Exiles Chronicles
Book I: Thy Will be Done
A companion story to Thy Kingdom Come

It had been a chance meeting that had brought the two companies together, just as the sun was dipping low in the west.

The seven of the Emerald Company (the final confrontation between them and Hermes that had seen the Emerald Queen refuse all contact with the Citadel for nearly ten months showing no signs of healing, despite an invitation from the Renegades to join them and the others for the first anniversary celebration two days hence) had come from the fledgling Emerald Kingdom, in answer to a call from the Brigadier. Yet another wild tale had reached him of a Youma having taken up residence close to one of the little hamlets that had begun to spring up on the almost innumerable sites of ruined towns and cities. Such stories were common still, and all too often they were little more than the wild exaggerations of villagers increasingly prone to regard any stranger with open hostility.

Already, a wandering catholic monk had been arrested by the local militia for trying to stop four villagers beating someone they claimed was a captured petty thief, and a family who had made the mistake of settling in an abandoned farmhouse, rather than risk the hamlet's possible hostility, and worse, of sheltering a half-African refugee from the south, had been driven out, the man they had tried to protect hanged from a gibbet in the village square, and their home and their few meagre possessions burned before the Brigadier could send anyone to save them.

In these times, any difference was an excuse for screams of “Youma spy!” and those obviously of foreign origin still remaining in England, either wandered homeless in fear for their lives, or hid within the greater communities, where the survivors were still too sickened and dispirited by the dreadful slaughter, following the liberation and famine, to care.

As with so many sightings of late, the Youma had turned out to be nothing more than a teenage human girl with some necromantic potential, her latent abilities brought to the fore by deprivation and her last desperation to survive. The Seven had done what they could, but the girl was half starved and hopelessly insane with her growing power and the memory of unimaginable brutality, and in the end there was nothing to be done but the inevitable, a solution all too common, given the impossibility of sustained help or treatment.

They had not returned afterwards to the hamlet, choosing instead to continue northwards for what little remained of the day, and camp in the reviving woodland for the night, before turning back westwards in the morning, and for home.

It was as they were preparing to abandon the road, that they had caught first sight of the little company as they made their way slowly from the north. Travellers on the road were still common, as people wandered often aimlessly here and there in search of a place they could call home, but this small company had been a particularly stark reminder of the reality of a still shattered world. The five children looked close to collapse, and the young man and woman trudging slowly at the rear of the little cavalcade, and pulling a battered hand-cart between them, seemed to be faring little better.

Quickening their pace, the Seven had hurried forwards, and it was only a few minutes later that they were overtaking them.

Their initial impressions had proven accurate. The children were footsore and desperately hungry, and their guardians seemed little less exhausted.

It had taken very little persuasion to convince them to rest with them for the night, particularly when the tall, dark-haired girl with laughing blue-green eyes had flashed the children a beaming smile of welcome, before producing with a flourish a beautiful golden long-bow, as if by magic. She had slipped silently away, to return soon with two brace of rabbits, much to the children's amazement and delight.

Tales of the mysterious, other-world travellers and the hidden magical kingdom in the west, were already known far and wide, despite all Hermes could do to discourage the stories, and the children had been suddenly full of questions and excitement. The Emerald Queen and her companions might not have been the company of Avalon who had saved the world, but so far as the children were concerned, they were the next best thing.

Stirring from her quiet introspection, the tall bard smiled in memory of the evening, and of their collective delight at her many tales, her usually watchful face relaxed in a rare and gentling calm, as she cradled the little girl close on her lap, one long, slender hand stroking gently at the child's newly-combed fair hair as she gazed out over the fire into the stillness beyond, alert despite her seeming quiet, as were all her companions, for any hint of danger. In her arms, little Crystal, at only seven the youngest of the children, stirred, still wide awake, her head half turning as she gazed up at the tall, dark-haired Rhiannon with bright-blue eyes shining in the firelight.

“Please, Lady Rhiannon, may we have another tale?” she inquired softly, her small voice hesitant, as though unwilling to disturb the hush of the moment. “It's been so long since I heard any really fine tales, and I really liked that last one. It served that horrible Overlord right, don't you think?”

For a moment, a full beaming smile lit a face that had seemed guarded and serious, far beyond her years. Then she sighed and settled her head on the bard's arm, and Rhiannon's throat tightened almost painfully as she looked down at her for a moment, and held her closer.

“Aunt Leanora and uncle Thomas try,” the little girl continued softly, her tone suddenly very serious once more, “but we've been so hungry; and we keep having to move because Aunt Leanora comes from Norway, which is ever so far away, and talks differently, and people get frightened.” She shook her head. “Besides, they only tell silly tales with no adventures. I like the ones with magic and swords and—”

“And knights and dragons!” agreed Peter, eldest of the five, from where he was settled beside the most overtly fierce-seeming of the company.

