by The Prophet (prophet@phlegethon.org)
Complete
Drama, Action/adventure
Chapter 1 of Æsirhættir
Daniel/other, other pairing
Season 5
FR-T
Violence
Spoilers for Singularity, Thor's Chariot, In the Serpent's Grasp, Jolinar's
Memories, Nemesis/Small Victories, Upgrades, The Curse, Rite of Passage
Disclaimers:
Stargate Sg-1 and its characters are the property of Stargate (II) Productions, Showtime/Viacom, The SciFi Channel, MGM/UA, Double Secret Productions, and Gekko Productions. This story is written purely for my own entertainment, and that of anyone else who may happen to read it. No infringement of copyright is intended. It is not intended and should never be used for commercial purposes.
The original characters, situations and ideas contained within this work are the property of the author
Author's notes:
This is the first part of an epic fan fiction, Æsirhættir which will continue in Hel's Teeth, Wolf's Head, The World Serpent and Ragnarok.
Vinland was an attempted colony, established in the New World by Leif Erikssen, a Greenlander. In the face of native hostility, the colony failed, and Lief's party returned to Greenland. The Vinland colony has been connected to the Viking settlement unearthed at L'Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland, although some archaeologists believe that this is a different settlement, and that Vinland was in New England.
The name Angharad Midhir is pronounced - very approximately - Anne-hah-rad Me-er.
The first part of the Brythonic double-l is often approximated as an 'f', or with a hard 'ch' as in loch, but is more correctly an unsounded aspiration. This is nigh impossible to do without a great deal of practice; I know I can't manage it.
Brythonic, or P-Celtic, is the Celtic language branch which includes Welsh, Cornish and Breton, as distinct from the Q-Celtic branch (Gaelic - Irish, Scots and Manx).
The horned Viking helmet is based almost entirely on a single image on the upper left-hand corner of the Oseberg Tapestry.
King Solomon's Naquadah Mines is a story I intend to write soon.
Jelling is pronounced 'yelling'.
Acknowledgements:
'When I say "You made me" you gotta say "I made you". How childish can you get?'
- The Joker, "Batman"
The usual thanks go to my beta-reader, Sho, who is now claiming that it's my fault that she writes fan-fiction.
The Prophet, 13th July 2002
Monday
Major Samantha Carter was in the main lab at the SGC, studying some of the remains of the Goa'uld Ha'kal vessel recovered from the ruins of General Keyes' Atum Base when the phone call came. SG-1 were on three weeks' leave from field assignments, and Sam was taking the opportunity to catch up on some lab work. Teal'c was instructing a course on Jaffa combat techniques and battle tactics for new SGC recruits, and Jack and Daniel had gone to Newfoundland with Cassandra.
Sam picked up the phone, recognising from the ring tone that this was an unsecured outside line. "Major Carter," she said, omitting all mention of the SGC from her greeting.
"Sam?" A girl's quavering voice came from the telephone.
"Cassie?"
"Sam…they're gone. They just…they're gone."
"Cassie. Slow down," Sam said, her tone as gentle as she could manage through her rising panic. "Who're gone?"
"Jack. And Daniel," Cassandra replied. "They've vanished."
*
Three days earlier.
Friday.
"I'm booored!"
Daniel Jackson winced at the twentieth refrain today of his new least-favourite song: The Ballad of Cassandra on Vacation. He was trying to read his mail, but was finding it hard going.
"Hey, Campers!" Jack called from the front hall, drawing a sigh of relief from the weary archaeologist.
"Hi, Jack!" Cassie called back, momentarily diverted from her boredom. "What happened to the dirty weekend?"
Jack cringed as he entered, carrying a large plastic bag and an aroma of fish. Daniel felt his pain.
"It wasn't a dirty weekend," Jack corrected. "It was a fishing trip."
Cassie smiled, innocently. "Mud, water, fish. Sounds pretty dirty to me."
"Yeah, well…Why are you purple?"
"I was bored," Cassandra replied, defiantly, running a hand through her hair.
"She was bored," Daniel acknowledged.
Jack stared at the deep purple hue that had replaced Cassie's usual blonde colouring. "Janet is going to kill you; you know that, don't you?"
"It's all natural, and I thought you and Jacqueline were getting on well," Daniel said, changing the subject. Since learning of their shared passion for fishing, Jack had been letting the SGC diplomat, Jacqueline Rede, use his cabin when he wasn't there. As both had this weekend off, they had decided to take a joint trip. Unlike Cassie, Daniel had no doubts that they were just friends: Even had Jack been interested, Rede seemed to have her eye on Jacob Carter.
"We were," Jack agreed. "Until I found out that she…" He paused, shuddering. "Catches fish."
Daniel grinned. He knew from Teal'c just how small a part the actual fish played in Jack's definition of fishing.
Jack reached into the bag, and produced a large and glistening fish. "So; bass okay for dinner?"
Dinner that night was the high-point of Cassandra's vacation so far. As though by some sinister conspiracy, all of her school friends were overseas with their families for at least the next week, and her mother was away for a fortnight; five nights at a big medical conference, followed by visiting old friends. Cassie had declined to join Dr Fraiser on her trip, deciding it would be boring and she would rather stay back and hang out with her friends. That was before she found out that everyone else was going away of course, and afterwards she could not go crawling back and ask to be taken along after all; not if she wanted to keep her teenage dignity.
Daniel had agreed to housesit for Janet, and keep an eye on Cassandra. Naturally, this was humiliating for Cassie, but Daniel was pretty cool, and he did his best not to crowd her. Cassandra was fairly sure that if her friends had been around, he would have turned a blind eye if she'd been out late, or even got a little drunk, but there just was no opportunity. Daniel had even tried to interest her in some work he was doing, but while archaeology was fun, at Daniel's level it was all a little dense for her taste.
'But' seemed to be the watchword of her vacation: I could do such-and-such, but…
At least Daniel made no attempt to 'relate' to her, and nose into what she liked doing. That was okay when Mom did it - it was embarrassing, but part of the whole 'parent' deal - but just weird from other grown-ups. And he had let her henna her hair, although he baulked at letting her experiment with the more vivid magenta dye she had her eye on.
Jack showing up was new, and a welcome change of pace for both Daniel and Cassie. Sam and Teal'c had both sent apologies, and Cassie was glad of that. She would see Sam on Saturday anyway, and with all four of them present, it would have been too easy for the kid to get edged out of the grown-up conversation.
The bass was also excellent, despite Jack's attempt to spoil the meal by explaining in unnecessary detail how leaving the guts in the fish until right before you cooked it added to the flavour. Apparently he had many more fish at home in his freezer now, and had fled the fishing trip when it became clear that Jacqueline Rede's approach to the hobby was far more aggressive than his. It was hard for him to relax, he explained, when the woman was wrestling violently with her latest victim for an hour in every three.
"I got a letter from an old friend today," Daniel mentioned, over ice cream. "She's on a dig in Vinland which she says might interest me. If you like," he told Cassie. "We could go up and pay a visit."
"Is that a good idea?" Jack asked. "I mean, when Dr Fraiser asked you to take care of Cassie, she probably didn't mean for you to take her to Scandinavia."
Daniel shared a look with Cassie before responding. "Vinland, Jack; not Finland. It's a tenth-century Viking settlement in Newfoundland."
"I knew that."
"It is still in another country," Daniel admitted. "But Cassie's sixteen, and if we okay it with Janet, and get General Hammond to pull some strings…"
"I'm not sure the General would appreciate being asked to use his priority access to take a teenager on holiday to Canada," Jack cautioned. "See," he added, in an aside to Cassie. "I know where Newfoundland is."
"It's okay," Cassie said, smiling. "I'm not too keen on going to Vinland anyway. I'd only cramp Daniel's style with his 'old friend'," she told Jack, confidentially.
"I just thought…" Daniel began. "Well, there's usually a lot of diggers from the local schools on these projects; people your age."
Cassandra's interest perked up.
"If nothing else, she's got a son who's sixteen." Daniel stood, and snatched an envelope from the dresser. He took out a photograph and showed it to Cassandra. "See."
The photograph showed a red-haired woman, about the same age as Daniel and Sam, standing by a boy of about twelve. He had the same hair as his mother, and at least at that age had been a good-looking boy. Even from a photograph there was something a little disconcerting about his eyes, but cute was cute…
"Could be fun," she allowed, slyly.
*
Saturday.
Cassandra had never been outside of the United States before - at least not since she had been living on Earth - so going to Canada was exciting for her, even if only to look at old things in holes.
"So, what kind of a name is Angharad?" Cassandra asked Daniel, as they left the terminal at St Anthony. His 'old friend', Dr Angharad Midhir, was supposed to be meeting them.
"It's a Welsh name," Daniel replied. "It means 'well-loved'."
"Why do names always have to have a meaning?" Jack demanded, following them out. "Jack doesn't have a meaning."
"Sure it does," Daniel replied. "It means 'God has shown favour'; aptly enough."
Jack assayed an offended expression. "Meaning?" He demanded.
"Just that you're lucky," Daniel assured him.
"Okay. So what about Flew?" Cassandra asked, interrupting the banter.
"Llew," Daniel corrected, enunciating the aspirated Brythonic double-l perfectly. "It means light, or fair."
"Flew," Cassandra tried again. "Chlew; no…Llew." She looked up, happily. "Llew. I think I've got it!"
"It'll do," a soft, lilting voice assured her.
Daniel turned, and took in the tall, sun-tanned figure standing near to them. "Annie!" He exclaimed.
"Danny!" She responded, and they clasped each other in a warm hug. "Gods, but it's been an age and more."
"Lifetimes," Daniel replied, more literally than Angharad could know. He held her off at arms' length and they gave each other the requisite inspection. "Looking good," he told her.
"And you," she replied. "I see you've been getting out in the field." She squeezed his biceps, briefly. "Mucking in with the work, too," she added, impressed.
"Well you've hardly been letting yourself go. How's Llew?"
"He's…Llew," Angharad replied. "But he's well. And who are these."
"Oh; this is Jack O'Neill; we work together."
"Pleasure," Jack said, shaking the archaeologist by the hand.
"Likewise."
"And this is Cassandra Fraiser. She's…"
"Purple?" Angharad hazarded, grinning at Cassie. "Welcome to Vinland, Cassandra."
"Thanks," Cassandra replied, taking her first good look at the woman. She had bright, cheerful brown eyes, to match her broad, infectious smile. Her dark red hair was pulled back into a thick ponytail, away from her tanned and muddied face and neck. She was dressed in combat trousers and a loose t-shirt, with a chunky lumberjack shirt pulled on against the cold, but left open. The pants and t-shirt were streaked with mud and dirt. Around her neck, Cassandra was startled to see that Angharad wore…
"Mjollnir," Angharad said.
"Pardon?"
"It's not an inverted crucifix," Angharad assured her. "It's a Mjollnir pendant; the hammer of Thor. A lot of people make that mistake," she added, kindly, as Cassie began to stammer a protest.
"Boy, is my face red," Jack admitted.
"Don't let it worry you. Happens all the time."
Daniel grinned. "Do you remember that girl, Karen?"
"The heavy metal Satanist?" Angharad replied. "Yeah; I remember her."
Daniel turned to Cassandra and Jack. "She wore an inverted pentagram around her neck," he explained. "People always asked if she was Jewish."
Jack smiled, feeling a little awkward, and keenly aware that there was more history between these two than just old friendship.
"The car's out front," Angharad told them. "There's not much traffic hereabouts, so I left it in the white zone." She led them out to the loading area, and to a battered old jeep. "So; what's your field, Dr O'Neill?" She asked.
Jack made his startled face. "Oh. It's Colonel; actually," he said. "And I'm…more of an enthusiast than a professional."
"Me too," Cassandra added.
"So what's with the hammer?" Jack asked.
"I'm Asatru," Angharad replied.
"A Pagan, worshipping the Æsir; the old Norse gods," Daniel explained, in response to Jack's desperate glance.
"Good choice," Jack said, approvingly. "Better them than the Egyptian ones anyway."
"Or the Indian," Cassandra said, shuddering.
Angharad looked at the two of them, questioningly.
"Private…joke," Jack told her. "You kinda had to be there."
Angharad shrugged, and climbed up behind the wheel. "Buckle up," she advised. "I drive fast."
