Altarrin is so incredibly worried about Carissa, currently asleep in the Emperor's quarters, unaware that she's under suspicion and in serious danger. 

His options for what to do about it are...limited. The Emperor, and the Office of Inquiry, believe that Altarrin is dead, and will be incredibly suspicious if he Gates in from nowhere and assume that he's an imposter. And he's in no shape to fight their way out. Nearly two days after his injuries in the spellsilver mine explosion, the backlash headache has finally eased a little, and his reserves of mage-energy are somewhat recovered – but he's been alone, trying his best to do first aid on himself without the help of any Healers, and he's worried that his condition is deteriorating. The deep burns on his forearms are agonizingly painful, and leaking foul-smelling fluid through the makeshift bandages. He feels increasingly weak and feverish. 

It's not going to be a better time later to warn Carissa of the danger, though, and he's running out of time. 

The Gate, anchored on a scry, is the hardest one he's ever cast, and - it feels like it's going wrong, somehow, like the spell is twisting away and falling in a direction without a name - Altarrin is dizzy and the room feels too close and hot and he doesn't think he has the energy left to start over and try again - 

- he flops through the Gate onto a hard tiled floor in a hallway, white rectangles of fluorescent light blurring above him. Which isn't at all where he intended, or expected, to be. He tries to rise onto hands and knees, and finds that he doesn't have the strength. 

(The very busy staff of the Renown Hospital ER in Reno, Nevada, will find a man inexplicably lying on the floor in the hallway, his strangely medieval clothing filthy and bloodstained. He's conscious, trying and failing to sit up, but he looks ill and feverish. There are severe third-degree burns on his arms, clumsily bandaged but, by the look of the pus oozing from them, already infected.)