The last one was a short chapter. This is a long one. I do hope you bear with it to the end!

Episode 8: For the Ring, Chapter 6

Stone crouched down, huddling close to the other two junior Librarians. "What the heck do you mean you know who he is? Is he one of your thieving buddies?"

"Hey! Enough with the judgy already!" Jones hissed back. "I've left all that behind me now!"

"Says the guy who planned the heist from a warehouse hidden in a pocket dimension!" Stone fumed. "There's one for the record books! What'll we call it? The TARDIS job?"

"You know I only use my powers for good now," Jones protested, his never ending veneer of apathy wearing thin.

"Yeah, a regular white knight!" Stone retorted. "You tell your girlfriend what you used to do for a living? Or was it just for fun?"

Jones hadn't really expected the fist to connect with Stone's jaw. If he was honest he hadn't even realised he'd raised it until it was caught in mid air. The odd thing was, what he had expected to see, when he looked at his wrist, was Stone's hand wrapped around it. Maybe even Cassandra's. He hadn't expected the shimmering blue bubble, just on the edge of vision, that was actually encasing his fist and forearm.

Both men looked at Cassandra in shock. Her nose was bleeding and Stone was at her side before she keeled over and the semi-present blue glow vanished. Jacob brushed her hair back from her face and whispered her name, but she was out cold.

"Stuff the boxes," he breathed. "We need to get her out of here."

"Agreed," whispered Ezekiel. "We can always come back for the rest."

"Can you really?" The voice came from behind Ezekiel, but he knew who it was even before he turned to face it. "That's a neat trick for a secretary, Mr Smith. You really must show me how you plan on doing that. Right after you tell me who you really are, of course."

"You first Wilkins," retorted Jones, falling back on his usual sarcasm and impudence. "Are you even a professor? Name like that sounds more like a butler if you ask me."

"I didn't," smiled the Professor. "But I am a professor, so if you wouldn't mind addressing me by my proper title in future." Wilkins turned to the group of men behind him. "Take them to the vault."

XXXX

The geophysics equipment up in the hotel conference room had proved useful. Put together with previous data, Flynn and Emily had been able to use its programing to reconstruct a three dimensional image of the land under the glacier. They watched as the computer took them through a flyover of the land as it saw it. Eve hovered behind them, one hand possessively on Flynn's shoulder, just in case Emily should get any ideas.

"Stop, go back," Flynn ordered. Emily did so and he pointed out the amorphous lump in the landscape. "What's that?"

"Probably just an erratic," muttered Emily. "What exactly are we looking for?"

"I don't know," shrugged Flynn. "It doesn't make sense! Völund was a legend in the Viking Age, he's easily from much further back in time, say around the two thousand year mark. There's no fuel around here to run a forge, or there wouldn't have been then anyway. Nobody would have built that here."

"If he was from two thousand years ago, how did he managed to forge a sword for Charlemagne?" Emily countered.

"If he's not from two thousand years ago, how is he embedded in a glacier surrounded by artefacts from two thousand years ago?" Flynn retorted. "Swords do tend to last longer than the smiths that made them, and there's always the possibility two similar legends became one over the passage of time and the hundreds of verbal retellings."

"How would he have got in the glacier in the first place is what I'm wondering," interrupted Eve. "Shouldn't he be the human equivalent of a bug on a windshield?"

"Iron age hunters used to follow the reindeer herds up onto the glaciers in the summer. They were constantly dropping stuff," Emily explained. "Over time, as more snow adds to the top and pressure melts the base, the dropped items work their way down through the ice, or appear to anyway. They found a horse in one not that long ago!"

"Lovely," quipped Eve.

"But that still doesn't explain what he was doing here," said Flynn. "He must have been walking over the ice flow when some snow from the mountainside fell and killed him. The snow compacted, was added to the ice flow with the rest of that winter's snow, and he became a part of the glacier. But that still doesn't tell us where, all the way up on the top of a glacier, he was walking to. It can't have been his home: a smith wouldn't build a forge way out here."

