Episode 8: As Big As We Need it To Be, Chapter 4

Cassandra could feel her heart rate descend as Flynn set foot on the solid stone of the ledge beyond the maze. Now it was her turn, but she wasn't worried about that: she knew she could get herself through. What worried her was what lay in store beyond. The more she thought about it, the more she reasoned that Ezekiel would have more Librarian-specific puzzles in store for them. He had safeguarded the vault by making sure at least two Librarians would be needed to access its heart. Well, unless that Librarian was him, of course! Exactly how many unknown challenges lay ahead of them she would work out later, though. For now she had to concentrate as if her life depended on it. It did.

Step by skip by jump by leap, she made her way across the void, da Vinci following behind her at precise intervals. The waiting henchman dragged her out of his master's way the moment her feet landed on the ledge.

"Now," breathed da Vinci, smoothing down his clothes, "which way next?"

"You're just leaving your friend there?" Flynn queried, nodding in the direction of the second henchman, calmly replacing his gun in its holster.

"Robert will await our safe return and ensure we are not followed," sighed the painter, waving a dismissive hand. "James here is sufficient to keep the two of you in check. Especially now that I have your blood."

"We got lucky this time," Cassandra pointed out. "Ezekiel designed that puzzle for me. He knew I would be able to crack it. If he designed a puzzle for each of us, you're two Librarians short."

"Please, child: your uncouth excuse for a paramour has barely scratched the surface of his chosen field!" Leonardo spat, herding them onwards through an arch leading off the ledge. "There is no puzzle the little thief can build on that score that I cannot break!"

The passage beyond the ledge wound round and down in ever decreasing spirals, lit only by the flickering, flighty flames of torches. An eldritch breeze drifted upwards from the depths, bringing with it the scent of cinnamon and frankincense and something else the Librarians could not quite identify. Down and down they stumbled, pushed ahead by their captors' hands whenever it was deemed they moved too slowly. Finally, a glitter in the semi-darkness proclaimed the end of this leg of their travels. The floor levelled out and widened into a small circular room barely large enough to hold the four travellers around its edge. It was necessary to stand around the edge: the centre of the room was taken up by a flame-lit, dark, stone cylinder, complete with bucket, pulley system and obsolete tiled roof.

"Well, well, well," quipped Flynn, quirking an eyebrow at Cassandra. "And at whom do you think this is aimed?"

Cassandra smiled, despite their circumstances. "Not me!"

Grumbling, da Vinci hefted a torch from its sconce and held it near the well. "There is writing around the edge."

Curiosity always being the primary state of being for Librarians, both Cassandra and Flynn leant forward to look, held back by their collars by the meaty hands of minion James. Flynn was the first to speak.

"Huh!"

"Huh, what?" Cassandra asked, glancing over at him. "You recognise it."

"Enough to tell you whose puzzle it is," replied the polymath with a tip of his head. "I'm good at languages, but my original area of study meant that I focussed most on European, Middle Eastern, Near Eastern and African languages, dead or alive, ancient or new. I've picked up a few more in this line of work, but by far my weakest are the closest to home. This isn't any of my many, many tongues; this is one of the Native American languages."

"Hmm," smirked Cassandra, "and who do we know that might be familiar enough with that area of linguistics to crack it?"

"Oh, let me think!" Flynn trilled, all wide eyed innocence. "And not a single piece of art in sight!"

XXXX

"Bleargh!" Stone shuddered, shaking himself as the door swung shut behind them. They were in an ante-room now, with another door presenting itself opposite the one they had just exited. "How much more of this is there, Jones?"

"Chuckles has a point, Houdini," agreed Charlene, leaning up against a wall. "Some of us ain't as young as we once were."

"Two more rooms, that's all," Ezekiel assured the group. "Just two, then we're through to the vault."

"And those rooms are?" Jenkins enquired pacifically.

Ezekiel avoided Stone's gaze. "The Cloakroom and the Box Room. In that order."

Jenkins raised a sanguine eyebrow. "Excellent choice!"

"Thank you," replied the Thief.

"Jenkins, how are you not utterly creeped out by that room?" Eve blinked, waving a hand in the direction of the Spirit Room door.

The old man bobbed his head from side to side. "To be honest, it was nice to see a few familiar, friendly, faces once more. I haven't visited them since before Judson and I had our little spat and I moved to work solely in the Annexe."

A sharp laugh from Charlene halted the questions forming in the two Librarians', and their Guardian's, brains. "You call that a spat? And I suppose you'd call the Hudson a tiny trickle!"

