I haven't tried preparing spells. I...assumed there were precautions to prohibit it, she says to Melody.

:- Huh. I'm not sure? I - our mages don't have the same distinction between preparing and using spells? If you could - try to start preparing it - then if it doesn't work at least I'll know what to fiddle with to fix that...?: 

That would require summoning my spellbook, and I'd want some assurance that you won't seize or destroy it.

:I - why would we want to do that? I think the Heralds are still hoping you’ll come around on demonstrating your kind of magic for them. Er, I can ask someone to promise that or something but it doesn’t seem like you’ve been finding our assurances very believable so far:

Do you expect that she's telling the truth, she asks the Tayledras. Maybe they'll lie since the Goddess isn't Lawful anyway but - if that's what's going to happen, it might as well happen as soon as possible.

Moondance blinks at her. 

:- I think so? And - I do not think we should want to destroy your ability to use magic! That would be very horrible to do!:

- fine. Carissa nods to him and summons her spellbook to her hand. 

And starts preparing all her spells, they didn't say she could only prepare the one.

That seems - fine, probably? Melody will keep an eye on her surface thoughts, just in case, even though she really  hates doing this. 

She's considering whether there's a way to avoid handing over Leareth-commanding permanently, as it removes a major reason to ever let her leave her dark isolated bed. She can't think of a very good one. She could do the delegation out loud and then tell Leareth over Thoughtsensing that it expired in an hour, if she could get him to Thoughtsense her, and then it'd stop working and they'd need her, but they're presumably (hopefully?) going to be way more thorough in their interrogation of Leareth than of her, and if it comes up, there goes ever leaving her dark isolated bed. 

She could tell Leareth he can do magic and try to dispel the local compulsion at the same time and hope they can fight their way out, but she expects that to fail - he's in pretty bad shape, she hasn't tested whether her magic can dispel this kind of compulsion, there are a bunch of other people in the area -

- probably the smartest thing to do is exactly what she was told, and then once returned to her dark isolated bed she can check whether dispelling magic works on the horrible local compulsion. If she is annoying and keeps glaring at them, they observably won't send anyone in to check on her for very long stretches of time.

(She glares at Vanyel in between tricky parts of spell preparation.)

She wants Invisibility, Detect Thoughts, Alter Self, Rope Trick, Fly, Tongues, Minor Illusion, Nondetection - or maybe Phantom Steed - Vanish, Charm Person - maybe two of Charm Person - or maybe a Summon Monster instead - or she could take that at second -

Melody makes a mental note of all of the spells as Carissa thinks about them.

It...still seems probably fine? It also seems higher-priority to do, well, something to make staying in Valdemar seem more appealing to Carissa. Melody isn't sure what. 

...She wishes she felt more sure that Carissa's complaints about 'Good' being insane were even unreasonable. 

Vanyel isn't reading Carissa's mind, but he turns his mage-sight on the spell preparation and watches it with amazement. 

...All right, fine, he probably deserves that. 

He sits down by Leareth's bedside, on the off chance that this is comforting. 

It's not very comforting but it's arguably better than being alone with the Tayledras, and Leareth manages to get himself calmed down enough to string together a thought, which is 'wondering where he is.' He isn't allowed to open his eyes so he can't even tell what kind of room he's in. 

:The wizard is preparing the language spell so she can give you permission to move and talk: Vanyel explains to Leareth, on the assumption that having any idea what's going on might also be some amount reassuring. 

Well, it's not like he's going to be able to move very far. 

He hopes it won't take too long; he's incredibly thirsty. 

It takes an hour. It'd be faster if she was just preparing Tongues and not other spells, but she's preparing all of them, which takes an hour.

She does cast Tongues as soon as she's done. "I delegate giving you instructions to the Tayledras and any other servants of the Star-Eyed Goddess," she says. Presumably Leareth will be upset about this but they're going to interrogate him soon; she shouldn't indicate wanting to escape with him until they're ready to actually leave. (There is the chance his people will rescue him and of course have zero reason to rescue her, but she can't think of a way around that).

Leareth lies there unable to do anything and feeling spectacularly awful. Eventually he does run out of panic, and settles into a state of just feeling helpless and exhausted. 

...Carissa's instructions startle him, and - no, he does not like this concept at all. Also she hasn't in fact given him any instructions so he still can't move. 

"You may open your eyes and speak," Moondance tries yet again. "You can move as long as you stay in the bed - is that specific enough?" he adds to Carissa. 

It seems like Leareth can open his eyes. He closes them again a second later; his head hurts a lot. He doesn't try to talk. He is not even slightly tempted to try moving. 

"Get some water into him and then you can interrogate the poor man," Gemma says, a bit snappishly. It's been a long day. 

Carissa thinks those instructions should be specific enough. She also thinks (though no one asked her) that probably they should aim for an amount of torture that still leaves him capable of communication? She's aware that's an annoyingly moving target in most cases but, you know, less deprivation of food and water, more broken fingers? 

Melody, as the one currently reading Carissa's thoughts, manages not to make an audible noise.

...Also, on reflection, someone should really have asked explicitly if Carissa's people had tortured Leareth, that could be - important to know... It's also so awkward and she needs a few seconds to steel herself. 

"Is there any way to let him use Thoughtsensing on just one person?" she asks, which she's very aware is stalling. "I'm not sure how long your translation spell lasts but it would be good if we could have you trade off with Starwind or Moondance later. You need less sleep, right?" 

Also Melody suspects Leareth is a lot less terrified of his previous captor than his current captors. 

- oh, that's promising. 

"We could tell him he can only Thoughtsense me and that'll work on volitional Thoughtsensing but won't do anything about the instinctive kind. I usually need two hours of sleep and can need none for a couple weeks in emergencies." They should take her ring and give it to Vanyel but they haven't yet and it won't work for him at first so she can claim it's coded only to her.

- great, now she's going to have to spy on both of them. 

"Right. I - fortunately right now we can tell if he is or not - I'm assuming at some point he'll start shielding again, that's almost always instinctive..." 

Which means that Randi is going to want them to interrogate him immediately, before he's more lucid and able to shield. Melody is pretty unhappy about this but that's nothing new. 

She switches to private Mindspeech. :Did you or your people in fact torture him. ...Aside from dumping him in the Void, it seems like that was somehow an accident?: