CHAPTER X
"A worthy endeavor, lady Sarah, even though you have some distance to go yet," the lord Tiernan was leaning against the wall, ignoring the sparring Fianna as he addressed the goblin queen.
Sarah hung her head low between her shoulders and braced her hands on her bent knees to rest the weight of her body on her legs, and panted rather un-regally. It took a moment until she could catch enough of a breath to answer him. "Thanks for your polite lie, lord Tiernan. I quite understand just how bad I am, and about the odds for me ever being more than passable. Yet I am here because I don't have much of a choice. What would the commander of the king's army be doing here at such an ungodly time? Everyone says that you are a brilliant swordsman, so I doubt there is anything for you to learn here."
"Plain curiosity, my lady Sarah," Lord Tiernan answered easily. "I overheard some of the goblin guards betting on your progress, my lady, and I could not help myself."
"They bet on me? What exactly was that bet?" Sarah asked suspiciously.
"If you want to know, you have to ask them yourself." He looked at the queen's sweat-soaked figure with an appreciative smile. "It was an excellent idea to ask female warriors to train you, my lady. Women move quite differently from men, and their strengths and weaknesses are different. And who cold teach you better than a women warrior? In a few centuries I believe you may benefit from training with me, and you might actually have some moves that could take me by surprise." He gave the goblin queen an appraising look. "It is a good idea to be able to wield a sword to protect yourself from assailants, but there is more to fighting than fighting fair."
His smile strongly reminded her of his brother all of a sudden. "Would you meet me here in the halls for an hour every evening with young Toby, lady Sarah? I think he would be willing to help me train you in the dirtier types of fighting. We could teach you how to avoid being offed in more unorthodox ways, lady Sarah, and I promise we'll do our best not to follow through. Not every killer will come at you with a blade, in full sight. You never know when fighting dirty might come in handy, my lady." He gave Nehorai an appraising look. "Since you might find yourself parted from your guard by some mischance."
"I am starting to think that fighting dirty might suit me better than all this honorable stuff," Sarah said with a calculating look. "If it is truly not an imposition, an hour before sunset then, here in the fencing halls. What say you?" Sarah looked at him with sudden suspicion. "You were not set up to this, were you?"
"Do I really look as if Jareth could press me into service, lady Sarah?" Lord Tiernan bowed his head to the queen with a wide grin. "In this very hall, my queen, just you, me, Toby, and a spot of attempted murder," and with a wink, he turned and left the fencing hall. Sarah thought that this was shaping up to be a long day already, then walked back to join the Fianna for another beating.
Sarah ambled slowly along the looming, hooded figure of Nehorai towards the throne room and glanced at his impossibly forbidding form with a grin. She could but hope that goblin king would be as taken aback by her dark shadow as everyone else who had seen him so far. When her friend had come to the goblin city under cover of darkness the night before, back from his visit in the mists, he found the goblin queen pacing her rooms restlessly, and she lost no time in filling him in on the latest developments. As did all of his kind, the shedim had strong innate magic, and when Sarah asked him, hesitantly, hopefully, if he would be willing to be at the goblin queen's side at all times and protect her against magic, as he did for the trader Eir, he agreed joyfully and without hesitation. Their friendship had become the cornerstone of his life, and in the many years they had traveled the goblin kingdom together they had become so at ease with each other that he found the prospect of being with her all the time a pleasant one. Sarah's mood picked up considerably after this, and they began to discuss the practicalities of their plan.
As no shedim could show his person in the underground without the threat of violence and death, they had come up with a guise for the queen's companion. A cloak covered every inch of him, the wide sleeves falling long over his hands, hiding his feathered claws whatever he might do with them, a deep hood covered his head and secured his face in a black, impenetrable shadow, his body and face hidden irrevocably and safely from prying eyes by the labyrinth's magic itself. The cloak was of dull camlet the color of dried blood, moving eerily slow around the body of its wearer like congealing blood. Just looking at the hooded shadow behind the queen set an observer's teeth on edge, and the inchoate sibilant hiss that occasionally emanated from him sent shivers of terror down anyone's spine yet caused no other effects.
It was Nehorai who had known the spell to conceal his voice. His kindred, accurst with voices that drove all but shedim, and the labyrinth's chosen, into a mindless killing frenzy, had long searched for ways to undo the curse of their voices, but had finally given up in despair as their magic could not sustain any of their attempts. Nehorai knew the spells his kindred had tried since the dawn of time, and if the one he had offered up might not have been useful for his kindred, it gave him the chance to converse freely with Sarah without endangering anyone else. Sarah and the labyrinth supplied the power and the binding of Nehorai's spell which deadened the sound of his voice to anyone's ears but Sarah's, and it extended to Sarah, whose words to Nehorai would be inaudible to anyone but him.
They agreed that he would be with the queen always, a threatening presence behind her at any time, silent and ominous, and Sarah was glad that she would finally have someone to discuss her observations at court with. It did not matter if Nehorai was as ignorant of court intrigue and politics as she was, he had a brilliant mind and a kind heart, and she trusted him with her life. She hoped fervently that having another, kinder mind to mull the intricacies of intrigue would help her understand the workings of the underground better than she had so far. It had been not long to dawn when they finally had taken to their beds, and Sarah was exhausted when she rose the next morning to get to the fencing halls in the castle for her lessons with the Fianna.
