Myth 13 - Myth Alliances by Asprin, Robert (ebook reader online free .txt) 📕

Now that we were safely around the corner of the inn facing away from the castle, I plunged the bulk of the spell

down into the earth. Tananda and I sat down, and I told the others what we had seen. “And once they let go of the power all of these active spells began working again, in?cluding this one. Now we can't get out until the Ten turn it off and take it home.”

“Yes, you can,” Zol agreed, peering at it closely. “Mis?tress Tananda was right about the way the spell is con?structed. It is a case of polarity. You were inside when it resumed operating, and the Pervect Ten left the room. If you had gone with them, you wouldn't have felt a thing. If you examine the individual tongues of flame that make up the walls, you would see that they have a blunt end and a pointed end. The pointed end is the dangerous one. When you arrived back just now, they were pointing in. This kind of spell works like a door on a two-​way hinge. First it swings out, then it swings in.”

“Oh!” I exclaimed, as enlightenment dawned. “And Gleep swung it in. So the points are facing away from us?”

“That's right! So now all of you can come out.”

Very nervously, Tananda and I rose to our feet. I bent down and looked Gleep in the eye.

“You jump out at the same time we do,” I ordered, sternly.

“Gleep,” he stated blandly, but I noticed his eyebrow ridges rise. He understood me. I wrapped my arm around his neck.

“One, two, THREE!”

We bounded out. Another brilliant flash of light blinded us for a moment. I could feel my hair crackle on my head, but no blaze of fire tried to consume me. When we let go of one another I patted myself down to make sure nothing was burning. Gleep's long neck snaked all around me as he looked to make sure I was all right. Tananda brushed her hair back, and pulled her tunic down so her decolletage re?turned to its normal buoyancy.

“That's a nasty one,” she remarked. “I'll have to re?member that trick.”

We'd barely straightened up when I heard another crackle from behind me. I spun around just in time to see the column of blue light collapse and vanish. The Pervect Ten were calling their safeguard spell home.

“A very sophisticated use of magik,” Zol Icty agreed, leading us back to the table. Montgomery, our host, brought us a tray full of food and beer. I fell on the food as though I'd been starved for weeks. Tananda served herself more daintily, but she filled her plate as high as I did mine. Being terrified and nearly incinerated did help us work up an appetite. “We are up against very intelligent opponents. You say they had a computer in the room?”

“Yes,” I affirmed, washing down a mouthful of cheese with a swig of beer. “The little one was reading from an al?most infinite scroll. I think it would be the longest scroll in the history of the world, but I couldn't see where it was rolled up.”

“It's in virtual space,” Zol explained, smiling. “A kind of magik. I could teach you, but that is not the best use of our time now. Can you get me in there?”

We looked at Wensley. He writhed uneasily.

“They're in there all the time except when they eat or sleep or come to supervise us.”

“Tonight is time enough,” Zol assured us. “I am awake a good deal of the night anyhow.”

“You don't want to go back again?” Wensley squawked, aghast.

“How do you want us to figure out what they're doing?” I demanded. “Ask them?”

The Wuhs had no answer to that.

Once again we found ourselves sneaking into the great room of the castle. The Wuhses on what anywhere else would have been guard duty carefully looked the other way

as we passed, with all the subtlety of a child counting to 100 in a game of Hide and Seek.

Apparently it had not made the Pervect Ten suspicious that their security spell had been stolen that afternoon. The gleaming blue cage was back in place, this time teth?ered with lines of force to the walls of the castle, prevent?ing it from moving again. That didn't worry me, because now we knew how to pass in and out of it without being killed.

The little flames were pointing inward when we reached the room, a sign that the Ten were not in it. Very carefully I used a tendril of magik to ease open the door wide enough to peer through. As I hoped, the room was dark and silent. I signaled to the others. We tiptoed in.

I had left Gleep at the head of the corridor curled up un?der a couch set in an alcove. If he saw any Pervects head?ing towards us he had instructions to cry out. At the sound of “Gleep!” we were to run into the anteroom and pop back to the inn. He would meet us there as soon as he could get away from them. They'd be unlikely to suspect an innocent-​looking baby dragon of subterfuge. I hoped.

“Now, Pervect code is very hard to break,” Zol explained, as he sat down in the child's chair and flexed his long fin?gers. I noticed with surprise that he fit into the seat fairly well. “They tend to like permutations of complex numbers