I looked up at Frost. "He's fading."
He nodded.
Rhys had gone to the bedroom door and brought Doyle out. They gathered round us, but the looks on their faces said more than words.
"No," I said, "it's not hopeless. There's got to be something that we can do."
They all exchanged looks, that flitting game of glance throwing, like the thoughts were too heavy to bear and you had to throw them to the next person and the next.
I grabbed Doyle's arm. "There has to be something."
"We do not know what would hold a goblin from fading."
"His mother was sidhe. Save him the way you'd save another sidhe."
Doyle looked a little disdainful, as if I'd insulted them all.
"Don't go all high and mighty on me, Doyle. Don't let him die because he's less mixed than either of us."
His expression softened. "Meredith, Merry, a sidhe fades only if he wishes it so. Once the process is begun, it cannot be stopped."
"No! There has to be something we can do."
He frowned down at us all. "Hold him, while I try to contact Kurag. If we cannot save him as sidhe, we will try to save him as goblin."
Kitto lay still in Frost's arms. "Merry needs to hold him," Doyle said, as he went for the bedroom.
Frost laid Kitto in my arms, across my lap. I slumped to the floor, put a hand under his legs, and pulled him into my lap. He fit; here was a man who I could hold in my lap. I'd spent much of my life around beings smaller than Kitto, but none who had looked so sidhe. Maybe that was why he seemed so doll-like at times.
I laid my cheek against his icy forehead. "Kitto, please, please, come back, come back from wherever you've gone. Please, Kitto, it's Merry."
He'd stopped murmuring my name. He'd stopped making any noise, and his weight, the way his body slumped against me ... He felt dead. Not dying, but dead. There is a weight to a dead body that the living, no matter how sick, do not have. Logically, it has to be the same, but it never feels the same.
Doyle came back out, muttering under his breath. "Kurag is not near his mirror, or any still body of water. I cannot reach him, Merry. I am sorry."
"If Kitto were sidhe, what would you do to save him?"
"The sidhe do not fade from lack of faerie," Doyle said. "The sidhe fade only when they wish to."
I held his cold body in my arms and felt the beginnings of tears. But tears wouldn't help him, damn it. I needed to talk to Kurag, now. What was one thing all goblin warriors had on their bodies at all times? "Give me your blade, Frost."
"What?"
"My blade is trapped under Kitto's body. I need a blade, now."
"Do as she says," Doyle said.
Frost didn't like doing something he didn't understand, but he took out a knife from behind his back, one that was almost as long as my forearm, and handed it to me hilt first.
I took my hand out from under Kitto's legs, and said, "Hold the blade steady."
Frost dropped to one knee steadying the blade with both hands. I took a deep breath, placed my finger against the point, and jerked downward. It took a second for the blood to well.
"Merry, stop -- "
"Hold the blade, Frost. That's all you have to do, so do it. I can't hold the blade and Kitto, too. Just do it."
He frowned but stayed kneeling, holding the blade as I drew my bleeding finger down that shining surface. The blood didn't coat it, just stained it, almost beading on the immaculate surface.
I dropped the shields that kept me from seeing spirits, kept me from shedding magic like old body skin. The magic flared for a second, glad to be free, then I willed it into the blade. I pictured Kurag, his face, his voice, his rough manner. "Kurag, I call you; Kurag Thousand-Slayer, I call you; Kurag, King of the Goblins, I call you. Thrice called, thrice named, come to me, Kurag, come answer your blade."
The surface gleamed through the light latticework of blood, but it was just metal.
"No sidhe has called a goblin by blade in centuries," Rhys said. "He won't answer."
"The naming of three is very powerful," Doyle said. "Kurag might be able to ignore it, but few others of his people could."
"But I have something he won't ignore." I leaned close to the blade and blew my breath warm upon it until it fogged with the heat of my body.
The blade glittered through the fog, the blood. The fog cleared and the blood soaked into the surface as if it had been drunk. I was left staring into a dim silvered surface. A blade, even the highest quality, is not like a mirror, no matter what the movies show. A blade gives an uncertain image, misty, as if you need to adjust some button or knob, but there is none. There is only a vague outline of a small portion of a person's face; their eyes are the most clear.
A blur of yellow lump-covered skin and two orange eyes appeared in the downside blade half; the upper was less clear but showed Kurag's third eye like a dim sun seen through cloud.
His voice was as clear as if he'd been standing in the room. It boomed out in a surprising rumble that made me jump. "Meredith, Princess of the Sidhe, was that your sweet breath that blew across my skin?"
"Greetings, Kurag, Goblin King. And Twin of Kurag, Goblin King's Flesh, greetings also." Kurag had a parasitic twin who consisted of one violet eye, a mouth, two thin arms, two thin legs, and small, though fully functional genitalia. The mouth could breathe but not speak, and to my knowledge I was the only one who ever acknowledged his existence as separate from the king's. I still remember the horror I felt when I realized there was an entire person trapped in the side of Kurag's body.
"It has been long since a sidhe has called the goblins by blood and blade. Most of the warriors who fought beside us after the great treaty have forgotten this old trick."
"My father taught me many tricks," I said. Kurag and I both knew that my father had often contacted him by blade and blood. My father had been Andais's unofficial ambassador to the goblins, because no one else wanted the job. My father had taken me to the goblin hill many times as a child.
His laughter did not so much roll out of the blade as roll through the room. "What would you have of me, Merry, daughter of Essus?"
He'd offered his help, and that was what I needed. I described the condition we'd found Kitto in. "He's fading."
Kurag cursed in the guttural language that was high goblin. I understood only about every other word. Something about black tits. "The mark ties you together, you and Kitto. Your strength should sustain him." His hand passed over his face like a yellow ghost in the blade. "This should not be happening."
I thought of something. "What if the mark healed over?"
"The mark would not heal, it would scar," he said.
"It did heal, Kurag, and it did not scar."
His orange eyes got very close to the blade, and very wide. "That should not happen."
"I didn't know that it was a problem to have it heal. Kitto didn't say anything."
"A lover's mark always scars, Merry. Always. At least among our kind." I couldn't read his expression in that narrow piece of reflection, but suddenly he let out a great snort, and said, "Has he been allowed to mark that white flesh only once?"
"Yes," I said.
"And the sex?" He sounded suspicious now.
"The treaty demanded only that I share flesh. Sharing true flesh is more valuable among the goblins than sex."
"Gabriel's Hounds take me. Yes, we value flesh, but what's a little bite without a little poke? Sinking teeth and dick into flesh, Merry girl, that's the ticket."
"Kitto shares my bed, Kurag, and stays with me most of the time, touching me. He seems to need to touch me."
"If the touch of your skin was all he had..." He dissolved into high goblin again, which goblins rarely did; it was considered rude to use a language that the other person didn't know. My father had taught me some goblin, but it had been too long, and Kurag's use was too rapid for my rusty skills.