what he was discovering, he was sure there was enough there for him to piece it together later.
He was rocked from his contemplation by the sound of running feet. Out of the colours emerged his time- looping double that he had first witnessed in Edinburgh and most recently in the Great Pyramid in Cairo.
As on their previous encounters, the future-Church wasn't shocked to come into contact with his old self. 'Is this it?' he said. 'Is this the right time? You have to listen to me. This is a warning.' Confused, he looked around. 'Is this the right place? Am I too late?'
Frustrated, Church said to his future-self, 'You're not giving me enough information,' even though he knew his double was locked in some constantly repeating cycle in the Warp Zone that made him appear at various points in Church's life.
'When you're in Otherworld and they call, heed it right away. They're going to bring him back. They're-' The future-Church became gripped with fear. In panic, he yelled, 'Too late!' and raced away into the colours.
For the first time, the double was close to his current appearance, suggesting that whatever point he originated at was in the near future. 'Okay,' he said to himself, 'when they call, I'll heed it. And then we'll sort out whatever's scaring you, all right?'
Church had a brief sense that someone else was nearby. He considered waiting to see what would turn up until some deep-seated instinct warned him to keep moving. Breaking into a jog, the colours streamed by him.
Am I dying? he thought. Is this just some reality I've created to soothe myself in my last moments?
'That question is not important. Remember the three questions. They are all.'
Church was surprised to hear the voice answering him directly for the first time. Before he could respond, the colours around him began to thin and he saw that he was, finally, running into the world.
The voice floated to him one final time, barely audible, and he realised it was his own voice. 'Good luck.' It faded away with the colours, and then he was jogging through a thin mist and out into a balmy summer night.
Grass lay beneath his feet, and there were trees nearby silhouetted against a sky alive with thousands of stars and a butterscotch moon, full and round, that lit up the field as if it were day. Church came to a halt and filled his lungs with the rich, cool countryside air, revelling in the aromas of hedge and field. As he looked up at the great chamber of the night, he felt an overwhelming sense of peace.
Home.
In a way he couldn't quite understand, every sensation that came to him in that beautiful evening setting reinforced what the voice had told him. His unconscious mind made connections that waited to reveal themselves. Fireflies glinted in the long grass, and as he looked out across the rolling countryside to where the lights of villages glittered, he heard the haunting call of an owl nearby. Here was everything he ever needed, every answer.
The scent of woodsmoke on the wind disrupted his reverie, and he turned to glimpse the flicker of a campfire in the middle of a dense copse. The soft buzz of amiable conversation drifted through the night, and by the time he pushed his way through the trees he knew what he would find.
Sitting around the campfire on which a spit-rabbit was slowly being turned were all the others. Ruth jumped up the minute he stepped into the circle of warm light and hugged him tightly.
'We were starting to worry you were gone for good,' she said.
Church caught the brief shadow crossing Veitch's face at Ruth's show of emotion, but he quickly flashed an honest grin.
'What are you talking about? It's only been a few minutes,' Church said.
'It's been a week!' Ruth said.
'Time moves differently in that place, just like in the Otherworld, you idiot,' Tom muttered as he stirred a bubbling pot of aromatic herbs and hedgerow plants.
'We have been waiting here patiently for your arrival.' Shavi clasped Church's hand warmly. 'Despite what Ruth said, we never doubted you would catch up with us. Experience tells.'
'Yeah, bad news just keeps on giving, Church-dude.' Laura grinned at him lazily, hands behind her head as she lay in the shadows just beyond the firelight. 'Besides, you're the man with the plan. We couldn't move on because no one knows what's rattling around in that tiny brain of yours. Unless it really is just running away and burying your head in the sand. Which I still think has a lot going for it.'
Realising how hungry he was, Church sat between Veitch and Rachel and stirred the pot. 'You stayed in one place? With the spiders everywhere? '
'Do you think we're fools?' Tom snapped. 'We're on a major ley here. And we've seen no sign of them, or we'd be far away and you'd be damned.'
Church laid one palm on the ground. Reaching deep down, he could just feel the faintest hint of buzz. 'Not much of a ley. The Blue Fire is pretty dormant. Just like it was before the Fomorii invaded.'
'That is the job of the Army of the Ten Billion Spiders,' Shavi said. 'We awaken the Blue Fire. They exert all their power to reassert the Mundane Spell and stifle the lifeblood of Existence so that it has little effect on the people who live here.'
'So that's us, right — pointless?' Laura snorted. 'We wake the Blue Fire. They shut it down. We wake it. They shut it down. We do all this suffering and get nowhere.' Underneath her irony there was a troubling bleak note.
'That's why we have to stop the Void once and for all,' Church said. 'That way we change things for ever.'
'Yeah, stop a god.' Laura laughed coldly, then rolled over so no one could see her face.
'You're all funny.' Rachel laughed. 'You talk about the strangest things!'
They all exchanged glances, but no one felt it necessary to illuminate Rachel on some of the harsh realities they had encountered.
'But you're good company, I'll give you that,' she continued. 'And you saved my life. I'm never going to forget that.' She wiped away a stray tear, the strain of her recent experiences still evident.
Her gratitude was touching, and only added to the warm mood that pervaded the campsite. With the soundtrack of the fire's crackling, the breeze in the trees and the calls of the owls, Church lay back and watched the stars amongst the branches. He would have been happy to stay there for ever, with his friends, and the woman he loved, in the beating heart of nature.
They'd all kept going for so long with the promise that such peace would finally await them at the end of their long, hard road, but perhaps this was the last moment they would ever have.
His lambent emotions must have played out on his face, for he caught Ruth watching him with concern. He gave her a reassuring smile. 'Let's make the most of this night,' he said to the group. 'What's out there isn't important. What's here is real, all that matters. Let's celebrate just being alive, being together. Because tomorrow everything starts in force.'
5
In the heat of the night, amidst the thick odour of petrol fumes and the regular buzz of traffic heading west along the A30, the Libertarian waited on the fringes of the stark garage lights. For every car or lorry that trundled in for refuelling, he carefully searched the faces of the drivers, filled with barely contained anger that he had no idea what he wanted to find, but convinced he would know it when he saw it, and that it was important. This time, this place. Why? His memory was increasingly and frustratingly patchy, at the point when he needed it the most. He half-recalled a distant memory of sitting around a campfire, and drove its unpleasant taint from his mind; too haunting, too destabilising.
A sleek, silver BMW rolled onto the forecourt, music blaring from the open window. The driver was slim, tanned, with well-cut, sandy hair, wearing an open-necked, light-blue shirt. At first glance, there was nothing out of the ordinary about him, but then the Libertarian caught sight of something subtle that was instantly recognisable: something in his eyes, perhaps, a hardness, too long between blinks, or the way the muscles of his face fell in an unguarded moment. He knew he had his man.
Marching over, he held out his hand. 'Simon,' he boomed.
'Scott,' the driver responded, unsure.
'Of course. Scott. You're looking for your girlfriend. Flighty type. Ran away, left you in the lurch.'
The information was so precise Scott was too taken aback to question the stranger.
