The walk was shorter than Sarah would have thought possible. Jareth swept ahead of her and didn't look back. He left her to struggle on.
There didn't seem to be much danger, in any case. The whole labyrinth was a shamble of crumbling rock and blistered plants. Occasionally Sarah found herself skirting deep holes in the pavement.
There was no evidence of life anywhere. Until they reached the City. Sarah found that was much the same as she remembered it- crooked, grubby, picturesque and crowded. The goblins stopped and stared as the Goblin King came through the gates with the Girl behind him.
Sarah stopped and stared too. The Castle looked as bad as the Labyrinth.
"'ey! What she doin 'ere?" a goblin finally called out.
"Yeah! We don't want her here, no we don't."
"Send her away!"
"Throw her out!"
"Kill her!"
The entire throng of goblins stopped shouting and jumping and looked around to the little goblin that crouched instantly behind a faded blue door. "What?" the goblin quivered, "Yer were all thinkin' on it. I knows yer."
Sarah retreated a step, more than a little scared by this verbal attack. She couldn't even think why! It wasn't as if she had ruined the goblins' lives. Their City looked fine so the damage couldn't have been so bad.
"Guards," Jareth said simply, looking somewhere else and lifting a hand.
Sarah looked around for the comical little goblin guards that she had seen before. She might be able to run for it. They would fall over their own feet if they could manage it. She just had to be smart and keep her head.
The brief sound of steel and then Sarah found herself looking across to the barrel of a handgun. Above it were a pair of unfriendly grey eyes.
"My guards, Sarah," Jareth introduced, "My personal guards."
She was tongue-tied.
The human figure dropped the gun into some kind of pouch at his side as others gathered into what seemed a nonchalant group around. And then they moved as one to reach her side.
The brave or stupid amongst the goblins moved aside and gave the company a large berth. The more fearful, and some of the wise, ran. They took to their heels and fled in what looked to be sheer terror.
Sarah wouldn't have minded running herself.
"What is this?" she choked.
"Don't be foolish, Sarah. This is for your protection." He nodded to the leader and watched with a great deal of calmness as his guest was quickly taken in hand and pulled towards the battered Castle. He looked at his goblins and just shook his head.
Sarah tried to reason with them, struggling in vain to find some way out of that grip. Between the prayers in her head to a God she'd never really believed in, she railed at herself for not having the sense to get away from Jareth as soon as she could. She'd followed him like a lamb right into a trap!
He'd all but warned her that he wasn't done with her and she'd quietly agreed to come back Underground. Why? What instinct could she possibly have misinterpreted to do such a thing?
"Let me go," she demanded, quaking in her skin, "Let me go!"
She repeated it. Again and again. Kept saying it because really, what else was she to do when the hands dragging her away were like vice-grips.
The guards were getting edgy with all her talking. She could see that. They kept looking at her and then turning steadfastly away again. She began to assert herself a little more because they had to crack. Just once! They had to give in! She wasn't dangerous and she wanted to go home. She hadn't meant any harm and they didn't have any power over her. They didn't! They had no power at all.
She said so- "You can't do this. I won the game the last time. Jareth has no power over me so neither do you! You can't do this!"
The leader suddenly spun around and lunged for her, teeth bared in a snarl. "Shut up, girl," he ordered rudely, shaking her.
Sarah screamed and Jareth was there instantly. "What is going on?" he demanded, "I said she wasn't to be threatened."
The reassuring information came a little too late. Sarah screamed and screamed and screamed. She wouldn't stop. Even when Jareth swooped down on her and shook her himself.
"Stop it," he demanded, "Guards, keep alert!"
It was all a little too late. The creature had been sleeping, resting- as it did in the day- but the noise was too loud. The company was betrayed. And Jareth could only snatch Sarah up and disappear out, safeguarding what was important to him. The guards turned to fight with spears and knives, guns and claws.
The beast was impervious to all those and they knew it. But they fought because they were vampires and they would not run.
