Sometimes gods aren't worthy of their people, and then sometimes things happen that are very, very hard to move on from. It won't even be the first time in their history that the temple of the Nameless God of Eternal Flame has taken in someone who felt betrayed by their previous god or their previous religious leaders (which can often be hard to distinguish.) 

They would be happy to take Ravenwing. Once they've come to an interim arrangement on compulsions, because they're not equipped to hold dangerous prisoners and there are other vulnerable people at all of the holy sanctuaries that would actually be good places for this. They can keep her out of trouble, and maybe help her find a way to heal. 

The disadvantage of making that agreement is that several of his advisors will make a lot of faces about it. The advantage is that Ravenwing will stop being a baffling and terrifying problem on his plate. ...And maybe be okay. He does, actually, want her to be okay. He's known her since she was a child. 

They can hammer out an agreement on individually approved one-off use of compulsions by a handful of approved mages from Predain while being directly supervised by a mage from the church of the Nameless God. It might not even take the entire rest of the day. Predain is being very efficient about withdrawing their troops and this is doing a lot to ease the tensions. 

They ARE being so efficient about it. It turns out that being suddenly significantly better at spatial reasoning is great for extremely optimized movement plans.

That...was probably the last thing that needed to be fully sorted out before Urtho and Ma'ar can meet face to face and actually finish and sign their peace treaty? 

Which won't mean it's over, of course, or that all the damage is repaired. Urtho is pretty sure he'll feel less terrible about it, though. And also it will no longer be against the conditions of the ceasefire for Ma'ar to show up through unannounced Gates to solve problems. It's - taken him a while to settle on this - but Urtho is actually just going to be relieved once he knows that Ma'ar can and will rescue anyone important to the peace who needs rescuing. 

He needs to actually pick mages and send them to the temple of the Nameless God, and Ma'ar is not at all sure that they're past the point when something could unexpectedly explode, but they can plan a time to meet tomorrow. 

He has a priestess to meet, after that. He's hoping they can move the other things along fast enough to get to that before midnight; he can still think just fine but he isn't not tired. 

(Ma'ar is slightly worried that he's going to run headfirst into some kind of very unpleasant emotional reckoning when all of this is over, where by 'over' he basically means 'Iomedae is healed and fine.' It's not the kind of emergency where you cut out sleep or push yourself to the point of backlash casting a hundred Gates in a day, but it's still a heightened state of alert, he's sleeping fine but he can't fully relax. 

...he's going to worry about that after this is, in fact, over. He spends an entire five minutes thinking about whether that's a mistake, it's definitely sometimes been a mistake in the past to put off taking a step back and doing processing about his recent decisions, but - he thinks he's okay, for right now. The headband is buying him a lot of slack.) 

The priests of the Nameless God who are working with Predain and Tantara on this are aware that Ma'ar has a huge number of demands on his time, and will try their best to take up the bare minimum of it. 

Ma'ar appreciates it. He appreciates them a lot, and it doesn't come naturally to be demonstrative about his gratitude but he will, actually, try to convey it. He's honored to be working with them. 

He's going to Mindspeak Thaliss privately and get her alone, because he still doesn't quite trust the entire rest of the senior priesthood knowing about their problem. 

That's perfectly understandable. Thaliss was hoping he would come and so they arranged for their priestess-Mindhealer to be making a tour of the other holy sites, so he can meet her (privately, in a shielded room) without having to do another Gate. Gates are tiring and he must have had a long day. 

Gates are quite a bit less tiring when one is both an unusually powerful Adept and also really, really good at them, but Ma'ar is still very appreciative.

He bows respectfully to the priestess, when he's ushered to the room with her. "Thank you for coming. I am Adept Kiyamvir Ma'ar - I am not sure if Thaliss explained -" 

"Kariasha." The woman is younger than Ma'ar might have expected, maybe only in her mid-twenties. She's wearing simple linen robes, her thick coal-black hair pulled back in a tail. "She told me you were coming. She did not say why." 

