Siinji - Or, Ankūro and the City of the Golden Boughs

24

24

The Ancients' secrets,
A warning passed down through time.
Ignored by brash fools.
- Rasakūn.

With effort and Tuccé's help, Yurivno struggled to her feet. A soldier stepped forward, not offering aid, but his hand moving to the hilt of his sword. Tuccé glared at the man. What did he expect an unarmed man supporting a half-unconscious Kannai to do? The man did not back away until he heard a guttural growl emerge from the throat of White Eye.

Hesitating, the soldier stepped to the side. It was the most Tuccé had heard from the old woman since her capture. She had allowed the soldiers surrounding her to push her along, shortened steps due to the hobble between her ankles, without any sign of her usual, uncompromising nature. Tuccé did not see the usual White Eye in this woman.

She didn't appear meek, or humbled, not even resigned to her fate. She only looked inert. That wasn't the right word, but Tuccé couldn't think of a word to describe her. As though the old woman bided her time. Her attitude puzzled Tuccé.

"Take me to the doors." Her hands clutching at Tuccé, voice a croak, Yurivno nodded towards where Drellis and Sakicho stood. "There's something there. Look how Drellis is acting."

Indeed, their opponent paced up and down before the entrance revealed by the opening of the doors, speaking in a low voice to his boy-warrior companion. To the side, Tuccé saw Akemio stood with his shadow warriors, a look of concern upon his scarred face. Some of those shadow warriors had fallen to their knees, palms pressed together in the method of prayer on Kaguta.

As Tuccé guided Yurivno towards the entrance, things started to become clear. The opening of the doors had revealed a long tunnel, stretching through, into the mountain itself. That was not what caught his eye. There, as though they had fought to escape something from within, were piles upon piles of bones. Kannai bones.

Yurivno stiffened in his arms and a gasp escaped her throat. Pushing herself away from Tuccé, the Kannai girl made faltering steps towards the entrance and the bones of her people. Stumbling, she fell to her knees, but still she moved forward until she reached the pile, her hand reaching out towards a Kannai skull before her.

"What in the name of the Patrons happened in there?" He whispered his thought as he came to stand behind Yurivno. At this point, he could see more and more of the bones within the cavern of the entrance.

"The doors were closed on them. They had no chance to escape." Even Drellis appeared disturbed at the scene he saw before him. "Like a sacrifice? An attempt to contain something within? There was nothing in the script of the tablets about this. Nothing."

Yurivno had shuffled further forward, clutching her bandaged hand to her chest. Her movements appeared awkward, stop and start, but her uninjured, trembling hand picked up first one bone, dropped it and then picked up another. She continued to sift through the bones, examining each one, then putting it to the side.

"This damage. It's strange. There are no marks from weapons." Yurivno picked up a skull that had a large indentation upon it, skull fragments falling like dust to the sodden ground, outside in the rain. "There are no teeth marks, either. These are all impact injuries, but not from something like a hammer. More like the damage from a fall."

The scholar in the Kannai girl had taken hold. Despite seeing the remains of so many of her people, possible ancestors, forebears of her kind, she did not seem moved by their deaths, but the method of their deaths. Tuccé dipped to pick up a bone, seeing the cracks, but he had no knowledge of how they had died. Drellis, too, picked up a skull, turning it over in his hands, examining every part of it. He ran fingers across a fractured cheek bone.