"Isn't that where they should be at this point?" Hadrian asked disinterestedly. Now that the he had removed the goblins – Caereh had not asked for them back – he had not even the small amusement of his slingshot. This empty waiting bored him, therefore he felt in no mood to indulge Caereh's whining.
"You weren't supposed to let them get this far. They were supposed to get lost."
Three of them? Now the reference to 'him' earlier made sense to Tieran. "You expect Jareth to get lost in a labyrinth? That is expecting a little much," Tieran commented.
Caereh ignored him and continued, "What about the lichen? And those brownies? You said those poison darts were a good idea. You said they would work."
"Apparently I was wrong," Hadrian said as he studied a knife one of the goblins had left behind on the floor. "She might become annoying soon," he thought.
"It's Jareth's fault. That's what it is. It's all his fault."
"Really?" Hadrian commented.
"They never would have made it so far if he wasn't with them. And he was your idea, too. You're the one who said he should be included." Caereh stood in a menacing pose over Hadrian as he sat in his chair.
"Very well," Hadrian snapped at her. "What do you suggest we do with him? Shall we turn him loose to do mischief from the outside? At least we control him in here."
"But what if he makes it through?" Caereh nagged.
Hadrian shrugged. "Then he makes it through. You only have to honor the rules if you feel like it."
"That's true." Caereh brightened as she considered this idea.
"I cannot believe you are discussing this in front of me."
Hadrian looked at Tieran scornfully. "What difference does it make? Do you think we care about your opinion? You can't do anything about it. You don't matter in this game."
"I had forgotten this was all just a game to you."
"Yes," Hadrian agreed, "and where's the fun in the game if you don't break the rules?"
Caereh brightened. "But, since they're in the oubliette, we won't have to break the rules, will we? We can just leave them there to rot."
This idea, of course, appealed to Tieran no more than the previous one had. "But where is the fun in that?" he asked.
"Ah, now you're getting the hang of it," Hadrian approved. "He has a point you know, Caereh. If we leave them there, what will we do for the next eight hours? Play solitaire?"
"I'd be willing to deal with it."
"But I wouldn't. I'm bored already. Eight more hours would be unbearable. What do you say I go pay them a visit? Play Hoggle for a while?"
"I say no. They're just fine where they are. Moving Sarah was Jareth's mistake and I'm not going to make the same one. If he'd left her there, she'd still be there."
"I would be interested in seeing what Hadrian looks like dressed as Hoggle," Tieran told Caereh mildly. In order for them to have a chance of finishing the Labyrinth, he had to get Caereh to let them out of the oubliette.
"You forget – I'm not here for your entertainment, you are here for ours." Hadrian did not tolerate teasing from anyone, least of all a prisoner.
"Good, then that's settled," Caereh said with an air of satisfaction.
"What's settled?"
"You're going to leave them in the oubliette."
"I never said that."
"But –"
"I said I wasn't here for his amusement. I'm here for my own. And it amuses me to go pay a visit to the oubliette."
"You won't."
"Why not?"
"I forbid it."
Hadrian laughed. "How? You've forgotten that I am the one providing the magic. Without me none of this would work. I'm going and if you're lucky, I'll come back and continue to help you."
"What will I do?"
"Here. Have a few crystals. You can watch." Hadrian tossed her a series of crystals, then vanished.
.….
"Find anything yet?" Cara asked. The three of them slowly crawled around the oubliette, looking for a possible means of escape.
"Only a skull, I believe," Jareth answered. "No cupboards, closets, benches, or boards."
"I suppose that would make things too easy for us. What about you, Alia?"
"Oh, yeah, I found stuff all right. Caereh doesn't seem to have cleaned this set up any. Cobwebs. Something slimy in one corner. Nothing that we –" Alia broke off suddenly with a suppressed squeak and some scuffling.
"What?"
"Something just ran across my hand."
"Wonderful. Just what I wanted to learn – we're not alone in here."
"No, you're not alone. You're never alone, not here you're not," answered a fourth voice with a smirk in it.
"Who's there?" Cara demanded.
"You don't recognize my voice?" Suddenly it hovered right next to her shoulder. "Cara, my dear, I'm hurt. After all this time I thought I meant more to you than that."
Cara shuddered in the darkness. "Why are you here, Hadrian?"
"Why am I here? Ah, yes, to give you a hand." He began clapping slowly.
"Very funny. We've had enough of those already. I don't suppose you could give us some light?"
