Once Upon A Highland Legend Read online

  “I dinna need your money, lass.” The woman released the crystal into Annie’s keeping. “No’ everyone sees what ye see when ye peer into the keek stane.”

  “Keek stane?”

  “An auld word for a scrying stone, crystal ball.”

  Annie smiled. “So what do I see?” she asked, testing the woman.

  The woman tilted her head and seemed to think over her answer a moment, then said, “Truth, lies, and the destinies of men.”

  Annie lifted both her brows and gave the woman a half smile. “All that, eh?”

  The shopkeeper smiled knowingly. She must have sensed Annie was waffling, because she added, “Take it and see what I mean, lass. If ye dinna wish to keep it, ye can bring it back before the first new moon.”

  Annie’s lips found a smile of their own accord, but fortunately she didn’t laugh at the woman’s gypsy-speak. “Okay, well…I would love to take a closer look, but I’m only in town for a few weeks.” She was too curious to turn down the offer, but she probably wouldn’t feel right keeping it after all. “Do you have a card? I can mail it back when I’m done.”

  “If ye truly wish it, the Winter Stone will return on its own.”

  The woman was serious. Her ancient, withered face didn’t crack a smile. Annie had a ridiculous vision in her mind of the crystal sprouting feet and walking back to the shop all by itself. Nevertheless, excited by the prospect of examining the crystal closer, she felt titillated by the offer. As odd as the entire situation might be, there was not much chance she would walk away without it. The scientist in her simply wouldn’t allow it. “Alright.” she agreed, but let me at least buy one of your tartan ponchos—how much did you say they were?”

  “Forty nine, ninety nine, but it’s on sale today. I’ll gi’ it to ye for twenty nine.”

  “Pounds?”

  “Yes, of course!” the woman declared, and hurried over to pull the tartan poncho off the mannequin in the window. “Here ye go, lass. ’Twill serve ye well,” she said, and Annie paid her. Then, thank God, she heard the rev of a bike engine outside the shop, and her cousin’s boisterous voice, so she thanked the shopkeeper profusely and hurried outside.

  Her cousin was still mounted on her bike, her short black skirt hiked up her leg to such a degree that Annie suffered a momentary pang of modesty at the thought of climbing on the back of the bike. The poncho would help at least.

  Dressed all in black, from her shiny heeled boots to her black nails and purple lipstick, Kate was a beacon for every pair of male eyes in the vicinity. “Coorie up!” her cousin demanded. “We dinna ha’ much time!”

  “Check this out.” Annie handed her the crystal while she pulled on her poncho.

  Kate revved her bike with one hand as she examined the crystal. “What aboot it?”

  “It changes colors.”

  In her cousin’s hands, the crystal turned pink, but Kate didn’t seem to notice. “Yer daft.” she exclaimed, and shoved it back at Annie. “Get your bum on the bike. I’ve got a date.” She beamed. “This time it’s true love.”

  “Every one is true love for you!”

  Kate gave her a chiding look. “Would ye even know love if ye were faced with it, Annie?”

  Annie frowned at her. “Anyway, I thought you had to get back to work?”

  Kate winked. “Why d’ ye think I took the gig for, love? I’m working it.”

  Annie laughed and took the crystal from her cousin, dropping it into her pack. She climbed on the back of the bike and barely had time to adjust her pack and put her arm around her cousin’s waist before Kate revved the bike and took off.

  The wind tore strands of hair from Annie’s ponytail, whipping them into her face. Houses whizzed past as they raced out of town, leaving the sounds of the Heritage Festival in their wake. Kate turned onto Ruthven and somewhere along that road veered off down another narrow road. About forty-five minutes later, after nearly three spills, Annie insisted Kate drop her off beyond the last walk-about parking. There were only two cars here today. Hopefully, she wouldn’t run into other hikers. She slid off the bike, eager to be off Kate’s wild bike ride.

  “You sure you’ll be alright?” Kate asked.

  “Fine,” Annie insisted.

  “Okay, but if ye’ll wait until t’morrow, I’ll come along w’ ye.”

  Annie shook her head stubbornly. “You don’t have the gear.”

  “’Tis no’ like ye’re climbing the Alps, mind ye. I’ve got boots.” Kate’s full lips turned into a grin and she hiked up her leg to show off her shiny black boots with the deadly heels.

  Little wonder they had nearly kissed the ground. How could anyone ride with those? Annie laughed. “Great, we can use them as grappling hooks,” she suggested.

  “Bloody hell! Ye’re a stubborn one,” Kate protested, but she laughed too. “Anyway, it’s not like ye’re rock climbing. It’s a lazy day walk aboot at best.”

  Annie lifted a brow. “Thirty point nine kilometers if you do the entire pass.”

  “Aye, but ye’re not,” Kate argued.

  “Right. So I’ll hold you to it—tomorrow—but I’m going today too.”

  “Alright, then. Meet me back here at six. Set your watch,” Kate insisted.

  Annie didn’t wear a watch. Apparently her cousin hadn’t noticed, but she said anyway, “I will.” She planned to be back long before Late Kate turned up again.

  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 b
ack 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…

  Chapter Two

  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 cou
ld 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.