Sarah stretched carefully and winced as pain shot through various parts of her body.
Today's sword lesson with Eirlys and Heulwen had been even more unpleasant than the first few lessons. The Fianna had decided that after a week of practice the queen had finally learned well enough how to hold the sword exactly the right way, as well as the basics of stance, and had begun her training proper. Sarah felt that she might have been unwise in asking for sword training, a quick death from the hand of an assailant just might be preferable to the drawn-out torture of the training. She pulled a face, which drew a low rumble of laughter from Nehorai walking next to her.
She gave him a sour look. "I am sure all this is very funny from the outside, but it certainly looses some of its charm when you have just taken a beating with the flat side of a sword on just about any spot of your body you can imagine."
Their steps echoed through the corridors of the castle, but since their voices were silent to the world as they talked to each other, Nehorai did not bother to tone down his laughter.
"You looked like a chicken about to be skewered," he said in high spirits, rather at odds with his darkly threatening appearance. "If you don't learn how to get better real fast, Sarah, the only way you will survive an attack will be because your attackers die from laughter."
Sarah looked a bit miffed. "What the night do I have a sworn guard for, Nehorai? Which would be you, in case you forgot. It's your job to get skewered to protect me, and I am sure your death will buy me enough time to run for it, don't you think?"
"Hah! I am a born-again coward, as you knew when you signed me up for this little charade, didn't you, Sarah? I have never even held a sword in my life, and I'd probably scream like a little girl if I'd ever find myself in a fight. Isn't that why we decided on such a terrifying disguise for me? Trying to reduce the likelihood anyone will ever find out that a bark is all I have? It works for Ankimo - nobody is suicidal enough to fight a Hundun. But if anyone should attack your shadow, well, the only thing I can think of is letting them hear my voice and hit them over the head from behind when they have gone crazy. Unless they kill me first, of course."
Yet coward or not, fighter or not, it wasn't as if Nehorai would not risk death trying to help her, Sarah knew. She laughed. "Forgive me, Nehorai. I am tired and hungry, and being beaten up before breakfast doesn't really improve my mood. Nor does facing the goblin king." The laughter on her face died as her features set in stubborn determination. "Speaking of the bastard, here we are," and she pushed open the doors to the goblin throne room.
As always, the goblin king looked devastatingly handsome in his narrow brown breeches and the white linen shirt, and Sarah thought angrily that he had obviously had a better night's sleep than she had. What was it with the fae? Couldn't they just look worse for wear at least occasionally? She could not know, after all, that the goblin king had only gone to his rooms just before daybreak and had stood under a cold spray of water for a long time in lieu of sleep, as he knew he would be facing an angry queen for the first lesson in magic just an hour after sunrise. A life longer than Sarah could even imagine had taught him a thing or two, and dealing with a night's lack of sleep was did not bother him. He had been folding his long limbs rather indecently over his throne, his long fingers wrapped around a mug of larak wrapped, but he rose with a flourish when Sarah entered. Etain bounded from his side to greet the goblin queen with enthusiasm, stuffing her nose into the pockets of Sarah's overdress in the search of some treat.
"I am sure you realize that punctuality is the courtesy of kings and queens, my dearest Sarah, a concept you may try to pay some attention to," Jareth addressed the queen lazily with his usual impudent smile.
"I'll let you know if I ever start giving a damn, goblin king. The goblin queen does as she likes." She looked at him with barely concealed anger while she petted Etain and fed her some treats. "As you may well imagine, the only reason I am here at all is that refusing the labyrinth at its most insistent is downright impossible. If it were, I'd let you rot for all I care."
Jareth did not seem put out in the slightest. "I take this to mean that I should not count on your presence at the diplomatic receptions in the near future, then," he said with a careless smile, which only served to infuriate Sarah further.
"Or ever," she managed to squeeze out through clenched teeth. "Far as I can tell those gatherings are a monumental waste of time and effort. I doubt I have the patience to deal with that or the diplomats themselves. Or you for that matter. However, should you want to start a war post-haste, I'd be glad to help out."
"Well observed, my dear lady Sarah, I am glad you have a firm grasp of you capabilities. Or the lack thereof, as the case may be." Jareth said utterly unperturbed as he walked up to Sarah and took to inspecting the quiet, robed figure standing behind the queen, Sed tense and ready at his side. "And who might this be? You do know that unknown and potentially dangerous people are not encouraged at my court."
"Nehorai is not unknown to me, rather the opposite," and with relish Sarah pushed on as she noticed the sudden near imperceptible freezing of the goblin king's features as he seemed to recognize the name. Her anger flared up again when she realized when he had heard it.
"He is blood-sworn to me and the labyrinth, so you need not fear treason or an attack. Yet who or what he is none of your bloody business." Sarah noticed with satisfaction that the goblin king was less than pleased with her words. "Nehorai is my sworn guard, and his prowess in sword or magic, or in ... other ... endeavors, is unparalleled."
Sarah had given up casual lying long before she ever had been chosen, but this did not mean that she did not judiciously use a lie when it was needful. And she did it right, uttering the lie with all the hallmarks of truth. "I have decided that I need an experienced mage at my side to protect me from all kinds of ... malicious magic. A goblin queen just can't be careful enough these days." She smirked at the goblin king's noticeably strained polite face with real enjoyment. "Just like Sed, only a lot more versatile." She winked at the king's goblin, who had noticeably relaxed at her words. "And no offence intended, Sed, he is a lot better-looking than a goblin, too."
