Segwarides sent Galahad a vicious glower, still angry about the perceived fat-shaming.
“Commenting on someone’s weight, either way, sends the wrong message.” Galahad told him honestly. “That’s not what we should be celebrating about you, as a person.”
Segwarides flicked him off and looked towards Bedivere. “The writing on this map is in the gryphons’ language.” He grudgingly admitted.
Bedivere grunted, somewhat accepting that Galahad was telling the truth. “So that’s why you’re with this monster?” He demanded, nudging Trystan with the toe of his boot. “Because of the gold?”
“We’re working together.” Galahad wasn’t about to tell him that there was no gold. Bedivere needed an incentive to keep Trystan alive. “Trys grew up with the man who drew the map. He is the key to everything.”
Despite his earlier words, Galahad would have lied without hesitation to save Trystan’s life, but he didn’t have to. All of that was a hundred percent true. Not just because Trystan was the ya’lah and the only one who could find the graal, but because he was Trystan. Without him, the whole world would be empty.
Bedivere tilted his head. “This guy is the key to everything? He is the only one who can get the treasure?”
“Yes.”
“You’re sure about that?”
“Yes. I swear it on my life.”
“Well, then what the hell do I need you for?” Bedivere lifted the Rath-gun and fired it right into Galahad’s chest.
The blast hit Galahad like a wrecking ball.
He went flying into the air, knocked right off his feet. The twisted magic it fired should’ve killed him, but somehow his coat shielded him from the worst of the blast, almost like a bulletproof vest. Trystan claimed the jacket was “enspelled with protective magic” and Galahad suddenly believed the hype. Whatever spells were woven into the threads, they were stronger than Bedivere’s gun. They blocked the destructive energy from incinerating him.
But they didn’t stop the sheer force of it.
The percussive power sent Galahad careening backwards and then splashing down into the Moaning Sea. He had no idea how far the magical-weapon had launched him, but the water was deep enough to suck him under into inky blackness.
Shit.
Why did he always seem to end up underwater? Thanks to that helpful yeti he’d met in his travels, Galahad was impervious to freezing. He could still feel the frosty magic of the ocean, though. The power of it clawed at him, wanting to entomb him in its frigid depths. He fought against the pull, trying to figure out which way was up. It was so hard to tell in the dark.
As his eyes adjusted, Galahad attempted to orient himself. Delicate beings of illuminated blues swam all around him, giving him the help he needed. Icen jellyfish. Some of the only creatures who could survive the curse of the Moaning Sea. He could see them everywhere, lighting the undersea world. They were beautiful. …And they showed him the way to the surface. Using their eerie glow as a guide, Galahad swam upward. Animals truly were a blessing.
He surfaced, more than a dozen yards from shore, and looked back towards the beach. The ex-knights weren’t taking the time to bury any of the abductors Trystan had killed earlier. No, Bedivere and his gang were already disappearing through the portal, dragging Trystan’s unconscious body with them.
Goddamn it.
Galahad swam towards them as fast as he could, but he already knew he was too late. Trystan and the ex-knights were gone, by the time he reached land.
Bedivere had just kidnapped his True Love.
Galahad staggered onto the sand, palms braced on his knees, breathing hard. Trying not to panic. Trying not to give into rage. There wasn’t time for it. He needed to focus. He needed to save Trystan. He needed to come up with a plan.
Fast.
Galahad closed his eyes and let out a slow breath.
The ex-knights thought he was dead, frozen into an ice cube and lost in the waves. That was an advantage. And he knew where they’d be going. They had the map, so they’d get a boat and head for the lost gryphon temple. Galahad needed to get there before the other men realized there was no gold to find and so they didn’t need Trystan to find it. He had no idea how he was going to locate the island without the map, but he needed to think of a way.
Improvise.
That was how he’d won all his toughest battles. It was the only way he’d win, now. He needed to come up with a strategy, one step at a time.
