A King's Promise by Lady Cailin
Chapter Title: A Promise Made
Disclaimer: The Labyrinth and related materials are copyright Jim Henson Productions and subsequent companies. This Fan Fiction was not produced, and is not intended to be reproduced, for profit. No infringement of said copyrights is intended by the author.
Summary: Magic binds such promises, and magic will see them fulfilled.
Jareth.
His name, spoken on the lips of a girl he had not seen in six years time. A girl who had called for all the creatures of his world by name, dragging them across the void, but had never called for him. The voice echoed across his nerve endings as only a mortal's could, laced with dreams and magic.
But it was not that which summoned him, which woke his goblins from their lazy slumber. It was the words yet unspoken. The words gathering to be spoken, like magic waiting to be unleashed for a second time.
A wish was waiting in the air.
It was curiosity which lured him when she called. He entered her world, flying the void between their lands to find out if it was true, or if the whisper of magic in the air had lied to him. Could she be so foolish as to make that wish again?
He could smell the illness on the boy even as the feathers of his other form settled on the cool flooring of the room. The building itself smelled of a thousand illnesses, the scent of decay and human frailty. Lights from human machines glowed against the pale canvas of his skin, and clear tubes fed into his body here and there. He had the look of a long and wasting illness, a painful disease that had taken the youthful strength from the hand cradled in the girl's.
She sat by his bed, her eyes dry of tears and full of a powerful desperation.
Her love for the boy filled the room and burned around his small frame. The Goblin King's mismatched eyes could see the lines of its power, feeding into the boy as the tubes of mortal medicine did, keeping him alive by will alone.
"If you take him, will he live?"
Ah, yet this was familiar. How many children, broken and sickly, had he taken over the years? Such selfish things mortals were, to wish away a life because fate had dealt them hardship. But in his enemy's gaze was not the self-serving wish of a child, and the love which echoed with her power spoke of something else. She had wrapped her own life and magic around the child, and his soul glowed with it, but not even that would keep his mortal body alive much longer. She knew it. It was in the hollowness of her eyes.
"I can't let him die here. I'll give anything. . ." her voice faded into an echo of her pain, and her grip on the boy's fragile hand tightened for a moment.
Such an interesting offer, and so unfortunate she had not finished the words. To demand anything of the girl would be a power he would relish wielding.
But then, she already knew what he wanted.
"Give me the child."
She flinched slightly at his words, and he smiled at the sight. The taste of long awaited victory already flavored the air. He had come expecting some sort of battle, but here was his opponent, laid low by the shadow of the reaper over her prized child. All he need do was wait.
"Promise me he'll live, and that you won't turn him into a goblin."
He smiled as a wolf bares its teeth, to hear her bargain for her dreams again. It seemed she had learned little in the time since she'd run his Labyrinth. She was demanding all the wrong things, leaving out all the right words. She assumed the worst the boy could become was a mere goblin. She had no idea what he could make the boy into at his whim.
And so the Goblin King merely smiled that feral smile, and inclined his head to agree.
"Promise me he'll be happy."
"So promised," he replied, nodding again. He felt the thrill of victory as magic rose up to bind the deal. The only thing left, were the words to be spoken. His goblins stirred in the shadows, whispering in excitement at the taste of human-fed magic. And Sara was more powerful then most in that, for she knew. She believed.
For a moment the force of her love within the room swelled, pushing towards the boy and flooding him with its power. A thousand wishes wove through its tides, and they tasted of all her hopes for the child. Her eyes closed in concentration, and the Goblin King wondered briefly if she knew what power she wielded, what spells she had knit around the child to keep him alive even this long.
It was an old magic. The simplicity of its intent allowed even humans to call its power to bare, if the will was strong enough.
"I wish the goblins would take Toby away, right now."
It was over in an instant, the shadows creeping in and the wind picking up as the magic of his world leapt out and claimed the boy. The first mortal child to be wished away to their world in a century, and the boy was his.
