Episode 4: More Than You Know, Chapter 6
With her father safely removed from the room to seek a first aid box, Cassandra pressed the speaker button on her phone.
"Miss Cillian what is going on there?" Jenkins voice roared down the line.
"I'm here, Jenkins," she said, so quietly it did nothing to alleviate the panic beginning to show in the old man's voice, although it did decrease the volume.
"What help do you need?" Jenkins asked softly.
"How are you at rounding up errant armour?" Cassandra asked in a small voice.
"Fabulous, if it's being worn by an errant knight!"
"Not exactly," she replied. "Actually, if we're talking exactly here, well, it seems it wasn't being worn by anyone..."
"Not anyone solid, anyway," Stone chipped in, returning from helping Doctor Cillian to his room. "I could see right through them, every one of them."
"Oh," silence fell on the other end of the line for a long moment. "But where did they go?"
"They have a wormhole," she squeaked back, "like we do."
"Oh," Jenkins repeated. "Oh, that's not good."
"And my Dad saw them," she admitted.
"Definitely not good," Jenkins agreed.
"And one of them used magic," Stone added. "Explosive magic."
"That's not... No, wait... But..." Jenkins stopped again, and in the silence they could almost hear the wheels turning in his brain. When he spoke again, his voice was curious, and thoughtful. "Mr Stone, tell me exactly what you saw."
"We got to the door. It was closed," he began, retelling the tale more slowly and carefully than he had to Cassandra. "When we opened it, the first thing I saw was the empty corner where the Roman legionnaire should have been. Then as the door opened fully I saw the four suits of armour all standing in a line, facing away from me. There was not another soul in the room, I swear. For a moment I thought it was maybe just somebody playing a prank on the Cillians, then all four of them raised their right arms together and reached towards the display cabinet door. There was a light. Doctor Cillian said something and they looked round. I saw their faces then, but I also saw the back of their helmets through them! By that point the door was open and they started walking through one by one. We started to move forward, but while the others left one fired some kind of ball of magic at the desk in the middle of the room and it exploded, throwing Doctor Cillian to one side of the room and me to the other. He hammered an SOS on the floor and I signalled an L. By the time Cassie got here the door had closed and I was over by her dad, helping him. He took a hit to the head with something, but he'll be fine."
"Uh-huh," Jenkins' pensive tone returned. "Tell me, Mr Stone, the mediaeval British knight: was his visor up or down?"
Stone blinked and looked down in thought. "It was down. His was the only face I couldn't see."
"And I'm guessing he was the one who stayed back to cover the escape of the others?" Jenkins asked, the confidence returning to his voice.
"Yeah," Stone nodded, the penny dropping. "You think he was actually a person and the others were just under his control?"
"It's possible," the old man equivocated. "That kind of armour covers almost everything of the wearer, with only a tiny space for the eyes."
"Wait," said Cassandra, frowning at the phone. "You said 'it's possible'. Does that mean you think there are other possibilities?"
"Well, let's say I've learnt, in this job, it pays to hedge your bets," admitted Jenkins. "I know I know of at least two other possibilities, but I do not know how may more possibilities I do not know of."
"What are the two you do know?" Stone asked, raising an eyebrow.
"Well, obviously, the armour could be haunted," replied the Caretaker, with a verbal shrug so obvious they could almost see him do it. "Or, on the other hand, it might be possessed."
"The difference being?" Cassandra wondered aloud.
"Well, the difference being that the latter is a third party event," explained Jenkins. "A possession, magically controlled or otherwise, does not have to have any particular link to the person, or object in this case, being possessed. A haunting, by it's very nature, does."
In the background, a voice shouted "Aliens!"
"It's not aliens, Jones!" Stone, Cassandra and Jenkins chorused over speakerphone.
"What about the door?" Cassandra enquired, changing the topic. "Can we reopen it? Trace it maybe?"
"Hmm," Jenkins considered. "Unlikely, and definitely not with the tools that you have. Not if it was opened from the other end, anyway. If they opened it in the library themselves, you might be able to use whatever they used to repeat the process, however."
"What are we looking for?" Stone asked. "And don't say old or odd, 'cause there are a lot of old oddities in this room."
