Urtho's mages are ready to Gate Iomedae and a small river-barge as far north as they possibly can. It's going to be a blind Gate, so they aren't exactly sure where she's going to land, and once through it, she should confirm that she's not in sight of land. 

Ma'ar should be able to Gate to her if she's wearing one of Urtho's protective talismans; she should be the only person north of Predain with one, so it would be a unique target. They do also have portable permanent Gate-thresholds for battlefield use, but only, like, three of them, and Ma'ar is not keyed to the Tantaran Gate-network and almost certainly shouldn't be. 

She can do that. She's wearing a bunch of Urtho's protective talismans. And Need will check for any minds in reach of Thoughtsensing, which has fairly impressive range. Though she's guessing from the fact Bastet told her to go north that it's the right place to be, which means not inhabited.

Then Iomedae and Need can get onto a river-barge. It's tiny, because they can't afford a Gate-threshold that would fit anything bigger, but with a roofed gazebo-type structue on top that might keep out some of the elements; it's also currently looking stranded and undignified in the middle of one of the stone plazas outside Urtho's Tower. There's some cold-weather gear for her to borrow. 

Four Adepts will work in concert to build an unscaffolded horizontal Gate-threshold under them, and direct it as far north as they can reach, which should hopefully be another thousand miles. They're going to try to aim for very close to the surface of the water, but blind Gates are less accurate - mostly on the north-south and east-west bearing, it's rarer to accidentally try to Gate high in the air or deep underground, but it's harder over running water and it seems worse to overshoot in the underwater direction. There might be a bit of a fall. Fortunately Iomedae is sturdy. 

- there is indeed a fall of about fifteen feet, and they're smashing down onto a mix of dark water, and gray icepack and slush. The sky is overcast, the exact same shade as the ice all around them. The horizon in all directions is flat and featureless grey, save for the occasional humps of larger icebergs. 

It's incredibly cold, for about three seconds before Need taps some of Iomedae's spectacular life-force and casts a heat-spell, pending getting a proper weather-barrier up. 

:All right. Er, who is this Kiyamvir Ma'ar and why exactly are we telling him to Gate here?: 

:Commander of Predain's forces. I am worried that the cultists will target him in order to break the ceasefire. I don't know why they'd want that, but if they don't like what I've done since I arrived here and it's mostly negotiate the peace, one obvious guess is that they don't like the peace. If I were them I'd try simultaneously to take me out and restart the fighting. So I want to give him my ring of evasion. It might be really helpful for surviving the superweapon, but I'm not actually sure, and I do think it'll ensure he survives anything short of the superweapon. Urtho thought it was a good idea, presuming he's not behind this whole thing, and - I'm willing to bet he isn't. By all accounts he's not one who works with the gods -- an unsurprising extension of his general inability to understand the incentives and motivations of actors he can't mindread.: It's a fairly vicious insult, taken in one way, but she doesn't think of it that way. Ma'ar is an important quantity here so she's spent a lot of thought sizing him up, and now she can predict him better. :Urtho thought he'd take being offered the ring very well, and he's flatly more important to a successful peace here than I am. I don't think there's anyone else on the Predain side who will agree to pre-war borders; they're winning and Tantara has much better land.:

A burst of dry mental laughter. :I see. That kind of man. Well, if he commanded Predain's forces into a war they were winning, he can't be completely useless. I'd be curious to meet him: 

Pause, while Need finishes the weather-barrier, and then a solid mage-barrier to keep out the spray of freezing water that occasional gusts of wind are flinging into the barge. It's suddenly much cozier. They can have a glowing golden mage-light to make it cheerier, too, Need has a ridiculous surfeit of mage-energy to work with now that she's even shallowly tapping Iomedae's life-force. 

:- Want me to Mindspeak him? I probably can if he's anywhere on the continent, my range is based on how powerful my bearer is and you're - something else: 

: - sure. Urtho's people were going to communicate through the channels I've set up but I don't know how vulnerable those are to Vkandis's interference and the sooner the better, really.:

:Of course. ...I haven't met the man, could you think about him where I can see it? Can't target him just off a name and title, but I probably could if I'd met him face to face and formed an opinion of his character, even if I'd never read his mind: 

Iomedae can go through their face to face interaction in detail. He Gated in, apparently to order his men - who Iomedae was slaughtering, it's extremely difficult for her to not use lethal force here compared to at home - to surrender. She went after him, flying, using the Boots of Speed to hurry herself up, calling a litany of entanglement to pin him in place - he could probably have Gated out despite it, it wouldn't have done anything to prevent him falling through a hole in the ground beneath him, but she was hoping he wouldn't know that -

She told him to surrender, because she pretty much always tells people to surrender unless it's a situation where she somehow can't accept their surrender, and he responded, though by the time he did she was actually already in the middle of stabbing him.

When she gives her sword the Brilliant Energy enhancement it goes right through any matter that isn't living, including Mage Armor and similar force spells, and on top of that when she's actually trying to deal damage - and she was - she hits very hard. His defenses weren't adequate. She still had healing, then, so she healed him - it really expands her scope of action a lot to have healing, she dearly misses it - and then they talked. He was concerned for his soldiers. She approved of that. He was grateful that she'd talked Urtho into discussing terms, which was - surprising, she hadn't imagined that the winning side of this war particularly wanted a pre-war borders peace - but of course, sides are made up of many actors, and Ma'ar constrained by the acceptability of his preferred solution to Predain's other leadership -

- she didn't ask him for his word not to Gate out. She didn't think he'd keep it, and you can - cause people a lasting sort of injury, by putting whatever desire they have to be honorable and trustworthy that strongly at odds with their safety, by forcing them to learn about themselves that they are lying when they give their word -

- and eventually he alerted her of Sheiknam's movements and she decided to let him go at once so she could deal with that, which she should in fact have done sooner, here's her undetailed analysis of what heuristics would have outperformed her existing ones in this case, though she isn't necessarily going to switch to them off a single incident -

That's enough to go off. Need also has several new questions but it can wait. 

