What’s the plan? Sindari asked as the kobold scurried away.
We check the windmill and hope the dragon doesn’t come home before we’re done.
And if he does? Neither of us is strong enough to kill a dragon.
I know. We’re going to optimistically hope for the best. I marched resolutely through the grass.
Sindari glided past me to take the lead. An interesting stance from someone with pee on her hip.
I’m not sure I believe that you didn’t anticipate that result.
His look back was not convincingly innocent.
4
As we reached the entrance of the windmill, its original door long rusted off, I looked one last time at the cloudy sky overhead. I didn’t sense a dragon, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t be on his way.
There is an enchantment on the doorway. Sindari twitched his tail as he gazed into the dim interior, where rotten rails and planks from a decaying staircase littered the stone floor. Will your charm work on it?
I stepped close and gripped what I thought of as my lock-picking charm, but it had actually been designed to nullify enchantments just like this. No, not just like this. Enchantments placed by dwarves and elves and magical beings of their caliber. It might not be able to handle something made by a dragon.
Not certain where to place my other hand, since the door was missing, I rested it on the nearby frame. An uneasy tingle ran up my arm and down my spine. The urge to flee back the way I’d come rushed through me. I gritted my teeth and kept my hand in place, willing the key-shaped charm to nullify the enchantment.
It heated in my hand, almost burning my palm.
I flashed back to the dark-elf lair where I’d been a prisoner, held by magical bonds, and had managed to break them with the charm’s help. I hadn’t expected it to be strong enough for the task, but somehow, it had worked. It had almost seemed to draw power from me, but I wasn’t sure I remembered that correctly.
Just because my mom had boinked an elf back in the day didn’t mean I had magical power. Sure, I had a few attributes that weren’t quite human, but it wasn’t as if I could cast spells. My charms and my magical weapons were the reason I could slay bad guys, not any secret power coursing through my veins.
The enchantment is still there, Sindari noted.
Annoyed that I’d let myself be distracted, I focused harder, willing whatever invisible protection was there to disappear.
Wood snapped and stone cracked, and I jumped back.
The doorframe I’d had my hand against split in a dozen places and crumbled inward. Several layers of the mortared stone of the surrounding wall collapsed atop it. Rock dust flew up, clouding the air.
Now it’s gone, Sindari remarked blandly.
“Uh, good.” I decided to pretend I’d meant to do that. It’s important to be suave in front of a magical tiger.
I have not seen your charm perform so earnestly before.
Earnest, right. “I’m exploring its full powers.”
Sindari padded slowly into the interior, ears alert and nostrils twitching as he sniffed the air. Since he was more likely to detect a magical trap, I let him go first, though I hated hiding behind anyone else.
As I stood on the threshold, a distant crying reached my ears. The kidnapped children? Dare I hope they were still alive? Or was it a trick? One designed to lure me into another trap?
The noise came from under the floorboards somewhere. Ancient floorboards that creaked as I walked into the windmill. Sindari weighed more than I did, but somehow, his paws didn’t elicit the same response.
I searched slowly around the voluminous ground floor of the windmill, looking for a trapdoor or steps to a lower level. There were upper levels, too, but it would take some climbing to reach them. The wooden stairs that had once spiraled up the circular wall had collapsed, and the floor above was thirty feet up.
As I explored, I passed ancient wheelbarrows with wooden wheels, a rooster-shaped windmill weight, and millstones resting flat on the floor or leaning against the walls. One of the larger stones had fallen through the floor at some point, leaving a jagged opening to a dark basement.
“What kind of windmill has a basement?” I muttered, pulling out my phone and tapping on the flashlight app. I also had a night-vision charm, but there was too much daylight filtering in through the doorway and holes in the walls for me to use it here.
Val? Over here. Sindari’s tone was grim.
He was on the other side of the cavernous room, behind a pile of rusty farm tools that looked like they’d been ordered back when the first Sears catalog had been mailed out. I shined the light down into the basement, spotting nothing but more millstones and a stack of wood boards, then headed toward him.
As I rounded the pile of farm tools, I almost tripped on a boot. A boot attached to a leg attached to a body. A body without a head.
