The Born Queen - J. Gregory Keyes [189]
But the music. Oh, it went out of the house and into the vast hollow places of the world. It rang in the stone of the mountains and sang in the depths of the sea. The cold stars heard it, and the hot sun in its passage below the world, and the bones inside his flesh. And still it went on, filling everything.
He almost lost his own voice. Mylton’s voice did falter, but then it came back, stronger, leading the lowest chords up from the depths toward the still unseen summit.
On the music climbed, falling now and then but always tending higher, never resolving and seemingly irresolvable.
He couldn’t stop singing now if he wanted to; Mylton’s stumble had been the last time that was possible. He heard many thousands of voices now sighing in the starless gulf, then millions, and he began to panic, because he couldn’t remember how it finished, what was supposed to happen at the end. The music on paper no longer mattered. The requiem had them all in its grip now, and it was going where it wanted to.
He felt his body shiver like a dragonfly’s wing and then cease to be. Nothing remained of him but his voice.
The end came, and it was terrifying, wonderful, and then—in a single, impossible moment—perfect. Every note fit with every other. Every voice supported every other. Everything was in its place.
The voices of the dead faded with his own.
Mery sagged against the wall and collapsed.
Out in the yard, the head of Robert Dare stopped trying to talk.
Hespero came at him like lightning, lunging and thrusting at Cazio’s groin. He parried quickly in uhtave, but the blade wasn’t there, for the fratrex had disengaged. It was only by wild chance that he managed to catch the blade a second time and stop it from running through his throat.
Cazio stepped back.
“You know how to use a sword pretty well.”
“I may have neglected to mention that I studied with Mestro Espedio.”
Cazio narrowed his eyes. “I met another student of his not long ago. Acredo. This is his sword.”
“An acquaintance,” Hespero said. “You killed him, I gather.”
“No. An arrow did.”
Hespero shrugged and came at him again, using the attack of the Cuckold’s Walk Home. Cazio countered it, move for move for move. Acredo nearly had killed him with that attack when they had fought because Cazio hadn’t known the final reply, but he knew the point would be at his throat when it was all over, so he finished with a high controsesso.
Again he didn’t find the blade, but Hespero’s found him, slipping through the ribs of his right side. Cazio fell back, looking at the blood in utter disbelief. Hespero came grimly on.
You’re going to be fine, Cazio thought. He got lucky.
He parried the next attack barely and then desperately struck deep. His blade grazed Hespero’s off-weapon hand and drew blood.
That was a nice surprise.
“You’re a better swordsman than I thought,” Cazio said. “But you aren’t invulnerable anymore.”
“If you treat that wound now, you might live,” Hespero said.
“Oh, you’re not getting away that easily,” Cazio said.
“I don’t have time for this,” the fratrex said.
Cazio renewed his attack, a feint to the hand, a bind from perto to uhtave.
Hespero punched him in the jaw with his off-weapon hand. Cazio reeled back, trying desperately to get his guard up.
Austra launched herself at the fratrex, leaping on his back and wrapping her arms around his neck. Hespero reached back with his left hand and grabbed her by the hair, but she didn’t let go until he slammed her into the wall.
By that time Cazio was on his feet, albeit unsteadily. He lurched toward Hespero.
“Saints, you really don’t know when to quit,” Hespero said.
Cazio didn’t waste his limited breath answering; he stamped and started an attack in perto. Hespero, a little impatiently, bound in sesso and riposted; Cazio ducked and lunged low but short.
Hespero started the Cuckold’s Walk Home, and Cazio kept up with him, barely. The last feint came