Aurelius Draconis's Arc

Chapter 1 of 3

Aurelius Draconis stood beneath the seven-ring arch at dawn and tried to hear his own heart. He wore six chakra stones on his body and carried the seventh, the heart stone, set in the head of his staff. Through the staff he meant to lift every soul in Alaria a little higher, one clean note at a time. But the stone at his solar plexus hummed sour and loud, the way it had hummed for years, and it drowned the heart stone until every signal he sent went out muddy. His dragon tail twitched against the back of his knee before he knew why. Grief. Old grief, his own. He had put shame into the solar plexus stone long ago, after he led a young soldier somewhere he should not have led him. The boy had trusted him. Aurelius still would not say the name aloud. Each morning he stood under the chimes and tried to send the signal anyway, and each morning the sour hum bled into it and ruined the work. Gaia found him there. She came up the path from the rose-wrapped keep with a small mushroom on her shoulder and dew on her sandals. She watched him a moment. Then she said, "Oh. You can't hear it because you won't say it." The mushroom leaned toward his belly stone as if it smelled sick soil. "Say his name. Just once. To me." Aurelius shook his head. His crown pressed cold on his brow. His tail said truth; his mind said no. He waited, as he always did, until both agreed. A pink winged creature drifted down through the rings, small antlers up, and let out three soft notes that hung in the air like a held breath. Gaia did not move. The mushroom did not move. Aurelius set the butt of his staff on the stone and opened his mouth and gave the soldier's name to her, quiet, only once. His knees went. The sour hum in the solar plexus stone cracked like ice under a boot, then thinned, then steadied into a low clean tone he had not heard from it in years. The heart stone in the staff answered. For the first time the two rang together. Gaia caught his elbow. She did not ask him to say more. She said, "Oh. Good." Then, smaller, "I need you now." She told him the border trees had sent word through their roots. A blight from outside had turned the heartwood grove gray, and she meant to walk in and bring it back to bloom, and she could not do it alone. Aurelius felt the staff pulse true against his palm. The signal he had wanted to send Alaria would have to travel with him into sick ground before it ever reached the rest.