The Gleamspire border pass greeted Gaius with a sturdy palisade and a gate wide enough to let a frigate through. The crags leading up to the gate were carved to house a set of ivory-white pylons the size of a young tree. Caladonians insisted that these things were sent to them by their deities as a show of celestial power.

  The translucent prism crowning the pylon was said to produce a beam of intense light that in a matter of seconds could turn a suit of plate armor into a puddle of fire that wouldn't seem out of place in the hottest nethers of the underworld.

  With half a dozen of those pylons staring at him, Gaius didn't care who or what might have been chasing him. He stopped the caravan a short distance away from the tiny guardhouse propping up the palisade.

  No one was coming out to greet him and Gaius was about ready to go see what was going on but decided to give common courtesy a shot first.

  He cleared his throat in a loud and insistent manner.

  The guardhouse coughed right back at him. A shutter creaked open and a loaded arbalest popped out.

  "I don't know what you did to Mallia's pylons, but I shall deliver her wrath in their stead, alef."

  On the other end of the arbalest, Gaius saw a tall, olive-skinned Caladonian wearing a shiny cuirass on top of a gold-stitched shirt. The guard's salt and pepper mustache that curved upwards more than it had any right to would have been the most ridiculous thing about him, had a pair of spectacles with mirrors for lenses not been perched on his nose.

  The guard's face, along with his words and the ordeal Gaius had to go through earlier, were just too much to handle. A confused "What?" was the only thing he could utter.

  That was enough to raise the guard's eyebrow and lower his weapon. "You speak!" He sounded almost as confused as Gaius.

  "You don't get too many foreigners here, do you?" Gaius asked.

  "We get plenty, my good man, just not when the moon's as full as the queen's corset. Didn't you hear the call?"

  "What call?"

  The guard struggled for a moment with the idea he had to explain something this obvious. He put his arbalest down and scratched his head for good measure before saying, "What call? The one that mere minutes ago enveloped this entire mountain range, warning us that alefs were on the loose. The one telling us to stay inside while Mallia welcomed these accursed husks into her kingdom."

  Gaius heard about Mallia, the Caladonian goddess of death and the counterpart to Nova, their goddess of life, so he asked the other obvious question. "What's an a-lef?"

  The guard looked at him like he was a lost child. "Alefs? Ale fiends? The plague of Siembra?" Gaius wasn't showing any signs of getting it, so the guard elaborated, "Dumber than ogres, tougher than hydras, pale as ash. Once a month, a swarm of them crawls out of the mountains to tear us all to pieces in some unholy rampage." The guard raised his spectacles up to his forehead and started fiddling with his mustache. "I'll be honest, when I heard movement outside, I was certain you were one of them."

  "That's what those things are," Gaius mumbled to himself.

  The guard heard that. "So you do know them!"

  "I've met a few on my way here," Gaius admitted.

  "And lived to tell the tale?" The guard squinted and placed a hand on the arbalest. "Who are you?"

  Now that was a question. Pretending to be a powerful wizard's messenger was a good way to seem more trouble than you were worth, and as such, guaranteed the least amount of scrutiny on the border. But now that Gaius was no longer a lone rider without much baggage and instead was driving a caravan full of presumably expensive stuff, that wouldn't fly. And explaining exactly what happened back there with Vasily was too unbelievable, even if it was the truth.

  "Just a merchant lucky enough to own a couple of very fine stallions."

  "Must have been a close call," the guard said after a short whistle. Gaius' clothes were intentionally shabby to begin with, but now, covered in road dirt and bits of alef brain, his getup looked like a rock troll's been using him for a chew toy.

  Even so, the gears began to visibly turn inside the guard's head. "Hold on for just a second," he said. "You're that merchant the town's been going on about the past few weeks. Vasily's Emporium, right?"

  It was Gaius' turn to put two and two together. Of course, he heard of Vasily, a Slavian mogul who owned numerous stores all over the continent and probably twice as many on the Slavian side of the ocean. Why someone that important would be traveling alone on some country road, Gaius couldn't say, but after his run-in with alefs he could safely claim that stranger things have indeed happened.

  Driving a famous merchant's caravan was a pretty lousy way to keep a low profile, and one didn't have to be a master thief to figure that out. "Of course. Just hauling some goods for the big opening," Gaius said, leaning into his usually nonexistent Mystlund accent.

  "You don't look like a Vasily to me," the guard noted.

  Gaius had to remind himself not to grin. "How many Vasily's Emporiums do you think there are, constable?" He didn't wait for the guard's answer. "Eighty-six," he said with the boastful confidence of someone who didn't just make this number up. "Eighty-seven if we count the one about to open in your fine town. The boss man didn't become a world-class merchant by selling knickknacks off a cart. He knows how to delegate, and I'm that delegation. I'll be running your local branch of Vasily's Emporium. Gaius Chanter, pleased to meet you."

  "Mallia's tits," the guard blurted out and disappeared from the window. Moments later, he stepped out of the guardhouse, walked up to the caravan, and shook Gaius' hand. It was the firm handshake of a man with something to prove. "Captain Esven, at your service," the guard introduced himself. "I just have to know, what possessed you to come here today of all days, Master Chanter? Didn't you know today was alef day?"

