That was depressing, but not something they either understood or could do anything about. Joe said, "Well, I don't want evil or another war or anything like that, because it would kill too many people, but frankly I'd do almost anything to relieve this boredom. We need a break, Ruddygore." He sighed. "You know, I felt sorry for Marge, but the fact is she's getting to see this place while I'm stuck on a damned false throne as some kind of monument. We can't even really enjoy this place. We're due back in only four days. That's just not enough."
"Don't feel sorry for Marge—ever!" Ruddygore admonished him. "She's really happy for the first time in her life."
"You've seen her, then?"
He nodded. "Yes, about a year and a halfback. She's still much the same, but she's fully accepted and adjusted to her faerie* (*Faerie refers to the heritage, magic nature, power, and "realm" of fairies in general; it has a connotation of that which is withdrawn from human ken. Fairy refers in more specific manner to individuals, races, traits, and abilities of the fairy folk; its connotation is more that of a normal, day-to-day existence.) nature now and she seems to be fully enjoying life. The fairy folk have a far greater joy in life, even the smallest and most ordinary things, because, while ageless, they are no less mortal than we, but unlike us, if they die before the Last Trump is sounded, they die the real death. It makes them appreciate things more and cherish every moment. It's one reason why fairy folk in the main seem childlike, although you know that they aren't."
"You make the threat of true death seem like an asset," Tiana noted.
"Oh, no! It just makes the outlook different, that's all. You see, deep down, no human really believes that he or she can die until it happens. The fairies, whose power is partly based upon belief, know the truth of that and its finality. Because of that, you either go nuts or you live every moment of life to the fullest. Whole races of fairy folk have gone in both directions." He paused a moment, then continued.
"However, as to your holiday problem, we might be able to solve it. I agree that you need a break, if only because of the boredom. Both of your natures are free-spirited, and that's part of the problem. Me, I could use a little boredom now and then. Let me think on the problem for a day or so. Perhaps we could invent a new holiday, one in which the two of you would supposedly go back to Heaven for a few weeks or something. I've never really been comfortable with this idiotic theology, but it has been convenient in many ways and it's no sillier than ninety-nine percent of the religions and cults in this world or on Earth. So long as it emphasizes Heavenly values and virtues, it doesn't serve Hell's ends, and that's more than can be said for most of them."
They arrived at the castle, where elfin grooms took their horses, and they entered and went to the Great Hall. They settled down in comfortable, fur-covered chairs, and a servant brought them a tray of delicacies, and another brought drinks. Ruddygore, still formally attired but with hat taken, settled back and looked somewhat relaxed.
"I can tell that you have been arguing over children again," he said casually.
They both jumped. "What!" Tiana cried. "How did you know?" She had visions of spies all over the place.
"Because it's something that would happen if boredom weighed heavily upon you. I know you both too well."
"Well, it's out of the question," Joe growled.
"Why?" the wizard asked him. "Oh, I agree when it comes to Tiana, but you're both weres. You can become each other. The genes would be the same."
"You mean me have the baby?" Joe was aghast. "Certainly. Oh, at thirty-six hours a month I fear the pregnancy would be about fifteen or sixteen years to term, but what of it? A simple spell would continue you every were-period until it happened, although you'd have to make certain that you did in fact become Tiana each time or heaven knows what you'd give birth to in the end, but it's possible."
Joe shook his head in wonder. "No, I don't think so."
"Well, perhaps there are other ways. We'll see."
"It is the first night of the full moon tonight," Tiana reminded him.
"Oh, yes—I know. Don't mind me. I'm here for a brief rest and to do some studying anyway. Something is up. I can smell it. Something that I feel both here and on Earth, and that means something big. I want to find it and nip it in the bud before it bites all of us."
Macore was a small man dressed in a dark gray tunic with an integral hood. The hood, of course, was down now, in the bright daylight and in the company of familiar friends, and revealing a darkly handsome man with an angular face, always clean-shaven, and a nose perhaps a bit too big but of which he was inordinately proud.
