Chapter Six
Linda stepped on her heel and muttered an apology which bounced off the curved walls of the murky tunnel.
'S'ok," Sarah said shortly, returning to her thoughts, shuffling mechanically along behind the torch-bearing Argle, as she had been for several minutes.
'You are my queen…you are my queen? What did that mean? Hey, that rhymes…okay, that's off-topic.' She shook her head slightly, eyes downcast, and scowled. 'Why would he say that?' She answered herself automatically. 'To mess with me.' Wasn't that always the answer? Maybe it was only a reference to her supposed equality in terms of cruelty—he was the king of it—and, yeah, the goblins, too—and she was the queen…
A drop of water splashed onto her cheek underneath her eye and she blinked.
"Why is it so dank in here?" Linda's pitch rose slightly. "Eww! Is this mold?"
"Prob'ly," Argle answered without looking back. "We're under the waste channels. No one else but us dwarfs knows the way through here."
"Who else would want to?" Linda said. The dramatic exclamation was followed by the sounds of gagging. For once, Sarah was in perfect agreement with her complaint, rubbing more fiercely at her cheekbone with her sleeve and shuddering.
"We're almost to the homestead. Have ya out near right at the entrance of the Labyrinth."
Sarah froze—Linda ran into her—and then leapt forward to grab Argle's shoulder and spin him around. He dropped the torch and it hissed on the thin layer of water coating the ground. They fell into shadow.
"Why'd ya do that?" he grumbled, stooping to pick it back up.
"The entrance?!" Her words screamed back at her five or six times. "No, we need to get to the center! How long have we been walking right back where we started?!" She gripped her own hair with both hands. 'Oh, it's not fair, it's not fair!' She glanced aside at her mother, despairingly.
Linda stood tentatively at her side, apprehension in her expression, her fingers curled over her lips as if to hold back her own words.
Argle stared up at her. "The center? Why didn't ya say so? I thought ya wanted out."
She could feel a full-body trembling coming on and her face and neck flushed warmly.
"Sarah," Linda said urgently. "Listen!"
Above, a muffled clanging.
"The clock," she said stupidly. "Damn! Listen, Argle, we need to get to the center. My mother's soul—well, half of it—is imprisoned there. Is there—how can we—do you know any short-cuts?"
"Half-soul, that doesn't sound right, the king only takes babes," Argle argued.
Sarah rolled her eyes. "I know what it sounds like, but it's the truth! Tell him, mother!"
Linda raised troubled eyes to Sarah's face, and then down to Argle's. She nodded.
"Well," Argle said slowly, as if suspicious they might be playing a trick on him. "I could take another way. Would end ya by the Bog's far side, but there's another hidden trail. Goes under the Firey's forest." Sarah grimaced. "That one ends under the new lagoon. From there the last path goes into the king's castle dungeons. Lucky's the dwarf that gets the cell with an escape route in it the floor, well if 'e can find it under the—"
"New?" Sarah asked quickly. "I thought everything here was ancient, never changing." Purposefully she put it out of her mind that yes; there was still a lot of walking to go.
Argle snorted slightly, and continued walking. They followed close behind him. "The land changes all the time. And the walls inside the Labyrinth. It's the king's property, 'e does what he wants with it."
"How does one creature get such power over an entire land?" Linda asked wearily.
"Don't know myself. E's been in power longer than I been alive. Word is, all the king's people—"
"The Fae?" Linda interrupted.
"Eh, if ya call 'em that. Word is, all 'em have power over the land. King's got royal family over in Aesten—"
"What's that?" Sarah and Linda asked together.
Argle stopped and half-turned to glare at them.
"Sorry," they said in unison.
"Aesten's the main court. The first. It's the place where all the other ones like the king comes from. That's the common name; don't know what they call it."
"But why is Jareth here?" As she queried him she slid on a slick patch of rock and landed on her bum at Linda's feet.
"Oy, watch for the hanging rocks, ya'll break open your head," Argle said helpfully, pausing.
"She fell," Linda pointed out, allowing Sarah to use her weight as an anchor to pull herself off the ground. Stalactites jabbed into Sarah's head when she was at full height and she yelped. "Oh."
"Anyway," Sarah bit out through clenched teeth. "Thanks for the warning, late as it was. Tell me about Aesten." She refrained from rubbing her head with an effort, twisting her hands into the long hems of her shirt. "And let's keep going."
