Drem
I’m enjoying the evolution of my lesser sidhe and their impact on my mortal characters. Drem, the archetype, was always meant to be an important character. But the ‘barrowmen’, from when they first appear as predators in Stonehill –
A small troop of white-skinned monsters guarded the bones. They held notched swords or sharpened sticks in long-fingered hands, and showed fangs as Mal approached.
Siobahn stood among them, smiling.
Two of the creatures separated from their brothers. They wore animal pelt and silk, and their long hair was knotted and greasy, their round eyes shadowed.
Liam hung between them. The lad had stopped screaming. When the monsters dropped him at Siobahn’s feet, he lay unmoving.
– and again in AtLS –
When the barrowman grabbed, it came not from the ground, but from the wall. The warding cant flashed, silver light burning bright enough to sting Avani’s eyes, and illuminated the tunnel and her foe.
No larger than a child, little more than a bundle of fur and claw and fang, the barrowman screeched as though burnt, and pressed back against the tunnel wall. It had flat, black eyes. Those eyes reflected back the silver of the ward even as it snarled.
“Get back!” Avani warned. “Stay away!”
The creature flexed sinew and claw, but didn’t shift from the wall. Avani glanced up and down the tunnel, but saw no sign of any other sidhe. She was wracked by a horrified certainty that an army of the creatures lurked just beyond her silver light, ready to swarm, and tear, and bite.
She thought she might vomit, but she kept her face still, the point of her sword aimed at the barrowman’s heart. If it were only one, she thought she could cut it down, perhaps even take it through the chest.
If it were only one.
“Go,” she ordered, and was distantly amazed to find her words were steady as her blade. “Go, and I won’t kill you. Now!” She flicked her sword. Silver light caught on the tip.
To her surprise, the creature turned and fled. It stumbled back up the tunnel toward higher ground. Just as it disappeared into the black beyond the spark of Avani’s warding, she caught its scent: ripe fish, and old soil, and rot.
– and an increasing role in Bone Cave –
Everin turned. Faolan stood tall in the lantern-light, the storm raging still at his back. The lesser sidhe drew close, flame reflected in flat black irises. Everin’s skin prickled. He knew them for what they were, little more than feral children, and he’d never hated the barrowmen as the flatlanders did, but he was wise enough to fear them.
“Near Beltane, Bail and its sibling Drem brought me word of two theists roaming east of the river. Priests from your walled city,” explained the aes si. “I thought nothing of it, at first. The priests travel occasionally, between the keeps, up and down the river. As I expected these men did not stay long in the scrubland: a night, mayhap two, camped in the brush. As far as Bail and Drem could see, they kept to themselves. When eventually they broke camp and made their way back to the King’s Highway, we dismissed them from our care.”
“They came back,” said Bail’s companion. Mud dulled its colorful motley. “More, many more.”
“Six,” said Faolan, “is not many. But Drem is right. Six is more than two, and now I had reason to be concerned. They were poking their noses near ways and means we prefer to keep hidden, and in fact came quite near one of our oldest gates. A few steps more in the wrong direction and they’d be serving the elders below.”
“Sweet meat,” added Drem, gnashing its teeth. It looked at Everin as it did so, and he was certain he saw a glint of humor in the dark stare.
– and finally in Book Four –
Everin waited a day in Skerrit’s Pass, studying the desert from top of his grandfather’s watchtower, trying to learn the army camped below while daylight painted the eastern side of the mountain white, and yellow, and gold. He knew a few things from time spent in service on the white sand, and so the legion in the wasteland alarmed him.
He knew, for instance, that the sand snakes were a proud and independent people, distrustful of change. Fiercely loyal to family and godhead, rarely did they stay long under a single lord’s banner, preferring to wander the vast badlands in small, unruly tribes, trading amongst themselves, enrolling in service only when coin was in short supply.
No lord sought to press a warrior into lifelong service. Desert existence was a nomadic reality. One champion moved on once his coin pouch was full up, and another with an empty purse stepped up in his place. For all its inhospitable temper, the desert was a crowded place.
“Are there cities?” Drem asked. The lesser sidhe had not attempted to hurry Everin in his contemplation, instead spending hours rooting about in the rocky cauldron that was Skerrit’s Pass, and nosing around the depths of the old tower. It wore still the form of a desert woman – long-limbed, dark skinned, and yellow-eyed. Everin, despite his own desert heritage, found the facade disconcerting.
“Aye. Cities of canvas, tent post, and brick. Up for a generation, moved on the next. A lord reigns where her banner flies, sooner or later she will grow bored of the same sun and moon and move on to the next place.”
Drem propped its elbows atop the tower battlements. Midday sun gilded the sand, obscuring the desert floor in a haze.
“And now they wish to see the sun and moon from the other side of the mountain,” Drem predicted.
“It happens,” Everin squinted thoughtfully. “The last time was in my grandfather’s age – ” he scuffed his foot meaningfully against tower stone ” – the time before that sidhe still walked above ground and helped beat them back. That was in advance of Wilhaiim’s white walls; flatlanders were farm folk, more intent on surviving than laying claim. Or so I was taught in my youth. You don’t remember?”
Drem shook its head. “I am not so old as that,” it said. “Faolan might recall. The elders certainly would, should they ever stir themselves to care.”
“Time, and time past, the sand snakes have tried and failed. Roused, routed, and returned to the sand.” Everin pursed his lips. “There were not so many of them, before.”
“Once there were not so many of you,” Drem retorted. “Mortals breed like rabbits.”
It stalked off, kilt swinging, bare feet slapping angrily on stone. Everin hoped it retained enough of Faolan’s magic to conjure sandals before they braved the burning desert sands.
– where I expect them to teach us a important lesson about the monster in every human heart:
Avani paused in undoing (the woman’s) splints. “She’s to stay here, in your chambers?”
“Until she fights off the fever, this is the safest place for her. If what Faolan told me is at all true, we’d best keep her a secret from the temple a while longer.”
“The barrowman was in no better shape,” said Avani, baffled. “In fact, nearly identical. But you kept it in a catacomb cell from the very beginning, and gave it only a thin blanket for warmth.”
Mal’s fine dark brows rose in confusion.
“A barrowman is not human, Avani,” he said. He held the taper over the woman to better see her face. “She may be our enemy, but as of yet we cannot assume she is a monster.”
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