"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.

She answers right away. “Cam! That was incredible! I - wow - we knew what you could do but it hadn’t really sunk in. Just. It’s a lot.” She’s slightly babbling, and catches herself, taking a deep breath. “Sorry.”

"No problem! I didn't see anybody have a great fall, so I think it went off without a hitch, does that accord with your observations?"

“Think so! We didn’t notice any resistance from the Karsite forces.” She giggles. “Though they sure looked confused.”

"I just bet they did. How's everything else going down there?"

“Going fine, I think! Van’s awake, the Healers want to keep him at least another two days but mostly that’s just the only way to keep him from working when he shouldn’t. Situation in Highjorune seems under control. Karis hasn’t tried to escape and I think we’re hoping to question her in a bit.”

"Uh-huh. Um, what's the state of the art on questioning holy assassins?"

"...Um, Truth Spell? We may start with first stage if she's willing to talk - it's not like we don't know exactly what we're asking about - but my guess is that we'll all feel more comfortable with second stage." 

"...yeah, okay. Is there protocol restricting questioners to the topic at hand while that's in play?"

"Huh? I mean, we're not going to ask her random irrelevant questions, that's a waste of time? If something might or might not be relevant I guess we'd lean toward asking." 

"I'm not like super worried about it in this case, it just came to mind as a plausible abuse of a truth spell. Maybe you could ask definitely pertinent things second-stage and stick to first-stage for anything of more dubious relevance."

"I really don't think we'd–" She stops for a moment. "All right. Hmm. I was about to say, none of us are going to abuse a Truth Spell, we're Heralds. But...well, we're also human, and Tran in particular is pretty shaken up. He's - very close to Vanyel. Randi too but we're not risking him in the same room as her anyway. I might pull Tran off this as well, or at least have a talk with him before about it." 

"You are also human! It's understandable to have emotions riding high and that is what protocol is for."

"Does your world have - well, I suppose you wouldn't for this, you don't have magic, but - do you have protocols for interrogation in general? Sounds like something Randi'd be interested in looking at." 

"Yeah, there are those, maybe I can get Kilchas to help smooth over the rough edges of my machine translation and get you a version in Valdemaran."

"Neat! Thanks. I think that's everything on our end. Anything new from your side?" 

"Nope, I'm just doing biology research when I'm not building walls. Kilchas hasn't bothered me for food yet and I should go remind him that humans need that sort of thing soon."