SGA fic -- Land of Shadows

[theladysnarkydame]

Title: Land of Shadows

Word Count: ~4400
Rating: PG
Warnings: none
Summary: The Carter-O'Neill Expeditionary Force was looking for the greatest treasure of the ancient world. John and his team found it.

Notes: Written for the 2012 SGA Genficathon (Genre: AU Prompt: "shadow of the past" and also, very loosely, "who cares for the caregivers")
Disclaimer:   I don't own the characters of Stargate Atlantis and no infringement is intended, nor profit being made.

* * *

 

The librarian . . . devotes his life to this war with the forces of oblivion. – Umberto Eco

 

A library is but the soul's burial ground. It is the land of shadows. – Henry Ward Beecher

 

* * *

 

The Carter-O'Neill Expeditionary Force found the ruins high in the mountains, half a world away from the star-port and not even close to the location tentatively marked out on Elizabeth's map.

Of course, they thought they were unrelated ruins at first. Something to check out while they refilled the trucks' water tanks and stretched their legs. The ruins were rounded and gentled with age, softened by vegetation and decorated with the bright gem-toned feathers of a flock of friendly birds. It was a nice spot for lunch.

Then they wandered deeper into the remains of the city, and there were men.

Made of iron and bronze, they stood in their places as though one day, many many years ago, their gears and pistons had simply stopped working, all at once. Some were so rusted they were little more than vaguely featured lumps. Some, protected by walls or trees or luck, were recognizable as Genii guards, though of a much older model than any they'd come across before.

The teams spread out in a more organized fashion now, eyes sharpened, steps more cautious. The Genii had never left their guards in an unimportant place.

And then Ronon, who of all of them was most familiar with the Genii's modus operandi and knew to follow the spiraling path of the Genii guards, found the Lost Library of the Furlings. Not that they knew that, then.

 

* * *

 

From outside, in the stone-flagged courtyard half hidden by encroaching ivy and thick blue moss, the dome looked modest – just a gentle mound of closely fitted gora-wood shingles, perhaps half again as tall as Teyla, lined with rows of translucent crystals set like windows, right about knee-height.

There were mechanical guards posted all along the perimeter of the dome, and scattered throughout the rest of the ruined city – rusted, yes, but also broken, as though here they'd met resistance.

"So they really did use them as a sort of security system," Rodney decided, warily judging the odds of them reactivating at their presence, as about half of the tech they found seemed to do.

Ronon sneered. "They used them as shock troops," he said. "To 'instill order over assimilated territories.'" They all looked over at him.

"It sounds like you take that personally," Teyla said, voice strictly neutral. Ronon didn't talk about it, but there was some history there.

Ronon shrugged. "That's what their own texts say."

But though the dome seemed to be the most heavily guarded building in the city, the only door that they found, flat on the ground and completely covered by the interlocked roots of a silverweed patch, was forty meters away and unprotected.

Despite Rodney's dire warnings of tomb-air and lurking snakes, when John and Ronon had cleared the door and opened it there was only a dry, quiet buzz, like power lines on a still summer night, and the bright, bitter smell of crushed silverweed.

They hadn't gone in immediately, of course. They went back to the truck to get some flashlights. But by the time they'd gotten back, Lorne's security team was casually setting up camp around the entrance and Elizabeth was smiling as she suggested that they wait until further study could be done.

Teyla assured him that the waiting had not been as long as it felt – Zelenka's team really was quite efficient, especially with Rodney nipping at their heels – but John and Ronon had filled an entire notebook with games of dots-and-boxes by the time Elizabeth gave the go ahead.

Both sides of the pages.

 

* * *

 

They left Zelenka's team on the surface to study the mechanics of the guards – what they could anyway, considering the damage they'd collected from the elements. They left Lorne's team to guard the scientists. And Elizabeth, though she'd looked up from the map she was sketching corrections on with a glare when she'd heard them say so.

They'd followed a long, spiraling staircase down from the entrance (not even this could tear Rodney's attention away from his instruments. His commentary was roughly half complaints about his knees and half observations of the readings, sometimes both in the same breath. John was used to it.)

