Episode 8: For the Ring, Chapter 4

"Well, Librarian?" Emily asked, once the ice cave had been cleared of everyone else. "What do you know that brought you and your Guardian here?"

"Fiancée," Eve corrected with a smile.

"Of course," Emily smiled back.

"Oh joy," muttered Flynn under his breath.

"What was that?" Emily asked politely. "Didn't quite catch it."

"Völund," said Flynn, raising his voice and meeting Emily's steady gaze. "We got a tip that Völund the smith had been found."

"Weyland," Emily replied.

"I'm sorry, what?" Eve's smile was turning slightly brittle.

"Weyland the smith, not Völund the smith," Emily smiled sweetly.

"They are the same person!" Flynn interrupted. "Can we not start that all over again!"

"You've had this argument before?" Eve was looking at Flynn now, with that same bright, sharp smile.

"Just arguments in general," Flynn explained, waving his hands in front of his face as if they were a shield against that ice cold glare. "Emily always seems to think she knows better than me because she has more degrees. When we were in Africa together she corrected me about everything. It was incredibly annoying!"

"Oh, you were in Africa together?" The fixed smile continued.

"Yes... I told you... King Solomon's Mines," Flynn floundered, knowing he had put a foot wrong somewhere, but not entirely sure where. He decided it was time to change the subject, at least for now. He turned back to Emily. "Why, er... Why are you here, exactly?"

"This is my dig," Emily replied, her smile brightening as the flustered Flynn ran a hand through his hair, leaving half of it standing on end. "You haven't changed."

"You have!" Flynn blurted. He saw Emily blink and immediately went into explanation mode. "I mean, what, er, what happened to the Queen of Sheba? Possible ruler of all Africa? That was all you ever wanted to study."

"Things changed when I met you, Flynn," she shrugged. "I went back to studying Sheba for a while. Made quite a few discoveries too. But I knew magic was out there, legends were real. I hit a point where curiosity got the better of me: I just had to take a look. I joined some Egyptian digs, and some Greek ones. Found Troy. Dug up some Roman mosaics. Worked my way around Europe, learning about one history then the next until I wound up on a dig in Denmark that rang some bells with one of the Scandinavian legends. That caught my interest properly. I've been looking for Norse heroes and legends ever since. I was looking for the forge of Reginn, where the Norse hero Sigurd was brought up, when my work led me to this glacier, or the land underneath it, anyway. We've been tunnelling into it for quite some time now. Imagine my surprise when the form of a winged man began to appear in the ice. I've been keeping the rest away and waiting for you to turn up ever since."

"Oh," blinked Flynn. "That, er, makes sense. That was very, um, very thoughtful of you, Emily, er, Professor Davenport."

"Oh, Emily is fine, Flynn," beamed the archaeologist. "We left things on good terms after all, didn't we."

"Did we?" Eve enquired, smiling at Flynn. "How nice."

"We did, er," Flynn avoided either woman's gaze. "We parted as friends. Ten years ago. A lot can happen in ten years, well a lot has happened in ten years, I mean..."

Eve turned his face to look at her. The way his face softened when he met her eyes was something she hoped Emily had been watching. She kissed him. When she drew back, she was certain she was the only woman in the world he was aware of, never mind the cave. "Why are here, Librarian?"

"Right," he breathed, "the other story."

"I'm sorry? What story?" Emily demanded.

"You were looking for Regin the smith, you got Völund," he said, now focussed entirely on the body in the ice behind her. "Two famous smiths from the Prose and Poetic Edda of Norse legends. You followed one set of clues and ended up here, we followed another and ended up in the same place. Why? You said you were looking for a forge? Could your clues have led you to Völund's forge instead of Regin's?"

"They might have," Emily admitted.

"Where are they?" Eve demanded.

"Back at my hotel room," Emily bristled.

"Is that secure?" Eve pressed

"I put them in the safe," Emily sniffed. "You don't seriously think I would leave something so precious lying around under the bed or something do you?"

Flynn opened his mouth, but Eve clamped a hand over it. She gave him a look, then looked back to Emily. "Take us there, we need to see them. You can let your team look after the body for the moment," she told the slighter woman. "It's just the remains of an overconfident inventor trying out his idea for an early flying machine, after all, isn't it?"