Angharad Midhir's dig was in a field, a short distance outside the town of St Anthony, and some miles inland of the main Viking site at L'Anse aux Meadows. In the centre of the field, a huge tent had been erected to protect the excavation from the rain and the wind, and from prying eyes.
"How did this site turn up?" Daniel asked Angharad.
"I don't want to tell you," the woman replied. "You'd laugh."
"Me? The man who stated publicly that the pyramids were alien landing platforms?"
Angharad relented. "Llew found it," she said. "Dowsed it."
"Doused it?" Jack asked, baffled. "He got it wet?"
"Dowsed," Angharad repeated. "He sensed the presence of the site under the ground when we were visiting L'Anse aux Meadows."
"Oh. How very…scientific."
Angharad smiled at Daniel, taking his arm. "You brought me a sceptic," she said, laughing. "How sweet."
"You don't feel it then?" Cassandra asked Jack, as the two archaeologists moved ahead, eager to reach the site.
"Feel what?"
Cassandra shook her head. "I don't know," she admitted. "Something though."
Under the tent, small teams of diggers worked in trenches three to six feet deep. At the heart of the dig however, a massive square trench had been sunk, uncovering a large, stone structure. The structure was almost twenty feet high and square-planned; thirty-feet along the base of each wall, tapering to twenty along each side of the roof. On one side was a rectangular doorway, framed by pillars and a lintel-stone, and flanked by two demi-pylons, jutting from the stone.
"That's not Viking," Daniel said, as soon as he saw it.
"You recognise it?" Angharad asked.
"It looks like an Egyptian funerary temple," Daniel replied.
Angharad nodded. "Come and take a closer look," she invited, and the two of them clambered down a ladder, into the trench, leaving Jack and Cassandra behind.
"I guess we just find ways to amuse ourselves then," Jack said to Cassandra.
"Hmm," Cassandra replied, distractedly. As Daniel had promised, there were a number of people her age on the site, mostly digging and barrowing, and she was rapidly losing interest in adult company. She looked around, and a lone figure caught her eye.
From the shock of auburn hair, she knew at once that he must be Llew Midhir, but that was not what drew her attention. Rather, she noted a sense of stillness and distance about him, as though he were apart from the world around him. Cassandra was not a girl given to feelings or intuition - whether she was supposed to be a step on the road to Nirrti's psychic Übermensch or not - but she had a distinct impression of something uncanny about the boy.
Leaving Jack standing alone, she walked over to the tall youth. Before she could hail him, he turned to face her. He had matured well since the photograph that Daniel had shown her - enough so that it might have been hard to be sure that he was the same boy - but as well as the hair, the eyes were the same. They were penetrating eyes; not in some smouldering, heart-throbby, Mills & Boon sense, but in that they seemed to look right through her in an unfocused and disconcerting fashion, as though she were somehow unreal. Cassie had heard an expression once that described a gaze like his: A thousand-yard stare.
The fact that she usually heard that phrase attached to images of shell-shocked teenagers in the Vietnam War was kind of disturbing.
"Hi," she said, when he stayed silent. "I'm Cassandra Fraiser."
Llew shook his head, although waking from some kind of trance. "Hello, Cassandra," he said, distractedly, with the same lilting accent as his mother; Welsh, she guessed. "I'm Llew," he added, after a long moment. "Llew Midhir."
"I figured," she replied. "I'm not interrupting anything, am I?"
"No. Nothing important." He shook his head again, and his eyes cleared somewhat. "You're…?"
"Purple," Cassandra interrupted. "I know. It seemed a good idea at the time."
"I was going to say, you're here with Dr Jackson?"
Cassandra blushed. "Oh. That's right," she replied. "Mom dumped me on him - or him on me; I'm not really sure."
Llew smiled at that, then: "You have the most incredible aura," he told her.
Cassandra was taken aback somewhat, unsure how to respond. Was that a compliment?
"Who's your friend, Cassandra?" Jack asked, strolling up behind her, a protective edge to his voice.
Cassie could have died. She loved her surrogate family dearly, but sometimes it could be like she had two mothers and three fathers. Three big fathers. "This is Llew Midhir," she said, gritting her teeth.
"Hey, Lou," Jack said. If Llew took offence at Jack's poor pronunciation, he made no sign.
"Llew, this is Jack O'Neill; a friend of my mother."
Llew turned his gaze to Jack, and smiled. "Pleased to meet you, sir," he said. "If there's anything you need while you're here, just ask."
"Llew," Cassandra said. "Maybe you could show me around the site. And I'm sure Jack would like to sit down somewhere; rest that bad knee?" She suggested, pointedly.
"I don't have a bad knee," Jack assured her.
"Well…why don't I show you both around?" Llew offered, warily.
"Sounds great," Jack replied. "My knee is fine," he insisted, off Cassie's scowl.
The girl narrowed her eyes, dangerously. "Arrangements can be made."
Daniel walked slowly around the base of the tomb-temple, examining the carvings in wonder.
"This is…incredible," he said.
"Tell me about it," Angharad agreed. "An Egyptian structure, in Newfoundland, covered in Icelandic runic inscriptions."
"References to a goddess," Daniel said. "I think the same one all the way around, but there are no names. Just this: 'She who in time shall rule all'; are you familiar with that pseudonym?"
Angharad shook her head. "Means nothing to me; and don't think I haven't looked. Aside from a few references to H. Rider-Haggard and 'She Who Must Be Obeyed', there's nothing I can find like it anywhere."
Daniel shuddered inwardly, remembering his own encounter with the powerful and cruel Goa'uld Queen Ayesha, but hid the reaction from Angharad.
"I'll tell you what, though," she said. "That still isn't the most exciting part of this find."
"It's not?"
"Nuh-uh. Come see the incident room; I'll show you."
The incident room for the dig was a portacabin, where finds and log books could be shielded from the elements. Angharad booted up a laptop computer, and showed Daniel a site plan, with all of the finds mapped onto it.
"Okay," she said. "Now the stratigraphy in this area around the tomb was well-preserved; no significant shifting or interpenetration of the layers."
"Okay," Daniel said. "So any finds from the level around the foot of the tomb should be roughly concurrent with it."
"Exactly. Now among those finds are several posts - fashioned from local wood - which seem to have formed a boundary enclosure around the temple. We dated those using dendrochronology, and look at the results."
Daniel took the log book that Angharad was offering, and studied the dates. "This can't be right," he said.
"I thought so at first, but all of the posts came back the same," Angharad insisted. "The temple was erected in the twelfth century, and we can tentatively show occupation by Nordic people as late as 1217 by the tree-rings."
"The Vinland settlement was abandoned by the turn of the eleventh century," Daniel insisted.
"I know," Angharad agreed. "But this is real, Danny! This is a Nordic settlement - with Egyptian influences - that outlasts the Vinland colony by over a century." She studied Daniel's face, intently. "You don't seem excited," she said, disappointed.
"I am, Annie," Daniel replied, honestly. "But I'm worried as well. Do you remember Sarah Gardner?"
"The chippie you dumped me for when I went off to dig in Scandinavia instead of Egypt? Yeah I remember her," she added, her hostility relenting at the look of pain on his face. "Danny?"
"She and Dr Jordan found something; something that went a long way towards proving some of my theories. They both died because of it," he told her, bitterly.
"Oh, Daniel. I'm so sorry." Angharad reached out, and laid a comforting hand on Daniel's arm.
Daniel flushed, awkwardly, hating the fact that he had to lie to Angharad. "It's probably silly, but…I'm afraid of the same thing happening to you."
Angharad smiled, softly. "I have a shrine to Thor in my trailer; I'm not going to be the one to mock you for being superstitious," she assured him.
"People…have a tendency to die around me," Daniel said, wanting to say more, but constrained by the secrecy that surrounded his job.
Angharad's eyes clouded with concern. "Don't worry about me," she assured him, touching her amulet. "I'm protected."
Daniel smiled, mutely; not trusting himself to speak.
Jack was feeling somewhat like a fifth wheel. When he asked Daniel if he could join the trip to Newfoundland, it had seemed like a good idea, the alternatives being to listen to Carter talk about naquadah for a week, watch the Sci-Fi Channel with Teal'c, or go back to Minnesota, and Jack the Piscatorial Ripper. Almost as soon as they arrived, however, he remembered why it was that he never liked going on archaeological missions.
Llew Midhir had shown he and Cassie around the site, and Jack now felt privileged to have seen the larval stage of Daniel Jackson in its native environment. Llew seemed a decent enough kid, but he was vague and absent-minded in almost exactly the same way that Daniel was. He wore a pendant; a spade-shaped emblem, quite different from his mother's Mjollnir, but that Jack recognised from Cimmeria as Thor's Hammer. If he was another Æsir worshipper, and if he really did claim to have unearthed this site by psychic means, then he probably had about as much of an academic career to look forward to as Daniel, only without any chance of finding employment with the SGC.
The kid's explanations of what was going on at the site were deeply involved, and made little sense to Jack. Cassandra had carefully questioned him on points that she did not understand, drawing out the less technical version - a skill that he assumed one would have to develop if Daniel was ever your babysitter - but even those clarifications had been all Norse to Jack. Some of the other diggers had chipped in, and done nothing to help Jack's understanding of events.
He was in two minds about sticking with Cassie. On the one hand, she would find it easier to talk to the other high school kids on the site without him, and besides, he was starting to feel old. On the other hand, he knew the kind of looks some of those kids were shooting in Cassie's direction, and dreaded to think what might happen if he were not around to glower at them.
"Dr O'Neill," Llew said, quietly.
"It's Colonel," Jack corrected, again. "But thanks for pretending I don't look completely lost."
Llew smiled. "I just wanted to say, if you'd rather hang out with the other grown-ups, I can look out for Cassandra for you."
"That's very kind of you," Jack replied, suspiciously.
"It's not much to do," Llew assured him, grinning. "You've scared most of the guys off already. If you're worried about me, I give you my word I won't try anything," he added.
"I still remember being a teenager too well for that," Jack assured him, but he was wavering. "Okay," he said. "But I'll hold you responsible…"
"I can live with that," Llew promised.
Somewhat reassured - the kid seemed decent enough - Jack went off in search of Daniel.
"God," Cassandra sighed. "I never thought he'd stop following me. It's like no one trusts me to make my own decisions."
"Welcome to adolescence." Llew looked after Jack's retreating figure. "And he does trust you; he just worries. He needed some kind of reassurance is all."
"And you know this from meeting him once?"
Llew shrugged. "Isn't it obvious?"
"You read it in his aura?" Cassandra asked, casually.
"Didn't have to," Llew replied.
Oblique hints not working, Cassandra took the bull by the horns. "You said my aura was…incredible. What did you mean?"
"It's just…" Llew waved his hand, searching for words to describe the indescribable. "I've never seen anything like it."
"So you see auras?"
"Well…see is the wrong word. I sense things. I can't really explain it; I've always done it, ever since I was a kid."
"So, what? You know what people are feeling?"
"Not exactly," Llew replied, still struggling for the words. "It's not that precise; or that useful," he added. "But I can often tell what kind of a place someone's from, and the kind of place they'd be given the choice."
"Example?"
"Well…Jack there," Llew said, gazing at the retreating figure. "I'd say he's from the city, but he doesn't care for company much; not in the wider sense. Not exactly a loner, but he doesn't let many people get close. I'd also say he's a man of action, but he likes the quiet. Kind of a barrel of contradictions; like most people."
"Pretty good, Cassandra admitted. "So what about me?"
"You…" He paused. "Well, you're something of a mystery. Young people are less set in their ways than older people, which always makes them harder to get a handle on. But I'd say you come from…not exactly the country, but not a big city either. Your roots are spiritual, but you're very much a rationalist."
"Believe me, I have reasons," Cassandra assured him.
Llew smiled at her. "There's also something…otherworldly about you," he said.
Cassandra turned her head to hide a secretive smile.
Jack found Daniel standing at the sealed front door to the structure, scribbling on a commandeered notepad. The archaeologist's face was fixed in an expression of concentration that Jack knew only too well. It was the look that usually meant staying at least another three days on whatever godforsaken rock Daniel had found a cartouche, or a stela, or a flint arrowhead.
"So what do you reckon?" Jack asked. "Goa'uld? Asgard? Or good old-fashioned human architecture?"
