The Shadow and Night by Chris Walley Page A

indeed? For what do we search or for what purpose? Ah. . . .” Here he sighed gently. “Both are valid questions that even we inside the sentinels ask. Or at least I ask. And neither has a simple answer.”
    Merral felt there was a curious hint of uncertainty or even doubt in his voice.
    â€œWell, tell me as we walk on.”
    Vero began to speak using a tone of voice that indicated that what he said had been long thought over. “The sentinels were founded in 2112 by Moshe Adlen, just after the end of Jannafy’s rebellion. Moshe Adlen was from one of those Jewish families whose conversion to the Messiah marked the very start of the Great Intervention. Incidentally, you do call it the Great Intervention here?”
    â€œOf course. . . . I mean, why not?”
    Vero shrugged. “Every so often someone reminds us that what we call the Great Intervention is really a misnomer and wants to change it. The real Great Intervention in human history, they say, occurred when the Most High took on flesh, died, was raised from death, and returned to heaven. You’ve heard the view?”
    â€œOh yes. But then you can argue that the events of revival, repentance, and conversion that we term the Great Intervention were, in a way, merely the outworking of that earlier event.”
    â€œExactly; the two-thousand-year-long infancy of the Church finally ended.” Vero nodded. “Here too, Farholme seems orthodox. But back to Moshe Adlen—he was a teacher of theology in a university when the Rebellion broke out, and he joined up. He fought against the rebels and was at the final battle at Centauri, and saw what had happened to the colony. He believed that the Rebellion could have been foreseen. He went to Jerusalem and stood before the three symbols the Assembly created to await the Great King: the empty throne, the unworn crown, and the unwielded scepter. And there he took a solemn oath to the Most High that, in as much as it was humanly possible, he would see to it that no such thing should happen again. So he founded an organization, first to help him, and eventually to perpetuate his work.”
    As the visitor paused, Merral spoke. “Some of this I knew or had been told and had half forgotten. But surely, Vero, we are nearly twelve thousand years on. Do you still hold to the same vision?”
    They were now winding round the sides of the gardens of the elevated levels of the town. The light from the houses was splintered through the bare branches of the trees.
    Vero answered slowly, the words coming out as if he was thinking afresh about the issue. “A sharp question. There has been a modification in some ways. We hold the standard view that, since the Great Intervention, the founding of the Assembly that followed, and the ending of the Rebellion that marred its infancy, we are in the era of the Lord’s Peace as predicted by the prophets of the Old Covenant. The glories of the Most High King are proclaimed already on nigh-on sixteen hundred worlds and a dozen Cities-in-Space. Evil is constrained to a shadow of what it was before the blessed Intervention. We get ill, we suffer loss, we die, but these things do not preoccupy us and mar our existence as they did our distant forefathers. And we believe that this pattern will persist until the end, when the King will return and evil will not simply be bound but will be destroyed and the fabric of the universe will be transformed. But into what, we—as ever—only foresee faintly.”
    He paused. “That much you on Farholme believe too?”
    â€œYes. Of course.”
    â€œQuite. If anything else were the view here, then Brenito or the Custodians of the Faith, who monitor what we believe, would have warned us of it long ago. Now when the King’s Son will return and all things will be renewed is, as it has ever been since the days of the apostles, a mystery. There are two main views. Some say that it may