Half a candlemark later, having spent literally all of her gold and promised an open-ended favor to the merchant who agreed to have his guard Gate her to the border of Tantara, Shayeen is riding up to a nearly-abandoned border posting.

She is learning from an absurdly young lieutenant that Tantara is at war. That the war is not going well. He is, uh, probably not authorized to tell her any more than that and is not at all sure he should send a random foreign woman (a random foreign child, really) to Urtho's Tower just because she has a magic sword. 

Need can speak into Shayeen's mind and coach her, and has a lot more practice at being persuasive. 

And so another ten minutes after that, Shayeen is awaiting approval to enter Urtho's Tower. 

Urgent message for Iomedae, from one of Urtho's Mindspeakers: 

There's a young foreign girl outside the Tower. She's a mage, and claims to be from the far southern river-kingdoms, which are literally over a thousand miles away. She has a magic sword. The girl does not speak a word of Tantaran, but her sword is apparently a person and has Mindspeech. 

According to her, uh, sword, she was previously on her way - with the advice of said sword - to find a temple to Bestet and train there, so she could go try to rescue the river-kingdoms from war. But now they're here, looking for a woman in need, because apparently the bloody magic talking sword has some kind of woman-in-need pathfinding spell. Or something. 

Does Iomedae by any chance know what's going on here, or have any explanation for it??? If she doesn't then they're - actually pretty alarmed. 

- well, probably it's a divine intervention by Bestet to answer the question Iomedae posed her a little while ago. There's a lot of other things it could be, though she's going to discard 'a coincidence' and she leans pretty strongly against 'the assassination attempt'.

She'd like to meet with them both, if that's possible.

Wow. Okay. They had no idea Iomedae had requested a divine intervention from Bestet and, uh, might have liked to know that. Though honestly even if Iomedae had said so, they wouldn't have expected one to ACTUALLY SHOW UP in the form of a foreign teenager with an intelligent sword. 

They'll allow the girl into Urtho's Tower to meet with her. They're nervous about it but it sounds like Iomedae does have an explanation for this and doesn't think it's an assassination attempt. (They'll have the kid searched, first, but she came in on horseback with approximately no baggage and they don't actually see a way she could be concealing Urtho's weapon on her person.) 

Iomedae requested divine intervention both of Bestet and the nameless god, and of the shamans of the Star-Eyed Goddess, the gods clearly have interests here and negotiating seems like a high priority. She's grateful for their help and sorry for worrying them, and will go meet the girl and the sword at once.

The foreign girl, once ushered into a room, is waiting impatiently for Iomedae! She looks about thirteen or fourteen, and rather underfed, and is clearly of a different ethnicity than anyone Iomedae has encountered so far in Tantara or Predain. She's disheveled and sweaty and wearing travel-worn riding levers covered in road-dust, and definitely smells like she hasn't bathed in several weeks. She is, in fact, carrying a very magical sword. She is trying very hard to look brave and tough and not as overwhelmed as she feels. 

"Shayeen," she says, pointing at herself. It's getting very frustrating being in places where she doesn't speak the language. 

Her sword is chattier! 

:- Yes, it's definitely you. ...Not that you really look like someone who'd need my help, but. We need to head north. I hope you have the faintest bloody idea why we need to do that. What's the problem?: 

They just WENT north! Why are they having to go north AGAIN?? How much more north can there possibly be????? 

(Previously, the fifty or so miles Shayeen had traveled on foot and horseback was the furthest she had ever been from home; before that, she had never been more than a mile from the king's keep.) 

:Understood. Are you coming with me? Is she coming with me? This is very dangerous, and I expect anyone who comes with me to die.:

:What sort of danger? I already died once, you know, not sure if I even can die again: Her Mindspeech shifts in register, to something deeper and more rote. :Woman's Need calls me; As Woman's Need made me; Her Need I must answer; As my maker bade me. ...I don't think you're to be my next bearer, for one thing I'm not done with this one and I rather resent the interruption, but your need must be great. I am a mage and a healer and a warrior, and can offer you those protections you cannot bring on your own. ...If we're leaving her behind, I want someone looking after her and keeping her out of trouble, is there someone you'd trust with it?: 

: - Marlana, the representative of Bastet's temple-order here, but I've already charged her with quite a lot. I don't know that Urtho's Tower is safe either, though if you came specifically with instructions for me to go north then quite plausibly that means the danger is indeed with me and everyone here should be fine.

The danger is that Urtho built a superweapon that causes a fireball fifty miles wide and someone has told me they intend to use it to kill me and I want to be fifty miles from anyone else they could hurt, and also I want to not cause a tsunami, and also I intend to dodge it. You may come with me, if you want to take that risk.:

A long pause. 

:- I think she'll be safe here. I trust the temple-order of Bestet to help her find her way. ...I didn't actually know how much further north I needed to go until we got here – or what's even there if you go north all the way, never saw a map that showed it. Reckon if we go far enough there's nothing much, so - makes sense, no one in fifty miles to get hurt: 

Another pause. 