"Hmm?" Daniel looked up at Jack, registering his presence. "Well, I think the workmanship on the temple is certainly human. The language is Norse - Medieval Icelandic, to be exact - not the original Asgard, and the design has strong Egyptian elements, but it isn't Egyptian. At the time this was constructed, the only people supposed to be living here were indigenous tribes. There are contemporary Viking artefacts, which is weird, because at the time there really weren't any Vikings anymore; not even back in the motherland. It's like there was a single village, for whom the whole eleventh century never happened."
Jack nodded. "So what do you reckon? Goa'uld? Asgard? Or…"
"Annie!" Daniel called out, interrupting Jack as Angharad rounded the corner of the structure.
"Dr Meer," Jack greeted her.
"Angharad, please," she insisted, with a smile. "Dr Midhir is my father."
Jack smiled back. "Alright, Anharad, although you know I was just trying to avoid having to pronounce it."
"Well, you're mangling my family name as is," she noted, smiling broadly. "How about Annie?"
"Sounds fine, Arnie," Jack said.
Angharad grinned. "So what do you make of our site?" She asked.
"Well…" Jack began. "It seems very nice. Very orderly, and…"
"Not having much fun?" Daniel asked.
"That obvious?"
"Only to the living," Angharad assured him. "If you want something to do, we can always use some more muscular slaves…I mean, diggers, in the trenches. I can assign one of the postgrads to keep an eye on you?"
"Well, as much fun as it sounds to dig holes under the supervision of a twenty-five year old with more education than me…I've nothing better to do," he confessed.
"Come on then," she said. "We'll get you a mattock."
*
Jack arched his back, pressing his fist into his spine to try and relieve the dull ache.
"Not used to the work?" Mary, his supervisor asked.
Jack grimaced. "The muscular slave gig? It's old hat to me, but every time I have to do something like this, I think I should be used to it. But I never am."
"You'll get back in the swing in no time." Mary assured him, with a smile. She was a mature grad student with Memorial University's Anthropology Department; a handsome, dark-haired Canadian in her early thirties, possibly with some Native American blood. It was nine o'clock, and she and Jack were sitting with the younger supervisors - Tamsin and John, an intensely coupley couple - around a fire some distance from the site. Their tents were pitched around a well-banked firepit, while the younger students and volunteers camped closer to the site. Angharad's trailer was parked right next to the incident room, and Mary explained that this was so that Dr Midhir could keep an eye on things overnight.
"What kind of things?" Jack asked.
"It's just in case of site robbers, looking for stuff to sell as souvenirs," Tamsin explained, with an air of disgust.
In his first day as an archaeological digger, Jack had gone through about three inches of soil, and uncovered a broken clay pot and a flat piece of corroded metal. He had thought the latter might be a sword, but Mary had tentatively identified as a weaving baton. They were on the edge of the site, but Mary thought that they might be excavating the outskirts of a burial area. Despite Jack's disappointment, the finds had been very exciting for her, and once again Jack was struck by the fact that this was the kind of place where they made Daniels.
"I think we might get the top of a skelly on Monday," she told Tamsin and John.
"Just the top?" John asked.
"Well, it's at the edge of the trench. We'd need to take it back another metre to get to the whole thing, I reckon."
The conversation continued in much this vein, liberally lubricated by alcohol, for a few hours. Mostly, Jack found it very dull, but on occasion he found himself following the discussion with some interest. He was not sure if that should be worrying.
At around half-past-ten, Jack found that Tamsin was offering him a drag on a joint, which he politely refused.
"That's really why we camp up here," Mary told him. "We're not supposed to smoke on the site; it might bring the University into disrepute."
"So is the whole dig just an excuse to drink and smoke pot?" Jack asked.
Mary shook her head. "Just on Saturday night. We have to get up early every day but Sunday, so hangovers are not our friend."
"Are they anyone's?" Jack asked, trying to look anywhere but at Tamsin and John, who were now moving into an advanced state of make-out, apparently oblivious to their reluctant audience.
"You wanna go for a walk?" Mary asked, scooping up the abandoned joint as she stood.
"Yeah; let's."
"My head feels funny," Cassandra said.
"Yep," Llew agreed. "Pot'll do that to you."
They were lying on a hillside, shoulder to shoulder, looking up at the night sky. Cassandra was searching through the stars, looking for the one which she used to call 'the sun'.
"It's not like I thought," she admitted. "Mom gave me all these talks and stuff, but…"
"Well, it's not going to be much of an anti-drugs campaign, is it?" Llew noted. He adopted a stuffy, public-information voice, and said: "If you're not already depressed, cannabis will make you mellow, and a little more creative. It's actually far less harmful or addictive than alcohol or nicotine."
Cassandra gave a long, high, giddy laugh. "What was that?" She wondered aloud.
"That, Cassie, was you being high."
Cassandra sighed, contentedly. "It's so different," she said.
"What is?"
"That sky," she said. "It's so different from the one I grew up with."
"How so?"
"Well…different stars mostly. Or the same stars, but in a different order. See that there," she said, pointing into the sky.
"Which one?" Llew asked, leaning his head in closer to hers.
"Track along Orion's belt to the right and keep going. The brightest star in that rather faint cluster."
Llew squinted slightly, following her directions. "I think I see it," he said.
"That's home," Cassandra told him. "That's Hanka; well, her sun at least. Jack and Sam taught me how to find it."
Llew propped himself on one elbow and looked down at Cassandra, quizzically. "Maybe I should have mentioned," he said. "Cannabis also makes you chatty."
Cassandra frowned, then shrugged. "Meh. So I probably shouldn't have told you that. Can I trust you to keep a secret?"
"Your secret? Like it was my own," he promised, solemnly.
Cassandra turned her head towards him. "That's so sweet."
Llew smiled, and lay back on the grass. "So long as I don't find out you're bent on world domination." He added. Then he paused. "Well…England you can have, but not Wales. Okay; maybe Swansea."
Cassandra gave vent to another peal of giggles. "Mom's going to kill me if she finds out I did drugs," she admitted once she was done laughing. "What would yours do?"
Llew laughed. "Mam gave me the bong," he told her. "Didn't want me smoking tobacco."
Jack and Mary strolled around the field, while Mary finished off the joint. Jack refused each offer of a drag, and was regaled with a lengthy discourse on the advantages of cannabis over alcohol.
"Damages your short term memory though," Jack mentioned.
"What does?" Mary asked, grinning. "Come on; let's go say hi to Dr Midhir."
Mary led Jack around another of the small hills that dotted the area, and they came across a small fire burning in a hollow. Daniel and Angharad sat by the fire, talking animatedly, and the scent of cannabis smoke was thick in the air.
"You as well?" Jack asked Angharad. "Is everyone on this site stoned?"
"Not on site," Angharad insisted. "I'm very clear on that point."
"Anyway," Daniel said. "Can you think of anything else to do in a campsite, miles from anywhere on a Saturday night? Apart from that," he added, as Jack opened his mouth to give the obvious reply.
"No pubs? No bars?"
"Not nearby," Angharad replied. "And anyway, I don't like to encourage teenage drinking."
"And you're fine with this?" Jack asked Daniel, sitting opposite the two archaeologists.
"Jack," Daniel replied. "Right now, I'm fine with just about anything."
"You're stoned!" Jack accused, shocked.
"Damn straight. Who's your friend?"
"Daniel Jackson; Mary Lasuip." Mary and Daniel exchanged hellos, and the woman sat down, quietly.
"I'd offer you a toke," Angharad assured Jack. "But I'm pretty much out."
"That's…okay," Jack replied. "I'm not sure it would help with this culture shock anyway. Daniel…"
"Jack?"
"You're stoned," Jack repeated. "Does this happen often?"
Daniel shrugged. "Not often. Only in company. And not for years now. I don't think I've been this stoned since my wedding day."
"You were stoned when you got married? And I thought you were corrupting them with your moonshine."
"First wedding," Daniel added. "When I was twenty-three years old."
Jack was momentarily dumbstruck. "What?" He asked, when he had recovered. "Who?"
Angharad raised her arm, almost shyly.
"And this is something you never felt needed a mention? In all the years we've known each other?"
"How often do we talk about our pasts?" Daniel replied. "I mean, really? It was the best part of a year before I found out Sam even had a brother."
Jack shrugged his agreement. "Okay. So what happened."
"We were undergrads together," Angharad explained. "Always good friends, and in our final year we dated."
"After we graduated," Daniel took up. "We both got places on a dig in Egypt with Professor Jordan."
"The same Professor Jordan?"
"The one and only," Daniel replied, fondly; sadly.
"Real chance of a lifetime stuff," Angharad agreed. "But with one major snag."
"We'd be working with an Egyptian crew," Daniel explained. "They don't take well to unmarried couples, at least not ones who sleep together; and they definitely don't think much of single mothers."
"Since neither of us was really comfortable with outright lying about our status, we decided to get married," Angharad concluded. "After the dig we went our separate ways: He deeper into Egypt, and I to Scandinavia, Iceland, Greenland and eventually here."
Jack was taken aback. "So you were divorced when I met you?"
Daniel blushed. "Well, we weren't legally married, so we didn't have to. We just exchanged vows, so we could be comfortable saying we were married."
"And what? You changed your minds after a year? I may be going senile, but legally wed or not, don't the vows say, 'til death do us part?" Daniel opened his mouth, but Jack cut him off. "And I know I'm a hypocrite, but I'm an honest hypocrite."
Angharad shrugged. "Ours didn't," she told Jack. "We were married for a year in a pagan ceremony. It's an ancient custom; to see how marriage fits on you."
"And it didn't?"
Daniel see-sawed his hand. "It was good," he said. "But we wanted different things; in our work and in our lives. The plan was to see how things were in a year, and then a year after that, until we were ready to commit full-time, or one of us called it a day."
"It took six months before he was shacked up with a new skirt," Angharad added. "Which is better than some I've known."
Daniel looked awkward.
"Don't fret," she said. "The long distance thing was killing me anyway. All you did was save me the guilt of having to dump you."
"Thirteen years ago, it would have been a huge help to know that," Daniel told her.
"I have to ask," Jack said. "Is Llew…"
"No!" Angharad snapped, sharply. "I mean, no. I was pregnant with him when I met Daniel. Not something I planned on, although I don't regret having him."
A new brittleness had slipped into Angharad's voice as she spoke, and Daniel put his hand in hers and gave a gentle squeeze. Jack let the matter drop.
*
Sunday.
Sunday was a slow day for Jack. The diggers took the day off, while Daniel and Angharad fussed over translations and cross-references.
Mary drove Jack and Cassie up to L'Anse aux Meadows to look at the Viking remains there, with Llew tagging along. Jack found it almost as dull as the sitting through one of Daniel's briefings, only much colder, and he was distracted by the fact that Cassandra was showing signs of being far too close to Llew for comfort. Jack's own adolescence might be the stuff of history books, but he still remembered that things happened between teenagers, and if they did, he was pretty sure Dr Fraiser would not be taking: 'it was legal in Canada', for an excuse. He also had no doubts that she would know - somehow - and that she would blame Jack and Daniel for not looking after Cassie.
Having a CMO hate your guts was never a good place to be.
It didn't help his state of mind that Cassandra was clearly being nervous and secretive about something. For his part, Llew assured Daniel - who assured Jack - that his intentions were honourable, but Jack had long since learned not to trust too much in intentions.
*
Monday.
On Monday morning, Angharad announced to the assembled diggers that she had decided to open the tomb. With Daniel's help, she had discerned that it could be pulled free with ropes, if they drilled a number of bolts into the slab, and they intended to proceed at once. While John was drilling the bolt holes, Daniel took Jack aside.
"Did you by any chance…" Daniel paused, awkwardly, as if embarrassed to be asking. "Smuggle a gun through customs?"
"Just a zat," Jack replied, defensively.
"No; that's good," Daniel assured him. "I've got a bad feeling about this tomb, and I'd like you to come in with us when it's opened."
"Okay," Jack agreed. "What sort of bad?"
"I don't know," Daniel protested. "It's just a feeling. But the temple seems to be dedicated to 'She who in time shall rule all' and it has Egyptian design elements, so I'm starting to get that nasty, crunchy feeling in the back of my neck."
"Sounds about right," Jack agreed. "Zat's in my tent."
"Take your time. That slab's not coming down until midday at least."
Cassandra and Llew watched as the bolts were inserted into the heavy slab. Llew was sitting on the edge of the trench, but Cassie was standing, not wanting to get mud on her jeans. After a while, Llew wordlessly spread his coat on the ground next to him, and Cassie sat.
