Thirty-three years ago
My sister called for me, her voice uneasy as I flew through the mist-cloaked valley. She called again, but her voice faded into the distance as I ran faster.
“Prala!” Tahani yelled.
I created my own path, kicking up the decaying leaves and branches that rustled beneath my feet as I went farther. The thick mist dampened my oil-rubbed skin and obscured my view. The sharp caw of a crow pierced the otherwise eerie silence and I slowed. I lifted my gaze to the sky and spotted nothing but the thick smoke billowing from the fire built by my tribe on the hill above the valley.
The caravan had stopped for the night somewhere to the north of the road leading toward our destination. I questioned Tahani endlessly as we rode in the confines of our wagon. The tribe had not made a long trip like this since before my sixth year.
“It is time you meet the King and Queen, my chava,” Daj said. Although she insisted on teaching Tahani and I the noble language, she preferred calling me ‘my son’ in our native tongue rather than using my given name. The same way Tahani called me ‘prala’. Brother.
Meet the King and Queen.
Tahani had gaped at the notion. Five years my elder, her beautiful head was filled with fantasies and tales of jewels and riches beyond anything our wandering family had ever seen.
I was forced to listen to her tales of the illustrious villagers and rulers of the kingdom for hours as we travelled through minor villages and over beaten paths for days and days on end.
When the caravan settled before dusk, I was done. I jumped from the wagon before Daj assigned me a task and took off for the valley.
A crow cawed again and I grabbed the rope tied at my waist and removed a stake. It was nothing more than a whittled down branch I created when my boredom and endless questions aggravated Daj into giving me something to do. Shadows rose through the milky mist and I held the stake at my side. The air, which was humid and stale while we were pitched back and forth in the covered wagon, grew cooler the farther I walked. The earthy scent of moss and leaves filled the air, and my bare skin prickled. I should have slipped on a robe. Daj and Tahani were forever taking me to task for running about without proper garments.
A shape loomed before me, breaking through the mist as I came closer. A tall black pillar with rounded edges stood well above me.
Spooked, I called my sister’s name, “Tahani?”
There was no answer. Why would there be? She could not have caught me so quickly. I was a fast runner and she would not stoop to chasing after me unless Daj forced her to.
The mist cleared, revealing a statue of weathered black and gray stone. I took in a deep breath as I neared it. Not a statue but a burial stone. My eyes narrowed and I turned in place. I was surrounded by stones of similar build, shadows of black, covered in mist.
My fingers swiped at the deep grooves carved on the stone. For the first time in my six years I wished I could read. I skipped the letters and symbols; I could make no sense of the senseless and instead studied the numbers.
Life and death dates. Daj had explained their meaning the day our tribe buried her brother, my Kak Ruhn.
I counted the numbers under my breath as my dirty finger traced the death date. “Two hundred years ago.”
I moved to the next marker, amazed at the long-ago dates marking the stones. From one to the next, the deeper I moved into the field the further back the dates went.
A breeze, filled with a scent older than any I ever identified, rushed past. The smell, both briny and somehow fire-like, filled the burial grounds, weaving between markers and wrapping around stones. A chill lifted the mist-dampened hair from my neck as a low vibration tickled my skin.
A snap sent me running deeper into the stones and mist. My bare feet hit the ground soundlessly. My eyes scanned the darkening sky above. They locked on the smoke; the dark black plumes rising from campfires directed me toward safety and I turned and headed for the encampment.
One moment my feet glided over the slick ground, the next I fell. My stomach dropped as the ground beneath me gave way. My arms and feet flailed, seeking purchase as debris tumbled with me.
Down, down, down I fell until my back smacked against the soft, muddy ground. My head followed, then nothing.
My moans echoed off the root and mud-filled chamber as I came to. I focused on the small glimpse of the sky high above me. Head cleared, I sat forward, the dank stench of the mud gagging me as I scrambled to my hands and knees.
“Tahani? Daj?” I yelled.
The ground beneath my arms and legs creaked. A deep rumbling reverberated as the mud and water shifted. My eyes, wide with fear, searched the ground.
Another booming crack sounded. The water drained as my hand slipped into a fracture in the ground. I jerked my hands away and slipped backward as an unearthly howl wrenched from the ground. The smell of fire permeated the air as a cloud of black smoke, thicker than the blackest fire I had ever seen, shot from the growing chasm.
“Riglă,” the smoke whispered, and I wet myself.
“Riglă.”
A silhouette took shape. Not human nor animal. Pure darkness filled with swirling lines and screaming energy. Bits of the darkness flew up through the hole in which I fell, but what was left lowered until it hovered before my eyes. A nameless, faceless riot of black.
With a screech that knocked me on my back, the darkness slammed into my chest and ripped into my body.
“Name?” the darkness howled within my head. The words were not spoken in the Romany language and yet I heard them as such. As though the creature, this darkness, translated as it spoke. “Name?” it repeated.
“Tabor,” I managed as the darkness tore through my head, gripping my brain between its smoky clutches.
“Nooo,” the darkness uttered. “You are Riglă.”
With the darkness inside my head I understood the words again as though spoken in my native tongue.
Riglă. Ruler.
The darkness smiled within, and I blacked out as it seized upon me.
Dark plumes escaped through the underground tunnel from which Tabor fell, into the misty sky. The energy swirled above the ancient burial grounds and combined with the thick air, riding the wind and spreading throughout the Kingdom of Tyalbrook.