There had been another door at the end – this one wide and tall, propped open with a stone doorstop carved to look like a horben shell. Ronon knelt to wipe the dust away from it, and revealed the bronze tracings of the local constellations, etched into it. They were very slightly the wrong shape, now. The little carving was older than the ruins they'd explored on the surface.

Through the door was the library.

 

* * *

 

"It's a little more imposing from this angle," John said, looking up. And up.

The small round windows they'd seen from the surface were placed close together in a triple row all the way around the room, high up by the dome. They looked like a string of pearls, glowing softly as the morning light streamed through them.

The diffuse light was collected and redirected by a series of mirrors, hung in two rows, one above the windows and one below. The mirrors were angled to send the light down to the next row of mirrors, and the next. And the next.

From the center of the dome, thin metal wires suspended much smaller mirrors, arranged in a spiraling depiction of the same constellations that graced the little doorstop's shell. They spun slowly, and the light they reflected skipped and danced across the dome above, and the endless shelves of books below.

There were bookshelves lined along the walls, higher and higher, broken by walkways and railings and long graceful ladders. They didn't stop until they were within arms' reach of the first row of mirrors. And all of the shelves, every last one, was full of books.

"It must be 50 meters high," Ronon said. His voice was calm, but John could see his face. He'd never seen Ronon look so impressed.

"There are vents up there," Rodney said, waving at the spinning mirrors. "The air's what's making them move, look at the dust." In contrast to Ronon, he sounded openly delighted, though John wasn't sure if it was really the air vents or the fact that the light show made the place seem less . . . underground.

Despite the dazzling display above, they stood in shadow. The sunlight simply couldn't reach them. But in the range of his flashlight John could see that here on the floor there were still more bookshelves, free standing bays of open shelves, just as full of books as the ones on the walls.

"Oh hey, that's clever," Rodney said, and John looked back to see him flip a switch hidden in a carving by the door.

"Rodney don't . . ." he barked before he could stop himself, but the floor didn't open up to drop them into a pit of snakes, and the dome didn't collapse on them. The mirrors didn't even crack.

In fact, nothing at all seemed to happen at first, and Rodney frowned around the room, completely ignoring John's outburst.

But then, without a sputter or any further hesitation, there was light – not a beautiful show of light as art like what spun above them, but a string of simple, artificial bulbs, hung like bunting over the free standing shelves.

Sheepishly, John lowered his flashlight and looked around. "Spread out," he said, eying the rows and rows of books older than anything they'd ever unearthed before. "Let's see what we find."

 

* * *

 

The shelves were covered with dust – great swaths of it, falling from the vents to land in untouched layers over books and bookcases alike as silky, spider-gray sediment. John half expected to find fossils.

He ran a finger down a spine – the leather was a startling, shocking blue beneath the dust. A title he couldn't read was picked out in worn red-gold. "When was the last time this place was open for circulation?" he asked, just a little louder than he normally would. It still felt almost sacrilegious, raising his voice in a library.

"What?" Rodney, apparently feeling no such compunction, yelled back from three stacks over.

John shook his head, wiping his finger on his tac vest. It left a trace across the fabric, like cobwebs. Shaking off childhood habits, he took a breath and gave a parade yard yell – "When was the last time this place was open?"

"Nearly three hundred years ago." The answer came from right at John's elbow, and he twitched back a step, bumping into the shelf. Dust fell in a cloud of gray, drifting like ashes over Teyla's bright hair. She gently waved it off with the book she held, one finger holding her place in the brittle pages.

John sneezed.

"Two hundred and eighty seven years ago!" Rodney yelled. "Was that you? If you're getting a cold, you can sit in the back with the luggage when we get back to the truck. I'm very susceptible to viruses."

John rolled his eyes. "It's just the dust, Rodney." He blinked it out of his eyelashes.

"I'm surprised the lights still work, if they've been untouched so long," John said in a more normal tone. They looked almost like Old Earth party lights, swung from lines of elegantly twisted cables, but they were shaped like the fat little four-winged birds that nested in the court outside, and buzzed faintly, like neon.

Teyla looked up at them fondly – she'd been pretty taken with the birds, and their gentle, lilting song, when they'd reached the ruins above. Their nests were woven towers, absurdly tall and graceful for such clumsy looking creatures, and theirs were the vividly colored feathers they'd found all over the ruins.