"Well, just like our mechanism here," Jenkins began, "theirs will have three parts: power, focus, effect. The effect, the wormhole itself, is gone for now at least. That leaves the other two. The focus will be something that links to the destination, and you know yourselves how random and seemingly irrelevant that could be, but the power source for this kind of thing has to be big. The globe I use once belonged to Verne and he rigged that thing with so many internal artefacts that he used to boast he could use it to visit every country in the world in less than an hour and a half. He did too, with ten minutes to spare! Brought back an item from every one and added them to the inventory. Of course, things were different then. I would like to see him try it after the empires all broke up!"
"Yeah, but you've got that thing hooked up to the door physically," replied Stone. "How do we figure out what they're using? And don't say old and odd!"
"I could say ancient and obscure," suggested Jenkins.
"Yeah, yeah, speak for yourself," grumbled Stone. "Call you back when we find it."
He hung up the phone, which had at some point in the conversation ended up in his hands, and looked round for Cassandra. She was walking very slowly along one side of the room, examining every inch of the bookshelves and drawers in detail.
"Darlin', you okay there?" Stone murmured watching her progress and wishing he could see what she did.
"I'm okay," she replied dreamily. "This is the easy part."
"Anything big?"
"Not really, not yet," Cassandra murmured, not pausing in her examination of the room. "But there's an awful lot of small."
XXXX
Ezekiel Jones ducked behind an arras and waited as the last tour group went by. When the echoing sounds of footsteps had faded away, he crept out the other end of the tapestry and followed the corridor to a carved oak door that bore a sign announcing it to be 'Private'. He slipped through the door and closed it quietly behind him. He had a choice of stairs up or stairs down. He chose down, heading for the archives. One flight passed without incident, then another, finally a third. He chose the second passage on the right and straight on to the door at the end.
He paused and listened at the door. There were voices inside. From the depths of his satchel he pulled a stethoscope. With one end on the door and the other in his ears, he listened to the conversation inside.
"Do not walk away from me, girl!" Flora's voice sounded sharp and angry.
"Why not?" Seonaidh's voice, much closer than her ancestor's, returned. "What would happen if I did walk away? From you? From here? It's not like the castle has never been without its three witches before. It must have been before I was born, surely. There must have been times, when one Cailleach died, that the maid took time to ascend to the place o' the mother."
"There has never been a time," replied Flora. "Never! Not since before the castle was built. From its building there was always three, and when the maiden became the mother, the mother retired and a new maiden was born."
"And when the Cailleach died?"
"You labour under a false impression, child," snapped the crone. "The Cailleach has never died. There was only ever one. Only I, and I alone. I am Flora Nic Tormod Mac Tormod Mac Leod Olafsson. Leod Olafsson, my great grandfather, was the Leod from whom we take our clan name. His son, Tormod, met and married the faerie princess, from whom we inherit our power. Together they had a son, Tormod after his father. That son was my father. I was named for my mother. I was born in the heart o' the winter that never was. The winter before the queen, Eleanor, died. I have lived on this Earth for seven and a quarter centuries and now my time is drawing near. How near, I cannot tell. I only know what my Grandmother told me: that I would know my end neared when another with my gifts came to replace me. At first I thought it was one of my own daughters or granddaughters that would take my place, but as I lived on, and watched them age and die, I realised my life was as cursed as it was blessed. For fifty years I waited to die. To follow my husband in death and pass this mantle on. One by one I watched the generations pass, slowly realising I would not pass with them. After a century of living, I even tried to die. For the better part of a decade, I found different ways to try and die, and every time, my powers prevented me. And I would have gone on trying, had another like myself not saved me, body and soul, and set me on my right path. Since then I have taught and trained every daughter of this house in the ways of our blood. I have watched the power in the blood wane and wane. Until now. Until you. You are the daughter destined to take my place here. You. Whether you choose it or not. And you will have a hard life ahead of you my girl. A hard, long, terrible, tearstained life where duty hangs about your neck like an anchor, keeping you in this place while the centuries turn and the walls crumble. It is neither my doing nor my choosing, and nothing I can do can take this geas from off your shoulders. The only thing I can do, to lighten that burden, is teach you everything over seven centuries of carrying that same burden has taught me. And the greatest lesson it has taught me is that there is nothing on this Earth - nothing - that tears you apart more than opening your heart to a love that must always be kept from you. You cannot die until the next comes to take your place. He can. You must marry and produce an heir, but choose a man who will stay by your side all his days. A good man. A good father. It will still hurt when he goes, but at least he will have a long life by your side before he does, as will your children and your children's children. You will weep tears to fill an ocean in your time, but to see them live the full length of their days in happiness and health eases the pain some. I am sorry, child. There is no easy road ahead for you. But be guided by me and perhaps I can smooth out some of the roughest patches."
