“That’s what you want,” said the man who had come from the far side of the square. “Why do we want you?” Rigg figured him to be the mayor or headman. He seemed to have authority. Or at least none of the locals thought it out of place that he spoke first.

“What’s wrong with the young one?” asked a woman.

“Two questions deserving of fair answers. May I answer the second one first, seeing how you’re all looking so curious at my grandson here?”

Ram Odin directed his question at the mayor, who gave him one of those sharp nods. It was an answer.

“The boy was a baby, not three days old, when the house caught fire. It was a thatchy roof and the whole thing was ablaze at once. Inside the house, too. My son was screaming in pain, but the mother, my daughter-in-law, she was from a strange folk. My son brought her into the village from afar, and she knew a blessing, I think, because she came to the window and she was also aflame, but the baby wasn’t burning, not a lick. She dropped him out the window. Nobody was close enough to catch him, the house was so hot afire, but the baby didn’t burn even though she did. My son screaming, but her making never a sound.”

So Ram Odin was a storyteller. Rigg saw how the people were spellbound. He also heard how Ram Odin was speaking the local language perfectly, but he was bending the vowels to be a little like the language in the town where they spent yesterday. So he sounded a little foreign, but they could understand every word.

“When the ruin of the house cooled enough to come close, I picked up the baby. Not burnt at all, not even the blanket he was wrapped in. Whatever she was, the boy’s mother was powerful. Not powerful enough to put out the fire, but powerful enough to spare his life.”

“If he didn’t burn, what’s wrong with his face?” asked the same woman as before.

“She kept the flame off him, but not the heat. Couldn’t kill him, but his face melted. I tried to push it back into place as best I could, but you can see I’m no master with clay. Did my best and the boy’s used to it, an’t you, boy?”

Rigg nodded.

“Can’t talk?” asked the mayor.

“Now it’s three questions, and me barely finished with the first,” said Ram Odin. “The boy can talk all right. But he’s shy and he’d rather talk to me, mostly, when meeting strange folk.”

There was a general recoiling at that, some murmurs.