"So what do they expect to find in there?" She asked.
Llew shrugged. "I'm not sure. Mam thinks it's probably a tomb, or possibly a tomb entrance, but Dr Jackson…he looks nervous; almost afraid."
Cassandra shivered, and Llew put an arm around her shoulders. It was not the cold that had provoked the reaction, but she made no complaint.
"Do you think there's something in there to be scared of?" Llew asked.
"I don't…" She hazarded. "There could be," she allowed. "I don't know the details - everyone tries to protect me from things - but I know one of Daniel's friends was killed last year."
"Sarah Gardner," Llew replied. "Mam mentioned it. But that was a dig in Egypt, surely?"
"There are bad things out there," Cassandra cautioned, barely hiding her fear. Since the time when Nirrti had managed to reach her in the SGC complex itself, she had some difficulty feeling safe anywhere when the subject of the Goa'uld came up.
Llew nodded, slowly. Then he lifted the Mjollnir pendant from his neck, and gently hung it around Cassie's. "I think you could use the protection more than me just at the moment," he said.
A line of students hauled on each of the two ropes, with Jack and Daniel heading up the effort.
"Is it moving?" Jack asked.
"Not a hope!" Mary called from beside the door. "This is just an excuse to get you two shirtless."
"It's going," Cassandra assured him. "One more good pull."
"Okay," Angharad said, from behind Daniel. "Once more. One, two, three; pull!"
The ropes snapped taut, as the students pressed back, and with a dull crash, the slab came free of the doorway and fell forward onto its face, bending the iron bolts beneath it. The students set up a cheer, as Daniel stepped forward to examine the doorway. Jack picked up his shirt and pulled it on over his vest, feeling the chill of the wind as the sweat on his arms cooled.
"Look at this," Daniel called to Angharad.
The woman stepped over to him, donning her lumberjack shirt, and handing Daniel his jacket. "You'll catch your death," she told him, crouching beside him and resting a familiar hand on his shoulder.
Daniel smiled his thanks and put the jacket on. "See here," he said, pointing. "The edge of the doorway, where the slab touched."
"It's so smooth," Angharad said, thoughtfully. "After so long, there should be some sign of corrosion. Unless the tomb were completely sealed."
"Which it wasn't," Daniel added. "Or we'd never have got the slab out so easily."
"Water's been in here," Angharad noted. There's staining on the floor, some slight erosion on the edges of the slab itself, but this…"
"Is no ordinary stone," Daniel finished, with a significant glance at Jack.
"This just gets better and better," Angharad breathed, which was not quite Daniel's sentiment. She took a torch from her tool belt and flicked it on, casting the beam around the inside of the chamber.
"But why would the slab be ordinary stone?" Cassie asked. "I mean, why make the doorway out of super-rock, but the door regular…whatever stone it is?"
"Granite," Daniel told her. "Maybe the slab wasn't built at the same time as the rest of the structure," he suggested. "It's not local stone, is it?"
Angharad shook her head. "We're on limestone."
"Dr Midhir!" Mary called out. "Come look!" Angharad and Daniel hurried to the slab, to see what had excited the woman so much. "See," she said. "On the inside of the slab."
"Oh my gods," Angharad whispered.
"More exciting pots?" Jack asked.
"Better than that," Daniel said, pointing to the deeply scratched markings on the back of the slab.
"That's what you're excited about? Isn't there more of that stuff all over the walls?"
Daniel and Angharad shared a despairing look. "Like this, sure," Daniel allowed, pointing to a block of runic text. Then he indicated the markings surrounding it. "But not like this."
Jack squinted at the designs. "What is that? Looks like really badly drawn hieroglyphics."
"They're Mi'kmaq totemic drawings," Mary told him, sternly.
"Mick who?"
"The Mi'kmaq," Mary repeated. "The tribe who were indigenous to this area."
"Mary's our site expert on ancient Mi'kmaq culture," Angharad told Daniel, causing the woman to blush.
"I wouldn't say expert. I'm not sure anyone is these days; so much of the culture was wiped out by the church before anyone started documenting it. But I know a little, and my grandfather was Mi'kmaq."
"So do these mean the same as the runic text?" Angharad asked.
"Uh-huh. Designs like these would be sketched by the puoin - the shaman - to ward off evil spirits. Although the Mi'kmaq don't usually do anything so…indelible."
"So what we have here," Daniel said. "Is a Mi'kmaq puoin, working with a Viking craftsman to create a ward against evil spirits on the inside of a granite seal."
"But the Viking settlers and the locals hated each other," Angharad said. "We know that."
"Maybe not this lot; or not at first. Maybe that's why they stayed here so long?"
Angharad beamed with excitement. "Whatever the reason, they must have feared the structure, and whatever was supposed to be in it."
Daniel shared a worried look with Jack.
"I can't wait to see what got them so scared." Angharad said. "Shall we?"
"Let's," Daniel agreed, although a trifle reluctant.
Angharad turned back to the diggers. "John; stay up here, and if anything happens, call emergency services. Mary; measure up the slab, and try to work out how tightly it was fitted into here. See if you can get a material analysis sample from the frame; then you can see what parallels you can find for the inscription." Mary nodded, clearly as excited as her boss. "Jack, Cassandra; would you care to join us?"
Both nodded their thanks, Jack resting his hand on the pocket of his borrowed tool belt which concealed his zat'nik'tel. He was uneasy with the idea of Cassandra venturing in to what could possibly be a Goa'uld's resting place, but then the alternative was to leave her alone on the surface with Llew, and risk answering for the consequences.
"You seem tense?" Llew told Jack. The boy seemed to be taking it as read that he was coming into the tomb as well.
"Just excited to be a part of this," Jack assured him.
Daniel and Angharad led the way into the dark interior of the tomb. Angharad slid open the sides of her torch, converting it into an electric lantern which cast light all around them, and through their shadows eerily onto the dark walls.
Immediately inside the doorway was a plain and unadorned antechamber, some ten feet wide and fifteen long, and a second doorway, this unsealed. Beyond the second door was a corridor, the floor of which inclined steeply downwards. The walls of this passage were decorated with murals, depicting stylised humans in dragon-headed longships, and a horned figure dancing before a great stone.
"Okay," Daniel said. "This is weird."
"Ya think?" Jack asked.
Daniel ignored the facetious tone. "Well, these are Vikings, depicted in Egyptian style. All profile, standardised proportions, formulaic gestures."
"And look at this," Angharad said, pointing to the horned dancer.
"What do you think?" Daniel asked. "A god?"
"He couldn't just be a guy in a horned helmet?" Jack suggested.
"Vikings didn't wear horned helmets," Daniel told him. "That whole idea comes from one picture on one tapestry, almost certainly representing either Odin or an Odin cultist performing some ritual role."
"This looks like the latter to me," Angharad admitted. "I think the stone is an altar. Look; where the paint has been scraped away."
"More like gouged," Daniel noted. "As though…"
Angharad nodded. "As though they were removing the name of something that they did not want named."
Jack suppressed a shiver. "Okay; now I've been hanging around with you long enough to know that that's not good, right?" He asked Daniel.
"No. It means that whoever this temple was dedicated to fell out of favour, and whatever came after was so scared that they tried to remove all traces of it. That description - She who in time will rule all - was left, but the name obliterated wherever it occurred."
They went further in, following the passage down and around a sharp u-turn. As they went on, they found more and more traces of deliberate destruction in the decoration.
"So why not just destroy the murals outright?" Cassandra asked, nervously.
"If the image remains, but unnamed, then it traps and torments the spirit," Llew replied. He was plainly as jittery as Cassandra, and, the girl guessed, for the same reasons. As they followed the passage further and further underground, the sense of power which they had both felt on the surface grew stronger and stronger. Cassandra was just wondering if it would be inexcusably weak and girly to take Llew's hand for support, when she felt him reach out to her. They were both trembling.
"There's something down there," Cassandra whispered.
"I feel it too," Llew assured her.
"Are you two okay?" Jack asked, concerned.
"We're okay," Cassie returned. "But…keep on your toes."
"I always do," Jack replied, feigning offence at the implication he might let his guard down.
On the walls, the scenes were becoming more bizarre, with skeletal figures bowing reverently before a female figure. As in the passage above, much of the writing had been scraped away.
"I like the idea of 'She who will in time rule all', less and less," Daniel admitted.
"You think that's her?" Jack asked, gesturing at the figure of worship.
Daniel nodded. "I think so. If I'm not mistaken, that's Hel."
Jack nodded. "And who's the woman?"
"Hel," Angharad repeated. "One 'l'; the Norse goddess of death. All unworthy men, and all Vikings who did not die in battle, went to her hall in Muspel and became her slaves, to battle against the Gods at Ragnarok."
"While those who did die in battle went to Sesrumnir," Jack said, nodding his understanding. "That bit I know."
"Or Valhalla," Angharad added. "But yes; they became the Einherjar; warriors of the Gods. The greatest of all honours."
"Good food, too."
"Jack," Daniel chided.
"Daniel?" Jack replied, blandly.
"It's alright, Daniel," Angharad assured him. "I don't mind."
After perhaps twenty minutes, they reached the end of the corridor.
"Damnit!" Angharad swore. The passage terminated in a wall, set with a sealed doorway. A large, smooth, circular runestone was set beside the door. "I don't think this one's going to come out so easily," she said, feeling around the edge of the door.
Cassandra and Llew gripped each other's hands tightly.
"There's something in there," Llew cautioned. "Something powerful."
"It's your imagination, kid," Jack assured him.
"No," Cassie replied. "I can feel it too. Like I can feel…" She broke off, unable to say what she wanted in the presence of Llew and Angharad.
Jack nodded, and took the zat out of his tool belt.
"What's that?" Angharad asked.
"Just a precaution," Jack assured her. "Don't worry. I'm not going to shoot the place up."
"Danny…?"
"Please, Annie," Daniel replied. "Trust me."
"You brought an armed soldier onto my dig," she said, hurt. "And you didn't tell me."
"I hoped it wouldn't be necessary," he said, sadly. "But trust me; we know what we're doing."
Angharad frowned, sensing that Daniel was hiding something from her, and clearly cut to the quick. "Do you?"
Daniel smiled, thinly. Then he reached out, and twisted the runestone. The door slid upwards, leaving the opening clear. "Yes," he replied.
"Llew; I want you to stay out here," Angharad said, nervously. "If the ceiling falls in on us, go and get help."
"I wish you wouldn't say things like that," Llew replied, trying for levity, and failing.
"Cassie; you should stay out here too," Jack added.
"For starters, I'm really not insured for you," Angharad told the girl, cutting off her protests. "I shouldn't have let you down here in the first place."
"Besides," Llew said. "Who's going to look after me?"
Cassandra smiled, but the expression wavered. "Okay; I'll stay back here."
"Be careful," Llew repeated.
"Always," Jack promised.
Cassandra watched, clutching Llew's fingers, as the three grown-ups passed through the door. From her vantage point, she could see that they were entering a small, domed chamber, with no other exits. At the centre of the room was a pedestal, covered in markings, from which the sense of power seemed to radiate.
"Can you feel that," Cassandra whispered, the hairs along her arms standing on end.
"I don't like it," Llew admitted.
In the chamber, Daniel and Angharad were standing on opposite sides of the pedestal, while Jack kept watch. Daniel appeared to be doing something to the slab.
"Do they really know what they're doing?" Llew asked.
"Oh yeah," Cassie assured him. "Your Mom couldn't be in better hands." Unless Sam and Teal'c were here as well, she thought, but she didn't say it, very aware of Llew's anxiety. She forced herself to stop trembling, and gave his hand a supportive squeeze. "Seriously."
"Thanks," Llew said. "I just wish they…"
Llew froze, and Cassandra almost gasped out loud as a wave of energy rolled over them. It had no form, but she could feel it, pouring through the door and rushing towards the pedestal. Instinctively, Cassandra knew where it was as it struck Jack, boiled around him, flowed over Daniel and Angharad and grounded in the pedestal.
No one in the room made the slightest reaction.
"Mam!" Llew called, and Angharad looked up. "Get out! Get out, n…!"
The pedestal flared with blue-white light, so bright that Cassandra and Llew were forced to turn away. When they looked back, the room was dark, silent, and empty.
No-one on the surface had the first clue that anything had happened until Cassie and Llew burst out of the tomb, almost at a dead run.