From the small noises in the quiet that followed, Ezekiel could tell that the filling of that ocean had already begun. His own mind was swimming with the weight of everything he had heard. Stuffing the stethoscope back in his pocket, he retraced his steps back to the door, stumbling in his haste to get back up the stairs and running the last part of the upper corridor to the castle end of the wormhole. He hurried through and slammed the door behind him, leaning back on it with his eyes closed and thoughts racing.
"Momma nearly catch you?" Stone quipped from across the room.
Ezekiel started and opened his eyes to see the whole team gathered around the central desk. "What the...? When did...? Huh?"
"When Miss Cillian and Mr Stone found it necessary to return they found their door was off-line," Jenkins informed the young man with terse formality, his eyes fixed on the item on the central desk and his back to Ezekiel. "Upon investigation, I discovered that someone had removed their identifier and replaced it with one of his one. I replaced the latter with the former, retrieved Mr Stone and Miss Cillian, then returned the items to their previous position, allowing you to return without the indignity of having to telephone me and beg."
"You wouldn't really have..."
"Would I not?"
Ezekiel swallowed and stepped forward to join the others. As they made space for him at the desk, he saw the item that had garnered such attention was a set of battle garments. "They don't look Japanese."
"They're not," said Flynn, his eyes warily darting from Jones to Jenkins and back. "They're Macedonian. They're a replica of the armour of Alexander the Great."
"And they were at Cassandra's parent's house?" Ezekiel's brow creased in confusion.
"Nope," replied Eve with a wry smile. "Guess again."
Ezekiel looked from the Senior Librarian and his wife to his two more junior colleagues. Stone had his arm around Cassandra and she was staring at the item with dull, red-rimmed eyes.
"What happened?" Jones asked in a small voice.
"I, we, checked everything in the library at my parent's house," sniffed Cassandra. "There was nothing major. Nothing particularly powerful at all. Not even the old manuscripts and maps in those drawers. We were beginning to think that maybe their door had been opened at the other end after all. Then, when we were heading for the door, Jacob mentioned something and suddenly I saw it. The big picture. The whole library, as if I was on the outside looking in. It wasn't any one item, it was all of them! Ezekiel, most of the books, papers and relics have been in that room all my life!"
"We made our excuses," Jacob continued, drawing Cassandra closer as sobs choked off her story. "Came back here. Told everyone. Everyone that was here, that is. We described the four suits of armour that walked through the door too. That's when Flynn thought it might be a good idea to check and see if the armour of Alexander that we had was actually the real deal. Turns out it wasn't. When we recovered it from Dulaque's warehouse, it had already been switched for a replica. We think the real one was in the Cillians' library."
"Which means that somehow, my parents are connected to the Serpent Brotherhood," Cassandra cried. "They had the real one: a fake wouldn't have shown Alexander the Great's face when it... when it did whatever it was they did. We all know the Serpent Brotherhood wouldn't let something like that out of its sight. Not after going to such trouble to hide it from us."
"And who knows what else they switched," added Charlene wearily. "I know they had some warning after two runs of disappearing boxes, but they couldn't have changed everything for replicas, could they?"
"We know they took some items, like Fenrir's chain," sighed Jenkins.
"And others they left alone," added da Vinci. "I've had a number of them object to their new positions in the Library. Some rather painfully. It is like reorganising a museum where exhibit is a diva, perfectly capable of making their voice heard if they are unhappy. It is quite tiresome."
"But if that was the case," Ezekiel pointed out, "if they work for the Serpent Brotherhood, and it's the Serpent Brotherhood who want the artefacts, then why would they move them? Maybe they put the items back into circulation and kept an eye on them so they could get to them when they wanted them. If that was the case, your parents wouldn't have to know anything about it."
"That doesn't explain why my parents, who are world renowned scientists, have been building a magical wormhole in their library since before I was born. That room was specially built. My parents designed it themselves when I was five. I remember it being built!"
Jenkins looked up at this, staring ahead in unseeing thought. He looked at Cassandra, looked round at the back door, then looked at Cassandra again. "I fear Miss Cillian is in the right here," he mused, still avoiding Ezekiel's gaze. "I fear her parents, or one of them at least, may know much more about the Library, and Librarians, than they would like us to believe."
