Notes: I just want to take this small space to thank all the people who have been reading and commenting. I'm glad that (thus far, at least) you've been enjoying the story. Needless to say, I love The Labyrinth, and it gives me great joy to share my love of it with all you fine people. And now I feel like a politician, so I'll just say, "Cheers."

10. Goblin City

Goblin City was a dump. A real dump. Having worked as part of The Labyrinth's maintenance detail for nigh onto three hundred years now, Hoggle knew a dump when he saw one. Nobody outside of the city gates—with the possible exception of the inhabitants of the Bog of Eternal Stench and a few of the less discerning folk at The Grumbling Wastes—would be caught dead allowing their corner of The Labyrinth to be as completely, utterly and shatteringly covered in filth as the goblins within the city did. They walked, rolled, crawled across and waded through trash and waste and animal dung and things considerably less palatable than that.

The city was built upon a sharply sloping hill, with the castle at its summit, casting its shadow over everything. Once, so many years ago that no one really remembered, the city had been a collection of modest, white-washed stone and timber cottages, with shoppes leading down to the lowest point of the city. Circumventing the shoppes were side markets and bazaars. A goblin whose name no one could remember had even commissioned a fountain. There was even talk, among the truly grizzled and bent goblins, that there had once been trees and creeping, flowering vines.

Those days were firmly in the past. The cottages now sagged into one another, weighed down under clothes lines and junk heaped onto their roofs. There was less a sense of architecture as there was of piles of rotted timber left here and there. Orderly backyards had given way to pigsties that spilled out into the main thoroughfares. Chamber pots were emptied into the streets below, were they festered amidst the droppings of flocks of chickens and bands of pigs everyone claimed belonged to their no-good neighbour. Goats clambered over rooftops and ate the roofs' thatching, bleating at and biting anything that came near. It was not unheard of for a family's roof to come crumbling down—goats and chickens and somebody's baby and all—at supper time. When this happened, the debris was swept out into the street, where it remained for months on end, and the family simply moved in with their in-laws. Every house—hovel, really—was overcrowded and stuffed to the rafters with all the stench it could muster.

"This place is a disgrace," Hoggle grumbled. A flock of wayward chickens, their bellies coated with mud, clucked and hopped out of Hoggle's way, cheerful in their indignation. One of them nipped at his ankles, and he aimed a kick at it. It squawked out of his reach, and he scowled at its retreating rear. "A total disgrace. Don't know why I bother coming back here."

The city was noisy enough on any given day of the week, but today it seemed particularly cacophonous. Over the usual cascading caterwaul of chickens, goats, pigs, goblins, hobgoblins, and even flies (mutated to unnatural sizes within the city walls), Hoggle could hear a shrill commotion echoing down from an alley just up ahead. Some idiot must have eaten some other idiot's goat by mistake, he thought. Stupid. Nobody knew which goats were whose anyway. But whatever this was, it sounded serious. He could make out laughter and taunts, and one or two goblins ran into the alley carrying spears and rattling in ill-fitting armour.

Several other goblins were in there already, tormenting what closely resembled a bundle of sticks wrapped in black, trailing seaweed and caught in a net suspended above street level. Whatever it was had about ten goblins beneath it, poking it with spears and whacking every inch of it with pots, pans, and one heavy looking rolling pin. It was none of Hoggle's concern. If it made goblins happy to beat up living bundles of sticks, then that was their nasty business.

"Take that, intruder!" shouted a goblin wearing a sieve as a helmet.

A reedy goblin hefting a frying pan cackled. "Give it a taste of this!"

Its cackle was followed by the frying pan swooshing through the air, then a thoroughly put-out yet strangely cheerful, "Ow!"

Hoggle came to a sudden stop.

He knew that voice.

He backed up, eyebrows knotted in disbelief, to peer into the alley. A goblin in a rusted breastplate pushed him aside in order to squeeze into the mob. "Don't block the way, blockhead!" Hoggle found himself shoving and elbowing his way forward along with the other goblins. A goblin female with large red boots handed him a spear ("Have a go at it, dwarfy!"), and Hoggle was too stunned to refuse the weapon.

