There was a sound from deeper in Kurag's room. It was a clattering noise with an edge of slithering, like a many-legged snake. I didn't know what the sound was, but Kitto went pale, bloodless in my arms, his body suddenly limp. If I hadn't been holding him, he'd have fallen to the floor. Rhys was on his knees, his hands on my shoulders, but kneeling tall behind me. I could feel the tension singing through his hands.
I wanted to ask what was wrong, but I didn't want us to appear weak in Kurag's eyes. Then Kurag answered the question for me, even unasked.
"I didn't call you yet." Kurag was angry, but there was an edge of resignation to it. As if the anger were mainly formality. Real anger, but he didn't have much hope it would help things. I'd never seen Kurag so... defeated.
A voice came just out of sight of the mirror. It was high and hissing, and first I thought snake, but it held that metallic buzzing to it that Creeda had, and there was no snake goblin in the queen. The voice said, "You wanted to show me off, didn't you Kurag? Show the princesssss that not all are asss ssidhe ass Holly and Asshh."
"Yes," Kurag said, and turned to the mirror. He looked solemn. "Know this, Merry: Not all sidhe-sides have taken after their sidhe parentage. Before you agree to this, you should see what will come to your bed." He looked at Rhys now, but that teasing edge was gone. "And not all our half-breeds are male."
"Don't do this, Kurag," Rhys said, and his voice was empty, but that emptiness was full of something, something that frightened me.
"She is part sidhe, white knight, and she wants her chance at bedding you again."
That clattering, slithering noise came closer, as if something were crawling and dragging itself along at the same time.
Kitto was making a high-pitched noise deep in his throat, a helpless keening. I held him tight, and it was as if he couldn't feel me. His body still lay limp in my arms, as if he was withdrawing into himself.
"What's happening?" I asked.
Rhys said one word, a name, with such hatred that it hurt to hear it. He said the name just as something crawled upon Kurag's great chair. Something that looked as if it had been sewn together from different nightmares.
"Siun."
Kitto screamed.
Chapter 5
Kitto's screams were high and piteous like the sounds a baby rabbit makes when the cat's got it. He scrambled out of my lap, across the bed, to fall over to the other side.
Frost rushed into the room with a gun in one hand, and a sword in the other. He searched for an enemy, then just frowned at us all when there was nothing to shoot. "What's happened? What's wrong with Kitto?"
"Doesn't my little trullup want to greet his master? Have you forgotten everything I taught you, Kitto?" the thing on the chair said.
Doyle had gone to kneel by Kitto, and was trying unsuccessfully to soothe him. I heard the deep voice through the screams, but when Kitto finally found his words again, it was to say, "No, no, no, no, no." Over and over and over.
I'd tried to turn and help Kitto, but Rhys's hands had tightened on my shoulders. One glance at his face, and I knew that Kitto wasn't the only one who needed help. I didn't know what to do, but I stayed where I was, with Rhys kneeling so that his body touched the back of mine. I stayed there so he could lean against me and not fall over.
I turned back to the goblin in the chair and waited for my eyes to make sense of it. At first it looked like a huge black, hairy spider. A spider the size of a large German shepherd. But the head had a neck, and there was something vaguely human about the mouth; it had lips and fangs. There were huge black legs on either side of the bloated body that were pure spider, but the two hands that stuck out of the front of it weren't. It seemed to have eyes everywhere, and every one of them was tricolored in rings of blue. It raised up as if trying to get more comfortable on the chair, and flashed a glimpse of pale br**sts. Female. I couldn't bring myself to call it a woman.
I never thought I'd see anything among the fey that I truly thought was nightmarish. I was Unseelie sidhe; we were the stuff of nightmares. But Siun was a nightmare for nightmares. If she had been a little less of one thing, and a little more of the other, it would have made her less terrible, but she was what she was, and there was no saving it.
That strangely shapely mouth, caught in the midst of all that black hair and those eyes, spoke. "Rhysss, how very, very good to ssee you. I still have your eye in a jar on my shelf. Come visit us again. I'd love a matched pair."
I felt a shiver run through Rhys, as if his entire body trembled in some unseen wind. His voice came out empty like a shell tossed on a beach, echoing with its loneliness. "If you didn't want us to agree to this treaty, you should have just said so, Kurag, and saved us all the time and energy."
I patted his hand that still gripped my shoulder, but I'm not sure he felt anything in that moment.
"Frost," Doyle said, "tend to Kitto."
Frost sheathed his sword and holstered his gun, moving to kneel beside Kitto. In day-to-day arrangements Frost and Doyle argued, but in an emergency all the guards obeyed Doyle. Centuries of habit were hard to break.
Doyle spoke as he moved to stand beside us. "What is your intention with this, Kurag?"
Siun said, "I wanted to see the pretty sidhe."
"Shut up, Siun." Kurag said it without looking at her, as if he just expected her to do it. Surprisingly, she did.
"I felt Merry deserved to see what you were offering her up to." Something close to his usual leer crossed his face. "Besides, Darkness, it won't be Merry in Siun's bed."
"It won't be anybody," Rhys said.