The Sons of Animus Letum

by Andrew Whittle

  I’ve decided to incite their terror.

  Your existence, and in fact the very shapes of your nations, have been formed by design. In each dark chronicle of your earth’s history, in the midnights of your worst wars, there have been a group of moral architects. They have walked among you, they have surveyed you, and ultimately they have saved you. Through blood and bone they have revised the course of your future from countless calamities. They are your secret guardians and they call themselves the Throne’s Eye.

  As Haren led the dying woman to these guardians, she had no concept of the situation’s gravity. She had no idea that she was going home.

  Like Haren, the monks of the Throne’s Eye possessed a sixth sense. Each of them, like Haren, heard voices and often felt people and places in a manner that was beyond sight, smell, and sound. The name for these gifted souls is Deathrider.

  Deathriders populate every corner of your realm. By the fault of your earth realm’s philosophies, most Deathriders are unaware or confused by their ability. They are deemed mentally ill by your medical arrogance, and then exiled to asylums to have their gifts drowned in medicine.

  Amid the medicines and doubt, every Deathrider is usually aware that something great awaits them.

  For most, this means the Throne’s Eye. In a way, the Throne’s Eye monks were collectors. Once a year, small bands of Throne’s Eye monks were tasked to traverse the globe in search of gifted souls. If found, the uninitiated Deathriders were lessoned in their abilities, and most often adopted into the Throne’s Eye brotherhood.

  However, adoption was only offered to the males. In fact, no woman had ever stepped foot in their inner sanctum.

  Organized as a monastery, the monks of the Throne’s Eye lived simply on the outland of your societies. Their existence was rooted and actualized as a medium between your world and Animus Letum, and upon this greater consciousness they had become your realm’s unacknowledged saints. The Throne’s Eye were masters of the spiritual and martial arts, and the great skills bred by these disciplines have been used to end your wars and facilitate your peace. They have sacrificed their lives and limbs to uphold the balance of your realm’s morality, and as recompense, the great shadow walkers of your realm have requested nothing but to be forgotten – and so they were and are.

  While their footprints have been barely pressed upon your earth, one great deity had always been aware of the righteous deeds of the Throne’s Eye. Serich had long witnessed the masterful strokes the Throne’s Eye had brushed across your histories. He watched the flames of impending wars and rising tyrants be doused by the tactical hand of the Throne’s Eye brotherhood.

  It was, aptly so, no mistake that unto them he sent his pregnant and dying queen.

  With the queen on her shoulder, Haren staggered slowly to the endpoint Rhea had given her. With each passing minute the queen’s breath became more erratic, and as she lost more and more of her breath, her weight fell heavily onto Haren’s frame. At first, Haren accepted the weight in her stride, but after twenty minutes of staggering, the queen’s weight had become almost too much to support.

  Although it was not announced by either party, both Haren and Rhea knew that time was not on their side. Haren had seen enough in her village infirmary to know the queen’s chances, and Rhea simply knew the truth. The queen knew that her wounds would be fatal. Knowing her fate, Rhea tried her best to speed up the journey to the Throne’s Eye. But unlike the soul, the body has limits. No power or bravery could mend her wounds. As Rhea did her best to oppose and suppress the pain, she acknowledged that time was her greatest foe. Time threatened the lives of the Lyran heirs. Time was threatening a legacy. As she pushed on, Rhea could feel Death growing close. Even from my vantage, it was unclear who was walking to whom. Was it Death striding coldly to finalize a tragedy? Or was it Rhea sacrificing her wounds even further into Death’s dominion so that her sons could live?

  After another ten minutes of limping through the forest, Haren’s body was pleading for rest. Her stamina had found and then exhausted her second wind, and as she and the queen pushed on, Haren’s fatigue began to influence her hope. Noting the pace of their stagger, as well as the landmark that the queen had transferred into her mind, Haren’s confidence had become tempered by reality. The chances of the queen arriving alive were not good. Bravely, Haren tried to labour on, but as she braced the queen, a sudden splash of water wet her legs. Haren was confused for a moment, but after looking down, her eyes grew wide.

