Traitor's Moon

the following morning and halted to rest the horses. Seregil and Alec remained with the soldiers while Riagil guided Korathan and his wizards up to the stone dragon.
    Seregil’s mare liked to suck air when being saddled, and he’d felt the saddle begin to slip during the last blind ride. After watering her, he tightened the girth strap, giving her a smart slap on the side to make her exhale.
    As he worked, he listened with half an ear to the various conversations going on around him. Korathan’s riders had struck him as a dour lot at the outset, but their Gedre counterparts were beginning to win some of them over. Some of them were stumbling along now in a jumbled argot of Skalan and ’faie, trying to make themselves understood. But he also caught a troubling undercurrent from some of the Skalans—muttered complaints about blindfolds and “strange,unnatural magicks.” It seemed that Phoria was not alone in her distrust of the ’faie, and in wizards in general. This was a new attitude for Skalans, and it troubled him profoundly.
    He was just finishing with the strap when suddenly everything went very still.
    â€œSon of Korit,” a voice said, speaking close to his ear.
    The hair on his neck prickled. Turning sharply, he expected to find a rhui’auros or khtir’bai behind him. Instead, he saw only Alec and the soldiers still going about their business, though he still couldn’t hear any sound.
    Wondering if he’d suddenly gone deaf, he turned to steady himself against his horse and found a dragon the size of a hound perched on the saddle. Its wings were folded tight to its sides, and its neck was arched back like a serpent’s. Before he could do more than register its existence, it struck, clamping its jaws around his left hand just above the thumb.
    Seregil froze. He felt its heat first, hot as an oven against his skin, then the pain of teeth and venom slammed up his arm.
    He grasped his horse’s mane with his free hand, willing himself not to jerk away or cry out. The dragon’s claws scraped pale lines in the saddle leather as it tightened its grip and gave his hand a sharp shake. Then it went still again, watching him with one hard yellow eye as blood welled from its scaly mouth and ran down his wrist.
    O Aura, it’s a big one!
Dangerously big. Its jaws reached to the other side of his hand.
    â€œThat will leave a lucky mark.”
    The pain quickly swelled to something approaching rapture. The creature seemed to fill his vision, and he stared at it with an agonized reverence as hazy golden light coalesced around them. Its scales reflected the sunlight with an iridescent sheen. The stiff spines on its face twitched slightly as it held him, and wisps of vapor rose from its delicate golden nostrils.
    â€œSon of Korit,” the voice said again.
    â€œAura Elustri,” he whispered, trembling.
    The dragon released him and flapped away across the steaming tarn.
    Sounds rushed in on him, and suddenly Alec was there, easing him down to the ground as his legs gave out under him. Seregil stared dazedly down at the double line of bloody punctures that crossed his hand, back and palm.
    â€œLarger than Thero’s,” he murmured, shaking his head in amazement.
    â€œSeregil!” Alec said, shaking him by the shoulder. “Where did it come from? Are you all right? Where’s that vial?”
    â€œVial? Pouch.” It was hard to concentrate with his entire arm on fire from the inside. People crowded in to see, overwhelming him with noise.
    Alec tugged the pouch free from Seregil’s belt and shook out the glass vial of lissik the rhui’auros had given him—the one he’d very nearly left behind.
    He let out a strangled laugh.
They knew I’d need it. They knew all along
.
    Alec gently worked the dark, oily liquid into the wound, easing the worst of the burning.
    The crowd parted for Korathan and Riagil. The khirnari knelt and took Seregil’s hand, then called out for herbs.
    â€œBy the Light, Seregil!” he murmured, quickly assembling a poultice and wrapping it around his hand with wet rags. “To be so marked, it’s—”
    â€œA gift,” Seregil croaked, feeling the dragon’s venom spreading through his body, turning his veins to wires of hot steel.
    â€œA gift indeed. But can you ride?”
    â€œTie me on, if you have to.” He tried to get up and failed. Someone held a flask