Rick Cook - The Wizardry Quested

"No sign of hostile magic," he said.

The one thing they didn’t have was a map. The magical forces around this place were too strong for the wizards of the North to get the lay of the land and there were no pre-existing maps of the place. Wiz suspected that even the wizards of the Dark League, who had delved this place, hadn’t had a complete map. He suspected even more strongly that the dungeons’ new tenant had done some major remodeling.

"Off in this direction."

Then, " said Glandurg, striding to the front, " let us away."

The dwarf took the lead with Malkin following, then Wiz, then June and then Danny. It wasn’t an ideal formation out it did mean that if Glandurg started swinging that sword the others would be able to get clear.

The tunnel led slightly off to the right and down. Here and there the old dirt walls or rough stone showed through, as if whatever was working on the dungeons hadn’t finished yet. Wiz found the thought comforting and he tried to hold onto it

Every hundred feet or so the tunnel would branch, sometimes into three or four directions. But the directional amulet kept pointing straight ahead. At last they came to a branching where the amulet told them to go right. Right through a large iron-bound door of age-darkened wood.

Malkin studied the door in the light of the magic globe. "No obvious lock," she said more to herself than the others. She ran her fingers over the rough iron surface, pressing experimentally here and there.

Glandurg reached for his sword.

"With a single blow of Bund Fury I shall cleave it asunder."

Danny and Wiz edged away from the door.

"Uh, we’re not to that stage vet," Wiz said a trifle desperately. "Just keep watch, okay?"

Malkin nodded and bent before the door. She ran her hands over the lock plate like a pianist touching her instrument She tapped on the door frame in two or three places and then turned her attention to the iron plate set in the stone to take the lock’s bolt.

"Easiest to take that off," she muttered and produced a set of tools from somewhere about her person. "Bring that light over here will you?"

As Wiz moved to comply she began to work on the plate in the wall It was held in place with three large and quite rusty nuts, he saw, with the bolt ends peened over them to prevent their removal. For some reason that bothered him, but he couldn’t quite understand why.

Malkin produced something that looked like a surgeons scalpel and applied it to the peened-over part of the bolts. The rusty iron cut like cheese under the pressure of the magical knife. Next she produced a small bottle and put several drops of an oily liquid on each bolt. The liquid seemed to soak into the joint between the nuts and bolts. Then she held up a tuning fork and struck it against the wall. A pure clear tone at the edge of human hearing filled the tunnel and Malkin applied the base of the fork to the first nut. There was a fine shifting of powder from the nut and bolt as the rust fell away under the influence of the vibrations.

She applied the tuning fork to each of the other bolts and then reached into the tool roll for something else. Then she stopped very deliberately, exhaled and stood up.

"Someone told me I shouldn’t rush these things," she explained. The next step is to remove those fasteners."

"Then we take the plate off and open the door," Danny said.

Malkin looked at him. "Then we see. Best not to anticipate what you’ll find on a job like this. Too much chance of missing something important."

With that she turned back and knelt again before the iron plate. She took the first nut between her thumb and forefinger and carefully, delicately, turned it. The rusty nut came off as if it was on only finger tight.

While the others watched Malkin moved to the center nut. She grasped it, moved as if to turn it and then stopped dead. Then slowly, ever so slowly, she began to turn the nut the other way.

That’s tightening it," Danny said, but the nut backed off and fell into Malkin’s hand. She shot Danny a raised-eyebrow look over her shoulder and went back to the third nut, which came off in the conventional direction.

Wiz picked up the second nut and looked at it. "A dummy thread," he said. The first few turns are cut right-handed, but the bearing threads are actually left-handed"

By this time Malkin had the plate off and the door open and while Wiz looked at the nut the others started filing through.

"Come here and look at this," Danny said from the other side of the door. Wiz followed him through. There, behind the now-open door was an evil-looking black sphere cradled like a nut in a nutcracker between a lever and the wall. One end of the lever was pivoted in place and the other end was fastened to the bolt with the backwards nut.

"Turn that thing the wrong way and you break the sphere," Danny told him. Suddenly Wiz felt very cold. "Nasty."

"I wonder what’s in that sphere anyway?"

"Danny."

"Yeah, Wiz?"

"Never ask questions you don’t want to know the answer to."

"How did you know how to open that door?" Wiz asked as he caught up with Malkin at the head of the party.

"Wizard, your problem is you’re too trusting," Malkin told him. "If it looks like it is supposed to open by turning deosil, then obviously it opens by turning widdershins."

"Thanks," Wiz mumbled and dropped back beside Danny, lost in thought.

"What’s wrong?" Danny asked.

"Malkin opened the door by turning the bolt clockwise."

"Just the opposite of what you’d expect. It was a trap."

"How many bolts have you seen since you got here with right-hand threads, like the ones in our world?"

The younger programmer stopped and looked at him. "I can’t remember seeing any bolts-except for the stuff we’ve made. Here they use pins or wedges."

"Exactly. They don’t use bobs, right-hand or left-hand. But that door was gimmicked to trap someone who expected a right-handed thread. What we’d expect."

"You mean this place is full of traps designed just for us?"

"Either that or the traps were designed by people who think like us. People from our world."

Danny let out a low whistle. "Jeez, I don’t know which is worse."

"Let me know when you decide," Wiz told him. "Because chances are whichever one is worse, that’s the one it is."

The evening came on dark and full of dirty fog. There was no sunset that day at the Wizards’ Keep, only the dank fog and the wind keening about the towers where lamps burned late as wizards labored over their spells. Here and there a guardsman paced the battlements, cloak drawn tight against the growing chill.

"What is the time?" Bal-Simba asked as he stared out the window, straining to make out the castle curtain wall.

Arianne glanced at the magic sundial sitting on her work table. "Barely the seventh day-tenth." She paused. "Dark, is it not?"

"Too dark," Bal-Simba agreed. "Unnaturally so, I think."

Arianne’s eyes flicked to the window but saw only Bal-Simba’s reflection against the darkness. "Our enemy’s work?"

"Perhaps." He turned from the window. "Ask Juvian to examine this fog for signs of magic."

His assistant nodded and spoke into a communications crystal.

So cold, Shauna thought, even for winter. She picked up the wrought iron poker and stirred up the fire. Listen to yourself. Like someone’s old grandmother. Still she stirred the fire, seeking comfort from the renewed flames. Normally the apartment in the guardsmens’ quarters was snug enough, with whitewashed walls and comfortable furniture enlivened with polished copper pots and examples of Shauna’s needlework But tonight it seemed chill and dank, oppressed by the air that had settled over the Wizards’ Keep.