She reaches, out and out and out (Iomedae will be able to feel that Need is drawing on her own life-force, though it's a tiny trickle compared to the total she has to offer) – it's in fact going to take a while to pick his mind out of an entire country, if Iomedae can't give her any hints about where he is on a map, though his mind is a very distinctive one... 

She finds him eventually, where 'eventually' is about ten minutes, so almost certainly still faster than the letter that Urtho's people would have dispatched once she was safely out of their country. 

:Are you Kiyamvir Ma'ar?: 

Ma'ar is in a war-meeting with three different generals and it's really not a good time to nearly jump out of his skin. What is that. He doesn't recognize the mindvoice at all and is fairly sure it isn't human. 

:What: 

:I'm Need, but that doesn't matter right now, it's Iomedae who wants to talk to you: And probably the simplest thing to do here is just to pull Iomedae into the link, like she did before for Shayeen. 

:The Church of Vkandis is interfering, probably with intent to kill me, maybe with intent to cause trouble beyond that. I've written a letter, but I don't know how long it'll take to reach you. I have a protective magic item for you, if you are willing to Gate to me to get it. I don't know how much urgency there is.:

:- I heard about the missing weapon. I have not yet received such a letter: Which isn't suspicious yet, turnaround times can be up to thirty minutes, but he would expect his people to hurry with a message that important, so he should probably send out orders to check on their communication-channels and make sure there are no messengers dead in implausible accidents or something. :Are you going to tell me your location, or do I have your permission to anchor a search-spell on you or your possessions?:

Pause. He seems indecisive about something.

:...Also, if you think you are the main target, will it put you in further danger to give up your protections? It is - not impossible that your death here would be even less - recoverable for the peace efforts, than mine:

(Because he'll come back, not immediately, but maybe still in time. Though Ma'ar isn't sure that's all of it. He also just, well, feels invested in Iomedae not dying.) 

:I'm north of you. The superweapon has a very large radius; I wanted to be somewhere where an attack targeting me would have as little collateral damage as possible. You may Gate to me off Urtho's protective artifacts, if you'd like. My assessment is that in fact an attack on Predain by the Church of Vkandis in which you are killed would be substantially more damaging to the peace efforts, though if you're confident in whoever would end up in charge in Predain that could change things.:

She didn't actually say which kind of Urtho's protective artifacts but he can make a guess, and off that plus knowing that she's to the north and presumably very far to the north, his search-spell should be able to find her within a minute. 

:- Oh. That is - a very good idea, actually, I am wondering if I ought also consider it, if - if you think an attack on Predain is likely to be primarily an assassination attempt on me personally. ...I think the ceasefire would hold for - long enough - if there were no other casualties and Urtho made it very clear that the attack had been against orders. I am much less sure it would hold if thousands more of our people were dead as well: 

:If there is an attack on Predain the intent would almost certainly be to break the ceasefire, and I don't think they'd target you over another target likelier to achieve that. But I don't know. I was taken aback by this whole situation. It has multiple opposed god-interventions; at home those gods would almost always have negotiated into inaction.:

:...Then I think I ought be where I can direct my people, but - somewhere not otherwise an obvious target: 

Probably. He hates not knowing, hates not having time to gather all the information that would inform that decision and carefully reason through the considerations, hates being out of control. He is mostly keeping this under control; he's scared, but it's a quiet resigned background fear, not panic. With the intimacy of Mindspeech, it does still leak through a little. 

:- Located you. Gate in five seconds: And if Iomedae doesn't warn him off, there will in five seconds be a Gate. Ma'ar stumbles, slightly, as he crosses the threshold into the boat; it's rocking gently on the water, and he's been using magic hard for candlemarks and is very tired. 

Iomedae acknowledges him with a nod. She continues to not seem afraid, however improbable that is.  She takes off the Ring of Evasion (replaces it with the usual ring of Deflection), hands it to him. 

He meets her eyes as levelly as he can. Accepts the ring, and examines it with mage-sight. At short range like this, he can Mindspeak Iomedae directly. :Do I need to do anything in particular to use it?: 

:It should work as long as you wear it and as long as you are not wearing others of the same make on the same hand - they interfere with each other in that case. I'd offer to test it for you, but none of my magic creates the area effects it is designed to shield against.:

He nods. :What does it actually do? I cannot make any sense of the spell by looking at it, or - see how it would interact with my other shielding: 

:It enhances other defenses by making it the case that, if you have successfully mitigated the effects a harm has on you, it has no effects at all. If you shielded yourself instinctively in time, it makes the shield adequate however large the explosion. That sort of thing.:

:That - is not the sort of thing that would be possible, with our magic, but I will take your word for it on that is possible with yours:

And he bows his head, briefly. It feels like there should be words, to describe - whatever feeling he’s having - but they aren’t coming to mind. It’s not a feeling he has ever in his life had reason to try to convey. And they don’t have time to spare.

:…I am very grateful. I will— if I have an opportunity to come to your aid, at a cost I can afford, I will do so.:

He raises his hands to start the return Gate. Pauses. :- Is the sword with Mindspeech relevant context that I might need to know -?:

:This is Need, she's helping me out. As an intervention from Bastet, we think. If I survive this, she'll probably be why. If I don't you should probably someday go trawl the ocean, she might be down there with a lot of valuable magic items.: