The Darkest Knight (Guardians of Camelot #3) - Victoria Sue Page 0,57
had word Lancelot was mortally wounded, and they doubted they could get him back in time for healing.
“She said if she, Aalardin, and I combined our magic, it would work over a greater distance. It made sense, so I readily agreed. I’d already seen what Aalardin could do, and he said she had incredible healing ability. She said we had to offer to voluntarily contain all my magic in one vessel so she could combine our powers.”
“Vessel?”
“She carried some items in a pouch including a gold goblet she said was imbued with Merlin magic. If she got the injured to drink from it, they would be healed, and that’s what she had been doing when she got our message. She said our abilities combined was the only thing to try, but we must voluntarily surrender them.”
“Morgan?” Kay said although he doubted any other.
Galahad nodded. “I repeated the words she told me and drank wine from the cup. She laughed and said my sacrifice was deserving of a warrior. She spoke in a language I didn’t know, and I waited for Aalardin to copy my actions. I never got a chance to ask because by that time I was feeling decidedly strange, and Mordred said I ought to sit down as magic weaving took a lot of strength. I don’t remember falling asleep, just waking up here.”
Kay didn’t know what to say. The thought of anyone being trapped for so long was a nightmare no one could remain remotely sane from.
“I am kept in mind isolation,” Galahad explained as if guessing at Kay’s thought. “I don’t know how she keeps people living for the time she does except I only age when I am conscious. I would guess that makes me around twenty-one, twenty-two regular years, but I don’t know exactly.”
“You look a lot younger,” Kay said honestly.
“And yet I feel every one of the hundreds of years I have been here.”
He had two more important questions. If he was honest, he had a thousand, but there were two that couldn’t wait.
“Charles is one she keeps alive?”
Galahad winced. “His life is a lie. I know he was originally sent to protect Tom so that they could bond and then they could kill Lucan. When that failed they went after you, but Morgan has very limited powers here.”
Kay frowned. If Morgan had no power, who was keeping Galahad chained? Mordred had no magical ability as far as he knew. “Do you know who Charles is?” Because he would bet he wasn’t the fifty-two human years he portrayed.
“A sacrifice to Arawn. She had followers with them much earlier than the events at Camlaan.”
The druid god of death. Kay knew they had taken children for that purpose. They believed an innocent’s blood gave them power in battle. “Mordred?”
“Can only exist here, which is a step higher than Morgan herself even. As far as I know, she is in a quandary. She wants to exist in the real world, but she doesn’t have the power yet. She tried last year, but Merlin stopped her, and it took some time for her to come back from that. Does Charles know?”
“That his life is a lie?” Kay nodded. “I think he is beginning to realize something is wrong. If you can appear to us, why can’t you escape? It’s obvious your power wasn’t taken from you.”
“It was at first. For a long time, all I wished for was death, especially when I found out how long I had been here.”
“When was that?”
“When Aalardin started his experiments.”
“He could come here?” Kay was surprised.
Galahad shook his head. “I actually don’t know where ‘here’ is. I think it’s an illusion, but sometimes when her power is depleted there is…a barrier almost? Or rather I am aware that the barrier thins, and somehow I managed to slip through it. I recognized Merlin holding a young man on the battlefield and crying.” Kay inhaled sharply. Had it been him?
“I did my best to scream at them, to make them hear, but I assumed I was dead and a ghost.” Galahad’s face softened. “Then I was present at his second birth in the old church.”
“Tom’s?” That made more sense.
Galahad nodded. “It got so I visited him as often as I could in both lifetimes. I don’t know whether time warps here—wherever here is—or it is part of my magic, but I could always visit him in both lifetimes. Sometimes he would see me, sometimes he wouldn’t. But over the years we almost became