sithe

9 ~ The Sithe

This one shouldn’t take long because we know bugger all about them, that’s the theory anyway. Young Kvothe has never heard of them and focuses his search more upon the Amyr. But elder Kote has since learnt that the Sithe are a faction among the Fae. Powerful, with good intentions... but let’s talk to Bast first, he seems to know the most about the the Sithe.

‘You don’t understand them if you use the term ‘good intentions.’ But if any of the Fae can be said to work for the good, it’s them. Their oldest and most important charge is to keep the Cthaeh from contact with anyone. With Anyone.’

But Bast is only 150 years old and doesn’t know everything, this oldest and most important charge was given to them before his time… but by whom? Someone important no doubt but before we get onto that mystery there is one other Bast mention of them too, and a very important one as well. When he is making his holly crown defence against any future skin dancer attack, he also talks once again of the Sithe.

‘I’m running dark on this myself, Reshi. I know the Sithe used to ride out wearing holly crowns when they hunted the skin dancers…’

If you factor in the similarity in their bows we can clearly see the links between the Sithe and the White Riders forming that make them one and the same thing. Kote also knows of an old Faen song about them called the White Riders Hunt.

Rode they horses white as snow. Silver blade and white horn bow,

Wore they fresh and supple boughs, Red and green upon their brows.

Where has he heard this from? you might suspect that Felurian may have taught it to him, it was originally a faen song after all, maybe Illien wrote it, he wrote everything else it seems, it might have been something he picked up as a child listening to faerie stories but young Kvothe originally say’s that he has never heard of the Sithe. We can actually glean that Kvothe must have remembered it (perfectly, of course) from the old Vintish book he found later in the archives, A Quainte Compendium of Folke Belief, in which the author recorded ‘songs about the grey ladies and the white riders’. Now this is very interesting because this book was written two hundred years ago and thus predates Bast but it is by it’s very name a book of mortal folk belief. Since every mortal who ever tumbles into and returns from the Fae (a very small number) is usually mad and mostly dead very soon after and we must assume the songs and stories did not come from them. Yet these songs did come to mortal attention long ago, possibly from as far back as the demon days, when these faen white riders must have visited mortal lands themselves and done so regularly and genially enough for this song to be known here, hinting that there must have been some mortal/fae collusion too but this forgotten folk song of Temerant is definitely an original faen song written about one of their own faen factions favourite pastimes…hunting skin dancers. It is a song about the Sithe and their enemies, and these true enemies are not the actual mortal skin owners themselves but are the faen masters who control the poor mortal puppets in question, and this other fae foe faction were called the Mahael-Uret.

Now there is no reason to assume that the Mahael-Uret mob have anything to do whatsoever with the chandrian, but the fact they do share a common enemy with the Sithe cannot be overlooked. And the enemy of my enemy is my friend sort of thing.

Small crumbs, yes, but I work with what I’m given. The Sithe once came to mortal to hunt down skin dancers. This actually makes perfect sense as a faen entity is the only ‘demon’ capable of controlling a skin dancer but would need a mortal body to possess in the first place, like one did to the waystone mercenary and who’s language this puppet was forced to speak in which I’m going to christen Eld Faen* which was the language spoken in the time of it’s ancient master and is all it had to work with. Since there aren’t any mortals in fae, the dancers masters must be historically tied to Temerant by default. We have another account of them doing just this in Trapis’ tale where he talks explicitly about a rank among the demons ‘who stole the skins of men and wore them like clothes’. One level below Encanis in the demon list of perceived badness which gives them another vague chandrian link and which would clearly mark these demons in particular as being what we now call skin dancers.

[Did they hunt in the mael?]

Taken all together this makes for a rather interesting triangle since we are told that it was actually Tehlu who ousted these particular demons all by himself, but the pieces of the puzzle fitting now has Tehlu/Menda as doing the same job as the white riders/Sithe did and therefore this will also link this ‘good’ faen faction called the Sithe to the real do-gooder Tehlu from Skarpi#2. The enemy of my enemy…

Tehlu anyways

Confused? I’m not surprised, but that is what is written and that is what we have to work with.

