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Chapter 15: The Quarry

The sun was well into its descent when Savona began walking along the road that led from Galera toward her homestead near the village of Inetto. Despite the stoic look on her face, her mind was numb with grief. Horem, her husband, whom she had loved so much and who had dearly loved her in turn despite his personal imperfections, had just been hanged for causing the death of another man by sorcery. Although she had been allowed some last private time with him in accordance with Cardi law, she was still so stunned by her looming loss she did not wait to claim his body as she could have, nor even engage transport home for herself. She didn't want to remain in Galera any longer than she absolutely had to, so she walked down the hill toward the waterfront at the bottom, where she would turn left and follow the road that led to home. No one seemed to be about just then, most likely they were either working at the docks off to the right, or watching the spectacle of Horem's hanging at the courthouse behind her.

Savona was perhaps a mile into her journey when a man driving a wagon pulled up alongside her, stopped, and asked "Milady, would you like a ride?"

She did not speak in response, instead she gave the driver a friendly looking wave-off, accompanied by a faint smile. He waved back with a smile of his own before urging his horses into motion again. He did not know who this woman was and quite possibly for all he knew her destination was close at hand. He also appreciated that maybe she simply was not in a sociable mood today, most anyone had such days now and then. That was all someone in his position really needed to know. Had he known her well he might have asked her more, before they parted company, perhaps never to cross paths again.

Savona actually found her spirits rising slightly after her encounter with the wagon-driver, perhaps because he had respected her lack of interest in being sociable just then. It was not long, though, before her spirits began to darken again.

'Horem, dear, what am I going to do without you?'

No answer came, so she kept on walking along the road that would take her back to her farm - the farm she would now have to run by herself, once she had arrived and paid the neighbor who she had hired to look after the animals in her absence.

Those animals were barely on her mind as the sun dipped closer to the western horizon and she wondered where she might spend the night. Even many of the smaller villages had an inn where travellers could claim a warm bed to sleep in and partake of the sustenance offered. Where villages were far apart, such as in the Tiga Hills or on the Thab peninsula, roadhouses served much the same function, and if a traveller arrived at such an establishment during spring planting or fall harvest season and was not in a hurry to get to where they were going, they could get free room and board for the duration of their stay if they helped the resident family with those all-important tasks.

Savona had no interest in either inns or roadhouses tonight, but she still needed to find someplace where she could bed down and keep herself warm for the night.

The lower edge of the sun was just touching the horizon when she spotted something that appealed to her: a hut, constructed of dark stone, stood only a few dozen yards from the road, but even at this time of year when many branches were bare of foliage it was easy for passing travellers to miss seeing. Savona though, remembered it well; once when she and Horem had been caught on this very road by a rare (for this locale) blizzard, they had taken refuge here and been astounded at how warm the interior was even without fire. During their two days' enforced stay on that occasion they saw no other humans, and tonight she had no desire to see, or be seen by, anyone. Once inside, she quickly rolled out her bedroll, ate the supper she had bought on the Galera waterfront, and soon dropped off into a sound yet also troubled sleep.

Savona was awake with the sunrise next morning, but she did not immediately rouse herself from her bedroll to prepare to resume her walk home to Inetto. Instead she lay there for some time, not even feeling hungry for breakfast yet, as various thoughts both bidden and unbidden kept passing through her mind..

'I don't want to see anyone...Horem dear, I miss you so much...what am I going to do now?'

Before long though, the demands of her stomach for sustenance prompted her to rouse herself up from the bed she had set up the previous evening. As she ate, a new thought came unbidden to her mind, a mantra she had first heard many years before, when she was still a child in Delmir.

'Mon sosha bal toko...mon sosha bal toko...'

She had learned the phrase when she was a young girl growing up on a farm in one of the inner valleys of Delmir. While her father and brothers more commonly did the heavier labor, when she was not helping her mother in the house or garden, she spent much of her time out in the fields, watching over the sheep and cattle that helped the family to survive and even prosper modestly, at least by local standards. Watching out for predators both real and imagined, driving the animals to new fields from time to time, making sure all were present and accounted for. If an animal went missing, she would have to search for it, perhaps assisted by whatever family members who could be spared from other tasks around the farm.

