Episode 8: As Big As We Need it To Be, Chapter 5
The group had been walking for ten full minutes and more. The sheepish silence that had descended in the cloakroom had continued for all of that and was way past beginning to feel awkward. Admittedly, their surroundings hadn't helped matters. Stone was walking like he expected something to jump out at him any minute.
"Mate! How are you so weirded out by this?"
"I know you too well, mate!"
"It's just boxes!" Ezekiel pointed out, waving an arm out expansively. "Just boxes."
"I can see that, Jones," growled Stone, still on guard.
"What else would you expect to find in a box room?" Ezekiel Jones heard four sets of footsteps halt behind him. He turned to find everyone looking at him with a variety of incredulous stares and incendiary glares. "What?"
"Jones," began the Colonel, as Stone appeared temporarily deprived of speech, "have you paid any attention to the rooms you've just dragged us through?"
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"I grow impatient!" Leonardo snapped, turning from the well with brows drawn. "One of you must know the answer to this. You know the boy better than I. To what is he referring?"
Flynn shook his head with a shrug. "It's all Greek to me."
"Hmm," growled da Vinci, turning to Cassandra. "But not to you I think, fair lady. He is as a brother to you, is he not? Who then to know his mind better. You knew he would choose a language from your beau's home town. You know both men better than perhaps any other here. What is the meaning of this scrap of nonsense?"
"I... I really couldn't say," sniffed Cassandra, her lips closing to a thin line.
"Oh, my dear, dear, Cassandra," purred da Vinci, drawing the vial of Flynn's blood out of his pocket. "I really think you can."
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"Nearly there," Ezekiel called back over his shoulder. "Just, er, no sudden moves now, right?"
Once again, there was a sudden cessation of movement behind him.
"What have you got planned, Houdini?" Charlene called, suspicion colouring her every word.
"Well..."
"Jones!" Eve and Stone growled together.
"I did say the back door to the vault was in the Box Room," Ezekiel pointed out, turning slowly.
"You did," agreed Eve, her eyes narrowing.
"As opposed to through the Box Room," he continued.
"Ezekiel..."
The thief raised two placating hands to the three suspicious faces glaring at him. Jenkins, he noticed, seemed to be trying not to laugh.
"Look, not all boxes are created equal," Ezekiel began.
"Oh, Houdini: you didn't!" Charlene groaned.
"Didn't what?" Eve demanded. "What didn't, or did, he do? Ezekiel?"
"Look, just calm down," Ezekiel advised, "be still and quiet, and she'll come out."
"She?" Eve and Stone cried, one in confusion, the other in irritation.
Ezekiel pulled a pleading face at the pair, who looked for confirmation to Charlene and Jenkins at their sides. The Library veterans nodded, one in resignation, the other in amusement. An agreement was reached. The group subsided into a tentative silence.
Ezekiel turned back to the path ahead. "It's okay, they're friends. We need to get in to the vault. Come on out."
Four pairs of eyes followed Ezekiel's gaze. He seemed to be talking to a large travelling chest lying behind a stack of old wooden crates. Lying, it seemed, was the right word, for moments later the box extended hundreds of little legs and tottered out into the middle of the path. Some of the toenails had a deep red nail polish on them. At least, Stone hoped it was nail polish! It surveyed the small group staring at it.
"Jones, it's staring at me!"
"You're staring at her!"
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Ezekiel had been paying attention to the world he was now in, thought Cassandra. The two word phrase, spoken aloud, had dropped a glamour that revealed a ladder reaching down into the well. Minion James had gone first, then Flynn, then Cassandra, finally da Vinci. They had wound their way through an undulating tunnel that opened out into a room lined in hieroglyphic reliefs. Something that screamed Flynn as loudly as if his name had been carved into the gilded cartouche in the centre of the opposing wall.
At a nod from da Vinci, James released his hold on Flynn and let the archaeologist and Egyptologist loose. He almost sprinted to the cartouche.
"Hey, look! It says my name!" He was almost bouncing in glee.
"Of course it does," groaned da Vinci in withering tones. It seemed the renaissance genius was getting weary of the modern thief's wit. "Any, perhaps more illuminating, or even just useful, revelations for us?"
Flynn worked his way over the walls of inscriptions, hands hovering over the surface as he read, longing to touch the surface, but held back by long years of archaeological training and Librarian experience. "Just a moment..."
Cassandra found she couldn't quite help the smile that crept over her face. "You know that's not actually three to five thousand years old, right?"