"They'll be alright," Cassie said. "Sam'll know what to do. They'll be alright." Over and over she repeated it, like a mantra, as they hurried to Angharad's trailer, followed by a growing crowd of volunteers. Llew shut the door behind them, as Cassandra fumbled with her mobile phone.
"Sam?" She said at last. Then, after a pause: "Sam…they're gone. They just…they're gone."
*
Sam and Teal'c tried not to meet each other's eyes on the flight to Canada. So long as they managed that, they could each tell the other that Jack and Daniel would be alright; that this was not the first time members of SG-1 had gone missing, and they had always turned up safely in the end. So long as they could not see the lies in each others eyes, they could almost pretend that they really weren't worried.
There had been a fifty minute delay while they circled on the border, waiting for General Hammond to negotiate permission for their USAF C-37A Gulfstream to enter Canadian airspace, but it had still been quicker than flying commercially from Colorado Springs. As always, Hammond had gone one step beyond for his people: As well as providing the SGC's Gulfstream, he had arranged matters so that a Canadian Air Force CH-146 Griffon transport helicopter was waiting at St Anthony to whisk them to the dig site.
Sharing Sam and Teal'c's grim mood were Lieutenant Colonel Louis Ferretti and Captain Amy Kawalsky of SG-6. SG-6 had been assigned to assist in the search for Colonel O'Neill and Daniel Jackson because of Captain Kawalsky's training in anthropology - within the SGC, her knowledge in the field of ancient cultures was second only to Daniel Jackson when SG-11 were offworld on a dig - but both she and her CO had a personal interest in the mission. Ferretti had served with both men on the original Stargate mission, and aside from them was now the only survivor. Amy Kawalsky's brother, Charles, had also made it through that first reconnaissance, only to be killed a year later. Charles Kawalsky and Jack O'Neill had been good friends, and it was an open secret that Amy was very fond of Dr Jackson.
"They'll be fine," Sam said, for about the fifth time. She suspected that they were starting to make the two junior members of SG-6 nervous, and maybe the chopper pilot as well.
"They have both survived many dangers," Teal'c agreed. "And have vanished into thin air before now, always to return."
"Colonel O'Neill knows how to take care of himself," Amy added. "And Daniel…is with Colonel O'Neill."
"How much trouble could they have gotten into on an anthropological dig anyway?" Ferretti asked.
The other three groaned.
"Never ask questions like that," Sam said. "Not when Daniel's involved."
"And don't call it anthropology in front of him," Amy added.
Sam leaned forward and called to the pilot. "Sergeant; how…"
"A few minutes, Major," the pilot responded, without waiting for her to finish. "I can see the site up ahead."
"Remember to land well clear, and don't buzz the site," Amy called. "Last thing we want is a bunch of bad-tempered archaeologists."
Although the pilot obeyed Amy's instructions, avoiding spraying loose dirt into the trenches, the helicopter attracted quite a crowd when it touched down in the field. There did not appear to be a great deal of work going on at the site, even before the arrival of this distraction.
As Sam stepped down she saw Cassandra - taking a moment to recognise her with her new hair colour - standing with a boy at the front of the crowd, and hurried to her. She suppressed the urge to pull the girl into a hug, knowing Cassie found that awkward now she was in her adolescent years. Cassandra however showed no such restraint, grabbing hold of Sam, her body shaking.
"Thanks for coming so quickly," she said, once she'd calmed herself down. "This is Llew; Dr Midhir's son," she added, introducing the boy.
"Thank you for coming, Dr Carter," he repeated.
Sam nodded. "We're going to do everything we can," she assured him.
"You're very kind," Llew said. "We…" He paused, a look of fear crossing his face as he gazed over Sam's shoulder.
She looked back. "Oh. Lou; this is Teal'c." The two exchanged wary nods. Sam could understand that people found Teal'c intimidating when they did not know him, but this seemed like more than that.
Cassie caught Teal'c giving her an odd look. "You okay, Teal'c?" She asked.
"You are purple," the Jaffa replied. Cassandra gave a frail grin, and hugged him tightly.
"Miss Kawalsky," Llew greeted Amy, familiarly.
"Hey, kiddo," she returned, clasping the boy in a one-armed hug. "Daniel got me a place on one of Annie's digs in my final year," she told Sam, then introduced her team mates to the youth.
Llew seemed reassured by the familiar presence, but he took a moment to regain his composure before going on. "Where was I?" He asked. "Oh, yes. I was saying, we can take you to where it happened straight away."
"The others think you're a rescue team," Cassie told Sam as they walked towards the temple. "We told them that there was a cave in, and that moving the rocks just made more fall in."
"Well done, Cassie," Sam said. "We'll make a covert operative of you yet."
Cassandra smiled, but the expression was fleeting, and barely touched her eyes. "We think Daniel triggered the wave somehow; he was fiddling with the pedestal. It's covered in markings, but we don't know what they mean."
"Well," Llew added. "I know what they mean, as symbols; just not what they mean in context. They're letters, but don't seem to form words."
"What kind of letters?" Amy asked. "Runic? Hieroglyphic?"
"They…Would you excuse me a moment. Cassie; can I speak to you?"
"Uh…Sure." Cassandra turned to Sam. "We'll be back in two shakes."
"Wonder what that's all about?" Sam said, as the two youngsters drew apart from the adults and whispered together, darting occasional glances over their shoulders.
"Llew Midhir appears concerned over something more immediate than his mother's disappearance," Teal'c observed. Sam was surprised by the ease with which the Jaffa managed the Welsh names. "I believe that he distrusts us."
"You're getting that as well?" Sam asked. "I thought maybe I was just imagining it, but…" She broke off, as Cassandra and Llew returned.
"Everything okay?" Sam asked, casually.
"Sam," Cassie said. "Can you or Teal'c sense anything about this place?"
"Sense?" Sam asked, warily. Llew kept casting glances from her to Teal'c, with a look that was somewhere between anxiety and horror.
"Yes. Like you can sense the presence of a Goa'uld."
"Cassie!" Sam snapped, shocked at the girl's lack of discretion.
"Can you sense anything?" Cassie insisted.
"I sense nothing," Teal'c replied, locking his gaze with Llew. "We are here to help you," he told the boy. "Why do you not trust us?"
"Cut to the chase, huh?" Llew said. "Okay. I trust you; I don't trust it."
"It?" Sam asked, giving Cassandra the evil eye. The girl stared back, sullen and defiant. "So you know…?"
"I can feel it inside you," Llew told Teal'c. "It's…I've never felt anything so utterly evil."
"I know it sounds odd, Sam," Cassandra admitted. "But I think that Llew may be a Hak'tar. We can both feel the power coming from this place, and if you can't, then it's not just from the naquadah in my blood. And he senses things even I can't."
"Well," Sam said. "The symbiote inside Teal'c can't hurt anyone, not for years. We'll get rid of it before that, but he needs it to live."
Llew nodded, clearly disturbed by the idea. Cassandra gently took his hand. "We've got to get on with this," she said, softly. "Are you okay with that?"
"Yes," he replied, distantly; then more firmly: "Yes. The letters were runic," he told Sam, as they set off again. At the entrance, he lifted one of the electric lanterns before proceeding. "But the way they're put together is gibberish; or at least a language that I don't know."
"How many do you know?" Sam asked.
"Seven," Llew replied. "But all Scandinavian or northern European. It may have been written in an Egyptian dialect; spelled phonetically in Runic characters."
As they entered the chamber, Cassandra shivered. "You still don't feel anything?" She asked Sam.
"Not a thing" she admitted. "Kawalsky; come and take a look at this."
Llew stood next to Cassandra, with Teal'c watching the boy intently, as Sam and Amy huddled around the pedestal. Up close, ancient bloodstains were visible on the surface of the stone.
There were two inscriptions on the pedestal: a line of characters around the outside of the circular plinth, and a block of text within that. The symbols were the familiar characters of the Norse futhark, but Sam had never really got around to learning them. Amy was not a Norse specialist, but she had picked up a few basics of the language on Angharad's dig, and later spent time learning the alphabet from Daniel - because it was used by the Asgard, and because it gave her an excuse to spend time with him. She also knew Egyptian and some Goa'uld and Asgard, but she concurred with Llew that neither text meant anything.
Sam nodded as the Captain spoke, running her finger idly around a shallow, spiral groove carved under and through the central block. "Captain?" She asked. "How are you with codes?"
"Codes?" Amy asked.
Sam nodded. "Follow the spiral, write down each character you cross."
"Aah," Amy gasped. She pulled out a notepad and began scribbling notes. She worked keenly for a minute, but then sighed. "Still gibberish," she said. She showed the pad to Llew, in case it meant anything to him.
"Nothing," he admitted.
"What about numbers?" Sam suggested, remembering the Hall of Thor's Might. "What would those give you?"
Llew took the pad, and wrote a string of digits. To Sam's great chagrin, no universal constant emerged. From the spiral, she had been hoping for Phi: the Golden Ratio.
"May I see that?" Teal'c asked. Llew handed over the pad, and the Jaffa stepped up to the pedestal. From the spiral she had hoped for the Golden Ratio maybe.
"So what do we do now?" Llew demanded, anxious.
"I don't know," Sam admitted. "But we'll think of something."
Cassandra suddenly straightened as another surge of power rolled over her. At the far side of the chamber from the door, a great slab of stone pivoted aside with a tortured, grating noise, revealing an opening. "Teal'c! What did you do?" Cassie demanded.
"Following the spiral does not spell out a message," Teal'c explained. "But a sequence of characters to be depressed on the outer ring. The Goa'uld sometimes use such a code to conceal Stargate addresses. This version is crude; in a more sophisticated form, the central text would appear to be a coherent passage in its own right."
"So why wasn't there a light this time?" Llew asked.
And then there was.
*
After the light dispersed, Jack took a moment to get his bearings. When he was certain that they were more or less alone, he spoke. "Daniel," he said. "What have I told you about touching strange control panels?"
"Well, this wasn't what I expected," Daniel admitted. "I thought that breaking the code might open a means of communication to the Asgard, or possibly activate a hidden transport ring system to a lower chamber."
"That last would be a very good reason not to break the code," Jack reminded him.
"I suppose it would be," Daniel admitted. "But that felt like an Asgard transporter, didn't you think?"
Jack nodded, looking around at the chamber in which they found themselves. "And this looks like part of an Asgard complex. But there was something off. I'm not usually aware of an Asgard transport beam until it's over; this seemed to go on longer."
"Danny!" Angharad snapped, her voice brittle with near panic. "What…?" Then words failed her.
"Oh, God," Daniel whispered.
"Ah; yeah," Jack said. "Look; we'll try to explain later, but for now you just need to know that the ancient gods were aliens, and we look to be on one of their ships. Maybe Thor got himself some new wheels, or…"
"Jack…" Daniel cautioned.
Angharad shot Jack a fierce glare. "That's just so…." She turned to Daniel. "Danny…"
Daniel nodded, slowly. "I'm sorry, Annie," he said.
Angharad laughed, bitterly. "No," she said. "No you're not. You were right, and the world was wrong…"
"Annie," Daniel pleaded.
"Except you're not," she insisted. "I know that, Danny. My gods are real."
"Ah, hell," Jack muttered. "I'm sorry, but do you know how many times we've had to put up with this spiel?" He asked Angharad.
"You're wrong," Angharad said again, softly. "I have all the proof I need; living proof…"
She broke off, as a bellowing scream echoed through the chamber.
"This is why I still hang out with you," Jack told Daniel. "We always end up in the funnest places."
"Are you okay, Annie?" Daniel asked, laying a hand on her arm.
Angharad shrugged him off, fiercely. "I'm fine," she told him. The anger and hurt in her voice gave the lie to her claim, but she waved him away when he tried to touch her again. "Don't, Daniel," she said, firmly. "Just don't."
The chamber shook as another cry sounded. "I think it came from down there," Jack said, pointing with his zat at one of the three exits. "Let's go take a look."
"Are you insane?" Angharad asked.
"Well, unless you can find a way back where we came from, I'd rather that thing was in front of us than behind."
Angharad nodded, resignedly. "You do this kind of thing a lot?" She asked.
"More than I like to think of," Daniel told her. She almost smiled, but caught herself, and refused to meet his eye.
Hurt, but respecting her feelings, Daniel moved up alongside Jack. "I don't want to worry you," he said. "But either my watch is fast, or it's actually several hours since we were on the site."
