It was a damned hard choice to make. Either stay with Thalia and possibly suffer what the approaching Heir had planned for them, or trust that she could take care of herself and venture into the night to catch the Heir off guard. Gabriel had made tough decisions before, but he’d never had a woman to protect. Gabriel always hated waiting while the enemy advanced. It put a man in a tight spot. He’d much rather take the initiative. It was a better tactic, and gave him the advantage. If Thalia had been a man, he would have gone after the Heir with no hesitation. But not only was she a woman, she was her. He could still taste her, feel the satisfying, perfect weight of her breast.
Gabriel had a much better chance of safeguarding Thalia, though, if he went after the Heir, rather than letting the bloke come to them. So he’d swallowed his fear and stalked his prey. At least Thalia was a good shot, and he had given Batu his own rifle rather than leaving him with that obsolete, inaccurate muzzleloader the Mongol carried, since it was unlikely that their advancing enemy was a drunk whale.
The moon was a slice of silver in the dark night sky, giving him just enough light to see where he was going as he edged around the field. His plan was to circle back and steal up behind the approaching Heir as the enemy’s attention was focused on Thalia and Batu. Ares’s bollocks—he didn’t like using Thalia as a distraction, but if everything went the way it was supposed to, she wouldn’t be in danger.
Gabriel crept through the tall grasses, keeping one eye trained on the Heir. He didn’t recognize him from the attack outside Urga, but it was hard to know for certain in the darkness. Whoever the hell this gent was, he wasn’t too keen on keeping quiet. Some kind of metal pieces were hanging from the Heir’s clothes, jingling with each step. And the Heir was muttering, too. Words Gabriel couldn’t understand.
No time to think about anything but ambushing the prey. Gabriel doubled back behind the Heir and stole forward, behind the enemy. As he got closer, he ducked down to hide in the grass, peering up every now and then to make certain of the Heir’s position. The Heir never stopped, keeping up his steady progress toward Thalia, and unaware of Gabriel’s presence. They were a hundred paces from the tortoise. Nearing the Heir, Gabriel saw that the man was smaller than the two English toffs, and less than half the size of the giant Mongol they’d hired. Someone else, then, some other paid muscle. But no less a threat, regardless of size.
Gabriel pushed forward, feeling not a little like some giant cat stalking its dinner. Both he and the Heir were only fifty feet from Thalia. Gabriel would have to make his move now, before the Heir got too close. He’d take the Heir down then wring some answers from the bastard’s neck. He took a steadying breath, then launched himself at the Heir.
And hit the ground, having thrown himself at nothing but air.
Gabriel leapt to his feet at once. It was impossible. The sodding bloke had been right in front of him one moment. And the next…gone.
No, not gone. Gabriel broke into a run when he saw that the Heir had appeared right in front of Thalia. He’d never run so fast in his life, not even when he was being chased by khukri-wielding bandits in Central India. Gabriel wasn’t exceptionally skilled at running and shooting with a revolver—his rifle suited him better—but there wasn’t any choice. Thalia, damn it, hadn’t even drawn her weapon. Instead, it looked like she was actually talking to the Heir. Gabriel swore. He was going to have to teach her that as soon as she could take a shot, she bloody better well do it and not waste time or opportunities by talking.
It would be impossible to take his own shot now, not with any accuracy. There was too great a chance he might hit Thalia or Batu. He didn’t hear Thalia as she cried out, “Gabriel, wait!” Instead, Gabriel threw himself at the Heir and tackled him to the ground.
Only to have Thalia and Batu grab Gabriel’s shoulders and pull him away. The three of them went tumbling backward in a heap of struggling limbs. The Heir lay flat on his back, trying to right himself.
“What the bloody hell do you think you’re doing?” Gabriel growled, struggling to peel Batu off of him.
“A mistake, Huntley guai,” Batu panted. “Don’t hurt her.”
“I’m not going to hurt her,” Gabriel snarled, shoving Batu away. “I’m trying to protect her.” He started to take aim with his revolver as the Heir got to his feet.
“Not me,” Thalia gasped as she grabbed Gabriel’s arm and shoved, pushing his gun away. “Her.” She pointed to the Heir as she and Gabriel struggled. “Look.”
Gabriel did look, then went still. The Heir wasn’t an Heir at all, but a Mongol woman. Her gender was confirmed by her voice, as she chuckled and dusted herself off. Gabriel saw that her sex had been hidden by the large robe she wore, which appeared even bigger because of the heaps of ribbons covering the fabric. Silver charms and mirrors dangled from the sleeves and the hem of the robe, as well as from the leather apron wrapped around her waist. The woman’s face was mostly hidden by the ribbons trailing down the front of her headdress, and it was hard to tell how old she was, though her hair hung loosely around her shoulders. She carried a small drum, also draped in ribbons that glinted palely in the moonlight, and a drumstick with a horse’s head carved into the end. In the weeks Gabriel had been in Mongolia, he’d never seen anyone dressed so peculiarly.
