There are guest suites in the palace and the Elves can with only a little bit of reluctance be persuaded to let their alien guests go for the night.

The guest suites have high ceilings and attached bathrooms and grand pianos and balconies. There is no system to call the palace staff because all the locals have telepathy but they can have someone outside the door if they need anything.

Ma'ar is delighted by the piano, and needs some Mindspeech prodding from Leareth in order to, instead, leave it for later and go to bed. 

Despite the multiple protective artifacts he's wearing, he puts some discreet magical wards on the room before going to sleep. 

Leareth places considerably more wards, though he's much faster at it so it actually takes him less time. 

He doesn't fall asleep immediately; he lies in the dark for a few minutes, tracing out the various pieces of this new, tangled puzzle, and doesn't come to any conclusions, and eventually sleeps. 

On the ship, Carissa sleeps and Mhalir grabs the opportunity to soak in the Yeerk pool, he's not quite due yet but he would prefer to have the flexibility.

And once they've both rested, they can peruse the books they photographed from the palace library? 

The books mostly stick with the confusing story they got from the Elves. Melkor defied the will of the creator god, Eru, and decided to do this by kidnapping Elves and forcing them to bear tortured orc children. Orcs were designed by Melkor to grow up quickly and have lots of children, even when they didn't intend them, so they could take over the planet. He forced all the orcs to swear him obedience and he interfered with their souls to make it easier to deceive them.

Then the Valar fought Melkor and took some Elves away and now Elves and orcs live in peace, but separately, the wounds of the past not quite mended. 

Do any of the books go into more detail on what the Valar are, what powers they have, what their goals are...? 

There are reportedly fourteen of them!  They are servants of the Creator, with vague nonspecific domains such as 'dancing' and the goal mostly of making the world nice, for a definition where Endorë failed so they left and tried again in Valinor. They mostly live in Valinor and don't do things here and the Elves here don't know much about them. 

Elves go to Valinor when they die. 

So it is an afterlife!

<- Maybe. It - still feels confusing. I think we ought try to go there next, to learn more - unfortunately I am still not clear on where it is. I suppose we can talk to the diplomat first.> 

He checks in with his staff before that. Still no sign of their mysterious pursuers, which is hopeful. 

They did jump a long way; maybe they lost them. 

Carissa goes to her appointment with the diplomat. He has the same eerie ageless face as the rest of them, and elaborately braided hair, and according to Detect Thoughts accepts her explanation about her various art projects without seriously considering that they might be false, though he does wonder privately if some terrible past experience drove her to that. 

        "A lot of people have a hard time interacting with orcs because of the - tragedy, right. They were supposed to be us. if they had not been harmed so grievously and deliberately they would be our neighbors. But - this is the world as the Creator saw fit to make it for now, apparently, and they're not like us, and they're not just a tragedy. They have their own interests and passions, and I do think there's much to be learned from them. And their love for their children is very inspiring; I think it has taught me to appreciate my own in new ways."

"Is it true," she says, "that Melkor - made orcs by torturing Elves."

      "Yes. Our body knows the form it ought to take, and only constant pain holds it back from taking that form. Orcs are in pain all the time."

"Do they mind?"

       "They don't. I admit it seems very strange to me but they don't seem to consider it very concerning at all."

It doesn't seem very strange to Carissa at all. "What did Melkor want?"

      "If only we knew. I think he was just - evil, because he's evil. He wanted to hurt and enslave people."

"The orcs seem ...harder to enslave than Elves, really."

      "What do you mean by that?"

"They're - more suspicious? More - defiant, more inclined to act in their own interests and not the interests of strangers..."

      "I think that makes them easier to enslave. Half slaves already."

And now Mhalir is incredibly confused again, trying to figure out what definition of 'slavery' the diplomat is using. 

<...I do not really follow> he thinks to Carissa. <Can you ask him how the orcs, for their part, tend to feel about Elves - how many are hostile, how many are willing to correspond...> 

"How do orcs feel about Elves? Is it hard to find ones who'll talk to you?"

       "Well, you know, I think they understandably take it personally, that we mostly cannot bear to look at them, and I think our priorities seem strange to them. But there are lots of them, and they vary. I haven't had trouble finding ones who want to write. They - mostly don't want to be Elves, even though you'd think they obviously would. I think many of them think of Elves as - obsolete, and believe that Melkor's crimes really were improvements."

"How strange."

        "I don't mean to give you cause for alarm, or prejudice. They only know what they know, and they mostly don't think about people who live far away and are very different and speak other languages."

This doesn't seem too odd or surprising to Mhalir, actually. It's not like most Yeerks want to be Andalites, even though the Andalites would consider themselves obviously superior and they somewhat have a point. 

<Does he know what traits specifically they prefer about their own species? ...Also anything more he knows of what the orcs say about Melkor might be valuable.> 

"Do orcs think that they're prettier to their sensibilities than us? What do they like about being an orc?"

