Title: Pax Deorum
Author: E.A. Week
E-mail: e. at gmail dot com
Summary: Two feuding families, a blizzard of monstrous proportions, and a brutal murder: when Jareth and Sarah journey to the Kingdom of Aves for a royal coronation, they encounter more scheming and intrigue than they had bargained for. Now Sarah has two weeks to find a killer before a most innocent scapegoat is put to death for the crime. Sequel to "Semi-Charmed Life." Third of three stories.
Category: Labyrinth.
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Disclaimer: Copyrights to all characters in this story belong to their respective creators, production companies, and studios. I'm just borrowing them, honest!
Credit where credit is due: The story title is stolen from Enya.
Story rating: This story is rated M (mature/ explicit) for language, sexuality, and adult themes.
Prologue
Nights in the Goblin City never passed in silence or even quiet: the sounds of discordant music, quarreling, fighting, celebrating, gambling, bartering, any activity conducted by day was as apt to be conducted by night. Down narrow streets, up crooked little alleys, all across the main thoroughfares came the sounds of snorts, shrieks, grunts, insults hurled, the cacophony of an impromptu party, the shattering of glass or crockery, the explosion of an experiment—or a dinner—gone wrong.
High above the noisy streets, in the castle's main turret, the King and Queen of the Underground slept undisturbed. Or, at least on this night, the king.
Sarah waited for the small hours, waited for the deep, slow breathing that told her Jareth had fallen into true slumber. In the large fireplace, the night's warming blaze had burned down to embers and at length to feathery ash. From the smoky residue, her sensitive nose could discern the types of wood that had been burned. In the last hours before dawn, when even the faint noises from outside the castle diminished to the occasional far-away yelp or rumble, Sarah rose from the large bed and slipped out from beneath the covers without a whisper of sound.
Autumn had deepened over the Underground these past weeks, and the stone floor was cold, but to goblin feet, the sensation scarcely registered. About her filmy silk night-dress she threw a cloak, more from habit than a need for warmth, and on bare feet, slipped out of the room and down the circular staircase. Far below, at the base of the tower, a single torch flickered in a wall sconce, at this distance a speck of light. Sarah's keen eyes pierced the darkness, guiding her down to a landing and the doorway to her own rooms.
The queen's suite, disused since the death of Jareth's mother centuries earlier, had been refurbished after Sarah's marriage to the Goblin King. She slept with Jareth in his room at the top of the tower, but here, she had her wardrobe and a day bed, her loom and spinning wheel. She went to a trunk at the foot of her bed and raised the lid, drawing out a small object wrapped in layers of velvet.
A round mirror lay within the folds of black, a precious thing made from the same glass as Jareth's crystal orbs. Sarah carried the mirror to one of her tall windows, sitting cross-legged in the large chair. Outside, as she had anticipated, the silvery-white moon lingered in the sky like a great pearl, casting its limpid glow into the room. Sarah loved how the moon looked in the Underground, so much more palpably magic than Earth's humble satellite, which she'd known as a girl, growing up among humans.
She held the mirror in her lap, taking care not to block the moon's light with her own shadow. The moonlight filled the glass surface, turning the opaque silver into the liquid shimmer of transparent water. Sarah focused on the mirror, trying to project her will outside herself, to bring her desire into manifest reality—the essence of magic.
In a low voice, she commanded, "Reveal."
The water grew murky for a moment, then became clear. Uniformed men carrying archaic weapons marched in formation across what appeared to be some kind of field. A Roman legion? With a sigh, Sarah refocused her efforts, trying to envision the time and place of her own upbringing.
The army vanished. In its place, Sarah saw a bustling city—cars, people, signs printed with the lettering of an Asian alphabet. Tokyo?
Right century, wrong continent, she thought, concentrating on the faces of her family: her mother, her father, her brother, even her step-mother. The water grew blurry, and Sarah saw a cluster of penguins sliding down a lump of ice, diving into the water.
Okay, not even close. She closed her eyes, feeling the swell of familiar frustration, the last emotion she needed. The more exasperated she became, the more random her visions would become. Jareth had told her again and again she needed to relax and allow the magic to flow out of her, but that was easy for him to say—he'd been using magic since his first moments of conscious awareness. Sarah caressed the edges of the mirror, Jareth's wedding gift to her. Given time and practice, it might become a window through which she could observe the world she'd left behind, but right now, the thing only plucked haphazard images and half-formed thoughts from Sarah's memory—things she'd read, seen in film and television, dreamed, or imagined—Sarah had never before appreciated the complex tangle of her own mind, its ability to store so much innocuous and random data.
The moon continued on its journey; soon, it would vanish behind its veil of predawn darkness. Sarah had chosen this hour hoping the moon's magic might increase the potency of her own, but it only seemed to have confused the seeing mirror. She heaved a sigh; might as well go back to bed.
Glancing down, Sarah jolted, for a moment unable to breathe. In the mirror she saw a vision of a woman—a very, very old woman, impossibly ancient, her face so lined with creases that she seemed a desiccated mummy. Her eyes were closed, a few wisps of white hair clinging to a crepe-skinned scalp. A diadem of some type encircled her brows, a jeweled bird crafted of black onyx resting in the center of her forehead. Twig-like hands, gnarled with age, had been folded across her breast, fingers gleaming with gemstones, bracelets loose upon her wrists. Her wizened body created the barest wrinkle beneath the heavy, luxurious fabrics that robed it. She lay upon an extraordinary bier carved of dark wood, the wings of a ferocious eagle casting a shadow over the woman's face. The bier had had been draped with more of that sumptuous, embroidered fabric, the whole catafalque surrounded by tapers in tall, exquisitely ornamented candleholders.
Sarah exhaled. The moon slid down the sky. The image in the mirror shifted and blurred, the glass surface becoming once again dark. Sarah would have no more visions that night.
She stood, returning the mirror to its velvet wrapping and storing it once again in the trunk. Then she made her silent way back to the top of the tower, mind awhirl with the image of the regal corpse. Had the woman's death occurred in the past, or had the mirror allowed Sarah a glimpse into the unknowable future?
As she slid beneath the bed covers, Jareth murmured, "What did you see?"
By now, Sarah had grown accustomed to his ability to carry on a conversation when more or less asleep. She responded, "A dead woman. A really old woman. It looked like her body was laid out for a state funeral. She had a sort of coronet, a crow or a raven made from onyx." Even as she spoke, Sarah recalled other details. "There were birds carved into the candlesticks, too. And gold eagles embroidered on her clothes."
Jareth drifted closer to consciousness. "Aves," he murmured. "Eucissa…" He drifted off again, returning to full sleep.
Sarah lay beside him, staring at the ceiling. Whatever Aves and Eucissa meant, she had a feeling she was going to learn soon.
To be continued…
