The shamaness had vanished completely.
Gabriel wished he had more whiskey. After the shamaness had disappeared, he’d completely drained his flask to steady himself, but it still wasn’t enough to get him used to the idea of magical songs moving from stone to person. And then the total disappearance of that person, vanishing into nothingness, right in front of him. But there was airag, and its slight fermentation would have to do in place of whiskey’s direct assault on his nerves.
They had returned to the monastery and found a room for the night. Thalia had gone out to tend to her private needs. Batu saw to the baggage by the light of a single lantern, while Gabriel paced next to his sleeping mat and made steady, but unsatisfactory progress through his flask. He could take his liquor, and the few sips of whiskey he’d had did nothing to help brace him after witnessing a woman blink into air. Batu, bless him, had found some airag, and Gabriel was making decent progress through it now. Still, it wasn’t quite enough. He wondered if he could ever get used to this new world that had been uncovered, where words were magical and solid flesh could disappear.
The door to their room opened, and Thalia entered quietly. She didn’t have a lantern or candle. After checking the corridor, she closed the door behind her. Gabriel strode immediately to her and took her into his arms. It wasn’t only because he had been scared out of his wits earlier, thinking that she was about to be attacked by an Heir. He also needed to feel her real, living self, the truth of her body and scent.
Her hands came up to cup his shoulders, and she leaned into him. She breathed deeply, pressing her face against his neck, drawing him in just as he was doing with her. Ah, God, she felt so damned good. Too good. His body’s reaction to her was fast and earth-bound, and though he knew he couldn’t have Thalia, some comfort was taken in his need for her.
Not quite enough comfort, though. She wouldn’t appreciate being jabbed in the belly by his now stiff cock. Gabriel not-too-gently pushed himself away and turned to fake an interest in a carved chest, muttering something about being glad she was safe. He listened as Batu and Thalia spoke quietly in Mongolian, hearing in their tone that they were discussing him and how well he was faring after the night’s events. No shots had been fired, but she was worried about him. The idea was awful, silly…and touching. Damn it.
He grabbed up his cup of airag and took another drink. When he was satisfied that his tool was no longer at attention, he sat down, leaning against the wall with his legs stretched out in front of him.
The tone of Batu and Thalia’s conversation shifted, grew tense and curt. Almost as if they were quietly arguing. Gabriel wasn’t sure what they were arguing about, but, judging by the quick looks they were both casting toward him, he was the topic. Why?
Thalia said something to Batu that meant she wouldn’t hear another word. Batu tried to speak, but she refused to hear him. Instead, pointedly ignoring the servant, Thalia sat cross-legged beside Gabriel with a swift and smooth grace that made his breath catch in his throat. Without speaking, she reached out and took his cup of airag, then took a sip before returning it to him. Gabriel held the cup tightly in his hand. He was sodding done for if just watching her drink from his cup sent blood straight back into his groin. He hadn’t stumbled around with so many unwanted cockstands since he was a spotty-faced lad.
“How are you?” she asked softly.
“Not too poorly, what with a person literally disappearing from my very hands,” he answered. He didn’t want to be touched by her concern, but, bloody hell, he was. “You?”
She gave him a slightly wobbly smile that hit him in the dead center of his chest. She was a little frightened, but prepared to face her fear, and that struck him harder than sheer bravado. “Strange night.”
“You’re an old hand with this kind of thing,” he pointed out.
“Theory only,” she said wryly. “Seeing the magic, watching it, feeling it, is…very different from hearing tales. I’d wanted to see it for myself for a long time now.”
“Did it pass muster?”
Her smile was stronger now, and that much more potent. “Can something surpass muster?”
Thank the blighted star Gabriel was born under, Batu was still in the room and fully conscious, otherwise Gabriel would have taken hold of Thalia Burgess and given her a thorough kissing, and probably more. Gabriel was suddenly attacked by a powerful, fierce desire for her, wanting to pull her onto the nearby sleeping mat and peel the robe from her, to cover her body with his own. He wanted to finish what they’d begun the other night in the cave, sink into her welcoming warmth. Both his cock and his mind were in agreement. He couldn’t remember wanting a woman so badly.