The bundle of sticks had shifted within the net, dirty, skinned fingers grasping the ropes in an attempt to pull itself up and away from a pair of white hot fire tongs. Messy, matted brown hair covered most of its face, but Hoggle no longer had any doubts as to what—who—was inside that net.

"David?"

Mismatched eyes, one blue and surprised, the other nearly dark and somewhat dazed, locked on Hoggle's. "I mind the fire tongs! The poking was painful, but bearable. The fire tongs are a bit gruesome!" A disturbingly malevolent cheer went up at his words, and David resumed his fruitless scramble upwards. He kicked a few spears away, for all the good it did him. "I wouldn't be adverse to some help, Hoggle!"

"No help," a goblin said, prodding at David's ribs with a broom stick. "Drive out the monster! Take that, you ugly beast!"

Hoggle scoffed at the ludicrous sound of those words at the same time that David protested, "Yes, yes, well and good, but can I be driven out by something not heated and quite so deadly?!" Hoggle wasted no time then. With a roar that would have made any wild dwarf proud, he swung his spear arm in a wide arc. Several goblins were knocked sideways. Twirling the spear above his head, Hoggle scattered goblins out of his path. He jabbed and stabbed and whacked at the crowd gathered under the net, so that goblins dispersed in a groaning surge of grumbles and panicky yelps. "GET OFF!" Hoggle hollered. "Get ON with ya! You'd better run, or you might find yourselves in DWARFISH STEW!"

David pulled a face. "Good Lord. Really?" The civilized distaste was brought up short by Hoggle slashing at the bottom of the net, so that David tumbled out of it and into an untidy heap on the muddy cobblestones. One ankle protested, and his stomach took personal issue with the smell wafting from the fetid puddle David's face nearly landed on.

"GO ON!" Hoggle was shouting, grasping his spear above his head with both arms. His eyes were wide and bright. Not quite sane, some might say. "Off with ya! Run away, you yellow livered cowards! RUN if you know what's good for your slimy behinds!"

David raised one arm to wipe his face clean. One look at his filthy sleeve and the arm was dropped right quick. "That's charming, Hoggle," he said. "I never suspected you could be quite so…" He wanted to say scary. He settled for, "Forceful."

Hoggle threw away his spear, suddenly calm as you please. He shot David a closed look. "So," he grunted. "You made it. You look like sh—"

"—oh, and I smell like it too," David said cheerfully. He could afford to be cheerful now, with white hot tongs and a net and tormenting goblins out of the picture.

Hoggle watched as David tried—with not much success—to straighten out the hopeless devastation that was his hair and clothes. "How did you get here?"

David favoured a crusted something clinging to his sleeve with a dazzling smile. "I made The Labyrinth believe I was devastatingly sad and ready to just leave. I nearly bought my own performance. It was brilliant. Well, the place obliged by bringing the gates of the city to me. Rather easy to boss around, this Labyrinth of yours, once you get the hang of it. I'm surprised everyone doesn't simply do it all the time. I suspect they might be, at that."

"No," Hoggle said, "they're not. Nobody can."

But his voice was so low and hushed that David did not hear. He was busy lifting pot lids and peering inside, only to draw back looking as if he had seen the festering contents of a goblin's stomach. Perhaps he had. He looked happy and curious again, just like at the maze. Yet something was off. There was a steel undertone to his voice that Hoggle had not heard before. "Aren't you going to show me around?" he said. "I seem to recall you offered me a place to stay."

"Did I?"

"Now, Hoggle, don't pretend you've forgotten. You've already abandoned me to flesh eating fairies, and that caused me some small grief."

"Is that what you think I did?"

David ran his eyes over a rotting raven carcass dangling off a hook with vague distaste. "Didn't you?"

"I did no such thing! I followed orders, was all. Warned you about the fairies, didn't I?" Hoggle stomped ahead of David, fists clenched. Had a good mind to put him back in the net, set some criminally inclined goblins on him. "Seems like you made it out all right. I had orders."

"Who did the orders come from, Hoggle?"