Step one: How was he going to cross the water? He couldn’t fly and he had no boat, but maybe he could... Wait. Galahad’s eyes popped open. No. He could fly. Thanks to Avi, he had a flying carpet! The damn thing was turning out to be incredibly useful. Knowing his goddaughter, that was probably why she’d prompted him to buy it in the first place. The child knew everything.
Straightening, Galahad headed up the beach, looking for where Trystan might have left their horses. Trystan wouldn’t have come to save him without a way to bring him back to St. Ives and he probably would have brought their stuff along. That only made sense.
As he walked, Galahad absently rubbed at his ribs. He was pretty sure they were cracked, but he’d still gotten away lucky. The coat really was quite a find, for a sale rack. Trystan would be I-told-you-so-ing about making Galahad wear it, for years to come.
Hopefully.
Galahad found the horses and quickly untied the magic carpet. Okay. Excellent. He had a way across the water. Step two of his improvised plan was finding the damn island. He wasn’t sure how to do that except to fly out there and look for it. …So he was going to fly out there and look for it.
Great. Moving on to step three. Rescuing Trystan.
That meant getting to that island and then stopping everyone who threatened his True Love. It probably meant killing them. He didn’t want to. He’d try other, less-permanent avenues first. But if they had to die to save Trystan…
So be it.
Galahad’s jaw tightened and he began tearing through the saddlebags. He pulled one of Trystan’s many, many spare swords free and looped the scabbard around his shoulder. Then, he found the antique gun he’d fixed and he shoved it into his waistband. There was a ruthless side to Galahad. He’d warned Trystan about that and it was true. No matter what he had to do, Galahad was saving his True Love. He’d burn down the whole world to get him back. There was no other option.
The man was everything.
He ignored the unsettling weight of the sword on his body and pushed forward. The power wasn’t in the weapon. That was what Trystan told him and he was right. Galahad hated the sensation of the blade touching him, but he could deal with it. The darkness wasn’t swirling within him. He didn’t feel out of control. Inside of him there was just unbreakable determination.
He would have Trystan back in his arms.
Within two minutes, he was on the magic carpet and flying over the ocean. Looking for an island that could be anywhere in a vast swath of open water. Wherever the gryphon temple was, it had to be far enough from land that no one had ever seen it. That made sense, right? It had to be way out in the sea, where few people ever ventured. Otherwise, it would have been found, even in this remote spot.
Since he didn’t have a better idea, he flew towards the horizon.
After hours of fruitless searching, though, he was beginning to question his theory. The Moaning Sea was so much bigger than he’d imagined. When it submerged Atlantis, it had spread outward for a hundred miles in any direction. How the hell was he supposed to stumble across one tiny island in so much space?
What of the island wasn’t there, at all?
What if Trystan had been right and the gryphon temple had sunk with the rest of Atlantis? Maybe it was at the bottom of the ocean now, forever hidden from view. Galahad’s mind went to movies. Where undersea labs existed in huge, magical bubbles, dry and protected. Could something like that actually happen? With strong enough magic, pretty much anything could happen.
Maybe he needed to chan
ge strategies.
Could any species of mermaids survive the Moaning Sea? Galahad had a great working relationship with mermaids. He’d raised a lot of money for their retirement homes. If he could speak to one who lived here, he was pretty sure he could convince them to help. He could ask them if they’d seen any sunken temples under the water. That would really narrow his search.
Except it would also take time and he didn’t have time. It was already early afternoon. He needed to find Trystan now, before Bedivere killed him and everything was lost.
Galahad paused the carpet, trying to decide which way to go next. The thick floral weave was drenched with sea spray, soaking his already soaked clothes. He rested his forehead in his hands, desperate and needing help.
He needed help.
For the first time ever, he reached for the dead gryphons who sometimes spoke in his head. He concentrated on contacting them. On getting some guidance.
Help me. Please.