"The lighting system runs off of a grid acting independently from that of the clockwork guards – so when one failed the other did not. Rodney says that it looks to have been designed by someone else entirely, perhaps the original builders of this library."

"Huh," he said, looking at the steadily buzzing strings of birds. Other than being a little dimmed by the dust on the glass, the lights were clear and steady – they didn't even flicker. "Yeah, this place is definitely not Genii. What's the power source, I wonder?"

"Working on it," Rodney muttered, coming around the stack. His hair stood in haphazard tufts, prematurely gray with dust, and a streak of graphite ran over the bridge of his nose. He chewed absently on the end of his pencil, considering the equations and diagrams on his notepad, then irritably flipped back a few pages.

"These numbers can't be right. Did Kavanagh's team make the initial survey? This looks like his work. Sheppard, I need to go back to the truck. Hand me the keys." He snapped his fingers and held out his palm, still studying the page.

"What did you find?" John asked Teyla instead. The way Rodney was going over those notes, he'd forget he'd asked in a minute.

"It is a personal history of some sort," she said. "Perhaps a librarian's diary, or an officer's log book. It's hard to be certain. The language seems closely related to Athosian, but if so, it is a particularly archaic form."

John raised an eyebrow. "Anything interesting?" he asked. Teyla loved to read, but generally didn't do so in the middle of an exploration. Something must have caught her eye.

"It covers the period surrounding the Genii's assault on this library." She sounded perfectly dry, but there was a spark in her smile, and John knew why. They'd been looking for such a long time.

"Is it . . ."

She held up the book and turned it to show him the title page. The book opened to the right. The pages were not yellowed, as the sunlight hadn't touched it, and the air was dry. The pages were brittle, the ink a bit faded, and the language one that John could not read, but he could quite clearly identify the embossed stamp on the upper left corner of the page.

The curled, feathered crest of the Furling University.

 

* * *

 

The shelves were set in a circle around an open space in the center of the library, directly beneath the mirrored constellations. There weren't any chairs or tables, but there were piles of cushions scattered in strategic groupings. When they moved them, carefully, so as not to damage the fabrics, they left the floor they'd sat on clear of dust – it gleamed with the rich red tones of gora-wood.

Rodney sat cross-legged on the floor, spreading his notes all around him. "See this?" he asked, stabbing a finger at a hastily drawn approximation of the lighting cables strung around the room. He didn't wait for John to answer, words tumbling out at an ever-increasing rate.

"The switch by the door isn't connected to the lights in any physical way – no wires, no nothing. It must send a signal to a secondary switch that is connected to the lights, because these lights are just glass, just tungsten , or something really damn close to it." He waved a hand randomly over his head, presumably indicating the the bird-shaped bulbs. "All the 'scope's telling me -- well not all it's telling me, it's telling me how breathable the air is down here, how freaking hot it is up there between all those mirrors, how old that book Teyla's holding is, how far underground we are, which, thanks, trying not to think about it – but the only useful thing it's telling me is that there is an active power source somewhere close by, and it is massive. Much more powerful that it needs to be to turn on these dinky little lights." He took a deep breath, then another, and the deep red of his face faded to a less alarming shade. "Sorry," he said. "Radek usually interrupts before I go that far off field."

"Focus, Rodney," John drawled. He was trying very hard to keep up a relaxed front, but he could feel his fingers twitching, and his neck felt tight. "Can you find this power source?"

"Of course I can find it," he looked honestly offended John had even asked. He gathered his notes with a nimble swipe of his hands. "I just need to pinpoint the frequency of the signal and follow it back to it's source. The lights aren't really helping, because it really isn't tungsten and whatever it actually is is vibrating at a frequency that is interfering with my instruments, but if I turn the damn thing off it'll cut the signal. And leave us in the dark, obviously."

"Get on it then."

"What do you think I'm doing?" he asked, hauling himself to his feet. His pants were streaked with dust, and his hands were gray with it. "If certain people would stop interrupting me with stupid questions." He stomped away, hunched over his notebook, every line of his back reading irritation.

He stepped around Teyla, who was intently reading her book, lips moving slightly as she puzzled out the less familiar words. Ronon looked over her shoulder, eyes intent on the page.

They were all tense. They'd searched for this place for such a long, long time.

