AN: See! I wrote!! LOL... This chapter did not want to come out
and frankly... I'm not sure if I'm happy with it but, its here and
I can go on from here so *rasberry*. It is longer than I thought it
would be, and different. Stupid characters wouldn't shut up. =)
Neway, thank you guys so much for reviewing (50 wohoo!). Keep it up!
I write quicker with encouragement... *hint hint*
Standard disclaimers: and ever and ever and ever and ever...
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~Sacrifices: Chapter Eight~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
"You'll ruin him yet little human." Sarah quickly wiped tears from
red cheeks and looked up in surprise, and some fear. The odd being
before her bowed slightly. She turned her head away and rested one
cheek on her knees, which were drawn up under her chin as she sat on a
small-receded alcove somewhere in Jareth's castle. She felt like a
child and she didn't like it. She hadn't been a child in a long
time.
Drevlyn's slitted gaze narrowed and he sighed. "What has Jareth
done..." Sarah looked up that and Drevlyn was surprised to find such
depth in a human's eyes. There was more to this girl, this woman,
that one would think.
"Who are you?" she asked, nay demanded, in a tone that made even
Princes want to respond. Drevlyn bowed again, this time with a great
flourish, humoring the belligerence that came so obviously with
stress, and weariness, and perhaps even fear.
"I am Drevlyn my Lady, Prince of the Dragons." He expected surprise,
perhaps an exclamation of 'Dragons?! Truly?' but he was disappointed.
The girl raised full brows and snorted.
"Lions and tigers and bears, oh my..." she murmured under her breath.
She raised her eyes to meet his again, suddenly fearless. Drevlyn was
impressed, even more so when she questioned him again. "Who is
Evirey?" Drevlyn sighed and leaned against a pillar a few steps from
the human, unconsciously copying Jareth's insolent slouch.
"Queen of the Unicorns..." Sarah laughed and it was a bitter sound.
"Dragons and unicorns and goblins, oh my... Nothing is ever what it
seems here, is it? In all this land the only thing constant is
illusions. Illusions of dreams come true, illusions of death. I came
to this place at peace, or at least accepting, of the thought that I
would die here." Drevlyn swallowed at the sudden silence.
"So, you found out about the fact that Jareth made you immortal?" The
woman laid her head back on her knees.
"Yeah. Bastard." Drevlyn stifled a laugh.
"You are not what I expected human." Sarah looked up sharply.
"You expected me?" Dragon skin didn't flush, not easily, but
Drevlyn's blue darkened slightly in response to the woman's quick
mind. He swallowed.
"No Lady... not exactly. I, I knew of Jareth's deal with you and he
informed me when he went to collect what was owed him. You arrival
was as much a surprise to me as I'm sure it was to you." Sarah's keen
gaze studied him for a moment and she stiffened, jaw squared as she
spoke again.
"You and Jareth... King Jareth," she amended and it cost her anger
born pride much to give him that title, "are close..."
"We're friends Lady," Drevlyn answered solemnly.
"The King of the Goblins has friends?" she quipped, bitterness still
very apparent. Drevlyn coughed to cover more quite inappropriate
laughter.
"Truthfully Lady, only among the Dragons, and perhaps his subjects."
Sarah looked away, face shuttered. "Although not among all of his
subjects." Sarah said nothing in reply but changed the subject
instead.
"How... how did Jareth know, when it was time to 'collect' on his
deal?" The question was innocently asked but Drevlyn sensed,
instinctively, that many things hinged upon his answer. Damn it.
Jareth was going to skin him alive, if he was lucky. Spying was one
thing... interfering crossed the clearly marked boundaries of the King
of the Goblin's very personal business.
Never mind that the future of his people depended on Jareth's ability
to protect Drevlyn's 'treasure'. Never mind that Jareth was in,
everything but relation, his brother. Jareth was a smart, cunning,
dangerous man but he could be the biggest fool about some things.
Foolish and prideful. Foolish enough to love a child and nurture that
love for two decades. Foolish enough to deal with the mortal he
should have, by every right, scorned. Foolish enough to bring that
child, a woman grown, to a place that she had already bested.