"Maybe it wasn't his home, then," suggested Eve. "Maybe it was hers."

XXXX

Jenkins sat, tea untouched in the china cup beside him. He tugged at his chin thoughtfully. He had spent so much of his life in the service of the Library, and it's annex. He had given up so much. Made so many sacrifices. Now, it seemed, his past was catching up with him. The Library had sent them to find da Vinci, he pondered. Perhaps this was the Library's way of telling him he could retire properly. It had sent them, in a round about way, to Flora. That had been a part of his past he had been even less ready to face. He had faced it, though, and he had survived. Maybe that was another sign. The Library had brought Flora back into his life, and he into hers. Maybe it was suggesting that he retire somewhere specific. Not before Mr Carsen and Colonel Baird's wedding, of course.

Then there was the other matter. No, he couldn't leave before that was over. Not even with da Vinci to help out. It would take all of them. It would take artefacts. Specific artefacts. Some of which he knew were in the Library. Others he had discovered, to his dismay, were amongst those stolen by the Serpent Brotherhood. A few were out there in the world, waiting to be found. He would have to help there. There were too many and time was too short. Even with the items recovered in Jones' grand plan, there would be little enough time to stop this snowball rolling before it passed the point of no return. It was too late to stop it before it began. It had begun over a year ago. Now all they could do was stop it before it reached the final battle, if they could. If they couldn't, they would need far more than the resources of just the Library to take on that fight with even a chance of winning.

He looked at his watch. He frowned. He had become so lost in his thoughts that he hadn't noticed the time since the last delivery of boxes through the back door. They should have been back hours ago. He cursed himself for a lazy, self-centred fool and rose from his chair yelling for da Vinci.

"Pazzo ignorante!" The answering enraged cry came from one of the workrooms the maestro had made his own. "Do you not know I am trying to work? All my treasures I left behind in that malvivente's attic. Perhaps once your practicante has finished chasing after what should not have been lost, he can help take back what was left behind!"

"Ah, cease thy piagnisteo, oræfta!" Jenkins snarled, appearing at the artist's door. "If you ever want a chance at stealing back your forgotten relics, leave that chiacchiere senza senso and follow me. As one of Mr Jones' favourite television heroes might say: allons-y!"

"Oho!" Leonardo laughed mirthlessly. "So your boy has run into trouble, has he? And no doubt dragged the pretty little redhead down with him."

Da Vinci walked into the back of Jenkins. He stepped back when the caretaker turned with a look of thunder. "You know that cowboy who has been following you around like a spaniel since you arrived?"

"Fancies himself an art critic, yes?"

"No, he does not fancy himself anything. He is an art historian, and a Librarian, with a higher IQ than you and a bar fighting track record that tells me he could quite possibly knock you clear into next week," said the Caretaker, his voice as sharp as steel. "You know that pretty little redhead you seem to like so much? That would be his girlfriend."

"I am an artist," shrugged da Vinci, sidling past Jenkins. "It is my job to see beauty in all things."

"Do not even think of asking her to pose for you," warned Jenkins. Da Vinci turned and opened his mouth to protest, but Jenkins silenced him with a glare and a raised finger. "Don't!"

XXXX

"Are you sure we can't narrow it down any further?" Flynn puffed, struggling to keep up with the two women as they trekked along the top of the glacier.

"You want to explain to my geophysics guys what we're looking for?" Emily called back. "I thought you'd be used to all this exercise by now? Keep up!"

"I'm just not used to having quite so much gear attached to me," he called back.

"Standard climbing gear, just in case we need it," Emily replied. She looked over to Eve. "Is he always like this? I'd have thought a job like his for ten years would have toughened him up a bit."

"Believe me, he's better than he would have been without the job!" Eve quipped. "How about you? Has your work 'toughened' you up?"

"I like to think so," Emily smirked. "I keep in shape when I don't have a dig, of course. I have to be ready for whatever landscape I find myself in."