"What's to tell?" Argle shrugged and the shadows on the walls jumped up and down. "That's where they all come from. And the king like all the others in Aesten and everywhere else they are has power over land. And e's here. That's what matters, as they say."
"Where are all the others?" Linda was behind Argle now.
Sarah's feet began to throb in time with her head. When would this end? Had it been so…so endless before?
"Where they are," Argle replied.
"Thanks, that helps so much," came her mother's sarcastic response. "Care to elaborate?"
"Don't know what that means, Miss, but if yar wanting to have a go at me I'll leave ya at the Bog and not see to it you get to the next path without the Fireys seeing ya," he warned her. "Don't like yar tone there."
"Huh!" Linda huffed disbelievingly. "I asked for more details. Or don't you—"
"Stop it," Sarah interrupted firmly. "That won't help. I know you're tired and stressed out; I am too. But—"
"You're tired?" Linda turned on her heel to glare at her. "It's not your soul at stake! Don't be so obnoxious to me, Sarah, I am your mother! And don't tell me you're tired! I've been awake longer than you and suffered things at that lake you can't imagine!"
She bit her lip. 'Don't say it—no, go ahead! Say it! You're not a child anymore and you don't deserve this!' She lifted her chin. "Well, then, since I'm such a brat, why did you even bother asking for my help in the first place? Maybe you'd be better off without me!"
"Maybe I would!" Linda yelled.
"Fine! I wish you'd never brought me here!" Sarah shouted back. "Argle! Take me back to the entrance, please!"
"What?" her mother half-shrieked.
"Then my debt to ya today is done, Conqueror," Argle said uneasily. "I won't owe ya more for yar status. Either we all go to the next path or I take ya alone."
"What about me?" Linda wailed.
"Don't owe ya nothing," he said.
Sarah spun about.
.
.
She watched her daughter walk away for a full ten seconds before the darkness enveloped her and she grew afraid. "Sarah!" she called, leaping forward. Almost immediately she ran into a stalactite. "Oh!"
She opened her eyes to see Sarah peering worriedly down at her, Argle off to the side with the torch, which was shorter than before. How long had it been…?
"Are you alright?" Sarah asked gently. She reached out to touch Linda's forehead. "You're bleeding. Not a lot, but still."
"Augh," she moaned, swallowed, tried again. "…Yes," she managed, pushing up on her elbows, wincing at the dampness on her back.
Sarah mistook the source of her expression. "Maybe you should lie back down for a bit."
"No. No. We're running out of time," she argued. "I'll be fine." Actresses, the good ones, learned how to work through all sorts of pain and discomfort.
"Okay," her daughter said, frowning. "If you say so. I'm sorry I yelled at you."
Linda's lip twitched in a frown of her own, and she nodded—only to wince again at the pain in her head.
Sarah sighed slightly and helped her rise. "Argle, I'm sorry you had to see that. We don't usually argue like that. It's been…very stressful."
"Mm," Argle hummed, brows slightly raised. "Ya want to go on?"
"Yes," Sarah said. "To the next path, please."
They tottered off together, Sarah and Linda, with the latter leaning on the former. They ignored their stomachs gurgling and the water that fell on their faces.
'This is too much. I can't wait until it's over.'
A/N: As I was writing the end, I suddenly thought, how do I explain why the Labby so little resembles Sarah's Labby? I know! And that neat twist about the runner's soul just wrote itself, but I rather like it.
To my reviewers:
Natsuko37—she is a hideous sort of person, isn't she? But I'm not worried about her likeability. That's kinda what Sarah is there for, eh?
CoffeeKris—hehe! Go ahead, if you really want to. She deserves it.
HazlgrnLizzy—that's always good to here! As I said, that twist about the Labby wrote itself. I didn't make it clear, but it's both Jareth and the Labby itself who re-arranges things, which is why he isn't always aware of luck operating to protect Sarah (see chapter three), but he can manipulate the Labby so that its darker elements are out in force. After all, a tougher soul needs harder challenges. The Labby also usually changes on its own depending on how well the runner's doing, in order to make it harder, but Sarah's case is special.
Nercia Genisis—glitter? Have you been visiting the Underground and making off with Faerie glitter? Thanks on the congrats.
FireShifter—what can I say? This story's on fire. Oh, sorry, I didn't even realize I was making a bad pun there, inspired by your name. . No, Sarah's smarter than her mother, books-wise. Linda knows enough about people to play her socialite role, though, with people she cares to impress. As for Jareth either wanting Sarah romantically or to destroy her? Possibly both. Poor conflicted Goblin King.