"Of course." A brilliant, blue-white flare burst into life and hovered near the low ceiling of the cave, blinding three of them for a few moments.
Once Cara's vision resolved the cave into a sharp contrast of white glare and pitch black shadows she answered him, "Thank you."
"Now, why else are you here?" Jareth asked crossly, with a hand still shading his eyes. His face shone ghostly pale against his black shirt in the bright light.
"I thought I would come to help. Caereh would like to leave you here for the rest of the game, but I thought, 'Where's the fun in that?'"
"So, against Caereh's wishes, you're going to let us out?" Cara said.
"Exactly. Very good."
"The question is where he will put us next. Perhaps back at the beginning?" Jareth suggested.
"Oh, come, come. I didn't say that did I?"
"No," Alia piped up, "but that's what Hoggle was supposed to do. We've followed the movie so far – why should it change now?"
"So the quiet little thing in the corner does still have a voice. I'm sure your sweetie sends his love. He's found himself a pet, you know. Ticked Caereh off with it royally. Most amusing. Now he and the cat have occupied the throne. Caereh hasn't noticed yet. Not always the sharpest knife in the drawer is our Caereh."
"Should you be saying things like that?" asked Cara.
"What will she do? I'm her magic."
"Yes, and why are you her magic?" Jareth asked.
"Ah, now that would be telling, wouldn't it?"
Alia ran out of patience. Tired, hungry, sore, and having just had a close encounter with who knew what in the dark, she snapped, "Oh, enough of this chit-chat! Just get us out of here."
"Such manners," Hadrian chided. He reached up and seizing the flare still lighting the room, threw it against the wall where it exploded. When the explosion dispersed it left the rock wall hanging in ragged shreds, light coruscating along the edges of the tatters of rock.
"What did you do to it?" Cara asked.
"I disrupted the animation. You would never have gotten out without me," Hadrian explained smugly. "There is no other way."
"Is it safe?" Alia asked peering at the darkness through the shreds dripping and arcing energy.
"What other choice do you have?" Hadrian asked in turn, standing back to watch them with arms crossed over his chest. "Make up your mind before it mends itself or Caereh figures out how to fix it."
"He's right," Cara said. "It's this or nothing, now or never." She ducked through the hole, avoiding the dangling streamers drawing up into the wall's surface. The raw edges of the wound were already growing inward, healing themselves.
Once through the hole Cara paused in the semi-darkness. "What about a light again, Hadrian? I don't suppose you'll give us another one?" She turned to look back at the opening which Alia and Jareth were climbing through.
"Oh, I couldn't make it too easy for you," Hadrian said as the hole in the wall sealed over, leaving them in darkness.
"I think we've seen the last of him for a while," Jareth observed. "Follow me."
"Where? How? I can't see a thing," Cara asked.
Jareth grabbed her hand and Alia's and linked them together. "Hold hands," he told her as he took her other hand and walked unerringly down the corridor.
"I am so tired of wandering around in the dark," Alia complained. "Bats and Biters and now bugs. What will it be next?"
"Nothing. We'll soon be out of the darkness. I can see light ahead," Jareth told her.
Soon they entered an area lit by no visible source. The air itself seemed to carry the light and cast no shadows. Alia did not really care where it came from, pleased enough that she could see again. Further along the corridor she could see carvings on the walls.
"Are those False Alarms up there?" Alia asked no one in particular.
"They look like it," Cara answered her.
"Don't go on," moaned the first one ominously as they passed it.
"Beware."
"Go back while you still can – if you still can."
"I see Caereh has made alterations in these, as well," Jareth commented. "They all look alike."
"Go no further – you won't make it anyway."
"You'll never make it."
"Yeah, they all look like her," Alia said. Reliefs of Caereh's face replaced the Easter Island monolith and Wizard of Oz tree faces. They all had a sinister twist Alia thought, bitter and malicious.
"Don't bother to go on, you'll always choose the wrong way."
"I don't suppose we'll be able to get these to shut up like Hoggle did," Cara said. "What an ego. At least you made yours individuals."
"You couldn't find your way out of a paper bag."
"Hey, there's no need to get insulting here," Cara told the last one.
"That's my job," it said. "I'm just calling it as I see it. I can't help it if you're the most clueless specimens that have wandered through here in a quite a while."
"Come along, Cara. You'll get nowhere arguing with a rock," Jareth said, pulling her away from the face carved into the rock as Cara opened her mouth for a snappy comeback. He steered her down the passage by her shoulders as she continued to glare back over her shoulder at the stone face. "Caereh is only trying to discourage and distract us. You're tired and doing exactly what she wants."
