If she's speaking to him telepathically she probably can read his mind, his sense was that those abilities went together in the local magic. He tries to think very loudly and clearly that he wants to know where they are. 

:....Oh, you poor thing: The woman's eyes are suddenly wider, though. :You're in Urtho's Tower: 

"Mmm." He doesn't know if that's good or bad news, and he's out of the strength to do anything about it either way. He goes back to drifting. 

Carissa, hidden in the forest, waits for anything to happen. Nothing happens. She considers this very rude of it even though she spent the last hour desperately trying to ensure nothing would happen.

In the morning she'll Sending the ship and learn whether Mhalir is dead or a captive and whether there are search parties. Until then all she can do is be very hard to find and eventually use her bonded gem to cast Rope Trick even though she didn't prepare it, and then hide in it to sleep.

It takes a long time to fall asleep, but it's still dark as the dead of night when she wakes. 

She Sendings the first person she can remember on the ship. "Mhalir and shuttle downed by magic. I escaped without Mhalir. Is their location known? Are there instructions?"

She gets a frantic and very relieved reply immediately. "Location unknown, local Gate nearby, taken alive and evacuated? Predain surveillance showing major troop movements, war escalating, discussing options for contacting Ma'ar." 

Alive. She takes a deep breath and rubs her eyes and takes another deep breath.

She has two more Sendings. "Evacuated where, to Tantara? Should be hyperspace jump signature at destination. I can contact Ma'ar, probably should if Urtho imprisoned, shouldn't if Predain did."

"Observed only one. Predain moved troops there shortly later, investigated scene, could indicate Urtho responsible, neither site's surveillance informative. Where are you - should rendezvous?" 

Last Sending of the day. But - she shouldn't contact Ma'ar, if he might be the one who did this she doesn't want him to be able to find her...

"Travelled east from the site maybe six miles. Should expect same problem as last time if you send a shuttle. Could ride farther from Tantara?"

A brief pause. 

"Fifty miles due northeast, noon rendezvous, by crescent shaped lake. Can you receive radio communications? Will also watch for other indications you can send." 

She can't answer that. 

She makes a phantom steed and  - actually there's no point in even starting until the sun is up. She's not quite sure yet what direction it's going to rise in; Rope Tricks are disorienting this way.

She spends the time until the sunrise pacing, and worrying about Mhalir. What if they don't realize he's a person - no, they have mindreaders. They won't care about him but - that's fine, they have plenty of strategic reason to keep him alive.

The war escalating. She wishes she could convince them to stop. She doesn't actually have a convincing argument, just an analogy to another world where someone pulled an asteroid out of deep space and set it hurtling towards their world, thinking wrongly they'd survive the destruction they were causing...and another story that, Mhalir is probably right, ended before it reached its true destructive potential conclusion. It is easy to see how the Andalites or the Yeerks could've been wiped out. Harder to imagine how that could've happened to both of them, but - maybe. 

When the sun has done enough starting to rise that she can figure out where east is she rides northeast, as fast as she can push her ghostly horse who has the advantage of not really needing to touch the ground.

The forest continues to be annoying to ride through but she can reach the specified lake by noon. It's fairly big. There's a cove with a sandy beach at one corner of the crescent, steep rocky banks at the other. 

She hides and waits for noon. It seems terribly likely that whoever detected the shuttles will be able to do it again, and she doesn't even have a Dimension Door today. But - she doesn't see what other options she has.

She doesn't see the shuttle, which of course is cloaked. 

A little after noon, though, someone calls out to her from the nearby trees in a low voice. "Carissa? It's Amrash." One of Mhalir's staff; the voice matches, and so does the face, when he steps out cautiously. There's a new person with him, a swarthy-skinned man in clothes that are obviously from this world and also obviously foreign to Predain and Tantara.

Both of them are holding Dracon beams, and look relieved to see her and also wary. 

Well, they were recruiting. 

She spends a minute trying to think of - no, she shouldn't've come here at all if she wasn't trying to get back to Mhalir's people and this is precisely what to expect given that she is. Probably they're going to want to infest her to make sure this isn't a trap for them. And they ought to hurry, in case the shuttle's descent here was detected...

She walks towards them, her hands raised, not that that means much since she's a wizard.

The new man nods and murmurs something in Amrash's ear. Amrash relaxes fractionally. 

"Carissa," he says, "we would like to stun you and bring you back to the ship that way. You - must understand, we have to be careful..." 

"Yeah." It is obviously the order Mhalir would've given, if he was here. "You'll need it set to five."

He nods - it's already set to five - and he stuns her. 

When she wakes up, she can't move. This is because there's a different Yeerk in her head. 

<Carissa, this is Onnet. Just having a look around.> Pause, then a wash of relief and a hint of fondness. <We're very very glad to have you back safe. We're on the ship now.>

She finds it vaguely upsetting to have it be anyone other than Mhalir, in a way that mostly manifests inexplicably as 'but what if they think I suck'. She tries to not have this opinion, which is a stupid one. Obviously they would need to do this; Mhalir would've ordered it, if he were here and himself unable to for some reason. 

<It's good to be back> she says. <What's the situation.>

<No news on Mhalir. We have not risked opening communications with either side. We have managed substantial recruiting on the eastern coast - sixteen hosts in total, ten mages, four Healers, two with other different Gifts we were not previously aware of. Five of the sixteen also have the Detect Thoughts and telepathy Gift. All of them are...mostly voluntary. We were in a hurry.> 

A brief hesitation. 

<Both the Predain and Tantaran armies have substantial movements happening; Predain seems to be gearing up for a battle over the Gate-terminus to the north of Urtho's Tower, which Tantara still holds. If Predain can take the Gate, even if they can't, Tantara's forces on that side will lose their supply lines, and Predain would be in a good position to advance on the Tower itself. It's unclear they have the strength to win the battle, though, Tantara is moving a lot of gryphons>> 

And we probably don't want that to happen at all, because going off the story thing things can get much much worse -

She's so scared. 

How long does Mhalir have. She should know this but she has been really busy lately.

<About thirty-six hours.> 

I don't think we can get him out of Urtho's Tower, if that's where they took him. If it's Ma'ar that has him - maybe. Ma'ar'll be moving fast, right now, there might be an opening - and if we've got local mages then I can ask them all my questions about magic system interactions, figure out whether there's anything -

- or you can do that, I guess -

<Oh, no, I have seen plenty and will go back to my usual host in a moment, it is just faster to catch you up and answer your questions this way.> 

Okay. I want to compare magic systems and figure out whether there's anything we can do to stop the stupid war from getting worse or to rescue Mhalir.

<That makes sense. With Mhalir captured, usually the command would fall to me, but - I will defer to you on matters related to magic and the tactics it allows. You are the expert on that.> A brief pause. <And on Mhalir, too, you understand how he makes plans better than any of us do.>