  Esven's question reminded Gaius that he wasn't acting like your common merchant would upon encountering anything that even remotely resembled those alef creatures.

  "Look, captain, I heard rumors about this place, but those were mere rumors. If a man heeded every rumor that reached his ears, he'd never leave his house, I say." Gaius then raised the pitch of his voice. "So if you don't mind a suggestion, it wouldn't kill you to put a crier's booth at the mountain's base. Or at least a sign with a drawing of an alef and a warning to stay away from this place come full moon. Those things were terror incarnate, and I'm lucky to have my head still attached to my shoulders right now."

  Esven opened his mouth but stopped himself mid-breath. After thinking for a moment, he said, "We may actually do something like that. It's just everyone knows about alefs around these parts." His tone was quite apologetic.

  "Well, I'm not from around these parts."

  "And now I see how that can be a problem. Siembra isn't your ordinary goblin-infested backwater, but those who've never been here can't know that," Esven said. "I'll take care of this first thing in the morning, but do me a favor, when you're introducing yourself to the magistrate later, try not to mention your little adventure, deal?"

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  Having a captain of the town guard owe him one was an opportunity Gaius could not pass up. "I've already forgotten all about it," he said.

  Esven replied with an exaggerated wink. "You have any trouble with the locals, you let me know, Gaius. I can call you Gaius, right?"

  "I'll settle for nothing less than Guy."

  The lawman and the thief were both convinced they were getting the better end of the deal.

  After the two of them exchanged satisfied nods, Gaius said, "Now, can we move this along? I'm not looking forward to meeting any more alefs today."

  "Anything for my new good friend," Esven said with perhaps a bit too much honey in his voice. He then got to work on getting the gate unbarred. It was too massive for a single man, and Esven was taking his time with it. During a short break, he noticed Gaius peeking at the road behind the caravan and said, "No need to worry, Guy. I assigned this post to myself exactly because it doesn't see a lot of action. One of the perks of being the captain. Say what you will about Mallia and her holy firepower, but I'm really not big on the smell of crisp alef. Past two months, I haven't seen one of those devils around here."

  Despite Esven's assurances, Gaius was still feeling alefs breathing down his neck. He moved the caravan closer to the gate and offered to help. The captain puffed his mustache with the kind of prideful indignation only Caladonians were capable of, and got back to work.

  Friendly or not, it was in Gaius' blood to feel uncomfortable around any and all lawmen. "And these alefs, where do they come from?" he asked just to break the silence.

  Esven turned away from the gate and said, "You didn't hear this from me, Guy, because as the magistrate put it during my captain orientation, I now have an image to uphold, but we don't really know."

  "You don't? Then why do you call them ale fiends? Do they like ale? Do they produce it? Are they somehow made from it?"

  "You haven't spent a lot of time in Caladonia, have you, Guy?"

  "Can't say that I have," Gaius admitted.

  The captain cleared his throat. "It all started with the dwarves. The Trogsmasher clan lost their precious hall to some invasion or cave-in. I'm not sure which. Doesn't matter. The point is, they were looking for a place to stay and they liked Siembra for it. Don't know what they offered the magistrate, but among the common folk here, their clan is famous for their special ale. There weren't many objections to them moving in." By that point, Esven forgot all about the gate and was pacing before the caravan using his hands to help get his points across.

  "For a while, everyone was happy. The dwarves had a place to stay and a mountain range to dig into. We had our fresh ale. And the magistrate had a boost to commerce. But since it's dwarves we're talking about, inevitably one of their mines broke into a tunnel our ancestors never intended to be discovered. Enter alefs. We tried throwing our troops at them, we tried sealing the tunnels off, we even have a standing bounty that promises a pile of gold to whoever manages to deal with the devils for good. So far, no one who's ever gone down there to try returned. And since we have no way to figure out what they are or what they want, we call the buggers ale fiends. As a reminder that sometimes good ale comes with too high a price tag."

  "I didn't sign up for a sermon, captain," Gaius said once Esven stopped talking.

  "Of course, of course." Esven adjusted his cuirass, got his shoulder under the bar, and lifted it with a low grunt. "And don't you worry, tomorrow I'll send out a few scouts to comb the mountains for any stragglers and a few carpenters with them to put up those signs we talked about."

  "An image to uphold, right," Gaius said without paying much attention to the actual words. There was a very good chance those scouts would discover a certain headless body and then a certain bodiless head. Vasily's enterprise was large enough for someone to put that macabre two-piece puzzle together and recognize the old mogul. When that happened, Gaius intended to not be anywhere near Siembra. Especially since he now saw Vasily's caravan and everything inside it as a bonus of sorts for all his trouble.

  It was time for him to cash in that favor. "Captain," he said. "Is there a chance you could fast track me through customs? I have an errand to run with my Mystlund suppliers before I can start working on the store proper."

  "I shouldn't," Esven said. "But who's going to stop me? I'm the captain."

  "I'll be sure to mention how helpful you were to the magistrate. Without letting him in on the specifics."