Before Jareth had a chance to respond, Eek pushed open the door to the throne room and held it for Ikiaq, who carried a tray with food and a large pot of larak.
"You must be starving, lady Sarah. When Eek told me you would be here after your sword lessons I figured you'd better get a good breakfast into you immediately." With long practice Ikiaq ignored Jareth's strained silence and set the tray on the stairs before the throne as she was looking for a table. Sarah laughed as she sat down on the stairs and took a mug full of larak.
"Please, Ikiaq, don't bother with a table. You know me, I am fine sitting here. Thank you so much for the food, I don't believe I could have heard anything through the growling of my stomach." Greedily Sarah picked up one of the appetizing stuffed rolls on the tray. It tasted even better than it looked, and Sarah felt herself relax. As the food and the hot larak settled comfortably in her stomach, she looked over to Nehorai with a stricken expression on her face.
"Night, I forgot you can't eat in that cloak, Nehorai. I am so sorry. Listen, why don't you go home and eat, and ..."
Before she could go on any further, Nehorai interrupted her in a teasing tone. "Shedim are not as greedy as humans are, Sarah, and you know I never eat much. I had thought about this eventuality even if you hadn't. I ate enough to last me for the day before we left home this morning, so I will require nothing until we get back. A cup of larak would be nice, however, and the labyrinth's magic should keep my hands and face well in the shadows for such an endeavor."
Sarah got up from her stairs in a hurry and pushed her mug of larak into Nehorai's hands. As intended, the long sleeves and deep hood of his cloak obliterated all view of his clawed hands or his feathered face with shadows and darkness as he took the mug from her and drank from it deeply.
Jareth glared at the two figures standing very near to each other, enclosed in a cone of silence, with barely disguised anger. "Some sort of a silence spell, isn't it?" he inquired, his voice not giving away any of the emotions that had flitted over his face for a moment. "A very advanced spell, my dear Sarah. I did not know that you could cast such. But what is the need? Does Nehorai croak like a toad?"
Sarah turned around and gave him an sweetly insincere smile. "I find it most helpful to be able to talk to a trusted friend without anyone being able to overhear. You have more experience to draw on than I can even imagine, so I decided I better get my own source of experience to refer to when needed. And if I had the power of creating a spell of silence, I certainly would not be here now, would I? It is Nehorai's spell." Her smile got more insinuating. "And his voice is a thing of wonder. He can sing the birds from the sky and the unicorns from the forest with his songs. Or the clothes off a woman's back, should he so desire. I have never heard more beautiful."
Ikiaq looked at the queen and her quietly seething milk-son with a suppressed grin on her face. Time to get out of the way, she decided. "I will come back later and see if you need anything else," she said gently as she left the throne room.
Her departure was barely noticed by the king and the queen who were busy glaring at each other. Eek knew that Sarra was safe, and he climbed agilely onto Nehorai's shoulder, directing him to a bench under the large window - no particular attention was required from either of them in this situation, so why not take a little nap? Within minutes Sarah's friends were peacefully asleep under the window, Eek rolled up like a misshapen cat on Nehorai's lap, and the incongruously domestic scene rendered the queen's shadow much less threatening looking than he had before.
With graceful abandon Jareth joined Sarah on the stairs and refilled the mug in his hands with lapis larak. "Enough of this chit chat, my dear lady. It is time we began your training."
And so Sarah found herself listing all and sundry magic she had ever used, anything she could perform or had tried to perform, including a blow-by-blow account on how she had failed. Jareth was inquiring in exhausting depth at what pace her understanding and mastery of magic had developed since her binding, and quizzed her on her perception of magic itself. She was surprised on how much she could actually do, though judging by the goblin king's face this did not seem a feeling he shared. As she picked up the mug of larak with her left hand, she unconsciously flinched as the heat of the mug burned on her cut palm through the leather glove.
Although she gave it not a thought, Jareth noticed the shadow of pain that crossed her face, and without as much as a by-your-leave he took the mug out of Sarah's hand and with a quick movement pulled her glove off. His own deceptively slender, elegant hands in leather gloves held her hand in a firm grip without any obvious effort, despite her determined efforts to wrangle free of his hold. With a shudder Jareth noticed that the deep cut on the palm had been closed with several stitches, a barbaric and doubtlessly painful procedure Sarah must have performed herself after she had gone home the night before, as nobody with even basic training in magic would have failed to heal the cut. The wound was clean and dry however, covered thinly by a herbal salve. He looked at her grimly.
"Since you insist on acting rashly, my queen, I must insist on you learning at least the basics of healing as soon as possible. Now pay attention." Drawing on her own descriptions of her experience with healing, he carefully outlined every step necessary to perform such a minor healing spell, and finally, with an elegant gesture, he drew on his power to heal it, making sure that the labyrinth mirrored for its queen the gathering of power through their mind link. Her red, work-hardened hand looked very graceless in his, lithe and beautiful even in gloves, and Sarah tried again to pull her hand out of his firm hold. The goblin king would not let go of her hand, however.
