"In that case everyone else should go away from the heat source," he says, undressing.

The heat elemental has been transferred into the small lump of iron ore, which does have to be heated but doesn't have requirements on how. The candles and incense are lit, everything else in position.

After leaving line of sight, Amber sends the ritual script in both Quenya and Incomprehensible, then repeats it a line at a time in the original. This isn't normal, for rituals, but it's nothing she hasn't agreed to before.

A few minutes later. "All right. Your magic is interesting. I think I can see the spirits you described -" he sends a mental image - "is that what I'm seeing? I'm getting dressed. I don't mind if you come back in. Does honesty interact badly with giving orders? Giving permissions? Speculating?"

"Yes, that's them. They're more analogous to air molecules filling space and having effects in the aggregate than to individual observers; what you're seeing are the smallest distinguishable clumps representing the purposes or materials of the nearest object or any number of other things.

All those are safe, dependent on grammar. Don't, like, phrase orders as "you will do X." That arguably counts as a prediction, and while it's an argument you might win it's not a good one to have to have. That kind of thing."

"Thank you. Irissë, it's fascinating, doesn't feel nearly as dangerous as I take it it actually is, and doesn't take long."

"Being a practitioner is risky. The ritual itself is safe.

Irissë, we can give you some privacy while you do it."

So they step away from the heat so she can do it privately. "Thank you for this," he says.

"I'm still wishing I had a better option, no offense, but it's this or not do it. The best I could think of managing alone was sending an elemental or two to help where they could."

And she feeds Irissë the lines.

"Once we're in less dire straits it is my sincere hope that we can make it worthwhile for you. This is a very talented and dedicated group of people. I would ordinarily be happy to promise, but I am not going to do that."

"A good idea.

I should be happy about all this, there are thousands of lives on the line even if I can't do anything at all on the other side, but I was kind of attached to my other long shot of a plan. Which I couldn't do here even if a moon appeared in the sky next week."

"Why not? I mean, I think you'd best resign yourself to this world being dark and moonless, but why wouldn't the plan work if we did have one?"

"Assuming the hypothetical moon were isolated enough for the spirits to be easily malleable, boring practical reasons.
It depended on selectively allowing visitors and immigrants whose presence would help, and I could expect enough interested people to pick from because the Moon is old and symbolically important to a lot of different people in a lot of different ways. Visiting a moon here would be an interesting curiosity, but it wouldn't have the same weight to it."

"It seems likely that if the fundamental forces of fate could be altered by sending people to a Moon, then my father would see fit to order people to go to a Moon."

"Fundamental is giving these forces of fate too much credit, fortunately.

The problem is that's all it would be, is going to a moon. If I invite some of the friendlier members of the Church of the Seven Bright Ones, it's metaphorically an invitation to the sphere of their second god. If people think being there at all is significant, the spirits are likelier to agree. They care about that kind of thing.

Though, that is more of a question of how effectively it works than whether. I had been assuming there wouldn't be enough interested parties to go around."

"I assume you couldn't have gotten the leave of your homeland's King. ...is he a practitioner? Does he even know about you all?"

"As far as I know, the people running the country aren't in general informed. Even if they all were, there isn't any authority who can just order people to do that."

"Well, we can send as many people as the situation warrants and design a ceremony of suitable gravity if that turns out to be the right approach."

"It actually might be, once there's a population of practitioners instead of just three of us."

"Will it be a higher priority than the war?"

"It definitely won't be more urgent than the war."

"Realistically, the war will probably take five centuries."

"If reforming the spirits' priorities could be done in a human life span, more people would have tried. If it worked in five centuries, I'd consider it a success."

"All right. In that case it may be worth not diverting too many resources towards until the war is over. Once it is, I can't think why we shouldn't spend the next Age on it."

"Well. At least we weren't previously planning to not win as soon as possible."

"We won't have you, as I understand it. That's a disadvantage to delaying your plan."