"I know a guy who's a bit of an expert on algothulls. Help me come up with some questions for him?"

She would have preferred to make this a relatively quick report, while she's still emotionally unsettled but - she would've also preferred Tar-Baphon didn't open negotiations with Alghollthus in the first place. What she prefers does not really have that much influence on what happens. "Sure. There's the obvious ones about - do alghollthus ever actually ally with surface-dwellers? What interests do they have that are likely to overlap with Tar-Baphon's? How united are they, should we expect that if this works out for him this is a dozen of them, hundreds, millions?"

"Why didn't he do this earlier, if it's not a ploy, he was losing before. Orv's where Erum-Hel is from, is that likely to be related? - Elie's presence probably breaks Aroden's assurance we wouldn't see him again, being itself unforeseen -

- you all right? I can call Marit in to plan the Commune questions."

...Well, that does happen sometimes. "I'm well enough. You might want to pull Marit in anyways, just to have a third head on it, but there's no reason I can't. Erum-Hel isn't a consideration I'd been thinking of, do you know him to have any ties to Alghollthus? Orv is a big place."

"I was thinking only that that's what he got the last time he tried to stir up some allies there. What I am doing is probably the equivalent of a person from the Darklands saying 'oh, they're from Avistan, I've heard of Avistan, have they met my cousin Dzarz? He lives there.'" She sticks her head out the door to call Marit. "Maybe he didn't try either Erum-Hel or this when we had Arazni because she had contacts in the Darklands. I never asked. What gifts?"

"Magic items - nothing I've seen that looks custom-made for this yet - and slaves."

"If I were Tar-Baphon and laying a trap I'd bait it a little harder than that. Though of course perhaps he knows I think so. What do alghollthu even want with land-creature slaves? If they eat them you'd think cows would do as well."

"If it was obvious bait there'd be people we know among the offerings. I don't know what Alghollthus do with slaves."

"They have fleshshaping," Marit says, walking in. "It's said they made gillmen that way. Why are we talking about alghollthus?"

"Magallentis is courting some. Probably more than the three to five that I've seen in the scry so far, I don't know what size groups they tend to organize into."

"Huh."

"I want to ask Aroden some questions, though this is probably downstream of Elie's presence here and He probably can't see it all that well. Do you still have the scry up, Alfirin -"

"Yes. They do not appear to have noticed it yet."

Marit makes a face neatly expressive of his annoyance about the fact that people being scried sometimes indicate having noticed this. "I suppose that at least lets us follow the alghollthus later. Presuming it's a trap, what's the trap -"

" - that if we had Arazni back and also had learned nothing at all since last time we really would just Teleport on over to steal all their toys?"

"Not baited very heavily, for that - I'd guess if it's false it's not a trap, it's a distraction. Or a piece of misinformation to make some future trap seem more believable. Everyone else I checked on was in about the places you'd expect, except for Kritasheere who was mind blanked."

"If it were my trap it'd have a moving piece," says Marit, "which is Elie."

"Imagine that I am shocked, shocked, to hear you say that."

"He is a supposed time traveller with a story custom-made to upset us and also explain why he won't answer any more questions, and an archmage, with whom we've done one major operation that got sold out. I want to know what he suggests we do if you tell him about Magallentis."

"And whose story is confirmed by an Abadaran miracle. I trust him, unless you're proposing that was faked, somehow, in which case I'd love to hear how."

Elie claimed, 'She checked with a miracle that I am what I say I am – an ordinary human wizard – and not, say, Mephistopheles. I could easily be an ordinary human wizard with nefarious intentions!' 

Marit's not going to tell them to get their stories straight, though he does suspect at this point that there's a little bit of them conferring on stories going on. "Different person present for the miracle and the archmagery? Genuinely a human time-traveller, also and unrelatedly working for Tar-Baphon? Genuinely a useful ally who might have good suggestions about the alghollthus? It's a cheap test. I do not propose that the situation merits conducting any expensive ones."

Alfirin likes and trusts him a lot, more than Iomedae's ever seen her like and trust anyone. It makes sense. It's almost certainly very good for her.

"Sure, call him in, he might know things about Alghollthus that we don't. I just don't think we should assume that if he does know something that's reason to expect he's leading us into another trap."

That feels maybe a little more defensive than Alfirin usually gets, which means it's deeply unwise to push. He'll ask Iomedae later, not in front of Alfirin, if she got that sense too. "I'll do a Sending," he says, and steps outside to do that.

Iomedae watches him, a bit fixedly.