Prideful in that he never saw his defeat coming, at the hands of the
said child. Prideful enough not to admit his continuing love.
Prideful enough to believe that he could face down the Sidhe Court
unscathed. Prideful enough to bind the only creature he had never
been able to understand to him for all time.
Drevlyn cursed, more vividly, under his steaming breath before
attempting to answer the human's archly asked question.
"He... Jareth holds the reins to great power, more than most Sidhe,
more than all the High Sidhe in fact. You injured his pride the day
you defeated him. Jareth wanted to make sure it wasn't a total loss.
"He put spells in place that 'checked in' on you and yours. He came
to claim his property the moment it was his to claim. Jareth is after
all a man of his word."
"So if I had given birth he would have been there to cut the umbilical
cord and take my child even as I recovered from the last
contraction?" There was cold anger behind the question but it was
anger born from her situation, not from the answer Drevlyn had given.
And his words had been the truth, simply not all of it.
Jareth had placed spells on the once mortal Sarah Williams. He had
put spells on her, but that didn't mean he hadn't watched her as
well. Jareth did not love as others did. There was a fierce,
possessive, obsessive quality that made love, of all the Goblin King's
emotions, the most volatile, the most intense. Drevlyn gathered his
thoughts and made an effort to answer the human.
"Perhaps... He can be a cruel man but then, so can I... So can you
human. There's cruelty in even the most innocent of things. Some
have said that children are the most cruel of all." Sarah flinched.
Silence stretched once again between them before Sarah broke it by
quickly dancing back to a before mentioned but painfully skirted
subject.
"Aye Drevlyn, Prince of the Dragons, Jareth... King Jareth's
friend... He can be cruel. Cruel enough to expand my time here from
perhaps forty years to eternity. Tell me, does he truly seek
vengeance from his hurt pride that much? If... If immortality was a
punishment for only me then, I would still rage, but I would
understand his actions better.
"As it is now... I will match every breath he takes for millennia. I
know the King of the Goblins takes pleasure from mocking my pain but
wouldn't even that doubtful amusement dull after a few centuries? I'm
just a woman, just a human. Why the fascination? Why bother?
"I won by luck twenty years ago, nothing more. I'm not anything
special now, if I ever was. I'm not the little fool who wished her
brother away. I'm not the child who bantered and bartered with lives
on the line. I... I'm a simple woman. I don't dream of princes and
happily ever afters, not anymore. I dream of a quiet wedding and
joining the PTA." Sarah stilled and spoke again, voice softer, more
pain filled than it was before.
"I... I dreamed of those things. They're beyond me now."
"And you blame him?" Drevlyn asked, tone just as soft. Sarah met his
gaze quickly, her jaw tightening in response as his slitted gaze
narrowed.
"No," she said finally, quietly. "I do not blame Jareth... damn, King
Jareth for the decisions I made. I... I spoke the words I did. I
chose the paths I've tread. I have no one to blame for the fact that
I'm here, for the fact that I ever was, but myself.
"I just... Why immortality?" Drevlyn swallowed, paused, and- knowing
it spelled his own doom- told her the truth.
"Because Jareth had no other choice. When he brought you here he used
much, most of his power, to break the ties you had formed with
Aboveground over the last thirty-five years. I don't think any other
Sidhe could have pulled it off. Could have brought a woman, even
willingly, to Underground without thoroughly draining, even
endangering, themselves.
"Jareth brought you back human, erased all memory of you in Above, and
tried to shield you from Evirey's prying eyes. That took a lot of
power. More than even the considerable reservoir of the Goblin
King's. The void between our worlds demanded power for your passage
so Jareth gave it what he could... He burned away your mortality to
bring you to the Labyrinth. He fed the void your Death. Your promise
of Death." It was Sarah's turn to visibly swallow.
"Your immortality was not a punishment... It was a mistake." She
said nothing for another long minute.
"Why... why did he have to shield me from Evirey?" Drevlyn laughed
harshly and stretched lazily, relieved at the turn the situation was
now taking. Politics were always safer ground than love, especially a
Goblin King's love.