“A shamaness,” Thalia whispered to Gabriel. They both rolled to their feet. “There aren’t many left in Mongolia, not since Buddhism came three hundred years ago.”
“Some kind of witch?” Gabriel asked.
The shamaness spoke, a long stream of Mongolian that Thalia quickly translated. “Not a witch,” the shamaness said, and Gabriel could only wonder how she had understood his English words. “One who speaks with the spirit world. Everything in nature has its own spirit, not only men and animals, but every plant, every stream, every mountain. And they are all part of a living whole. Even you,” continued the woman, pointing at Gabriel with the drumstick, “are connected by the World Tree. Shamans and shamanesses cross into the mirror world of the spirits, speak with them, listen to them.”
Thalia spoke to the shamaness, and the woman answered. “I asked her why she is here in Karakorum,” Thalia translated. “She told me that she brings offerings to the past.”
The shamaness reached into the folds of her robe and pulled out sticks of incense as well as a small metal bowl. The woman filled the bowl with airag and set it before the tortoise, then struck a flint to light the incense. Pungent smoke curled into the air.
Gabriel finally understood. “She’s feeding the tortoise.”
“You’re right,” Thalia nodded, amazed.
He’d seen people make offerings before, at shrines to deities in temples and by the sides of roads, always wondering what they saw in cold stone or statuary that inspired faith. A hard life in Yorkshire and what he’d seen as a soldier had convinced Gabriel that he’d little to believe in besides himself. Ever since brushing up against the world of the Blades, though, his understandings of truth and reality tottered. As they did now. Why make an offering to a statue of something that wasn’t even a god?
Whatever the shamaness’s purpose was or was not, it didn’t matter, not where the mission was concerned. “Then she’s the woman we want,” Gabriel said.
Thalia started to step forward. “I will ask her about the Source.”
“She looks a bit busy at the moment.”
The shamaness had begun pounding on her drum, first softly, then with growing strength and loudness. As she did this, she chanted to herself and began turning in circles. Gabriel watched, fascinated, as this went on for several minutes, the drumming, chanting, and turning never ceasing.
“She’s entering a trance,” Thalia explained quietly. “It is how she crosses over into the spirit world. I have never seen this before, only heard of it.”
“My grandfather spoke of shamans,” Batu added. The usually fearless servant was standing behind Gabriel as if looking for protection from the chanting woman. “They are powerful and strange.”
Gabriel had to agree. Just listening to the shamaness’s chanting made every nerve in his body shiver. Even though he had been stationed in remote parts of the world, as an Englishman and soldier, he’d never had much chance to witness native spiritual rituals, but had been inclined to dismiss them as just another variation of the religious nonsense he’d been force-fed as a child. Hindu ceremony or Anglican rite—it all seemed the same. Empty gestures.
There was nothing empty here in the dark plain of Karakorum. As the shamaness continued to chant and spin, beating on her drum, Gabriel could actually feel a change in the air. Something seemed to stir to life. An unseen energy pulsed beneath the surface of the world, working into his skin and mind. The night crystallized, sharpening and expanding at the same time. He almost jumped when he felt Thalia’s hand on his arm. His senses were alive to her touch, almost painfully so.
“Do you feel it?” she whispered. Her eyes were wide and glittering, beautiful.
Somehow, he managed to nod.
The chanting grew faster, the shamaness’s voice swirling around them. She twirled so fast, she became a blur of glimmering mirrors and ribbons. Her drumming and chanting pierced Gabriel’s brain, making it impossible to think or move. He could only stand, amazed, as something began to glow and pulse inside the tortoise.
A warm red light gathered in strength within the stone. While the shamaness continued in her unearthly chant, the light began to move. It traveled from the center of the tortoise, moving up through its body, its neck, then into its head and finally its mouth. Gabriel felt Thalia’s hand clutch at his sleeve as the light danced out of the mouth of the tortoise and into the mouth of the shamaness. The woman suddenly stopped her chanting and drumming. The drum dropped from her fingers, as did the horse-headed drumstick. She stopped spinning, swaying on her feet as the red light glided to the center of her chest.
Afraid that the shamaness had been possessed by some dark spirit, Gabriel moved toward her. He wasn’t entirely sure what he could do to help her against a magical energy, but it seemed better than standing by and just watching. Thalia stopped him, however.
“I think this is what she wants,” Thalia breathed.
“Is it what we want?”
“Please be quiet,” Batu whispered. “She speaks.”
