Her roommate, a pretty young woman in a white dress with long trailing sleeves, smiles graciously right back.

"Good evening. I am Jacinthe Desrosiers. Who might you be?"

"My name is Ilsa. It's a pleasure to meet you. I hope you won't insist that we stand on ceremony; I was looking forward to a more relaxed atmosphere away from home."

"Oh, I apologize if my speech patterns are unduly formal. I don't mean to construe it as an obligation on your part."

"Think nothing of it." She looks around the room. "I see the accomodations are as lovely as advertised."

"I suspect that producing such accommodations is trivial, given their resources."

"Yes, I imagine so."

She gravitates to the side of the room with less ornate furnishings, gazes thoughtfully at the desk, pulls out the comfortably upholstered wooden chair, and sits.

"It's nice to be somewhere that isn't at war. Less... urgent. What's your world like?"

"Dreadfully dull, I'm afraid. I'm the crown princess, but I've little to do until my father dies but listen to my tutors and attend to petty court intrigues." 

"Oh, I see. I'm sorry to hear that. Hopefully you will find this place to be an improvement on that front. A happy medium between too interesting and not interesting enough."

"One merely hopes it does not manage to be simultaneously too interesting and not interesting enough."

She laughs softly. "Yes, I get quite enough of that at home."

"Don't we all."

"It's part of what I came here for—hoping I would find a solution to the problems I'm facing in my own world. If I'm lucky, maybe it'll even work."

"I wish you luck in resolving your war. Those are always a nasty business."

"Yes, very much so," she agrees. "Thank you."

"If you don't mind my asking, what is the war about?"

"The short answer? Expansionist neighbours. The long answer will require some history, but I don't mind explaining, if you have the time to listen."

"I'm all ears."

"Since time immemorial, the continent has been divided into three regions: D'Hara in the east, the Wilds in the west, and the Midlands between. The Midlands are a place of many countries and many peoples. D'Hara is a single unified empire, and always eager to expand its borders. So they'd scuffle with us and take some of our territory and we'd push them back and so it would go, on and on for centuries. And then, not too long before I was born, the most brilliant wizard in history decided he'd had enough of that. He created an impassable magical barrier separating the Midlands from D'Hara." She pauses briefly. "Last year, it came down, and they were immediately at it again."

"That sounds like a problem much more difficult to solve without mind control."

"Very much so! And the current ruler of D'Hara has a grudge against the brilliant wizard for killing his father, but for unrelated reasons the brilliant wizard vanished while the boundary was still up, so I suspect that in the absence of the man he's actually mad at he is taking it out on the Midlands as a whole."

"Oh, undirected flailing, that's ever so productive."

"Darken Rahl is many things, but emotionally mature is not one of them. Unfortunately for the Midlands, he is both magically and militarily powerful."

"Well. I'm sure you'll be able to take away his toys before very long."

"That is indeed the hope."