"But –"
"It's a rock, Cara. What does it know, anyway?" Alia said as they reached a brick tunnel lit intermittently by air vents to the surface.
"More than one might think," Caereh answered, stepping from a shadow into a sunbeam. "For instance, I'd say it had gotten you spot on."
Cara groaned. "I should have known we'd be getting a visit from you when the False Alarms turned up."
"Aren't they wonderful?"
"Oh, sure. Even Hadrian is more helpful than they are," Cara said. "How'd he persuade you to let us out? Did he say he'd lead us back to the beginning? Or did he work on his own without your permission?"
Caereh's face clouded over as Cara reminded her of Hadrian's disobedience of her wishes. "Keep talking and you will regret it – unless you would prefer to spend the rest of the game back in the oubliette? Or perhaps in the Bog?" Then she remembered the real object of her visit and turned to Jareth to use a few lines on him.
"And how are you enjoying my version of the Labyrinth, Jareth?" she asked, approaching him closely and playing with the buttons on his shirt.
"It is just what I would have expected from you."
"You're finding it too easy?"
"That's not what I said."
"But that's what you meant. You've already had help, maybe we should even things up a little." She pointed to a point in midair about five feet off the ground where nothing appeared. "Hadrian! The clock!" she growled.
"Oh, good," Alia said. "I was wondering how much time we had left."
A gilt clock with numerals from one to thirteen in black on its white face finally appeared. The time read approximately 20 minutes to five. As they watched, the hands spun around, winding hours off the time left to them. Eventually, Caereh (or Hadrian) slowed the hands at a little past eight. They had just lost over three hours.
"Oh, well, if Sarah could do it, so can we," Cara said.
"Still too easy for you?" Caereh produced a crystal with surprising ease and threw it down the tunnel with admirable form.
"No, I didn't say that. You deliberately twist our words."
"Come on, Cara," Alia said, tugging on her arm. "Let's go. The cleaners are next. Remember?"
Cara turned and ran after her, the memory of this scene from the movie vivid in her head – the rotating blades tearing through the iron-barred door, the lumbering, rumbling machinery. She could almost hear it behind them.
"Wait a minute – I should hear it behind us. I don't hear anything." She glanced over her shoulder and did not see anything in the brief look. She slowed down and turned around. She spied nothing but Caereh standing in the distance, her whole body communicating her displeasure.
"Hey, guys, you can slow down a little. No cleaners."
"What do you mean?" Alia demanded breathlessly.
"Do you hear anything coming?"
"No."
"Well, then. And look – Caereh's not happy." Caereh was gesturing energetically now, pointing down the corridor and talking to the air again. "She must be chewing Hadrian out. Wait, I think I saw something move."
"Well, don't just stand there. Come on."
"No, it's not big enough for that. Hold on."
"Are you two coming or do you have a wish to become mincemeat?"
"C'mere, Jareth. You've got to see this. Look."
Jareth walked back toward them. "So Caereh is displeased." He shrugged. "That's nothing new."
"No. Look."
Two medium sized goblins wielding brooms and dustpans entered Caereh's sunbeam. The goblins worked their way slowly along the tunnel, meticulously sweeping the dust and dirt in front of them. They paused to sweep a small pile of debris they had accumulated into the dustpan, then turned down the side entrance leading to the False Alarms.
"Cleaners," Alia sniggered. "No wonder Caereh was ticked off. Well, show's over. Let's go," she said when Caereh disappeared. "How do we get out of here? Wasn't there a side door?"
"Not anymore." Jareth shook his head. "Caereh seems to have removed it. I haven't seen one yet."
"Then I guess we'll be walking down here a while," Cara said.
"Do you hear something?" Alia asked.
"Hmm?" Jareth asked. "No. Yes, I do."
They all turned and looked back the way they had come. In the far distance they glimpsed a brief flash, then only darkness.
Alia sighed heavily. "That's the real cleaners, I suppose. I should have known better than to laugh at the other ones."
They sprinted away from the distant flash and rumble, Jareth in the lead and Alia bringing up the rear. "More track practice. I never did look into running cross-country at school," thought Alia, then concentrated on running, positive the machine was gaining on her.
She focused so blindly on running that he did not notice the actions of her companions, forcing Jareth to stop her bodily as she ran by.
"No, down the hole," Jareth said as he caught her.
Gasping and panting, she did not immediately understand him.