"All fae know enough to heal such as this, but since you, by your own words, act as a healer in the goblin kingdom, you need better training than I can give you in this area. Go to the healers' halls in the city and ask for healer Hina'ea. She is 'Lo lani's sister, and not only is she an excellent healer but also a renowned teacher. She will be able to teach you all that you need to know."
Sarah's mind was whirling, as always she felt powerfully attracted to him when she touched him, but the sight of her own unlovely hand in his made her feel revolting while being turned-on at the same time, and she grasped for anger. As she tore her hand out of his, she hissed at him. "I don't have the time for such niceties, goblin king, much to my ... obvious ... regret, for I will need to leave the goblin city in a few days and make for the roads again."
Jareth looked at her with a malicious glint in his eyes. "I am ... obviously ... deeply grieved to be the one who has to tell you that you may have to change you plans, my dearest Sarah. The labyrinth agrees with me that in your present unprepared state you cannot be permitted to expose yourself to dangers untold. We are in a state of war, lady, and our subjects die within our borders, with no trace of the perpetrator. Once the labyrinth is satisfied that its queen is able to defend herself sufficiently with both sword and magic, you will be allowed to leave the safety of the goblin city again."
For a moment Sarah saw red, struck speechless with the sudden fury that threatened to choke her, yet before she could turn on the goblin king as she intended, she felt the touch of the labyrinth in her mind.
DO NOT BE ANGRY WITH HIM, CHOSEN, FOR WHATEVER HE MAY SAY, THIS IS MY DECISION. I CANNOT LET YOU ENDANGER YOURSELF, FOR HOW CAN I GO ON SHOULD ANYTHING HAPPEN TO YOU? YOU ARE PART OF ME, AND I FEAR I MAY NOT BE ABLE TO KEEP YOU SAFE. ALL I ASK IS THAT YOU LEARN ENOUGH TO DEFEND YOURSELF FOR A FEW MOMENTS AGAINST ANY UNEXPECTED ATTACK UNTIL I CAN FULLY AID YOU. I WILL DRAIN MY POWER FROM YOU, I WILL TURN ALL ROADS BACK SO YOU CANNOT LEAVE UNTIL YOU HAVE LEARNED TO CONTROL YOUR MAGIC. WITHIN THE GOBLIN CITY YOU SHARE IN ALL MY MAGIC, AND THERE IS MUCH TO BE DONE FOR EIR SHOULD SO YOU WISH. FORGIVE ME, CHOSEN, BUT I MUST KEEP YOU SAFE EVEN AGAINST YOUR WILL.
Sarah felt her anger drain away. The raw pain and fear in the labyrinth's mental touch, the honest remorse and unshakable determination were too powerful to hold on to her spite. She had seen enough slaughter and death on the roads to know that she would not have been able to defend herself had any of the nightmares that haunted the labyrinth chosen to attack her. She simply had never quite understood her vulnerability as she now did.
Jareth studied the queen's face with keen interest. He had felt her resist his touch when he scrutinized her hand, but that had not bothered him. Her hand had been rough in his, calloused and scarred, but beautifully formed and confident, the palm wide and strong, the fingers long and elegantly shaped, the pale oval nails short, a confident hand used to do what needed to be done. No fae lady would have been caught dead with hands like his queen. As always she had tried to evade his touch, his nearness, and as always she had reacted with an outburst of anger to repel him. He had read her undiluted fury with amusement, and then the labyrinth began to talk to her and distracted her attention. Sarah would never make a diplomat, her face much too open and too easy to read for anyone with eyes to see. Her features went from blind fury to chagrined acceptance as she listened to the touch of the labyrinth in her mind, anger, love and regret all mixed together, finally giving way to reluctant acceptance. The goblin king did not believe it would be long until his queen would try to flee his presence again, for while Sarah obviously lacked the ability to control her magic yet, she understood its underlying workings and had, by sheer dint of stubborn trial and error, already taught herself more than he would have considered possible for one not born to magic. Not that he planned tell her, nor hurry their lessons on. This was too much of an opportunity to let pass without making good use of their enforced time together.
When Sarah's attention returned to her surroundings, she felt the inscrutable eyes of the goblin king on her. She did not like the appraising smile on his lips. "It would seem, goblin king, that I am stuck with the city and, worse, with your presence for the time being. As unpleasant as this prospect is, I have lived through worse. I think." Nary a muscle twitched in the goblin king's face, but Sarah saw his eyes narrow. Good. If he thought she would meekly submit, it was time he learned better.
She refilled both their mugs from the still-steaming pot of larak. He might be an overbearing prick, but she had no doubt he would teach her magic if it killed her. The attempts of the labyrinth and the shedim may have come to naught, but she suspected the goblin king had never even pondered the possibility of failure in his life.
An indeterminate time later she wondered if her whimsical thought might have been more prophetic than she knew, for the possibility of not surviving his teaching seemed more plausible any minute. The goblin king had informed her, in a tone of deep suffering that seriously endangered her determined equanimity, that her knowledge of magic about rivaled her expertise in swordsmanship, only to then outline a remedial program that would have exhausted a whole class of students. As if this wasn't bad enough, she had found herself utterly unable to even follow his very first basic lesson, which, according to his words, was the foundation for anything to do with magic. By now she felt that her skull might split open any second.