On that late afternoon two sheep were missing from the flock, and she headed toward where she thought she heard their bleating. She was close to where she thought they had wandered to, when she was distracted by the sound of several mens' voices coming from the woods nearby. Wondering if they might possibly have seen her lost sheep, she turned in their direction - only to be frozen in her tracks when she saw who they actually were.

The strange men were sorcerers. And not only were Delmir women barred from practicing the craft, they were also prohibited from even witnessing their private ceremonies. Despite the embarrassment she felt at witnessing something she knew she should not have, Savona was also curious, and stayed where she was for a few minutes to watch from her accidental vantage point in the woods.

"Mon sosha bal toko..." the sorcerers began chanting among themselves. Savona's attention was momentarily diverted when the sheep she was meant to be searching for bleated again; when she looked in the direction of the sorcerers once more, she found herself mysteriously unable to see them, though their voices seemed to come from the same spot as before.

"Mon sosha bal toko..." she now began whispering quietly to herself. The men presently ceased their chanting, and with little further ado, left their small clearing via a trail - which ran mere feet from where Savona was standing. Once more she froze in place, fearful she had been seen, but the group of sorcerers walked right past her as if she were just another tree in the forest. When two of then even looked right at her and didn't react at all, she realized with a mental shudder she must have somehow cast a spell of her own upon them.

'Is that what 'Mon sosho bal toko' does, make someone invisible somehow?' she now thought. She couldn't decide if she should be excited or scared at having apparently learned such an arcane trick of the mind, but she knew neither her parents nor the Delmir authorities would approve of her having done so, and possibly react quite harshly if they ever did find out. To this day she never told anyone of the encounter. Even Horem was never to hear her story, and the missing sheep whom she then rounded up presumably never said either.

Once Savona did eat a breakfast and rolled up her bedroll and put it into a pack she then slung over her back, she resumed her trek toward home. If anything, she had even less desire to interact with other people than she had had yesterday, and perhaps unconsciously, often muttered to herself "Mon sosho bal toko" whenever she saw or heard or thought she heard someone approaching. Whether for that or some other reason, the travellers she did encounter always passed her by, acting as if she was not even there.

"Thank you...thank you...for leaving me be" she would afterwards say to herself, not then really aware why no one seemed to take notice of her.

Savona arrived at her home later in the afternoon, after the neighbor had left for the day. She didn't then check on her animals, instead she went straight to the bedroom she and her husband had shared for so long, threw off her pack, and collapsed on to their bed, weeping.

"Horem dear, how can I go on without you?"

She did soon rouse herself to stoke the fire for warmth, and to prepare a supper, she was hungry from the long walk from Galera. As she had asked beforehand, the caretaker had kept the pantry stocked. As she ate, for no particular reason she could recall later, she began gazing toward a mask which hung on the wall. It depicted a fairly typical woman of Delmir or Cardi, but slightly larger and shaped so it could easily fit over one's face. It also had an attached wig of dark brown hair which would reach about halfway down her back. Though she herself did not often wear earrings, when she bought the mask she attached a pair of raven feathers to its ears, feeling they made the mask even more beautiful than it already was. She had bought it at a local fair a few years after she and Horem had settled on their farm. The seller was a refugee from Delmir as they were and had brought it with him, though he could not recall where it had originally come from; his earliest of it was seeing it hanging on a wall of his home when he was a small child, and he had eventually inherited along with the house.

Once she was done with supper, washing up, and stoking the fire again, Savona decided to put on the mask, she had not done so since she had purchased it all those years ago. It proved to be remarkably snug and comfortable, when she rubbed the raven-feather earrings she felt a most peculiar sensation she had never felt before. For a moment she was scared, but the feeling disappeared before she could even reach up to take the mask off. Next came a feeling of euphoria unlike anything she had ever felt before. At times she felt as though she were no longer in her physical body but somehow looking on from above. At other times she felt as if she were not in Inetto any longer, but somewhere far away, in places that were strange yet also familiar. In the early months since they had left Delmir, Horem and Savona had travelled over much of western Cardi-Ran, but very little since taking up their farmstead.