Yet when the shamaness opened her mouth, she did not talk, didn’t even chant. Eyes closed, she sang. It was an uncanny song that dipped and swayed, curving itself down into valleys and up again into mountains. Gabriel couldn’t understand the words, but he felt the song stretch out all around him like a banner unfurling itself under his feet, showing him an entire landscape. He was taken across the whole of Mongolia, could see and touch its rolling steppes, the secluded vales, the unforgiving beauty of the rocky hills, the dark, pearl-blue lakes. It was all contained in the breadth and shape of the song. He had never experienced anything like it, not in all his travels. There weren’t many words, but each one extended on for miles.
Thalia, gazing at the shamaness with undisguised amazement, quietly translated the song, but it was almost unnecessary, since Gabriel felt its meaning.
I have seen the world change
Many times over.
A life, a breath, drawn in and exhaled.
They are the same.
I am stone. I never yield.
And though I carry the universe upon me
I do not move.
The sky sees everything, He tells me
Everything. What He sees amazes
Even Him!
A crimson field. No matter the season, the soft springtime,
The brief heat
Of summer, the brittle autumn, the long
Cold snows of winter—
The field burns crimson always.
Though it is constant, it does what I cannot.
It moves.
When the last syllable of the last word died away, the shamaness gently began to fall to the ground like a blown leaf. Gabriel, his reactions slowed by the power of the song, leapt forward to catch her. But when he reached her side, his arms came up empty.
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.
“You’ve done it!” Thalia said, wonder and pleasure in her voice.
Gabriel opened his eyes.
Here was another impossibility. He had drawn something. Not just a paper full of meaningless scrawl, but an actual tree that stood where two streams forked. He hadn’t even been aware that his hand holding the charcoal had moved, let alone created an actual picture.
With this small success, they decided to call it a night, and soon everyone was settled on their sleeping mats, the lantern doused, the room dark and quiet.
It was a hard night. He’d grown somewhat used to sleeping near Thalia, but never in a room. Having four walls and a roof enclosing them, instead of the limitless steppes and sky, changed things. He tried to remember when the last time was that he’d slept beside a woman, and couldn’t. With Felicia, he’d slipped from her bed, dressing quickly and quietly in the dark, and the dawn had found him sprawled in his own bunk.
In the monastery room, Gabriel could hear Thalia breathing as she slept. Those soft sounds from her were more intimate than the cries of pleasure Felicia had made as she and Gabriel had impersonally fucked. The result of having Thalia near him, even with Batu close by, was a damned long, uncomfortable night and too little sleep.
He was grateful for the morning, grateful to get back into the open spaces. They rode in a southerly direction, which Gabriel had said felt right. He hated trusting the lives of Thalia and Batu to something beyond his understanding, but they had little to go on besides impressions of the shamaness’s song. For hours, they rode, no one speaking much as Gabriel tried to concentrate on how the song had felt. It was bloody frustrating.
Just before noon, with no sign of the tree or the rivers, he became positive that he’d led them all down the wrong path. He was a man of tangibles, not a believer in impressions and feelings. Here was proof of that. They were wandering around Mongolia with no set destination. And somewhere out there were the Heirs, ready and eager to spill blood. Gabriel fumed.
Pulling up the reins on his horse, he grumbled, “Hell’s arse, this has been a waste of time.”
“Don’t be so sure,” Thalia counseled. “Let’s ride a little further, just over the next hill. After that, we can think about what we should do.” She nudged her horse on with Batu close behind.
Grudgingly, feeling like a fool, Gabriel put his heels to his horse. He let Thalia keep the lead as he scanned the land, looking for enemies or something that resembled his drawing. When Thalia and Batu reached the crest of the hill and then stopped abruptly, alarm prickled the back of his neck. Had his ridiculous ideas about how a song felt taken them straight into an ambush? He kicked his mare into a gallop and reached for his rifle.
Thalia looked over her shoulder at his approach, a smile touching the corners of her mouth. “You aren’t going to need that,” she said, eyeing the weapon. “Unless you plan on hunting cottonwoods.”
Puzzled, Gabriel brought his horse alongside hers, then followed her gaze into the valley ahead.
Nestled peacefully between the hills, a cottonwood tree stood on a grassy bank that lay where two small streams forked into their separate directions. Everything was quiet and undisturbed. Gabriel fumbled in his pocket, then produced the scrap of paper on which he’d drawn the night before. He held the picture up, stared at it, then looked back into the valley. The scenes were the same.
“The song has not misled us,” Batu said.
“Gabriel has not misled us,” Thalia corrected. “You shouldn’t doubt yourself,” she added, looking at him meaningfully.
