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.

They set out for the sick grove before noon. Gaia walked ahead with the small mushroom on her shoulder, and Aurelius followed with his staff. The heart stone in the staff head rang clean against his palm. The other six stones on his body answered in low agreement. He should have felt ready. Instead his tail kept snapping tight against his calf, over and over, in short warning jerks. Something in the gray trees was watching. He did not know what. Until he did, he did not dare open his chakras wide and pour signal into the ground the way Gaia needed him to. Gaia stopped at the tree line. The trunks past her went the color of old ash. She touched a root with two fingers and pulled her hand back fast. "Oh. It hurts here." The mushroom on her shoulder shrank down small. "Something moves in there. Pip feels it too." She looked at Aurelius. "Can you hear what it is?" He shook his head. His crown said nothing. His tail said yes, close, wrong. Two signals that did not match. He had a rule for that. He waited. He turned back the way they came. A small pond sat off the path, ringed with stones and mushrooms, lotus pads floating flat on the water. A tall broad woman knelt beside it with her hands in the shallows. Her sleeves were rolled to the elbow. Fish moved slow around her wrists. She did not look up when he approached. She said, "I'm Wren. I work with hands. The rest of me breaks things. So I sit still." Her voice barely carried. "You're leaking fear off that staff. I felt it from here." Aurelius knelt at the pond's edge. He set the staff across his knees. "There is something in the grove. My tail knows. My mind does not. I cannot open the stones until I see it." Wren nodded once. She lifted one wet hand and laid two fingers on the stone at his throat, careful, precise. "Closed," she said. Then his brow. "Closed." Then his solar plexus. "Open, but tight." She dried her hand on her shirt. "You already know what's in there. You just don't want to name it. Same as before." He looked at the water. A lotus turned on its own slow current. He thought of the boy whose name he had said aloud once, only once, at dawn. He thought of the gray trunks. His tail went still against his leg. He said, low, "It's grief. Not mine. Theirs. The trees are grieving something that died in them." The staff pulsed hot in his hand. His crown and his tail agreed at last. He stood. He walked back to Gaia at the tree line and told her what stalked the grove was not a hunter. It was mourning. He could open the stones now. He did. The seven began to ring together, out into the sick wood, and the nearest gray branch shivered once and held.

The seven stones rang together into the sick wood, and for a moment Aurelius thought the work would be simple. Then his tail cracked hard against his calf. Something at the far edge of the trees had heard the signal too. It was moving toward him. Gaia felt it a beat later. The small mushroom on her shoulder pressed flat. "Something's coming down the old stone walk," she said. Aurelius turned. A cracked path of fitted pavers ran out of the grove, half swallowed by gray moss. Whatever the blight had drawn was using it as a road. He could not close the stones now. Closed stones would leave the grieving trees worse than he found them. Open stones would meet whatever arrived, and if the thing touched him mid-signal, the heart stone in his staff would shatter. A small bright bird-girl dropped out of a nearby tree whose leaves fluttered like wings. She landed light on the moss. "I'm Birdie," she said. "I saw it from up there. It's shaped like a man but it's hollow. It wants your sound." She tilted her head. "You can't run. Your feet are already ringing." An old wizard stepped out from behind the butterfly-leafed tree, blue robe dusty at the hem, a lit staff in one hand. "Aldric," he said, short. "I felt your seven from two ridges over. Boy, you are broadcasting like a bell in a well." He looked down the stone path. The gray thing was closer. It had the outline of a tall soldier. Aurelius's solar plexus stone went cold against his ribs. "I can hold the signal for you," Aldric said. "Not carry it. Hold it. You need a hearth to pour into, not open air." He struck the ground with the base of his staff. Between them a fire bloomed up out of nothing, logs stacked, sharp bright crystals rising through the flame. "Sing into this. It will take the vibration and keep it while you deal with what's coming." Aurelius knelt by the crystal fire and lowered the heart stone toward the flames. The seven stones poured their ring into the crystals instead of the open wood. The gray figure on the path stopped. It had no sound to follow now. Birdie stepped in front of Aurelius and spread her wings wide. "Go on," she told the thing. "He's not here for you." It stood a long moment. Then it thinned, sank into the moss, and was gone. Aurelius lifted the staff. The heart stone was whole. The fire held his signal, steady and bright, and the nearest gray trunks had gone from ash to pale brown. Aldric watched the flame. "You bought yourself a night," he said. "But that thing was one of many. Word is out in the blight now. They know your sound."