"You were working on a dig when you first met him, weren't you?" Eve enquired, keeping her voice light. "In Africa?"

"In Morocco, in fact," Emily nodded, "near Casablanca."

"And he what? Just turned up one day, said 'hi, I'm the Librarian, fancy helping me find King Solomon's Mines'?" Eve persisted.

Emily paused and took a swig from her water bottle. "Funnily enough, no," she replied. "He actually tried to pass himself off as a geologist first, but I didn't believe him. Only after I caught him trying to break into my dig at night did he actually tell me what he was after."

"And you believed that?"

"Circumstances intervened," Emily shrugged. "After that, try as he might, he couldn't get rid of me. Not until it was all over of course."

"When you left to go study the Queen of Sheba," Eve nodded. "But you changed direction after a while, you told us, and that led you here. Was it just curiosity that made you do that?"

"What else would it be?" Emily asked coquettishly.

"You weren't, for example, hoping to bump in to Flynn again, by any chance?" Eve breezed.

"Oh, I always knew we'd bump into each other again eventually," sighed Emily. "I had faith."

"Really," Eve muttered. "Great!"

A muffled cry and a thud brought both women to a halt. They turned to see Flynn clambering to his feet.

"He still does that, huh?" Emily queried, making no move to help the Librarian to his feet.

"More often than you'd think," sighed Eve, folding her arms and waiting for her fiancé to catch up with them.

"Cave," panted Flynn, pointing. "Up there. Great vantage point, nice little ledge out front to park your flying horse on."

"Just as well we brought the climbing gear then," sing-songed Emily in triumph.

XXXX

The vault was precisely that. Solid, steel-lined walls surrounded by who knew what and no doubt doused in magic just for good measure. The lights only operated when the door was opened, but Jones had a good memory for details. Especially security details. Medical details, not so much though. He had no idea of the exact time they had spent in the vault, but his internal clock told him they were talking hours not minutes.

"How is she?" Ezekiel asked the darkness.

"Still out cold," Stone's voice was darker than the vault and twice as cold. "Pulse is steady, breathing's okay, but absolutely no response."

"She's never been out that long," murmured the thief. "Not even..."

"I know," Jacob cut him off.

"I'm sorry," Ezekiel breathed. "If I hadn't..."

"If I hadn't made that dig about your girl, you wouldn't have," admitted Stone. "That was uncalled for on my part, and I apologise. Neither of us knew Cassie could do that, though, and I doubt she'd have known the consequences herself. No need for you to apologise for that."

"If I hadn't hired Wilkins in the first place we wouldn't have been having that argument," Jones pointed out.

"Yeah, that's true," Stone admitted. "Fine, let's say I accept your apology. Now tell me who you should have hired?"

"The guy was top of his field by a mile," shrugged Jones. "Next person on the list would have been some dude from Germany."

"Exactly," sighed Stone. "There was nobody else. Nothing you could have done differently. So stop trying to apologise for something that ain't your fault. You looked into the guy's background, right."

"Closer than the Pentagon or their three letter flunkies would have," admitted Jones. "He was squeaky clean."

"Then there's no way you could have known," shrugged Stone.

"Doesn't make me feel any better about it," sighed Jones.

"I know," said Stone. "I've been there, remember, with far more cause for blame. It'll pass."

They sat in silence for a few moments. Jones rested his head against the cold steel wall and closed his eyes. He was just drifting off into a doze when Stone spoke again. "What was that other thing you said?"

"When?" Jones asked, not bothering to open his eyes.

"When you recognised Wilkins' voice," Stone clarified. "You said you knew what was going on."

"Just something I remembered hearing back at the dig," said Jones, sitting up. "He would stand there talking about all the fantastic Norse artefacts he'd found and the legends about them. I remember he was always more enthusiastic if the piece came from a legend about one or other of the Norse gods. He talked about the cup we were looking for too. Seemed to think it held the power to make a man immortal, like a god. Then when he was talking about transformation, it clicked. He has some crazy scheme to turn himself into a Norse god."

