Mae govannen, and welcome to chapter 2! Hope you enjoy it!

Navaer Lalaith – I believe Labyrinth was a movie before it was a book, actually. Yeah, JWH and I looked at the crossover section, but it seemed like the story would be easier to find if I posted it in the LotR section and she posted it in the Labyrinth section. Otherwise a lot of people might never find it.

Pasha ToH – It is a little known fact that I will do just about anything for cookies. Here you go!

Magic Dance in Middle Earth

Chapter 2

Legolas did not know where he was. There were small green and brown creatures crawling and running and hopping all around him, and the young prince's Westron was not very good, so the words of the creatures, rather absurd and ridiculous anyway, sounded only like garbled nonsense to him. He was trying hard to be brave, but he was utterly lost and alone, and tears were trickling down his cheeks despite his best efforts.

"What's the matter?" one of them sneered at him, blowing a raspberry.

"Ada!" Legolas called, hoping his father would suddenly appear and whisk him away to safety. But he had no such luck. Instead, the frightening man who had taken him from his bed stood over him.

"Now now, don't cry," he said.

Legolas drew back from the strange figure. The man was dressed in a white shirt with large sleeves, grey leggings, and what looked like a black leather waistcoat. He had black gloves on as well, and his wild hair made him an alarming figure in the little elf's eyes.

"I want my father!" he whimpered in Sindarian.

Jareth, for that was the man's name, stared at the little elf who spoke a language the goblin king couldn't understand. He knew what to do for crying children, however, so he turned and grabbed the shirt of a nearby goblin as music started up from nowhere.

"You remind me of the babe!" he declared gleefully.

"What babe?" the goblin asked, confused. Honestly, these creatures were so stupid. There was only one child in the castle at that moment, and he was sitting in the room with them, for goodness sake!

"The babe with the power."

"What power?"

"The power of Voodoo."

"The what-now?" the goblin asked.

Jareth groaned and the music screeched to a halt.

"People, people," he said. "How many times do we have to go through this? I say 'the power of voodoo,' and you say 'who do?'"

A chorus of ohhhhs and grunts of affirmation followed his words, and Jareth started the music once more.

"The babe with the power."

"What power?"

"The power of Voodoo."

"Who do?"

"You do."

"Do what?"

"Remind me of the babe."

Jareth always thought himself very clever when he said that, but the goblins spoiled it by laughing. They always laughed too early.

"Quiet!" he snapped. "A goblin babe."

Silence.

"Well?"

The goblins laughed, and Jareth began to sing.

"I saw my baby, crying hard as babe could cry.
What could I do?
My baby's love had gone and left my baby blue.
Nobody knew: What kind of magic spell to use?"

"Slime and snails," one goblin offered.

"Or puppy dog's tails," another said. At least the miserable creatures could rhyme.

"Thunder or lightning."Or not.

Jareth spun around and pointed at Legolas.

"Then baby said -"

Legolas had been trying very hard to figure out exactly what the people around him were saying. Jareth's voice was easier to understand than those of the goblins, and he realized that the man was referring to him as a baby.

"Not a baby!" he declared hotly.

Jareth just moved on to the chorus:

"Dance magic, dance.
Dance magic, dance.
Put that baby spell on me.
Jump magic, jump.
Jump magic, jump.
Put that magic jump on me.
Slap that baby, make him free!"

That Legolas also understood, and his indignation won out over his fear.

"No!" he shouted and ran up to Jareth, kicking him hard in the shin and then running out the door.

The music stopped again as Jareth grasped his shin and hopped up and down on one leg.

"Well, go get the little brat," he snarled, and the goblins raced to do his bidding.

Meanwhile, Thranduil had come up with the clever idea of marking the stone beneath his feet with a rock he had found so that he could retrace his steps if he should come up against a dead end. It was a good plan, considering he had already encountered several, and as he looked up from his marking he saw another wall before him.

Perhaps I should just climb over it, he mused. Suddenly a noise caught his attention. It was soft sound of rock scraping against rock, followed by the murmuring of tiny voices.

"Pasta Vazoo? Is a-writing on the fraggin' walk-walk! Your mother is a fraggin' aardvark!"

