The Trap (The Magnificent 12 2)

“Eyes show?” Dietmar said.

Mack looked at him thoughtfully. “You know what? Maybe it was eyes. That would make more sense than ice.”

“We’re magnificent, not necessarily brilliant,” Jarrah said.

“Then it is good you have me because I am brilliant,” Dietmar said. He did not say it as a joke. “My family name is Augestein. Most people think it is from Augustus, the Roman emperor.”

“Yeah, I was going to guess that,” Jarrah said dryly.

“But in fact Auge is the word for eye.”

“And Stein is the word for beer glass,” Stefan said.

“Actually it is the word for stone.”

“Then why does my uncle Fritz always say, ‘Draw me a stein of Yuengling from the keg in the basement’?”

“The ‘ice show’ is actually the ‘eyes show.’” Mack looked at Dietmar more carefully. He hadn’t taken to Dietmar at first. Neither had Jarrah, obviously. The casual mention of an ancient castle and the talk about being descended from Grimluk himself had seemed like showing off. Mack didn’t like people who thought they were better than other people. Jarrah liked them even less. Only Xiao seemed indifferent—maybe she thought all nondragons were more or less the same.

“Augestein. The eyes. The ‘eyes show,’” Mack repeated. “Grimluk was sending us to meet you. So that the eyes—the Auge, you—could show us the Egge Rocks. The Externsteine.”

“That makes sense,” Dietmar said.

“Seriously? That makes sense to you? He couldn’t have just said, ‘Go find this kid named Dietmar; he’ll take you to the Externsteine’?”

Dietmar shrugged. “The important thing is that you found me. And now I will take you to the Egge Rocks, the Externsteine.”

Dietmar was seriously irritating Mack with his attitude. Also his long blond hair, which girls would probably really like. But Dietmar was one of them, like him or not. And Mack realized he might not like a lot of the Twelve. But liking wasn’t important. All that mattered was staying alive and not letting the Pale Queen win.

“Well, Dietmar Augestein, what are we supposed to do? What are we supposed to discover now that we’re at the Externsteine?”

Dietmar looked nonplussed. “I don’t know.”

“I know exactly what to do,” Stefan said. “Kick that old man’s butt.”

He plunged straight into the narrow band of woods that separated them from the Externsteine.

“But we don’t have a plan,” Dietmar protested.

“We never do, really,” Jarrah said. “Come on, your lordship, I believe we’re going to have a good old fight.”

They emerged from the woods into a lovely, parklike setting. A well-tended lawn bordered a small lake shaped like a mirror image of the state of Vermont.

The Externsteine itself was a series of tall rock pillars. Maybe a couple hundred feet tall. They were light in color, devoid of trees or grass—just giant rock fingers thrust into the air.

Mack’s first impression was that they looked like a small surviving part of some bigger structure. Like an architectural ruin, a segment of the walls of Troy, or a slice from a Mayan pyramid.

Imagine a row of those giant smokestacks you see sticking up out of power plants. Now imagine they’re white. And then imagine they’re all cracked and crumbly.

And you’re standing right where it would all crack and crumble down.

They looked broken. Worn by time. They cast very long shadows in the early, slanting sun. It was in the pattern of those shadows that Mack could see that the pillars were in roughly ascending heights, with the tallest pillar right up against, and even somewhat in, the lake.

The lake was nothing special—a pond, really. The water was dark and cloudy green.

“This is an ancient place,” Xiao said. “I feel long memories touching this place. Strangeness. Danger. Evil. But faith and hope, too.”

“It has a certain Uluruness about it,” Jarrah admitted.