"Okay," said Stone carefully. "Let's say I'm buying that, for now. Which one?"

"I dunno," shrugged Jones. "He talked about a lot of them. Seemed to have a soft spot for Loki though. Must like fire."

"Or illusions," added Stone. "Loki was more than just the god of fire, he was a trickster god, playing both sides against each other. He did eventually settle down onto the side of evil, though."

"Although some do argue that he only did so because he was so shunned by the rest of the Aesir and Vanir," said Jenkins as the lights flickered on. "Oh my, what has happened to Miss Cillian?"

"She used magic, it knocked her out," Stone explained, getting to his feet with Cassandra still in his arms. "We got caught after that and she's been out ever since. Serpent brotherhood were here. What happened to them?"

"There were a few guards," replied Jenkins airily, holding the door open for Stone. "Nothing we couldn't handle."

"Was Professor Wilkins here when you arrived?" Jones asked, following Stone out of the vault.

"Wilkins?" Jenkins frowned. "So he's their new leader. Did he tell you what they're up to?"

"Mentioned something about a transformation," answered Jones. "Nothing else. I think I know what he meant though."

"Judging by your conversation when I arrived, I think you probably do," replied the Caretaker. "What you don't know is why."

"And you do?" Da Vinci cut in, joining them, a book in his hand. He saw the look Jenkins gave him and shrugged. "What? It is my diary!"

"You couldn't have just brought the whole box?" Jenkins sighed.

The return trip to the library, past numerous unconscious guards, was uneventful. Da Vinci was left to unhook the back door and reset it back to Flynn and Eve's co-ordinates. Jenkins and Jones followed Stone through to the first aid room with Cassandra. The old man shooed the younger out of the way and made a quick examination of the patient. He placed a cooling pad on her forehead and stood up.

"There's nothing else we can do for now," he said, waving the two Librarians into chairs. "We just have to hope she wakes up of her own accord. Right now, though, we have bigger problems. The signs, the omens, the portents that the Runestone has been warning us about: they are coming to pass and quickly. Wheels have been set in motion, set in motion months ago, to start us on a very definite path. If Wilkins succeeds in becoming the avatar of Loki, those wheels will not stop until the final battle has been fought, and it is a battle I am not confident we can win."

XXXX

The climb hadn't been too arduous, but once again Flynn found himself left playing catch up. When he reached the top he found the two women laughing over some shared joke. "Oh, that's never a good sign," he grumbled.

"What was that darling?" Eve asked, reaching out to help him up onto the ledge.

"Nothing, nothing," breezed Flynn, dusting off his hands and looking at the shallow indentation in the cliff wall. "So here we are, eh? At Hervor's front door."

"Potentially," Emily corrected.

"I'd say definitely," argued Flynn. "I mean it's hard to spot if you don't know what you're looking for but the shimmer around the edge of the cave mouth? Definitely a glamour of some kind."

"A glamour?" Emily folded her arms and raised an eyebrow at him.

"Try it out," said Flynn. "Walk into the cave."

"There's nothing there!" Emily protested.

"Have a little faith," shrugged Flynn.

Emily looked him up and down and considered for a moment, then stepped forward into the cave.

She disappeared

"What the..." Eve began.

"Shall we, my dear?" Flynn enquired, holding out his hand.

"Whatever you say, Librarian," she replied.

As they stepped into the cave, the world changed, as if they had stepped through a bead curtain. The process was familiar to Eve. It was the same shift in air and temperature that she had felt when she and Cassandra had stepped into the back room of the dress shop in New York. They were in another dimension. She looked around her, taking in the extended interior of the cavern they were now in. Her eyes came back round to centre and alighted on the figure of an armoured woman, currently holding a knife against Emily's throat.

