#the sithe

Continued from here

“Reshi, shut up and listen. Really listen.” Bast looked down for a moment, choosing his words carefully. “You know who the Sithe are?”

Kvothe shrugged. “They’re a faction among the Fae. Powerful, with good intentions--”

Bast waved his hands. “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 having any contact with anyone. With anyone.”

“I didn’t see any guards,” Kvothe said in the tones a man might use to soothe a skittish animal.

Bast ran his hands through his hair, leaving it in disarray. “I can’t for all the salt in me guess how you slipped past them, Reshi. If anyone manages to come in contact with the Cthaeh, the Sithe kill them. They kill them from a half-mile off with their long horn bows. Then they leave the body to rot. If a crow so much as lands on the body, they kill it too.”            - The Wise Man’s Fear, Chapter 105: Interlude -- A Certain Sweetness, pgs 762-763

This is the most we explicitly know about the Sithe. 

*gestures however*

At the very beginning of Wise Man’s Fear, Kvothe and Bast discuss the possibly-a-skindancer’s attack the previous night. Most specifically, they discuss how they can protect themselves if more come:

The innkeeper shrugged the comment away. “Last night has me thinking,” he said. “Wondering what we could do to make things a bit safer around here. Have you ever heard the song ‘The White Riders’ Hunt?” 

Bast smiled. “It was our song before it was yours, Reshi.” He drew a deep breath and sang in a sweet tenor: 

“Rode they horses white as snow. Silver blade and long horn bow. Wore they fresh and supple boughs, Red and green upon their brows.”          - Wise Man’s Fear, Chapter 1: Apple and Elderberry, pgs 5-6

Later, when Bast gets back from collecting the holly boughs, they speak of it more: 

[The innkeeper] reached over and pulled a single long branch from the bundle. “What do we do with this, anyway?”

Bast shrugged. “I’m running dark on this myself, Reshi. I know the Sithe used to ride out wearing holly crowns when they hunted down the skin dancers....”           - Wise Man’s Fear, Chapter 2: Holly, pg 13

My last piece of evidence (for now) is a bit of a longer shot. It’s in A Quainte Compendium of Folke Belief, the only book Kvothe can find in the Archives that mentions the Chandrian. 

“The author recorded songs about the grey ladies and the white riders.”

- Wise Man’s Fear, Chapter 16: Unspoken Fear, pg 149

The stretch here is that this is one sentence, seeming to indicate that the grey ladies and the white riders are connected. The colors are also similar. 

There are many more references on this subject that I expect I’ll go deeper into soon. This fascinates me for no identifiable reason.

TL;DR

The Sithe = The White Riders

They use long horn bows to kill anything that has made contact with the Cthaeh

They hunted skindancers with silver swords.

There were women close to them, possibly among them, since we haven’t seen any indications of sexism in Fae societies. (I’ll go more into this later)

Back to the Ademic word sentin (from this post)

Sentin = Sithe

Warriors who ride, and fight with bow and sword. Tempi, as an Adem, would also never think that women would be excluded from combat. It would be absurd.

I understood. “No,” I said. “She’s not one of the Adem.”

Tempi shook his head and pointed at Marten’s bow.

I shook my head. “No. She’s not a fighter at all.”

- Wise Man’s Fear, Chapter 81: The Jealous Moon, pg 603

I believe Kvothe is wrong. He did not understand what Tempi was asking.

Breaking it down:  Sentin. Presumably an Ademic word (though probably derived from another language). Can be represented by:            - Hands in front of you in a gripping gesture          - Sword          - Bow

Kvothe believes this means Ademic mercenary. But we find out later that: “The Adem word for one who takes the red is Cethan. And it is a very proud thing” (WMF Chap 114, pg 834).

Sentin and Cethan are obviously quite different.

So to understand we go back to the pantomimes Tempi uses to try to explain himself.

Hands in front in a gripping gesture.  We are meant to imagine this as gripping a sword with both hands. We don’t see any two-handed swords in Ademre while Kvothe is there. They may exist, but for Tempi, who uses a one-handed sword (and they have all seen him use it), if he was trying to get the group to understand he meant “sword-wielder,” he would have used one hand, in the way he normally uses his sword.

The sword and bow are pretty explicit. Whatever Tempi’s talking about, it uses a sword and a bow.

So what if the gesture is not this:

photo credit: [x]

But instead this:

photo credit: [x]

Two-handed gripping gesture in front of the body. The description isn’t any more specific.

So what do we know of that rides horses, wields sword and bow, and could fit the description “Death to men”?

The Sithe. 

The warrior Fae who guard the Cthaeh. (lol that rhymes)

Tempi is asking if Felurian is one of the Sithe. If the tale Dedan is telling is about the Sithe.

But wait, it never says the Sithe ride? Or include women? Yes, well. I am a nerd. And I have enough context clues to indicate that the above holds true for the Sithe.