Disclaimer: I do not own Jareth, Sarah, the Labyrinth, or anything else from the movie.
Jareth threw a crystal at me, and I rose and floated through a door into Magdalene's maze.
Magdalene's maze is a very weird place. It is made entirely of globes of light, and beams of light connecting the globes, suspended in space. The light has its own gravity, so you can walk on it. Jareth claims that a collection of beams and globes is called a graph. The light beams keep stretching and twisting, as if they don't care how long they were. It was dreamed up by a young woman who loved mathematics. I suppose I shouldn't be too surprised.
Just inside the door is a complicated mass of beams and globes. It's big, at least when it needs to be. I climbed along it to the far edge, knowing that the goblins would also need to be sitting on it.
The door reopened, and I watched Jareth send a group of goblins through. Two of them were carrying a third. They made their way across the structure to me.
One of the goblins looked at me and said, "Jareth says you may not be a trained healer but you're the only one we've got, so you'll have to do. Can you try to heal her?" The goblins carrying another goblin deposited her on the structure. Light beams moved to support her.
I swallowed. Mother, hurry! We need your healing power! I placed my hand on the goblin and concentrated. It was hard. I gritted my teeth and tried. My side suddenly hurt with the goblin's pain as well as my own. I kept working. One of the first things I had learned was how very, very bad it was to stop a healing in the middle. Mora still had a limp from that time.
The pain receded and I opened my eyes. The goblin woman lay at my feet, part-healed-that is, I'd formed a thin layer of scar tissue to stop the bleeding, but not repaired any of her muscles. "I shouldn't do any more," I told the goblin leader. "I'm going to have to do this an awful lot, and doing more than stopping the bleeding is going to drain me too much." I yawned. I was exhausted.
More goblins carried their wounded to me. I tried to help them all-but soon I felt my power waning. I opened my eyes, staring down at an injured child I couldn't help. "I can't," I whispered. "I haven't the power."
Jareth appeared behind me, and placed his hand on my shoulder. I felt magical power flow into me. "Jareth, what are you doing?" I asked. "With the Labyrinth in ruins you don't have any power to spare."
"I'll have to spare this," he said. "My people need it."
I nodded and kept working.
It was a grueling few hours. Jareth was kept busy moving goblins into the Maze, and I was kept busy healing them. Jareth fed me more power as necessary. Neither of us mentioned how weak we were becoming. But I knew that we were probably no match for Sarah.
Then Sarah walked into the maze.
She was carrying Toby and holding Elien's hand. "The demon's possessed Elien," Jareth said, somehow retaining his composure. I couldn't. I was terrified. "Can it control both of them at once?" I asked.
"If they're standing close enough together it can. If they're related by blood, it can. That's why most demonic transfers are between relatives."
Sarah and Elien came towards us. I stood up and placed my hand on Jareth's shoulder. "Take my power," I said. "Maybe you can use it to stop them."
He conjured a crystal and threw it at them. Sarah caught it and tossed it into the air. It puffed out in a cloud of sparks. She pointed at us, and a wind slammed into us, blowing us off of the graph.
We fell down, into a triangular pyramid of light beams. It expanded, becoming large enough to contain us both. I stood on one beam, gripping Jareth's hand. Sarah and Elien stood above us, and pointed down. I heard a word spoken and shivered. It was a spell of imprisonment.
The air between the light beams began to sparkle. It firmed into shimmering iridescence. I touched it. It was rock solid. Jareth and I were now trapped in a crystal pyramid.
Sarah and Elien turned and walked out of the Maze. I turned to Jareth. "Whereare they going?"
He swallowed, unhappily. "It can't beconvenient for the demon to have its power spread between two or three bodies. I think it's going to transfer Sarah's power into Elien, or the other way around, and then come back for you."
"What happens to Sarah when the demon abandons her?"
"Usually a demon's victims simply lie down and die when they're left."
I stared at him for a moment. "No. No! No, don't let that happen to either of them!"
"Do you suppose I've got any choice? I can't get out of this pyramid either. I can't help them."
"Try something. You're the Goblin King, you've got the power, and you're giving up?!"