"Because little human... The Queen of the Unicorns loves all things
mortal. Loves humanity, with all its quirks and idiosyncrasies. She
has a court of humans living in her realm that she has kidnapped over the
years as children. And she detests Jareth with a passion I've rarely
seen matched. He is not always the most tactful person and several
comments have ensured that a certain Unicorn Queen would be only too
happy to provide his demise.
"Now imagine what kind of prize you'd be... an immortal human who had
bested Jareth before and who Jareth still claimed as his."
"I am not a thing to be fought over by wolves." Drevlyn, who had been
studying the ceiling, looked sharply at the woman. There had been no
evident anger in that statement but its coolness, its absolute
firmness told him something. He had struck a nerve. Sarah's face was
shuttered, imperial, and every inch as regal as Jareth's could be.
Drevlyn was, once again, impressed.
Immortal, bound to a man that she feared and was drawn to, tired,
angry, spent after facing that man- that Goblin King- and one of his
dearest enemies she still managed as she sat, dirty, grubby, perhaps
even tear stained in a ripped gown, to act like a Queen. Jareth
really did have good taste.
"Wolves?" he asked faintly. Sarah flushed but did not retract her
words. Drevlyn walked forward and stopped in front of the small
recess Sarah was perched in. He crouched gracefully until he was
looking up in the human's dark gaze.
"Answer me this human... Jareth asked you why you named him your
King. I ask the same and don't, don't give me that heaven be damned
answer of yours." Sarah stared at him and Drevlyn sucked warm breath
through fanged teeth. The woman was good. Just as good at staring
him down as Jareth, perhaps even better... something Drevlyn would
have sworn was impossible before today. She bit one full lip.
"I... Jareth... Damn," she swore. "I don't know. I am a woman of my
word Prince Drevlyn. I was standing there; confronted by this
creature I didn't know offering things I don't think she quite dared
to vocalize here, in the Labyrinth. And then there was Jareth." She
bowed her head a moment. "King Jareth," she granted stiffly.
"I... I have defied him before Prince Drevlyn. And he was right... in
that moment when he demanded that I tell the Queen of the Unicorns who
he was to me I wasn't thinking of Melanie. I wasn't afraid of saying
the wrong thing and having the Goblin King snatch away Mel.
"I was standing there and... it was the truth. The simple truth
Drevlyn. It wasn't some epiphany. It wasn't some revelation. It was
the truth. Jareth can be a arrogant bastard and sometimes... Sometimes
I can almost hate him. Sometimes...
"But..." Sarah trailed helplessly away. "He's the Goblin King. I
wished myself away once; I gave myself away a second time. I... It
was the truth. I can't explain it and damn it I couldn't lie, not
then, not to him, not when he's never lied to me. He may not have
always been honest but he's never lied.
"So I said the words, I voiced the truth." She looked at Drevlyn more
closely. "Why? Why is what I did so important?" Drevlyn rose from
his crouch.
"Because Lady... Jareth is the most powerful being Underground in
terms of magic, but not politically. We are all ruled, to an extent,
by the Sidhe Court. Jareth less than most but still... to some things
he must bow in favor of their will. It is tradition that every
mortal, every human, brought to this realm must be presented to the
Court. Jareth rather blatantly ignores that tradition. He usually
turns his newest subjects into goblins. And his disrespect is
tolerated with some things because, to check his power would require
more magic and blood than it would be worth, especially for mere
tradition's sake.
"This situation is rather different. By your age and immortality you
are a rarity, a first. You are almost one of us," and by 'us' Sarah
knew Drevlyn meant High Sidhe, "yet you are not of our world, even if
you belong to it now.
"Jareth wished to hide you from the Court, from Evirey who often
enough keeps an eye on Jareth *for* the Court. Now that she knows about
you she will call a Judgment Session. They... I think they are like
your mortal trials. Jareth will have to defend and explain his
actions and will formally make his claim on you.