Eve reached out two hands, one to each opening mouth, and closed them. "Not now, Librarians: we don't have time for that story. Come on, Ezekiel: lead the way."

"At least cloaks just hang around on walls or hooks," muttered Stone following the others through the door.

Approximately thirty seconds later, the sound of Jacob Stone, genius, art historian, linguist, Librarian, oil rig expert, rang out through the walls. "Jones! They're staring at me!"

XXXX

Language is complicated. First there's spelling, then there's grammar, then there's context, sometimes there's even inflection or emphasis! Translation is so much more than just working out what the words mean. Nevertheless, once you've translated the Language of the Birds, anything else is fair game. Even if it's not from an area of the globe or its history that you specialised in! That, at least, was da Vinci's thinking. Flynn had been bent over the scrawled transcription for a good half hour and more already.

"Have you made no progress?" Leonardo snapped, his hand reaching for the pocket in which he had placed the vial of Flynn's blood. "I warn you, Librarian: I will not be lied to!"

"Unlike us apparently!" Flynn shot back. "Do you know how many indigenous languages there are in North America, da Vinci? I say North America because that's the progress I've made. I've narrowed it down to this particular continent. In case you're still wondering, that's roughly three hundred possibilities! I'm working on narrowing that down further at the same time as applying my knowledge - sparse though it is - of Native American language groups and individual tribal languages and their grammar, syntax, lettering and all the rest. If you have any suggestions on how to work it out faster, be my guest!"

"Ezekiel would have picked something that he was sure Jacob was fluent in," mused Cassandra, her brows furrowed in thought. "Try closer to home."

"Well, in and around Portland..."

"No, Jacob's home, not the Library's. Not ours."

An odd smile flitted across Flynn's face and he turned to her. "Cassandra, I know you mean Oklahoma, but you ought to know Jacob's home is standing right in front of me right now. And that doesn't take a genius to work out."

In the dull, reddened light of the torches, it was difficult to see the blush that spread across Cassandra's face, but the flutter of girlish embarrassment that crossed it was plain to all.

"So, um," she blinked, "what would be the language used around Jacob's family home then?"

Flynn's eyes looked off to the side, as if he had his own set of hallucinations to study instead of just the inside of his own memory. "Cherokee, I think."

XXXX

"My congratulations, Simmonds," purred the Queen once the footsteps on the far side of the door had faded into silence. "The retrieval of Anansi's Calabash puts us back on track almost perfectly."

"I live to serve you, my Queen," replied the soldier, staring rigorously ahead of him while the woman he had sworn his allegiance to padded softly around him. "What item shall I find for you now? I was told something about tools?"

The Queen smiled, the corners of her lips crawling up her face as if to distance themselves from the words they uttered. "Indeed, you will require a small deal of magical assistance, given by a few of the items in our repository. I will train you on their use myself, then I will instruct you on the finding of the next item of power. First, however, there is something else I need you to do for me."

"Anything, my Queen," avowed the soldier, meeting her eyes as she circled back round to face him once again.

The Queen's smile broadened. "I am so glad you said that."

XXXX

"Jones, I swear: you're doing this deliberately!"

"To freak out bad guys! I never thought I'd be bringing you through here!"

"Clearly, Ezekiel, the possibility at least crossed your mind," sighed the Colonel. "Why else have a back door in the first place?"

"I always have a back door! It's my specialty!"

"With alarm systems!"

"With all systems!"

"Look, the kid designed this route to put off anyone who tried it, and up until now he was the only one who knew about it: if it's freaking you two out, imagine what it would do to someone not used to magic!"

"It's not freaking me out!"

Jenkins cleared his throat. "I dare to disagree!"

"Box Room door up ahead!"

"Thank..."

"Hey, Chuckles: if this is the easy route, just think what the one your girlfriend is on must be like!"

Silence.

XXXX

"I got it!" Flynn bounded to his feet, the exuberant enthusiasm of discovery radiating from his features. Then he remembered where he was and why. He passed the pad to da Vinci. "Here."

Leo looked down at the almost illegible scrawl that marked Flynn's handwriting, brain always travelling faster than the hand could keep up with. "Hmm: it's a riddle. At least, that's what I make of it. It says: 'When silence falls a doctor calls to bring the truth to light; but three's the man who first began to bring this to the fight.' Utter nonsense otherwise. Are you certain in your translations?"

"As certain as I can be," nodded Flynn, innocently avoiding Cassandra's gaze.

"Then we must apply ourselves to the problem of solving either the riddle, the translation or both. If either of you have any idea what this means," growled the painter, "I suggest you speak now."