The Dragons of Bone and Dust (Tales from the New Earth Book 7) (9 page)

Ethmira. Simon prayed that the blood
he'd seen on the mouth of the kallorian had been its own and not his
friend's. He might never know. If the time lines were stretching
between the realms, his Magic Mirror spell might not be able to make
a connection. But he'd try to reach her at his first opportunity.

Right now it was time to go home and
learn how much time had really passed since he'd been away.

Kronk will know, Simon told himself.
And Aeris. I hope that they've kept the tower in good repair.

A pang of worry struck him as he
remembered his last moments on Earth. His two elemental friends had
tried to hold back Lacertus, the godling who had been chasing him.
They hadn't succeeded, and now Simon wondered if they were okay. He'd
thought about them many times since, but had tried to put the
situation out of his mind, mainly because there had been nothing that
he could do about it.

Now though, now he was home and the
worry came crashing down upon him once more.

I have to see them both, he thought.
Right now.

He adjusted the pack on his back and
realized with a pang that he'd somehow managed to lose his elven bow
during his headlong scramble toward the portal back in Dellis Varna.
All he had left was the pack and the quiver tied to his belt.

“
Damn it,”
he said bitterly. “I'd finally become comfortable with a weapon
and now I've lost it.”

Worse still, it was one less
connection with the elves and Ethmira and he felt the loss keenly.

With a tired shrug, he tried to let
it go and thought about his one true weapon instead.

“
Mortis de
Draconis,” he said with a smile. “Slayer of Dragons. Oh,
I've missed you.”

His hand itched for the feel of the
staff again. Just another reason to stop standing around like an
idiot and get back home.

“
Okay. Here
goes.”

Simon closed his eyes, concentrated
as hard as he could, and fixed a picture of his tower firmly in his
mind.

He held it there until he could
almost see it when he opened his eyes again. It was locked into place
and he nodded once. Time to go.

“
Gate!”

The sensation of being sucked into
the nothingness of the Void was something that Simon hadn't missed.
It wasn't painful but it felt, somehow, alien; like something that
human beings were never meant to be exposed to. But it was certainly
efficient.

Simon slowly counted to ten in the
icy blackness, the usual amount of time it took to get anywhere using
a Gate. On ten, light exploded around him and he stumbled forward,
almost falling as his eyes adjusted. He stood still and waited to
regain his equilibrium, swaying a bit like a near-sighted drunk. When
he could see again, he looked around slowly, trying to get his
bearings.

And there it was. He was standing in
the middle of yet another field of waving grass. It was after noon to
judge by the position of the sun and the grass was a richer shade of
green. The breeze was sweeter and warmer and it all felt very
familiar.

Across the field, a hundred feet
away, a square, gray stone tower surrounded by a high wall stood
proudly against the blue sky. He was home.

“
Home,”
he whispered. “Home again. Oh man, you look good.”

The light-colored stone of the wall
and tower glowed so brightly that Simon had to shade his eyes as he
tried to take in the details of the building. It looked the same but
he couldn't really tell from where he stood. But instead of rushing
forward, he advanced slowly, taking it all in.

The thick grass pulled at his legs as
he walked and he was careful to watch his footing. Insects hummed and
buzzed around him and everything felt so normal; it was as if he had
never left at all.

Three years, Ethmira had said. He'd
been gone three years. But looking at the tower, it felt more like
three hours. Things looked exactly the same. Or did they?

When he got to within a few dozen
feet of the main gates, Simon stopped abruptly. He had thought that
they were standing open when he first arrived, but they weren't. They
were broken. Smashed outward and barely hanging off of their rusted,
iron hinges.

“
Crap,”
he hissed angrily. “Lacertus' doing. I forgot that he crashed
through them when he chased after me.”

But why hadn't Kronk and the other
earth elementals who worked for him fixed them? Why leave them sadly
twisted and broken like this?

Simon carefully slipped in between
the gates and moved into the yard that surrounded the tower. And
stopped again.

“
Goddamn
it.”

The ironclad door of the tower was
gone, ripped off of its hinges. He looked around and spotted it lying
forlornly in the uncut grass against the surrounding wall.

The edges of the doorway were ragged,
pieces of the rock wall broken off. The interior was exposed and he
could only imagine how much damage had been done by the weather over
the past three years.

He'd worry about that later. What
suddenly struck him were thoughts of his livestock, especially his
three horses; Chief, Tammy and Sunshine, and Sunshine's offspring;
Sunbeam. He rushed around the tower to the right, hurrying to the
stable behind the building.

Empty. The stable door was open and
the place itself smelled dusty with disuse. There was no sign of the
horses.

Simon was actually relieved. Maybe
Chief had led his small herd to safety. The big stallion was
perfectly capable of something like that. His Change had not only
given him new colors and a pair of deadly horns, but had made him
quite intelligent.

And the wizard noted with a shiver
that there were no remains anywhere; more proof that the horses had
made it to safety.

He left the lonely stable and walked
across the yard to the small rear gate. It too was open, but still
intact. He must have left it open on the last day he was here; a
habit he'd had that allowed the horses to come and go as they pleased
from their stable to the pasture outside of the wall.

Simon walked through the gateway and
stopped to look around, scanning the area intently.

The pasture was richly green, grass
waving in an early summer breeze. Birds were singing and the smell of
young trees and new flowers was thick in the air.