He did not bother to taunt his opponent. He left her to the cold emptiness of the hospital room, and the hollow sound of her own cries.
He did not need to break her, when her own words had already accomplished the feat.
The magic of the Labyrinth claimed the child, and all the memories this world had of him. The world above would discard all memory that there had ever been such a child. She, of them all, would not forget. Her journey through the Labyrinth had assured that. She knew of the Underground as no other mortal did, and his magic could not steal that from her. She would remember the child, and the memory would knife at any joy this mortal world might offer her.
She would wonder at his fate, and bleed the love and hope she had used to keep him alive so long.
It was a small victory, compared to what he had won from her tonight, but it made him smile none the less.
It would be four more years before he would think of his enemy again. Four years in which he wove the boy into his world and laced the child with the magic that would see him leave mortality behind.
It was the old way. To steal a child left him mortal, and the lifespan of such a being was but an instant in the eyes of his thieving parents. But a child offered, that was a different matter all together. A child freely given could be changed, could be made a part of the world to which he was adopted. It was a treasure to a people who saw a handful of births in a century's span.
This boy was such a treasure to the Goblin King.
He had not taken the child as a goblin. His promise bound him against it, and it would have been a waste even if he were able to make it so. A mortal child offered to one of his kind had the power to bind together mortal dreams and immortal magic. The power to dream the dreams which fed his kingdom, and rule over the magic which brought those dreams to life.
What a King such a boy would one day make.
He doted on the boy, and through the child's dreams he wove the strength back into his wasting land. The call of mortal dreams brought magic welling back up to the surface of his kingdom, and the air again buzzed with the power of wishes waiting to be fulfilled. It brought a life to the land and its people that they had not felt for over a thousand years, when mortals had last heeded the call of magic and wishes.
It was as the boy grew that Jareth became aware of something missing. No matter what dreams the King called into reality for the child, not matter what pleasures and magic became his to command, the boy was left unsatisfied.
It was in the spider's woods, beneath a canopy of translucent silks that sparkled in the moonlight, that the boy first spoke of that emptiness to the Goblin King.
"Father," he began almost hesitantly, his shoe nudging the side of a peach which had fallen to rot on the ground bellow the webbings, "there is something missing."
Jareth arched one golden eyebrow, for in those words he felt the tug of the promises he was bound by regarding the boy.
Promise me he'll be happy.
"What could be missing that you could not have my boy?," he offered, calling a crystal to await the boy's whim.
The child only frowned, his wild golden hair falling before his eyes as he considered the peach beneath his booted foot.
"I do not know. Only," here his frown grew darker, and he rubbed a hand across the area above his ribs where his heart beat strongly," Only, something is missing."
Jareth's eyes could not be drawn from the spot where the boy tried to ease some unseen ache. The grass beneath the boy's toe had wilted, his longing for something the earth could not provide leaching its strength and bleeding sadness. The King felt the echoing call of emptiness reach him through the land.
Love.
Now that he looked he could see it there, within the immortal body he had given the boy. Wrapped around the mortal soul he had been born with was the love of the King's enemy. A string tied tightly to the boy, disappearing across the void between worlds. He knew without doubt where its other end lay.
Damn the girl.
Damn her for a witch. How dare she tie the boy to her? How dare she call him back with a love he did not remember? The boy was his. She had wished him away and could not steal him now. He seethed his anger in silence and the world around him darkened. He breathed rage as dragons breath fire, but he could not strike at the tie. He could not disentangle his heir from her weavings.
This was ancient magic, and it defied his rule.
The boy could not live thus, could not rule the Labyrinth with half a heart tied to the world above. What use was a dreamer king to his land if all his dreams were of a nameless loss within him? What good would the boy do the Labyrinth if all he called out for was the girl whose love tied him to that frail mortal world?
And in the midst of it all lay a promise which bound even the Goblin King.
Promise me he'll be happy.
Damn the girl.