Crown of Shadows - C. S. Friedman [69]
“Look,” he told her, “I’m going to have to break in—”
“Oh, no, you don‘t!” She forced herself between Damien and the door. “Your friend wanted a secure apartment, and that’s what he got. Already I’ve put up with gods know how many nails and such being hammered in the windows, and now—”
“I’ll pay for it,” he said quickly. “I’ll pay for any damages in cash, right now.” He dug hurriedly into his pocket, praying that he had enough money on him. There were coins in the bottom, large ones by the feel of them; he pulled them out quickly and offered them to her. “Here.” They’d pay for the door three times over, he estimated; even so she was reluctant to accept them. “Take them!”
“I never had such trouble like this before,” she muttered. But she got out of the way. He stepped forward and ran his hands over the door, trying to Know its substance. After a few seconds he cursed in frustration, stepped back, and tried to think clearly.
The bolt was a solid one, affixed in a steel chamber that was firmly attached to the wood. It wasn’t going to come loose easily, not by virtue of any Working he knew how to do. Damn the Church, which had limited his training to the sorceries it approved of, making him helpless in the face of such a simple mechanism! He drew in a deep breath and tried to think calmly, tried to reason his way through the problem the way Tarrant would have done. The lock was steel through and through. Steel was hard to Work. The slot that received it was also steel, and well fortified against a forced assault. But where the steel parts were affixed to the wood, and within the wood itself ...
He Knew the door and the wall beside it, and chose the wall as the more vulnerable of the two. Then he reached inside it with carefully focused fae, in the same way that he had done to a tree in the Black Lands so long ago. Insinuating himself into its cells, smelling out the microbes that crouched between the woody fibers, analyzing their hunger. At last he found what he wanted, and he Healed. The microbes grew and multiplied, their life cycles accelerated by his Working. As they grew, they digested the wood that surrounded them, breaking down the hard cell walls, rotting the powerful fibers. Two generations of microbes, then three. He guided them through their newly paced life cycles, making sure their hunger was focused on the one part of the wall he meant to weaken; there was no point in causing more damage than he had to.
At last he sensed that the process had done as much good as it was likely to. Despite his rush, he took care to stabilize the hungry microbes at a normal level before he withdrew his senses from the wall; otherwise the rest of the house could be undermined in a fortnight. Then he stepped back, drew in a deep breath, and pulled on the door as though his life depended on it. At first it didn’t move. He persisted. At last, slowly, the wood of the door frame began to give way. Softly at first, then with a splintering crack that made the landlady step back with a gasp. He gave the door a good jerk, as hard as he could muster, and the wood gave way utterly: the steel housing of the deadbolt tore through the wall and the door was open at last, the mechanism of its closure dangling from its edge like a broken limb.
“Gods‘v Earth,” the woman muttered, but Damien had no time to coddle her. As soon as the door was open, he moved into the dark apartment—
—and malevolence swirled up about his legs with such force that he nearly crashed to his knees, cold fae invading his flesh with a power that made bile rise up in his gut, his stomach spasming as if it could vomit up this repulsive evil. Loathsome, unspeakably loathsome; it took all his self-control not to abandon his search and desperately try to find a Working that would scrub his flesh clean of the sickening power. Go ahead, the power seemed to urge,