LAST EDITED ON 04-10-11 AT 07:24 PM (EST)Scarlett, I had to go back and research it, but there was a precedent in the Fiji season.
All the other seasons with an HII, which started for real in Season 12 -- NO. All the seasons with an exile island, where the idol was hidden at exile, only ever had one idol at a time. It was the non-exile seasons where they had two, because they needed one in each camp, but Fiji was an exception. They hid the clues at Exile, but the idol was in camp -- one in each camp.
The non-exile seasons were China, Samoa, HvV, Nicaragua.
In Nicaragua the two pre-merge idols were never played until the last day.
In HvV, both idols were played at the merge, and only one was rehidden.
In China, James went out with both pre-merge idols in his pocket, at F7, and no idol was rehidden. The next TC would have been the last one to use an idol. There was no clue with the reward challenge though.
Now to Fiji, Yau & Earl were sharing their camp's idol, found pre-merge. Mookie had found the other idol pre-merge. At the merge, Mookie's idol was handed to Alex and Edgardo was voted out.
At that point, one idol was played and one pre-merge idol was still in the game. The idol was rehidden in the merge camp with clues on EI. After a few exiles, Yau found the clue that allowed Earl to find the second idol.
It looks like that is the only season with the same set of facts as this one. It seems that when an idol is played post-merge, one will be rehidden, even though there is another idol in play that has carried over from the pre-merge.