For a long moment, there was silence. Then whispers drifted through his mind and Galahad heard Fisher. He knew it was Fisher, even though he had never met the man. And he understood the words, even though he didn’t speak the gryphons’ language. He didn’t have to speak it. If he listened, he just knew what the man was saying.
He listened to the instructions that Fisher had given Trystan, long ago in the zoo, like he was sitting right there with them. The same instructions that Trystan had repeated to Galahad in the Fire Cave of Corbenic, his finger gesturing towards the ground.
Find a dream and follow it, boy. And when you’re lost and your dream follows you…? Tell it not to look at the horizon. Look straight down.
Galahad looked straight down. …And saw a hole in the ocean.
He blinked, trying to make sense of it. There was a hole in the ocean, round and deep and about an acre in circumference. All the water around it was being held at bay by a massive, and undoubtedly enspelled, wall. A wall that stretched from the seabed, up and up, to a point just over the highest crests of the waves. If you weren’t directly above it, you never would have seen the top of the wall. You would have no idea that it was even there, hidden by the constant movement of the Moaning Sea.
But Galahad had listened to Fisher and looked down.
The ocean rolled beneath him, but the land inside the walls stayed mostly dry. Galahad craned his neck to look into the hole. Allllll the way down, far below sea level, was a perfect circle of golden sand with a building sitting right at the middle of it.
An island, sunken in the sea.
The flying carpet dropped without Galahad even having to think about it. He dove the rug downward, finally landing it on the marshy sand. Sea spray rained down on him from high above, as the waves crashed against the magical stones that surrounded him, getting him even wetter. Stepping off the carpet, Galahad’s astonished gaze went up to the towering walls.
It was like being a ship in a bottle.
Galahad wiped the moisture from his face and turned his attention to the listing structure in front of him. Hidden from view from the modern world, covered in barnacles and algae, the building took up almost every square inch of sand. Aside from skittering periwinkle crabs, it didn’t seem like any living creature had visited it in countless years. The constant mist of the ocean kept it forever damp, but it wasn’t submerged.
The lost gryphon temple still sat on dry ground.
The sinking of Atlantis had not been kind to Listeneise. It was a shipwreck of a building, crumbling in places. The columns on its front had toppled and were half-covered in sand. Part of the steeply-pitched roof had fallen in, giving it a lopsided appearance. It was smaller than he’d thought it would be and looked like it might fall down with a gentle push.
But it was there and that was all that mattered. Galahad had found the exact spot that he needed to find, using the exact tools he needed to find it, at the exact moment his True Love had needed him most.
There was no way that happened by chance.
Trystan’s clans were still protecting their son.
“Thank you.” He told the dead gryphons who’d helped him. Who’d seen his struggle to repent after Legion and who had given him this chance to prove himself. Who had sent him a gift that he didn’t deserve, when they put Trystan in his care. “Thank you. I won’t let you down.”
Chapter Thirty
Only the ya’lah can break Uther’s curse and they must be from wingless blood.
Some despair that this is impossible.
But I believe the gods are far smarter than the king and his sorceress.
I believe that the curse is why the old ones were entrusted with the graal, in the first place.
The gods saw all of this coming to pass. The graal’s power was always intended to save the gryphons in our hour of most desperate need.
That hour is now.
How the Wingless War Happened
Skylyn Welkyn- Gryphon Storyteller
Atlantis- Listeneise
Trystan awoke with a metallic taste in his mouth. It was strange, but familiar. He’d experienced it before, when Marcus and Uther had dosed him with angelycall and dumped him in prison. Who the hell had drugged him this time?
And where was Galahad?
He opened his eyes, scanning for his mate and not spotting him.
He did see that he was in some sort of underground room, though. It was dark and damp and periwinkle crabs were skittering around. Frigid water was dripping onto his head, from somewhere up above. It was hard to see in the dim light, but the chamber appeared… big. Really big and irregularly-shaped. Like maybe it was carved right into the bedrock.