For the next few days Savona kept to herself and occupied with the various tasks about the farm she now had to run by herself. The stoicism which had sustained her from the time of her husband's arrest until his hanging had fully reasserted itself, at least on the surface. Increasingly though, she felt like a stranger in her own home.

'I just don't want to be here anymore' she began to think to herself.

In an attempt to find solace, and remembering some of the sensations she had felt the evening before when she had first put on the mask, she put it on again, and once more felt an odd euphoria pass through her body. At times the energy felt dark, as if a thunderstorm were raging. At other times it felt as if the sun was shining down amiably and all was somehow right with the world. She still was not ready to deal with such a swirl of contrasting emotions, so she soon took off the mask and hung it back on the wall. This time, though, she then took the raven feather earrings off the mask and fastened them to her own ears. What happened next was a surprise.

'You can do anything you want. You have the power' her mind's ear now heard. Wondering if someone had walked in without her noticing she looked about the room, but saw no sign of another speaker - except the mask. Its lips actually seemed to move as Savona heard the strange voice speak, and she first thought her eyes were playing tricks on her, but the mask told her they were not.

'Yes, you can do anything you want. You have the power, I am only your enabler' it said to her mind, explaining that that was because the feathers she was was wearing represented Raven the Trickster, while the mask had been made decades ago by a Delmir mask maker for a sorcerer customer, who for some unknown reason had never picked it up for his use.

'You have what it takes to be as good as any other sorcerer...' the mask now said. Had any onlookers been present, they would have seen and heard nothing but an ordinary woman gazing upon an inanimate mask hanging on a wall.

Savona's mind listened attentively, but she herself remained stoic. She still felt emotionally drained following the death of her husband, but that night, as she lay in bed before drifting off into sleep, she had a strange dream. It was unbidden and irrational, she knew, but there nonetheless.

If she could somehow get to Tulla and have an audience with the king, perhaps he would have his chief wizard help her bring her husband back to life. It made no sense, her rational side said, but she was no longer thinking rationally whenever her husband came foremost to her mind. For all their power, even the most renowned wizards could not bring someone back from the dead. And as she herself had so painfully learned just days ago, there were few crimes the authorities took more seriously than causing the death of another by sorcery. The irrational side of her mind was too far gone to pay heed, however...

Eventually a new mantra began playing in her mind. Like the others it was unbidden at first, but she made no effort to resist.

'Take me away..take me away from here...take me toward the king...'

It continued to play in her mind the next morning as she tended to the needs of her animals as well as her own. When she took a break from duties and returned to her kitchen for her mid-day meal, she paused to look upon the mask on the wall. She put the raven-feather earrings on her own once more, then put the mask itself over her own face and began to chant.

"Take me away...take me away from here...take me toward the king and his wizard..."

A traveller who was riding past on the road outside later said he saw a large black bird seemingly fly right through the roof of her house, before turning and flying in an easterly direction. Though he was initially sure that was indeed what he saw, he was also uncertain whether to believe his eyes, as magic was totally inscrutable to him, and finally the memory to the nether recesses of his mind.

Savona rubbed her eyes as she sat up in her bedroll, which was set up under a dense canopy of shrubbery, on top of which a lightweight yet also waterproof blanket had been spread, thus affording her shelter from the elements, should they come while she was thus encamped. Though she had eaten a supper that evening, she was still hungry. Despite the sun having already set some time ago, she could make out a village about a mile away, so she decided to search one of the outlying sheds for forage. The moon was in full, so she had little difficulty finding her way.

She was still a few hundred feet from the nearest shed when she heard voices. She retreated as quickly and quietly as she could, but then one of the men called out a challenge that was clearly meant for her to identify herself. She did not answer, though the voice somehow sounded familiar, and retreated further. After s few moments she realized why the voice seemed familiar. She had previously heard it in Galera, among the visiting king's horsemen accompanying the knight-justice who had presided at her husband's trial and hanging. A wave of angry emotion, unbidden and unlike anything she had ever felt before came over her, and she let out a scream unlike any her ears had ever before heard...