       "Well, they like the growing up quickly and having lots of children, they think it's very sad that Elves wait so long to have children, and that the children don't tend to grow up with siblings their same age. I think they believe that osanwë makes Elves too - conciliatory, group-oriented, lost in other worlds, and the damaged version Melkor gave them is more practical. They can tolerate horribly ugly conditions, obviously, and I think they consider that a significant advantage."

"And what do they say about Melkor, do they know that he tortured Elves to make them -"

      "That's a bit of a touchy issue. I think there's a lot of - they don't trust the Valar, right, and they only have the Valar's word and ours about most of the things the war was about, very few orcs from in Melkor's fortress Utumno survived."

Of course not. "Surely the Valar wouldn't lie," she says innocently. 

      He takes this completely at face value. "Of course not. But they don't understand incarnates very well, so they get confused about some things, and the orcs don't know they wouldn't lie - orcs lie sometimes, just to impress someone or save some money or get out of trouble -"

"So they believe that Melkor didn't do all those awful things and the Valar went to war with him wrongfully?"

      "Like I said, there's lots of variety. But some believe that, I think."

It holds together, more or less, Mhalir thinks. He's...not sure it's wrong, that their universal telepathy is a contributing factor to the Elves'...innocence, that's not quite the right word but something in that direction. 

<Can you ask if he knows anything about travel between here and Valinor?> 

"It seems like maybe if there were more communication with Valinor it'd be easier to clear up misunderstandings. They could talk to their dead, and to ours..."

           "Well, their dead aren't in Valinor. I think Mandos hopes to figure something out for their dead eventually but they wouldn't fit with the project of Valinor at all. It still might help, but," shrug. "I would prioritize it below letting people talk to sundered family, if anyone were figuring out how to make communicating with Valinor easier."

"Why's it so hard?"

          "...well, because it's so unimaginably far away." He is confused and not quite suspicious but getting there, that she doesn't know this.

"Sorry, I know that, I mean - it seems like it'd be a priority for the Valar, to not have all these people believing they are the victims of a wrongful war. Surely gods can figure out something..."

       "Travel isn't any faster for them. They can communicate across the worlds instantaneously, but - imagine you did not trust them. Would you trust words that they relayed?"

"...but that's so frustrating!" Carissa says. "That they might believe something and - not be possible to convince -"

        Gentle laugh. "I know. I'm sorry. Hopefully Melkor's parole will mend things eventually."

"Oh, is that why Melkor was paroled?"

        "Who knows the will of the gods? But if I had to guess I suppose I'd guess so."

<...I am leaning toward 'another planet' after all> Mhalir thinks to her. <In a different star system. If it were another plane, well, the gods ought either be able to hop across promptly or not at all. ...Perhaps they can communicate via hyperspace, but not travel, and they need to do that the slow ordinary way? I - am still rather confused by this but that seems the most likely interpretation.> 

He is, again, impressed by Carissa's ability to mostly dodge around and defuse suspicion while asking the questions they need to. This might be most of what they can learn, here? He's not sure, maybe she has ideas for more queries. 

"Does the King worry about relations with orcs in the future, once Melkor's back?"

"Well, I think it will take a long time for Melkor to satisfy everyone that he's changed."

- nod. "I think that's most of what I was curious about. Thank you."

"I enjoyed speaking to you. If you remain interested in this, you should let me know - there's lots to be done."

And it's a hard job to hire for, because even this man's very mild level of political acumen and caution about what he says is very very unusual in his society. It's sort of encouraging that it's not impossible, though. "Thank you."

And they can leave. 

<I like him> Mhalir thinks as they head out. <What did you think of it?>

I like him too. He seems - competent to think about things, if the orcs are gearing up for war I'd expect him to notice....maybe it's just that their farmers are all shaped very conciliatory and their nobles are much closer to normal, that'd be a perfectly reasonable way to define people if -

She has some kind of ideological objection she's having a hard time articulating, it feels that it would've been an injustice to her to make her like the Elves they met in the city and at the debate and on the road just because they didn't need that many people who were capable of suspicion, but really it's hard to say what the injustice would've been, assuming the leadership was competent, and you objectively don't need ideological creativity from your magic item makers and might reasonably prefer to design them with no curiosity at all for anything but magic - 

- sounds like the orcs don't get an afterlife, because they're not allowed in Valinor...

Mhalir also has some sort of hard-to-name discomfort about the Elves being the way they are. Though...he's not sure the difference between the diplomat they met, and the farmers, is necessarily about how they were made? Humans on Earth weren't made at all, and they vary a lot on traits like credulity and suspicion and then self-select into particular jobs based on it, or learn to have more of the skills they need with time and experience, he feels like this could perfectly well explain the differences they've seen. 

<...I noticed that. About the orcs. It is...upsetting... Just because they 'would not fit with the project of Valinor', whatever that even means...>