"His teeth," Sarah babbled, wrenching herself away, "His teeth! He- he…"
Jareth very calmly smacked her.
She stopped howling but the shock hadn't broken. She just stood there, shivering, wringing her hands one against the other.
They had said, hadn't they- 'kill her'. Even the goblins and the goblins were stupid. The whole place was dangerous and the guards had fangs and red flames deep in the pupils of their eyes.
They had fangs and flaming eyes. Kill the girl, the goblin had shouted, kill the girl.
Sarah whimpered and tried to force her heartbeat to slow down. She had to stay calm. She had to think clearly.
Jareth left her to her mental exertions, standing at the window and watching passively as his guards were slaughtered. Lyndon would live because Lyndon always lived. In a manner of speaking, of course. He conjured up a crystal and spoke into it, "Come back. Let the wretches die."
Those who could- obeyed. They tore themselves away from their companions and they dived nimbly back to the Castle.
The beast didn't follow. It was too busy with the few it had in its clutch.
Even as Jareth watched, one of the guards still alive raised his clawed hand and ripped his own throat open.
"The better to die," Jareth sighed. It was a contingency plan for such situations. He looked over his shoulder to the centre of the room and Sarah was through the worst of it.
Indeed, she was sitting ramrod straight in a chair with very lucid green eyes trained on his back. When he caught her eye, she blinked and went ever so slightly pink.
He turned around and settled himself for leaning against the nearest stretch of wall. "Are you done?" he asked bluntly.
She didn't say anything at first. And when she did, the fear was still seething just behind the careful neutrality of her tone. "Why'd you bring me here?"
"We have unfinished business," he snapped, pulling off the wall and striding towards her. "If you have rested quite enough, I suggest you follow me."
The way he said it made her pause. "You suggest it?"
"You may do as you like in this Castle. Stay if you wish. However, the ceilings tend to fall in these days," Jareth smirked, "A technical problem I am endeavoring to fix."
Sarah got up hurriedly and cast a worried glare at the ceiling. "Now where?" she asked, "I'm not going unless I know what I can expect first."
"What you can expect is that I do not want you dead. Be grateful. I did until a short while ago."
"What?"
"I changed my mind. Come. The caves below are where I need to be."
Once again, the Goblin King followed his usual policy of stalking away, leaving her to decide to follow or not, just as she liked.
Sarah found that she might as well follow the devil in hell, if only because she knew that danger versus the unknown ones that lurked in dark corners. So she kept sight of the back of that black jacket. The view was… rather entertaining, she found, even if it did make her feel frustrated with herself.
The jacket was short- undeniably short- and the trousers were tight- also undeniable- and the whole effect was to show off the lean, slick muscle that moved beneath cloth and skin with that unconscious pull and release that made the human body such a wonderful mechanism. Sarah wasn't an expert on male bodies but she found this one to be remarkably fascinating.
Jareth slowed his steps and let her get closer. The corridor was narrow and humid but the draught was blowing her scent to him and he couldn't resist smiling at the vague hint of 'fascination' he could detect.
The little thing wasn't quite so young, he noted, laughing inwardly to himself. He took her down and down, right to the grounds of the Castle, and then he took her down again.
Sarah shivered and moved closer still.
The sudden clatter of loose debris just behind her and she turned around and yelped in shock.
Jareth turned too, lips curled back over his teeth. He lowered his defenses when Sarah dropped down to her knees and threw her arms around the dwarf. "Hedgehill," he greeted blandly, "How lovely."
"Hoggle," the dwarf managed in a strangled sort of way, "Get off!"
Sarah let go. "I thought you were one of the guards," she said.
Hoggle gasped and looked quickly around himself. "Where?" he asked, sounding absolutely terrified, "Where?"
"Calm yourself, Heggle," Jareth snapped, "We are not interested in you."
Hoggle gulped and tried to back away. "Well, er, I'll be seeing you later, then," he called, "If- if you're staying, of course. Only came to say hi. Bye bye." He was gone, haring down the corridor as fast as his legs could carry him.