Ligeia's long, lustrous, jet-black hair shone in the firelight, her piercing dark eyes flashing as she favoured him with a fierce, almost feral smile that he seemed to understand and answer, and he made no move to prove he was old enough not to be frightened of the dark, when a faint sound startled him, and she tightened her left arm protectively closer about his small, too-thin form, even though he had insisted to everyone else earlier in the evening that he was afraid of nothing, and was as much able to take care of himself and the others as Uncle Thomas and Aunt Leanora.

As eldest, he seemed to take his responsibility to protect his companions with a seriousness far beyond his eleven years, and with Elizabeth: only two months his junior, and Edmund and Susan: twins barely a year and a half younger, he had made a solemn promise to see that little Crystal would never ever have to be hurt or frightened again.

He had glared defiantly into the surrounding twilight as he had proclaimed this earlier that night, as though daring anything to challenge him. But Ligeia had caught the tears glistening unshed more than once as he had watched his quiet, withdrawn little foster-sister, and he seemed to have sensed, of all the Emerald Company, a kindred spirit in her, and had not been ashamed to cling suddenly to her and burst into tears when he thought no one else was watching.

She had taken him alone to help her collect what they could for the fire, sensing his need to be away from the others for a little. He had pressed desperately close, sobbing brokenly for a little for the mother and father he would never see again, then pulled away for a moment before hugging her fiercely once more, and flashing her the easy, confident grin that seemed to be his trademark, and that she understood suddenly hid so much he did not want the world to see.

They had said nothing more, but he had stayed close to her throughout the meal and Rhiannon's tales, and he had not resisted as she had tucked the cloak and blanket around him, and settled him at her side.

Now he huddled closer to her in the near-darkness, and Ligeia vowed that at least tonight he would sleep soundly, and fear nothing.

“Knights and dragons?” came Rhiannon's gently bantering tone from the further side of the fire, and Crystal giggled softly and snuggled closer.

“No!” protested Elizabeth from her place in Joanna's arms.

And Ligeia found her eyes straying once more to their tall and silent queen, the cloak of nemesis drawn close about her, midnight-black tonight in answer to her mood, remembering the look she had given Rhiannon, when the usually perceptive bard had inquired, earlier in the evening in a gently teasing tone, after Peter had told them of his promise, as to how he had managed to lose Lucy, since he, Susan and Edmund had managed to stick together. The younger boy had grinned impishly, immediately catching the joke, while his sister giggled in concert.

But although Peter seemed also to have understood the reference, and smiled, Ligeia had caught the quick flash of pain in his eyes. And Joanna had shot Rhiannon a look that warned her that the joke might not have been appreciated, and never again to assume anything given the circumstances; and again, Ligeia had been reminded just how much more completely the fierce, self-possessed Emerald Queen might understand him and the others than might they, and how wide still might be the gulf between them.

Now, she looked towards the tall, flame-haired girl who at times seemed still in so many ways a stranger to her and her five sisters, save perhaps for Liana, who seemed to share a special kinship with her that even Rhiannon seemed to find it hard to understand; and she was not surprised when Joanna caught and held her glance, her emerald eyes flashing for a moment in feral challenge, before her face was softened by a sudden kindly smile that was becoming at last more common, after the frigid, almost brutal mask of the days of the Occupation, when the six had feared for her soul.

Her gaze moved about the circle for a moment, before Elizabeth stirred and shivered in her arms, and she moved quickly to tuck the cloak and blanket closer around her with a quiet gentleness that Ligeia had feared for a time lost for ever.

“I think perhaps,” she said, her subtly-emphasised west-shore Irish lilt the only indication of her own weariness, “that we've had enough tales for tonight; don't you?”

By the fire, Thomas and Leanora were already curled up close, the sense of security the Emerald Company gave, along with a sedative Camilla had slipped unobtrusively into the herbal tea she had made them, ensuring they would have what was possibly their first full night's peaceful sleep since they had found the children, half-starved and wandering, six months before, and taken it upon themselves to become the family each had lost.

Now, the tall healer-archer sat watch beside them, her beautiful golden mana-bow laid across her lap in longbow form, long, slender fingers playing gently now and again with the string, as intense, blue-green eyes gazed into the stillness beyond the circle cast by the fire in search of an enemy she was certain would not appear. But she had promised the children she would keep watch with her bow through the night, and like her five sisters, she had no need of sleep in any way others would understand.