Singers

Putting Menda/Tehlu in the same camp as the Sithe ideology would provide another link to another of the chandrian’s triad of enemies, the Order Amyr. According to Skarpi, the Order were formed at the same meeting that Tehlu and his angels were present and the Amyr’s number one purpose is clearly stated as being to confound Lanre and all who follow him, ie. the chandrian. That is why they exist. ‘nothing will prevent us from attaining the greater good’ said their leader which are very similar to the words that Bast spoke earlier about the Sithe sort of working for ‘the good’. In my opinion. this ‘good’ they speak of really ought to be the same good and is the good decreed by Aleph’s justice to bring an end to the demon days once and for all and to deal with the existential threat of the chandrian which would mean that the Seven’s enemies the Amyr and the Sithe should really both be present in the same room for the same reason at the same time. All the people in the world, be they demons, (fae) or mortals have all made their future intentions known by their own choices and are all now standing side by side on the same side of the path that Menda, as Aleph’s instrument of justice, drew in the dirt outside Lady Perial’s front door. And Aleph is there too to protect them, but on the other side are those who refused to cross.

‘(The chandrian )were the first six people to refuse Tehlu’s choice of the path, and he cursed them to wander the corners—‘

But I shall wait to deal with later…

If this is true tinfoil, then we are going to need a link to make it work and Skarpi doesn’t disappoint, you might not think so but it’s all clearly written there for those with eyes to see. Whilst there is no actual mention of any Sithe in the room, we don’t get to hear hear the whole of the story. Not only is the ending cut short abruptly by the actions of the church justice Erlus, but Kvothe also arrives too late to hear the children request this day’s tale, and at six bells one of them must have asked for this exact story in Skarpi’s talent contest, probably along the lines of ‘ I want to hear what happened to Selitos next’ or some such story. Kvothe was late (damn that kid!) and thus valuable first hand knowledge is now lost to us… damn that kid. Now I don’t think the Sithe to be are still among the remaining Ruach who were too scared to get involved in great matters, but rather they have already played their part and made their Sithe decisions some small time before Kvothe finally arrived, something that is sort of confirmed by this other ancient ruach namer Skarpi who before he makes his own exit gives Kvothe a little half-smile when he managed to catch his eye.

‘but at the same time, deep inside me, something selfish was saying, if you’d come earlier and found out what you needed to know, it wouldn’t be so bad now, would it?‘

a bit of our mind reading name knowing stuff going on here maybe? (Read big brother and then come back later if you don’t understand), it’s shaky, yes, but it is strongly hinted that what we need to know, the tale about what happened next was the story spoken for everyone else to hear, children, barman, Erlus & co. included, all neatly explained by Skarpi in the earlier part of this story, a part Kvothe missed because he was late for class…damn that kid.

Every single word used in these books is far too important to be ignored as mere filler, some moreso than others, and as well as this, (in addition, also) we know from our reading that Pat Doesn’t Waste Ink! which only goes to highlight one small but very important word in Skarpi#2 that is easily overlooked in such a large book but has been bugging at me for years now… the word Too.

…too.

Too, tōō adv. as well. in addition. also.

‘Most of the Ruach hung back from Selitos, too. They were afraid and did not wish to become involved in great matters. But Tehlu stepped forward…

So this means that before the Ruach had a choice to join Selitos, they had Already turned down another option. That is written as clear as day. Some of them who could not just forget Lanre’s destructive actions so easily decided to sign up to the Order Amyr, and some would go on to sign up for the angel program… But ‘most of the Ruach’ refused Selitos too which means that they must have already refused another choice of option at this meeting, possibly even more than one option was available, and they were all attending this meeting to discuss what is best defined as the question ‘What are we going to do about the unkillable problem that is Lanre’? The combined findings of this meeting would be that they were offered at least three choices that they could have signed up for depending on their willingness to get involved in progressive plans. One option was becoming an extension of Lord Aleph’s judicial plan which would involve volunteering to join the Angels. This was an option already offered to and indeed turned down by Selitos as being not good enough who instead decided that it was necessary to form another group with a different tactic of confounding Lanre and all who follow him, and some of the Ruach clearly decided that this was much more their cup of tea. And the most logical extension to our options would thus be for some of them to sign up to do the work of Aleph best in a plan which was missed by Kvothe but would allow them to threaten the chandrian existence in a third Aleph allowed shape and form by joining the faen branch of operations and become a Sithe. The Sithe were charged as being full time guardsman to something equally important in the grand scheme of things who would stop anyone (chandrian included) from gaining access to the entity that is the Cthaeh.