"Hervor?" Flynn tried. The woman's eyes turned to him. "Hello. My name is Flynn Carsen. I'm the Librarian. We came here to find you."

"You have found me," replied Hervor, in accented English. "Now what is your intention, Librarian?"

"We found your husband," said Eve softly. "We saw he was missing his ring."

With her free hand, Hervor drew a cord from her neck. Upon it was the missing ring. "When his soul left his body, I heard it cry out to me," she said. "But I may only attend those who die in battle, not by misadventure. I sought him out. I made this glacier his tombstone. And I took back the ring I had once given him as a promise of my love. It was ill done. I made a promise to him that day that I could not keep. I promised I would stay with him until my dying day. I broke that vow."

"We cannot change out natures," said Flynn. "We just came to find the ring because we think that is why the Library sent us here. Not Emily there, she was the archaeologist who discovered your husband's body. Myself and Eve. She's my fiancée and my Guardian."

Hervor dropped the knife and pushed Emily away from her. She walked to an inlaid coffer and raised the lid, drawing out a shimmering string of gold rings. "The rings that my husband and I worse are cursed by my broken vow," she said. "These rings are not. They were made by him in pure love for me. May they always prove a blessing on your union."

Taking two of the rings from their cord, she handed them to Flynn. He stared at his hand as if she had just handed him a second Philosopher's Stone.

"The giving and receiving of rings is still common in mortal marriage ceremonies, I believe?" Hervor enquired.

"I, um, I don't know what to say," floundered Flynn. "Thank you. How can I repay you?"

"Tell me where my husband's body lies, that I may retrieve it," she replied. "I would once more make this ice flow his tomb, where he lies ever under my gaze."

XXXX

The office was quiet and still when the Librarian and his Guardian returned. They made their way through to the lab and found Jenkins, Jones and da Vinci with their heads bent over a series of scrolls.

"Where's Stone?" Baird asked, immediately suspicious of the serious looks on all three faces.

"First aid room," Jenkins replied. "Miss Cillian is resting and he is with her. We have a larger issue to deal with."

Flynn nudged Eve and she glared at him then looked back at Jenkins. "Whatever it is," she said, "can it wait for two minutes? I have something I need to ask you, privately."

Jenkins blinked. "I guess so," he replied. "Leo and Mr Jones can take Mr Carsen to see Miss Cillian. They can fill him in on the way."

Obediently, Jones left and dragged Flynn with him. Da Vinci glowered but followed after a moment's staring contest with Jenkins. The old knight turned back to Eve.

"How can I help you, Colonel Baird?" Jenkins asked as the door swung shut.

Eve took a moment to compose herself, then spoke. "Flynn pointed out to me on the way back here that there was something I had forgotten to do," she began. "In all the hustle and bustle of organising the wedding and organising Flynn and doing this job, I forgot something that I have to do myself."

"Which is?"

"Jenkins, you know my parents are both long gone," said Eve, taking the old man's hand. "And I'm really not that close to the rest of my family. I wondered, I was hoping, that you would do me the honour of walking me down the aisle."

"Colonel Baird," said Jenkins softly, covering her hand with his own, "the honour would be mine."

"Thank you," she said, kissing his cheek. "Now for the bad news: what did we miss?"

Jenkins picked up the scrolls and spread them out for her. "Quite a lot, I'm afraid. Mr Jones uncovered the new leader of the Serpent Brotherhood, and he's been running our dig in Gamla Uppsala for us. The Runestone changed under our very noses and provided us with another cutting insight into our future. Mr Stone finished the translations and I, with some help from Flora, interpreted them. An interpretation then borne out by information gathered by Mr Jones and company while they were attempting to retrieve more of our lost artefacts. We did get some back, but by no means all."

"So do we know how all this fits together?" Baird asked, wincing as she tried to join the pieces of information up in her mind.

"Unfortunately we do," said Jenkins, turning her to face him. "Put together, the signs all say one thing."

"And that is?" Baird frowned.

"Ragnarok is coming."