David was smiling, but his eyes were hard and distant. The corners of his mouth strained under the pretence of mirth. Hoggle shifted uncomfortably where he stood, disturbed by the sight in a way he could not articulate. After an awkward, heavy while, he threw up his hands. "I just follow the orders. T'aint none of my business where they come from. And you made it out all right," he added, gaze firmly averted.

"Do you take orders from anyone?"

"It depends…" Hoggle coughed, shifted where he stood, then rubbed thumb and index finger together in a manner David understood all too well.

"You want money?"

Hoggle waved his arms in a dismissive gesture. "Phaugh! Money. Human nonsense. No. But… compensation, yes." He shot David a crafty look. "Not your watch. Something a bit more valuable."

Days (months) (time was so strange in this place) ago, David would have been thrown, even wounded, by Hoggle's display of dispassionate greed. Things were different now. David thought of himself as two different people: the David who had fallen into the maze, and the David who stood before Hoggle now. He was dirty and tired and on edge and still crackling with the sense that something vital and powerful had changed within him. Even as he thought all of these things, his hands busied themselves digging in his pockets. He pulled out two pence, his lighter, and the pen light. Hoggle bit into the two pence, shook the pen light with a puzzled frown, and sniffed at the lighter.

"Unique, human artefacts," David said. "Two pence made of bronze, lighter out of silver. Neither of them is plated. And the pen light," he paused for dramatic effect, "is electric."

"Huh." Hoggle twisted the bottom of the pen light, jumping a bit as its blue ray slammed into his eye. "I was hoping for something a bit more valuable…" Not exactly an honest reaction. Any one of these items would make him the envy of several dwarves, sprites and goblins he knew, but why should David be any wiser? "But these'll do. For now."

"Good. I want you to guide me into the castle."

Hoggle's eyebrows shot up. He pocketed his new treasures and started off quickly down the thoroughfare. "Get somebody else," he called out. He could feel David pushing his way through the crowd, trying to catch up, and Hoggle moved his legs as fast as he could. Curse his short legs, and curse David's beanpole height. Within seconds, David had grasped on to his sleeve.

"Oh, come on, Hoggle," he pleaded. "I've come this far. The castle is the centre of The Labyrinth, isn't it?"

Hoggle threw hasty glances around him, making sure no one had heard David. He grasped one of David's bony wrists and pulled him along to a cul-de-sac, shushing him in a loud, urgent whisper whenever David so much as parted his lips. He shoved David under an arch made by an old desk that had wedged against the high wall above, so that they stood within an isolated pocket of rubbish. Somebody's living room, from the looks of the smashed chairs and lanterns and one lonely book. Hoggle pulled a worm eaten door free from the trash pile and stood it so that it blocked the entrance afforded by the arch.

"Nobody goes into the castle," he said in a harsh whisper.

"I've come this far."

"Then just be glad for that and go on your way. We'll go to my friend's house, Wrim. He'll set you up an' you can do…" He looked doubtfully at David's rather sorry appearance. "Whatever it is that you do. You could stand a bath, for starters."

David crossed his arms. It was amazing how much taller that one gesture made him look. He seemed to tower over the cul-de-sac. "You accepted my payment, Hoggle. You are now bound to do as I say."

"Am no such thing."

David tried another tactic. From tall and imposing he switched to open armed and flattering. "You can't possibly be scared, can you? Why, you drove off at least twenty goblins all by yourself just a few minutes ago. You're a brave dwarf, Hoggle."

"Goblins are child's play. The castle is his territory, and I ain't leading you in there."

"Fine." David removed the worm eaten door and ducked under the arch. "So be it. I'll guide myself in. Thanks for your help, Hoggle." He paused then, and looked back at the dwarf. His face softened, and he was the old David again. "I'm disappointed that you won't guide me, but you saved my life. Thank you. Fairies notwithstanding, you're a good friend."

With that, he made his way out into the crowded city once more. Hoggle could see his mousy brown head over the throng, and he followed it until it turned a corner and away from view.

"Goodbye, David Jones," he said. "I really hope I'll see you again."