Raspiel saw the dismayed look on her face and glanced between Sarah and the shattered powder remains of the wand, then laughed. "So that is where your magic resided," he said. "And now you've lost it."
With a heavy, exhausted sigh, Sarah hung her head. The stone she was sitting on was the deep, dark color of blood. Jareth's blood.
"Oh, come now," Raspiel said. "You can't be giving up? After all your talk, are you so easily defeated?"
"No," she said softly, barely a whisper. One of the guards bent down and grabbed her arm. She jerked it away from him. "No."
"What?" Raspiel asked. "I'm afraid you'll have to repeat that, my dear. I didn't quite catch what you said."
She lifted her head and looked into his eyes. She knew that he was moments away from ordering her death once again, that this perverse catlike playfulness would not last. She resigned herself to it. After all, in a way, she was dead already. She had been dead for months. She had died on the tile floor of that 'shoddy little mercantile' between an isle of cat food and candy bars. Since then, she had been living on borrowed time, and it would seem that her debt had finally come due.
But she would be damned if she was going to just lay there and let him give the order to kill her. "I said no," she told him fiercely.
She slowly got to her feet, and the guards let her, but they didn't retreat.
Raspiel's lips thinned in irritation. "Kill her," he said.
As the swords and spears were thrust at her to do just that, Sarah reacted automatically and threw up a shield. After living so long in the Underground with magic so close to her hand, it was an instinctive reaction, and no one was more surprised than her when it worked.
Her eyes went wide and in her shock, she almost released the shield. She looked to Jareth, who still lay slumped in his bonds. He appeared unconscious, so it couldn't be him. Even if the chains around his wrists were not iron, or if by some miracle, he had become immune to it, it still could not be him.
What the hell? she thought.
"What are you doing?" Raspiel shouted. He was practically foaming at the mouth in his anger. "I said kill her!"
Sarah could feel it now, the way the magic hummed in her blood and along her skin. It was one of the most comforting sensations she had ever experienced, like the caress of a mother's hand. She didn't know how she had come by it, but she knew how to use it, and she didn't hesitate to do just that.
She threw up both of her hands and with a sharp cry, released the magic in a burst. The guards were hurled away from her as though by a mighty hand. Some of them crashed into nearby walls, but most of them fell to the floor and quickly backed away from her.
"You kill me, Raspiel," she said, advancing on the king. "Kill me yourself if you can."
"This cannot be happening," he said between clenched teeth. "You are not Sidhe. You have no magic, no power here, nothing."
"And yet here I am," she said simply, halting a few feet in front of him. "This cannot be happening, and yet it is. I have no power here, and no right to any magic, but as you can see . . ." She let her words trail off and shot a light spark of glitter from her hand for emphasis.
The guards all looked around at each other in a daze, and then, buy some silent agreement, they all got up and made for the door, leaving their monarch to fend for himself. The Unseelie king suddenly roared with rage and leaped at her with his spear aimed at her heart. Sarah backed away, then threw up her shield again, and the spear glanced harmlessly off of it.
Raspiel whirled the spear over his head and smashed it again and again against her shield, like he was trying to batter a hole through the magic. He was screaming unintelligible, Gaelic sounding words as he attacked her over and over again, to no avail.
Abruptly, he stopped. He stood leaning on his spear and glaring at her, trying to catch his breath. "Alright, human," he said. He turned away from her walked quickly toward Jareth's unconscious body. "Alright."
"No," Sarah said. She ran after him and caught hold of the sleeve of his tunic just as he reached Jareth's side.
He threw off her grip and faced her, his body in front of Jareth like he was guarding the Goblin King from her. "I'll kill him," he warned her.
She looked between Jareth; lovely, beautiful, broken Jareth, and Raspiel. Raspiel wanted what Jareth had, but he was enraged. Was his rage more overwhelming than his greed? God, she hoped not, because if it was, he could kill Jareth before she could do anything to stop him, he was that close.
"If you kill him, you will have nothing," she said.
"I already have nothing," he spat.
"But Jareth could give it to you, couldn't he?"