Description
Chapter 15: The Quarry

The sun was well into its descent when Savona began walking along the road that led from Galera toward her homestead near the village of Inetto. Despite the stoic look on her face, her mind was numb with grief. Horem, her husband, whom she had loved so much and who had dearly loved her in turn despite his personal imperfections, had just been hanged for causing the death of another man by sorcery. Although she had been allowed some last private time with him in accordance with Cardi law, she was still so stunned by her looming loss she did not wait to claim his body as she could have, nor even engage transport home for herself. She didn't want to remain in Galera any longer than she absolutely had to, so she walked down the hill toward the waterfront at the bottom, where she would turn left and follow the road that led to home. No one seemed to be about just then, most likely they were either working at the docks off to the right, or watching the spectacle of Horem's hanging at the courthouse behind her.

Savona was perhaps a mile into her journey when a man driving a wagon pulled up alongside her, stopped, and asked "Milady, would you like a ride?"

She did not speak in response, instead she gave the driver a friendly looking wave-off, accompanied by a faint smile. He waved back with a smile of his own before urging his horses into motion again. He did not know who this woman was and quite possibly for all he knew her destination was close at hand. He also appreciated that maybe she simply was not in a sociable mood today, most anyone had such days now and then. That was all someone in his position really needed to know. Had he known her well he might have asked her more, before they parted company, perhaps never to cross paths again.

Savona actually found her spirits rising slightly after her encounter with the wagon-driver, perhaps because he had respected her lack of interest in being sociable just then. It was not long, though, before her spirits began to darken again.

'Horem, dear, what am I going to do without you?'

No answer came, so she kept on walking along the road that would take her back to her farm - the farm she would now have to run by herself, once she had arrived and paid the neighbor who she had hired to look after the animals in her absence.

Those animals were barely on her mind as the sun dipped closer to the western horizon and she wondered where she might spend the night. Even many of the smaller villages had an inn where travellers could claim a warm bed to sleep in and partake of the sustenance offered. Where villages were far apart, such as in the Tiga Hills or on the Thab peninsula, roadhouses served much the same function, and if a traveller arrived at such an establishment during spring planting or fall harvest season and was not in a hurry to get to where they were going, they could get free room and board for the duration of their stay if they helped the resident family with those all-important tasks.

Savona had no interest in either inns or roadhouses tonight, but she still needed to find someplace where she could bed down and keep herself warm for the night.

The lower edge of the sun was just touching the horizon when she spotted something that appealed to her: a hut, constructed of dark stone, stood only a few dozen yards from the road, but even at this time of year when many branches were bare of foliage it was easy for passing travellers to miss seeing. Savona though, remembered it well; once when she and Horem had been caught on this very road by a rare (for this locale) blizzard, they had taken refuge here and been astounded at how warm the interior was even without fire. During their two days' enforced stay on that occasion they saw no other humans, and tonight she had no desire to see, or be seen by, anyone. Once inside, she quickly rolled out her bedroll, ate the supper she had bought on the Galera waterfront, and soon dropped off into a sound yet also troubled sleep.

Savona was awake with the sunrise next morning, but she did not immediately rouse herself from her bedroll to prepare to resume her walk home to Inetto. Instead she lay there for some time, not even feeling hungry for breakfast yet, as various thoughts both bidden and unbidden kept passing through her mind..

'I don't want to see anyone...Horem dear, I miss you so much...what am I going to do now?'

Before long though, the demands of her stomach for sustenance prompted her to rouse herself up from the bed she had set up the previous evening. As she ate, a new thought came unbidden to her mind, a mantra she had first heard many years before, when she was still a child in Delmir.

'Mon sosha bal toko...mon sosha bal toko...'

She had learned the phrase when she was a young girl growing up on a farm in one of the inner valleys of Delmir. While her father and brothers more commonly did the heavier labor, when she was not helping her mother in the house or garden, she spent much of her time out in the fields, watching over the sheep and cattle that helped the family to survive and even prosper modestly, at least by local standards. Watching out for predators both real and imagined, driving the animals to new fields from time to time, making sure all were present and accounted for. If an animal went missing, she would have to search for it, perhaps assisted by whatever family members who could be spared from other tasks around the farm.