 

* * *

 

Nobody knew exactly what had happened to the Furlings. They'd left nothing behind but mentions in other people's histories, but they'd been everywhere in those – a race of scholars and engineers, they seemed to answer to no governing body but the University chairs, and they hired themselves to other races as teachers and scribes, technologists and councilors, all in exchange for writing down everything . It was said, in almost every account, that the Furlings had a copy of every book in existence, or that this was their most holy quest.

And then the Genii broke their contract.

Three Furling engineers had come to their capitol to copy the Genii holy texts, and, as payment, build them a more efficient way to power their clockwork army. The Furlings, owing allegiance to no government, felt no hesitation in this sort of work, any more than they'd abstained from improving the messaging system for the Goa'uld navy, or building the Atlantean's a whole new defense system. The Furlings were strictly non-partisan. Their enemy, they said, was time itself, and the loss of knowledge.

Until the three engineers were finished, and the Genii refused to let them leave.

The Asgard's account was the most complete. In that, the Furlings were said to have all left their posts at once, receiving a message from the University in some unknown manner. A delegation was sent to demand the release of their people. When the Genii captured the delegation as well, the Furlings withdrew. All of them.

Soon after, the Genii turned their legions to the mountains, and marched them to the Furling University – the history didn't say where that was, exactly, because no one but the Furlings knew. The Furlings, and now the Genii.

But the Genii legions didn't return from the mountains. Neither did their relief, sent when communication ceased.

The Genii declared the University vanquished, and sent no more legions. No one, to this date, has met a Furling since.

 

* * *

 

"Come on, you worthless piece of junk! That's obviously not the frequency I'm after, quit locking on to it!"

Rodney's outbursts were background noise – soothing even, after so many years of working with him. They meant he was still on track.

While he muttered and cursed behind the stacks, Teyla read passages to John and Ronon.

"The writer was a librarian – but according to her, they were all librarians. The University was built around the Library; all the engineers, the technologists, the councilors . . . they were all librarians. The writer herself . . . she says in the beginning, 'I am an engineer so that I can find new words – words build new worlds, as I build new structures. When I build a new thing, it requires new words, or old words used in new ways, and thus new worlds are born. That is why I am a librarian – to protect these words, so that worlds are not lost.'"

Ronon frowned, thoughtful. "She sounds like a priest."

"I think," said Teyla, "they were much the same thing, to a Furling."

John thought so too. The Library had that feel to it, like it had been sacred to somebody for a really long time.

"The Genii obviously never made it down here," he said. It would not feel so hallowed, if they had. "Does your engineer say what stopped them?"

Ronon's attention sharpened even farther.

Teyla flipped gently through the pages. "I do not think she finished all that she had to say," Teyla said, her eyes regretful. "The account ends abruptly. But she says, 'until the gateway opens, we must hold them out. They do not understand the value of words. They would destroy this world along with all others. We must hold them out.'"

"What gateway?" Ronon asked.

"She does not say."

Rodney's voice rose again. "Damn it, I will give you to Kavanagh, you piece of scrap, that is not . . . " he trailed off into silence, and John's head came up.

"Sheppard! I found it!" Rodney popped his head around a bay of books on the far side of the circle, grinning wide and bright. The grin, with the streaks of dust on his face and the wild tufts of his hair, made him look ridiculously young.

"I found it!"

 

* * *

 

There was a hatch in the back of a shelf, behind two thick books bound in green leather, that Teyla said were texts on the wildlife of the Hoffan floodplains and that Rodney said were in the way. For all his irritation though, he pulled them gently from the shelf, and stacked them neatly on top of their neighbors.

The hatch swung open, but not without effort, and not without a painful screeching of hinges. Inside was a cubby full of crystal panels glowing faintly blue and rose and green. They all four peered at them with wide eyes, heads close together. Ronon, in the back, had his hands braced on the shelf and John's shoulder, so he could crouch enough to see without bumping Rodney's arm.

Rodney took a deep breath, checked his scanoscope, and pulled the central panel free. It went dark in his hand, and John made a protesting noise, but Rodney was already shrugging under Ronon's elbow and trotting back towards the sitting area. There was a grinding, sliding sort of sound, and they all broke into a run.

