The Sidhe by Charlotte Ashe

Author:Charlotte Ashe
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Interlude Press
Published: 2015-12-18T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-Two

Sehrys reminded Brieden more and more of the elf he had been at the beginning of their journey. He was both hypersensitive and aloof, crying into Brieden’s arms one moment and refusing to look him in the eye the next.

Brieden was very worried.

As he drove them along the winding road toward The Border, Brie­den held Sehrys’s hand and tried desperately to keep him enter­tained with near-constant chatter. He told Sehrys about Ravurmik and his grandmother and the river where he and his brother had liked to swim. He told Sehrys about the Academy and all the mis­chief he had gotten up to with the spoiled boys of Villalu Proper. He told Sehrys about the different weapons he had learned to use there, hoping that might give Sehrys some comfort. He asked Sehrys if he would make them stew when they set up camp, and then talked about which root vegetables he preferred.

Then he asked if Sehrys would play his pipes while they rode. At first Sehrys demurred, but he smiled when Brieden fetched them from the carriage after they stopped to water the horses, and when he finally began to play, Brieden knew he should have just asked him to play in the first place. The tension rolled from Sehrys as he wrapped himself in the music. The fear was still there, but Sehrys seemed to breathe it out into the notes, releasing it from his body as he filled their path with music.

Brieden let Sehrys lose himself in the music and close his eyes as it washed over him. It neutralized what little effectiveness he had as a lookout, but it was worth the sacrifice to soothe some of his pain. And, it also seemed to distract Sehrys from the many grisly details Brieden noticed around them as they passed through the countryside and into the forest, drawing ever-closer to The Border.

Things like trees embedded with iron-tipped arrows and smeared with plum-colored sidhe blood.

Or the leathery, discolored human ears nailed to a fencepost.

Or the shriveled, graying sidhe ears nailed to another.

Brieden was very glad that Sehrys was too absorbed in his pipes to notice the large boulder with a message smeared across it in dark purple blood. The message was a passage from the T’aukhi Scrolls, the sacred writings of the Followers of Frilau:

To tame the mighty sidhe, to bind him in iron and use him for the service of man is a kindness, for only through this may he pay penance for his cruelty and find his way to Summerland.

The Frilauan faith had been gaining traction, especially in the few generations since the House of Panloch had converted. But this was the first time since the bloody raid on his village all those years ago that Brieden had seen evidence of exactly how far the followers of the mysterious prophet were willing to go in their quest for religious dominance.

He quickened their pace, gripping the reins tight enough to turn his knuckles white until the boulder and its message was far behind them.

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