On that late afternoon two sheep were missing from the flock, and she headed toward where she thought she heard their bleating. She was close to where she thought they had wandered to, when she was distracted by the sound of several mens' voices coming from the woods nearby. Wondering if they might possibly have seen her lost sheep, she turned in their direction - only to be frozen in her tracks when she saw who they actually were.

The strange men were sorcerers. And not only were Delmir women barred from practicing the craft, they were also prohibited from even witnessing their private ceremonies. Despite the embarrassment she felt at witnessing something she knew she should not have, Savona was also curious, and stayed where she was for a few minutes to watch from her accidental vantage point in the woods.

"Mon sosha bal toko..." the sorcerers began chanting among themselves. Savona's attention was momentarily diverted when the sheep she was meant to be searching for bleated again; when she looked in the direction of the sorcerers once more, she found herself mysteriously unable to see them, though their voices seemed to come from the same spot as before.

"Mon sosha bal toko..." she now began whispering quietly to herself. The men presently ceased their chanting, and with little further ado, left their small clearing via a trail - which ran mere feet from where Savona was standing. Once more she froze in place, fearful she had been seen, but the group of sorcerers walked right past her as if she were just another tree in the forest. When two of then even looked right at her and didn't react at all, she realized with a mental shudder she must have somehow cast a spell of her own upon them.

'Is that what 'Mon sosho bal toko' does, make someone invisible somehow?' she now thought. She couldn't decide if she should be excited or scared at having apparently learned such an arcane trick of the mind, but she knew neither her parents nor the Delmir authorities would approve of her having done so, and possibly react quite harshly if they ever did find out. To this day she never told anyone of the encounter. Even Horem was never to hear her story, and the missing sheep whom she then rounded up presumably never said either.

Once Savona did eat a breakfast and rolled up her bedroll and put it into a pack she then slung over her back, she resumed her trek toward home. If anything, she had even less desire to interact with other people than she had had yesterday, and perhaps unconsciously, often muttered to herself "Mon sosho bal toko" whenever she saw or heard or thought she heard someone approaching. Whether for that or some other reason, the travellers she did encounter always passed her by, acting as if she was not even there.

"Thank you...thank you...for leaving me be" she would afterwards say to herself, not then really aware why no one seemed to take notice of her.

Savona arrived at her home later in the afternoon, after the neighbor had left for the day. She didn't then check on her animals, instead she went straight to the bedroom she and her husband had shared for so long, threw off her pack, and collapsed on to their bed, weeping.

"Horem dear, how can I go on without you?"

She did soon rouse herself to stoke the fire for warmth, and to prepare a supper, she was hungry from the long walk from Galera. As she had asked beforehand, the caretaker had kept the pantry stocked. As she ate, for no particular reason she could recall later, she began gazing toward a mask which hung on the wall. It depicted a fairly typical woman of Delmir or Cardi, but slightly larger and shaped so it could easily fit over one's face. It also had an attached wig of dark brown hair which would reach about halfway down her back. Though she herself did not often wear earrings, when she bought the mask she attached a pair of raven feathers to its ears, feeling they made the mask even more beautiful than it already was. She had bought it at a local fair a few years after she and Horem had settled on their farm. The seller was a refugee from Delmir as they were and had brought it with him, though he could not recall where it had originally come from; his earliest of it was seeing it hanging on a wall of his home when he was a small child, and he had eventually inherited along with the house.

Once she was done with supper, washing up, and stoking the fire again, Savona decided to put on the mask, she had not done so since she had purchased it all those years ago. It proved to be remarkably snug and comfortable, when she rubbed the raven-feather earrings she felt a most peculiar sensation she had never felt before. For a moment she was scared, but the feeling disappeared before she could even reach up to take the mask off. Next came a feeling of euphoria unlike anything she had ever felt before. At times she felt as though she were no longer in her physical body but somehow looking on from above. At other times she felt as if she were not in Inetto any longer, but somewhere far away, in places that were strange yet also familiar. In the early months since they had left Delmir, Horem and Savona had travelled over much of western Cardi-Ran, but very little since taking up their farmstead.

