For A Few Souls More (Heaven's Gate Book 3) Read Free

Atherton’s head before he took in the human details.
    It reminded him, unsurprisingly, of a travelling church congregation. The kind of evangelical folk who toured the country en masse, pitching their tent and preaching to the locals before folding the words of Jesus away into their packs and trunks and carting them off to the next town. The people looked drawn and severe, a flock of hungry birds wrapped up in plain feathers. Here and there, fires burned, heating thin stews and watery soups. It was a place of abstinence. A camp of grey people. A place of puritanism and disapproval. Atherton liked it.
    “Are you hungry?” Father Martin asked.
    Atherton had travelled too far and too hard to refuse a meal when it was offered so Father Martin led him through the camp to a small tent on the far side.
    Their companion, sparing just enough time to offer Atherton one last cautious glance, peeled away to rejoin his family.
    The monk’s tent was just large enough for two, and they sat in its mouth and ate a meagre portion of bread and cured meat.
    Once done, Atherton filled his small pipe and listened to the monk’s tale.
     
     
    4.
     
    F ATHER M ARTIN TOLD Atherton of his trip from England. He detailed the rest of his party: his fellow members in the Order of Ruth; Lord Forset and his daughter Elisabeth; the engineer Billy Herbert and, finally, Roderick Quartershaft, the man of fiction who, as well as Wormwood, found his real self, Patrick Irish, at the end of his journey.
    He told him of the things they had seen on the road to find their impossible town. Of swarms of bats and tribesmen of iron and coke.
    He told him how Wormwood had finally appeared before them, the solidifying of a mirage, a dream writ large in timber and slate.
    He told him about Alonzo, the self-appointed voice of God who had pronounced to those gathered on the plain.
    He detailed the long hours of waiting, of the near tragedy as Lord Forset’s Land Carriage was stolen and aimed at Wormwood like a steam-powered bullet.
    Finally, and by now the sun was beginning to set behind the mountains that surrounded them, he told him of the collision.
    “Light flooded the entire valley. There was the sound of a gunshot, such a simple, earthly noise, and then the air itself felt as if it was being sucked out of the world. A wind roared and we stumbled, blind and deaf as the reality we had always known shifted around us.”
    This was not news to Atherton. It had been felt the world over. A blank moment of thunder and awe, experienced by all.
    At the time, Atherton had been in New York, regretting his transfer from Africa, assisting with the Empire’s expansion. Africa had been a land of monsters too, Atherton felt. Heat and rebellion. Bullets and blood. He had done good work there. When the light had come, washing over him, he had half hoped it was the hand of God, coming to claim him from his new station, a city of boredom, and relocate him to somewhere worthwhile. Perhaps, in a way, that was exactly what it had been.
    “Then, all was normal again,” the monk continued. “The light vanished, the wind faded and the town lay before us. Only now its streets were open, the way no longer obstructed by the unseen barrier.”
    “What caused it?”
    “They say...” and here Father Martin’s nerves truly began to show. “It was the death of God. Felled by a bullet.”
    “You can’t kill God,” Atherton said for the second time that day. This time he found some agreement.
    “I would hope not. Though they say He wanted to die. They say He was wearing the body of a mortal. A child. They say He wanted to know what it felt like to be human. To be finite.”
    “Who are ‘they’ that do all this talking?”
    Father Martin shrugged. “Stories pass around here as freely as the air. I don’t know how much credence I can give any of them. All I can say is that this has become the accepted version of the events that took place on the other side of Wormwood.”
    “In