Gabriel couldn’t speak. For the first time since beginning this strange mission, since being all the way back in Southampton, Gabriel felt part of something much larger than himself or another person. This other world that Thalia had shown him, he had seen it, but never felt it, never been inside of it, nor it inside of him. But through that song, the magical force that pulsed beneath the skin of the everyday joined with him, used him as a channel. The results were right there, drawn onto a scrap of paper. And in the valley with the forked rivers. Not until that very moment did Gabriel understand how very large and very powerful magic could be. He felt humbled, awed. Yet also, being a part of it, he felt expansive, strong.
“Bugger me,” he said quietly.
What followed was the strangest tracking mission Gabriel had ever undertaken. Since both Thalia and Batu insisted that the song spoke most clearly through Gabriel, at their behest he would continue to lead them toward their destination. And by “lead,” they meant: have him sit quietly and think about the shamaness’s song, each note following the next. Whatever bit of geography sprang into his mind he would describe or draw, and they would set off in search of it.
“This is a damned silly way to run a campaign,” he grumbled after they had left the cottonwood tree behind in search of a hill with three tall, rocky spires.
“That’s not what Lord Raglan said at the battle of the Alma,” Thalia answered, riding beside him.
Gabriel stared at her. “I knew men who saw action at the battle of the Alma, and not a one said any magic had been involved.”
“None that they were aware of,” she replied. She must have seen his look turn black, because she answered quickly, “Yes, the troops fought bravely, and the Alma wouldn’t have been won without them, but Lord Raglan had a little bit of assistance from Fatimah’s Guiding Hand, recovered in Constantinople the year before.”
“This Guiding Hand—the Heirs gave it to Raglan?”
“They did.”
“And the defeats that followed—what happened to the Light Brigade, the losses in the winter of ’55, the Malakoff, and the Redan—because the Blades took the Guiding Hand back?” He heard the cutting steel of his voice, but didn’t try to temper it.
She looked horrified. “God, no! The Blades would never take back a Source, knowing it could cost soldiers’ lives. They tried to get the Guiding Hand back long before it had been brought to the battlefield. It was, unfortunately, pure military mismanagement of the Source and of men that caused those defeats. Fatimah’s Guiding Hand was lost somewhere in the Crimea, and hasn’t been recovered.”
Gabriel shook his head and muttered, somewhat calmed. It was bloody well difficult to get his bearings, now that he knew about the Blades and the Heirs and the rest of their lot. He didn’t know whether to be pleased or troubled when, after riding the rest of the afternoon, the three rocky spires were sighted, glowing with the setting sun’s last rays.
Thalia, however, wasn’t troubled at all. When they came upon the pinnacles of rock, a smile lit her face and lit something inside of Gabriel, too. In his experience, women grew less beautiful the more time he spent with them. But somehow, being with Thalia disproved that. It wasn’t a theory he was happy to refute, not in this case.
They all dismounted and walked toward the spires. The rocks looked like three old men, watching the world pass by and finding it all rather lacking. It was eerie, having seen them so clearly in his mind, and then, there they were, no longer thought or sound but real stone.
“Well done, Gabriel,” Thalia cried, exultant, and took hold of his hand. Without any thought, his fingers wove with hers. They were palm to palm. He could feel her everywhere. Touching her like this felt impossibly right. It was wonderful—and unsettling.
And over quickly. She suddenly pulled away, frowning, her color high, or maybe the light from the setting sun was burnishing her skin. No. She was upset. Wonderful. Not only was the servant angry with him, so was the woman Batu served.
Damn it, he cursed to himself, what the hell did she want? Everything had been going right lovely between them, and now she was angry because they held hands. He couldn’t figure out the maze of the female mind. Just because he got along better with Thalia than he had with any other woman didn’t change the fact that she was a woman, with all the mental tangles and inconsistencies of her gender. It could drive a man out of his gourd.
“Night’s falling,” Gabriel said roughly. “We’ll make camp soon.”
She nodded and peered along the rolling hills. “I think there’s a sheltered spot about a mile south.”
“Can you and Batu find it on your own?”
Alarm flared in her eyes. “Yes, but where—?”
Gabriel quickly headed toward his horse and mounted up. “Good. I’ll find you. Need to do some reconnaissance, make sure those sodding Heirs aren’t on our trail.”
He didn’t wait for any response from her, just pulled hard on the reins to bring his horse about before kicking the mare into a canter. Gabriel focused hard on the landscape, looking for telltale signs that their enemies were close or following. He saw without seeing the oceanic beauty of the dry grassy plains, the isolated stands of scrub and trees, the smoke of a distant ger’s chimney rising in a white plume into the indigo sky. They had no meaning to him, beyond indicating whether or not the Heirs were nearby. All he cared about was ensuring the safety of their small riding party, the success of their mission. He couldn’t understand the changeability of women, and, at that moment, he told himself he didn’t bloody well care.