The wraith reared back with its black whips, a deep note beginning to cycle up from inside it again, when a searing blue light erupted around us. The Ward was back on her feet and shone brighter than before. She lashed the wraith with her fiery whips, the cords ripping through the creature. Its many-voiced howl gashed the earth below us again and we nearly fell.
The Ward, graceful and luminous, continued to flog the wraith with her amber threads,hermany voices rising against its thundering chorus.
I stepped past my friends, set my feet, and pulled another revelatory stroke, lighting up the wraith’s shadow again. I recalled Handel’sMusical Timesnewsletter andMessiahdrafts, and focused those thoughts into the light flaring from my lantern. Inside the wraith’s layered shadows, a shimmering pattern began to shine brighter than the rest—those “Moonlight Sonata”–like notes again—the same one I’d seen in Newgate Prison.
Handel screamed. “I am not onlyMessiah! I have an oeuvre of compositions your reductive world has carelessly ignored!”
The words emanated in dense waves from an immense scar at the center of his shadow. But before I could peer into it, the wraith let out a discordant scream that extinguished my lamp. It then whirled and charged the Ward, its giant form slamming her into the ground amidst streams of black smoke.
Lakshmi rushed in from the right and swiped at it with her tulwar. The wraith bucked and shot a shaft of darkness into her chest, knocking her back into a dead cypress tree.
The Ward clambered to her knees, arms hanging at her sides, struggling to lift her amber whips.
I shot an assault stroke into the wraith and screamed “Go!” to my friends. They rushed ahead, striking at the massive black form. Their weapons seemed useless, and it roared another booming chorus, driving them back across the plain like tumbleweeds. I set myself against the rush of sound, clutching my lantern.
The Ward simply toppled to the ground and curled into a fetal position, her shine dimming as the wraith began again to rain down whip strikes on her.
In a panic, I recalled a phrase from Handel’s last manuscript ofMessiah, a line that had never been sung. I drew breath and shouted the melody with all the strength of voice I had left.
The wraith went still. A cold breeze hissed across the ancient plain. Then the wraith’s massive human form shifted and raced toward me over the cracked earth. I shouted my ghost stone to life and raised my lantern and bow, but before I could play a stroke, it whipped a tendril of black vapor around me and held me bound. I struggled, writhing and twisting, but the cord only tightened, and a moment later I was pulled inside Handel’s immense darkness.
A freezing pain tore through me, and I dropped my lantern. The wraith began probing my soul, winding tendrils of smoke down inside my wound. I could hardly move. A rush of images coursed through my mind—moments of my life. The wraith saw it all.
And inside it this time, it wasn’t just the promise of rest. Memories flashed through my mind that were not my own—sitting at a harpsichord, an itchy wig on my head; blowing intoa trombone, the sting of cigarette smoke in my eyes; standing onstage at the Horse, but I’m singing Angela DuFresne’s song. I know distantly that the wraith began with ugly memories, but the memories of those inside it—at least the ones I’m seeing—are so different from mine. And the music is beautiful, powerful; I feel strong reliving it. I want tokeepreliving it. I wanted to keep being a part of all these new memories. Make them my own.
I decided to stay with them?—
Then the shining edge of a blade slashes through me. I feel a stabbing pain and tumble onto the dirt.
Against the recoiling darkness of the wraith stood Cassius.
CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO
The history of Albion is the history of tribes at war.Now, ages hence, I finally understand that my victories over Caesar’s legions and my own kinsmen were only as valuable as the love I had for my peopleand my dear Fflur.
—Chancellor Caswallawn, Ancient Stratum,excerpt from “Chancery Response to Shiguan Hegemonic Motion”
Cassius draggedme away from the wraith and hauled me to my feet. Gone was his centurion armor. He wore a leather vest over a long, black-and-grey-striped shirt.Gaulish, I thought.
We stared into each other’s eyes, and I squeezed his hand. “Thank you. Cas?—”
“That can wait. What is the plan?”
Lakshmi came up beside me and handed me my lantern. “Jack, even with Cassius and the priest, the wraith is too strong.”
I looked around. Kincaid was crouching with his metal rods in his hands, protecting the Ward. He nodded to me. I raised ahand in thanks, then turned back to the raptorial. “I know,” I said, still gasping for breath. The rest of my friends had gotten up but were struggling to stand.
And from far out on the Ancient Stratum, new sounds like thunder rolled toward us.
I turned toward the wraith. A few notes of Handel’s unheardMessiahhad brought it storming to consume me. I’d just heard my friend sing a third verse I’d been trying to find for twenty-five years. If a metal singer could struggle so long to finish a song, I couldn’t imagine what a musical giant like Handel must feel, who’d been at it for centuries. His unfinished song had to be the key.
The wraith gathered itself and started toward me, shrieking, black smoke trailing from its mouth. The scars in my shadow flared, and a rush of bad memories flashed in my mind.
Cassius and Lakshmi closed ranks, weapons raised.
I lifted my bow and struck my lantern so hard that several bowstrings snapped. A flash of revelatory light showed me the wraith’s Rupture, but not what lay beneath it.
The wraith screamed, driving Cassius and Lakshmi aside, and began racing toward me.
