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It was cool here in the pass, no sun reached the bottom where we rode. The horses blew and tossed their heads. Dude shifted in the saddlebag, poking his head up, making a low sound that sounded like a grumble, as if he did not like this place.

Death was here.

Torin kept us moving, one hand on the reins, the cloth tight across his face, his expression grim.

I agreed, no stopping, this was not a place to rest.

On the other side of the battlefield, Torin slowed and pulled down the face-covering. “Och, twas bleak.”

I took off my face-covering and stuffed it in one of the saddlebags. “I did not like that one bit. How much further?”

He said, “Ye will be glad tae ken, Princess, we hae gone halfway, we are nearly there.”

We came out of the pass in the afternoon, the steep sides falling away at last. The land opened.

Torin looked around admiringly. “Tis beautiful, inna it, mo leannan, this is Loch Awe. Tis yer ancestral home.”

I said, “It is?”

“Aye, tis where yer father grew up, except this is hundreds of years before.” The loch was long and steel-gray, running away between the hills until it disappeared into a distant mist. The water looked cold even from here and the wind moved across it in dark patches, giving it a chop. At the near end the loch narrowed toward a low point of land and the mouth of another glen.

“Yer father and his brothers ran along these hills.”

“My uncles were here.” It wasn’t a question, I was putting the story together, the men I knew, and how this was the landscape they had lived in. “Wow. It’s beautiful.”

“Aye... tis. Does it feel familiar?”

“I’ve never seen it before, but yeah, kind of.”

Torin reined in and sat very still on Cathbarr, looking at that empty spit of ground where the water met the shore.

I followed his gaze and saw only rock, a scatter of trees, and the loch lapping against them. Nothing else.

“What is it?” I asked.

He was quiet for a moment, then said, “There ought tae be a castle there.”

“Oh, what castle?”

“Kilchurn, I hae kent it all m’life. Max and I would ride through here just tae see it, though twas a century afore his father, the Duke of Awe would reside there. Kilchurn castle, in my time, is an ancient Campbell stronghold, ye see it and ye ken that Campbells own this loch and the mountains beyond, the land as far as ye can see. Tis a glorious castle, yet in this time Alba is so young, it haena even been built yet. Yer father winna live there for three hundred years. Tis unsettling.”

He shifted in his saddle looking up and down the landscape.

“Tis as if there is a hole in the world. There ought tae be a castle and instead there is only rock.” He let out a breath and gathered the reins.

“Come, Dalmally is just beyond. We want tae find a roof afore the light goes.”

We started down toward the loch, the empty point of land sliding past.

Torin and I didn’t turn to look.

27

ALEXANDRIA

1308 - WE SLEEP IN A STABLE AT DALMALLY

We reached Dalmally in the evening, when the light had gone soft and gold across the hills. The path widened as it dropped toward a scatter of low stone buildings and thatched roofs clustered in an open space. Smoke rose in thin blue threads from several chimneys, carrying the smell of peat and cooking. Somewhere a dog barked as we passed, and the chickens scratching in the dirt near a low wall looked up, irritated. There was a distant sound of a hammer on metal from what must have been a smithy.