"I..." Emily paused under Eve's glare. She returned it stare for stare, but the Colonel eventually won out. Emily's shoulders sank. "Fine. Overconfident inventor it is. I can sell that story to my team."

"Good," Eve smiled triumphantly. "We'll take a look round here while you do that and bring them in."

Nose in the air and lips pursed, Emily departed. Flynn had his nose up to the ice before she had even left the cavern.

He traced the outline of the wings, just visible in the ice, and looked over to his wife-to-be. "How do you think he made them?"

"You're the brains here," she shrugged, not meeting his eyes. "You tell me."

"What did I do now?" Flynn whispered, stepping over to her and wrapping an arm about her waist. She raised an eyebrow at him. "We were just talking! Talking! Not smiling, not flirting, not forgetting about my wonderful, beautiful, amazing fiancée standing right next to me glaring at me as if I was ignoring her entirely and you're doing it again! Stop doing that! What did I do?"

"Next time," smiled Eve, icily. "Try not to sound quite so pleased to see your ex-girlfriend who you travelled across Africa with and who is way smarter than I am."

"Ah, er, not really smarter, per se," Flynn's face contorted as he searched for words. He wrapped his other arm around her. "Not exactly smarter, just... Just a different kind of smart. She's good at facts and history and digging and you're good at people and tactics and fighting and survival skills and so much more."

"Any particular reason you've been edging closer and closer to me all through that little speech?" Eve raised an eyebrow at him again. "Because, if you think flirting and flattery are going to get you out of this, you're going to have to do a lot better than that."

"The idea had not even begun to speculate," he replied airily, "about the possibility of crossing my mind." He kissed her gently, resting his forehead against hers. "I just don't feel complete without you."

Eve smiled, and this time it reached her eyes and warmed her features. "That's a good start."

XXXX

"The boy knows what he's doing," Jenkins hissed sharply. "Just listen to him and you'll see. He's a Librarian now, not you. You walked away. If you're staying, make use of yourself and help him."

"A Librarian works alone, with the companionship, protection and aid of a Guardian only," returned Leonardo. "If he is as great a Librarian as you seem to think he is, or will be, standards have dropped since my day!"

"Yes," Jenkins retorted. "Now we value loyalty and courage more than genius and arrogance! Will you help him? Yes or no?"

Da Vinci turned his face away, looking out over the office, both down to the desk he had been working at and up to the mezzanine he had been asked to move to. "The stone changes of its own accord. There is nothing more I can find out from it. I may as well be where my skills will be appreciated."

"Thank you!" Jenkins stormed down the stairs and over to the central desk. He looked down at the stone. "My turn now. Let's see what secrets I can wring out of you."

Stone looked up. He had heard the tone of the conversation on the stairs, if not the words, and he knew the scowl that now graced Jenkins' face. He walked over and put the book down in front of the old knight. "These any help?"

Jenkins looked down at the notepad and flicked backward through the pages. His mouth grew slacker the further back, or onward through time, he read. When he reached the first set of runes Cassandra had copied, those now superseded by the current message, his mouth was open and his eyes glazed. When he spoke, he didn't take his eyes off the current runes. "Did you show these to da Vinci?"

"He never asked to see them, and I wasn't done," shrugged Stone. "Why? What's it all mean?"

"It's a Runestone," said Jenkins, as if that explained everything.

"We knew that, didn't we?" Stone asked. "It's a stone with runes on it."

"Runestone, not rune stone," clarified Jenkins. "Capital R, all one word, much rarer, magical and usually only found in places like Sweden and Norway. Scandinavia. The Norse strongholds."

"I'm guessing it wasn't created just to come out with pithy one liners at random intervals," sighed Stone. "Nothing I've translated in that book sounds great, but the messages are getting decidedly worse as you get to the present day. What is it? Some kind of magical twitter feed?"

"No, it's... Since when did you start using twitter?" Jenkins frowned at the cowboy.

"Jones made me check his while he was 'recuperating'," he shrugged.

Jenkins shook his head. "No, it is more an oracle than a 'twitter feed'. These messages are warnings, not reports. They are omens, even, foreshadowing an event that grows ever nearer. The closer we get to that event, the sterner the message, the blacker the imagery."

"What event?" Stone breathed, matching the volume of his voice to the low tones Jenkins was using.

"That, Mr Stone, is the question," sighed the Caretaker. "Excuse me. I think I need to confer with Flora about this."