He was not surprised to find Ruddygore away, although his usually reliable sources told him that the old boy was due back almost any time now. Macore was one of the few who knew where Ruddygore went on these frequent and sometimes long business trips, although he'd never been to Earth, and all he knew about it was what he'd learned from associating with Joe and Marge in the old days.
The old days, he thought sadly, sitting in a small reception hall and picking at the fine meal Durin, Ruddygore's elfin master chef, had prepared for him. How quickly the time passed, he reflected, and how much older he felt. Not that he wasn't physically as good as he ever was, but now more of that speed and quickness came from spells and elixirs, dearly bought, instead of through natural training, as it had been not too many years ago.
He wondered, sitting here, why he felt so depressed. Things were not, after all, that bad, and he really had no complaints. The life of a thief was a lonely one, but he had chosen it, rather than being forced into it. Those who were forced into it were amateurs and tended to remain so. He had only sympathy for them. He, now, was different. He was rich, he was famous—or infamous, depending on who heard the name and under what circumstances—and he had the friendship of the head of the Council and the two demigods who dominated life, particularly in the area of the river. Few had ever caught him and none had ever held him; he was getting into his middle forties now, pretty old for any sort of thief.
He loved a good roll in the hay with a willing wench, but there was no end of those, and he wished no lasting commitments to anyone. To make such a commitment was to make him eternally vulnerable. He was, in fact, at the top of his profession and he had achieved everything in his wildest dreams—plus a lot more.
And that, of course, was the root of the problem. When one has broken into dark towers ruled by witches and ancient gods and stolen their treasures, picking the unpickable locks and breaking the unbreakable spells, what was there left for him? He could, he reflected, do no better than to equal himself in the future, and one of these days even he would make a fatal mistake, borne of carelessness or age. No human being was perfect. It was this knowledge—that he should quit now, while well ahead, or inevitably die—that was eating at him. He was the gambler who was now ten thousand ahead, able to support himself forever, who knew that if he played long enough he'd lose it all, but could not stop playing because, really, he didn't want to do anything else.
And what challenges were left? What had not he or one of his colleagues never failed to crack that was worth cracking?
With a start, he thought of one. One right below him, in fact, and the best guarded of the lot. He could recite the names of two or three dozens of the finest who had tried it. He'd never seen them again, and probably would not, in this life. It had never occurred to him to steal from Ruddygore. Mooch off him, certainly, and use his name and political influence where it was advantageous—but steal from him? The man was the most responsible for elevating him from petty con man and minor crook to the king of thieves he now was.
But did he have to steal—or merely solve the problem? He dwelt on the idea that evening as he put away his things and made ready for bed. He looked at his shaving gear and then stared into the mirror and scowled. Nothing, no reflection at all, stared back. It was as if he were invisible; yet, of course, he was solid and real. He'd been cutting himself shaving for several weeks and still hadn
't really gotten it right. He would grow a beard and to hell with it, except that trimming a beard was just as difficult. It hadn't seemed much of a curse, and it really wasn't, considering the alternatives, but that demon sure had one hell of a nasty sense of humor.
He'd traded the jewel off quickly, as agreed, to a young and ambitious black magician with some useful spells to trade. He hoped the kid thought fast. He kind of suspected that the other part of the deal, that the priests not catch up with him, had been handled by them blaming whoever had the gem. If so, the twerp better grow up real fast.
Throughout the next day the problem of Ruddygore's vaults haunted him, and he really had the urge to give it a try. He milked the staff for all the relevant details, which weren't much, but helped more than they knew, and mapped out a rough idea of what was down there. Naturally, there'd be mechanical traps, and ones with fixed spells—those were rather simple. He didn't fear those, although they'd be formidable indeed, so much as he feared electrical traps—the one kind of guard that no thief in this world would expect or understand. They had used a few such in the war, and of them all the ones he feared most were those which transmitted and those which took a code to turn off.
With a start, he realized that energy was energy, whether it was magical or electrical. One of the spells he'd gotten from the young black magician was in fact an energy-damping spell, although of course the fellow hadn't seen it that way.
He decided to give it a try. What the hell. This would surely make him the king of thieves if he did it; if he didn't, at least he wouldn't have to worry about his future careers.
