Nothing happened,
Colin said, 'Break the stick over your knee and throw it at the doors. It looked cool when you did that before.'
Vanity squinted at Quentin. 'Was that from a made-up language?'
'Better than most real languages,' muttered Quentin under his breath. Then he said, 'That would have worked if these had been dwarf doors. Well. Let me try something else.' He knelt, took a piece of chalk from his pocket, and wrote some angular-looking Viking letters on the little strip of floor that showed between the edge of the carpet and the threshold of the door.
He stood, raised his wand, touched the tip to his chest, and spoke: 'Nine nights I hung upon the wind-torn tree, my own spear through my own heart, myself a sacrifice to myself, high on the tree whose roots none know! None came to aid me, none gave me drink. I saw the runes below me. Crying out, I seized on them.'
He pointed to one of the marks he'd made on the ground with his wand. 'Three great runes burn in my hand. A fourth and greater one I know. If a man fastens chains and gyves to my limbs, I sing the song to set me free; locks spring apart, fetters jump open, my hands and feet know liberty.'
He raised the wand and tapped the door.
The door trembled in the frame.
Vanity said, 'Did it work? The door was listening to him.'
I said, 'No. I can still see the spiderweb across it.'
Colin said, 'Maybe Vanity can just wish a secret passage into being, and we can go into the room that way.'
Quentin said over his shoulder, 'That's not the problem. The door is not really locked; it is just going to let off an alarm or a curse if we open it unlawfully. The windows and floorboards are the same way. The act of going into the room is what is prohibited. If this had been a locked door, something keeping us prisoner, that last rune would have worked. Well. Maybe I can make the magic think magic is wicked.
Let me try something else…'
Again he tapped a chalk letter with his wand-tip. 'Nine great runes burn in my hand. A tenth and greater one I know. When witch-hags ride the wild wind at night, such spell I know as to daze and confound them, that they will not find their own doorposts again, or return to don their day-shapes.'
When he raised the wand to touch the door this time, the stick in his hand jumped backwards in his grip, striking Quentin a nasty knock across the elbow—he had put his arm up to guard his face—and went spinning end over end down the corridor. It clattered loudly to the carpet.
'Ow, ow, ow,' muttered Quentin, holding his arm.
'Is it broken?' asked Colin.
'If it were broken, I would be crying like a girl, not saying, 'Ow, ow, ow.''
'Well,' said Colin. 'Let me go fetch your wand. At least it will give me something to do.'
'Don't bother. Apsu! To me!' And the invisible stagehand snatched up the stick and tossed it back to him.
'Great trick,' said Colin, looking more downcast than ever.
Quentin said to the door, '
A noise came from the door, a creak of wood.
Vanity said, 'What's that noise?'
Quentin said, 'It is laughing at me. Apparently, I am not exactly a friend.'
I asked, 'What it? What is laughing?'
He said, 'An undead dryad. They chopped her up and planed her into boards. I cannot break the spell, because I don't have any influences to back me up. I am a trespasser. The moral order of the universe is not on my side.'
Colin said, 'Tell the door that it's our stuff in there. Stolen property. Belongs to us.'
'In effect, I just tried that. Whoever put up the door was not the one who stole the goods. If they are stolen.'
I said, 'They might have been surrendered in a war. Or they might simply belong to Boggin.'
Victor said, 'We are forgetting the principle of what you call the table of oppositions. Magicians don't stop spells, you said. They stop psionic effects. Materialism stops magic.'
His forehead opened. His metal eye rotated into view. Azure sparks, and then a beam, lanced from his eye and played back and forth across the door.
Quentin backed away nervously.
Victor, said, 'There is a magnetic anomaly. But there cannot be any mind, or intention, or purpose watching this door, since only complex living mechanisms have minds, and there is insufficient complexity here for that. I see nothing but wood, and wood is carbon atoms strung together. I do not see anything that could cause the magnetic anomaly. Whatever has no cause cannot exist.'
Victor put his hand out and pushed the door open.
2.
I stepped in. I said, 'Quentin, do you have the disc?'
