Free The Fisherman's Daughter by K. Scott Lewis

would I be if she had just cast me aside as lost? As… saldaka , as you put it.”
    The sidhe sat in silence for a moment. “I see your point. But it’s still an awful thought, to have no control over our passions. You don’t understand how overwhelming passion can be for us. How can we risk opening our cities to outsiders?”
    Eszhira shook her head. “I don’t accept that. First, you said the risk was only humans. Second… why don’t you try thinking like a gnome for a moment, or even a human?”
    Tallindra blinked.
    “Why don’t you try studying the phenomenon? You sidhe… so calm and deliberate in your approach to art, you fixate on beauty and forsake understanding . Even the High Court: They weren’t in love with wisdom. They were in love with loving wisdom. You’ve lived so long in fear of this thing. What have you done to learn from it?”
    Tallindra shook her head in confusion. “But what do we do?”
    Eszhira set her coffee cup down in frustration. “Sidhe live by the ethos, ‘What is beautiful?’. Gnomes live by, ‘What is possible?’, and humans, ‘What is useful?’. Consult with their wizards. Find a cure, or at least a ward. The clue, I think, is in the ghostfish liver.” She frowned slightly. “And possibly Malahkma’s Milk.”
    Tallindra stared at her. “You… you might be right. Surely the gnomish alchemists could derive something, something that would prevent fastening against our will. Something to protect us from the glamour. How could we have missed it this whole time?”
    “The shamans. They said the ghost trance was the only way to safely meet the sidhe. The High Court had been conversing with them safely, without fastening. That must have been it. They must have found a way to use it, at least in that controlled setting.”
    “Much of our ancient lore was lost when sorcerers destroyed our cities,” Tallindra admitted. “Even if we find a cure, it will take a lot of work. But you’re right. The world is changing.” Then: “Will you help me in this?”
    Eszhira looked at her friend and smiled. “Yes,” she said. “Let us do this together.”
    They spent the rest of the hour finishing their breakfast in silence, enjoying each other’s quiet company as they finished their coffee and watched the sun continue to rise over ocean sails and airborne zeppelins.
    And in the canals beneath them, gondolas took sightseers from all over the world. Humans from the far Realms, dwarves, and seelie alike. And ratlings and trolls, and darklings. Even orcs came to Tavenport, for seelie had integrated and intermarried into their tribes too.
    Eszhira smiled at seeing a seelie father and children and their orc mother pass by on a gondola. The orc held one of the little elf children in her lap and was pointing to one of Tavenport’s cathedral spires.
    Eszhira felt warmth in her heart. If she could get the sidhe to learn from how the other races viewed the world, they’d soon see more sidhe among their numbers as well, traveling, conversing, and safely building friendships across the old divides.
    The world is changing indeed.
     
     

Note from the Author
    If this is your first time in Ahmbren, welcome and thanks for reading. The story you just read serves as bookends for the high-fantasy period of Ahmbren. The prologue and epilogue scenes are set after the trilogy When Dragons Die , featuring two elves discussing the way ahead into the next period of Ahmbren’s history and how they might solve the problem of elven glamour so the sidhe can intermingle with the world’s other races. Meiri’s story plants the seeds for the epic that begins in Myth and Incarnation and crescendos in When Dragons Die, which Tallindra and Eszhira just experienced. I invite you deeper into Ahmbren, to continue your journey with the full-length novel, Myth and Incarnation , as your next step.
    Now that we’ve sat with these two women at the end of the epic and experienced its earliest beginning, the focus for