Unaware that he was wrestling with the angels of his better nature, Thalia said, “Now you understand. The magic you felt tonight is nothing compared to what the Sources can do. And if the Heirs get hold of these Sources—”
Right. Gabriel brought his mind back to the reason he was even with Thalia in the first place. Finding and protecting a Source from those mealy bastards, the Heirs. “They won’t get the one in Mongolia,” he said at once. He’d protect Thalia, too, from the Heirs and anyone or anything else. He wondered if that would include himself. “Whatever it is.”
“The song mentioned a moving field of crimson,” she mused.
“Seasons don’t affect it,” Gabriel added.
Thalia frowned in concentration as she thought. He wasn’t used to seeing a woman thinking deeply. Most of the officers’ wives usually looked bored and vacant. It surprised him how much he liked seeing a woman—Thalia—think. He knew many men were on edge around clever or thoughtful women. Probably because it made them feel small or stupid. Gabriel didn’t feel either of those things as he watched Thalia thinking. He felt…warm. Hungry.
“Because of the song, we know it’s extraordinary that this field can exist in all seasons,” she mused. “Something natural, then. Something usually only seen during a certain time of year.”
“An animal,” Gabriel said, “or a plant.”
She considered this. “A herd of animals moves, not plants.”
“I’d wager moving plants are right extraordinary,” he said dryly.
“Wager?” She smiled. “I could never resist a gamble.”
He grinned right back at her. “Never could resist a betting woman.”
“The odds are too steep,” Batu interjected from the other side of the room. Gabriel caught the man’s barbed stare, which was aimed directly at him. What the devil?
Thalia said something hard in Mongolian to Batu, and whatever it was, it had enough bite to make the servant scowl and fuss with the baggage. She turned back to Gabriel and made herself appear calm and untroubled. Before Gabriel could puzzle out why he was suddenly a bone of contention between Thalia and Batu, she continued with her musing. “A herd of red animals, or a field of plants. We could be looking for either. Though I haven’t heard of a Source being any of those things.”
“You’re our sharpshooter,” said Gabriel. “It’s your know-how that’s going to find what we’re looking for.”
She grimaced. “I may fire wide. Outer Mongolia is a big country. With the clue about the tortoise, I knew where we needed to go. But this…” She held her hands open, as if they could encompass the whole of the country.
Gabriel took a drink of airag and considered. He didn’t have much experience figuring out mystical clues that led to magical power sources—he had exactly none—but he did know a thing or two about strategies and buried information. Bandits plagued the hills of India, and more than once Gabriel had uncovered their secret networks of communication to prevent raids. One of the clever buggers had even used baskets of fruit to send messages—each fruit had been given a specific meaning, and together, they made up a whole message. Finally, Gabriel had been able to crack the code, and none too soon. The local villages were at the brink of destitution because of those thieving sods.
He picked over in his mind all the aspects of the song. Something was hidden within it. That was certain.
He started to speak, then stopped.
“Come, now, Captain,” Thalia chided. “Don’t be shy with me. You can’t forget that we were all naked in blankets together. You were about to say something. Tell me.”
He didn’t want to be reminded of that. Just hearing her say the word “naked” was a test of his resolve.
When he didn’t speak, Thalia sighed and looked up at the ceiling, addressing the heavens. “He issues orders left and right, but can’t seem to take them himself. If this was the army, he’d be drummed out for insubordination.” She turned back to Gabriel. “What if I was your commanding officer and ordered you to speak?”
“If I told my commanding officer what I was thinking now, I’d be sent to a lunatic asylum,” Gabriel said, sardonic.
“Especially if you mentioned mystical singing stone tortoises and vanishing shamanesses,” she countered.
She had a point there. Magical objects, demon Viking storms—nothing was too strange. Taking a breath, he finally admitted, “I was going to say that when the shamaness was singing, I…” Never a man comfortable with words, he struggled, trying to find the right ones. “It was like I could see the song.”
