“Can’t blame him for his horny haberdashery, then.”
“What is haberdashing? I am not knowing this word.” The rest of our ferry ride is pleasantly occupied with the rich history of haberdashers and their profession, and Perun adds “visit a London haberdasher” to his personal bucket list. But our faces set into grim lines once we hit land and lope across Rügen to the spot where Weles has hidden the white horse of ?wi?towit. I check with Mecklenburg to make sure Weles didn’t show up while we were gone and he says no, the only god nearby is Perun. The turf parts for us, the staircase beckons, and Perun goes first, holding his axe out in front of him as he descends, perhaps thinking the axe will trigger any traps first and give him time to avoid them. But that makes little sense to me: If Weles is an earth god, he probably has deadfalls rigged or some kind of cave-in planned. You don’t dodge cave-ins or obliterate them with lightning blasts.
“Perun? Hold on. Don’t move.”
“Okay. I am not moving.”
The walls of the staircase are earth and chalk, solid for the moment but unstable, easily collapsed. I put my palm against the wall to see if it’s “living” earth or cut rock by calling out to the elemental.
//Query: Mecklenburg? Can you sense me here?//
//Yes//
//Please cancel all earth magic on this island except my own bindings//
//Yes Fierce Druid bindings only/
//Harmony No earth-god magic here/ I realize almost too late that the chambers themselves were probably created by magic and hastily add, //But keep shape of chambers//
//Harmony//
I give a small, pleased sigh and Perun looks up at me, a question in his expression. “I just canceled any earth magic on the island except mine,” I explain.
“You can do this?”
“Yes. Atticus did it once to Bacchus. Certain gods work their miracles through the earth all the time and the earth allows it, but the wishes of Druids always take precedence, since we’re actually bound to the earth and gods are more bound by faith.”
“So his magical traps will not be working now?”
“Correct. But if he has strictly mechanical ones, those will still be operational.”
“I am understanding. We go.”
The light wanes to almost total darkness for a stretch, but a source of light grows below as we descend, along with a strange hum. When we reach the bottom of the stairs, we hear a click in the walls and some dust falls from above, but nothing else happens.
“I think we just triggered a trap,” I say.
“And yet we still walk,” Perun replies. “Is good.”
“Yes.”
The chamber at the bottom widens and is lined with shelves filled with glass cages. We can see them because there are Ecobulbs hung from the ceiling, powered by a generator somewhere that must be the source of the humming we hear. And inside those cages are many, many rats.
“What the hell is going on? Those aren’t rigged to break on us, I hope?” I say.
“No, is not trap. Is food for next trap.”
“What?”
“Listen. You hear it ahead?” Perun points to an arched passageway at the other end of the chamber, with a single dim light illuminating it. “Under hum you hear hissing.”
“Oh. Yes, you mentioned there would be snakes.”
“Rats are food for snakes.”
“How thoughtful of Weles.”
<Fun fact: Snakes are not very tasty,> Orlaith observes. <Probably because they eat rats.>
When did you eat a snake?
<Oberon and I found one in Colorado and tried it. We thought it was icky.>
We pad down the corridor toward the sounds of hissing, which is not typically a good survival strategy. After a short distance the corridor ends abruptly at a wide pit about thirty feet square and perhaps twenty feet deep. The bottom of the pit has helpfully been illuminated so we can see that the floor is completely covered in writhing snakes. It’s much too broad to jump. There appears to be an extendable bridge mechanism on the far side, and on our side is a helpful length of chain dangling from the wall with an illustration beneath it showing a bridge over the pit.
Perun is about to pull on the chain when I stop him. “Whoa, wait. Why would Weles put a pit here and then help us to cross it?”
Perun drops his hand. “You are right. He would not do this. Is trap. We pull chain, we go into pit with many snake.”
“Exactly. And I bet it’s a mechanical trapdoor too. It won’t require magic to work.”
Perun considers the space, looks at Orlaith, then says, “Maybe I make wind and we fly across?” Orlaith is of course the trouble; Perun and I could shape-shift to winged forms and fly across with ease.