"It will be contested. For curiosity's sake many would have you as a
subject. For spite, for Jareth's arrogance is not just insulting to
you little human. All High Sidhe have pride and Jareth wounds many on
a regular occasion."
"And then?" Sarah demanded. Drevlyn snorted and smoke escaped from
his nostrils.
"And then they will vote. Jareth will either be punished or acquitted
and you... You will be given to the claimant whose argument is
strongest." He could practically see the human bristle.
"That's barbaric," she spat. "Do I have NO say in ANY of this
Judgment Session?" Drevlyn laughed and it was, for the first time, a
light sound.
"Of course child. Those of the Underground do consider themselves
more civilized than Above. You named Jareth your King once and
claimed it as truth. I'd suggest that you do so again, with all the
sincerity that you can manage, or you may find yourself with a new
ruler." Sarah glared.
"If I am to be ruled it will be by a King that I decree. I am NOT a
toy. I am NOT a curiosity. I will NOT be bartered or given. I am
NOT some kind of slave. And you had better tell your 'friend' that he
had better be damned sincere and prepared himself."
"Why don't you tell him yourself?" Sarah and Drevlyn both whirled and
blanched to find Jareth on the other side of the corridor, arms
crossed, foot tapping, face unmistakably furious. With who Drevlyn
wasn't sure. Jareth held out one black gloved hand.
"Sarah, come." Drevlyn glanced at the woman. She was made of sterner
stuff than Drevlyn was. She stared at Jareth, mouth pursed. "Sarah,
that was a command." She drew herself up straighter but made no move
to stand. Drevlyn edged away. Jareth fumed for a moment before
growling.
"Please Sarah. Just come. We must speak." Sarah studied the irate
Goblin King for another long moment before rising fluidly and walking
forward to take his hand, face a mask. Jareth glared at his
'brother'.
"You and will have a talk later as well, about spying and about
interfering." Drevlyn winced at the blatant fury in that parting shot
as Jareth and Sarah disappeared. He had hoped Jareth hadn't caught on
to the fact that he had watched the whole scene with Evirey.
Damn, damn, damn. Skinned alive indeed.
and frankly... I'm not sure if I'm happy with it but, its here and
I can go on from here so *rasberry*. It is longer than I thought it
would be, and different. Stupid characters wouldn't shut up. =)
Neway, thank you guys so much for reviewing (50 wohoo!). Keep it up!
I write quicker with encouragement... *hint hint*
Standard disclaimers: and ever and ever and ever and ever...
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~Sacrifices: Chapter Eight~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
"You'll ruin him yet little human." Sarah quickly wiped tears from
red cheeks and looked up in surprise, and some fear. The odd being
before her bowed slightly. She turned her head away and rested one
cheek on her knees, which were drawn up under her chin as she sat on a
small-receded alcove somewhere in Jareth's castle. She felt like a
child and she didn't like it. She hadn't been a child in a long
time.
Drevlyn's slitted gaze narrowed and he sighed. "What has Jareth
done..." Sarah looked up that and Drevlyn was surprised to find such
depth in a human's eyes. There was more to this girl, this woman,
that one would think.
"Who are you?" she asked, nay demanded, in a tone that made even
Princes want to respond. Drevlyn bowed again, this time with a great
flourish, humoring the belligerence that came so obviously with
stress, and weariness, and perhaps even fear.
"I am Drevlyn my Lady, Prince of the Dragons." He expected surprise,
perhaps an exclamation of 'Dragons?! Truly?' but he was disappointed.
The girl raised full brows and snorted.
"Lions and tigers and bears, oh my..." she murmured under her breath.
She raised her eyes to meet his again, suddenly fearless. Drevlyn was
impressed, even more so when she questioned him again. "Who is
Evirey?" Drevlyn sighed and leaned against a pillar a few steps from
the human, unconsciously copying Jareth's insolent slouch.
"Queen of the Unicorns..." Sarah laughed and it was a bitter sound.
"Dragons and unicorns and goblins, oh my... Nothing is ever what it
seems here, is it? In all this land the only thing constant is
illusions. Illusions of dreams come true, illusions of death. I came
to this place at peace, or at least accepting, of the thought that I
would die here." Drevlyn swallowed at the sudden silence.