But there were no signs of cows or
horses and his chickens were long gone. The small lake behind the
tower was rippling in the wind, sparkling and inviting.

I could use a swim, Simon thought
absently as he searched for his missing animals.

He walked through the thick grass
toward the line of fencing that bordered the field to the west. When
he could get a clearer view of the wooden fence, he grinned and
actually laughed a little with relief.

A section of fencing about ten feet
wide had been knocked down. Any hoof prints had been erased over time
by rain and snow, but the wizard was convinced that the animals,
probably led by Chief, had escaped the enclosure.

They may have been content to remain
in the pasture until autumn had thinned out the supply of grass and
they'd been forced to search for more food, he thought. Certainly
with the lake available, they hadn't had to worry about water.

The cows had been wild when he'd
first rounded them up and Simon was sure that they had returned to
that condition. He wasn't worried about them.

But the horses had been raised by a
human. They had lived through the Night of Burning and had Changed,
just like he had. Had they managed to survive in the wilderness?
Maybe even thrive? Or had some monster hunted them down and devoured
them?

That thought made Simon almost
physically ill.

I'll have to search for them, he told
himself. Better yet, I can send Aeris and maybe some of his fellow
air elementals to seek them out. They had a talent for that sort of
thing.

He turned back toward the tower.

First things first though. He had to
examine the tower and find out if it was still livable. And if it
wasn't, he'd better get started making it so.

An hour later, Simon stood on the
roof of the tower and ran his fingers through his hair. He was dirty,
covered in dust and grime, and sweaty after searching through the
entire building from top to bottom.

It was a mess; worse than he'd hoped
but not as bad as it could have been. He allowed himself a moment to
sit down on the edge of the parapet and relax. He sighed loudly,
thinking about the work ahead.

It had finally occurred to him that
his elemental friends must have been banished back to their own
realms when he had escaped to the elven lands. Usually it took the
death of the summoner to break the connection to their elementals.
But leaving one universe for another would probably have the same
effect.

A small, insidious part of him kept
saying that Kronk and Aeris might have been killed in their battle
with Lacertus, but that still wouldn't explain the disappearance of
the other elementals who had worked for him and Simon had dismissed
that thought with some relief.

But of course the ultimate test of
his theory was to try to summon his friends back to his side. Besides
that fact that they would make the task of repairing and cleaning the
tower so much faster and easier, Simon simply missed them.

Kronk's inherent cheerfulness and
endless optimism coupled with Aeris' sarcasm and keen mind had made
his life bearable for a half-dozen years and he wanted them back in
his life.

As long as they want to come back, he
thought with a tinge of concern. After that fight with the godling,
maybe one or both had had enough of him and his crazy life. Simon
wouldn't blame either one if they had. But he had to know, and he
decided to try to summon them while the sun was still up. The night
was a lonely and dangerous time on the New Earth now; better to get
this done before it got dark.

He had found that the main floor was
a total mess. The door had been open to the weather for three years,
after all, and an amazing amount of leaves and trash had found its
way in.

Not to mention a few animals, he
thought and sighed again. Raccoons probably. Maybe skunks or
squirrels as well. Every cupboard had been opened and his pots and
pans, as well as plates and silverware, was strewn across the floor.
His clothes hanging in the standing closet near the door were
tattered and moldy, and smelled damp and rotten. They would all have
to be thrown out.

Oddly, his old kettle was still
hanging in the fireplace. It looked a bit rusty, but he could clean
it up with a little elbow grease.

Unfortunately, the couch and his
comfy chair were write-offs. Both were rotting and had mold on them
as well and he felt a pang of regret at the thought of destroying
them. Nothing had brought Simon more pleasure than sitting in that
chair in front of the fireplace, curled up with a cup of tea. He
would be snug and warm, and Kronk and Aeris would usually be with
him. That was always the image that came to mind when he thought of
home.

He pushed himself away from the
parapet and began to pace around the top of the tower, thinking hard.

The chair can be replaced, he told
himself. Furniture isn't important. What makes a place truly a home
is more than bricks and mortar, furniture and decorations. It's the
people that you share your life with there; your friends and family.

“
Right,”
he said loudly. “Time to see if I still have either of those
left in my life.”

The one thing that Simon had found
intact on the main floor was something that was more valuable to him
than all the comfy chairs in the world. He looked at the staff in his
right hand as he leaned against it and smiled with renewed relief.

“
Mortis de
Draconis,” he said to it. “I don't know how you made it
through all this in one piece, but am I happy to see you.”

The staff glowed in the sunlight, its
length of pale metal and wood covered in dwarven runes. Whether
because of magic or simple good fortune, the weapon had been lying in
a corner almost invisible under a pile of dry leaves. Picking it up
and wiping off the dirt had made Simon feel almost like himself
again.

“
You and me
against the world again,” the wizard told the mute staff. “Now,
let's see if we've still got the old mojo.”

He moved to the center of the roof,
grounded the staff and took a deep breath.

“
Kronk, I
need you!” he cried, his voice echoing down through the tower.

The sound faded away and Simon looked
around expectantly.

Nothing.

No sense of the earth elemental's
presence, no feeling of power in the air. Nothing had happened at
all.

After waiting for a few minutes, the
wizard moved the staff to his left hand, wiped his sweaty palm on his
pants and transferred it back to his right.