Alain shuddered. Withi’s interest seemed uncouth.
“I’ve heard a worse story,” said the sergeant, settling a hand on her hip. “If you’re brave enough to hear it.”
“I am!”
He grinned. “Well, then. It was once told me that Eika came about by foul magic, and a curse. That a great dragon was killed and as it lay dying it cursed any who might dare profane its corpse. But all the women of the village had heard stories of the great power of the dragon’s heart—power they could use to charm any man they wished, so they had been told. They cut open the dragon’s body and pulled out the heart all bloody and steaming hot. They cut it into many pieces and shared it out between them.”
“They ate it?” Withi made a face, pulling away from the sergeant’s casual embrace.
“Ate it, every bit. And soon enough all those women were pregnant, and when they gave birth, they gave birth to monsters!”
His audience was hushed, and every person in the hall jumped when he spoke the word “monsters.” The sergeant chuckled, pleased with the success of his tale. “So these monstrous children, it is said, ran away into the north and were never seen again. Until the creatures we call the Eika came raiding.”
“I saw one dead,” said Raimond, undaunted by this story. “Saw no claws, but his skin was as tough as leather, and it shone like polished gold.”
Young Heric snickered again. “Like polished gold! More like it was armor stolen off a Salian body. I heard they steal women, and what would they need women for …” Here he paused to measure Withi up and down with a grin. “… if they were dragon’s get? They’re men just like you and me.”
“Oooh,” said Withi in her most scornful tone, “and I suppose that you think the old ruins back up the hill were built by men just like you and me, and not by daimones and devils and other ungodly creatures?”
“Hush, Withi,” said Cook in a brisk voice.
Heric laughed, as did some of his comrades. But the sergeant did not. “You’ve not seen the Eika yet, Heric,” said the sergeant, “or you’d not laugh. Nor is it ever wise to laugh at the things left on this earth by creatures we do not know.”
An indefinable hush settled over the older men and women, a taut attention, that the young soldiers seemed unaware of.
“I hear,” continued Withi defiantly, “that if a person goes up to the ruins on Midsummer’s Eve, you can see the ghosts of them who did build it.”
“I’ll go with you,” said Heric, winking and nudging his fellows, “Just to see what I might see.” They snickered and coughed.
“You’d not joke,” said Raimond, echoing the sergeant’s grim words, “if you’d been there yourself. Ai, I recall it clearly. There was a girl, back these many years, who went up to those ruins on Midsummer’s Eve. On a dare, it was.” His gaze was sharp suddenly as he looked right at Withi. “She came back at dawn half crazy, and pregnant, too, or so we found out in due time. And she died bearing the child she’d taken from whatever haunts up there!” Hands shaking, he gripped the handle of his cup and banged it on the table for emphasis.
“What?” scoffed Heric. “She gave birth to Lackling here?”
“Nay, and you’d not laugh, boy. One of the men from the country took the child away.”
“Now you listen to me, young Heric,” said Cook in the assured voice of one who rules her domain completely. “It’s true enough, what Raimond says. It happened not so many years back either, for I knew her when we were both girls. She was a pretty, black-haired slip of a thing. Her parents were Salian, fled from the Eika raids. She did go up to the ruins, though everyone said she shouldn’t, and she told me—” Here Cook’s husky voice dropped to a whisper and every stray conversation at the two tables vanished as does a snowflake in fire. Everyone strained forward to listen. “She told me that the shade of an elf prince come to her, one of the Lost Ones, and lay with her, right there in the altar house, and that it was his child she bore.” No one, not even Heric, made a noise. “But the Lord and Lady grant it not to those of mortal frame to have concourse with the Lost Ones, for they are not believers. So she paid the price. She died three days after birthing the child.”
Alain stared at Cook. Sergeant Fell had told a tale to frighten and amaze Withi. Cook’s story was different. Certainly she was telling the truth. She was of an age to be his mother. He had black hair, and his features were sharper and a little foreign, or so everyone in Osna always said. What if this black-haired Salian girl was his mother, and the shade in the ruins truly his father? A Lost One! Wouldn’t that explain why the Lady of Battles had come to him? He had always felt different— and it was often said the elvish kind were daimones in truth because unlike mortal men they did not die in the natural course of years, and if killed by accident or violent death, they were not succored into the Chamber of Light but damned to wander this world forever as dark shades.