  “Your water,” she said to the queen, “your water broke…”

  The trembling queen was aware. As tears rolled down Rhea’s cheek, it was clear that she was overwhelmed. It was as if hope and surrender were warring for her heart, and surrender had started to win.

  “Its okay, my lady,” Haren tried to assure her. “We just have to move more quickly.”

  The queen managed a nod. At the very least, she would go down fighting.

  With the stakes even higher, Haren seemed to find a third wind. As she cut through more of the unkempt greenery, Haren began to hear three distinctly male voices.

  “Hello!” Haren called desperately. “Is there someone there? Please! I need help!”

  The reply was immediate.

  “There, Aeroh!” one voice yelled.

  Before Haren could detect from which direction the voice came, the bush on her left side rustled, and a young man in a brown robe leapt in front of her.

  The man quickly surveyed Haren and her passenger. “It’s her!” he yelled back into the bush. “Igallik was right!”

  In an instant another two brown robed monks bounded out from the brush. One was as young as the first, but the other had a long and light gray beard.

  “Aeroh,” the older one barked. “Get back to the monastery. Inform Igallik that he was right. Tell him Rhea…” the monk seemed to pause with the gravity of what he was about to say. “Tell him Queen Rhea has been found.”

  Haren was shocked. A queen?

  After the older monk made the order, Aeroh – the first monk who had arrived – disappeared back into the bush. The remaining two monks were quick to take the queen’s weight from Haren, and after they had replaced her, the older monk looked to Haren and then nodded back to the heart of the forest.

  “It would be best if you headed back,” he said to her. “We will take her from here.”

  “But I have nowhere to go,” Haren protested. “I don’t even know where I am.”

  “You have been a great help,” the monk said, “but there is no role for you where we are going.”

  “Just let me follow until…”

  “Please, miss,” the monk implored, “just walk away.”

  Haren was too tired and confused to formulate an argument. As her uncertain steps slowed, she felt compelled to finish the journey, but instead of walking, she froze. She somehow believed that the moment was too big for her. The queen could not allow it. Before Haren was out of arm’s length, Rhea threw her hand back and grabbed Haren’s red gown. As Haren’s frame added to the weight that the monks were pulling, the older monk turned pleadingly to Rhea.

  “My queen,” he said, “we cannot bring her. There are rules. We cannot allow her in our home.”

  The queen looked sternly at the monk and angrily forfeited one of her limited breaths. “She comes…”

  The two monks looked to each other: neither had the audacity to argue.

  The older one looked reluctantly back to Haren.

  “You can come,” he said finally. “Stay close and don’t get lost.”

  Haren nodded once to him, and although she didn’t know why, she folded into a bow before the queen.

  After her passage was assured, Haren’s eyes studied the queen.

  “Where is she from?” she asked the monks as she trailed behind them. “A queen from where?”

  The older monk seemed uninterested in answering.

  “At this point, you are not owed a history lesson,” he said firmly.

&
nbsp; The monk’s tone conveyed clearly that he would not entertain any questions from the violet-eyed girl.

  Even still, Haren was compelled to ask one more.

  “Can I help carry her?” she asked. “I can take some of the weight.”

  “Take her belongings,” the older monk said. “Take them, and keep close.”

  Haren nodded, and reached for the queen’s crown and staff. The queen would only relinquish the staff.

  After Haren accepted the weapon, the monks resolved to take all of the queen’s weight, and with Rhea completely off the ground, the convoy headed quickly for home.

  With the monks as navigators, the queen’s journey was drastically quicker. It was only minutes before the giant gated entrance of the Throne’s Eye monastery appeared. The dark wooden gate was thirty feet high, and on each of its sides, log walls stretched sideways to form a giant fortress. There were two wooden perches above the gate with two monks occupying each. After the elevated monks spotted Haren’s convoy, they called out orders to each other, and after a few strenuous grunts and the sound of grinding and cranking gears, the giant Throne’s Eye gate opened.