"So, you found out about the fact that Jareth made you immortal?" The
woman laid her head back on her knees.
"Yeah. Bastard." Drevlyn stifled a laugh.
"You are not what I expected human." Sarah looked up sharply.
"You expected me?" Dragon skin didn't flush, not easily, but
Drevlyn's blue darkened slightly in response to the woman's quick
mind. He swallowed.
"No Lady... not exactly. I, I knew of Jareth's deal with you and he
informed me when he went to collect what was owed him. You arrival
was as much a surprise to me as I'm sure it was to you." Sarah's keen
gaze studied him for a moment and she stiffened, jaw squared as she
spoke again.
"You and Jareth... King Jareth," she amended and it cost her anger
born pride much to give him that title, "are close..."
"We're friends Lady," Drevlyn answered solemnly.
"The King of the Goblins has friends?" she quipped, bitterness still
very apparent. Drevlyn coughed to cover more quite inappropriate
laughter.
"Truthfully Lady, only among the Dragons, and perhaps his subjects."
Sarah looked away, face shuttered. "Although not among all of his
subjects." Sarah said nothing in reply but changed the subject
instead.
"How... how did Jareth know, when it was time to 'collect' on his
deal?" The question was innocently asked but Drevlyn sensed,
instinctively, that many things hinged upon his answer. Damn it.
Jareth was going to skin him alive, if he was lucky. Spying was one
thing... interfering crossed the clearly marked boundaries of the King
of the Goblin's very personal business.
Never mind that the future of his people depended on Jareth's ability
to protect Drevlyn's 'treasure'. Never mind that Jareth was in,
everything but relation, his brother. Jareth was a smart, cunning,
dangerous man but he could be the biggest fool about some things.
Foolish and prideful. Foolish enough to love a child and nurture that
love for two decades. Foolish enough to deal with the mortal he
should have, by every right, scorned. Foolish enough to bring that
child, a woman grown, to a place that she had already bested.
Prideful in that he never saw his defeat coming, at the hands of the
said child. Prideful enough not to admit his continuing love.
Prideful enough to believe that he could face down the Sidhe Court
unscathed. Prideful enough to bind the only creature he had never
been able to understand to him for all time.
Drevlyn cursed, more vividly, under his steaming breath before
attempting to answer the human's archly asked question.
"He... Jareth holds the reins to great power, more than most Sidhe,
more than all the High Sidhe in fact. You injured his pride the day
you defeated him. Jareth wanted to make sure it wasn't a total loss.
"He put spells in place that 'checked in' on you and yours. He came
to claim his property the moment it was his to claim. Jareth is after
all a man of his word."
"So if I had given birth he would have been there to cut the umbilical
cord and take my child even as I recovered from the last
contraction?" There was cold anger behind the question but it was
anger born from her situation, not from the answer Drevlyn had given.
And his words had been the truth, simply not all of it.
Jareth had placed spells on the once mortal Sarah Williams. He had
put spells on her, but that didn't mean he hadn't watched her as
well. Jareth did not love as others did. There was a fierce,
possessive, obsessive quality that made love, of all the Goblin King's
emotions, the most volatile, the most intense. Drevlyn gathered his
thoughts and made an effort to answer the human.
"Perhaps... He can be a cruel man but then, so can I... So can you
human. There's cruelty in even the most innocent of things. Some
have said that children are the most cruel of all." Sarah flinched.
Silence stretched once again between them before Sarah broke it by
quickly dancing back to a before mentioned but painfully skirted
subject.
"Aye Drevlyn, Prince of the Dragons, Jareth... King Jareth's
friend... He can be cruel. Cruel enough to expand my time here from
perhaps forty years to eternity. Tell me, does he truly seek
vengeance from his hurt pride that much? If... If immortality was a
punishment for only me then, I would still rage, but I would
understand his actions better.