Jack checked his own watch, and saw that Daniel was right. "Were we unconscious?" He asked.
"I don't think so," Daniel replied. "I've got a theory, although Sam would probably find about a dozen holes in it."
Jack waited a few moments. "Well?"
"Oh; I just figured that even broken down into your component molecules and slung across the galaxy at several hundred times the speed of light, there has to be a travel time."
"And? But? So?"
"So, if we took several hours to get here, we might be a very long way from home. Maybe further than we've even gone by Stargate before now."
"Speak for yourself," Jack replied.
The screams continued to reverberate throughout the complex, growing ever closer as the three of them moved cautiously along the passages. There seemed to be very little there; empty rooms, tables with nothing on them, dead display screens and control consoles stripped of their enabling runes.
"This seems so familiar…" Angharad whispered to herself.
At length, one of the passages opened out into a high-ceilinged chamber. From this entrance, a horseshoe walkway ran left and right, to two smaller doors. Held within the horseshoe was a shallow pit, and rising from it a strange machine. Consoles around the edge of the pit seemed to be intended to control the machine, and its purpose was horrifically clear.
Strapped into a cross between a medieval rack and a dentists chair was a tall man. His body was inclined, almost to vertical, and held in place by bands of metal, articulated to the chair. His skin was decorated with tattoos, and pierced by myriad tubules, which carried strange fluids into his body. The man had blonde hair, which hung lank and unwashed to below his waist, tangling with a beard of the same flaxen hue. His face was invisible behind the curtain of hair. As they entered, he was screaming again, and twisting in his bonds until he looked as though he might injure himself. Surrounding the chair was a vague distortion in the air, like a ripple in water; an energy field.
"Ye gods," Angharad whispered. "He's speaking…It's hard to make anything out, but it sounds like ancient Norse."
"What's he saying?" Jack asked.
Angharad waved him to silence, concentrating hard. "I'm not sure. It sounds like an Icelandic dialect, though. Or maybe Norwegian." She listened for a moment more, until the screaming and thrashing subsided.
"Okay," she said. "I think I heard: 'A plague on you, bitch, for keeping me alive. And a curse on Asgard for their foul mercy. May Thor's balls shrivel and harden…"
"I didn't think he had any," Jack commented. Daniel shushed him and motioned for Angharad to continue.
"Well, there's just a lot more in that vein," Angharad admitted. "Nothing much more enlightening than that."
Jack spun around, hearing the pattering of feet behind him, just before the man erupted in another torrent of abuse. He drew Daniel and Angharad aside, and a moment later a woman rushed past them to the consoles. Weeping and fretting, she began to rearrange the runestones, and gradually the cries died away once more. She looked young, with a voluptuous figure and golden hair.
In a quavering tone, the woman spoke, and Angharad whispered a translation to her companions. "Forgive me, Lord, but I had to rest."
The man raised his head, eyes glittering coldly through his blonde veil. "You stupid whore," Angharad translated. "I have no forgiveness for you; only hatred and contempt."
The woman hung her head, but said nothing, and the man continued in a hoarse whisper: "I can barely spare the effort to despise you anymore. Your loyalty is foolishness, your 'love'" - he sneered, cruelly - "blindness. There is no woman in the three worlds I would not sooner bed than take a milksop like you. I can hardly believe I ever found you beautiful."
The woman shuddered with sobs, but still made no response.
"What a charmer," Angharad hissed.
"Well, the years of torture probably not helping his temper," Jack said, bleakly. "Well, we can fix that." He stepped forward, and the woman started in terror.
Jack raised his zat to the consoles.
"Jack…" Daniel said, warily.
"Wait," Angharad added. "I don't think you should…"
"Stuff it," Jack said, and fired.
The zat'nik'tel's lightning arced around the railings, leaping from machine to machine. Sparks flew, and panels exploded, and with a crackling hiss, the energy field stuttered and failed, and the lights in the chamber went out.
The chamber was pitch black, and filled by the echoes of an almost crazed laughter. Jack took a flare from his tool belt, and lit it. In the phosphorescent glow, he looked around, seeing Daniel, then Angharad, then the woman cowering in the shadows.
"Gah!" Jack cried, as the man who had been bound in the chair clambered over the darkened consoles, weeping and laughing at the same time. He had pushed back his tangled, matted hair, and his blue eyes bored into Jack.
The woman ran out to the freed lunatic, sobbing for joy. With barely a glance, the man swung his fist, backhanding her and sending her crashing hard against the consoles.
"Hey!" Jack stepped forward as the man advanced on his whimpering custodian. "Back off there, pal."
The man looked at him, and struck him casually aside. Jack was startled by his strength - for a man who had spent who knew how long in a torture device, he was in remarkable shape - and sent tumbling across the floor. Both the zat and the flare skittered away from his hands.
Angharad approached the man, speaking gently in his own language. Daniel stood protectively at her shoulder, glancing nervously to where Jack was feeling cautiously for his weapon. Despite the surroundings, he was less than startled to see white fire light the man's cold, blue eyes from within.
"Annie," he cautioned.
With a sudden lunge, the man caught hold of Angharad about the waist, and pulled her against him.
"No!" Angharad screamed, panicking. "Get off me!"
"Leave her alone!" Daniel roared, hurling himself at the struggling pair. Light filled his gaze, almost blinding him, and his rush met only air. Stumbling, he barely caught himself from toppling over the consoles into the pit, and he was grateful to feel Jack's hand on his shoulder.
"What the hell just happened?" Jack demanded.
"He was a Goa'uld," Daniel said. "He took Annie!"
"What the hell is a Goa'uld doing strapped into a torture chair in an Asgard complex?" Jack asked. "And why does he disappear on an Asgard transport beam?"
Daniel shrugged, helplessly. "Maybe she knows?" He suggested, pointing to the woman, who lay shivering and weeping at the base of the consoles she had once manned.
"Can you speak to her?"
"I can try," Daniel replied. He crouched in front of the woman, and put his hands on her shoulders. "Look at me," he demanded, in halting Norse.
Slowly, she raised her head and met his gaze. She had pretty blue eyes, in an almost childlike, cherubic face, but they were swollen with tears, and she looked as though she had not slept well in a long time.
"Who are you?" Daniel asked. "Who was he?"
The woman's face registered no understanding. She seemed to stare straight through him, in a state of abject shock.
"Where has he taken my friend?" Daniel demanded. "Where? Answer me," he insisted, shaking her by the shoulders. When she still gave no response, he shook her harder, her head lolling listlessly on her neck.
"Daniel!" Jack snapped. "That's enough."
Daniel looked back angrily at his friend, but the mute sympathy in Jack's eyes silenced his retort.
"We'll get her back," Jack promised.
"How?" Daniel asked. "We don't even know…"
Once more, light flashed, and this time it remained. Squinting and blinking, Jack and Daniel were able to make out that they now stood in the transport hub of an Asgard mothership. The woman was still crouched at Daniel's feet.
"Okay then!" Jack called out. "You want a piece of us? Come on out and try it!"
"What are you doing here, Jack O'Neill?" The voice came from all around them, gentle and mellifluous.
"Thor?" Jack asked. "Is that you buddy?"
The door of the transport room slid open, and an Asgard entered. When Thor's voice spoke again, it was still from the public address system however. "Follow my crewman to the bridge," he instructed. "The woman will be cared for."
"Is it just me," Daniel asked, as they followed. "Or does he sound mad about something?"
"He sounds…stressed," Jack admitted. "But I can't imagine Thor being mad at anyone for anything."
The door to the bridge opened before them, and Thor stood waiting.
"It is perhaps fortunate then, that you will not have to imagine," the Asgard told Jack, and as incongruous as it was, the slender alien did indeed seem angry. "I am most disturbed to find you here, O'Neill; and you, Dr Jackson. I would have thought that you would both know better than to meddle in such a place."
"I guess you don't know us that well," Daniel replied.
"Not helping, Daniel," Jack cautioned.
"Tell me, O'Neill," Thor said. "Do you know who it was that released our greatest and most terrible foe from his captivity?"
"Ah," Jack replied, sheepishly.
Thor blinked, His face was as unreadable as ever, yet the uncharacteristic air of anger that hung about the Asgard seemed to intensify.
"That would be us," Daniel explained.
"Or more accurately, me," Jack admitted.
Thor shook his head, gently, his anger seeming to give way to a sorrow which went far beyond his race's customary melancholy. "Then it is you who have brought doom upon us all," he said.
*
"Colonel O'Neill!" Sam knew that she should not have been surprised.
"Hi guys," Jack said. "What are you all doing in Newfoundland?"
"We were just passing through," Ferretti assured him, with a grin. "Don't start thinking we care or nothing."
"Is it just me?" Daniel asked. "Or are there more doors in this room than there used to be?"
"You are not mistaken," Teal'c told him. "The second exit opened when I entered the decoded text onto the pedestal."
"That's odd," Daniel mused.
"Who's your new friend?" Sam asked. "I take it this isn't Dr Midhir?"
The man who had arrived in the transport beam with Jack and Daniel stepped forward. He was a red-bearded giant of a man, casually dressed. "Major Carter," he greeted her, in a light and oddly cadenced tone. "It is a pleasure to see you again. I only wish that it was under more felicitous circumstances."
"Thor?" She asked, uncertain.
"I am incognito," the Asgard explained. "Sadly, we must call upon your assistance once more to defeat a great and terrible enemy."
"Again?"
Jack gave an embarrassed grin. "Well; this time it is sort of our fault."
"We set their most archenemy loose," Daniel added, darkly.
"I said I was sorry," Jack offered. Daniel just glared.
"Are you alright, Daniel?" Sam asked, gently, sensing the tension between her friends.
"I'm fine," he insisted, unconvincingly.
"He's not fine," Jack corrected. "He…they both told me not to do it," he confessed. "And the guy took Dr Midhir."
"Mam?" Llew asked, anxiously.
Jack started, having not noticed the boy's presence. "We are going to get her back," he promised, grimly.
"We shall do all that is within our power to retrieve your mother safely," Thor agreed.
"Thank you, Lord Thor," Llew replied. "And you Colonel."
"Lord Thor?" Daniel asked.
"Uh, yeah," Llew replied, almost blandly. "Isn't that the right way to address a god?"
"So much for incognito," Jack muttered.
*
SG-1 repaired to Angharad's trailer for a conference with Thor. They had sealed off the temple, and convinced the concerned diggers that Dr Midhir had been flown to hospital. SG-6 were watching the entrance, more in case of opportunistic tomb robbers than to keep the archaeologists out, since they were too shocked by Angharad's injury even to care what lay within the tomb-like structure anymore. Mary had even ceased to care about the mysterious bilingual inscription.
In addition to the four team members, Llew had insisted on being present, and once Jack had agreed to let him sit in, Cassandra would not be dissuaded from joining them as well.
"As you know," Thor began. "When the Asgard first encountered the Goa'uld, we knew nothing of their ways."
"That was when Freyja's kin encountered them?" Jack asked.
"Yes," Thor replied. "The crew of the Vanir. However, even after that it took us some time to realise that the atrocities committed were not simply the work of a renegade lord, but were of a kind practiced by all Goa'uld. We did not learn for some time that their savagery and lust for power was as innate to them as the desire for understanding is to us. Thus, when Loki approached us, Odin was convinced of his goodwill. They swore oaths of kinship, binding them as close as brothers, and entered into a pact which Odin hoped would bring the perpetrators of the massacre of the Vanir to justice, and form the basis of a peace between the Asgard and the System Lords."
"Oops," Jack commented.
"Odin was not the only one taken in by the betrayer," Thor admitted. "Loki fooled us all at first, and he and I were companions for many decades. I taught him much of our ways, and our technology, and he in turn taught us much about the Goa'uld; all of it lies.
"Even when it was discovered what the Goa'uld truly were - how they live, their culture of cruelty - we still trusted Loki; we wanted to trust him. But then he began to abuse our gifts, and our friendship. I learned that he was stealing the plans for our weapons and starships, and putting them to use in a project of his own; a project designed to destroy the Asgard in one fell stroke."
"Ragnarok," Daniel said.
"That is the name that Loki gave to his project," Thor acknowledged. "When I learned of it, I bid him to stop. At first he tried to convince me that he was working on a plan to bring about the downfall of the Goa'uld, but when he saw that I knew the truth, he taunted me with his schemes. I tried to stop him by force, but Odin prevented me. As oathbrother to Odin, Loki was one of us, and the Asgard have not raised their hands, one to another, in over six thousand years."