:- And I'll come with you, if you'll have me. Just for this, mind you – you're clearly a warrior on your own merits and I wouldn't insult you by claiming you'd ever need my help in any other circumstance - but here, yes. And maybe we'll both die up there, but I've been wandering this world a thousand years helping women in need, I always figured I'd go out that way sooner or later: 

The mental sense of a sigh. :I'd better tell Shayeen. She's going to be upset, she hates being left out. Especially if it's because she's too young. Not sure if there's anything you could say to her, that would help -?: 

:It looks on a map like it's believed to be just very cold ocean, which will be genuinely annoying, I have no special protection against freezing right now.: Generally someone else would cast that, or she'd prepare it when she prepared new spells. :I've committed to staying there the first six hours of the day, the next few days, and taking my rest there if I rest at all. If you're a mindspeaker then you'll be able to check for underwater inhabitants, which I'd appreciate.:

:Help isn't something that people only need when they're weak, and all of your work has been helping me, as I understand it. I'd be honored to work alongside you.:

:Oh, if that's all you need I can give you a weather-barrier. And check for minds in range, too: 

And Need will explain to Shayeen that they need to part, briefly, because the woman they came here to help needs to save this kingdom. But in the meantime there's already someone here from the temple of Bestet, and so Shayeen can get started on her training, which she needs very badly. The mission Need will be on is dangerous and it won't even be the interesting kind of dangerous. 

Usually in the ballads, when a magic sword chooses you personally and promises to help you save your kingdom and people, they don't then haul you a thousand miles to another kingdom entirely and abandon you at a temple while they go help someone else! Why is this her life right now???

(Shayeen does not, in fact, actually want to go any further north, or be in danger from something she doesn't understand at all and can't fight and that has nothing to do with the River Kingdoms. She wants to go home. She is also never ever going to admit that particular feeling to anyone.) 

Need reaches for Iomedae again, with the purely mental equivalent of a fond yet exasperated eye-roll. 

:If there's anything you would say to her, I can relay it. I can't give her solemn advice anymore, we've spent too long having arguments on the road: 

:I apologize; I think it is my fault this added trip was asked of you,: she says to Shayeen. :I asked Bastet for help, and my guess is that she had very few avenues by which she could hope to provide it in time. Urtho's Tower is a good place to study, in peacetime, and we are going to try to make it peacetime. I have met Marlana only once, but my guess is that there's a great deal you can learn from her, and that you'll grow up to agree with her about more than you disagree with her about.: You want to be exceptionally careful about implying to a frightened child far from home either that there's no one they can rely on or that there's anyone they should trust absolutely. :If Need and I don't return, the people of Tantara will probably be able to give you an account of all that happened, and what a wise person would learn from it to make necessary wars go better than this one did. And if we do return, I'll bring her back to you as quickly as I reasonably can.:

All right. Shayeen can do this. She intends to be a future queen and so she can't be a frightened child, and she certainly isn't about to beg Need to stay even though she really wants to. 

She straightens, and nods, and does her best not to look terrified. And then, with great effort, unwinds her fingers from Need's hilt, and offers her to Iomedae. 

Iomedae takes her. And smiles at Shayeen in the way that makes people find it very very easy to be unafraid.

That is very weird but it does, in fact, help. 

And there's suddenly a new presence in Iomedae's mind, much closer and more intensely present than just Need's mindvoice. 

:Oh: 

The tone is awe. Or, maybe more accurately, the reaction of someone who hasn't experienced awe in the last thousand years and is not at all sure she approves of it and nonetheless cannot help herself. 

- then there's a sense of Need mentally shaking herself. :Later. You and I need to have a talk but we might as well do that in the desolate north. Er, do you have a plan for getting us there, because I can't do blind Gates and - I don't know what you are but you aren't a mage...: 

:I am not. I was planning to ask one of Urtho's people to Gate us. Us and a small boat and something Kiyamvir Ma'ar would be able to use for a Gate-target.: She will go request that those be made ready to go, though. 

Apparent to Need, though probably not as obvious as the fact that she has somewhere between thirty and sixty times as much life force as a normal person: she's not frightened at all, though she assesses it as reasonably likely that she'll die. She has quite a lot of magic tucked up against the holy symbol around her neck, ready to use, and other abilities that rely on some resource she's since exhausted. She is politely sharing as much situation-relevant information with Need as she can, but nearly everything else is behind very, very good Thoughtsensing shields. If you tried to compulsion this person even with those shields down it simply would not work.

Also she's ludicrously good at wielding swords. If they need to use Need to kill anything that will be the world's most trivial task. 

Fascinating. Iomedae...is not, actually, the sort of person whom Need would usually choose and bond to – though, indeed, in nearly any situation Need would be honored to fight beside her. Need was, in life, a master swordswoman with half a century of battlefield experience, and she carried those skills with her into - whatever she is now, because it's certainly not 'dead'. She can grant that skill to her bearer. 

Iomedae is much, much better than her. Need would almost be jealous, if that weren't obviously stupid and also below her dignity. And, while she isn't a mage, it looks like under normal circumstances she would have access to both magic and healing. Via...the power of her god? This is one of the things Need has many questions about. 

But the danger she is about to face isn't one they can hold off by wielding a sword. She has very little in the way of the simple utility magic that Velgarth mages use as a matter of course, including something as basic as a heat-spell. 

This is the first time in nearly a thousand years that Need will be walking, willingly, into a fight - if you can call it that - that she isn't at all sure she can win. 

It's almost refreshing.