Trystan pulled himself into a sitting position. Whoever had drugged him also tied his hands in front of his body, which he didn’t appreciate. Trystan had gotten pretty skilled at freeing himself from his captors, over the years, so he wasn’t too upset about that. The ropes seemed flimsy. If he needed to, he could escape and kill whoever had done it, within a few minutes.
Right now, he had way bigger problems to focus on.
Where the hell was Galahad?
A group of knights appeared to be digging random holes in the ground, which was a typical show of intelligence for their kind. There were six wingless men, in total. Trystan wasn’t sure who they were, but it didn’t matter. At the moment, only one thing in the world truly mattered to Trystan.
“Where is Galahad?” He demanded.
The knight closest to him had sunken cheeks and a bored expression on his face. He had to be the leader of the group, since he was the only one of the six not working. “You’re awake.” He told Trystan, like maybe Trystan hadn’t noticed. “Good. I was beginning to think you’d be out all day. We need to know where the treasure…”
Trystan cut him off, not giving a shit about any of that. “Where is Galahad?” He repeated harshly.
“Dead.” The man crowed, rising to his feet. There was a strange cylindrical gun in his hand. “I killed him myself.”
Trystan felt the world stop. “Dead?” He echoed blankly.
Oh gods… Howling emptiness screamed in his mind, threatening to destroy him. For just a second, he waivered. Wanting to give into it and die himself. Without Galahad he would have no reason to go on. His path would end. He would have nothing at all to…
No.
Trystan’s instincts kicked in, cutting through the panic. No. This man was lying. He had to be. Were instincts and emotions the same things? Is that why Trystan had always felt them? He wasn’t sure. He just knew he trusted them and they told him the knight still lived. Trystan would know if Galahad was dead. He would feel it.
“How did Galahad die?” He demanded, his heart pounding.
“I knocked his ass into the Moaning Sea.”
Trystan’s head tilted. “You froze him?”
“Yep. I imagine he’s nothing but a knight-icle, by now.”
Relief rushed through Trystan, leaving him slightly dizzy. The knight was immune to freezing and gods-only-
knew what else. That would not kill him. Trystan was half-convinced that nothing could kill the man. The gods protected their miracles.
Satisfied that Galahad was safe, for the moment, Trystan took closer stock of his own situation. “I know you.” He told the knight, staring up at the stranger and finally processing his features. “You’re dead. I’ve seen your ugly memorial statue.”
“I’m not dead.” Bedivere the Brave snapped, looking insulted. “And that damn statue looks nothing like me. Arthur deliberately picked the worst likeness he could find. He always was an asshole.”
Trystan couldn’t argue with that assessment. “You are the one who tried to kill Galahad in the desert? The ex-soldier who served under him in the War, but blamed him for some Bad memories?”
“Bad memories?” Bedivere scoffed. “Is that what he told you? Bad memories? My whole life was ruined because of Legion!”
“Many lives were ruined because of Legion.”
Bedivere ignored that truth, focused only on his own petty complaints. “That day, I lost everything I believed in.” He rose to his feet, agitated and pacing around the damp floor. “I wanted to tell the truth about it, but I knew that no one would ever believe me. Not over him. I had to run.” He’d clearly repeated that excuse for his cowardice so many times that he’d even convinced himself.
“In the meantime, Camelot has made you into a martyr.” Trystan arched a sardonic brow. “I suppose this enshrined legacy had nothing to do with your choosing to stay dead. Your ego was not involved, at all.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.” Bedivere stabbed a finger at him, outraged by the sarcasm. “If I had told everything that happened that day, I would have been painting a target on my back. Galahad was too popular to stand against. Everyone would have sided with him and I’d probably be in jail!”
“Also, returning to Camelot would have revealed you to be a deserter, rather than a man who heroically died saving children from a fire. Then, you would definitely be in jail, yes?”
Best Knight Ever (A Kinda Fairytale Book 4) Page 46