"The drain," he said pointing to a manhole in the center of the tunnel to clarify.
"Or would it be goblinhole here?" Alia thought irrelevantly.
"There are rungs. Now! Hurry!"
Alia forced her burning, leaden legs to squat by the hole and climbed down the ladder. The hole was narrow, a tight fit. "Definitely a goblinhole," she thought, descending as quickly as she could manage. Jareth soon followed her and pulled the cover over the hole behind him leaving them in pitch blackness again.
Alia descended until she nearly stepped on Cara.
"Hey, watch out! I'm down here," Cara told her just as a rumbling passed overhead. Mortar and brick flakes rained down around them, dislodged by the weight and vibrations.
"Sounds like it's gone," Cara said. "Think it'll come back? Can we risk going back up there?"
"No," Jareth answered her. "The weight of the cleaner jammed the cover."
"How convenient. So now we're in another oubliette," Alia said.
"Not necessarily. There is still down. Is there more ladder below you, Cara?"
"Yeah."
"Then we choose down again. There should be another way out down there. Why else would you have the hole and ladder in the first place?"
Alia tried counting the rungs, but lost track when she slipped. Cara finally announced reaching the bottom long after that.
"Is there room to stand?" Jareth asked.
"A little, not much."
"Any openings?"
"None that I can see, of course. Let me feel."
"Better you than me," Alia said, the memory of her encounter in the oubliette giving her a shudder of revulsion. With lots of little tickly legs, it had used every last one of them to run across her hand. Just thinking about it made her skin crawl again.
"Yeah, there's a tunnel down here. It's pretty small. It'll be a tight squeeze."
"Then we will crawl. Perhaps this clothing has some benefits after all," Jareth admitted.
"I don't think it's your knees you will need to worry about, Jareth," Cara told him. "It's your elbows. We won't even be able to crawl on hands and knees. I think this is goblin sized."
"We'll just have to do that then. We have no other options at this point. Is there room enough for us all to stand down there?"
"I don't think so."
"Then you'll have to lead. You may as well start down the tunnel. Alia will follow you and I'll follow her."
Cara crawled into the tunnel and started worming her way through the darkness. It felt as though it had been tiled rather than brick or stone lined or left bare earth. Fortunately it felt as dry and clean as the rest of Caereh's computer Labyrinth. She heard a muttering and mumbling behind her.
"Is that you, Alia? What are you saying? I can't understand you."
"I said, slow down a little."
"I'm not going very fast as it is. What happened to hurrying?" Cara answered, a little puzzled.
"Some of us aren't as thin as you are. Some of us actually have shoulders and hips. I can barely move. This is going to take me a while."
"How is Jareth doing behind you?"
"Hold on, I'll ask." Cara heard more muffled conversation as Alia tried to direct her voice back to Jareth. Then Alia answered Cara irritatedly, "He doesn't seem to be having any problem. Why did I expect otherwise? I'll bet he can fit anywhere he likes."
"Probably," Cara laughed back at her. "Have you got the hang of it yet?"
"Almost. I hope this doesn't go very far."
"Me too."
A few minutes later, Cara abruptly hit a wall.
"Hey what'd you stop for? I've got the hang of this now, you don't have to wait for me."
"There's no more tunnel," Cara told Alia.
Alia groaned and relayed the news to Jareth. After some muttered consultation, she said, "He asks if there's another tunnel anywhere."
"No," Cara answered crossly. "I said it ended."
Alia conferred with Jareth then suggested, "Did you feel for a latch or anything? Maybe it's a door or a hatch on the end of the pipe."
Cara had already felt the surface in front of her, but obligingly tried it again. It was completely smooth, perhaps metal, not tiled like the inside of the drain or whatever they crawled through. No bumps or irregularities to push, no handles or loops to pull on, no cracks to hint at a concealed opening.
"No, there's nothing," Cara said, beating at the wall in frustration with her fist. "Wait a minute," she added. She thought she had felt the wall give when she hit it and tested it again. It definitely moved. She hit it again and again with as much force as she could manage from this awkward position. Suddenly it gave way and light flooded in through the round opening.
-
There
is a quote in this section from the song "Saint Augustine in
Hell" by Sting on Ten Summoner's Tales. It's not an explicit
quote, but the dialogue triggered it in my head and the line fit, so
there's the attribution, just to be on the safe side. I tried dividing this off with a ruler, but it wouldn't save (what's the point of a feature that you can't use?), so we'll have to make do with italics and a hyphen.