He whirled and stared at me. "Do you think, you stupid little brat, that it gives me any pleasure to wait in helplessness as my beloved or my foster daughter is even now having her living essence ripped out by a demon? It hurts me more than you know. I want to save them, I would do anything to save them, AND I CAN'T! I haven't been this helpless in centuries, and I hate it!"
I blinked. "Your what?"
He was instantly on his guard again. "My foster daughter, and my protégé."
"No, not that. Not Elien. Sarah is your what?"
He drew himself back. "Nothing. A slip of the tongue, that's all."
"I heard you. You said-"
"Koren, you will be silent on this matter, and you will be silent now." I could hear the menace in his voice. So I stopped talking. There was a pause.
"The thing I don't understand," he said eventually, "is why we're here, rather than in a part of the Labyrinth Sarah created."
I looked around. The Maze felt new. "Can the demon read her mind?"
"To a very limited extent."
"Well, then, maybe it thinks that she did create this. It certainly feels new enough."
Jareth nodded. "If that's the case, then we might have a chance."
"Not much of one. It's not our turf either. Maybe" I trailed off. We were both helpless. There were no maybes. Were there?
Koren, I've killed the spell keeping me on Earth, said Twyla abruptly.
Good! "Mother's free to come back to the Labyrinth," I told Jareth. "Maybe if she comes here, she can break this down."
He nodded. "Have her try it."
I looked up. A woman walked out of the doorway to the castle and began walking towards us. She ran down the light-beam graph and climbed over to our pyramid.
Twyla didn't look like I remembered my mother Larina. She seemed much younger and much frailer. She had paled, too-her skin was very, very white, and her hair had turned silver. Only her vivid green eyes retained their color. She rested one long, delicate hand on the crystal barrier and concentrated. Then she looked up. "I don't understand how this was done," she said. "It's a standard barrier spell, but the nature of this place has changed it somehow. None of the usual shortcuts to destroy it will work, and I don't have enough power to brute-force through it."
"Damn," said Jareth.
"Who knows anything about this place?" she asked.
"It was created by a girl named Magdalene a year ago. She might understand it," I answered.
"Where is this Magdalene?" she asked.
"On Earth," I replied. "I don't know where, exactly."
"She was in California a year ago," Jareth added.
Twyla nodded and walked out. I sat down and wrapped my arms around my knees, waiting for her to return.
In half an hour, she returned, with three young humans behind her. "Three of them?" Jareth asked.
"They wanted to go with their sister," Twyla explained.
One of the girls stepped forwards. She seemed to be standing on another light graph, which glided where she wanted. She looked at the pyramid. "Faces, that's what they have to be," she muttered, "and only planar graphs have faces." She looked at Jareth. "I can try something, your majesty," she said. "I think it will work."
"Do it, Magdalene," he said. "I haven't time to waste."
She nodded and reached for a glowing globe. It fit in her hand-although I was certain it had been big enough to stand on a moment before. She pulled a beam of light out of it, and directed the beam into one of the glowing globes at a corner of the pyramid I was trapped in. There was a sudden flicker, and the iridescent wall on the bottom of the pyramid swelled out like a soap bubble and touched the entire length of the new light beam.
Magdalene smiled. "Perfect. That's exactly what it should do." She grabbed her globe and rapidly drew light beams to the other corners of the bottom. The wall swelled out to touch them all. I was now standing inside a triangular double pyramid.
"Here's the hard part," she said. She touched her globe again and pulled a fourth light ray out of it. The thing she stood on floated upwards, carrying her to the top of the pyramid. She touched the light beam to the globe at the pyramid's top.
There was a flicker of light, and the walls sparkled out of existence. I stepped out, taking my mother's hand, and climbed to the large graph near the door. Twyla glared at the four children. "You stay here," she commanded. "We have planning to do."
Jareth looked at Twyla. "Do you have any ideas?" he asked. "Sarah's more powerful than I am; I'm tired."
"Can't you do something, your majesty?" she asked. "You've more magic than most members of the Fae court."
"One, Sarah is tapping most of it, and two, I used most of the rest making sure my subjects survived her earthquake. We need a way that doesn't use my magic."
Twyla frowned. "There is one other optionbut it's very dangerous."
"We'll have to do it," he said. "We have no other choice. What is it?"