter written in. 

"Yes. I'm Carissa Sevar."

He still looks wary, but nods to her. "Well, come across." His eyes flash to Ma'ar. "Who's the lad." 

"Kiyamvir Ma'ar. He's local and a mage and was stuck herding cows, it seemed very unfair." And she hurries through the Gate with him.

The man does not dawdle at taking the Gate down; he does it skillfully and only takes about three times as long as Urtho would, and he's very focused during it. 

"Well," he says when he's done, looking at them, "I cannot say I understand what brings you here, but - welcome to Ka'venusho. I am Snowstar k'Chona, Adept mage of the Kaled'a'in people. I work with Urtho." 

They're standing in a vast stone courtyard. There are potted citrus fruit trees nearby, a fountain - this time spotless - and a stone bench with a tastefully ivy-draped awning of woven branches over it. The air is balmy, less dry than in Predain, the sky a softer blue with fluffy clouds. 

Visible past the courtyard is a path, paved with large smooth flagstones that must weigh a thousand pounds each. And then, probably a mile away but still feeling almost close enough to touch, is Urtho's Tower. 

Ma'ar cranes his neck back, looking. It's so tall! It has multiple spires, gracefully curved, and they go up and up and up. 

The air is practically crackling with ambient magic. 

" - wow," she says. "Thank you. It's beautiful. I can explain what brought me here - but it is a long, complicated story."

Snowstar smiles a little. "It must be. Come with me." He beckons for them to follow, and then turns and starts marching down the path. "Urtho is in his study. He was not sure you would show up for the Gate, or if it was some sort of trick, but I expect he will be very interested in speaking to you."

The path has flowerbeds on either side of it. Currently they're being tended by a couple of lizards, about as tall as Ma'ar and with large domed heads and brightly coloured scales, chattering away to each other in a different language which Carissa can of course understand anyway. They seem to be gossiping about how two young mage-students are being terribly oblivious to their romantic interest in each other, and scheming needs to happen in order to set them right. 

Ma'ar's eyes are huge. He can barely tear his eyes off one thing to look at all the other fascinating sights, and the sheer quantity of magic around him is exhilarating.

Awwwwwwww.

She's seen places that are as magical, but not any that are as orchestrated; this is all Urtho's territory and he can make sure it doesn't get too crowded or too smelly or too tasteless, while even Absalom - even Aktun - are places where people can have different design visions than their neighbors. This is something else.

And - you can't judge people by their flowerbeds but it doesn't have the air of a place where people who come in peace are in danger. She does suddenly wish she'd disguised her clothes more conservative but that's probably mostly the encounter with the guards at the gate talking. 

They pass some students in uniforms at a crossroads with another path; the students are talking over each other excitedly about some exam they seem to have all just passed, and pause for a moment to look curious at the newcomers and then wave cheerfully. 

A shadow moves overhead; in the air, some large winged creature - not a bird, it's much too big and also visibly has the hindquarters of something more like a lion. It lands, preens with an alarmingly large beak, and then says something in a faintly sibilant but perfectly understandable voice to the gardeners. 

Ma'ar is starting to feel like his eyes are going to fall out of his head! 

It can't have been set up to impress them, or if it was, that's nearly as impressive as it being real.

So much lost so stupidly -

She keeps walking. Smiles at Ma'ar.

Snowstar glances back at them every so often, and smiles more when he sees Ma'ar's reaction to his surroundings. 

The path leads all the way up to an entrance to the Tower itself, an archway with a pair of doors that seem really excessively huge. And apparently open by magic; there's a crystal knob set each of them, and when Snowstar waves a hand and chants some words that are incomprehensible to Ma'ar but to Carissa sound like 'open, half', one of the doors swings open on oiled, silent hinges. 

Inside is an echoing, high-ceilinged room with a floor of polished, pink-veined marble flagstones, except for a square-ring in the middle which has some sort of abstract mosaic, and surrounds the base of a spiral staircase that leads up to multiple sets of balconies around the inside of the room, doors branching off from three sides and windows studding the fourth side. There are crystal globes everywhere, some faintly glowing, but they're hardly necessary right now given the number of windows. 

