Sorry this is taking so long, folks. Work is busy and, as you'll see, this one needs a bit more research than most.


Episode 5: The Shared Narrative We Agree To Believe, Chapter 2

Eve stepped back and surveyed the item in Flynn's hands. "Why do I get the feeling this one's going to be my turn again?"

"Er, possibly because of the aura of war that is coming off of it," suggested Flynn.

"Really?" Eve quipped. "There was me thinking it had something to do with the fact that everything in this aisle seems to be war-related!"

Flynn glanced back along the rows of weaponry, shields, tactical books and other devices that might conceivably be used to get the better of an opponent in a fight. He looked back to the ancient gold drinking cup in his hands. It was dual handled, similar to a quaich, but instead of projecting horizontally from the rim, the two handles were formed from the meeting tips of the outstretched wings of two stylised ravens, one on either side of the cup.

"Go on," sighed his wife, "what is it, what does it do and how do I test it?"

Flynn looked at the cup for a moment, then looked up. "It is a communal drinking cup, Celtic origin, showing two opposite Morrigan ravens. It was used to imbue the warriors with the spirit of the war goddess Morrigan before a fight. All they had to do was drink from it and they would feel no fear, and no pain, for as long as the battle lasted."

"Well, that's one way to get dead!" Eve snorted. "Every good soldier knows that fear is what keeps you alive. It keeps you sharp. I know some people think fear is cowardice, especially when they haven't actually experienced anything like it themselves, but cowardice is only giving in to fear. Courage is being afraid, and doing what you have to do anyway."

"Spoken like a true warrior," smiled Flynn, not meeting her eyes. "You know, maybe I should try this one. There's nothing that says it only works on warriors."

"There's nothing that says it wouldn't work on you even if it did," smiled Eve gently. "You've been battling the forces of evil for nearly half your adult life, Flynn: that counts. But we need your brain in good working order. It's better that I try it."

"No," Flynn shook his head. "It's safer if I try it. If it works it won't affect my ability to reason or remember, only to feel fear, and I'm not brilliant at that anyway. That's why I need you: you see the danger, the tactics, the things I ought to be afraid of, the things that might kill me. I can't risk you losing that. I can't risk losing you."

Eve turned his head to hers and held his gaze. She kissed him softly, then leant back. "Ditto. Now give me the cup."

"If we were not married, in love, or even friends," he asked, "what would your tactical assessment be? Who is better suited to try the cup: the professor or the colonel?"

"I can't lose you," she whispered.

"You won't," he murmured, "as long as you're here to keep me safe."

XXXX

Jenkins ran his hand over the golden item that rested on its custom made stand. It wasn't the item on his list, but it was good to see it all the same.

"What's that?" Jones enquired, still trailing behind his mentor. "Next item?"

"Family heirloom," murmured Jenkins, his fingers tapping lightly at the shelf by the stand. "My grandfather gave it to me when I returned to him after being made a knight. All great warriors were presented with a torque in his day. He presented his own to me even as I took his place as head of the family and guardian of our treasures."

"Your family had treasures to guard too? Like Flora's?" Jones frowned. "Where are they?"

"Here," replied the old man with a dry half smile. "Where else?"

"Then why can't Flora bring her family's treasures here too?"

"Maybe one day," Jenkins shook his head. "Not now. Not while the castle still stands and the McLeods are still known."

"Then the place where your family's treasures were kept was destroyed?" Ezekiel deduced. "Your family name: that's gone too?"

"The next item is a bronze mirror, hand held, Celtic, approximately two thousand years old," read the old man, ignoring Jones' question. "It may need a bit of polishing first, but it is said that, if you look into it you will see there a reflection of your true self. I would not recommend trying it: nobody ever sees what they hope for ."

XXXX

"How exactly do you intend to test that?" Cassandra queried, eyeing the pair of items suspended from her love's hand with her head tilted to one side.

"Well, it's a long way to the next item on our list, as I recall," shrugged Stone. "If these guys work, we can get there in next to no time."

"There's that 'we' again," she retorted. "You do know there's only one pair of moccasins there?"

"Darlin' these are the original 'seven league boots'," he laughed. "At least if they're real, they are. I put these on and I can go from here to just about anywhere in the blink of an eye, taking anything, or anyone, I carry with me."