"You are not usually this slow to understand a concept, Sarah, so please, pay attention to what we are trying to teach you here." After Jareth's initial attempts at explaining had led nowhere, the labyrinth had be drafted into helping. Jareth visualized a spell and the steps to performing it and then the labyrinth conveyed the process to Sarah. It had not worked any better than Jareth's earlier attempts, unless a roaring headache could be considered success. "Before you invoke any spell you need to gather your magic to you. Imagine a litter of curious kittens trying to wander away as you are trying to reign them in within the confines of a basket."
"You have already used more similes for gathering something up than I have ever heard in my life, goblin king, and much as I admire your mastery of language, I can't say it has helped me any," Sarah spit at him as nastily as her pounding head allowed. "Despite all your pretty words, I can't for the life of me see the likeness between gathering something in my arms and in my mind. The labyrinth can try to make me see 'til the cows come home, but it just makes no sense. All I seem to be able to conjure are headaches."
Jareth rubbed the bridge of his nose. Night, he was running out of ideas to explain something as basic as breathing. "Lady Sarah, you already know what I am asking you to do. You are gathering the magic when you perform healing magic or when you create reality from your mind's mirror. All you need to do is use it consciously. It is the first lesson of magic small children learn in the underground, when they are scarce more than babes."
"And yet another useless piece of information. Too bad I am many decades too old to profit from you sage advice, goblin king." Sarah kicked herself mentally. It was not his fault that she was to dense to learn. However, she doubted her aching brain would accept any further instructions, so she turned to face the king.
"Let's postpone this lesson until tomorrow when I can think again, goblin king. Forgive my rudeness, I am frustrated and my head hurts, and it is not a combination that promises better results in the near future."
Before she could gather her wits, the goblin king had moved close to her and looked down at her like a friend, his face rueful and his smile open and without guile. Never had he looked at her like this before. He gave her a crooked grin. "Please accept my apologies, Sarah. It may have been a very long time, but lady, you should have seen me when I received tutoring in the magic arts as a young man. I do remember how frustrating it is to be unable to understand something that seems so easy to the person who teaches you. If memory serves me right, I did not cut the most gracious figure myself. And my tutor's description of my behavior might be even less flattering."
Sarah relaxed and smiled up at him in unconscious response, her nose crinkling. Jareth gently laid his hands on both sides of her face so his fingertips touched her temples, and the pain in her head drained away with each beat of her heart. Even when the pain had gone, she lingered under his touch for another moment, for while his closeness stirred her blood as always, for once his touch was no gambit in a game, no claim of possession, no ploy of dominance, but simply gave comfort as may be offered to a friend. Finally she stepped back with a grin.
"This would have been the perfect opportunity to describe the gathering of magic in yet another metaphor for my understanding. You missed a chance, goblin king."
He looked at her with an easy grin, but she could tell he was debating with himself whether to speak. "The gathering of magic is but a sleight of hand, Sarah, if you have performed it but once, you will wonder how it could ever have eluded you. I can show you how it is done, if you will give me permission to touch your mind." Sarah paled and her face must have shown her absolute repudiation of the idea.
"I will swear a blood-oath to you, my queen, that I will no more than skim the surface of your thoughts. I would never invade your mind, if that is your fear. Believe me, lady, it would not be necessary. I would barely need to touch your thoughts at all to show you what you need to do. It would be no more intrusive than touching you face, Sarah."
Sarah thought she'd rather be damned than ever risk to giving him a glance of what went through her head when he touched her. But his words had been kind and his touch had been a comfort, and she could not muster anger, even if she wasn't convinced about his trustworthiness. So Sarah didn't rage at him but looked at him without rancor. "Don't tell me you actually thought I might agree to this, goblin king? I am not sure I could trust even myself when faced with a tempting setup like this, whatever my intentions might be at the outset. And I suspect you can resist anything but temptation, so I am not going to lead you right into it. I am sure you understand that to my greatest regret I have to turn down you ... generous offer." She smiled at him cheekily to take the sting out of her words.
"Excellent idea, my lady," Ikiaq's voice came from behind, making both her and Jareth jump. The castellaine had come in unnoticed some time earlier and had watched the proceedings with some amusement. "Any woman who will allow a man into her head is a fool who deserves all he is going to take from her. Now, don't get me wrong, lady Sarah, Jareth would never break his promise, the lad will be true to his word, but there are always stray thoughts that will come at you when you touch another mind, and strong emotions strongly increase the odds for strays. Did he mention that?" She smiled at Jareth with affection.
"But he is right, lady Sarah, it would need but a slight touch to show you what you know. Would you trust me to help you, lady? I am sworn to the labyrinth and its chosen, and should some unwarranted thought stray into my mind, it will be as if it never happened."
As Ikiaq was talking, Sarah looked at the castellaine and thought that she would trust the woman with her life. And had she no done so already when the trader Eir had followed the castellaine's advice? Ikiaq was older even than Jareth, and Sarah could not imagine that any fantasies or desires of the flesh would shock or dismay her, and she knew that Ikiaq would keep her secrets safe.
"Yes, lady Ikiaq, I know I need help, and I would be glad of your guidance. I seem to be so utterly unable to grasp the concept of gathering in the magic, and how will I ever control my magic without this? But let's do it right now before I loose my nerve."
