"Esther M. Friesner - Hallowmass" - читать интересную книгу автора (Friesner Esther M)

twittered, fine hands fluttering like doves in delight over the unexpected treat
of spectacle and death.

And then the miracle.

They could not tell -- none of them who stood there in the great cathedral's
shadow that day -- they could not say just when they first heard the music. It
was simply there, like the air and the sunlight and the smells of the town. Some
claimed it fell from heaven, a shower of angelic voices. Some raised
work-hardened hands to thick, ungainly lips and dreamed that the voices they
heard were their own, transformed by some greater power, raised in a song whose
words and music they had never been taught but had always known.

It was a healing, that music. It stole Master Giles's hands from around
Margaret's neck and set them to raise up the body of his son instead. It set the
bishop's heart and not just the words of his mouth on forgiveness, love,
salvation. It was a song kin and child of many songs: A mother's voice rejoicing
over a blessed cradle; a husbandman's rough cheer over a day's work done and
well done; a virgin lass weaving dreams of love into the melody that springs
unbidden to her lips when she first sees a young man's smile that is meant for
her alone; an old woman crooning a low, contented tune by the fireside where
even her dwindling life is beloved and welcomed by those around her.

Master Giles was the first to recognize the true source of that song. "The
statue!" he cried. "The statue is singing!" He held his son's limp body to his
breast with one strong arm and with his free hand gestured wildly at the stone
he had carved to match his son's clay model, the saint who was called soulless
sister to a lord of Faerie.

His words said all and said far too little. More than a single miracle had put
on a skin of music there that day. More than the single statue molded prayer
into melody as a blind boy molds beauty into clay. The lady's image did not sing
alone. All the stone saints sang together with her, and all the people of the
town, and all the stones of the cathedral too until the heavens could not help
but hear the sweet, pious petition of one yearning heart.

All the people of the town? No. Margaret stood cold and still as any stone,
unmoved by the chorus of life and love surging up around her. "Fools!" she
bellowed, red-faced, into the faces of the noblewomen. "Idiots!" she roared into
my lord bishop's own enraptured gaze and moving lips. "Break this spell, shatter
this glamour, burst this evil enchantment into a thousand pieces!"

But all that broke was the twelfth statue in its niche. It burst from the inside
out, like a bubble, and something small and pure and brilliant flew from its
shattered core and soared into the waiting smile of heaven.

Silence held the square before the great cathedral, silence and all its awesome
host, flourishing their smoke-streaked banners. Neither elf nor mortal dared to
break the holy reign of that innumerable army that laid ghostly swords to living
lips and stole away all chance of speech.