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But Colum’s eyes were on the torches. “Nae. We must kill them or they may see us.”

“Ye dinna have to kill the English to prove yer loyalty,” said Iàcob. “The way down is free.”

Sorrow flashed for a moment in Colum’s eyes and, once again, David wondered what had happened to him. If David found the rock in the castle, he may never know.

“Aye,” said Colum. “Let’s go.”

They crossed the wall path and climbed down, silent as night. It was quiet in the inner bailey. No one was there, among the timber buildings with thatched roofs. Keeping to the buildings, they made their way from house to house until they reached the main keep, a square, three-floor tower.

“Let’s go to the dungeons,” David suggested as the three of them eyed the single heavy door.

The dungeon was where Padean had told him he’d seen the rock and likely where they’d find a prisoner, as well. The men nodded. Colum listened by the door, then slowly opened it. Typical of main keeps, the first floor was essentially a storage room with weapons, firewood, and food. In the corner was a staircase leading down.

They hurried as silently as they could. As Colum opened the door at the end of the flight of stairs, David saw two guards sitting around a small, round table. One of them had his chin on his chest, and the other one’s head was leaning against the wall. Both were snoring.

David had expected to fight, but these two were sleeping. Like two dark shadows, the Highlanders came from behind him and, without a word, cut the throats of the guards. Used to violence in the Middle Ages, David still watched in shock as life pumped out of the guards in dark gushes.

With his sword out, darkened by blood, Colum walked to the next door. “Come on, Mackenzie. We’re lucky to be alive by now.”

The next room was a dungeon. A long corridor held a row of cells behind iron bars to the left. All appeared empty. While Colum went ahead with a torch, David took another torch and walked into the first cell, carefully lighting the floor.

Nothing. Just a smooth, dusty floor with no flat rocks and no carvings and no handprints. David stood looking helplessly around him in the empty cell.

“What are ye waiting for?” said Iàcob behind him. “She isna here. Hurry.”

The screech of metal hinges down the corridor told David Colum must have reached another door. Colum checked the rest of the five cells one by one. None of them had the rock. With a sinking feeling of failure, David hurried after them.

They walked into a strange empty room with a round hole in the middle of the floor and something that looked like a well mechanism. Colum was leaning over the hole with his torch.

“Anna?” he called.

“Aye, I am here,” came a weak female voice. “Who is there?”

She was down there, in a hole, with no way out. He looked down there, too, and it must have been ten feet down that he saw a female face peering at them. The stench of death and feces made bile rise in his stomach. What kind of animals would do that to a human being?

“’Tis Colum. We came to get ye out of here.”

“Let me get her,” said David. “I have been told about the oubliette.”

He still hadn’t found the stone; he hadn’t found his way out. Padean may have lied to him, but he didn’t think so. The place where nightmares are born, he remembered Peigi’s words. If the stone was anywhere in the castle, it must be down there.

“There’s no time to think it over, Colum,” David said sternly. “Lower me.”

“Aye,” Colum said through gritted teeth.

David held on to the chain and Colum lowered him down. The screeching of the chain was like the call of a gargoyle for the master of darkness.

His torch attached to the chain above him, he plunged lower and lower into a prison of stone. Anna clung to the wall and shielded her eyes against the light, blocking his view of her face. She was a small, thin figure with dark hair in a mass of filthy knots.

When his feet landed on a smooth rock and he looked down, the floor seemed to tilt under him.

He was standing on the time traveling rock. Frantically, he looked around, moving the chain with the firelight. “Sìneag! Sìneag!”

“What are ye doing, man?” hissed Colum from above. “Take Anna and get the hell out of there.”

He was shaking. What were the chances Colum’s mission and his own would lead to one place, the oubliette.

“Sìneag!” he cried.