Instead of laughing right in his face, Thalia nodded thoughtfully. He liked her acceptance. Liked it more than was good for him. “See?” she repeated. “In what way?”
“I saw…” He fought to give words to what had been a strange, almost indefinable experience. “The land unrolled all around me.”
Admiration and understanding lit Thalia’s lovely face. “Mongolian tradition has many songs sounding like the land itself. The notes and tones reflect the landscape. Rivers, steppes, mountains. One could actually sing a place.”
“This is true,” Batu said, coming to stand beside them. He still seemed angry, but not so put off that he couldn’t lend a hand. “I will demonstrate.” He sang out a few wordless notes, surprising Gabriel with his skill, and in those notes, Gabriel heard the flowing of water over rocks, tumbling down into a large pool.
Almost at once, a monk opened the door and glared at them. He spoke a few hard words at Batu and Thalia before shutting the door. Batu looked sheepish.
“Let me guess,” Gabriel said dryly, “we’re being too loud. A common barracks complaint.” Batu merely shrugged, continuing to be sore with Gabriel. If Thalia hadn’t been there, Gabriel would have hauled the other man by his collar and rattled him until he confessed what had gotten him so riled. And then they’d settle it with their fists. That’s how it was done in the army, and it worked fine. No grudges.
“But what you just sang,” Gabriel continued. “It sounded like…like a waterfall.”
“Yes,” Batu said stiffly. “Near where I was born, there is a beautiful cataract, and I sang it to you.”
“Can you remember what the shamaness’s song sounded like?” Thalia asked Gabriel. When Gabriel nodded, she moved from sitting cross-legged onto her hands and knees and crawled to the baggage. Gabriel tried to make himself stare at his hands instead of watching her well-formed, edible behind sway temptingly across the room, but he didn’t do a very good job of it. A man couldn’t resist looking, unless he was quite dead and buried beneath several feet of hard-packed dirt. However, Batu was glaring at Gabriel again, and understanding finally hit. It was a wonder it had taken him so long to puzzle it out.
Gabriel had almost half a foot on the other man, and outweighed him by three stone, an uneven match if it ever came down to it. But Gabriel, despite his growing lust for Thalia, didn’t want to hurt her, and in that, he and Batu shared the same goal.
Thalia came back with some paper and a piece of drawing charcoal that she gave to Gabriel. She seemed unaware of Gabriel’s ogling as well as her servant’s silent efforts to shelter her. “Try to draw what you felt when you heard the song,” she urged.
“An armless baboon can draw better than me,” Gabriel objected.
She tried to look stern but couldn’t hide the smile that curved the corners of her mouth. “Just try. It might help if you close your eyes.”
Grumbling, Gabriel did as she suggested. He closed his eyes. “I don’t see anything,” he said at once.
“Were you the man who counseled patience to me at Karakorum? Give yourself a little while.” He heard the laughter in her voice and couldn’t keep from laughing a little himself. Her voice turned soft and coaxing. “The world you’re in now, it isn’t the same as where you were before. Let the soldier part of yourself go. There’s no training here, no right and wrong way to do something. All right?” When he nodded, she continued. “Now, bring the song back into your mind. Don’t rush. It will come when it’s ready. And when it does, fall into it.”
None of his commanding officers had ever made such a bizarre request of him before. But he kept his eyes shut and let his mind wander back to the song. He didn’t think he could recall it very well, and at first struggled with frustration and a need to know right now. But once he let go of that impatience, the song seemed to release itself into him, as though it had been buried somewhere and needed a moment’s stillness to come forward. He heard the notes filling him up, let them take him wherever they needed to go. There was a wild, harsh beauty in the melody, as there was in the land. He’d never been particularly moved by scenery—always too busy with a job to do or trying to uncover the geography’s secrets when planning a mission—but something stirred inside him when he handed himself over to the steppes and rocky hills of Mongolia, and how right, how fitting it was that Thalia Burgess was part of that land. The more he saw of it, the more he understood that she would live in such a place, and how forbidding both the land and the woman could be, if one didn’t know how to survive in their harsh climates.