  The monk Aeroh had been sent ahead of the convoy, and indeed he had brought the news. In addition to notifying Igallik, he had subsequently alerted nearly every monk in the monastery. The gravity of the situation had snapped each monk out of his routine and brought them all to the entrance to the monastery. The monks quickly made a path as Rhea was escorted through the gates. Haren was not as fortunate. As Haren entered through the gates, her path seemed to close. The monks blocked her path as if she were an intruder, and it was not until Rhea waved emphatically for her to follow that the path re-opened.

  From behind the crowd, Igallik, the head monk of the monastery, emerged.

  Igallik’s green eyes and slow walk appeared as if they had seen one thousand years. His face was weathered with deep lines that deepened even further upon his every expression. A long gray beard fell from his jaw to his belt, and he wore a gray robe for the specific purpose of identifying himself as the senior monk in the monastery. Igallik was the enigmatic entity of the Throne’s Eye. In the archives of the monastery’s history, Igallik was accounted for in chronicles that were centuries past. No one knew his age, and no one knew his origin. It was only his wisdom that was fully acknowledged. The levels of Igallik’s awareness and foresight remained the Throne’s Eye’s greatest instrument of direction and survival.

  As Igallik broke into view of the queen, there was unmistakable relief in Rhea’s eyes. The exchange was that of old friends. Igallik allowed his hand to fall onto Rhea’s forehead, and after he removed it, his gaze and posture fell as if he knew every detail of her condition. After a mournful shake of his head, Igallik quickly began directing Haren, Rhea, and the other monks through the giant courtyard of the Throne’s Eye monastery.

  The inside of the monastery was a massive acreage completely surrounded by the thirty foot high perimeter wall. The monastery’s central courtyard was a perfectly symmetrical circle with a base of dark red interlocking stone. The stone was carved and organized to form the symbols of the Lyran House, and within the stone there were small plots of soil that allowed for an abundance of massive cherry blossom trees. Like the points on a compass, there were eight paths branching out from the circle of red stone. Seven of the paths led to chapels, living quarters, horse stables, and training areas. The eighth path, which represented north on the compass, stretched one hundred yards to the aesthetic marvel of the Throne’s Eye monastery: the High Temple. The High Temple was a golden chapel built at the summit of the monastery’s grand staircase, a staircase that, step by step, ascended nearly two hundred feet.

  Understanding the incredible stakes at play, Igallik rushed the monks and queen down one of the stone paths to the Throne’s Eye infirmary. Once they had entered, Igallik instructed the monks to lay Rhea down on the table in front of an open window. The infirmary’s contents were what one would expect; however, the room’s dark wooden floor, grandiose stained glass windows, and golden tapestries seemed far too imposing for a sick room.

  As the morning sun surged onto the monastery, its beams breached through the infirmary’s windows and began to animate the stained glass’s colours and characters onto the polished floor around the queen. The dozen monks present began to light and then place candles around the room, and Igallik, after calling for the monastery’s herbalist, knelt next to the dying Rhea. Although no words were spoken audibly between them, it appeared as if the queen and head monk were having a conversation with their eyes. It was then that Rhea relinquished the golden crown into Igallik’s hands.

  Haren had been directly in tow of the procession, but feeling somewhat alien to the monastery and its monks, she had halted at the infirmary’s door frame. As she watched the mysterious men in robes, she made sure not to encroach onto what seemed like privileged space.

  While Haren watched, Igallik made sparing glances back to her. At one point, Igallik’s face seemed to protest whatever the queen was saying to him; however, before he could return an argument, Rhea’s body clenched and a strangled and painful scream burst out from her damaged throat.

  “Wylak!” Igallik shouted as he rose to full posture. “Wylak, we need you now!”

  In seconds, Wylak, the monastery’s herbalist, pulled a wooden herb chest past Haren and into the room. The young and slender herbalist wore a green robe, and his cool blue eyes seemed to contrast his wild blonde hair and natty beard.

