mikebarnes

The Long Way Home

The first book in the Earth Legacy series

The Premise

The Earth Legacy series is a saga covering two worlds of man, set far apart in space yet linked by a common history.

On Earth, thousands of years before this story begins, mankind's abuse of the planet and its ecosystems left the human race with a stark choice: leave, or die. Their ravaged world was no longer capable of supporting them, even with their almost total command of physical laws. Luckily, that scientific knowledge made a mass exodus, the complete evacuation of the Earth, a relatively easy thing to achieve... though it was far from easy for the people to leave their home behind to start new ones.

Arriving on the remote planet of Orbis, a world which bore a distinct resemblance to the Earth during the period when Gondwana and Laurasia formed two giant continents, settlers intent on living within the natural world, rather than above it, started a new life for themselves in the land of Gondwana. But things went wrong from the outset: greed had followed the settlers, a greed which ruined lives and threatened to end the grand experiment almost before it had begun. Disaster was only narrowly averted.

When our story begins, all of this is ancient history which, where it is remembered at all, has passed into legend. But history has a tendancy to repeat itself...

How does fate lead our hero, Xanda, to skip between these two worlds? What does he find on his travels, and how will he save his peaceful country from the demons of the past?

There's really only one way to find out!

However...

Just to whet your appetite, if you don't mind a few small spoilers then you can read the first chapter of the book right now.

From the book: Chapter 1, The End of Peace

For a thousand years, the land of Gondwana had lived in peace under the benign rule of the Thuryan dynasty. Legend had it that a great hero, Malcator the Magnificent, led the people in revolution against the dark overlords who once held the people in their iron grip.

The overlords wielded magic, they could destroy anything and anybody who stood against them. They had existed since the dawn of time, as far as anybody knew, and would exist until the end of time. Their power was unbounded, and they used it only to serve their own selfish aims. The land was theirs to do with as they pleased, the people theirs to rule without mercy. The splendour of their palaces stood in stark contrast to the poverty and suffering of their subjects whose lives, and deaths, were completely under the control of their malevolent masters.

But Malcator was different. He was born of the dark overlords but he was unlike them in almost every way. He knew from an early age that the world was wrong, that people were not objects to be used and then cast down. He knew, too, that there was no hope for a better world unless he himself created it. There was nobody else.

His overlord brothers and sisters never guessed his secret, though keeping it hidden from them taxed him dearly, nor yet did the oppressed people of the lands who despised him just as they did the others of his kin. He guarded his secret well and bided his time. And when the time was right, when his own power was at its peak and his brilliant mind had formed a plan of campaign, he left the castles and palaces of his own people and went out into the fields and squalid towns, his identity hidden, to fulfil his destiny.

There remains no known record of how he accomplished his revolution, of how he took a subdued and fearful society and formed from it a nation of warriors against which even the powerful overlords would eventually fall. Yet somehow that is what he did. There followed a long and bloody war, in which thousands died in every fierce battle. Even Malcator was not powerful enough to avoid the bloodshed and loss of life, though he desperately wished that he could, and even Malcator was not powerful enough to evade its effects. In a final desperate battle, he stood against the remaining overlords, encamped in their last stronghold deep in the mountains, and battled for many days and nights until, exhausted, the rock was split apart by the ferocity of the exchange of sizzling energy and the last of the overlords, Malcator included, were buried deep under the mountains.

And with them were buried the talismans which had given the overlords their fearsome power. Because of Malcator the people knew that, after all, the overlords had been mere mortals just like they themselves. The overlords held in themselves no special magic, instead they used the power of strange machines, passed down through generations, the secrets of which had been lost in the dim and distant past.

The overlords were gone, even Malcator, celebrated by a proud and liberated people as The Magnificent, was gone. Gondwana had been split apart by war, but time heals all wounds. The world slowly recovered, the people learned to forget, and peace fell like a soft blanket upon the land.

Malcator had left the world an unexpected gift. A son and heir, born of a common woman, Seya Thury, whom he had secretly loved and cherished above all else. The boy grew into a proud and noble man, crowned king by the joyful people who recognised in him greatness, honesty, and wisdom.

Thus began the rule of the Thuryan dynasty, a thousand years of happiness, richness and light for a land once shrouded in darkness.

But the Thuryan rulers kept hidden a vital secret, a secret too dangerous to share. Not all the magic of the overlords had been destroyed. A few fragments of their arsenal had survived, protected by the descendants of Malcator against misuse by minds which might be turned by power, against people who might grab them and use them for their own, selfish gain. They might have destroyed them, or hidden them like the others for all time, but they did not. Instead they guarded them against the time when they might be needed by the forces of good.

Indeed, many of the talismans were used for good over the centuries. When the rains failed and the people faced starvation, the fourth king, Ferdinand, declared it a miracle when after five months of drought the rains finally lashed down, quenching the thirst of the cracked and barren earth, and seedlings lying shrivelled and dead sprouted anew. Only King Ferdinand himself, along with his wife and a single trusted advisor, knew the truth.

The kings used those talismans, many times over the many years but sparingly and oh so secretly, to ensure the health and wealth of their people. They had no wish to make themselves gods, and they had no wish to stir jealousy and resentment among the people. So those minor miracles were of necessity few and far between.

So peace reigned, the people were happy and well fed, Gondwanan civilisation blossomed and the overlords, and the misery they caused, passed into legend. Like many ancient stories, this one became just another tale of good versus evil, of morality and justice, embellished through the generations, and few seriously believed it.

Through all the years that the Thuryan dynasty ruled, it was the custom for the eldest son of the king to succeed him. By happy miracle, or by the genetic gifts of Malcator and his wife Seya, the kings of Gondwana were always fair and just. They continued to guard their secrets and use them wisely.

The sons of kings were all fair and just.

Until Brandon.

There had been no hint of trouble when Brandon was a young child. He had behaved no better nor worse than any other child of privileged upbringing. His friends liked him well enough, and they would play at soldiers together through the rooms and corridors of the old castle. When Xanda was born, Brandon was six years old and, though a little jealous of the attentions his younger sibling received, was as good a brother as any other in the kingdom.

It was during the summer of his twelfth year that the change came. Brandon had been off on his own, playing around the castle and exploring all the nooks and crannies as he often did. The secrets of the great castle, its origins lost in the depths of history, had always fascinated him. The fateful day had started fine and clear but, as the morning rolled on, great storm clouds formed overhead and the castle was lashed by wind and ferocious rain such as had not been seen for many years. Plans for dinner in the courtyard were swiftly changed to a more sombre affair in the great hall. Brandon arrived late, dishevelled and wild-eyed, and everyone assumed he had been caught out in the rain.

But from that day, a cloud hung over the future king. It affected him and those around him. He became more and more reclusive, and the cheerful little boy grew into an often sullen man over the years that followed. Nobody could understand what had happened to that cheerful little boy, though many tried and failed to find him again.

Nobody knew, that is, apart from the King.