Vanyel peers blearily at the message. 

...Oh, gods, that's so awkward. As if having the dream last night, when he was incredibly out of it on poppy-syrup, wasn't already mortifying enough! Leareth had clearly been trying to pump him for information on something - and had dropped hints about events 'west', but Vanyel had no idea what that was about, and also no idea how much Leareth already knew about Cam. He had mostly clammed up and kept changing the subject rather than play the verbal sparring game with Leareth when he was in no state to keep up. 

Given that he probably did a terrible job of acting like nothing was wrong, it's not surprising that Leareth noticed something seemed off, but it's still so embarrassing. (Vanyel is, in fact, pretty sure that Leareth has no interest in him coming to any harm. And is just...being a mother-hen? Humiliating.) 

He fumbles for a while before figuring out the phone keyboard and replying. With some typos.

[Tell him Im fine adn he shoulnd't worry]

...really?

Vanyel is WAY too out of it to keep track of certain facts with ramifications, such as: Cam not knowing about the conversations part of his Foresight dream, and thus has zero context to make sense of the fact that Leareth is probably genuinely worried for Vanyel's wellbeing.

He's remembering a particular conversation they had, once, in a chill quiet snowscape, when he was almost as groggy as last night just from sheer sleep deprivation. Leareth, speaking up as though he had read Vanyel's mind and emotions.

I know it can feel like there is nothing but ugliness, like there is nothing worth salvaging from a world that is so desperately broken. But there is, Herald Vanyel.

I look at the stars, and I remember that there are so many lights in the world, who are worth saving, and we cannot save all of them – from the very beginning, it was too late to save all of them – but we can still save some. It is never too late for that.

In a world of lights, you burn brighter than most. I cannot wish to see that extinguished.

There are tears in Vanyel's eyes now, which is really not helping with anything.

[its fine] he taps out to Cam, barely able to read what he's typing on the awkwardly small screen. [he doenst wantto kill me]

I really do not understand you people's approach to infosec! How about you rethink this when sober.

Whatever. He'll go back to sleep, then. 

And shortly after that, Keiran is ready for their meeting! 

"Hey Keiran! I'm going to screen share you what I can see from up here of the Valdemar/Karse border - I can get higher resolution, too, zoom in on things to make sure I'm not making a wall under somebody or damming a river or whatever. What do you folks want in the way of apertures for later trade, maintainability standards, etcetera?"

Keiran oohs and aahs appropriately about the aerial view, and adds notes to the maps she's been working with so far. Which, presumably, Cam can just conjure copies of, rather than screensharing and looking over her shoulder.

She's put quite a lot of thought into which materials will be maintainable later on without Cam's help - brick and mortar would be her default idea but she's curious to hear his options and whether any of them can be made the normal way with materials available in Valdemar. She's also thought about what to do with rivers. They'll probably want to run the Terilee through a tunnel or something? It's a major river and very close to a major road and Horn has been a focus of attack. Fortunately the direction of flow has Karse downstream, making it harder for Karsite spies or raiders to sneak in that way.

There's a lot of material to cover, for nearly two hundred miles of border, but Keiran is very organized and they can probably cover it in less than an hour. 

Brick and mortar is a solid choice for repairability concerns, though he will adapt the exact design a little to increase earthquake and weathering tolerance unless there's some magical reason not to. He can do an arch over the Terilee, and more minor rivers, and have gates that require cooperation on both sides of the wall to open at suitable road sites for once everyone's chilled out.

"Jaysen will be pleased about the gates," Keiran says cheerfully as they're wrapping up. "When Tran was talking up this plan to all of us, he was grumpy about how it'd affect trade. Given that the shortest trade route to Seejay from here goes through Karse. Anyway, thank you for your help on this. It's very much appreciated." 

"You're welcome. Anything last-minute before I start putting that up?"

"How likely are you to, er, squish people by accident? We've sent word out to pull our scouts back from the area where the wall is going, but the placement is still in Valdemaran territory - don't want it to look like we're nabbing their land by doing this - and it's possible not everyone got the word yet." 

