Megiddo’s blood was still wet when Camlann returned to his wonder. It didn’t occur to him that this was odd, or that he should be concerned by any wetness on the walls; he noted it, because it was true, and then he passed the door into the catacombs. The left-hand path with its little chapel shone a welcoming lilac light, but the field repelling him from the right-hand door was gone. He pressed his palm against an indentation in the door and heard it click. By instinct, he twisted the palm-lock to the right. The door swung open before him, yawning into a winding stair that disappeared down, down, down into darkness.

He followed the stair. This was what he’d come for, and the light from his ring was enough to illuminate his way--just a few steps forward, but enough. He watched the slick stairs, placing his feet carefully. Dying on his Wonder would be very traditional, but still not his cup of tea.

The last step surprised him, and he stumbled into a larger cavern. No matter how high he lifted his hand, the light didn’t break through the darkness. With a sigh of defeat, he lowered his hands, and stood there for a moment. Pitch black. Dark as… dark as something. It crowded his senses, and he let it, closing his eyes and settling down on the floor. The stone was damp, and in the last vestiges of light from the ring he could see that it was only water. Salt and iron and stone, he thought. Not like blood.

As his senses attuned to the darkness, he could hear something coming from his left side. Echoes of water, perhaps? It wasn’t loud, though it became more so the longer he sat there in the still and silent. He closed his eyes--it was so dark he couldn’t tell the difference, really--and let the splashing of that nearby water become everything. The whole world.

A bead of sweat rolled down his spine. The temptation to summon his magic and turn on the hypothetical lights was overwhelming, but he resisted; the darkness here was his own home, and it wouldn’t hurt him. It wouldn’t hurt him…

The memory rolled over him like a wave.

“I didn’t know there were catacombs down here,” the young man said. “I know there’s devotional rites and all, but--”

“You will learn them all in time.” Camlann held up a hand to cut off further words from his little remora. Did the Knight Academy know what he did here? If they did, surely they wouldn’t send each new Page of Camlann to him before awakening them into their full powers. They would steal his control away, condemn him to a life of boring Saturnian parties and boring Saturnian Court. They’d send him back to Earth, to the village that would fear him for his power…

No. He denied them that right. There would never be another Knight of Camlann as long as he drew breath. He would outlive the stars and outlive the sky.

“Where are we going,” asked the little not-Page.

Camlann paused on the threshold of the stair. “To see the whales.”

He opened his eyes to light. Starlight, he thought, shining down on the surface of what seemed to him to be an ocean. Sense intervened: it was a tidal cavern, and the starlight was glowing minerals upon the high, smooth cavern roof. There should be stalagmites, he thought. Stalactites. Whichever. But there was nothing but bright glittering crystal that flickered like stars, and waves rolling up over smooth stone floors.

A skeleton loomed over him. Camlann was small, but most creatures’ remains didn’t dwarf him the way this one did. A keening sadness washed all conscious thought away, and he placed a hand tenderly upon the long brow-bone of the whale. Some foreign thought intruded--they are killing the whales!--and he came back to himself with a jolt.

“Old friend,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

He was cold, he thought. So cold. And the way his pants clung to his legs was uncomfortable. He’d go home for now, to puzzle over the fate of that memory-page, over the whales. For now, he promised, patting the long brow-bone of the whale. “I’ll come back.”