The Trap (The Magnificent 12 2)

“So you’re one of us,” he said. “I mean, one of the Magnificent Twelve.”

“Yes. I’ve known it for some time now. We dragons may know some things you humans don’t. Like, well, like just about everything except technology.”

“We know other stuff, too,” Mack said.

Xiao looked skeptically at him. “Tell me the truth: before all this started, you only believed in the things you could see and touch and feel. Right? You knew nothing about the wonders and the terrors that lie hidden in the unseen places of the Earth.”

“Well, I didn’t know there were dragons living under the Forbidden City, that’s true. Or dragons anywhere. Or Lepercons. Or Tong Elves. Or Skirrit. Or some princess named Risky.”

“A princess named Risky?” Xiao said, puzzled.

Mack was pleased to discover something he knew that Xiao did not. “I think her full name is Ereskigal.”

Xiao’s eyes froze into a stare. She didn’t move, except for a cheek muscle. It twitched.

“Ereskigal?” She held her breath, then let it out in a gasp. “You encountered Eresk

igal?”

“Yeah. We weren’t exactly friends. And I kind of had to destroy her.” He had conflicted feelings about that. On the one hand, it seemed kind of creepy to brag about killing anyone or anything. On the other hand, he’d managed to take down a very, very scary person.

Xiao laughed. “You did not kill her. At least not the way you think.”

“Hey,” Stefan interjected from the seat in front of them. “Mack fried her butt. Zap! Shock and awe! Smoke and ash! Pow! So awesome.”

“You don’t know much, do you?” Xiao said.

To Mack’s amazement, Stefan’s face sort of crumpled. If Mack hadn’t known better, he’d have thought Stefan was a little intimidated by Xiao. “No,” he mumbled. “I don’t.”

“Ereskigal, or as some say it, Ereshkigal, is Morgan le Fay, Kali, Persephone, and Hel.”

“She’s Hel all right,” Jarrah muttered.

“She is not dead. Ereskigal must be killed twelve times, each time in a different way. Unless you killed her twelve times, she is not gone.”

Mack glanced nervously over his shoulder. Even Risky couldn’t possibly keep up with the barge.

Although now that he noticed it, the barge was starting to slow down.

“We’re almost there,” Xiao said. “We’ll pass as tourists at the wall. It’s morning now. We have to walk for a way along the wall; the dragon we’re to meet doesn’t like the river, so he lives a short distance away.”

The barge was definitely going slower.

Then it stopped beside a dock. Xiao led the way off the barge. She paused to thank the creature. Then began a long climb up a spiral staircase. At the top of about a thousand steps (actual number 812), a tube hung from the arched stone ceiling. It was brass and green and ended in eyepieces. Xiao took a look through the eyepieces.

“It’s clear,” she said.

Now they climbed a bronze ladder. Xiao pushed up against what looked like a blank stone ceiling. It lifted with surprising ease.

They climbed out onto a wall. But not just any wall. The Great Wall of China.

This was a wall that, back in the days when it was all still standing, ran more than five thousand miles. About ten feet thick, maybe thirty feet tall except for the frequent towers.

Steep, green, triangular mountains tumbled together. They weren’t that tall, but there were a lot of them. Like a bunch of fuzzy green blocks all jumbled together.

The wall snaked right across these mountains, up one side, down the next, up again, down again, and whee, around to catch the next mountain.

It reminded Mack a little of the dragons. Sinewy and snakelike and strong, with stones and cobbles making the scales.