Ikiaq's mental touch was as deft as her hands, and the light brush of her thoughts inexplicably reminded Sarah of her mother. The castellaine guided her mind very much like a mother might guide a child's hands during an intricate chore, and she pulled the queen's thoughts along with her own, giving an inside view of how to gather magic. A few minutes later Sarah wondered what the heck had been her problem, the difference from what she always did when she wielded magic and what Jareth had asked her to do was really but a hair's breadth. She had to admit that the goblin king's imaginative descriptions of gathering magic to yourself had been rather to the point. Not that she was planning to tell him. Still, the experience had not been one she felt the need to relive in the near future. Or ever.
She shook her head repeatedly and vigorously. "Night, that felt like ants crawling around on the inside of my skull." She shuddered and hit the side of her head with the palm of her hand. "And I believe not all of them have left yet."
Jareth's heartless laughter interrupted her musings. "What a most unpleasant image, my dearest Sarah. But do not worry, I hear there are not lasting effects ... for most people. Let us hope you are not among the unlucky few that are haunted by strange inexplicable thoughts and sensations as the result of a mind touch." His voice grew lower and more ominous. "There are those who slowly loose hold of their sanity in the months and years after their mind has been touched, their wits scattered as their actions become more erratic and inexplicable." His was a very creditable voice of doom, belied only by his laughing eyes.
"I'm very glad, goblin king, that you feel comfortable enough with me to share difficulties of your life, even though I already realized that you are barking mad," she addressed him with slow, well-enunciated words, her face as serious and concerned as she could make it, although her effort was hampered by the wide grin that was determined to spread over her face.
The goblin king laughed. "Much as I would like to spend the rest of the day trading insults with you, my dearest Sarah, the duties of a king cannot be postponed for such pleasant trifles," he said with what sounded like real regret in his voice. "I am already late for a meeting with the clerk of the privy council, and even though she cannot really admonish her liege for being late, she has a surprisingly expressive face. I really have to go see her before her face tells me things I'd rather not hear."
Sarah smiled at him apologetically. "I am sorry I have wasted your morning, goblin king. Blame everything on me. I hope I will be more receptive tomorrow, and perhaps we can keep it to an hour if I am actually capable of doing what you ask me."
Ikiaq looked at her quizzically. "It really hasn't been much more than an hour since I brought you breakfast, lady Sarah. Jareth's schedule is much too full to spend the whole morning on your lessons, as important as they are. I know he is tweaking his schedule so he will have more time to teach you as soon as possible, but for today, it is still early in the morning."
The goblin king's voice cut through her surprise. "And while I am sure that you are dying to know how, my dear lady, I doubt you will be ready to re-order time in the foreseeable future. However, we will continue our lessons tomorrow morning at the same time, and I will do my best to beat the odds to get you closer to the day that your magic might allow you to control time. We will discuss every day's lesson over breakfast, which you will undoubtedly need after your weapons training with the Fianna. However long our training may take, though, I can promise you, your lessons in magic will never take out more than an hour out of your morning. And please remember, Sarah, you need to see the healer Hina'ea in the healers' halls for lessons." He executed a flawless bow before the two women. "I bid you a good day, my dears," and the goblin king left the throne room with his usual flourish.
Nehorai and Eek came up to the surprised looking goblin queen, who could not suppress a curse. "Night, it's still early in the morning? This day is dragging on, and he tells me it has barely started? I had such high hopes that I could go to bed soon," Sarah groaned. "Well, it cannot be helped. Thank you for the breakfast, Ikiaq, you saved my life. I suspect I will rely on you provisioning again tomorrow and all the foreseeable days in the future." Sarah bent down and lifted Eek up to her shoulder. "Can you direct us to the healer's hall, lady Ikiaq?"
Over the next few weeks and months Sarah's days began to settle into their own exhausting rhythm. Every morning she went to the weapons training with Heulwen and Eirlys, and as often as not they were joined by some of the fighters of the Carmarthen fian, young Wyn foremost of them. To Sarah's pleased surprise Toby began to show up for the sunrise sessions, and while Sarah quickly realized it was Heulwen who drew him, it did not diminish her pleasure. She did not presume to have mastered anything, yet neither was she a complete innocent about defending herself any more. Her body had slowly adapted to the hard exercise, and while she still got bruised in every session, her body did not scream in protest with every movement any more, and her stamina and speed had increased noticeably.
After a breakfast spent in surprisingly pleasurable bickering with the goblin king in the throne room, an indeterminate amount of time passed for her training in magic, more challenging and more frustrating even than sword fighting. This might have had to do with the fact that the goblin king did not believe in following cumbersome restrictions like rules and limitations when he taught the queen. Once Sarah had grasped the idea of concentrating magic before she cast a spell, he made her use magic constantly, mostly by having her defend herself against some spell he carelessly threw at her, and inviting her to do the same to him. This rather active training was interrupted by very welcome periods of storytelling while they rested for a mug of larak, when he told her of the various uses and applications of magic by the kindreds of the underground and the many spells that had been used by mages in the history of the underground. Contrary to her unconscious expectations, spells were but mnemonic devices, simple shortcuts to avoid the re-invention of the wheel. A powerful mage could create countless spells in near limitless variations to bring about a desired result. It was however a lot more efficient to not have to come up with a new spell every time a certain outcome was desired, so all mages had a repertoire that was effectively a shorthand for getting the job done. Although Sarah noticed that the goblin king rarely repeated himself, he either did not need mental crutches or he was showing off. She did not trust the goblin king nor did she feel that his intentions were something she might be able to fathom, yet she could not help being impressed by his knowledge and his ability as a teacher. Much to her chagrin the goblin queen found that not only did her bone-deep desire not lessen upon closer acquaintance but she even liked the king more and more, although she would not allow herself to let her guard down in his presence for she understood well that he was a master of manipulation and she was not match for him.