Chapter 4
Invitation To Danger
There is no puzzle so complex that it cannot be solved.
—Motto of the Thieves' Guild of Husaquahr
NONE IN THE LONG AND VARIED HISTORY OF HUSAQUAHR had ever seen Throckmorton P. Ruddygore move this fast or be this angry. He had spent four days on the island recovering and relaxing from his unknown ordeals, then had headed off for his great castle Terindell in Marquewood as Joe and Tiana ruefully headed back to their own duties elsewhere.
As usual, Ruddygore always checked the seals, and when he discovered that no less than three attempts on the vault seemed to have been made in his absence, a new record, and one of them by Macore, he blew up. Of course, the staff was only guessing at this—they knew that all three had entered, two who thought they were surreptitious and Macore through the front gate—and that none had emerged again, but none could be absolutely certain that the vaults had been the cause of it.
Ruddygore was certain, taking only a cursory glance at the front door of the vaults and taking a reading from the memory in the wood. "How dare they!" he stormed to Poquah. "Particularly Macore! Well, they all got what they deserved. Let's go down and see what damage is done."
What had taken hours for the greatest of thieves to figure out Ruddygore did in a quick series of motions, so automatic that one would not have even guessed the traps were there. He pulled down the door, stepped in, went immediately over the bridge that seemed not to be there, then down the stairs, rapidly, skipping just the right steps and ducking at just the right points. Poquah, who knew the route as well as his master, did likewise, at least until the hall of mirrors. The mirrors would attack anyone without Ruddygore's full reflection in all of them, so the sorcerer had to wait a moment there until Poquah was with him and under his protection. He took the opportunity to read the walls, and found signs of two thieves gone to Hell in there between checks. Poquah was the only one of faerie, other than the dwarves, who would not be instantly killed by the iron in the vault, and that was only because of a spell that interacted with Ruddygore only when Ruddygore was present.
Two thieves. That worried him. Two, not three—and neither of the two were familiar.
"I don't like this, Poquah," he muttered darkly. "It is absolutely impossible for any, be they human or fairy, to pass this point unless with me. Even a false visage won't do it, since the mirror sees and recognizes such spells. About the only type of creature capable of passing through here would be some sort of vampire, and Macore 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, stake-filled 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 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 the lock, then turned it in an elaborate series of moves. The lock was, in fact, a nine number combination lock, and it had to be done just right, including removing the key before attempting to open the door. He did so, then pulled up on the handle and the great metal door swung away.
The vast treasure trove of Ruddygore's went back for what seemed to be miles, but he didn't try and walk the corridors and check every little thing. It was all keyed to him and to a personal inventory spell, and it took him almost no time at all to determine that the only things missing were fifty-one pounds of gold—real, not fairy, although the fairy gold would have been a better prize— and one of his American Express cards. The gold one, naturally.
There was, of course, only one way to get someone and that much gold back out, and he immediately walked far back along the corridors of the vault until he came to the Lamp. He was more than a little surprised to find it still there.
The Lamp of Lakash had been formed in the earliest days of Creation by the great powers who created the world. It looked, in fact, the way it should have—an ancient oil lamp that had once reminded Joe of an antique gravy boat with a top on it, sitting atop a rounded stand. It was originally designed as a fudge factor by the early Creators, since it could, within some strong limitations, violate or alter the laws of science and magic and grant a wish. Hell had made a stab for it, and it had been lost in the turmoil for eons afterward, even existing at various times on Earth as well as here, and giving rise to both worlds' legends of magic wishing lamps and genies. Ruddygore picked up the lamp and rubbed it gently, trying to remain calm and mark his words well while he held it. No matter what legend said, none were entitled to more than one free wish on the Lamp. Make two and, while the second was granted, the wisher changed places with the genie, becoming the slave of the Lamp in place of the one now there. Ruddygore had no desire to pay the price he would have to pay if he, even inadvertently, made a wish.
When it had been recovered by Joe and Marge, it had contained Dacaro, the evil wizard and former pupil of Ruddygore's, who had taken refuge in it against the demon prince Hiccarph.
Vengeance of the Dancing Gods Page 4