:I do have Mindspeech, if you would rather use that. Matters for a Mindhealer are almost always private, and it sounds like this one is something of a state secret as well: 

Ma'ar is going to raise extra privacy-shields anyway, but yes, after that he would still be more comfortable conversing in Mindspeech. 

...The Mindhealer is hard to read. She's very - level. His instincts aren't flagging any hostility but he's less sure than he would like that he would be able to tell.

- hopefully Bestet knows that if this is actually a terrible idea, now would be a very good time to warn him of that - 

...He'll explain their problem. Again. 

She listens solemnly. 

:...It was brave of you to come: she says, when he's finished. :When you are so afraid of me, and of Them: 

Is that really the most important priority to discuss right now. 

Ma'ar doesn't say this. He...nods, and tries and fails to think of anything else that would be a better idea to say. 

She shifts her weight, leaning forward to prop her chin on her hands. 

:I kind of hate that I could make people trust me, if I wanted. I never do want to, that is not what trust is for, but it - still makes it feel hostile to ask for it, that I could: 

She looks steadily into his eyes. :I am certain I can ease her suffering. I am not sure if I can heal her, not in the sense of - making what happened be as though it never was. The Eternal Flame has come to me a few times, but it is really not at the times when you would think the stakes were highest. I think it would help her either way, to come to the holy sanctuary, it is in itself a place that eases pain. ...Knowing what I do of her, I think she would choose the risk, if it were her choice, but she would not be afraid. You are, and she entrusted the choice to you, and - I am not going to ask you to go against your conscience: 

This conversation is so confusing, even with the headband. It doesn't quite feel like talking to a person, and - who knows, maybe he is in some sense talking to a fragment of a god. Maybe people are like that, when they've themselves been touched by a god enough times.

Iomedae might know what to make of it but he can't ask her. 

...if they could trust the Nameless God, even partially, they would have another ally here. This is not at all the sort of thing that one can count as evidence of the Nameless God's trustworthiness, it's just - wanting it to be true.

There are so many things Ma'ar wants to be true, and maybe he could trust his thinking more if it were unbiased, but the thing is, sometimes he wants things to be true and he makes them be. He's not nearly as good at it as Iomedae is but it's the thing that he's reaching for. 

He's so tired of being afraid and he probably COULD ask the Mindhealer to make him stop being afraid and also he absolutely shouldn't do that. 

:Are there questions I can answer that would help? I could - I am not very good at this, usually people come here because they already follow and trust the Eternal Flame, and I should know why but I - it is at least hard to convey in words: 

Ma'ar blinks. 

:Why do you trust your god?: 

Kariasha takes a deep breath. 

:I am from a village a long way south of here. When I was a young woman, riders who worshipped Atet came to raid our village. My brothers were killed, my male cousins were killed, and my mother and sisters and female cousins were - taken. I was - I cried out to something, to whatever Power could hear me, and I am still not sure how I did it, how I knew where to step and when to hold still and could find the places to hide, but I escaped. I ran for a long time, and reached a temple. To the Nameless God of the Eternal Flame, which is fitting enough since I knew no name I was willing to cry out to. They took me in and Healed my wounds and told me some things of their god's teachings. But they could not help me ride out and fight to rescue my family, they were - this order does not do battle: 

She closes her eyes. 

:I - had a vision, I think, a dream, where I followed a spark and rode in alone. It ended when I reached the camp where my family was held captive. They were taking them to the Ceej Empire to sell as slaves. I - the vision did not actually show if I would succeed, or if I would die trying, but I had to try. I stole a knife from the kitchens and I rode out without telling anyone. I feel guilty about that, they would not have stopped me, just - looked sad - but I suppose I was not ready to bear that yet. I followed the path that the spark had showed me. 

