He pulls out his daggers, moving very slowly and nonthreateningly, and sets them down on the ground on the other end of the room, and retreats over to where Mahdi is looking at a book about economics. "Does he have good taste?"

"I hate reading economics with my headband off, I don't really know. It's a pleasanter distraction than thinking how long it'd be until anyone missed us -"

"I bet my darling brother checks on me every day. But - it's gonna be fine. The person who did this is gonna invade Cheliax. So the more ridiculous stuff he can do, the better, really."

He sighs. "I guess," he says, again. 

And Malduoni stands only a few yards away, invisibly. His rod of security lets him hop to an extradimensional space where the outside world is paused. For twenty-four hours, and only once a week, but this is a place where it's clearly worth it. He's slept, he has all of his spells again, and he hasn't exactly resolved his deep pit of confusion, it's going to take asking questions to do that, but he's - clarified it, yes. 

He can read Leareth's thoughts more easily, here, which is interesting; the not-sorcerer seems to have been supplementing with some sort of magic item, now disabled. He's thinking about how - all of this - is very much his own style, very - in character for himself - and this is in the abstract a baffling line of reasoning, but it accords with the other baffling piece, so there's no additional confusion it adds. And the structure of Leareth's thoughts are - it's not exactly how Malduoni thinks, it's the product of an entirely different life history, but - the resemblance is still clear. Leareth is also coping very calmly with being imprisoned here - they all are - but Leareth's particular flavour of frustration at lacking his magic is a very familiar one. 

(Malduoni had considered at first whether it could have been the case that, when Aroden died, his memories returned to more than one person - a god is a very big thing and His death involved fragmentation, after all. But it doesn't fit, because 'Leareth' plainly isn't from their same world at all, he had already pieced this together from sideways references and now Leareth is thinking about it much more directly.) 

They know his identity as Aroden. They knew to seek him in Rahadoum. They have a man with them - a man with powerful alien magic carried from another world, and apparently an army waiting somewhere - who claims to be, clearly in some more abstract than literal sense, the same person as Aroden/Malduoni. He must have the relevant pieces, now, but he's not yet succeeding at piecing them together. 

...

A few seconds later, a figure suddenly appears. He's - very old, white-haired, his face lined. 

"I apologize for my rudeness," he says. "I wished to speak with you. Since none of you are stupid, I assume you can guess why." 

He is the first to say -

"Hi. Did you do something so Leareth can understand us -"

"Ah, yes, I will take care of that now." Casting Tongues before he appeared would have made his presence very apparent, but he does so now. Nods to Leareth and repeats what he said. 

Leareth looks him in the eye, levelly. "I am not surprised at all, and it would be unhelpful to be offended." 

"It seemed more likely to work out like this if we were right than if we were wrong."

"I have to congratulate you on your subtlety in spying on us," Leareth says. "I assume you had someone watching us after all during the fight - or were there yourself, perhaps. And were - eavesdropping on my Mindspeech? You would not have used this much overkill if it were only that I have abilities a Golarion sorcerer ought not." 

The man smiles. "Also I was reading your thoughts. You in particular made it very difficult, so, I must offer congratulations as well." 

Leareth nods. Doesn't return the smile. "I assume this place is an absurd level of secure, but - may we speak openly here?" 

"Of course." 

"Aroden. You survived, right? And - rebuilt, it must have been from nothing..." Leareth shakes his head. "If you were reading my mind," (he would one hundred percent be offended and scared if it were anyone else but he can't really be, here), "then - you must be very confused about who I am." 

"One might say that. I have gathered that you come from another world and have an army at your beck and call - presumably you left them behind in said other world, or I would have heard something. Also you and your friends seem to believe that you are the same person as me, which does not make very much sense." 

"It does not. We - lived the same story, I think. In two different worlds, which I am sure left corresponding differences in us." He glances at Mahdi and Hagan. "They can help explain better." 

"Three weeks ago an acquaintance of Leareth's from his world, called Velgarth, landed in ours by a magical accident, we don't have more details though we think it was an accident on our end not Velgarth's. He was aware Leareth was working on a large-scale plan that as one of its steps involved conquering his country, but he didn't have more details. Eight days ago we hired the High Priestess of Nethys in Sothis, Nefreti Clepati, to kidnap Leareth from his world so we could ask about them. She did. Before she did, she said - my notes are in my Bag of Holding and my headband is disabled so this may be off - 'the same stories repeat themselves across worlds. Young men who think they're immortal, because they are, because they were, but everything else was not, everything else was lost, a price they did not know they'd need to pay, and time erodes even the mountains.'"

He's still, not answering, for a period of about five seconds. 

(The centrepiece of the puzzle is falling into place and quite a lot of the confusion is resolving with it. Although not in a direction that he is exactly pleased with.) 

"You are telling me," he says slowly, "that Abadar knows everything you were thinking, when you came here to investigate, and so does Nethys?" 

"Not everything. On my part, I told the pharaoh - who is not, in fact, personally Abadar, though I am sure you knew that already - that I suspected Rahadoum was preparing to fight Cheliax, and that I could make inferences about the person leading because they were an alternate version of someone I knew in my own world. I suspect he guessed I meant myself. He - may have been pressing me for information later, no, almost certainly was. I do not think there is any possible way he could have made the leap to your being Aroden because it is, from an outside view, absurd." 

"And yet you believed it, on a hunch, enough to travel here undercover and learn more." 

"...The entire history of my life is from an outside view absurd, so." 

"You haven't actually told us your history, beyond that it matches," he says to Leareth. "- and that he was, uh, trying to build a god who'd fix everything wrong with Velgarth."

"I see." Malduoni does not look surprised at all. 

"I suppose I ought to tell you, to - make the case better." Glance at Hagan and Mahdi. "And, at this point, I see little reason to hold it back from either of you. My world had a Cataclysm about two thousand years ago. Two powerful mages fought. One of them was myself, the other my teacher and mentor. I lost most of my memories and do not have surviving records, so I am unsure of the details, but - I did not want to fight him and I certainly did not want to kill him. I was winning the war, and then - things went very badly out of control, he destroyed his own stronghold to prevent my reaching it, and handed a weapon I had not known existed to some of his allies, who used it to murder me. In the process setting off said Cataclysm, which left the world badly damaged for millennia. I had already arranged immortality, and so I - came back." 

"...Yes. I see certain similarities." A piercing look. "Are you still planning to solve your Velgarth's problems with a god."