For the next few days Savona kept to herself and occupied with the various tasks about the farm she now had to run by herself. The stoicism which had sustained her from the time of her husband's arrest until his hanging had fully reasserted itself, at least on the surface. Increasingly though, she felt like a stranger in her own home.

'I just don't want to be here anymore' she began to think to herself.

In an attempt to find solace, and remembering some of the sensations she had felt the evening before when she had first put on the mask, she put it on again, and once more felt an odd euphoria pass through her body. At times the energy felt dark, as if a thunderstorm were raging. At other times it felt as if the sun was shining down amiably and all was somehow right with the world. She still was not ready to deal with such a swirl of contrasting emotions, so she soon took off the mask and hung it back on the wall. This time, though, she then took the raven feather earrings off the mask and fastened them to her own ears. What happened next was a surprise.

'You can do anything you want. You have the power' her mind's ear now heard. Wondering if someone had walked in without her noticing she looked about the room, but saw no sign of another speaker - except the mask. Its lips actually seemed to move as Savona heard the strange voice speak, and she first thought her eyes were playing tricks on her, but the mask told her they were not.

'Yes, you can do anything you want. You have the power, I am only your enabler' it said to her mind, explaining that that was because the feathers she was was wearing represented Raven the Trickster, while the mask had been made decades ago by a Delmir mask maker for a sorcerer customer, who for some unknown reason had never picked it up for his use.

'You have what it takes to be as good as any other sorcerer...' the mask now said. Had any onlookers been present, they would have seen and heard nothing but an ordinary woman gazing upon an inanimate mask hanging on a wall.

Savona's mind listened attentively, but she herself remained stoic. She still felt emotionally drained following the death of her husband, but that night, as she lay in bed before drifting off into sleep, she had a strange dream. It was unbidden and irrational, she knew, but there nonetheless.

If she could somehow get to Tulla and have an audience with the king, perhaps he would have his chief wizard help her bring her husband back to life. It made no sense, her rational side said, but she was no longer thinking rationally whenever her husband came foremost to her mind. For all their power, even the most renowned wizards could not bring someone back from the dead. And as she herself had so painfully learned just days ago, there were few crimes the authorities took more seriously than causing the death of another by sorcery. The irrational side of her mind was too far gone to pay heed, however...

Eventually a new mantra began playing in her mind. Like the others it was unbidden at first, but she made no effort to resist.

'Take me away..take me away from here...take me toward the king...'

It continued to play in her mind the next morning as she tended to the needs of her animals as well as her own. When she took a break from duties and returned to her kitchen for her mid-day meal, she paused to look upon the mask on the wall. She put the raven-feather earrings on her own once more, then put the mask itself over her own face and began to chant.

"Take me away...take me away from here...take me toward the king and his wizard..."

A traveller who was riding past on the road outside later said he saw a large black bird seemingly fly right through the roof of her house, before turning and flying in an easterly direction. Though he was initially sure that was indeed what he saw, he was also uncertain whether to believe his eyes, as magic was totally inscrutable to him, and finally the memory to the nether recesses of his mind.

Savona rubbed her eyes as she sat up in her bedroll, which was set up under a dense canopy of shrubbery, on top of which a lightweight yet also waterproof blanket had been spread, thus affording her shelter from the elements, should they come while she was thus encamped. Though she had eaten a supper that evening, she was still hungry. Despite the sun having already set some time ago, she could make out a village about a mile away, so she decided to search one of the outlying sheds for forage. The moon was in full, so she had little difficulty finding her way.

She was still a few hundred feet from the nearest shed when she heard voices. She retreated as quickly and quietly as she could, but then one of the men called out a challenge that was clearly meant for her to identify herself. She did not answer, though the voice somehow sounded familiar, and retreated further. After s few moments she realized why the voice seemed familiar. She had previously heard it in Galera, among the visiting king's horsemen accompanying the knight-justice who had presided at her husband's trial and hanging. A wave of angry emotion, unbidden and unlike anything she had ever felt before came over her, and she let out a scream unlike any her ears had ever before heard...