The Trap (The Magnificent 12 2)

Dietmar shrugged. “It is written in a strange alphabet, symbols that mean nothing.”

Jarrah’s curiosity beat out her skepticism. “Can you draw them here? The symbols, I mean.”

“I have nothing to draw with.”

Jarrah stuck her finger in her mouth and used the spit to draw on a flat altar.

“Ah,” Dietmar said with obvious distaste. “Of course I know the symbols. The family crest is on all our dinner plates; I have often puzzled over it.”

He drew.

Valin raced.

Stefan blocked his path at one end of a short but scary bridge.

“It’s Vargran!” Jarrah said, watching as Dietmar finished. “And it says . . .” Jarrah frowned, concentrating. “It says, ‘Open the stairway to heaven.’ I think. Of course, if you were speaking Vargran, you’d say, ‘Sec-et eb etchi n(ch) alinea.’”

Mack flinched. He looked around. He breathed a sigh of relief. “I was halfway expecting something crazy to happen.”

Dietmar was obviously deeply impressed by what Jarrah had told him. “I cannot believe that after many centuries we know that our family motto is Sec-et eb etchi n(ch) alinea.”

Mack flinched again. And this time he was right to flinch because suddenly the ground began to shake.

“Earthquake!” Mack cried.

“We have no earthquakes in Germany!” Dietmar protested.

“You do now,” Jarrah said. “Welcome to the Magnificent Twelve!”

“Hey, all you people, get off these rocks!” Mack yelled to the middle-aged tourists.

Dietmar yelled it in German. Roughly, “Getten zee offen den rocks!” At least that’s how it sounded to Mack.

People were running, pelting back down the stairs and across the connecting bridges. People will do that in an earthquake: they will run and they will totally pelt. And as luck would have it, Valin was unprepared for the pelting. He was swept away by the frightened hordes.

The Externsteine was shaking. The rock pillars were swaying back and forth like tween girls at a Ke$ha concert. The gloomy little lake was rippled and splashing.

Unfortunately Mack didn’t have the option of running. He just mostly had to stand there atop the pillar, hands out for balance, like a surfer trying to ride a really big wave.

Stefan made his way to his side and said a thoughtful, deeply impressed “Huh.”

The smallest of the pillars suddenly upended with a great noise of ripping roots and flying dirt. It rolled end over end, like a slow baton, and snugged up against the next pillar.

These two pillars then crunched and ripped and tore and pushed themselves right up against Mack’s pillar.

They formed now a sort of crude three-step staircase. A staircase you might climb if you had extremely long legs.

With a surge of dark green water, a new pillar began to rise from the lake. It pushed its way straight up, spilling water and mud and algae all down its side.

It rose higher, all the way up to where Mack and the others were standing.

“Come on!” Mack yelled.

He leaped onto the rising pillar. He landed hard, stumbled, took two way-too-big steps to try and steady himself, and almost launched off the edge.

But Stefan’s hand grabbed him and yanked him back.

Still another pillar was growing now, even as the one they were on was still rising. The latest pillar was surging from the lake, catching up to them.