Thranduil spun and snatched up the flagstone that the little people were in the process of turning. He lifted it and the little people into the air.

"What did you say about my mother?"

One of the little people made a noise like "eep," and then they were silent, clinging for dear life to the stone square.

"Ah, ah nuthin'" one of them said at last. "Didn't say nothin.'"

"Put us down, mister?" another asked timidly.

"Tell me which way to go," Thranduil commanded.

The little people put their heads together as best they were able without letting go of their handholds.

"That way!" they said with one voice.

Thranduil turned and looked behind him, and where the dead end had been before there now stood two doors, decorated by some odd-looking two-headed creatures that somewhat resembling playing cards.

"Pick-a a door-door," one of the little people said helpfully.

Thranduil put them down and they scurried back into their little hole screaming; "hit you avec un sac-a-dos!" as he approached the doors, regarding the two-headed figures suspiciously.

"Try one of these doors," one head said.

"One of them leads to the castle," another added. "The other leads to…"

"Bu-bu-bu-bum!" a third head said helpfully.

"Certain Death!"

All four heads made ooohing noises.

"Which door leads to the castle?" Thranduil asked the head that had first addressed him, located on the bottom of the left-hand door.

"We can't tell you."

"Alright then," Thranduil chose at random and stepped through the right-hand door.

"Wait! How do you know that door doesn't lead to (bu-bu-bu-bum!) Certain Death?" a voice shouted at him.

"Nothing is ever certain," he called back, and at that moment the ground opened up beneath him and he had a brief moment to wonder if certain death lay at the bottom of a hole before he fell.

Hands stuck out of the wall on all sides, and after a while they grasped his arms and legs and stopped his decent.

"What in the name of Arda…?" Thranduil began.

Some of the hands came together to form the shape of a face, and the mouth moved as a voice said;

"We want to help you."

Another face formed to his right.

"We're helping hands."

"Which way would you like to go?" another hand-face asked.

"I beg your pardon?"

"Up or down?"

"Come, come, we haven't got all day."

Thranduil didn't much relish the thought of falling further beneath the earth into a dark hole.

"I would much prefer to go up, thank you," he said.

There was a flurry of motion as the hands formed dozens of faces, all talking excitedly to each other.

"Up?"

"He chose up?"

"No one ever chooses up!"

"What do we do?"

"Send him down."

And then the hands released him and Thranduil fell once again, landing at last in a dark hole. A gate clanged shut loudly over the opening he had come through. This didn't look good.

Thranduil sat alone in that hole for about an hour. He examined all sides of it with both his eyes and his fingers, but he could find no way in or out except the way he had come. He peered up into the dark, vertical tunnel and wondered how difficult it would be to remove the grate and climb back up it. With no other options he began to loosen the bolts with a rock, singing softly to himself to sooth his rattled nerves and to keep the darkness of his earthen prison at bay.

"A Elbereth Gilthoniel,
silivren penna miriel
o menel aglar elenath.
Na-chaered palan-diriel
o galadhremmin ennorath,
Fanuilos, le linnathon
nef aear, si nef aearon."

His voice was sweet and low and rich, filling the small earthen hole with sound that echoed up the tunnel above his head and faintly reached the ears of some of the small creatures passing by. All who heard the sound stopped to listen, entranced by the beautiful voice and the words they could not understand. Only one pair of ears that heard the elf's song was not enamored.

"Oh, la de da," Jareth said. He pillowed his cheek on one gloved hand as he gazed into the crystal palmed in the other, watching Thranduil move about the hole. "I do hope he gives up once the dwarf leads him back to the beginning. I'm not sure I can take much more of this."

"I don't think he will ever give up, Sire," a thin goblin at his side said.

"Oh?" Jareth asked wearily. "And what makes you think that?"

"He's too much like you, sire."

A sweep of Jareth's bejeweled riding crop sent the goblin crashing to the floor.

The other goblins stared at him.

"Well? Laugh!" he commanded.

The metal cover gone at last, Thranduil put his fingers on the inside of the tunnel and was about to lift himself up when he heard the sound of footsteps.

"Who is there?" he asked, turning and dropping into a crouch, ready if an attack should come. His elven eyes made out a small, hunched shape in the darkness.

