Free The Dragons of Bone and Dust (Tales from the New Earth Book 7) by J. J. Thompson

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