He glared at her with such fury she knew that if he had possessed any kind of power beyond that of glamour and deception, he would have squeezed the life out of her with complete relish. "He could," he said. "But he won't."
She watched him carefully, noting the way he edged just a little away from Jareth, a little closer to her. Good. That was good. "I think maybe he thought he was protecting me," she said.
"I don't believe you," Raspiel snarled.
She shrugged, her eyes on the short distance between Jareth and Raspiel. "Believe what you want."
He hesitated, and moved a little closer to her. She wanted to retreat, but made herself stay still. "So what if he was protecting you? What use is this knowledge to me?"
"If he knows that he no longer has to protect me, he might change his mind." She knew damn well that he would never do any such thing.
Raspiel glanced down at Jareth, then back at her, then back at Jareth, and moved just a little.
There, Sarah thought triumphantly, and rushed him. She was not a good fighter, she had never taken any women's self-defense classes, or karate, or even yoga, preferring to lose herself in words and books, so she was not surprised when Raspiel was not caught off guard by her attack at all. He turned, seized the front of her shirt in his fist, and threw her across the room.
She landed heavily and felt one of her fingers snap against the stone. She screamed at the pain and held her hand up to look at it. The finger was bent at an unnatural angle, but as she watched, it began to heal. The bones shifted and reknitted, the skin and sinew moved, and her hand was unharmed.
"My God," she whispered. But she had no time to wonder about that, because her ploy had worked. Raspiel had left Jareth and was coming toward her.
"I'll kill you myself," he shouted as she got to her feet.
He raised the spear over his head and brought it down. Sarah reached out with her magic and caught it in the air, halting its decent. She wrenched it out of his grasp and took it in her hand. She twirled it a little inexpertly, then grasped the end, drew it back, and swung it like a baseball bat.
Raspiel screamed like a banshee as the tip of the spear sliced through his face. The cold iron parted his flesh like it was wet clay and one of his bright purple eyes popped like a peeled grape.
That's two for two, Sarah though with grim satisfaction.
Raspiel staggered back, but somehow remained conscious and kept his feet. "My eye!" he shrieked. "You took my eye!"
She pointed the spear at him, let him see his own blood and bits of skin on the tip, and began walking toward him. "Back the fuck up or I'll take the other one," she snapped.
He shuddered, then with an angry cry and a swirl of glitter, took his falcon form and flew out the nearest door.
"No pride at all," Sarah grumbled to herself under her breath. She threw the spear down and ran to Jareth.
"Jareth?" She cupped his face in her hands and lifted his head. "Jareth, open your eyes, damn you."
He groaned and his eyes fluttered. They were unfocused for a moment, then they sharpened on her face and his lips drew back in a snarl. "Get away from me."
"Jareth, it's me," she said patiently. She remembered the changeling. "She's gone, Jareth. She disappeared. Come on, help me get you up. We have to get out of here. Jesus, you're a mess."
"No," Jareth said. He tried to get away from her, but he was weak and she dug her fingers into his arm to hold him up. "Not . . . You're not Sarah . . . Let me go."
"Jareth, knock it off," she said. "You're going to hurt yourself more—Oh Jareth, look at your back. Why isn't it healing?"
"Iron," he panted, getting his feet beneath him. "The lash . . . it . . ."
She looked to where he pointed. On the floor in a pool of his blood lay a thick coiled bullwhip. The tip was a wicked gleaming iron barb.
She suddenly felt like crying, like holding him in her arms and crooning soft love words in his ear, like kissing him all over to banish every mark the evil Unseelie king had put on his body. Instead, she tried to hold him up and unlock the manacles at the same time and almost fell on her ass again.
"Jareth, help me," she pleaded. "How do these—oh, never mind, I got it." The manacles opened with a sharp snick of metal under her hand, but as the second one opened, with only her small frame to hold him up, Jareth collapsed to the floor.
She swiped a hand through her tangled hair and huffed out a breath. "You have to help me," she told him.
"I'm not . . . going anywhere . . . with . . . you," he gasped. He glared at her like she was some kind of biblical demon trying to tempt him. "You're not . . . Sarah."