"As it is now... I will match every breath he takes for millennia. I
know the King of the Goblins takes pleasure from mocking my pain but
wouldn't even that doubtful amusement dull after a few centuries? I'm
just a woman, just a human. Why the fascination? Why bother?
"I won by luck twenty years ago, nothing more. I'm not anything
special now, if I ever was. I'm not the little fool who wished her
brother away. I'm not the child who bantered and bartered with lives
on the line. I... I'm a simple woman. I don't dream of princes and
happily ever afters, not anymore. I dream of a quiet wedding and
joining the PTA." Sarah stilled and spoke again, voice softer, more
pain filled than it was before.
"I... I dreamed of those things. They're beyond me now."
"And you blame him?" Drevlyn asked, tone just as soft. Sarah met his
gaze quickly, her jaw tightening in response as his slitted gaze
narrowed.
"No," she said finally, quietly. "I do not blame Jareth... damn, King
Jareth for the decisions I made. I... I spoke the words I did. I
chose the paths I've tread. I have no one to blame for the fact that
I'm here, for the fact that I ever was, but myself.
"I just... Why immortality?" Drevlyn swallowed, paused, and- knowing
it spelled his own doom- told her the truth.
"Because Jareth had no other choice. When he brought you here he used
much, most of his power, to break the ties you had formed with
Aboveground over the last thirty-five years. I don't think any other
Sidhe could have pulled it off. Could have brought a woman, even
willingly, to Underground without thoroughly draining, even
endangering, themselves.
"Jareth brought you back human, erased all memory of you in Above, and
tried to shield you from Evirey's prying eyes. That took a lot of
power. More than even the considerable reservoir of the Goblin
King's. The void between our worlds demanded power for your passage
so Jareth gave it what he could... He burned away your mortality to
bring you to the Labyrinth. He fed the void your Death. Your promise
of Death." It was Sarah's turn to visibly swallow.
"Your immortality was not a punishment... It was a mistake." She
said nothing for another long minute.
"Why... why did he have to shield me from Evirey?" Drevlyn laughed
harshly and stretched lazily, relieved at the turn the situation was
now taking. Politics were always safer ground than love, especially a
Goblin King's love.
"Because little human... The Queen of the Unicorns loves all things
mortal. Loves humanity, with all its quirks and idiosyncrasies. She
has a court of humans living in her realm that she has kidnapped over the
years as children. And she detests Jareth with a passion I've rarely
seen matched. He is not always the most tactful person and several
comments have ensured that a certain Unicorn Queen would be only too
happy to provide his demise.
"Now imagine what kind of prize you'd be... an immortal human who had
bested Jareth before and who Jareth still claimed as his."
"I am not a thing to be fought over by wolves." Drevlyn, who had been
studying the ceiling, looked sharply at the woman. There had been no
evident anger in that statement but its coolness, its absolute
firmness told him something. He had struck a nerve. Sarah's face was
shuttered, imperial, and every inch as regal as Jareth's could be.
Drevlyn was, once again, impressed.
Immortal, bound to a man that she feared and was drawn to, tired,
angry, spent after facing that man- that Goblin King- and one of his
dearest enemies she still managed as she sat, dirty, grubby, perhaps
even tear stained in a ripped gown, to act like a Queen. Jareth
really did have good taste.
"Wolves?" he asked faintly. Sarah flushed but did not retract her
words. Drevlyn walked forward and stopped in front of the small
recess Sarah was perched in. He crouched gracefully until he was
looking up in the human's dark gaze.
"Answer me this human... Jareth asked you why you named him your
King. I ask the same and don't, don't give me that heaven be damned
answer of yours." Sarah stared at him and Drevlyn sucked warm breath
through fanged teeth. The woman was good. Just as good at staring
him down as Jareth, perhaps even better... something Drevlyn would
have sworn was impossible before today. She bit one full lip.
"I... Jareth... Damn," she swore. "I don't know. I am a woman of my
word Prince Drevlyn. I was standing there; confronted by this
creature I didn't know offering things I don't think she quite dared
to vocalize here, in the Labyrinth. And then there was Jareth." She
bowed her head a moment. "King Jareth," she granted stiffly.