  The man in green went quickly to work. He pulled his chest next to the queen, and after cracking it open, he quickly administered plant roots to the queen’s throat. The roots immediately soothed the queen’s wounds. With the pain managed, the herbalist dug deeper into his medicines and pulled out two vials of glowing blue water. Wylak poured the first vial over the queen’s scalp, and almost instantly the tension in Rhea’s body released. As the queen’s face conveyed her relief, Wylak pulled a small golden apparatus from his chest and then held it over Rhea’s pregnant belly. The tool’s top half was shaped like a compass, and the lower half was a dangling golden chain with a small blue crystal bound to its end. After Wylak administered the second blue water vial to Rhea’s belly and chest, he studiously held his tool over the queen and seemed intently focused on his gadget’s dangling crystal. After studying the tool’s movement over the queen’s belly and heart, the young herbalist turned to the head monk with heavy eyes.

  “In a way I don’t understand,” Wylak said sorrowfully, “the children have been affected by crossing realms.” The herbalist looked apologetically to the queen, but had to look back to Igallik to fend off his own tears. “Every breath she takes is damaging her children. If the queen lives ten minutes longer with her sons in utero, the children could be very damaged – mentally and physically. The window of their survival is almost closed.”

  Every heart in the infirmary sank – all but one.

  After Rhea heard that she was harming her children, her hands clenched around the bed sheets beneath her, and with a painful scream she charged unrestrained into the motions of childbirth. It is true in your realm that the good hearts must be led by the great ones. As the screaming Rhea clenched and pushed and the wounds on her neck tore even further open, the monks of the Throne’s Eye, solely by witnessing the queen’s strength, came to know courage in a way they never had before.

  Even so, there was no time for reverence. There was barely time for action.

  With his eyes remaining fixed on the struggling queen, Igallik nominated the herbalist. “Wylak, we need you to deliver the children.”

  Wylak’s eyes grew wide with surprise. “This is the first woman we’ve ever had in the monastery,” he said apologetically. “I can help her pain, but I am in no way practiced in childbirth. None of us are.”

  “I am,” said the second woman to ever enter the Throne’s Eye.

  Every monk turned immediately to the purple-eyed girl at the door frame.

  “I a
pprenticed in the infirmary of my village,’ Haren said. “If you let me, I can deliver the children.”

  There was no time for rules or tradition.

  “What do you need?” Igallik asked.

  “Towels,” Haren replied as she looked over the tools spread on the medical counter. “Towels and those clamps.”

  In seconds, Haren was given her tools. Wylak nodded affirmatively to her, and as he began to administer more herbs to the queen, Haren knelt at Rhea’s legs and prepared to receive her babies.

  Even in Rhea’s broken state, when it was obvious that the throes and motions of childbirth were stealing the last reserves of her life¸ the queen would not relent. The conditions of her arrival on earth demanded nothing less.

  Finally, after five minutes, the first child was born. Haren inspected the child, and after nodding to the queen to affirm that the child was healthy, Haren handed the small boy to Igallik. Rhea seemed to bite back her relief. Her duty – to Serich, to herself, and to her sons – was not yet complete.

  As the seven minute mark passed, Rhea’s will was nearly destroyed. The second child was crowning, but the queen was almost lifeless. As Rhea’s eyes began to roll backwards, Wylak looked worriedly to Haren. His face conveyed far too clearly that he had no other herb or option for the queen. Haren couldn’t allow it to end like this. Although the queen had shown her more courage than she had ever seen, Haren stood up and demanded more.

  “My lady!” Haren shouted. “It is your life for his! One last push! For a life, my lady! Just push!”

  Tears streamed down the queen’s face. She feared the incredible pain she needed to inflict upon herself. She feared the immense courage that she needed to find. Her scared stare acknowledged the impossibility of a final push with a pleading and praying look up to the heavens. With her eyes still saying no to Haren, the queen managed to nod her head yes.