- and I reached the camp and - there were children, among the bandits, I know they saw themselves as tough men but some were younger than me and my sisters, and I - it felt like I could only fix this one unbearable wound in the world by tearing open another, by taking other people's children away from them. ...I prayed to Eternal Flame that there could be a different way, and - suddenly everything was light and there were wings of fire in my mind... 

She makes a brief huff, half a snort, not quite a laugh. :And then I woke up in my mother's arms with an awful headache and literally no idea what had just happened, and they told me the bandits had let all of us go and left for no reason.

We went home, but nobody in the village looked at me the same, I was - strange, touched by a god - and also I kept almost doing things to people's heads by accident. So I came back to the temple and had to give some very awkward explanations and apologize for stealing the knife, and have my Gifts tested and then learn how to use Mindhealing the hard way: 

It's such a baffling story! Is that the kind of thing that just happens sometimes??? 

It's not what he would do. It's not even what Iomedae, who's a lot more Good than he ever dared to aim for, would do. It's not calculated, it's not the most lives saved bought for the lowest price. It's not - legible and predictable and the kind of action that sets the precedents you want everyone to keep, Iomedae would probably not approve of mind-controlled an entire troop of bandits into freeing their prisoners. (Iomedae would solve this problem with a sword. Oh, she would try calm ultimatums and the cautious dance of negotiation concessions, she just wouldn't hesitate to use the sword if the negotiations predictably failed.) It's not destroying Evil, particularly, it may or may not have done anything to protect the next village over, it definitely didn't destroy the most evil possible at the lowest cost...

It's just - a little piece of Good, a little piece of something being better than the alternative, that spiraled outward. And even though gods swim in Foresight it can't possibly have been part of the plan that someday the girl who got a random miraculous Mindhealing Gift, when she pleaded with her god to give her a way not to kill the children, would heal Iomedae. But here they are. 

...or maybe it's a lie shaped to be as convincing to him as possible. (Are gods good at that? It really doesn't sound like Vkandis was, with Iomedae, and of course he has no idea what was actually discussed with the Star-Eyed Goddess, if they spoke.) 

He's so tired. 

Iomedae is also probably very tired of her brain not working. Which isn't a reason to rush, she said she can endure it and he believes her, it's mostly just a reason why he shouldn't whine about that. 

Kariasha bows her head. :You do not need to decide, right now. It makes sense to be afraid. The world has been very cruel to your people, and someone you care about was just hurt very badly after taking the risk of trusting a god: 

This feels like a Mindhealer-y conversation again and do they have to do this. 

(...He should flag that as a sign that there probably is some kind of unpleasant emotional reckoning to deal with but he's still going to try to schedule it, for a time that is not now.) 

:You can take the night to consider it. Speak to Thaliss, she can tell you where to direct your Gate. I will set tomorrow aside: A crooked smile. :If you choose not to come, I am not going to complain about a day off, it has been a very busy year: 

No wonder, her country has been at war. Ma'ar winces. (He could hide it but he doesn't. It feels more honest.) 

Kariasha ducks her head. :I am not blaming you for it. Urtho attacked first, and speaking as someone who once stole a knife from a temple to the Eternal Flame so I could go protect my people, I cannot blame you at all. It must have been very awful for you, and it cost both of our peoples a great deal. Now it is nearly over, and that was your doing more than Urtho's, for which I am grateful: A slight shrug. :I just - I wish you had time to rest. If you do bring Iomedae here, I am going to tell her to make you: 

What are you even supposed to say to that. 

Ma'ar thanks her politely for her willingness to help, while only half aware of what he's saying, and he speaks to Thaliss, and gets a location on a map and an image off Thoughtsensing and a more explicit agreement, in writing, of how many guards he can bring, and then he Gates back to the Citadel.

It's late again and Iomedae is hopefully asleep, and won't actually be annoyed if he tells her in the morning that he's made a decision and they're going. Ma'ar is tired but he's not quite sleepy, yet, so he's still going to go hover for a while.