She fisted her hands in her hair in frustration. She could certainly drag him bodily across the dungeon to the scrying mirror; in his condition, there wasn't a whole hell of a lot he could do to stop her, but he would fight her if she did that. With whatever he had left in him, he would fight her, she could see that on his face.
What could she do to convince him that she was really her. What did she know that nobody else did? She sighed and began reciting, words that had branded themselves into her mind and her heart. "Through dangers untold and hardships unnumbered," she murmured, "I have fought my way here to the Castle Beyond the—"
"No!" Jareth's head shot up and he stared at her with piercing mismatched eyes. "Anyone could have told you that. The . . . spell . . . is known to others."
She put her hands on her hips and sighed. "Well then what? What will convince you that I'm me and not some changeling harpy?"
He laughed softly, almost convinced already by her impatient demeanor that this was really his Sarah. He coughed and spat blood on the floor. He held up a hand to stall her when she would have knelt beside him. "Say something Yeats for me, and I'll believe you."
"Yeats?" For a moment her mind went completely blank. He expected her to recite fucking poetry at a time like this? "Okay fine, Yeats," she said, racking her brains for anything at all poetic. He wouldn't know if it was Yeats or not anyway, it just had to sound nice. Strangely though, it was Yeats that came to her mind. "A queen was beloved by a jester," she said, her eyes closed to remember the words that rushed from her lips like water. "A queen was beloved by a jester/ And once when the owls grew still/ He made his soul go upward/ And stand on her window sill./ In a long and straight blue garment/ It talked before mourn was white/ And it had grown wise by thinking/ Of a footfall hushed and light./ But the young queen—"
"Enough," Jareth rasped. "I believe you. Gods below, get me out of here."
She opened her eyes and crouched by his side so that he could brace his weight on her. He wasn't terribly heavy for a man, but dead weight is dead weight, so she was glad she had convinced him to cooperate.
"Where did Raspiel go?" he asked her as they made their slow way to the scrying mirror against the far left wall.
"He flew . . . away," she gasped. "Look . . . can we maybe talk about this . . . later? You're not exactly a . . . featherweight, you know."
"That's just because . . . you're so small."
"Uh huh," she pushed him up against the wall so he wouldn't fall over. "Show me the Castle Beyond the Goblin City," she commanded the mirror. It took her at her word and swirled with images, coming to rest on a landscape of the Labyrinth and at its center, the Castle. Well that wouldn't do. There was no way she was going through the maze lugging Jareth along with her, especially not in his condition. "Okay, okay, what now? Show me Queen Elipsabet of the Unseelie Court," she said.
Jareth looked at her questioningly, but she waved him off. The mirror shifted again, and there was Elipsabet, pacing back and forth in the throne room in front of the gold throne. Her long pale hair was loose and flowing and she looked tired and careworn.
"Good, come on," Sarah said and pulled Jareth forward. She wrapped her arms around his waist and they stepped through the glass together.
The poem recited above is the Louis Untermeyer edition and appears here in its entirety:
The Cap and Bells
By W.B. Yeats
A queen was beloved by a jester,
And once when the owls grew still
He made his soul go upward
And stand on her window sill.
In a long and straight blue garment,
It talked before mourn was white,
And it had grown wise by thinking
Of a footfall hushed and light.
But the young queen would not listen;
She rose in her pale nightgown,
She drew in the brightening casement
And pushed the brass bolt down.
He bade his heart go to her,
When the bats cried out no more,
In a red and quivering garment
It sang to her through the door.
The tongue of it sweet with dreaming
Of a flutter of flower-like hair,
But she took up her fan from the table
And waved it off on the air.
'I've cap and bells', he pondered,
'I will send them to her and die.'
And as soon as the morn had whitened
He left them where she went by.
She laid them upon her bosom,
Under a cloud of her hair,
And her red lips sand them a love song.
The stars grew out of the air.
She opened her door and her window,
And the heart and the soul came through,
To her right hand came the red one,
To her left hand came the blue.