Realising he would get nothing more, Church headed once again towards the light, and when he glanced back briefly the puppeteer was gone, no marks in the dust to suggest he had ever been there.
Soon all thoughts of what he had seen faded, to be replaced by the unexpected sensation of a great weight lifting from his shoulders. Could it be all over? After so long, he scarcely dared believe it.
Night came down quickly in the desert. Hal waited for him, the Wayfinder a blue beacon of hope in the desolate landscape. His cloak was wrapped about him against the plummeting temperatures.
'You're the new Caretaker? How did that happen?' Church asked.
'Long story. It's a big job, an important job. Someone needs to do it, and I guess I passed the entrance exam.'
'Don't do yourself down. You deserve it.'
'Walk with me.' Hal held the lantern high to guide their way across the wastelands.
'It's not over, is it?'
'No. I'm sorry, Church. It's never over.'
'Never?'
'Never.'
Church's heart sank.
'On the bright side, you get to spend eternity with the best friends you could ever wish for. You get to be a tremendous force for good in the universe, shaping the lives of untold millions. And you get to be king, now and always.'
'So we didn't win today. Despite all the deaths and the pain, we didn't win,' Church said wearily.
'Oh, you won.' The Wayfinder's sapphire glow gave Hal's smile a strange, transcendental quality. 'You won bigger and better than you ever dreamed.'
Hal's words resonated with what Lugh had said about the Void and the new age, and Church had a strange sensation of something of incomprehensible magnitude drawing around him. He shivered, although he had no idea why.
On the crest of a rise, Hal indicated the shifting colours of the Warp Zone ahead. 'That's still here?' Church said. 'I thought it was some bizarre side effect of the Void.'
'It's going to stay here. And it'll be your new home.' Hal laughed when he saw Church's baffled expression. 'In a way. It's time I told you everything.'
They sat together on the ridge in the chill desert night under the lamp of the full moon. Across the heavens, the glorious sweep of stars brought a shiver of magic and a feeling that anything could happen.
Hal set the Wayfinder in the dust and watched the blue flame dance. 'Destroying the Burning Man weakened the Void immensely. If there'd been time to use the Extinction Shears, the Void would have been cut from this reality for ever.'
'I don't know if that would have been such a good thing. Everything needs two sides, two faces. One to define the other and to give it value. We need the Void and Existence. It's just a matter of balance.'
Hal nodded slowly. 'They said you were wise.'
'So is this how it was meant to have turned out? All part of the pattern?'
'Who knows? I don't. What I do know is the spiders took the Void to safety in the past. That dark force can reappear at any time in Earth's history to try to change things so that what happened today… never happened.'
Watching the drifting colours of the Warp Zone, Church thought he understood.
'It's the job of the Brothers and Sisters of Dragons to oppose the Void wherever it appears,' Hal said. 'In the Renaissance, the seventies, the Norman Conquest, the Jurassic era, for all I know. Whenever the Void starts to exert its influence, calling on new allies, creating new threats, trying to shift the pattern, you and your Brothers and Sisters will be there to stop it.'
'Through the Warp Zone, we can reach any time and any place.'
'Exactly. It was always going to be this way. You read all the legends, the old stories. The king, waiting across the water… the ocean — of time and space — at the darkest hour when the call would go out and he would return with his knights to vanquish evil and save the land. The Brothers and Sisters of Dragons become the ur- myth.'
'Yes, I know that story.' Church drew the sword he had picked up near the shattered bridge. After Caledfwlch, it had a strange feel, but it felt right, as though it had been held by good people, despite the way the blue and black flames appeared to fight along the length of the blade. 'So we don't get to rest.'
'You get to live for ever with the people you love the most because time never passes here in the Far Lands, or there in the Warp Zone. Always young, always strong, the greatest hero Existence has, fighting the true fight for all time. Does that not feel good?'
Church considered it for a moment and realised it did. It felt, in a strange way, like heaven. The best reward of all.
'Lugh and the Tuatha De Danaan have asked for our help,' he said.
'You'll have time for that. After all, you've got an Army of Dragons to help you out. And more gods than you can shake a stick at. If you really need them.' He laughed quietly.
'So we keep repelling the Void at every turn. But we can't destroy it, because without the Void we would never have been challenged enough to grow and become what we are today. We needed that dark side to learn how to be good. That was part of the plan too, right? Existence needed the Void to achieve its ends. There's irony in there somewhere.'
Hal began to say something about the Caraprix, but then caught himself and would only shake his head enigmatically when Church pressed him.
'But something happened when I used the Extinction Shears. I felt it,' Church said.
'Something amazing. You severed the Void's connection to the warp and the weft. It escaped into the pattern of the past, but from this day on it has no connection.'
'The Void can't exist in the future?'
'You freed all the worlds, Church. The Void's influence will always be felt through the infinite connections, but it can have no control. There is no Mundane Spell. What lies ahead is the Kingdom of the Serpent. Existence will rule the balance for the first time since time began. It really will be a golden age.'
The possibilities were too vast for Church to comprehend.
'The future hasn't been written yet,' Hal said. 'There's still a very important job to do. But that's for tomorrow. Right now, enjoy the knowledge that every sacrifice has been worthwhile. You won, Church.'
They sat in silence, watching the moon make shadows across the desert, and the stars glinting like jewels in the vast chamber of the night, and Church felt at peace. For the first time.
He felt at peace.
Epilogue
1
After Church had explained what the future held, he took Ruth away into the desert and left Shavi, Tom, Hunter and Laura sitting around a large campfire, drinking a potent brew that some of the Norse gods had brought with them.
'So, an eternity of fighting. Could be worse,' Laura said.
'It's going to play murder with my plans for a Caribbean holiday.' Hunter prodded the fire and sent a cascade of sparks shooting towards the stars.
Laura saw Shavi smiling to himself as he looked around the circle. 'What are you thinking, Mr Enigmatic