Stone waved a hand at the full length mirror that rested at the far end of the desk. Jenkins shook his head.

"I think I would rather use my private line, if you don't mind," said Jenkins quietly. He flicked his eyes up to the mezzanine. "We may be discussing other things that I would rather certain people not overhear."

Stone nodded, understanding. "I'll go see how she's coping with Jones on one side and da Vinci on the other."

Jenkins watched him head up the stairs, then turned and hurried to his lab. The mirror sat where he had left it. He said the words of the incantation and deposited the notebook on the desk in front of him. Flora's face came into view.

"That was quick," stated the old woman. Her voice was completely devoid of emotion, but it was exactly that that told Jenkins she was worried. "Either she's developed a serious level of magical ability in a very short time or you've found something equally serious you need my help with."

"The latter," Galeas winced. "Although I do have a bit more information about the enchanting Miss Cillian too, and another item she has asked me to speak to you about."

"Tell the worst first," sighed the Cailleach. "There are storm clouds gathering and Corryvreckan has been roaring all day. A sure sign that winter is coming, and not the passing season the people of this world are used to."

"A winter lasting three years?" Galeas asked. "I fear, my old, old friend, that winter started before any of us even noticed."

XXXX

Ezekiel Jones, World Class Thief, looked critically at the star-like contraption hanging from a lantern stand.

"What are you still missing?" Stone asked. He had listened to the explanation. He was fairly sure the only reason he believed it was because he knew Jones had asked the Genie for the solution. The artefacts required were quite specific in their type and placement and four places lay empty.

"Negative Water represented by a representation of the Judas Chalice," replied the younger man, pointing to the lower end of the y-axis bar. "Positive Light on the time axis needs a representation of the Crystal Skull of Atlantis. Positive Earth on the x-axis should have something to link to the Celtic Cross of Saint Patrick."

"Shouldn't that be on the Light axis, what with the sun motif and all?" Stone queried.

"The dude used it to chase all the snakes off the island and it's made of the stone he build his first church in. I'm going with Earth. Plus, that's what the Genie told me."

"Okay, and the last one?" Stone moved on. "I get the four dimensions of height, length, depth and time, but the fifth?"

"In our world, magic has its own dimension," Cassandra explained from his other side. "Sweetie, you walk through another dimension every time you walk out of this office! The entire Library only exists because of the magical dimension it's in! Well, it seems Dulaque learned that trick too, and therefore we need something to represent the dimension of magic. Two things: one for either end. And the one we're missing is something to link in to the Sacred Cat statuette of Tutankhamun."

"I think I may have an idea for that," Stone mused, tucking a strand of the shimmering red curls behind his girlfriend's ear. "Baird and Flynn brought something similar back while we were in France. Leonardo and I passed it just the other day when we were taking the tour."

"I know the item you mean," da Vinci nodded. "You'd never get it in the cage though, it's far too large."

Each metal bar axis had a small spherical cage welded to either end. Three clips could be released to separate the two halves of the sphere and insert the object to be used. The vertical height axis was to be bound by artefacts linked to the ancient element of Water, the horizontal axis of length by artefacts linked to the element of Earth, depth was bound by fire. The fourth bar, representing the axis of time, crossed through all the other three axes diagonally. The fifth bar crossed all four diagonally. Each sphere was just about large enough to hold an orange.

"Maybe not the statuette itself," Stone shrugged, "but we've used pictures of stuff before and it's worked."

"Yeah, but that was a representation of where we were going, or something there, anyway," countered Jones. "A picture of that statuette would be a representation of a representation of something where we're going. It would just link back to the one in the Library."

"Excuse me," da Vinci cut in. "Did you just say you could use a picture of the object to work this contraption?"

"Well, yes," replied the thief. "But first we'd need something to take the picture of. It only works with photos, not drawings. At least not any we've made. They're not accurate enough."

"And the cat statuette in question was black, say one cubit tall?" Da Vinci persisted.

Stone nodded. "Sounds like one I spotted when we first got here."

"That's the one," Jones agreed. "Why?"

"I have a photographic memory, young man," declared the artist. "And that statuette was here in my day too. I may be old, but I am willing to bet I am still one of the greatest, if not the greatest, copyist on the planet. Give me paper and a few other materials and I will make you a picture of your statuette that will look even more real than any of your high definition cameras could make it."