The Trap (The Magnificent 12 #2)(36)

“I don’t think my mom and dad ever—” Mack began.

“He’s stalling,” Nine Iron broke in. “Take him, my young apprentice!”

Mack figured he only needed another few seconds. He figured this because, as always, he noticed things. And the thing he had noticed was that the tour bus’s engine had just roared to life. And he had a pretty good idea who was sitting behind the wheel.

“Stalling? Me? I just have an interest in history,” Mack said. It was a statement that would have caused his history teacher at Richard Gere Middle School (Go, Fighting Pupfish!) to laugh and laugh and then start weeping.

There came the grinding of gears, and the bus came wallowing up over the lawn.

Nine Iron spun toward the bus with his usual catlike speed—if the cat you’re talking about is a dead one. But Valin was much quicker. He grabbed his ancient master and threw him to the ground.

The bus swept over them both.

Stefan hit the brakes, and the bus stopped with both Nine Iron and Valin beneath it.

“Go go go!” Mack yelled.

He, Dietmar, Jarrah, and Xiao raced for the path up onto the Externsteine. Stefan brought up the rear.

It took a while for Valin to extricate Nine Iron from under the bus. He had to crawl back under to retrieve his master’s cane-sword. Then he had to wait for Nine Iron to gasp, wheeze, cough, pant, gargle a little phlegm, and take a good spit. And by then the Magnificent Four were pushing past slow-moving tourists and racing up stone steps and across rickety, rusted steel arches, from stone to stone, toward the pinnacle.

They reached the top, gasping for breath and calling out apologies to the middle-aged folks they’d shoved past. Valin was far below, rushing to catch them but still a few minutes away.

“Okay, now what?” Mack gasped.

“Yes, now what?” Dietmar echoed.

“Hey! I thought you knew!”

Dietmar looked very serious. “I have been here many times, it is true. After all, this place is on our family crest. But—”

“Your what now?”

“Our family crest. The coat of arms of the Detmold branch of the von Augestein dynasty. The symbol of our family. It shows the helmet of Helmut der Zusammenhanglos—Helmut the Incoherent—the greatest of the von Augesteins in the fourteenth century, renowned for his inability to make anything clear. Below Helmut’s helmet are three black lions above the Externsteine. And of course our family motto, which was written by Helmut and is therefore completely incoherent.”

“The incoherent thing seems to have been passed on,” Jarrah said. “Didn’t understand a word of that. And by the way: ticktock! That crazy kid is coming!”

Xiao seemed mildly irritated by Jarrah. “You should not show disrespect for Dietmar’s ancestors.”

Mack said, “Why is the motto incoherent?”

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.