  An avaricious grin appeared on Esven's face. He finished dragging the gate open and invited Gaius through. "Just come to me tomorrow afternoon and I'll see what I can do."

  "I was actually hoping to get this over with today, captain. Surely we can figure something out?"

  Esven grinned and beckoned Gaius to come closer.

  The caravan's horses took a few steps forward, allowing Gaius to take a peek beyond the gate. There, he saw Gleamspire mountains spill over into a wide basin surrounded on all sides with smooth, almost polished-looking rocks. In that basin, he saw Siembra. It wasn't one of Mystlund's bloated cities that could house a million people, but it was no thatched village.

  The cozy town had its fair share of wide streets with neatly stacked two-story brick houses on each side. It had an orchard of olive trees, a sturdy-looking town hall, an excess of inns and taverns, and an open space densely packed with tents and lean-tos.

  On the far side of the basin, Gaius could see the dwarven quarter Esven was telling him about. The bearded miners had themselves a handful of stocky stone cottages rivaled in number by a series of distilleries covered in smoke and brass piping.

  Above the dwarven part of town, Gaius spotted a road that culminated in a gate, not unlike the one his caravan was standing in. Only there, the pylons weren't dormant. The gate was blocking the view, but still, Gaius could see bursts of brilliant light fill the air with a dazzling display of Mallia's destructive power.

  "Alefs?" Gaius asked.

  "Alefs." Esven confirmed.

  "How long does it usually take?"

  "All through the night. But you're welcome to try and figure something out. I'm never going to say no to a man willing to risk his life over a brief delay. I'll even cheer you on. From a safe distance."

  "Point taken," Gaius said. "Now, can you perhaps show me where my store is instead? I think I'll work on organizing stocks today." As far as Gaius knew, he did a clean job lifting the tablets. No one was breathing down his neck. Spending a night in Siembra wasn't that bad. Maybe the shop even had some extra goods for him to pilfer.

  "I'll do you one better." Esven hopped onto the caravan and got comfortable. "Go down, then take a right," he said, gesturing at the road ahead.

  Gaius flicked the reins but looked back at the open and unguarded gate. "Shouldn't you be watching this thing?"

  Esven roared in laughter. "Here's how I see it. If an alef appears, it gets roasted. And if some regular raiders decide to make a nuisance of themselves today of all days, well, all those alefs roaming the mountains right now need some exercise too."

  "You're the captain," Gaius said, wondering if everyone in Siembra was like Esven or if he was a one-of-a-kind specimen.

  As the caravan started moving, Esven jumped on the opportunity to agree with Gaius that he indeed was the captain. He then took things from there and explained how a position like his was crucial to a busy adventuring hub such as Siembra, and how despite that, the magistrate was never supportive of his ideas.

  Gaius half-listened to all this solely for the rare moments when Esven remembered he was supposed to be giving directions. But mostly, he was just uncomfortable with a constable sitting so close to him, and more importantly, to the precious stolen tablets. It took all of Gaius' willpower to stop his hand from reaching for the saddlebag.

  Preoccupied with not raising Esven's suspicion, Gaius ended up completely tuning out his question about something or other. The captain wasn't a fan of that, so he poked Gaius' side with his elbow.

  "Am I right?" he asked.

  "Yeah, yeah, sure," Gaius was eager to agree. His eyes darted to the lights coloring the leaden autumn sky above Siembra's gate. "Not every day you get to see a show like this," he said to excuse his absentmindedness.

  Esven, a proud Caladonian citizen who now had an in to talk about his homeland, did just that. "Ages ago, when you guys were still part of your little empire and our priests were just learning the truths of Nova and Mallia, we didn't yet know the holy words to tame their relics. Back then, Mallia's pylons fired on anyone reckless enough to approach the pass and would occasionally even go off on their own, gracing our ancestors with a brief glimpse of divine power." Esven slammed his heavy palm into Gaius' sore back. "You're in luck, Guy. Today, you get a chance to experience the same sight our ancestors did. Grab yourself a mug of our famous Trogsmasher ale or two and step outside around midnight. You'll get what I mean."

  "Wouldn't even dream of missing it, captain."

  As a kid in Mystlund, Gaius once broke into the local library and stole a book just to prove to his friends he could. He didn't know anyone he could unload the book off to, so he did the next best thing. He read it. The weighty tome was full of records dating back to the Old Empire. Lucky for young Gaius, these records were presented as exciting stories of heroism and valor. A decent section of them was dedicated to the empire's attempts of scaling what would come to be known as the Gleamspire mountains.

  Unlike Esven's inspired words, those cautionary tales didn't talk much about miracles and pretty lights. Instead, they warned anyone willing to listen to stay away from the mountains, as not a single scout regiment sent there was able to make it back.

  And even though in Gaius' times Caladonia had open borders and friendly relations with its northern neighbors, thanks to the lasting effect that book had on him, he only agreed to visit the kingdom when the job paid retirement money.

  This thought brought Gaius back to the tablets in his bag, so he put on a smile and turned to Esven, making sure to nod and hum to whatever the captain was telling him.

  Story Facts - Chapter 2