I’d seen plenty of grisly sights over the years and didn’t react to this one, other than to sigh. The man was wearing a blood-drenched green-and-khaki Jefferson County ranger uniform, and I knew right away this was Willard’s missing contact. I wished the guy had waited for me instead of trying to find the children on his own.
“Where’s the head?”
Sindari sat beside the body—this was what he’d brought me over to see. It’s not here.
Judging by the stump of the neck, it had been bitten off. With one powerful chomp. There weren’t many animals I knew that could have done that. I remembered how large Zav had been in his dragon form while standing on the rooftop of my apartment building. A dragon’s maw was definitely big enough for the job.
“Do dragons eat humans?” I shuddered at the idea.
Not typically. They prefer fat herbivores of substantial size. But they’re certainly capable of eating just about anything—and anyone. The dragon could have done this to make a point. Or as an efficient way to kill the man for snooping in his windmill.
“Is it really his windmill?” I looked toward the exit—the only way in or out, unless there was a big hole somewhere on a higher level. “How would a dragon fit in here?”
The only hole in the wall was the one I’d made.
They have long necks.
I thought he was joking, but Zav’s neck had been long. Elegant but long. Could his big head have fit through the doorway to kill this man with a bite?
They can also shape-shift into smaller creatures, as you’ve seen.
“True.”
I shook my head. I would let Willard know what had happened to this guy, but the children were why I’d been sent.
“Sindari?” I returned to the hole in the floor and pointed him toward it. “Can you tell if anyone is down there?”
He sniffed the air over the hole. That distant crying came again. No, not distant. Muffled. Maybe there was a door and another room down there.
“It may be another trap,” I admitted.
If he didn’t smell anyone, I would assume it was, that the dragon wanted to lure me down so it could later bite my head off.
I do detect other humans down there. Several of them. Stay here. I will look.
He disappeared into the darkness, dropping twenty feet and landing among the millstones without trouble. I dropped to my stomach and shined my light around below, hoping to spot a way to climb down—or climb back up, if I jumped down. Next time, I wouldn’t hop out of the Jeep without a rope.
The circular stone wall of the windmill extended all the way to the flagstone floor of the basement. The area down there wasn’t simply some pit that had been dug out after the initial construction. It actually looked like the original ground level of the mill and that the earth outside had been built up to cover it. Or maybe the windmill had been magically sunken into the ground. If so, to what end?
I pointed my flashlight beam toward the nearest basement wall. The mortar between the stones was crumbling or missing completely, leaving what I could turn into handholds for climbing. But the hole in the floor was more than ten feet from the nearest wall. There wouldn’t be a way to get over to it without suction cups.
“Or making a new hole,” I muttered.
A gouging noise floated up from below.
“I hope that’s you, Sindari.”
A loud thud followed.
“I definitely hope that’s you. Please let me know if ogres live down there.”
I am attempting to break down a solid oak door with an enchantment locking it. I may need you and your charm.
“I don’t suppose I can toss it down and you can use it without me?” I eyed the exit, worried about the dragon returning while I was down in the basement.
I do not believe I can use your charms. Also, when you used it on the doorway above, you did something beyond the intrinsic power of that charm. I sensed it.
“Any idea what it was?”
You did it. Do you not know?
“I know less than you’d think.” I located Sindari with the flashlight beam and saw the door. The muffled crying came again, and it came from that direction. That made up my mind. “I’m coming down.”
But not without creating a way out. I trotted to the wall, pocketed my phone, and, apologizing to Chopper for using it as a crowbar, slid the blade between the board and the stone. A mundane sword would have snapped off at the hilt. Fortunately, Chopper was no mundane sword. I’d won the blade in a battle years ago and didn’t know its history—Zav had hinted that it had powers I didn’t know about—but I did know it was far stronger than a slender piece of metal should have been.
It glowed a faint blue when it was out of its scabbard, but today, its glow was fainter than usual. Maybe it was indignant to be put to this use instead of going into battle.
“Next time,” I promised the blade.
A board shifted, nails wrenching free from their beds, and I flicked it away. As old as the windmill was, the floorboards were thick and solid, and I couldn’t pull up the rest with my hands. I had to keep using the sword as a crowbar. Aware of the seconds passing, I forced myself to be careful and methodical—and not cut my leg off.
Another thud came from below. Sindari trying to knock down the door.