Beside her, Marina finished teasing out her long fair hair with the little golden comb their queen had managed to manifest, and favoured Camilla with a warm, gentle smile before turning the little comb to her younger sister's dark tresses.

“Please, just one more tale?”

Curled up close at Liana's side, Edmund was exhausted and ready at last to sleep, but he was not going to admit it while Peter and even Crystal were still wide awake. Besides, tales of the Emerald Queen and her six companions (and in particular, of their secret protection of so much of the resistance during the Occupation) had begun at last to spread far and wide, and it was such a tale of the resistance before things went so wrong that he really wanted to hear.

Like the others, he had dreamt so many times during the darkest days that he was a great hero, and able to fight the Overlord; and meeting the Emerald Company that night, he had found himself overwhelmed at just how brave they must have been, and just how beautiful they were; but especially Queen Joanna and Lady Liana, who he was sure must be sisters, since they looked so much alike, and each of whom had brought back poignant memories of pretty, flame-haired Lydell, who had shown such courage at the end.

The Emerald Queen would have been his first choice to be near of course. But the look in her flashing emerald eyes when Uncle Thomas and Aunt Leanora had explained just why his new little foster-sister was so quiet and self-contained, had made him think that perhaps it would not be a good idea to bother her, until she had had a chance to calm down.

Edmund smiled again with grim satisfaction, imagining just what she might have done to the monster who had hurt Crystal's mother, had she had the chance.

Now, eager to hear more, he flashed Liana a look full of hero-worship, flushing furiously as she returned his smile, her brilliant jade eyes shining with warmth in the firelight, before he turned a still-flaming face to Rhiannon.

“Can't you tell us more about what you did during the Long Dark?”

It was a name (along with ‘The Dark Year’, and simply ‘The Occupation’) that was becoming ever more common, and he shivered in anticipation of another thrilling adventure to finish the evening: terrifying, but also exciting, now that the true horror was over.

But in Rhiannon's arms, Crystal stirred and whimpered softly, and even in the glow of the fire, Edmund caught Peter's sudden glare, closely followed by that of his sister. And suddenly he hung his head, shocked and ashamed that he could have forgotten so quickly.

Little Crystal had fared particularly badly during that terrible year, her mother, the daughter of an Earl, beaten and brutalised again and again by a particularly sadistic master, who had it seemed, found it particularly amusing to show a human of her station just where her place now lay, often within the little girl's sight and hearing; and she did not want to hear anything about that dreadful time, save how the evil Overlord was finally defeated.

“Sorry,” Edmund mumbled, sickened again, despite his youth, at the sudden memories of what the little girl had told them, not daring to look up to see his little foster-sister's tears, or the accusatory looks of the others, and worst, of the seven travellers, and trying vainly to shut out the soft sounds of her broken whimpering, until at last Rhiannon managed to soothe her.

Pressed close, Elizabeth felt the Emerald Queen's arms tighten for a moment almost painfully around her; while glancing quickly at her queen, Liana caught for an instant a brief echo of a hate and rage to set the demon-queen herself to trembling, as her own memories stirred of what she had seen, and the vengeance she had taken.

“You know, that was a really stupid thing to say!”

Susan's angry hiss brought Liana's attention back to the boy at her side, as his sister shifted in Lenore's lap, and glared at him until the tall, fair-haired mage hushed her gently, her blue eyes seeking Edmund's own in a quick glance of understanding, even as Liana's arm tightened for a moment about him, and he lifted his head to catch Lenore's look before blushing and glancing quickly away.

“I think Joanna was right,” the mage continued quietly as she settled Susan once more, and drew the cloak and blankets closer around her. “You're all over-tired, and I think it's really time to go to sleep; hmm?”

But little Crystal shook her head. “Can't we have just one more tale?” she pleaded. “Just one more, before we go to sleep?”

For a heartbeat the bard seemed unsure, and it was Edmund who settled the matter.

“Could you tell us how you came here?” he asked with sudden inspiration. “Some people say you're from Avalon, like Lord Grey and Lady Polaris, and Lord Merlin and Lady Arcturus, and some say you're Senshi, like Lady Zeus and Lady Hermes. But Aunt Leanora says you're from another place altogether; and she should know.”

Abruptly, Rhiannon's smile was tinged with sadness. They had never met the pretty Norwegian fighter before that evening, as she had, it seemed, joined Brigadier Hamilton-Smith's company only a little before the end; and in the confusion and the horror after the liberation, they had not crossed paths with the remnants of the group again, before she had fled the new fanatics. But her information was likely to be as accurate as any they had confirmed, after the Overlord was gone, and their greatest secret had ceased to be important.

