Once Upon A Highland Legend (3 page)

Tugging her enormous bag off Kate’s bike, she watched in horror as the buckle in her strap caught her cousin’s crocheted pullover. Thankfully, it released its hold without rending her cousin’s flimsy sweater.

“Dinna fash yourself,” Kate insisted. “If I’m lucky, it’ll meet the same fate at Russell’s hands.” Annie laughed again and Kate grinned. “We’ll fix ye up t’morrow, love. It’s aboot time ye took that stick out of your arse and lived a wee bit.”

Annie threw her bag over her shoulder. “I didn’t come here for that,” she said. “I don’t need a man in my life—or new clothes—or a new haircut, but thanks anyway, Kate. I know you mean well.”

“Aye, ye do,” Kate persisted. “Be back here at six,” she reiterated, and then took off without giving Annie a chance to stand her ground.

Apparently, her cousin had already decided she was withering away after her breakup with Paul. But Annie was fine—more than fine. In fact, she was doing
exactly
what she wanted to do.

She watched as her cousin nearly took another spill, somehow saving herself as she turned and then zoomed past again, leaving Annie in her dust.
Literally.
Annie spat dust, and closed her eyes to ease the sting in her eyes. Kate was a trip—in a good way. However, they couldn’t be more different, she decided as her cousin’s brilliant mass of curls disappeared around the bend. The instant Annie was alone, she felt her tension melt away as she sucked in a breath of fresh air. And then she started on her way, eager to begin.

This time of the day, the sun had burned off most of the morning fog. The hills were a lovely string of emerald pearls. Most hikers just walked the Lairig Ghru pass, but this wasn’t a full-on hike as Kate had pointed out. Annie only needed a clear view of the area from somewhere up high, so she took a route west. The wind was mild today, and it was sunny. A perfect day for hiking. Still, she was glad for the poncho, because it was a bit brisk.

What do I see?

Truth, lies and the destinies of men.

Bullshit,
Annie thought. Still she itched to take the crystal out of her bag for another look. However, she had much too much ground to cover to stand here ogling a rock. And yet she felt its presence acutely, like a force of energy emanating from the depths of her pack.

Determined to forget it for the time being, she adjusted the pack at her back, pleased that she had found her day pack at such a great price. She might not be much into Coach or Louis Vuitton but she
loved
her new day pack. If there was one thing she felt passionate about it was good gear.

Estimating that she had a good six or seven hours before she needed to be back at the meeting point, she abandoned the road and found herself climbing mostly on rutted tracks. The pass was clear for most of the hike, but higher up in the rockiest terrain it was a bit more difficult to traverse, especially during winter when the entire pass was snowbound. The last time she’d hiked through with Paul, they had taken the Lairig Ghru straight through from Speyside to Deeside. Today, she would play it by ear. As she’d told Kate, there would be plenty of time to cover all the ground she needed to cover during the next few weeks, with far more planning once all of her gear arrived from wherever the airline had decided to ship it.

Normally, she was prepared for everything, but for once in her life it felt good to take it as it came. She had a cellphone for emergencies, she had a sandwich, her notebook and her camera—and she had her Farbgel—Scotland’s answer to pepper spray—just in case—at Kate’s insistence, of course. But she wasn’t worried. The area was quite familiar to her, and it wasn’t her first time out. In fact, she felt as though she had been born in these hills. Today company would only have slowed her down. Plus, she really didn’t want to tell anyone what she was after—not yet.

Only her father would have understood.

She was excited by this. Of all the bait and switch theories, this was the only one that hadn’t been thoroughly pursued, probably in part due to the fact that the stone was “home” now after having been returned to Scotland in 1996. The Kingussie report had surfaced about the same time the stone had returned to Scotland. Apparently, some old woman on her deathbed claimed her brothers had stumbled into a cave while playing up in the hills as boys and there they had discovered a stone that sounded a lot like the Stone of Destiny. Unfortunately, her brothers were both dead now too—one killed in World War II and the other fell off a ladder in his hardware store and cracked his skull at the age of sixty-two. Neither was around to corroborate the woman’s story, but it didn’t matter. Annie only needed something a more solid to go on in order to ask for an official dispensation—a long-buried cave, maybe. That was why she was heading up to the “Demon’s Penis” today…to find her
proof
. After all, she didn’t need any special permission to hike these hills or to poke about unofficially, and if there were unexplored caverns in the area, she was bound and determined to find them.

About an hour into her hike, she stopped at a burn, grateful that she’d worn her good hiking boots on the plane. Despite what Kate said, hiking the Cairngorms wasn’t for the fainthearted, even when you stuck to well-worn paths. Crossing the burn at the footbridge, she headed west until the peak of
Bod an Deamhain
greeted her like an old friend in the distance. The munro leaned to one side, looking far more like a woman’s breast than a demon’s penis, but the sight of it filled Annie with an unparalleled sense of satisfaction, even as it brought back bittersweet memories of hiking with her parents.

While most parents might not have dragged their eight-year-old along on a hiking trip through some of the wildest terrain in Scotland, her father hadn’t blinked an eye, nor had her mother—which was entirely to be expected considering that her dad had climbed some of the most challenging peaks on the face of the earth and her mother had met the love of her life traveling the Trans-Siberian. Her parents had been fearless. They’d instilled the same attitude in Annie. The simple fact that they had jumped out of planes together, taken a sailboat out for six months on the Pacific and met the Dalai Lama twice, made their deaths feel all the more senseless. Run down by a drunk driver only three blocks from her grandmother’s house. On the way to pick her up, no less.