After her lessons in the castle, never longer than an hour however long she had been there, she went on to the healer's halls, where Hina'ea had proved any bit as good a healer as the goblin king had claimed. Hina'ea was a soothing summer breeze to 'Lo lani's passionate storm, her hair the color of the clouds in a perfect summer sky, glowing white against her silver skin, but like her sister her locks were in constant restless movement around her head, buffed by the invisible wind that seemed to accompany all odei. Hina'ea wore a simple blue shift with a loose pale green overdress like all healers, and when Sarah had mentioned with admiration the wind-driven bits of cloth that created 'Lo lani seductive clothes, the odei healer told her that it was the pride of her kindred to create the most complex patterns of multiple bits of material to clothe themselves imaginatively. The healer halls were always busy, and Sarah suspected that the hour she spent every day with the healer would not have been forthcoming had she not been the queen, as the apprentices never got to spend so much time with one of the best healers. Yet Sarah did not feel guilty, as everything she learned would benefit the denizens of the goblin kingdom as much as herself. Her time with Hina'ea was spent in the animated conversation of equals who are knowledgeable about different aspects of a topic and they taught each other the practical application of these topics. Hina'ea was as interested in Sarah's methods of treating patients without magic as Sarah was in Hina'ea's magical regiment. Sarah thought with wry amusement that it did not make much of a difference that her specialty had been veterinary medicine, as the patients in the underground rarely were human anyways.
In the late afternoon Sarah returned to the fencing halls to work on her sword exercises, until it was time to meet Tiernan and Toby for her special training, which in her mind she had taken to dub the murder class. It was rather exhilarating, for there were no rules nor limitations to what was allowed. The room had been thoroughly spelled to protect all three of them from real damage if not pain, and while the punishment part seemed to be unfairly tilted towards her, at least in her own opinion, Sarah relished the ability to try out the more outrageous ideas that crossed her mind. While Tiernan was going about teaching her to survive a sneaky attack in a very organized and efficient way, Toby seemed to be as happily bloodthirsty as she was. Under the watchful and oftentimes surprised eye of the experienced fighter the young fae lord and the goblin queen engaged in imaginative and vicious attacks on each other, frequently resulting in one of them down for the count, which taught each of them valuable lessons in the process. Sarah learned that trying to knee a man in the groin was pointless and supremely painful if the male in question was seven inches taller and armored, while Toby found out that trying to grab a woman from behind and lifting her off the ground left him open to the full strength of her upper body concentrated in her elbow on the side of his head. While Tiernan's offerings in murderous intent were less flashy, they also tended to be more effective, not to mention less painful for him. And so, with time and dedicated teachers, Sarah learned to deal with unexpected attacks from unexpected weapons. And as the goblin queen learned more about the difficulties of surviving, she began to worry what she would do if anyone truly wanted to kill her.
Sarah conscientiously joined the war council whenever she found the time and even graced several banquets and balls in the castle with her presence, a gesture of goodwill that surprised and delighted the goblin king who had been prepared for the queen to chafe under the restrictions placed on her. Yet Sarah was not given to dwell on what could not be changed, but tried to make the best of any situation she found herself in. And despite her exceedingly full schedule she still found hours every day to do what she liked, and to her astonishment she realized that she enjoyed her time in the goblin city.
The dwarf trader Eir and her Hundun companion had begun to ply their trade as purveyors of whatever goods would sell on the daily markets, Eir's breads and cakes much in demand, and her good-natured haggling and gossiping with all who would talk to her, yielded tidbits of information that often enough had not yet reached the ears of the goblin king or the war council. Luckily, since the first harvest had been excellent and the second was shaping up to be even better, the specter of famine had been averted, and with the sinking prices of food, the general health had improved. Yet people still got into fights, children still fell off trees or walls, and accidents still happened, and so Eir did brisk business as a healer for the poor in the city.
Toby had taken it on himself to show the goblin queen and her ever-present cloaked shadow around the city she purportedly did not know, and took her to places she had never seen even as the dwarf trader, from a rich baron's walled gardens of unearthly beauty to a tiny dusty city square with a public fountain which was the center of life for the neighborhood at the edge of the hedge maze. He introduced Sarah and her shadow to his many friends in high and low places, whom he seemed to have acquired without distinction of rank or place. It did not take Sarah long to realize that while the loyalty of the blood-sworn to her was absolute and unquestioned, it was his friendship that made people accept her fully without any prejudice that they might have harbored against the human goblin queen before. Toby's admiration and friendship gave her a place in the goblin city that it might have otherwise have taken her hundreds of years to earn. And on top of this, she enjoyed his company as much as that of the people he introduced her to.
And when the goblin queen and her shadow went home in the evening to become just themselves again, free of all glamour or pretense and animatedly discussing the events of the day, the goblins thronged in their quarters and told them stories of all that happened in the goblin kingdom. They would bring their queen ugly presents and listen enraptured to the songs Sarah and Nehorai sang for them, and she found that she could be as happy in the goblin city as she had been on the road.