Suddenly attentive, Crystal flashed her foster-brother a grateful look, before turning pleading eyes to the bard. “Oh yes!” she cried; then at Rhiannon's sharp glance, more quietly. “Oh yes! Please can we have that one? Oh, that would be splendid!”

For a long moment Rhiannon seemed to consider, glancing to her queen as though deferring to her.

“They'll fall asleep if they're tired,” said Joanna quietly in her native Irish Gaelic. “I don't think one last tale will do any harm. Besides, little Crystal's still frightened, and night-sounds in the dark are about the last thing that's likely to settle her to sleep.”

Nodding, Rhiannon let her eyes stray about the circle, her glance catching and holding for a moment that of each of the company, until she was certain all were attentive. Then, in a low voice that held even her own companions enthralled, she began.

“In a place far beyond the reaches of for ever, where the light of the furthest star shall never shine and no traveller may pass, save by great magic, or arts and knowledge almost beyond imagining; in a place beyond dream or fantasy, where even the guardian of time dare not go, there lies the void between realities; an unimaginable place, where exists the roar stuff of matter and of thought; a place incomprehensible, perhaps even to those few who have crossed its boundaries and tried to understand its laws; for they are merely passing through, and do not stay. Some call it the great Gateway: the stepping-stone to other truths and other worlds, that no starship could ever reach.

“Of these, many are so like to this that you might not know at first, should you stray, that you had slipped the moorings of your own reality; while others are strange and terrible beyond imagining, filled with wonders and terrors of which we may only dream: worlds where tales and fantasy are real, while we are to them but dreams, or the fleeting motion of an author's pen.

“How vast is this place, and to how many myriad realities it leads, perhaps none shall ever know; for how vast is for ever? Yet above and beyond the infinite reaches even of this void, there lies yet another and greater: a place that is to the first, as the first is to us: a place for ever unreachable, save perhaps by arts so great that the sum of all the worlds we could know might grow old and fail, long before we could hope to understand them: a place that leads perhaps to myriad upon myriad of voids, that hold each their own myriad worlds.

“Whether this goes on for ever, with void within void, or whether this is the end, who can say? But if you could stand at the uttermost end, in the greatest such place that could ever be, and look out into the infinite wonder of creation, you might see all the voids within voids that hold at last each their myriad universes of stars and planets, drifting like tiny bubbles in the crystal depths of a vast clear lake.

“Most, like that which holds this universe and this world, would pass, calm and quiet: perfect spheres, closed to all to come or go, drifting gently within the lake of for ever. But for some, perhaps by some dreadful chance, or some misstep at the very moment of their creation, cracks begin: tiny fractures, almost imperceptible at first; yet which grow and grow, until at last the bubble bursts, and a billion billion voids, holding each a billion billion realities, fail in ruinous fall and everlasting oblivion. How many such fractured bubbles there may be, perhaps we can never know. But it is within such a failing, fractured omniverse that our tale begins.

“Just when the first fault came, none may tell; for time is different for each reality. Yet when it came, it was felt suddenly perhaps in every possible world within that omniverse, and for a moment the very foundations of reality were shaken; while in its void, there sprang suddenly into being, a between-place that should never have been: a place where what one imagined was all that was real: a gateway reality that made it possible suddenly for a tiny few who could learn the art, to travel from world to world within that fractured omniverse, and take others with them; and changed any traveller a little for each new world to which they journeyed. Yet it exacted a dreadful price for such passage; for it copied from all who passed, the sum of all they possessed, and made of it shadows in their image: nightmare phantoms beyond the darkest dreams of the lord of deepest Hell: creatures anathema to the very fabric of physical reality, and hungry for the bodies their counterparts possessed, that they might have life beyond the anti-real emptiness that was their home.

“Just how this came to be, none can say. But of all the myriad worlds there might be, only in eleven were there to be found such travellers, and only in one a traveller to master the full power of the gateway realm; and it was from these worlds: nine known in the rest only as tales and fantasy, and the last two known to the others not at all, that came the only hope to hold back the Fall; yet of them also the nightmares beyond madness which only their courage have held thus far at bay.

“From one came Saotome Ranma, heir to a great school of martial artists: a fighter of potential beyond measure: a boy of seventeen, cursed at times to take the form of a young girl. And others followed him.

“From another, Mano Yohko: one-hundred and eighth demon hunter of her line, with her faithful apprentice at her side: whose skill was great beyond her years, and whose shining blade burned with the incorruptable fire of her soul.

