[h2]Tyaethe Radistirin[/h2]

She gave a shrug at that, "I haven't met anyone that would walk around without their head [i]on their own accord.[/i] But the best healers can pull off something like that for a little while. With proper rituals and a strong enough mage, I guess you could keep it going for longer."

And Veileena [i]was[/i] something of a prodigy there... with all the negative attention that the daughter of a traitor tended to get for magical excellence. Still, she had the power and her family did have some history of mages in general, so if they had something like that rattling around, it wouldn't be the most surprising thing, and they were standing in holy ground without the paladin (or the knights in general) being given any signal to do something, so that ought to rule out any sort of undeath or slavery.

With enough preparation, too, magical effects that would be nearly impossible to sustain as a constant spell (or even annoying to do so) could be maintained with much less effort, even if they might still need input sometimes. Enchanted items tended to be the obvious example--it wasn't like Tyaethe's sword had gotten any heavier in the last two centuries.