But, like her obsessions, Annie came by her sense of adventure honestly. She supposed that was why Paul had found it so difficult to deal with her. He said she was stubborn, opinionated and too independent. How could anyone be too independent? And how the hell did that give him the right to sleep with her best friend? How cliché. He hadn’t even had the sense to cheat on her in an entirely original way. But the worst of it was that Annie had realized afterward how few true friends she actually had. Her life had been too wrapped up in her work, and if she got this new dig, that wasn’t about to change. But that was fine. Moving to Scotland would be a good change. Spending more time with Kate would be great as well.

Today the walk was clearing her head, doing her good. In fact, by the time she emerged from the smattering of trees at the base of the corries, she already felt like a new woman. Up ahead, bright purple hues drew her inexorably toward them. On either side of the worn path bluebells sprang from the ground, swaying gently with the summer breeze.

Up higher, the hillside felt spongy beneath her boots. These were not your typical mountains, more like elevated plateaus. The name itself, Cairngorms, was a misnomer. Translated from Gaelic, it meant “blue cairn.” However, made primarily of granite, the hills glowed red under the afternoon sun…a bit like the Winter Stone. It was why the old ones had named them the red hills—the
Am Monadh Ruadh.

Stopping in the middle of a blooming field, she paused to take a look around. From here, she could spy the pine forest she’d come through down below. Sad to know that was all that was left of those amazing woodlands. Her stomach grumbled, so she picked a spot near a crumbling cairn, and pulled off her dry sack, then slid down to sit on the mossy ground, resting her back against a large boulder.

She must have been walking a good two hours or more, and she wasn’t anywhere near where she needed to be. To check the time, she took her cell phone out of her bag.
2:15.
Okay, three hours, maybe a little more. She’d lost track. At this point, she’d be pushing it to get back to the meeting point by six, so she texted Kate to let her know her E.T.A. Then she fished her sandwich out of her bag, and along with it the Winter Stone, feeling a bit gleeful to be alone with her newfound treasure at last.

When she touched the crystal, the striations turned green.

Curioser and curioser.

Inspecting it as she finished her sandwich, she grabbed her canteen, took a sip of water, and then tossed everything but the stone aside to take a closer look at her prize…

The Cairngorms, 878

Callum placed another rock on his father’s burial cairn. The corries were littered with them—some said dropped by Cailleach Bheur herself—faerie tales, like those told by Kenneth MacAilpín. Except that those were harmless, and the lies Kenneth told were not.

He was angry with his Da for dying—angry with him for leaving him alone with decisions that weren’t his to make.

MacAilpín’s sons were all treacherous, murdering bastards—but this wasn’t Callum’s fight. Callum had followed his Da into these hills, because…well, that’s what sons were supposed to do. But his father was barely cold in the ground and his uncle was already campaigning to return to Scone with the stone.

Apparently, loyalty was a dying trait.

And yet Callum could hardly fault his uncle Brude. In truth, he was wavering as well—more than a wee bit if the truth be known. Sweating under the hot afternoon sun, he placed the last of the cairn stones on his father’s grave and stood with arms akimbo to inspect his handiwork. He had refused the help of his clansmen. This task was his alone. In part because he suspected treachery, but neither did he wish for anyone to witness his grief. It was a terrible thing, gnawing painfully at his guts.

His father had been the last of his blood. His mother was gone, his brothers as well—both victims of King Giric’s coup—and now his Da was dead as well. There was no one to return to Scone for, no one to stay here for, and by the sins of Sluag, if a mon wasna fighting for his kin, who the hell was he fighting for in the end? The situation soured his mood.

Even now his kinsmen were down in the vale, arguing over what to do with the Destiny Stone. Half of his clan wanted to return the stone to Scone. The other half were more inclined to never allow it to see the light of day. Brude was the most vocal, wishing to return it, but that came as little surprise, for, like Callum, his uncle had never relished taking on this burden. As far as Callum was concerned, they could smash the stone to bits, return it, or leave it in the belly of the mountain. The rotten thing was cursed anyway.

But then they knew that, his Da would have said. That’s why they had stolen the bloody thing to begin with, leaving a perfect replica in its place. Let them crown their kings upon that other slab of stone and mayhap it would stem rivers of blood.

Disgusted to his core, Callum turned away from the cairn. It was complete now, but he could not credit that his father’s body would now lie and rot beneath the heavy stones. His bones would remain here for eternity, forgotten under the mists of
Am Monadh Ruadh.

And where might Callum be?

Except for those who had followed his Da, his tribesmen were now scattered to the winds. Alba was no more. He was a man without a home.

With a growl of displeasure, he started down the hillside, battling his conscience and his temper. That’s when he spied her…

Annie yawned and stretched, thinking that somehow, she must have dozed…with the crystal in her hand. She lifted it to her bleary eyes. It was nearly colorless again. What a strange, but fascinating rock.

After eating her sandwich, she had been so entranced with the thing, peering into it, watching the colors change and trying to figure out how it worked, that she must have dozed. She didn’t recall feeling sleepy, but she guessed it must have come upon her suddenly, after filling her stomach, because she
felt
like she’d been asleep for a hundred years or more. She thought maybe her plane trip must have taken more out of her than she had realized, because the hike hadn’t been all that strenuous. She sat up and shook the fuzz from her head.

What time was it anyway?

Instinctively, she sought her bag to grab her phone and text Kate again, but her brand-new pack was gone. With a shriek of alarm, she shot to her feet, looking about, her gaze focusing on movement in the near distance.

There was a half-naked man, rebuilding the cairn she’d passed on the way up. Clearly, he must have taken her bag, because unlike the Winter Stone, bags didn’t simply get up and walk away on their own. Wrapping her fist around the crystal in her hand, she was angry enough to whack the guy upside the head with it, so she took a few calming breaths before starting in his direction. At the very least, she needed her phone back so she could let Kate know she wasn’t going to make it back on time.