He has to stoop as he steps into the alcove, unlike in the rest of the chamber, where the slope of the roof was steep enough for him to have stood naturally. He curses whoever made it at first, wondering why they couldn’t make it high enough for him to stand. Then he considers the effort it must have taken to carve even this much out of solid granite, and finds a measure of compassion. A huddled mass of forty or more is pressed into the tiny space. It is hard to tell, as desiccated as they are, but it appears as if they were placed with care…standing upright where they could be, or sitting propped against the walls, with only a few thrown in the center, left to lie in heaps on the stone. But they have shifted as they’ve dried, shrunk, rotted, dissolved. Many now lean against the walls in pieces, their joints giving out under the dual pressures of gravity and time, the pieces of their strengthless frames crushed by the weight of their fellow corpses. Some share a final embrace, whether because they died that way, as lovers, meeting the end together in each others’ arms, or because they were arranged post mortem, the tall man doesn’t know. A few still bear the markings of the massacre itself – blade marks on their bones, cracked or open bits of skull, skin, brown and shriveled as it is, darkened in places and in patterns time and tannins can’t explain. At least one is flat out missing a limb, lying, prone, on the floor, one leg missing at the hip. Others likely are as well, but it is impossible to tell what was missing from the first and what has simply fallen away.
He chooses one of the prone figures and begins his search in earnest.
He isn’t sure what he is searching for, exactly. A woman in a ceremonial robe, the makings of which he only knows from modern adaptations, is his only real clue. But all the clothing has rotted away, and gender becomes indistinct in such advanced stages of decay. He can’t see anything to indicate which might be the form he seeks.
Sigh!
At least there are only forty or so…
He finishes searching the first prone figure and tosses it, bone by bone, towards the sarcophagus, He runs each between his fingers, cleaning it of anything that might conceal the object in question. More than one crumble into dust themselves, joining the detritus on which he kneels. He sifts through that as well, of course, removing his gloves and raking his fingers through it square by measured square, searching for anything of any size that might have gotten buried. But there is nothing that piques his interest. A dagger here, a bracelet there, a couple of coins that might be treasures to the numismatists in town, but nothing the man can afford concern for at the moment. He moves on to a second figure and dismembers it as well. Then a third, then a fourth. His back begins to ache from crouching as he finishes with the pile of prones and moves on to the figures that are propped against the walls. A few of these are still wrapped in scraps of clothing – warrior’s leather, by the feel of it. Tough material, and oiled deeply, very slow to decompose. He has to work through these with care, checking every fold of skin, every baggy pocket that has formed as the flesh the once-taught garment surrounded lost itself to the passage of time. He finishes with the sitting figures and starts in on the few still standing, changing his position every few minutes from kneeling to sitting, sitting to crouching to standing, semi-erect, while he inspects their upper bodies. He gets through the last of them. Still nothing.
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He sits back against the stone, watching the shadows chitter and dance in the failing light of the torch. He fishes a second out of his satchel and strikes it, re-illuminating corners that have dimmed, and eyes the bulk of the sarcophagus, which rises now like an Atlantean temple from the sea of bones and dust he’s tossed. He doesn’t want to open it. Aside from the time and effort involved (his tools are very rudimentary, and he has no expectations of speed), he is worried about the other legends, and what else he might disturb.
He sighs. But there is nothing for it now.
On weary legs without conviction he rises, and scuttles towards the coffin. He is searching in his satchel for his awl and lever, the first of the tools he’ll need to unseal and move the copper lid, and he is just about to
(dagger)
…and he is just about to…to…
(look at the dagger you pea-brained little donkey-lover!)
It takes a moment to sink in. The dagger. The very first thing he extracted from the dust, and tossed aside as nothing more than one of the victims’ attempt at defense. But was it? There was something off about the dimensions, not so great for combat or throwing, and it was ornate.
He digs into the pile just outside the alcove, where he thought he’d tossed the thing. He burrows through the pile of bones and other detritus, searching for that glint of steel. It seems almost fitting, now that he thinks about it, than an object of such peace and kindness would be disguised as a weapon. The Chubain may have had a sense of humor after all…
THERE! A flash of something metallic…no, not the dagger, just a bracelet. How about there, half-hidden in the dust? Was that an edge of sharpened steel?
He extracts the thing, pinching it gingerly by the blade despite the doeskin that protects him, and blows the dust off its haft. It is the dagger, and it is indeed of awkward dimensions. It is small, barely longer than his hand, with a thin, corroded blade that was only ever sharp on one side. Despite this, its haft, carved from bone, or perhaps whitewood, with arcane patters across its surface, is easily three fingers wide. Almost wide enough for…
He smiles as he pops the haft, and the amajlija tumbles out. Cast in a lustrous, silvery metal, which the tall man thinks is pewter, it depicts a man in robes, with features of the southern wastes, arms raised to Mother Sky, hailing a flock of messenger birds as they flutter towards the dawning sun. On the reverse, three bands of raised material run up and down the height of it, giving it a platform feel, or some sort of guided track. Into each is etched a word:
Matiti…kun…mir
Dovesong.