“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.