“From yet another, Magami Eiko and Daitokuji Biko: two rivals who fought without respite when alone, yet bound by friendship with the princess of a far-off world; and who laid aside their pride, and stood side by side against the darkness.

“From two more, Senshi much as your own, but of worlds in which the Overlord never came to be.

“From the next, Urd, Belldandy and Skuld: three goddesses of the ancient Scandinavian north, and the young mortal Keiichi who had captured Bellandy's heart.

“From another, Kei and Yuri: the Lovely Angels; two impetuous but courageous girls, of a universe in which humanity's empire had reached far out to the stars.

“From the next, Lina Inverse: a sorceress of great power, and a courage and nobility beyond all even she could once have believed she could possess, with many friends and a rival at her side.

“And from the ninth, the Knight Sabres: four women brought together by circumstance, and the determination to see justice for the people of the city from whence they came.

“Two other worlds there were, as I have said. But of these I shall say nothing, save that the first was very much as this before the Fall, and the second was one in which the British Empire never died. And from the first came a boy, and from the second, a girl. And they were bound together as creator and created. And she hated him.

“Of the nine worlds known in stories, each to each, five were, on the surface, so like this before the Fall, that you might not know at first were you to travel there, that you had left your own; and Eiko's was little different, but for the advancements of a few more years. Of Kei's and Yuri's, I have already spoken; while that of Lina Inverse was a place of monsters and dragons and mighty quests, where magic and high adventure were king.

“Which brings us to the last; a world that would seem at first little different from this, but for the changes another nearly forty years might bring. Yet it was a darker world, where for many, greed and power had become all that mattered, and where giant corporations held the world, and fought for dominance.

“Pre-eminent amongst these was Genom: a company that built everything from cars to computers, but whose true power lay in a very special product that only they could make. These machines: many made in human form, they called Buma; and they were both a blessing and a curse: a blessing because they could relieve people of so many things they'd had previously to do themselves, but a curse because Genom saw in them only the chance to profit from their potential as weapons of terror and devastating power. And it was upon these that the researchers concentrated, building ever more efficient killing machines; until at last, late in the year two-thousand and thirty-three, a tremendous leap in technology was made by a Genom scientist of exceptional brilliance and unparalleled vision, and two new prototypes were built that would be ten-thousand times more deadly than anything ever made, and make Genom rich beyond imagining.

“The tests were a success, and four more of the new Buma were constructed.

“But their creator had become sickened and horrified by what was being done to those he had begun to think of as his children; and with his help, the first of the six, understanding at last the enormity of the greed and hubris of the company she had, until he had freed her, been programmed to serve, fled the tower of her makers to the Knight Sabres and her freedom.

“The road for the others would be harder; yet they too would escape, and perhaps may have lived long lives content, had not the events of the growing collapse come to their world. For in the midst of a battle by Genom to test their resolve, Youma appeared suddenly in MegaTokyo, followed swiftly by Kei and Yuri; and the struggle was forgotten in what came after.

“So began the battle against a tide of ruin and nightmare beyond all any could have conceived. And for almost two months it continued, with hope failing; while reality trembled, and the mistress of damnation drew ever nearer her triumph.

“Then, on a black night of dreadful rumour, all gathered at the Mano home; for that world was most in imminent peril, and the lord of its Hell himself was in terror of what might soon befall. And they decided that despite the ever more frequent attacks of their nemesis upon that world, they could no longer afford to stay; and Joanna opened the gate, and the company passed through.

“And in that moment, reality screamed and shivered, and the gate wavered; and all within the company felt a tearing, as though a splinter of his very soul were being ripped away. And for seven, the others were suddenly gone; and all was nightmare and horror, and a dreadful, shattering plunge down into an oblivion beyond the last ruin of for ever.

“And when they could understand once more that they still lived, they found themselves scattered across a strange yet dreadfully familiar world, and staring up at a sky turning black with the first great stroke of the Overlord's coming.

“And now, we come at last to the end of this tale; for it is nearly midnight, and long passed time for all young children to be tucked up fast asleep.”

“But Lady Rhiannon!” protested little Crystal sleepily from where she lay now curled up close in the bard's arms. “You never told us who you were, or from which world you came.”

“Did I not?” murmured Rhiannon softly, gazing down upon the little girl with a warm and gentle smile. “Ah; but my precious, that is a secret.”

And with that, she lifted Crystal in her arms and kissed her gently, before she settled her close once more. And as her low voice began in a warm and gentle song that seemed to enfold all in a sudden, peaceful stillness, little Crystal closed her eyes at last, and sleep rushed swiftly to claim her.

And she slept without waking through the hours of the night, while the six sat still and silent, and held back the darkness and the fear.