In the center of the circle, right about where Rodney had spread out his notes like a paper peacock's fan, there was an opening, and a light shone through it.

"More stairs?" Rodney all but wailed.

 

* * *

 

But John hadn't so much as stepped on the first step (John took the first step first, because there was no way under any sort of circumstance that one of his team would walk into something before he did.) before there was a flicker, and a whisper of air, and he was somewhere else.

Before he could panic, the rest of his team were there, one by one in quick succession, as though they'd run after him (which he would have words with them about. Later.).

Rodney took a grip on his tac vest, while Ronon's hand came down again on his shoulder and Teyla's arm brushed against his. But they said nothing.

Mostly, they were far too busy staring. The room they were in was obviously still a part of the Library. There were books on every spare surface, stacks and piles of them. But there was no dust. Everything gleamed under a soft, white light, much brighter than the little bird lights. They were crowded onto a round bronze plate, where they'd been transported. And in the center of the room, surrounded by towering stacks of books, there was what could only be called a Gate.

It was not like the great round portal the Atlanteans used instead of star ports. It was more a door frame, seemingly empty, simply made. But the room on the other side of that door frame was not the same as the room they were in.

In front of this impossibility, on a small table, there was a single book open near its end, and a single key, laid across the page. Teyla stepped over to it, hands hovering over the text, carefully keeping the door frame in view as she leaned down to read.

John and Ronon watched her, and so did Rodney, though his eyes kept cutting down and sideways to check the 'scope in his hand. It was pointed at the door frame, and the readouts flickered constantly in a staccato rhythm.

"Oh," Teyla said. She looked back over her shoulder, and her eyes were wide.

"I don't think I understand," she said. "But . . ."

"It says, 'Here Headmaster Grivent gave the order. This branch of the Library is to be closed. Work will continue in the other branches, until such time as we can reopen this one. If any are left who can yet make it here, I will leave you the key. Go and join them.

'Don't fear, the Library is not to be abandoned. The army of ignorance and fear that threatens it will not succeed. I will stay, I and my brother and my wife. Evayas has already taken the children through. They will learn new worlds under new stars.

'The words have been spoken; we will be shadows soon. Untouchable, we will bring chaos to our enemy – we will chase away the army. We will guard the door. The Library will stand. And then, if as shadows we can speak, we will say the words again, and join our families. If we can not, so be it. We will fade into the ink of our favorite tomes, and join the words. We have already said our farewells.'" Teyla stopped. She ran a her hand over the key, and her eyes were sad. "The word he used for shadow," she said, "has changed in modern usage. To ghost."

For a moment they were all four silent. Until Rodney cried out in frustration.

"But what did the rest of that mean? What other branches? There was only one Library, everyone knew! Just one, in all . . . " his voice trailed off, and he let go of John's vest to flip furiously through his notebook.

"What?" John asked him. There was an answer in his throat, but he wanted to hold on to it, just a little longer. "McKay. What?"

"There's more Libraries, somewhere else," Ronon said, as if it were the simplest conclusion he'd ever made.

"Yes, yes, that was the obvious part," Rodney muttered. "This equation," he said, flashing the page in John's face, "and this one, see? Peterson took that reading. Not real bright, that one, but he never reads the 'scope wrong. I thought he just couldn't write legibly."

He flung a hand out towards the door frame, and the key in Teyla's hand. "It's a theory – Elizabeth would have kittens if I tried to test it on my own, and she'd be right, this is insanely dangerous and will probably kill us all. But. It's the Furlings' version of a Gate! Tied to a set destination, a link from this Library . . . to another. And another, and another – they could stretch across galaxies!

"A copy of every book, on every subject, ever written. In all the histories, all of them, that is the highest aspiration of any Furling ever asked. Of course they wouldn't restrict themselves to one Library."

Rodney's eyes were dancing. Ronon was smiling. Teyla hadn't yet looked away from that key.

And John could feel the wide grin stretched out on his own face. They'd already found the Lost Library, with all the knowledge, all the history the Furlings gathered before the Genii tried to steal it. And not only was there more, it was out there , on other worlds, and they could reach those other worlds without the long, long trip between stars. He could see other skies before he was old and bent and gray. They could walk right through the door.

They had a key.

 

fin