"You've been reading too much Longfellow," she told him, pulling a dubious face.

"He got the story somewhere," shrugged the cowboy. "Here, gimme a hand while I put these on."

XXXX

"Why exactly did you put the telescope in the Large Collections Annex?" Charlene asked, ticking the item off her list. "It's not exactly large."

"I considered that it might appreciate having something to look at," shrugged da Vinci. "The next item on the list, as it happens."

Charlene looked down the list. "Aristarchus' Armillary Sphere. And where in your great wisdom did you put that?"

Da Vinci pointed along the winding suspended path in front of them. At a junction, where the path they were on forked out to make two more, stood a metal frame. Propped in the centre of the frame, resting in a hammock-like cradle of silk, was a mechanical sphere about half the size of the globe Jenkins used to power the back door. Charlene looked at da Vinci and raised a wordless eyebrow. She stalked forward and peered at the sphere. In its centre was a reasonable facsimile of the sun, with six planets orbiting it at various distances.

"Well, it's here," she observed. "How do we test this one?"

In answer, da Vinci leant forward, picked up the sphere and threw it up into the air. At the zenith of its arc, it froze, then suddenly expanded, projecting all six planets outward and in motion. The sun at the centre blazed with light, making Charlene raise a hand to shield her eyes. When she cautiously removed it she could see the sparkle of projected stars far beyond the outer limits of the sixth planetary orbit. She inspected the planets, noting the small moon orbiting the third.

"Saturn's rings are missing," she pointed out.

"It was three centuries before the advent of Our Lord," da Vinci pointed out in turn. "Give the man some credit!"

Charlene folded her arms and looked up again. "How do we turn it off?"

XXXX

"Okay, I've done one, you've done one," counted out the Colonel, dragging her spouse through the bookshelves by his cravat. "Next one's my turn."

"And put the life and or sanity of the woman I love in danger?" Flynn piped up. "Never! I'm the Librarian. If there's any testing of artefacts to be done, I'll do it!"

"That wasn't the deal and you know it," Eve reminded him.

"Never let it be said that Flynn Carsen was afraid of a little magic! Oh!"

"When did you say that thing would wear off?" Eve tugged the cravat as her husband got distracted by yet another shiny sharp object. "Come on! Where next?"

"To the map room! Third left, fifth right and two doors down!"

"Please tell me that's just a room where we keep maps," sighed Eve, marching onward.

"What else would you put in a map room?" Flynn frowned. A jade and jewel hilted Mughal dagger caught his eye. "Ooh, the dagger of the Emperor Akbar, buried with him in sixteen oh five. I remember retrieving this from his tomb at Sikandra five years ago..."

Eve glanced back and saw the hand go out to the crimson and gold scabbard. She tugged on the cravat again. "Nope!"

XXXX

Cassandra looked around them, letting the world settle around her again. Apparently magical travel through an extra-dimensional space did not agree with her synaesthesia. She kept a hand on Jacob's shoulder as he placed her back on her feet. Maps of the library unfolded before her eyes, attempting to match up with the visual points of reference around her. Nothing matched.

"Where are we?" Jacob murmured, removing the moccasins from his feet.

"I have no idea," replied Cassie. "I've never been this deep in the Library before. I don't see anything I recognise."

"Well, we must be getting somewhere near the right bit," he deduced, pointing at an item two bookcases away. "That looks like a Mexican God's Eye to me. Eye of God, mask of a god. They oughta be in similar categories. The Mask of Dionysus can't be far."

"We know the moccasins work anyway," shrugged Cassandra, ticking them off her list and falling into step beside him as they headed towards and past the God's Eye. "How do we find out if the Mask of Dionysus is genuine?"

"Dionysus, also known as Bacchus, was the god of wine and revelry," Stone supplied. "He was worshipped by the Romans, the Greeks and the Minoans. He was also linked to theatre. I wouldn't be surprised if the mask is a precursor of those the Greeks used to use in their plays. They would exaggerate the facial features of the character and help project the voice to those in the furthest seats. Maybe this one does something similar. If we find it, surely we can't be that lost. Even if we are, maybe we can use the mask to project a call for help?"

