Vengeance of the Dancing Gods by Jack L. Chalker Read Free Book Online Page B

is not one of those. Well, come on. Let's see just how far he got..
     
    The Imir walked before him now and through the center mirror as if it wasn't there, as indeed it was not. It was an illusion, reflecting the others. An immediate bright, searing light hit them, hot and intense, but there was no sign of any remains or essence to show that anything had ended its life here.
     
    "Definitely no vampiric spirit," Poquah noted. "It would have been destroyed at this point..
     
    Ruddygore again took the lead, pressing the keystone in the wall that was invisible in the brightness of the light to ordinary eyes, insuring that the spring-loaded, stakefilled walls beyond would not close on them. Down another few stairs and around a curve, they broke through a complex sonic pattern that was impossible to avoid and well above the threshold of even an animal's hearing. The sorcerer went up to a small wooden box, flipped it down to reveal a numeric keypad, then pressed a nine digit combination that prevented the alarm box from going off, triggering all sorts of signals above and even nastier traps below.
     
    They entered the main chamber and faced the seven identical doors, like those to bank vaults. Each had different and complex spells and locks on them, and there was no way to tell which one was real and which were the decoys.
     
    Ruddygore and Poquah stood there, puzzled. Still none of the signs showed any trace of a recent visitor. This wasn't unusual if one just passed through, but death imprinted the inanimate objects surrounding it with a specific and retrievable set of signals.
     
    "Clearly, either Macore did not come down here, or 38 JACK L. CHALKER 39 VENGEANCE OF THE DANCING GODS Page 28 Chalker, Jack L - Vengeance of the Dancing Gods he succeeded in entering the vault," Poquah noted in his dry, flat tone.
     
    "No, if Macore had succeeded in getting all the way, he'd have returned upstairs, either to prevent any suspicion from coming his way or simply to taunt me about his feat in breaking my elaborate system," Ruddygore responded.
     
    The Imir walked over to the second door from the right and examined its spells and locks. "Nevertheless, someone not only was here but managed to choose the correct vault. It is an amazingly skillful job, but the seals have certainly been tampered with..
     
    Ruddygore strode quickly over, looked, and saw that it was true. He frowned worriedly, not liking this at all.
     
    "Not even the Dark Baron and his demon prince succeeded in breaking into these vaults. I don't care who it was, Macore is simply not this good. This is serious indeed, Poquah. I smell the hand of Hell in all of this, for only they would know enough of these vaults to bring someone this far..
     
    "Still, the doors are scrambled randomly every few hours. How could even Hell know the correct one at that particular moment?" .
     
    "I don't know. But all these attempts by all these master thieves in the last couple of years, which I'd foolishly taken as just chance and the wages of being famous in dull times, I now suspect is more than that..
     
    It would have taken the best of wizards many hours to unwork any of the spells on any of the doors, which were at the heart of the final security system. The true vault shuffled magically between the doors randomly, but at least once an hour; none could undo the spells and pick the locks in less than two, not even a member of the Council itself, which meant that even someone who got this far would be forever picking the lock to what would be the wrong door.
     
    The only one who could undo the spells in sufficiently fast time to get into the right one was the maker of the spell, and it still took Ruddygore better than ten minutes.
     
    He rarely visited the vaults, or even checked them. He only checked to the last point where the thief was destroyed.
     
    The spell undone, he had effectively frozen the vault shift and now took a great key from his waistcoat pocket and placed it in