"Me."

Thranduil recognized the voice even before a match flared to life and a lantern was set alight. Two close set, cloudy blue eyes looked up at him.

"Hello, Hobbit," he said.

"It's Hoggle. Say it with me. Hog-gle."

"My apologies," Thranduil said absently, glancing around the walls again now that they were illuminated.

"Oh, you're looking around," Hoggle said.

"You're a very observant man, er… ah…" Thranduil turned to look at him. "Hoggle, what sort of creature are you?"

"I'm a dwarf," Hoggle replied, looking mildly insulted.

"But you haven't a beard."

"So, what's that got to do with it?"

"Well, all dwarves have beards."

"No they don't. And besides, I don't like beards. They itch."

Thranduil stared at him for a moment, then decided he had more important things to worry about and went back to his inspection of the hole. Hoggle continued his exposition as if he hadn't been interrupted.

"I suppose you've noticed there ain't no doors. Only the hole. This is an oubliette. Labyrinth's full of them."

"Fascinating." Thranduil was peering up the tunnel again, only half listening to Hoggle's words.

"Bet you don't know what an oubliette is," Hoggle said smugly.

Thranduil, having lived all his life in Middle Earth, had never had the opportunity to study French, and so, of course, did not.

"It's a place where you put people to forget about them," Hoggle said, grinning from ear to ear.

Thranduil grunted. "How did you get in here?" he asked.

"What?"

"Well, you were not in here when I arrived and you didn't come tumbling down the tunnel, so I can only assume there is another entrance. How did you get in?"

Hoggle shifted uneasily under Thranduil's gaze, scuffed his toe in the dirt, and looked everywhere but into the elven lord's face.

"I, ah, well… I ain't telling."

"Why not?"

"I don't like you."

Thranduil considered. He could threaten Hoggle into submission, which, if he was any sort of judge of character at all, would be fairly easy, or he could appeal to the small creature's greed. He had noticed the shiny jewels and baubles hanging from Hoggle's waist, and assumed that bribery would work just as well as intimidation. And it would be kinder.

He slipped a ring off his finger.

"If you show me the way out of this hole," he said. "I will give you this."

Hoggle's eyes widened.

"Do we have a deal?" Thranduil asked.

Hoggle wavered, harrumphed, and then put out his hand.

"Deal," he said. Thranduil dropped the ring into his hand. "What is this made of, anyway?" he asked suspiciously.

"Mithril."

"Meee –thrill," Hoggle repeated. "Cor."

"I beg your pardon?"

"Never mind." Hoggle picked up a piece of wood off the floor and propped it up against the wall. "Here we go."

With a flourishing "dad um!" he swung the piece of wood to the side. Where only earth had been a moment before there was now an open space. Steam billowed out of the doorway as it opened and a woman screamed.

"Ooops! Sorry ma'am," Hoggle said quickly, slamming the door shut again. He gave Thranduil an apologetic look, his face red with embarrassment. "Well, can't be right all the time."

He swung the door the opposite way, revealing a dark doorway.

"Ah ha, this is it," he said. "Come on then."

Thranduil followed the little dwarf through the doorway (it was a rather tight squeeze for the elf) and found himself in a large and spacious tunnel. There were faces carved into the pillars of rock that supported the ceiling, and they moved and spoke as the elf and dwarf passed.

"Don't go on!"

"Go back while you still can!"

"This is not the way…"

"Take heed, and go no further!"

"BEWARE! BEWARE!"

"Soon it will be too late…"

"Ignore them," Hoggle advised. "They're just false alarms. You get them a lot in the labyrinth, especially when you're on the right track."

"Oh, no, you're not!" a rock to their left shouted.

"Oh, shut up!" Hoggle hollered back.

"Sorry, just doing my job," the rock muttered, chagrined.

"Beware," said another, a little further on. "For the…"

"Just forget it," Hoggle said exasperatedly.

The rock snapped its jaw shut with a snap.

"I should get some of those," Thranduil said, craning his neck to look back at the false alarms as Hoggle grabbed him by the hand and pulled him into another passage.

A small crystal ball rolled by their feet as they stepped into the new tunnel. They watched as it moved a little way down the tunnel until it came to the feet of a stooped beggar man, where it hopped up into the tin cup in the man's hands.