"What were those masks made of?" Cassandra asked, pausing to look down a side aisle.

"It varied," shrugged Jacob. "Wood, linen, other easily moulded but lightweight stuff. Made them fairly short term though. There are no original examples that I know of."

"Were they ever made of amber?" Cassie enquired, tugging his sleeve as he moved to walk on.

"What?" Jacob looked down the side aisle, his gaze following Cassandra's pointing finger.

On a plinth, under the glow of a light that seemed to be turned into liquid gold as it passed over it, was a large, bearded, amber mask. It was notably Greco-Roman in its features. Her fingers slipping down his arm to entangle with his, Cassandra led the way to the luminous visage.

XXXX

The map room was, to the Colonel's relief, nothing more than a room with maps in it.

"Why do they have their own room?" Eve asked.

"Same reason they do in normal Libraries," replied Flynn, wandering round the room and running his fingers over glass panels that encased some of the oldest maps Eve had ever seen. "It's a controlled environment exactly built to house them. Some of these are very delicate, and very powerful."

"What do they do?" Eve's tone became wary and she caught Flynn's wrist as he reached for a drawer handle. "My turn, remember?"

Flynn drew back, holding his hands up in surrender. "Maps change how we look at the world," he said. "The Map of Eratosthenes is no different. It was the first to include lines akin to latitude and longitude. Its maker had worked out the circumference of the Earth and applied that knowledge to what was already known about the geography of the discovered world around him. Had Columbus paid more attention to Eratosthenes and his calculations, he might have worked out sooner that it was not the far side of Asia but a new, undiscovered, continent that he had landed on."

"So what am I looking for?"

"Ancient parchment, bit dog-eared, obvious horizontal and vertical lines and a clear outline of the Mediterranean and the countries surrounding it, although their further edges get a little bit less accurate."

"Like this?" Eve indicated the contents of the fifth drawer she had opened. Flynn put his head on her shoulder and looked down.

"That's the one," he replied, wrapping one arm round her waist and reaching out to the bronze handle to lift the glass panel. "All you have to do is touch it and something should happen. I'll be here all the time."

"Any idea what?"

"Nope," he shook his head and kissed her cheek. "That's the best part."

XXXX

"Well, I warned you not to look into it," sighed Jenkins, striding on ahead of a confused and distraught Jones. "Now you have, try not to touch anything else! Especially not our next item!"

"Wh-which is?" Jones stammered, hurrying to keep up with the older man.

"Schleiden's Microscope," he snapped back. "Schleiden was a co-founder of cell theory, along with the perhaps better known Theodore Schwann, who, frankly, I always found the most irritating of men. Schleiden's propositions in 1938 were so controversial in some areas that numerous long running arguments were started over it. However, the data he backed his arguments with was so bulletproof, at least for the time, that arguing with him on any matter of his research was about as likely to succeed as trying to wear down the wall of China with snowballs. Of course he was no stranger to the less strictly scientific side of research, and he guarded his research, both magical and mechanical, the way a tigress guards her cubs. It was rumoured that the microscope he used to view the plant cells was magically augmented to give a clear and precise picture of reality in the minutest detail. It was also hexed. For Schleiden, it showed him exactly what he wanted to look at: the clear details of the cells he was studying. For others who tried to view his work without his permission, it showed rather more than they had bargained for, and a number of duels broke out in consequence. In fact, there were so many duels, and indeed deaths by duelling, in Jena in 1839, that foil-fencing was banned! Of course, like a woman's wit that flies out the casement should one shut the door upon it, the individuals involved simply switched from foils to sabres."

"I think I've had my fill of reality for today," muttered Jones, catching up with Jenkins beside a shelf of scientific minutia.

The old knight reached out to a short, squat tube and pressed a button on the side of it. The tube elongated and sprung up from a metal stand, a small dial popping out on one side with a whirr of mechanics. Jenkins pointed his gadget at the contraption. Nothing.

"So it's a fake?" Jones surmised querulously.

"Not necessarily," murmured his companion. "Here: hold this and point it at the microscope. If it registers anything - anything at all - move the scope away from me. Some of us have more reality in our past than others."