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those vaults looked deceivingly simple, with a huge basic key lock that any amateur could pick. Of course, that was how it should be. The first traps would not be on the outside of such an entry, but just inside. The only advantage he had as a thief was the knowledge that Ruddygore himself had to go down there once in a while, so there was a way around every trick and trap, every spell and danger, if he could spot them all in the proper order and solve their riddles.
     
    An experienced hand with a probe revealed the first one right away. The big wooden door, in fact, was not locked at all, and any attempt to fiddle with the lock mechanism meant instant activation of alarms. Examining the door carefully, he saw that it was, in fact, not a normal door at all. The hinges, for example, were false. The door, in point of fact, appeared hinged in some way from the bottom. Try and pick that lock and the entire door, built of heavy wood and probably reinforced with iron or lead, would suddenly and quickly fall outward, crushing the would-be thief like a rat in a trap.
     
    He had his kit with him; from it he took a small handle that was actually a magnet. He placed the handle as far up on the door as he could and then, holding his breath, he pulled gently. The door, which was clearly iron-cored, gave, coming forward as he pulled. He stopped as soon as he dared and examined the small, dark area he had revealed. As he had suspected, there were two alarms, Page 16 Chalker, Jack L - Vengeance of the Dancing Gods one mechanical and one magical. The mechanical one, nothing more than a pull-string, proved easy to bypass, 22 VENGEANCE OF THE DANCING GODS but the spell was enormously complex and took some time to understand and build onto enough to bypass its trigger.
     
    Removing his door block, he continued to pull down until he was satisfied that there were no more traps, at least on the door. No alarms that he could sense were sounding, and he felt reasonably satisfied that he was safe.
     
    He carefully stepped inside, then used his handle once more to pull the door back up to its closed position. He was now totally in the dark, and knew he would have to risk some light. He brought forth a small torch and lighted it with his flint, not wishing to try any spells in this place until he could see just what he was dealing with.
     
    The torch flickered and then burst into life, and the thief gasped. In front of him was a great hole, a bottomless pit of blackness. The floor did continue, but it was a good twenty feet to the other side, and no ladder, rope, or other way to bridge the chasm was evident. He shifted his sight to the magical bands and saw a criss-crossing network of complex red and blue strands across the whole of the chasm. He realized quite suddenly that the spell was so complexly woven that it would take hours to unravel enough even to guess its nature. He ignored that as impractical; instead, he looked for loose ends and found none. The spell was a complete one, then, not an interactive type wherein he or another intruder would provide the additional mathematics to enact its horrors.
     
    He wondered, in fact, about that chasm. Nothing in his research indicated that Ruddygore ever brought with him a great bridge or ladder, and he could hardly see the huge fat man going hand over hand on a rope. Clearly one could cross this without apparatus, but to do so would have required at least one loose end in that spell to which a small solidifying spell could be tied, sufficient to allow someone simply to walk across on thin air. This was a spell of concealment or revealment, then, not a true trap in and of itself. That meant that either it hid something 23 JACK L. CHALKER that was actually there or showed something that was not there.
     
    Could the chasm be false? He gingerly tested, and found his foot going down off the edge without finding any support. No, at least some sort of depression was there. But if the chasm was real, how