They don't use the staircase, though; instead Snowstar points them to a smaller door, which leads into a much more normal-sized and ordinary-feeling corridor. It's also lit, reasonably well, by crystal globes set into wall-sconces in place of candles or torches. The walls and ceiling are stone slabs, well-finished and with very neat mortar but not polished or decorated; the floor is presumably also stone but has a sturdy knotwork rug over it, muffling their footsteps. 

Snowstar unlocks a door, apparently with magic rather than a key, and leads them up a narrow stone staircase to another corridor, and then deeper into the Tower. 

It's all incredible, but also Ma'ar has never been inside this much building, and finds that he's a little claustrophobic. Also his magic-sense almost hurts from looking at everything, it's so bright. He squeezes Carissa's hand tightly. 

Carissa mostly feels very effectively and successfully intimidated, which is what you'd expect if you send a cryptic message to the most powerful mage in the world. She squeezes Ma'ar's hand back. It's still possible that she could just Dimension Door out of here with him, they won't know how to shield against her magic, but she doesn't particularly expect it. They chose this. Hopefully they chose right.

Snowstar leads them up to a quite normal-looking plain oak door, and knocks. 

There are footsteps inside. 

Urtho thirty years before the Cataclysm hardly looks different from resurrected Urtho at Leareth and Carissa's wedding. Maybe the worry lines on his forehead and around his mouth aren't quite as deep. His long narrow face looks like one that smiles a lot, twinkling blue eyes above a beaky nose, silver hair falling past his shoulders. 

"So, you were telling the truth, at least in part," he says. He sounds cheerful, friendly. "I'd better invite you in. Thank you, Snowstar, you can go back to your class now." 

His office is spacious, with an enormous oak desk and another long table for his books, plus bookshelves floor to ceiling. It's also a huge mess. Every surface, including the spare armchairs except the one he must've been sitting in moments ago that has a steaming cup next to it, is covered in papers, books held open with random objects or other books, at least a hundred assorted magic artifacts flung down carelessly and haphazardly. 

Urtho blinks at the chair arrangement, as though noticing that it's problematic but not quite clear on why, and then gives them a sheepish look and starts clearing papers. 

- she translates for Ma'ar, for lack of anything better to do, and waits.

He gets two armchairs cleared for them, offers them a seat. "Tea? I made a pot just a few minutes ago - I think - maybe it was an hour ago but I can heat it up again." 

"Sure. Thank you."

The tea is definitely more than a few minutes old, but not too badly oversteeped, and Urtho hums to himself as he reheats it with a bit of magic and pours two cups, asks if they take milk or sugar - his milk is in a jug inside a very magic small cabinet, which wafts out cold air - and brings the cups over. Sits. 

"So. I have a feeling that I got a tiny fraction of your story in your message - fascinating spell, by the way, never seen anything like it - and that the rest of the tale is even more interesting. Tell me more?" 

Deep breath. 

"There are other worlds. I don't know how much you've studied the stars, but they're suns, like yours, and some of them have worlds around them, like yours does. And I have a general sense of how much you've studied the planes but there are other planes your world hasn't discovered, even farther away, and some of them have worlds in them too. I'm from another world. It's called Golarion. We have magic, but it works differently. We don't have Gifts. The best teacher I had explained it to me as - the underlying landscape of mage-energies has a lot of structure, and what we do is we found all these stable points in the structure and we call those spells. One of the simplest ones gives us the ability to see mage-energies, and then from there we can prepare spells - we have to set up this elaborate scaffold to be able to manipulate mage-energies at all, and then we pin the spell into place on the scaffold, and can cast it later when we need it. It is mostly worse than being mage-gifted but anyone can do it. I can show you, if you'd like.

Mostly our way is worse than yours. But there are a couple areas where it affords more flexibility. The underlying landscape of mage-energies has structure, like I said, and that means it can do information you don't have. I'm using a translation spell, right now. We can fly, we can turn into animals, our illusions require substantial expertise but not as much as your illusions do, there is a relatively simple illusion spell that makes it look like duplicates of you are running off in three directions and you don't have to do the detail-work..."

Urtho is staring at her intently; every few seconds he frantically scrawls something down on a pad of paper he has next to him. His tea is completely forgotten.

"May I see one of these spells cast?" he says when she stops speaking. 

Ma'ar is huddled in his armchair, trying to be unobtrusive. He's not scared-scared but he is overwhelmed, and Urtho is noticeably incredibly powerful, he feels different, and there are a hundred sources of magic in his room. It's - a lot.