Daniel nodded. "This story is part of Earth legend," he said. "Secure in Odin's protection, Loki mocked the other gods; the Asgard."
"Indeed, Dr Jackson, and myself especially. He attacked worlds under my protection, assaulting and abusing the women of my following, murdering the men, and destroying my hammers so that the Goa'uld could overrun those who had looked to me for safety. Still Odin and his allies in the Council would not permit me to act against him, although every day his plans against us gained momentum.
"At last, he caused the death of my dearest companion, Baldur, by sabotaging the shield on his vessel. Unprotected, he was destroyed while attempting to defend a world under Asgard protection from the depredations of the Goa'uld Sobek. Finally, Odin was forced to heed my counsel, and although he would still not allow us to kill the traitor, he gave permission for us to capture and imprison him."
"Which I get," Jack said. "But what about torture?"
"The torture was not deliberate," Thor assured him. "Merely a side-effect of the method used to hold Loki prisoner."
"Why not just seal him into his sarcophagus?" Daniel asked.
Thor turned his head, and gazed right at Daniel. "Because then there would have been no side-effect," the Asgard said, darkly.
Jack swallowed hard, unnerved by the anger which had once more entered Thor's tone. He had never thought it would be possible to make an Asgard angry; that the race was above such sentiments. Loki however, had plainly managed to piss Thor off so badly that the Asgard had not forgiven him, even after all this time.
"When we had captured him, we brought Loki to an asteroid, orbiting a fading star in the remotest corner of our galaxy. There, one of my lieutenants, Skadi, had prepared a place of imprisonment, that would hold even one as devious and slippery as Loki. An energy field held him suspended, and great machines kept him alive. In time, held in that field, conscious all the while, every moment of Loki's existence would become torment."
"That's obscene!" Jack protested.
"Loki's crimes were obscene," Thor replied. coldly. "And remember that I would have preferred to see him put to death. Also, the machines could be used to alleviate his pain if supervised. No Asgard wished to devote their life to tending the traitor, but his concubine, Sigyn, begged us to allow her to continue serving her master."
"The woman in the complex?" Daniel asked. "She'd been there from the beginning?"
"Yes. She was given a healing pod to maintain her own physiological integrity, and taught how to adjust the machines. For all that he had given her little reason, Sigyn truly loved her master."
"Not that he showed much gratitude," Jack muttered, angrily.
"Loki has never had much time for anyone but Loki," Thor replied.
"When we arrived, Loki was in pain," Daniel said. "Why was that?"
"Sigyn has been sustained by the healing pod for more than two millennia. She has reached the point where the pod's effects last only a short time, before she must return. I estimate that she must have been using the pod for eight hours, every seven days - by your terms - in order to prevent a complete failure of her body's vital organs."
"Two thousand years of that crap?" Jack asked. "Girl Power was just something that happened to other people for her, wasn't it?"
"On the contrary, O'Neill," Thor said. "In her time as Loki's concubine, Sigyn wore many skimpy and unflattering garments."
Jack rolled his eyes. "Earth culture by media monitoring. No wonder no-one ever comes to talk to us."
"So what happens now?" Sam asked. "Why is one Goa'uld on the loose such a terrible threat?"
"Loki made his escape in an Asgard ship, and as you know, it is sometimes hard even for us to track our own vessels."
"Did he have outside assistance in his escape?" Teal'c asked.
Jack gave a rueful smile. "Apart from us?"
"It is possible," Thor replied. "In his prime, Loki had many servants among the Goa'uld; enough to threaten the primacy of the System Lords, even without his access to Asgard technology. Many returned to the fold or were slain by the System Lords after Loki's defeat, but a few may still support him in secret and await his return. Most dangerous of all, however; he will seek now to reunite with his three children."
"His children?" Sam asked.
"The Serpent, the Witch and the Wolf," Llew surmised.
"Jormungandr, Hel and Fenrir," Daniel expanded.
"Yes," Thor continued. "The three children born to Loki by his Goa'uld Queen, Angrboda. Jormungandr is a Goa'uld, last known to inhabit the body of an Unas."
"Sensational," Jack grumbled. "I hate those things. No offence to Chaka," he assured Daniel.
"I'm sure he'd be delighted to know that your thoughts are with him," Daniel said. "What about the other two?"
"Hel and Fenrir are twins; the Harcesis offspring of the two hosts. All three children have access to the technology hoarded by the Goa'uld, and that of the Asgard race. Each possesses tremendous power and intelligence, but worse than this, we believe they may hold the keys - knowingly or otherwise - to Loki's most terrible weapon. Naglfar."
"The ship of nails," Llew whispered.
"Huh?" Sam asked.
"I was going to say that," Jack admitted. "The 'huh' thing, not the nails."
Daniel looked grim. "In the age of Ragnarok, when the Earth Freezes and brother will fight brother, Loki will captain a ship made from dead men's toenails, and sail out of Muspel to battle the gods. That's the legend anyway. If there really is a Naglfar, then I imagine that Loki getting to it wouldn't be good."
"Naglfar was the heart of Loki's plan," Thor acknowledged. "A vessel built with the technology of the Asgard and of the Goa'uld, and that of any other race whom Loki could deceive or steal from. The most powerful warship ever conceived. Loki constructed the vessel in secret, but Baldur learned of its existence. I believe that Loki engineered Baldur's death in an attempt to conceal Naglfar, but he had already given the information to Skadi, who brought it to me. Loki was captured before he was ready to launch his attack, but Naglfar was completed, and concealed, using a technology beyond our own; a technique which I believe was similar, but not identical to the Nox's power of invisibility.
"Since Loki's capture, the ship has remained hidden; dormant."
"And the children know where?" Jack asked.
"It is unlikely that Loki would have entrusted them with such knowledge. The keys which I speak of are literal. Like all Asgard vessels, the ship has a master rune; a stone which unlocks every system on the ship. From the information that Baldur sent to me, I know that the Naglfar's rune was designed to be divided into three parts when removed from its cradle, and I believe that this was so that he could give one to each of his children. Without its brothers, a single part of the master rune would be useless."
Sam nodded her understanding. "Jolinar remembered similar practices among the Goa'uld. A lord might entrust separate parts of a secret to each of his children. They then don't dare move against each other for fear of losing the secret, but they won't divulge what they know to each other and gain the ability to act against their parent."
"That is correct, Major Carter. Loki knew that his children would horde their potential power, and never share it. But now he will have to retrieve all three parts of the master rune before the Naglfar can be activated, which gives us a chance to recapture him."
Jack raised his hand. "Sorry if this is a silly question, but what if he has a spare key?"
Thor nodded. "The master rune of an Asgard vessel is linked to it by quantum entanglement. It is irreplaceable and can not be duplicated."
"It the key is entangled to the ship, does it even have to be in place?" Sam asked.
"Yes," Thor assured her. "Although the entanglement joins the two at any distance, it acts only to identify the key. The ship is activated when the entangled runestone is placed in the control cradle."
"What about Angrboda?" Daniel asked. "Does she fit into the equation somewhere?"
"No," Thor replied, shaking his head. "She is dead. Skadi vanquished and destroyed Angrboda when she sought to free her consort from his prison."
"Okay," Jack said. "So, worst case scenario; what happens if Loki gets the keys and gets to his Snagglefar?"
"With the power of Naglfar at his command, none of the System Lords would have the strength to stand against Loki," Thor said. "He would stand, uncontested, as the Supreme System Lord, and unite the Goa'uld under his banner. With all the resources of the Goa'uld at his disposal, and the shipyards of Asyut, he could build a fleet of vessels such as Naglfar - although none capable of defeating his own command vessel, naturally. He would be able to eliminate the Tau'ri, and with the advantages of Asgard technology, could root out the Tok'ra resistance. Even the Asgard would be unable to stand against such a force; as you know, we already sorely taxed in policing the Protected Planets Treaty, due to our war with the Replicators."
"So, real end of the world as we know it stuff?" Jack said.
"Ragnarok," Daniel affirmed.
"And how do we stop him?" Jack asked.
"We must prevent him from claiming the keys that are in his children's keeping," Thor explained."
"No problem then," Jack said. "You just jet off to wherever they are, and make sure you get the keys first."
"Were it that simple," Thor replied. "We would already have done so."
Sam groaned. "So what's the catch?"
"The 'catch', as you say, is that we do not know where his children are, precisely. The Asgard were…reluctant to confront Loki's get after his imprisonment."
"Reluctant?" Daniel asked.
"We were…afraid," Thor admitted. "They have many gifts from their father; weapons and technology; alterations made to Hel and Fenrir, and to Jormungandr's host body."
Jack looked concerned. "Alterations?"
"Nanotechnology; genetic engineering; gene therapy; cybernetics. Loki's own host is similarly enhanced."
"Wonderful," Jack muttered.
"You say you don't know where they are," Daniel said. "Do you know where they were?"
"Jormungandr will be easy to locate," Thor replied. "Rather less so to contact. He was confined in an Asgard prison, which orbits the galaxy. I believe that your people recognise it as an erratic comet. He was transported directly to the prison, some time before his father's capture, but no-one spoke to him, so we had no opportunity to find out where he had hidden his piece of the key.
"The prison has not been used in many years, but was designed to prevent any approach. As an Asgard mind designed the defences, an Asgard mind may be ill-equipped to breach security there. It may be that a less sophisticated…"
"I'm in," Sam told him. "My stupid ideas are always at your disposal."
"Thank you, Major Carter. Your stupid ideas are always welcomed."
Sam smiled at the Asgard, and even on the bearded face he wore, the return smile looked odd when Thor's voice came from behind it.
"For a long time, it was thought that Fenrir might yet prove our distrust of Loki's brood misplaced, but in the end it was decided that the risk was too great. He was tricked into donning a restraining collar which prevents him travelling by Stargate, and placed on a primitive planet called Jelling before the device was activated."
"So you know where he is?" Jack asked.
"Yes. However, no Asgard may enter the system where that world is located. It is home to an ancient and insular race, who do not like intruders, or visitors."
"These guys can kick you out if they don't like you?"
"There are many powers in the universe which rival that of the Asgard, O'Neill."
"So how did you get Fenrir there in the first place?" Jack asked.
"This race dwell between the planets, and pay little attention to the comings and goings of beings who pass through the Stargate, but the Asgard once came in ships, and they are no longer welcome."
Jack shrugged. "So no Asgard, but we could still go. Right Teal'c?"
"Indeed, Colonel O'Neill," Teal'c agreed.
"Thank you, O'Neill."
"And what about Hel?" Daniel asked.
"We…do not know," Thor admitted. "She went into hiding soon after the hunt for her father began, and has not been seen since."
"Well…you only need one of these keys to stop Loki; right?"
"That is correct, Dr Jackson."
Daniel nodded. "So, if you can get Jormungandr's or Fenrir's, then Hel's won't matter. But, it's better to be safe than sorry. Now, the temple out there looks like it may have belonged to a Hel-cult. I'm willing to bet that she designed it to lead some poor unsuspecting fools to rescue her father. I'd also put money on there being a way to find her in there. Maybe in that chamber that opened the second time the runes were activated."
"What you say sounds plausible," Thor agreed.
"Well then," Daniel concluded "Amy can stay here and try to work out where Hel would be found, while we're tracking down the other two."
Sam frowned. "Surely you'd be better equipped than Amy to…"
"I'm going," Daniel said, firmly. "With you or with Jack and Teal'c, but I'm going."
"Dr Jackson," Thor said, gently. "You are most likely to aid in Dr Midhir's rescue by finding Hel. You have no skills that would increase the success of either of our teams, but you are needed here."
"I can't just stay here while she's out there," Daniel protested, angrily. "I won't…!"
Daniel turned and stormed out of the trailer. Sam looked to Jack, who shrugged, helplessly. "I'm not in his good books at the moment," he said. Sam nodded, and followed Daniel.
"Daniel," Sam said, softly. "You know Thor's right; Amy can't do this alone." They were standing by the trailer door, trying to avoid the attention of the hovering crowd of concerned students and volunteers.
"I can't do it, Sam," Daniel replied. "Not again."
"Do what?" She asked.
The look on Daniel's face was bleak. "Stand back, and wait for the people I love to die."
