Thoughtful nod. 

"What is the state of secrecy on the capabilities of Velgarth magic?" 

"A number of the pharaoh's researchers know of it. Not everything, but a great deal. They have been asked to keep it to themselves, but are not under geas, so - my guess is that it is secret now and will not remain so indefinitely. Velgarth's existence is less closely held but is certainly not widely known at this point." 

"Another reason to move quickly." Malduoni lays his hands on the table, briskly. "All right. I think we had best cover the intricacies of Velgarth magic now. Hagan and Mahdi are already quite well-informed of this, I imagine, and so might as well be present to help generate ideas here." 

"They worked closely with Vanyel for a time, so I imagine so." Leareth looks over at them. 

"To a first approximation they can do most arcane magic that's not transmutation or conjuration, where they're limited because they have to do all the work themselves, they don't have access to any scaffolding that enables things like polymorph effects. I've wondered whether they could be taught to use the thing we use for scaffolding but I haven't given it a serious try. Instead of teleportation they can open a portal to somewhere else on the same plane, they call that a Gate. And all of it's much more flexible since it doesn't have to stabilize but maybe sorcerers here are like that too, I've never watched one closely and I think mages in Velgarth get a lot more specialized training in the use of their magic than sorcerers here. They can imitate a Pearl of Power for wizards, not for clerics. They can dispel magic in a clever way that looks like a very minimal power expenditure and they can do very very low-power enchantments. They are bottlenecked on how much they can do in a day mostly by exhaustion, which responds normally to Lesser Restoration if you have any way to get that here."

"We also have magic-specific senses, similar to Detect Magic but present in the background unless we are shielding them - they do take a minimal amount of effort to use, but comparable to, say, standing up, it is not something one will ever be too tired for except in very unusual circumstances. I can directly observe magic as I cast it, and as your casters work. This is how we can disrupt your spells with less power expenditure, by seeing the most brittle part and aiming there. We have many varieties of shields and wards, many of which are lower power than yours - thus perhaps easier to dispel with your Dispel Magic - but correspondingly cheaper to place, and also quite flexible." 

(He is perhaps going to wait until he's alone with Malduoni to discuss blood-magic and the implications there.) 

"There are also a number of other, more specialized Gifts in Velgarth. I have Mindspeech, which is a form of permanent telepathy, receptive and projective. We have our own variant of Healing - actually, this might be of great use to you, since you do not have clerics. It is not as good for injuries, but is in many ways more flexible, and also comes with a type of Sight useful for diagnosis and triage..." 

He goes through a list of all the commonly-known Velgarth Gifts.

"–and Mindhealing can also work similarly to compulsions, though that is not its main use in Velgarth," he finishes. 

Malduoni's expression goes still again. 

"Is it also visible to our spells for detecting enchantments." 

"...I am not sure, I do not have it myself and have not tested it. I suspect not. It is not visible to mage-sight. I do think that enchantments would be clearly visible to the specialized Mindhealing Sight." 

"Interesting." A long pause. "I wish to politely request that you keep this between us, unless the pharaoh asks directly. Though I suppose Abadar may know of the Gift's existence via the Velgarth gods." It's not necessarily going to be salient, though, or packaged in a form useful to humans anticipating his moves. 

....he is increasingly suspecting that, like, a significant fraction of important people in Cheliax are already mind-controlled which is terrifying and kind of brilliant.

Malduoni hears that, of course. He doesn't smile. 

(Leareth has been assuming this for a while, mostly on the grounds that it's what he would do.) 

"We have at least several more hours of catching one another up to do," Malduoni says; it's directly mainly at Leareth. "I do want to briefly touch on what your plans will be after that, in case that needs coordination." 

Leareth mulls on that for thirty seconds or so. 

"...I think I must return to Sothis. My mage-scholars are there, and in the absence of a workable interworld Gate-technique, the only way I can actually return to Velgarth is with Fazil, or," his lips twitch, "by asking Abadar nicely." 

"Do you think you can invent an interworld Gate in a week. It seems that bringing your army over is not feasible without that." 

Leareth thinks in silence for even longer, this time. 

"I would place nine out of ten odds that I can, if I throw enough of my own and my mage-scholars' time at the problem." 

...Nod. 

"I can work with that." Glance at Hagan and Mahdi. "And what would your plans be, by default?" 

"Uh, pick up consumables and study the geography of Cheliax. We could do that more usefully with more knowledge of the invasion plans but obviously often work with less."

"I can give you some amount of context."

Malduoni intends to give them exactly the level of context he feels comfortable with Abadar knowing. He will probably give Leareth more, because - well, he's at this point placing a lot of trust in Leareth's judgement. Not with the most rock-solid justification he can imagine having, but...for this, he thinks it's enough.

They have invasion plans to discuss (he doesn't know exactly where he would put Mahdi and Hagan, yet, but can at least describe the general shape of what he'd want them to do), and magic theory to discuss, and this will easily eat the rest of the day. After lunch, which is a not-very-fancy meal brought in for them, Malduoni very politely shoos Mahdi and Hagan elsewhere so he can talk to Leareth privately. 

They will head back out into Azir. It feels a little surreal, to be back in a normal city where people are going about normal lives. They don't talk to each other. There's not much that wouldn't be dumb to say, out loud, out here.  

"I miss Fazil," he says eventually.

"Yeah. Maybe soon."

Leareth extricates himself around sundown. He's equipped with half of a set of paired magic mirrors, a communication method that's apparently very secure - this is obnoxious to pull off with Velgarth magic - though of course only insofar as the two ends are. Given who's in possession of the two ends, though, he is kind of less worried about that. 

(Well, Nefreti Clepati demonstrably can rob him of all his possessions, but he doesn't actually think she has a motive to do it again, and also it wouldn't help her or Nethys that much, neither of them are going to be able to impersonate him even as far as the proving-his-identity questions.) 

After a really extensive amount of back and forth, he has Malduoni's tentative agreement to trust his judgement on Abadar. Which is, currently, that Abadar is probably worth allying with, if allying is what Abadar wants to do here. There are quite a lot of pieces there, and caveats, but - ultimately it's not favourable to Abadar's goals to have Cheliax in the hands of Asmodeus, and that seems like the strongest driver here. 

He goes to find Mahdi and Hagan. 

They haven't wandered too far. "Back to where we left from?"

"I think so."