Thranduil's elven senses told him there was more to this beggar than met the eye, but before he could do anything the figure suddenly stood, and the costume fell away to reveal the goblin king.

"Well, well, what have we here?" he asked.

"Uh, nothing," Hoggle said.

"Nothing?" the man snapped back. "Nothing! Noth… oh damn." He gave Thranduil an angry glare. "That really was my best line."

Thranduil smiled thinly.

"So, my elven friend, I have been trying to get Hoggle to actually follow my orders for years. How is it that you have him helping you so early in your acquaintance?" His eyes flitted to the mithril ring, which Hoggle had strung about his neck with a leather cord.

Thranduil shrugged. "More flies with honey."

"Helping! Oh, no, Your Majesty," Hoggle interrupted. "I wasn't helping him. I was going to lead him back to the beginning! Just like you told me!"

"That's good, Higgle," Jareth began.

"It's Haggle," Thranduil offered helpfully.

"Hoggle!"

"Yes. Because if I thought for one second that you were betraying me, I'd be forced to suspend you head first into the bog of eternal stench."

"No, Your Majesty! Not the eternal stench!"

"Oh yes, Hoggle!"

Thranduil clapped.

"What?" Jareth asked

"You remembered his name. Well done indeed, my lord," the elf said sarcastically.

Jareth glared. "And how are you enjoying my labyrinth, my lord?" he queried.

"It's not that bad," Thranduil answered. The other two stared at him. "Well, I'm not saying I'd like to build a summer home here, but the trees are actually quite lovely."

"Well," Jareth said. "You may be enjoying this, but frankly I find the whole affair rather boring, so why don't I speed things along?"

The clock marking the time Thranduil had left to complete the labyrinth appeared again and Jareth twirled his finger, causing the hands to advance several hours. Thranduil's face remained impassive, but his eyes shone with rage.

"You have no honor," he said coldly.

"You keep saying that," Jareth remarked. "I wonder what your basis for comparison is." He started to walk away, then suddenly turned back to face the elf.

"Oh, and by the way, you sing like a choir boy."

Thranduil bristled at the unspoken implication. "I have three children," he said.

"Must have been before they went snip."

This was too much for elven pride to take. Thranduil launched himself at his foe, his right fist connecting solidly with the side of Jareth's face as the elven king knocked the goblin king to the ground.

Jareth was no sluggard, but he barely had time to register surprise before he found himself on his back upon the ground. Thranduil sat upon his chest, one arm across Jareth's windpipe, pressing just hard enough to make breathing uncomfortable without cutting off the goblin king's air supply completely. Hoggle cowered against the far wall, forgotten by both kings for the moment.

"I could kill you now," Thranduil threatened his captive.

"Then… you'd never… get… your son back," Jareth gasped.

"Nay," Thranduil pressed a little harder. "I believe killing you would remove the greatest obstacle in my path."

"I… don't… think so!" Jareth snapped his fingers and his riding crop appeared in his hand. He swung it at Thranduil's head, the crystal on its top striking the elf's temple. Thranduil fell to the side, rolled, and came smoothly to his feet, ignoring the way the world wobbled slightly. He stood in a fighter's stance, knees bent and on his toes, waiting for the attack.

But it never came. Jareth scrambled upright, but instead of continuing the fight, he changed the riding crop into a mirror and gazed into it. The beginnings of a deep bruise were already forming on his left cheek.

"You mangled my face!" he exclaimed. "You insolent, pointy eared, flat haired…" he groped for an appropriate designation. "aardvark!"

Thranduil sneered Sindarian at him. "You disgust me, vile King."

"What was that about my mother?" Jareth's mirror transformed into one of his crystals. "So you like my labyrinth, do you? You think it's pretty? Well, let's see how you deal with this slice!"

Thranduil frowned. "Slice of what?"

"Pie!"

Jareth hurled the crystal toward the far end of the tunnel. There was a flash of light as the goblin king disappeared and a large metal object appeared where the crystal had fallen.

"Oh no!" Hoggle hollered. "The cleaners!"

…..

See that little button there? If you click on it, you just might get your own little pocket Legolas!