I had forgotten the part about alerting the nearest Herald! From what we see in other books, though, I don't think it worked -- the Heralds without Mage-Gift can't see or hear the Vrondi, so while they maybe get very "suspicious" or "feel like something's wrong" when the Vrondi try to alert them, just because they're all hanging around, they don't seem able to communicate clearly.
Herald-Mage particularly stupid and/or the Karsite particularly good
We do find out that the Karsite mages have been "cheating", for lack of a better word -- they use a lot of nasty summoned creatures that a Herald-Mage would never use, a lot like 'Lendel's wyrsa pack! So one Karsite mage controlling a pack of mage-creatures could kill a lot of Herald-Mages, or at least keep them trapped at the border; and I suspect that even a pretty weak mage can summon, so that sort of gives the Karsite mages another advantage.
The other part is probably due to Leareth's attempts to kill potential mages -- no one can guard every Mage-gifted youngster in the whole realm, even if they though to do so, which would be crazy. It seems Leareth spent quite a bit of time carefully killing Mage-gifted Valdemarans from a distance before they could become Herald-Mages, so now Valdemar doesn't have many people with Mage-Gift to start rebuilding from.
The main problem with sending Gifted kids off for training is just *identifying* them -- it seems to take Mage-Gift to recognise Mage-Gift! So without any Herald-Mages, Valdemar doesn't have a way to find out if any Herald-Trainees have Mage-Gift in addition to mind magic.
The only way they could 'find' mages would be to trust an allied country to send a mage to them as a "detector", and then trust the ally to train them without changing their loyalty to Valdemar. Those allies may not have any mages without apprentices already; and they certainly would expect to be paid for training someone who's not going to stay in the country. Would you train somebody to be a weapon, then give that person to the neighboring kingdom? (Plus, of course, Valdemar seems to want all its mages to be Herald-Mages; it doesn't have court mages the way other places do. So if they went to the trouble of finding somebody, arranging a treaty so that person could go off and get trained, waited for the training, then brought the person back and presented him to the Companions... and that person wasn't Chosen, then what? Send him back to the other country? Exile him?)
I'm not sure what you meant by "people like Tallo/Moon" -- Tayledras? Mages from another country? Criminals? :D
are there rather big plotholes?
There are some, for sure! I have always imagined that it ought to be possible for Valdemar to have 'borrowed' some mages from an ally like Rethwellan, for instance; if any got Chosen, great! If not, they could still hold a court title and maybe look over the Herald-trainees once a year to see if any of them are Mage-Gifted. (What to do after that's a puzzle, but I'm sure they could find out.)
A lot of it I think just never had time to happen, because of Vanyel making everybody 'forget' that magic existed! IF he hadn't done that, then Valdemar might have solved its mage-problem given some time. Instead they weren't able to see it as a problem, so nothing got done.
no subject
Herald-Mage particularly stupid and/or the Karsite particularly good
We do find out that the Karsite mages have been "cheating", for lack of a better word -- they use a lot of nasty summoned creatures that a Herald-Mage would never use, a lot like 'Lendel's wyrsa pack! So one Karsite mage controlling a pack of mage-creatures could kill a lot of Herald-Mages, or at least keep them trapped at the border; and I suspect that even a pretty weak mage can summon, so that sort of gives the Karsite mages another advantage.
The other part is probably due to Leareth's attempts to kill potential mages -- no one can guard every Mage-gifted youngster in the whole realm, even if they though to do so, which would be crazy. It seems Leareth spent quite a bit of time carefully killing Mage-gifted Valdemarans from a distance before they could become Herald-Mages, so now Valdemar doesn't have many people with Mage-Gift to start rebuilding from.
The main problem with sending Gifted kids off for training is just *identifying* them -- it seems to take Mage-Gift to recognise Mage-Gift! So without any Herald-Mages, Valdemar doesn't have a way to find out if any Herald-Trainees have Mage-Gift in addition to mind magic.
The only way they could 'find' mages would be to trust an allied country to send a mage to them as a "detector", and then trust the ally to train them without changing their loyalty to Valdemar. Those allies may not have any mages without apprentices already; and they certainly would expect to be paid for training someone who's not going to stay in the country. Would you train somebody to be a weapon, then give that person to the neighboring kingdom? (Plus, of course, Valdemar seems to want all its mages to be Herald-Mages; it doesn't have court mages the way other places do. So if they went to the trouble of finding somebody, arranging a treaty so that person could go off and get trained, waited for the training, then brought the person back and presented him to the Companions... and that person wasn't Chosen, then what? Send him back to the other country? Exile him?)
I'm not sure what you meant by "people like Tallo/Moon" -- Tayledras? Mages from another country? Criminals? :D
are there rather big plotholes?
There are some, for sure! I have always imagined that it ought to be possible for Valdemar to have 'borrowed' some mages from an ally like Rethwellan, for instance; if any got Chosen, great! If not, they could still hold a court title and maybe look over the Herald-trainees once a year to see if any of them are Mage-Gifted. (What to do after that's a puzzle, but I'm sure they could find out.)
A lot of it I think just never had time to happen, because of Vanyel making everybody 'forget' that magic existed! IF he hadn't done that, then Valdemar might have solved its mage-problem given some time. Instead they weren't able to see it as a problem, so nothing got done.