Flynn turned and raised an eyebrow at her. "You're remembering who set this up, right?"
Cassandra laughed, her eyes rolling as she nodded. "Fair enough."
"Enough of this!" Leonardo cried, perhaps, one might think, a little petulantly. "What does it say?"
"It's a copy from a page in a book," sighed Flynn, turning back to da Vinci. "A very specific book, in fact."
"You weary me, Librarian," warned the ex-Librarian. "Which book?"
Flynn smiled with the sheer and simple joy of knowledge. "The Book of Thoth."
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Eve Carsen straightened to her full height, stepping out of the low ceilinged stairway they had been following for she didn't know how long. Before her was a carved oak door.
"Jones, where are we? I thought you said the Box Room was the last room?"
Ezekiel Jones, who hadn't even had to duck in the stairway, grinned. "It is. You're still in it. This is the door to the centre of the vault."
"What do you mean, we're still in it?" Eve demanded, in a tone that very nearly wiped the smirk right off Ezekiel's face. "I thought we left it when we climbed through the top of that chest. You know: the one on legs!"
"Aw, Trunkie's just the way to the door out," Ezekiel explained. "Everything you've walked through in between, even this, is still inside her."
"We're inside that trunk?"
"You named it?"
"Jones, there were side tunnels!"
A cacophony of complaints might have daunted a lesser man, but Ezekiel Jones, World Class Thief, Librarian, and Expert Vault-maker, was used to people not seeing the world from his perspective. It was amazing how frequently they just seemed to miss the point! He answered each of his naysayers in turn.
"Yes, Colonel, we're still inside the trunk. Jenkins: Trunkie is not an 'it', she's a 'she'. Stone: of course there are side tunnels. She gets hungry you know. You didn't exactly wander off down any of them, did you? Look, you're all here. You're all safe. Ish. You're all now privy to my knowledge of the back door route. There is the door. What are you complaining about?"
"Houdini has a point," shrugged Charlene. "You wouldn't want the shortcut to be too easy, would you?"
"But he named it!"
"Her!"
"You named your car. Stop whining!" Charlene pointed out. "Come on, kid: show us how this thing works."
Ezekiel nodded, grinning now from ear to ear. "It needs an active Librarian and active Guardian." He waved a hand at the door, indicating two vaguely palmate leaves on the ends of curling branches just above the middle of the door. "Just place your hand on the leaf."
Eve rested her palm in the hollow of the leaf indicated. "What would you have done if they'd taken me with Flynn and Cassandra?"
"I'd have used Charlene," replied the glib rogue, placing his own palm in the other leaf.
A wave of heat passed over Eve's palm. It had died away entirely and the door swung silently open before anyone spoke again.
"Hey, Houdini," murmured the Guardian in question. "How did you know I was still active?"
"Please: when Flynn and the Colonel were away you took charge without even a blink of the eye. Plus," Ezekiel held up a finger to denote the coup de grace, "you said it, right there, right then: I guess that's me out of retirement then. That was really all it took, wasn't it? The Library listens."
Charlene looked from Jenkins to Ezekiel and back again. She slapped the knight on the back. "You taught him well, big guy. You taught him well."
As the veteran Guardian followed Ezekiel and Eve through the door, Jenkins straightened to his full height, repairing his wounded dignity. "Big guy!" He caught Jacob Stone, still standing beside him, trying not to laugh. The Librarian opened his mouth to speak and Jenkins raised an admonotory finger. "Don't even think about it!"
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"I'm still not sure you're following me, Leo," warned Flynn. "I never set foot in the tomb where we found the Book of Thoth. Ezekiel did. Ezekiel and Eve. This isn't my puzzle any more: this is theirs. It was Ezekiel who solved the mystery of that tomb and all its terrible traps, not me; and the only person who saw him do it was my beloved wife, Eve."
"Where one Librarian has succeeded, so too can another," growled da Vinci. "At least you had better hope so, Mister Carsen, or your beloved wife will be waiting for you to rescue her in vain."
Flynn froze. Cassandra felt the blood drain from her face. They had been so wrapped up in their own situation, had so easily assumed the rest of their friends and loved ones were safe, that the possibility they might actually be in danger had been shoved to one side for the moment. Now the idea dragged itself to the forefront of their minds, rudely pushing its way into their consciousness. The effect was exactly what da Vinci had hoped for.
"Where are they?" Flynn asked, a tremour only barely audible in his voice.
