Oh. Right. 

"If all went well, they are in Velgarth now. Vanyel's kingdom was expecting an invasion from my army; they misattributed his disappearance as my doing, and were then very suspicious of communications from him to the contrary. We expected that sending him back in person would be the best way of resolving this. There were delays there," he probably doesn't need to explain the whole difficulty with Yfandes, though he does expect Aroden is right now reading his thoughts about it, "but they planned to leave at the same time we departed Sothis. Fazil and Vanyel both know the Aroden aspect and also that we suspected you were my alt. This was - fairly relevant information, in their decision to trust me as well as consider helping you." 

"I see." He waits a few beats. Glances expectantly at Mahdi and Hagan. "Is there anything else in this vein that I ought to know?" 

"We haven't involved anyone else." He's not feeling so cooperative as to try to think through all of the things that might have happened that'd be useful to Aroden, probably if you want to be a god you can do that yourself. 

He is thinking that hopefully Aroden won't see fit to kidnap Vanyel, who has really been through enough recently, as has his whole country. "Van did not expect Valdemar would help you with Cheliax but he thought they'd help with the Worldwound. If it needed it. I'm now assuming that you have a plan there."

He does but not to the point that he would turn down help. "I see. I am not sure of the best way to handle that; this is all a very unexpected complication. I imagine it is likely that Vanyel told his government of your speculations about me, as part of his attempt to defuse tensions with Leareth." 

"That is plausible. I - would not have felt that I had the standing to order him not to, and also his - our - recent decisions make very little sense without that context, and providing a sensical explanation to Valdemar's leadership would have been critical." 

Aroden lets out his breath, slowly. So it's too late to quarantine the secret from Velgarth. That pushes even harder toward moving fast, he thinks. 

"Leareth. I imagine some of your subordinates also know." 

"They know some of it, yes. A small number, all of them under a voluntary geas-like spell of loyalty to my mission. Not dissimilar to yours, actually." 

"How unsurprising." Aroden is quiet for a moment. "All right. Leareth, I will consider your subordinates already geased for this purpose. Ideally I would like to meet Vanyel and Fazil and request it of them as well, but that seems logistically difficult, and I hardly think I can impose it on Vanyel's superiors in Valdemar. What is the current state of communication between Velgarth and Osirion?" 

"Abadar is in communication with the local gods. It is possible to scry in Velgarth with a crystal ball and the pharaoh may be doing so. I believe Fazil was the only human approved to Plane Shift there." Leareth glances at the others for confirmation. 

"It wouldn't surprise me if the pharaoh has another attuned focus for his own people but Fazil is the only one I know of."

Aroden nods. Thinks, briefly. 

"Well. A number of elements of this situation are not ideal, but it also includes unexpected resources and help, so on the whole I suppose I cannot complain. I will place the geases now, and then we can go elsewhere and discuss further."

He does so, starting with Leareth. Each geas takes ten minutes to cast, so it's going to take a while. 

It's one of the few spells there's no defense against, and he'd really like to watch, but without Detect Magic up he won't actually learn anything, so he reads instead. 

Leareth is also a little irritated that he can't watch with his Othersenses, but Aroden is being sufficiently reasonable here that he can't be annoyed with him about it, so the annoyance isn't directed anywhere in particular and is just sort of floating there. 

Aroden finishes. 

"As soon as we leave this place," he says calmly, "I am Malduoni again. I am going to Plane Shift you to a small demiplane that is linked to my office in Azir by a permanent portal. Your possessions are already there. I would like to speak further, of course, but I am sure you would all like breakfast and a chance to regroup, and - I will not stop you from preparing spells and teleporting back to Sothis immediately if you wish. If you decide to stay and discuss more, I will be available all day and you can return to my office when you are ready." 

How many permanent demiplanes can a person have. 

(The geas on which name to think of him by is very intrusive; the rest isn't.)

He takes Hagan and Leareth's hands for the Plane Shift.

Aroden takes Leareth's hand -

- and Malduoni arrives in the other demiplane, the three of them in tow. This one is a lot more boring; it resembles an ordinary hallway, with an ordinary door at the end. There's a nice carpet, a couple of tasteful paintings of nature scenes on the walls, and no other decor. 

Malduoni releases Leareth's hand, gestures at the door. "Go on." 

Leareth glances over his shoulder. Notices that there's also a door at the other end of the hallway. He wonders vaguely where it goes. It seems very rude to run and try to check while they're here with Malduoni, so he doesn't. 

They can walk out through the indicated door instead.

It goes to a sort of lobby area with a few armchairs arranged in it, and two doors. Their things from the camp are neatly packed up and waiting on said chairs. 

Malduoni strolls past them and opens one of them. "This is the way out. Not the way back in when you rejoin me - you will want to go in the front door and ask the guard. 

Once they've gone through, he'll re-lock the door with magic - it's not completely proof against wizards getting in, of course, but it's at least very inconvenient - and then take the other door himself. 

He inventories all his belongings before speaking. 

"Well. I guess that went well."

Leareth, for his part, checks that his Gifts and Othersenses are back in working order, as well as the artifacts he's wearing and his intelligence headband. It is disappointingly not as good as the one he left behind in Malduoni's demiplane-library. (The geas is quite obtrusive here for him too, but hopefully he'll get used to it.)

"I think so, yes." He finds himself smiling, involuntarily. He's feeling sort of exhilarated, almost giddy with it. 

"I want to prepare spells before we go meet him, but I don't think it makes any sense to run back to Sothis at this point."

"It really doesn't."

Leareth nods.

:Well, I am pleased that I was right on all of my inferences: he sends in Mindspeech. The geas seems fine with that level of indirectly-thinking-about-it.