"Daniel…"
"I wasn't with you on Apophis' mothership."
"Because you were shot watching our backs on Klorel's. We left you for dead."
"When you fought the Replicators on the Biliskner and the Blackbird, all I could do was watch."
"You had appendicitis, Daniel."
"I left you behind on PX9-757."
"You collapsed. Teal'c had to drag you out of that complex, and you both waited for us. It wasn't your fault; none of those were."
"I can't leave her," Daniel said, and Sam could hear the weight of guilt in his voice.
"There's more to this than you're saying; isn't there?"
Daniel refused to meet Sam's gaze.
Sam sighed. "Look, Daniel. You've saved all our butts before now, but you haven't done it by rushing in with a gun." She raised a hand to cut off his protest. "You're probably right that she needs help, but you'll do more for her here than you will haring off…"
"And getting in the way," Daniel finished.
"No," Sam assured him. "You don't get in the way, Daniel. But this, here, is what you're good at. It's what you do."
Daniel's shoulders slumped, and he assayed a weary smile. "I know," he said. "I just hate not being out there; looking for her. I got her into this, Sam. It's my fault she was there. I activated the transporter."
"And if you hadn't?" Sam challenged. "She was a smart woman, Daniel. She'd have worked it out herself, and then she'd be gone and no-one on Earth would know about it." She gripped his shoulder affectionately. "You take too much on yourself, Daniel."
"I know," he admitted again.
"Alright," Jack said. "So Thor will take Teal'c and I back to the SGC, and brief us on Fenrir before he and Sam head off for this prison. We'll lead a combat team through the Stargate to…" He paused.
"PX8-666," Sam reminded him.
"Right. Nothing ominous about that," Jack said, before picking up with: "…to PX8-666, to find Fenrir and give him a good going over. Daniel; you'll stay here with SG-6 and try to track Hel, and… What'll you do if you find her?" He asked.
"Probably try to follow and get her key," Daniel said. "If it looks dicey, we'll ask General Hammond for additional backup before we go, but I don't think we'll gain anything by waiting around."
"Don't do anything stupid, Daniel," Jack cautioned. We'd like to get you back in one piece."
"I won't. But there's a timescale involved here, and it's not just about…"
Cassandra had been sitting quietly throughout, and was starting to drop off when, without ceremony, Teal'c rose from his seat and moved to the door.
"What…?" Cassandra began, but he held up his hand to stop her. Then he wrenched open the door, reached out, and dragged someone inside.
"Mary?" Jack asked, confused.
"She was listening at the door," Teal'c explained. "And has been doing so for some time."
"We were worried," Mary said, defiantly. "It's all so weird, having armed guards to keep us out of an unstable tomb; that's not normal. And none of us saw you bring Dr Midhir out, and what does a Canadian dig site have to do with the US Army anyway?"
"Air Force," Jack corrected her.
"Air Force, Army; whatever. Point is, this is all some weird conspiracy. I heard those two outside, talking about 'motherships' and 'replicators'…"
"Carter?"
"I was distracted, Sir," Sam answered, defensively. "It's supposed to be your job to do the guy talk thing."
"…and all that stuff in here about spaceships and aliens and the end of the world," Mary continued. "We want to know what this is all about, and we want to know where Dr Midhir is, right now."
Jack just gazed at the girl in disbelief. "Okay; first thing: Not a conspiracy. Second thing: If we were a conspiracy, telling us you know we're the conspiracy? Not the smartest thing to do."
"Where is Dr Midhir?" Mary demanded, controlling her fear well.
"We don't know," Jack replied. "Exactly. We hope we'll be able to find her, but…"
"I'm coming with you," Mary said.
"That would be most unwise," Teal'c told her.
"Wise? I don't care from wise. I care that my friend is missing, and that the US Government is involved somehow. So either you take me with you, or I go out there and tell everyone what you were talking about!"
Jack turned to Daniel. "Are all archaeologists this self-righteous?" He demanded.
"Most of us," Daniel admitted. "It comes from being right so much of the time. But take her or leave her, we should move on this, now."
"Loki can't reach all of his children that fast," Sam assured him. "He'll have to Gate to PX8-666 if nothing else."
"It's not just about Naglfar," Daniel told her. "It's about Annie. I don't know why Loki took her, but whatever his reason, we need to get to her before…" He tailed off, as Mary shot him a panicked look.
"Before what, Daniel Jackson?" Teal'c asked.
"Before he gets bored."
*
After the light faded, Angharad had found herself in another metal-walled complex, along with the ragged and shaggy-haired creature who could only be the trickster god, Loki. Wild-eyed, the man was clutching her about the waist in a cruel grip, startling strength in his atrophied, jaundiced limbs. She beat at him with her hands, and kicked as best she could at his shins, but he barely seemed to feel the blows as his soft, wasted flesh yielded like putty under her assault. In desperation, she resorted to grabbing a fistful of his lank, matted hair and pulling on it, crying out in disgust as she felt it tear free of his scalp.
At that last, Loki gave a scream of pain, and hurled Angharad across the room. She fell hard, tumbling in a pile against the wall. She looked up, afraid, but saw that Loki was ignoring her, staring about in confusion.
"Where am I?" He wondered aloud, voicing Angharad's concerns as well. She thought that she might have fallen and bumped her head; the words sounded distorted and echoing.
"On board the Kalliste. You are free, Lord."
Angharad turned to see the woman who had spoken, her voice sounding as strange as Loki's. She was barely more than a child, sixteen or maybe seventeen years old, with flawless olive skin and oil-black hair. A wicked smile played on her lips, and her eyes danced with a delighted fire, somewhere between malice and mischief. She was dressed in a dark green chiton, belted tightly at the waist and open along the length of her left leg, and wore an abundance of jewellery. A strange gauntlet of metal strips was wrapped around her left hand.
Loki stumbled forward, catching the girl by the shoulders. He peered at her, then leaned close and sniffed her skin. "Eris?" He asked, uncertainly.
"Yes, Lord," the girl replied, gazing at him in sorrow. "It has been so long for you, and you are so much reduced; but a spell in the sarcophagus will see you restored to yourself again."
"Sarcophagus," Loki grunted. "Yes. Take me there. Now!"
"And the woman, Lord?"
"Woman?" Loki looked around, seeming to notice Angharad for the first time. "She is his," he said.
Eris disengaged herself from Loki and approached Angharad, who rose to face her on her feet. She was a good six inches taller than the girl, but Eris radiated an untouchable arrogance which made her seem twice her actual height.
"Ah, yes," Eris said, reaching out and taking hold of the Mjollnir pendant.
"Don't touch that," Angharad warned, grabbing the girl's by the wrist.
Eris' smile never faltered, as with her free hand she caught Angharad's wrist and bent it backwards, forcing her to release her grip. Her strength was almost inhuman.
"Never touch me again," Eris cautioned. Then she tugged, snapping the chain, and held the amulet in the palm of her hand. "No power in this," she commented. "But she reeks of the Asgard."
Angrily, Angharad shoved the girl back. "Get off me!" She commanded.
Eris took a step back, her eyes blazing with hatred…literally. Angharad gasped at the sight of that white glow. She tried to move away, but the wall was at her back.
"I told you never to touch me again," Eris reminded Angharad. Then she thrust out her hand into Angharad's chest, and Angharad felt her whole body shudder at the impact. She collapsed, gasping and retching to the floor, unable to raise her eye beyond Eris' perfectly pedicured toes.
"Stop playing, Eris." Loki rasped. "Secure the wench, and take me to my sarcophagus."
"As you command, Lord," Eris acquiesced. The toe of her sandal snapped upwards, and black light exploded across Angharad's vision.
Angharad had no way of knowing how much time had passed since then. She had been unconscious for God knew how long, and when she awoke in this cell, her watch had been taken, along with her shoes, car keys, trowels and toothbrush.
She woke, lying on a bench, and with some discomfort raised herself into a sitting position. There was a fierce ache across her right eyebrow, and when she touched it, she felt the tackiness of dried blood. There was only a little light in the cell, but she could see enough to make out a neatly-folded pile of clothes on a second bench. There was no food, but fortunately she did not much feel like eating. The clothes proved to be a chiton, much like Eris', and Angharad decided to stick with her muddy site gear.
Instinctively, as she always did when she felt afraid, she reached to her amulet, and found it gone. Eris must still have it, she realised.
She was growing more confused by the minute. Loki she could handle, and she was not about to start poo-pooing other religions, but why would Eris and Loki work together? Was there some kind of goofy, international league of tricksters? Was Coyote about to shove his oar in?
She heard footsteps outside, and then the door opened, admitting a young man wearing a kirtle tunic and long breeches. The garments were brightly coloured, and like Eris he wore a great many accessories: ropes of beads hung beside a bronze torque around his neck, and ribbon-gauntlet just like the girl's twined around his left hand. On his feet were sealskin boots, about his waist a leather belt, from which hung a knife and a scramaseax. He had shoulder-length, flaxen hair and a neatly trimmed beard, and blue eyes shone from a weathered face. He was achingly handsome, but radiated an arrogance that made Angharad shudder.
Aside from the gauntlet, he looked every inch the Viking noble.
"You worship the Thunderer?" He asked. His voice was soft, but still there was that rumble.
"I do," she replied. At least her own voice sounded normal.
"You will renounce him, and worship us," the man said.
"Us?" Angharad asked. "Who are…Loki," she realised.
His eyes burned white. "Yes. We are Loki. We are your god now."
Angharad stood, a little shakily, but managed to hold herself straight and upright. "Never," she said, impressed at how steady she was able to keep her voice.
Loki's eyes flared, and his back-handed swing - so casually executed that she never saw it coming - knocked her from her feet. She turned and glowered up at him, but he acted as though he had done nothing. She started up, but he held out his hand, and the stone at the centre of his gauntlet glowed.
Angharad froze, then slowly settled back to the floor. She might have no idea how a Goa'uld hand device worked, but she knew a weapon when she was threatened with it.
Loki laughed, softly, and backed away to the door. "We shall see, wench," he said. "We shall see."
*
Tuesday.
Jack O'Neill was in a pensive mood as he packed the last of his things for the journey back to Cheyenne Mountain. While it was not unusual for him to set off on crazy, ill-thought-out missions to the far side of the galaxy, it was almost unheard of for him to do so without the company of his full team. The last time they had been so divided, he and Teal'c had almost been killed by Replicators on board a pre-atomic Russian submarine.
With a sigh, Jack finished stowing his tent, and shouldered his bag. If nothing else, he would not miss the Newfoundland weather, he decided.
He made his way across the site to the central trench, and the massive, enigmatic stone structure which had brought them here in the first place. He passed the guards at the entrance - the two junior members of SG-6 - and made his way down to the main chamber. Thor was waiting for him - still in disguise - along with Major Carter, Teal'c and of course Mary, with a nervous grin on her round, open face. As Mary could not be left to reveal what she had heard to the press, and was not willing to remain with Daniel at the site - and as Jack did not really want to kill her and dump her body in a ditch - it had been decided that she should come back to the mountain, and accompany Jack to Jelling. With any luck, he could have General Hammond confine her during the mission, and find a way to deal with her later.
Daniel was waiting to see them off, as were Ferretti, Cassandra, and Llew. Cassie and Llew were holding hands - they had apparently been joined at the palm since the first time the entered the tomb - but it was a gesture of mutual fear and comfort, and so Jack was not too worried about anything happening between them just now.
"Sure you wouldn't rather come home?" Jack asked Cassandra.
The girl shook her head. "I think I can help here," she said. "And I'll be real careful," she added, talking not only to Jack but to all of SG-1; her surrogate family.
Sam hugged the girl goodbye, and Cassie returned the gesture. Since the start of this thing with Loki, she had let her teenage tough-girl image slide. Jack kind of liked the overall effect, but he knew he would be glad to see the arrogant, insolent Cassandra return once it was all over.
"Good luck, Jack," Daniel said, his voice brittle. He was desperately worried about Angharad, trapped and alone on Loki's mothership, or spirited off to who knew where for who knew what purpose, but for Llew's sake, he was trying to hide his fear.
"You too, Daniel." Jack turned to Cassie. "Take care of these clowns won't you?" He asked, gesturing to Daniel and Ferretti.
"Surely will," the girl replied.
"Okay, Thor," Jack said. "When you're ready."
The Asgard raised his arms, and the light came down.