"Why, where do you think?" Leonardo shrugged, the perfect picture of innocence. "Precisely where you sent them. What did you think the purpose of you remaining behand was? Without your connection, the way is closed and they are stuck there. As long as they were not on the path at the time, I can see no more immediate danger than that."
"And if they were on the path?" Cassandra forced herself to ask.
"Cassandra," said Flynn, dropping his voice to a tone far softer than any he had used on da Vinci. "If they were on the path when it closed, there's no point in hurrying back to rescue them."
Part of her had known the answer before he said it, before, even, she asked the question, but still it seemed to knock the air out of her until all that was left came out in a tiny sound. "Oh."
"Thus we arrive at the conclusion: the sooner we are all through this facsimile of a pharoahs tomb," pointed out da Vinci, waving a hand at the entrance Flynn's knowledge of hieroglyphs had opened for them, "the sooner you are free to try to rescue your friends and lovers."
Neither Flynn nor Cassandra particularly liked the way da Vinci said the word 'try', but there was nothing else for it. They would have to piece together what sparse knowledge they had of the tomb itself with Flynn's immense knowledge of Egypt and Egyptology. With any luck, all of which usually went to Ezekiel, it would be enough.
"Okay, what did he tell you about the tomb," Flynn whispered, turning to face Cassandra fully. "I know he would have told you something."
"He didn't tell you anything?" Cassandra frowned.
"Anything I asked," breezed Flynn. "I just wanted to know if he told you anything different?"
"Oh, he knew I would be interested in the mathematical side of things," she began, "so he started with the dimensions. Height, width, length, direction, gradient, and any changes in them." She paused and caught Flynn's eye. "Distance between traps too."
"Can you map it?" Flynn asked.
Cassandra looked into the near distance beyond Flynn's shoulder. "More or less, but he only told me some of the types of traps, not each particular one in order."
"Okay," nodded Flynn, "so he gave you a map, even though you didn't think of it as such at the time. He didn't tell me what order the exact traps were in either, but he did give me a way to find out."
"Oh?"
"Well, as you know: I do love learning," Flynn preened. "And when I find someone who knows more than I do about something I like to, well, make up the difference, shall we say."
"Flynn," Cassandra glared.
"He taught me all his tricks," grinned the Senior Librarian. "Well, probably not all his tricks: this is Ezekiel we're talking about. The ones he used to detect and baffle the traps in that tomb though, definitely!"
"So we know where to look and what to look for!" Cassandra almost cheered under her breath. "What do you need?"
Flynn looked about him. The faux Egyptian ante-chamber was stocked with a plethora of period paraphernalia. He hoisted a gilded and enamelled wood staff out of a statue's loose grasp. "This will do for starters. Now something to throw."
"What about these?" Cassandra pointed out, indicating the shallow, circular offerings dish in the statue's other hand. It was full of a semblance of offerings.
"Trust Ezekiel to replace medallions or meals with marbles," sighed Flynn, taking the plate and tipping the contents into a pocket. "Don't want to lose these."
"Why not," asked Cassandra, nonchalantly, refusing to give him the satisfaction.
Flynn narrowed his eyes at her, lopsided grin telling her he knew she'd spotted the pun. "Because I'll need them to roll down the tunnel ahead of us, to spring any pressure triggers."
"And if they reach a pit trap?"
"That's why I'll only use a handful at a time."
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"How much further, Ezekiel?" Eve demanded, marching behind her charge at a pace that forced him to walk far faster than he liked. "You said we were in the vault."
"We are! We are!" Ezekiel assured her, not slowing down. "But Trunkie's new to this dimension. Just in case anyone got past her, and had an active Guardian and Librarian on hand, as the case might be, I installed an extra layer in the vault itself. It's just a simple corridor, but it winds about a bit and scans to check for seriously elevated heart rates at regular intervals. It's probably detecting mine right now! That's what's taking so long!"
"And we lower that by?"
"We stop." Jenkins voice rang out from the back. "It's Looking Glass logic. The more you want to get through, the further away you get. Everybody stop."
The five stopped moving, four faces turning expectantly to Jenkins.
"Don't look at me! I didn't design it!"
Four faces turned expectantly to Jones.
"We all just need to calm down," explained Ezekiel. In example, he took a deep breath in through his nose and out through his mouth. To his surprise, at least in fifty percent of the people standing in front of him, it worked!
"Okay, I'm calm," growled Stone, in a voice that suggested the addendum 'but only just'. "Now what?"
"Now," breathed Ezekiel, turning back to the path ahead. "Now we see what's round the bend."