Sarah spun around and glared at the Goblin King with something of her old fire. "You frightened him," she accused, "He only came to say hi."
"He said it. After which he left again. I don't see why you are upset by this," Jareth remarked. He turned around and walked off again.
Sarah was getting very tired of this. But she followed. Because she didn't know where she would end up if she took the wrong turning or the wrong fork in the tunnels. The décor she remembered; nothing had changed from that damp, dusty, rusted disuse of her last trip down. She even spotted a false alarm but he didn't respond when she passed him. She supposed it was because Jareth presumably didn't need to be warned out of his own oubliette system.
"We're almost there," he informed her, "Try not to scream this time. They won't touch you without my orders."
And with that slightly disturbing reassurance, Sarah was taken into a brightly lit cavern.
"We call it the Cathedral," Jareth chuckled, waved his hands to the enormously high ceiling, "Beautiful acoustics and we didn't even need to decorate."
He was right. The walls glowed and glittered with veins of silver, the natural pillars set into the stone smooth and curiously fluted. The long stalactites seemed to be lit with a natural light, shining icy cool in the not-quite-darkness.
Sarah blinked and opened her mouth.
Jareth had already made for the raised platform at the other end of the room. Pausing, he stopped and looked over his shoulder with one of those amused curls of his lips. "Join me, Sarah," he invited.
She was very uncertain. Until the shapes began to fold out of the shadow and then she ran to his side and kept close enough in case of emergencies. They wouldn't touch her unless he ordered it, but she preferred not to give them the chance to try anything.
Jareth took the two steps with a light tap of his heels and dropped elegantly into a seat at the long, carved table. He gestured to Sarah to sit with him.
She sat thankfully, her feet a little relieved for the respite.
And then the fanged human materialized unexpectedly from the crowd and came up the two shallow stairs to present himself to the Goblin King.
"Lyndon, sit down. How many this time?"
"Three, Jareth."
"Three more than we can afford," Jareth growled. He stared at the table and absently began to remove his gloves.
Sarah remembered those hands. They were very nice hands from what she remembered. She flushed a little again when she recalled how they had held on to her during their one dance.
Lyndon breathed in deeply and looked to his king with raised eyebrow.
Jareth gave a smile with no apology and then put the entire issue from his mind. "Have you eaten?" he asked. He noted that Sarah stiffened in her chair at the question.
Lyndon had too, and the Commander of Jareth's personal guard was staring at the girl with a very keen interest even as he shook his head in answer.
"Pel, refreshment," Jareth called.
"Yes, Your Majesty."
Another guard ran to another side of the room and returned bearing a tray.
Sarah decided she like the heavy metal cups that were placed before all three of them. They looked unashamedly gothic and antique. She supposed they weren't real gold, but then that would be too much to expect.
"Just water for our guest," Jareth instructed quietly.
"Of course, Sire."
The dark earth jug was lifted from the tray and clear water poured carefully into her cup. The jug was left with her as Pel left the platform and melted back into the general array of bodies.
Lyndon opened the bottle and sniffed delicately at the contents before shrugging philosophically and courteously filling the Goblin King's cup first. "Not the best," he warned, "But it will serve."
"It will have to," Jareth remarked.
Lyndon smiled at the wry words and filled his own cup. He could smell the richness and wished it were fresh. It had been a good harvest but time dealt a cruel blow to even the best collections. He lifted his cup and sipped first. Nodding, he motioned to Jareth to drink his share.
Sarah was sipping at her water when she noted something- they weren't sipping. They drained their cups in long swallows and then greedily poured more. The movements were controlled but the haste was so clear she could see it tremble in their hands.
Not hands.
She looked down in horror at the appendages that clutched the cups, at the sharp, long nails and twisted, gnarled joints. Her eyes lifted higher and they were sitting back replete, lapping the last of the red traces from their mouths and lips, from sharp canines with pointed tips that looked as though they could rip through flesh without too much effort.
Sarah wasn't prone to fainting. She'd never fainted before in her life.
There was a first time for everything.