Ed and For'Ten had walked across the border rather uneventfully. The only hitch had some when they passed around town. It was then that they became aware of a presence following them from quite some distance behind. Ed had made it his goal to ignore him in the hopes that their boring days of walking would be enough to discourage him and make him turn back. Unfortunately, logical thinking only worked on the logical. If they hadn't been so close to the border they would have just used their magic and traveled ahead a few hundred miles and lost the poor idiot.
That poor idiot happened to be the scholar. His blind fascination with the merfolk led him farther from water and further inland as he chased the only two people who seemed to be able to track the merman that he had met earlier.
Unfortunately, this was a COMPLETELY misguided assumption. These two weren't chasing The Dirge at this point. They were trying to make their way north. They knew that word of a notorious pirate would spread in the north like wildfire and make him hiding nearly impossible.
What they were after was getting as far north as possible, as quickly as possible, to help Loran and Morgan find the souls in the north. The longer they stayed so far south the less helpful Ed's ability to track them stayed. They needed to help by getting there as quickly as possible.
The other benefit of letting The Dirge remain on the loose was that it gave For'Ten a very good reason to be in the north. He was a respected keeper of the peace. His band of knights were as good as the highest law of the land in the south. If anyone questioned him he could claim that he was tracking a known wanted pirate to arrest or kill him.
It wasn't until Ed and For'Ten made it over the border that a bit of good fortune struck for them. While they crossed over with absolutely no difficulty. A certain scholar was immediately apprehended by a virtual parade of the taxmen.
They had been tipped off that someone was coming across the border and needed to be dealt with. They had actually been given exceedingly accurate information. Far more than they normally got from their benefactor.
And just as the scholar was getting ready to cross he had been surrounded on all sides by taxmen.
For any normal person, this would have been intimidating at a minimum or terrifying at the other end. The scholar had never had the normal reactions to things that most people did. This was why he pursued his life's ambition so fervently. He really wasn't in control of normal thoughts like normal everyday people.
Instead of fear or concern, he was immediately interested in the swarm of people. "You certainly are studious about keeping the border safe. You can ignore me, I am just hunting merfolk."
The nearest taxman to him was one of the older members of the order. He stepped forward and looked at the scholar. The taxmen were by nature non-descript. If I gave you a description of what he looked like now, you could run into the same one, two weeks later and I would have to give you a new description. That was the nature of their organization.
It's harder to avoid the tax collectors of the southern nations if you are unable to identify one from a distance. They never had the same face. They might have the same build or similar colored hair, but they never looked the same way twice.
The real beauty of the situation was that they didn't realize that they were an arm of the gods themselves. The southern lands were generally distrusting of the northern gods, and because of this fact, the gods had developed new ways to keep an eye on them. For Golliad this had been the greatest pun he had ever fabricated. What better way to keep up with his image as the collector god than to be the silent benefactor of the Taxmen.
Did that mean that his little organization didn't benefit the souther peoples? Absolutely not, quite the opposite as a matter of fact. He was able to collect taxes and other goods and distribute them as needed for those who needed them the most. He couldn't readily just drop a pile of miracles on some town. This wasn't who the divines had been in the south. They were generally distrusted because the humans trusted them so much. For someone like Golliad, it was so much better, and more to his nature, to work from the shadows.
The taxmen had been ordered to shuffle this man north but keep him out of the way of the previous two travelers that they had just made sure crossed the border. They weren't sure why these two were allowed to cross until they had seen For'Ten from a distance. They assumed that their crossing was allowed by the government and that was why they had been ordered to step aside.
Now some of you might wonder why the tax collecting organization was acting as border patrol. Well, that was actually based more on luck than by any real power brokers. In order to keep the demi-humans from traveling so freely in the north, the church had levied taxes on "non-believers" at the border. The price of crossing for Demi-humans was high, not so high as to be impossible, but high enough.
As a rebuke to the humans, the council of the southern lands had given the taxmen a request. They asked them to do the same. They wanted to encourage trade, but they wanted tariffs on all goods that might interfere with the economy of any significant establishment in the south. Because of this, the Taxmen had to be in the know about everything. They had records of all business and trading. And they were exceptionally good at their job.
So what happened was they weren't really an organized border patrol. Because of their abilities, they were extremely good at collecting tariffs and taxes and hardly anyone made it across the border without coming into contact with them. This made them an excellent deterrent. Better than any military patrol in fact. So much better than most people avoided open borders unless they knew of the few spots that the taxmen avoided.
The scholar asked each person who came up to him a slew of questions. He asked their names, where they were from, how did they get to the border, had they stopped a merman also, the list of questions went on and on.
The taxmen were more amused with the eccentric man than they were concerned. They knew how to answer with half-truths if they answered at all. Most of them smiled and just keep passing him onto the next person. Down a line that led him quietly across the border and away from Ed and For'Ten.
At the end of this line stood a man holding the reigns to a donkey. This donkey had also been part of the specific instructions they had been given about how to deal with him. The scholar was handed the reigns and forced onto the donkey's back. During the whole time he was being ushered onto the donkey the scholar never stopped asking questions. His constant talking was almost like a parrot who didn't know when to shut up.
The man who had held onto the donkey while the scholar got himself on finally spoke anything of real meaning. "Scholar." A simple word was all he said.
The scholar stopped talking. The lack of a response to his questions as well as the mans force with which he said his name stopped him more than anything else. "Yes?" he squeaked out.
"Your fare has been paid across the border. This donkey will take you where you need to go to find what you have been looking for. Take this letter explaining the rest."
The scholar's eyes lit up. "Oh, I can find what I'm looking for?" His absent-minded nature had ignored anything else that had been said to him. That didn't mean that he didn't take the letter that was offered to him. It just meant that he shoved it into his clothing without really thinking about it. "Well, then fabulous! I must get on my way. I really must find this merman again without fail."
The taxman standing closest to him smiled. Inside he was worried about what was wrong with this man. The other part of him was certain the man was riding off to his doom. The taxman simply smiled and slapped the donkey on its hindquarters. It slowly started walking away.
The scholar didn't stop talking about merfolk the whole time he was being led way from the border. The sound of his voice carried over the air for quite sometime before the image of him disappeared around a corner and out of sight.