"I'm going to build the wall from the bottom up, not drop it into place, and I'm going to do it a half-mile or so at a time, looking closely enough that I'd see anybody who's not heavily camouflaged. If someone is heavily camouflaged and doesn't move when a wall starts growing under them, they might wind up stuck on top of the wall, or fall off it, but I'm going to make it ten feet high to start and then go back and add more a bit faster, so it shouldn't kill anybody even under those unlikely conditions."

"- Oh, good, that seems unlikely to cause issues - unless someone's being very stupid about situational awareness, and I'd at least like to think we train that out of the Guard recruits. Shouldn't be any civilians left in that region."

She smiles at him. "I think that's all, then. Let us know if any problems come up with it? I think probably the Karsites will be too, er, off-balance to try to stop you, but depending on how long it takes, I don't know." 

"I don't think they have orbital capabilities," he says dryly. "I should be done in a candlemark unless something weird happens, which, in two hundred miles, isn't that unlikely, so budget two?"

"Will do! Er, should I try calling you again if we haven't heard anything by then?" 

"You can but the most likely way I'd fail to check in would be if there were some pressing emergency so it's possible I won't answer promptly."

"Makes sense. Thanks again!" 

The Heralds have arranged for some of their Farseers to watch Cam's progress, just in case it does look like the Karsites are trying something - what, Keiran has no idea - and they can warn Cam. She knows he has cameras but they can't detect magic. 

Cam builds the wall. He has to go pretty slow to avoid anybody who might be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and indulges in some light pixel art with the bricks here and there.

The Valdemarans are, in fact, mostly out of the way; a few unwary scout parties are startled and alarmed when the wall starts appearing from nowhere near them, but they don't interfere. 

On the Karsite side, there are a few signs of visible troop movements, including by Gate, but no active resistance yet. 

(Unbeknownst to Cam, several low-level agents who work for Leareth are in range to observe or hear about the miraculously appearing wall.) 

It takes a candlemark for word to reach Leareth himself, which is remarkably fast for a spy-report compared to at any other time in the past decade, but right now feels too slow. 

Leareth receives the news via Mindspeech. He paces. He has a lot to think about. The impossible wall suddenly sealing off the Karsite border - presumably requested by Valdemar, and isn't that ironic, given Vkandis' intervention with Iftel - is only the newest item on a growing stack. 

He's been tracking the location of the cursed dagger ever since he received word from his agent in Highjorune. It's very far away; impossibly far away, he would be tempted to say, but the limits of possibility have clearly changed. It's out of range of all but the lowest-power, least precise version of the tracking spell - one he had to modify on the spot, because he's never needed a spell to track something that is no longer even on the planet. 

Leareth isn't dwelling on it much, it's not productive, but. He's scared. A horrifyingly powerful alien being has suddenly appeared from nowhere and started taking all sorts of actions on Velgarth. Benevolent actions, so far - and it's actually a promising sign that, based on his sketchy inferences of what happened in Haven, Vkandis tried to get rid of this new Power - but nonetheless. Leareth doesn't understand what they want, and he doesn't like it. 

He waits for further contact. 

When the wall is up, Cam goes back over it and makes it taller. It is covered with Fair Isle patterns and various abstracts and copies of attractive mosaics and also the source code for Doom.

With that done, he sends Van('s Healers) a courier drone with some of the good painkillers in case that will help him think more clearly, with carefully translated dosing instructions.

Aww, that's a great idea! They've been throwing a lot of Healing at Vanyel and can hopefully start to cut down his painkillers soon, but Shavri was reluctant to do that too soon. She knows Van - and knows that he'll try to push through way more pain than he should, and if they let him he'll start working again far before he's ready. 

Leareth now has several dozen mages scrying the wall in progress. Leareth is trying to figure out what the various decorations signify. 

The Doom source code is especially baffling. If Cam tries to conjure Leareth's personal notes again, he's going to find many, many pages worth of scratch notes as Leareth tries to make any sense of what the source code means or is meant to do. 

Cam thinks that is hilarious.

When he's all done he calls Keiran.