"I... I have defied him before Prince Drevlyn. And he was right... in
that moment when he demanded that I tell the Queen of the Unicorns who
he was to me I wasn't thinking of Melanie. I wasn't afraid of saying
the wrong thing and having the Goblin King snatch away Mel.
"I was standing there and... it was the truth. The simple truth
Drevlyn. It wasn't some epiphany. It wasn't some revelation. It was
the truth. Jareth can be a arrogant bastard and sometimes... Sometimes
I can almost hate him. Sometimes...
"But..." Sarah trailed helplessly away. "He's the Goblin King. I
wished myself away once; I gave myself away a second time. I... It
was the truth. I can't explain it and damn it I couldn't lie, not
then, not to him, not when he's never lied to me. He may not have
always been honest but he's never lied.
"So I said the words, I voiced the truth." She looked at Drevlyn more
closely. "Why? Why is what I did so important?" Drevlyn rose from
his crouch.
"Because Lady... Jareth is the most powerful being Underground in
terms of magic, but not politically. We are all ruled, to an extent,
by the Sidhe Court. Jareth less than most but still... to some things
he must bow in favor of their will. It is tradition that every
mortal, every human, brought to this realm must be presented to the
Court. Jareth rather blatantly ignores that tradition. He usually
turns his newest subjects into goblins. And his disrespect is
tolerated with some things because, to check his power would require
more magic and blood than it would be worth, especially for mere
tradition's sake.
"This situation is rather different. By your age and immortality you
are a rarity, a first. You are almost one of us," and by 'us' Sarah
knew Drevlyn meant High Sidhe, "yet you are not of our world, even if
you belong to it now.
"Jareth wished to hide you from the Court, from Evirey who often
enough keeps an eye on Jareth *for* the Court. Now that she knows about
you she will call a Judgment Session. They... I think they are like
your mortal trials. Jareth will have to defend and explain his
actions and will formally make his claim on you.
"It will be contested. For curiosity's sake many would have you as a
subject. For spite, for Jareth's arrogance is not just insulting to
you little human. All High Sidhe have pride and Jareth wounds many on
a regular occasion."
"And then?" Sarah demanded. Drevlyn snorted and smoke escaped from
his nostrils.
"And then they will vote. Jareth will either be punished or acquitted
and you... You will be given to the claimant whose argument is
strongest." He could practically see the human bristle.
"That's barbaric," she spat. "Do I have NO say in ANY of this
Judgment Session?" Drevlyn laughed and it was, for the first time, a
light sound.
"Of course child. Those of the Underground do consider themselves
more civilized than Above. You named Jareth your King once and
claimed it as truth. I'd suggest that you do so again, with all the
sincerity that you can manage, or you may find yourself with a new
ruler." Sarah glared.
"If I am to be ruled it will be by a King that I decree. I am NOT a
toy. I am NOT a curiosity. I will NOT be bartered or given. I am
NOT some kind of slave. And you had better tell your 'friend' that he
had better be damned sincere and prepared himself."
"Why don't you tell him yourself?" Sarah and Drevlyn both whirled and
blanched to find Jareth on the other side of the corridor, arms
crossed, foot tapping, face unmistakably furious. With who Drevlyn
wasn't sure. Jareth held out one black gloved hand.
"Sarah, come." Drevlyn glanced at the woman. She was made of sterner
stuff than Drevlyn was. She stared at Jareth, mouth pursed. "Sarah,
that was a command." She drew herself up straighter but made no move
to stand. Drevlyn edged away. Jareth fumed for a moment before
growling.
"Please Sarah. Just come. We must speak." Sarah studied the irate
Goblin King for another long moment before rising fluidly and walking
forward to take his hand, face a mask. Jareth glared at his
'brother'.
"You and will have a talk later as well, about spying and about
interfering." Drevlyn winced at the blatant fury in that parting shot
as Jareth and Sarah disappeared. He had hoped Jareth hadn't caught on
to the fact that he had watched the whole scene with Evirey.
Damn, damn, damn. Skinned alive indeed.