Sarah sat in the window in one of the reception rooms in the tower, her legs dangling out over the ledge, looking pensively at the sun, still low over the horizon. "You promised you would show me how to re-order time, goblin king. I know I am not a brilliant mage, but it has been a while since you caught me unawares with one of your sneaky attacks. I'll likely never be as good as you, but then you have the advantage of more great years than I can count, and that chasm will never close. I have this suspicion that if I wait until I am good enough in your estimation, you'll never teach me. I have learned enough magic to leave the court, goblin king, and I long to travel the kingdom again." Sarah knew she sounded peevish, but the goblin king's reluctance to teach her time magic grated on her nerves. "You can of course keep refusing me, but that would just force me to try on my own."
"You will under no circumstances do that, my lady Sarah," and the goblin king's voice suddenly sounded wary. Sarah grinned but did not turn her head. It made her dizzy to look towards him, his legs above her head as he sat on the outside of the tower wall at a right angle to her. He had taught her to change the orientation of gravity as ever she needed, and some of her lessons had involved trying to get away from him on any surface that offered itself. Once she had mastered the knack, she enjoyed the ability to walk upside down a wall when she needed to. Suddenly with a sudden tumble of limbs the goblin king sat next to her on the ledge, having effortlessly turned his body in space so he came to rest next to her.
"There are no grimoires or mages who can teach you about time magic, Sarah, as only with the labyrinth's power is it possible to re-order time. Nobody but the labyrinth's chosen have ever manipulated time, and it is a dangerous endeavor. Promise me you will not play with forces beyond your ability to control, my lady."
Sarah smiled up at him sweetly. "If you want to be sure that I don't do anything rash, goblin king, you might want to convince me that there is no need. I honestly cannot see why I would ever need to re-order time, but that does not mean I do not want to learn how to do it. And don't pretend you don't know what I am talking about, for are you not the same way, goblin king? I am willing to promise you that I shall not use time magic unless in the direst need, a need I cannot even fathom, but only if you agree to teach me."
Jareth slowly and thoroughly considered her with narrowed eyes. The months of close contact with Sarah and their spirited exchanges had taught him much about her, but he realized with a start that he had not considered the obvious corollary, that he had been studied just as closely. He really should know better than to underestimate the queen, he scolded himself, as she was as devious and brilliant as any fae he had ever known if in a different way.
"Would you promise to use time magic only under my aegis, Sarah, until you are more proficient?" he asked in his silkiest tone.
"That has got to be the dumbest condition I have ever heard of," Sarah exclaimed with disgust clearly written on her face. "I can't even imagine why I'd ever want to re-order time, after all I lack the natural sadism of some people who enjoy torturing runners. But if I ever need to mess with the flow of time I very much doubt it will be in your presence, goblin king. So the answer is an unequivocal no. But I will leave court soon, and if you have not taught me how to control time I will find out on my own."
"Well, let us talk about time magic when you have shown me how well you can deal with shape-shifting," and in a flurry of movement and golden feathers a large golden-white night owl sat on the ledge next to her, half as big again as they usually were, its head reached to over her shoulder, then he turned back to his usual arrogant self in a moment.
"If you actually think I'll begin a lesson in shape-shifting on a window sill in a tower, some 50 yards over a cobblestone yard, think again." Sarah said with determination. "I want a lot of soft grass around me, and no witnesses at all."
With a laugh Jareth put his arms around her, and before she could protest they stood on a patch of soft grass in the middle of the hedge maze, a slender birch shading the early morning sun. Jareth walked over to the tree and leaned his back against the trunk. "Just you, me and the labyrinth. Not even your faithful shadow, as always deeply asleep in the alcove with your goblin. What less could you want, dearest lady?"
"Do you really want me to answer that, goblin king?" Jareth just grinned. "What I'd really like to know, goblin king, what is the point of shape-shifting to a bird is when you can just appear wherever you want by magic? Why bother flying?"
"I wished it was that easy, my dear Sarah," and for a moment Jareth looked decidedly murderous. "If I could just transport myself through the goblin kingdom, white Babdh and her blood-beaked crows would not be killing on our lands, lady." His nasty smile left little doubt of his plans for Babdh. "We can move ourselves to another place by magic, but only within a very short range, and only to a place we know so well that we can create the perfect image of it in our mind. If you cannot picture a place exactly as it is, you will go nowhere.
And the range is pitifully short, from the castle I can appear anywhere within the maze, but no further out." He grinned maliciously. "It is enough to scare the night out of unwary runners, but unfortunately not enough to serve any real purpose."
He shook his head in regret. "So if you ever need to move quickly, my lady Sarah, a bird it must be." He carefully outlined the steps necessary for the transformation and explained all the things she'd need to keep in mind. When he was finished he looked at her expectantly.
"Can I choose what bird I will be, or how does that happen?" the goblin queen inquired.
"You may choose, of course. Who would want to be a vulture? Just imagine the embarrassment to a highborn noble if they'd find themselves in such plumage."
"That explains it," Sarah muttered under her breath, but not low enough for the goblin king's sharp ears. His eyebrows went up inquiringly. "Hawks and falcons, eagles and owls - just what you'd expect from a bunch of vain fae."
"Far be it from me to dictate your choice, my dear Sarah, but let me inform you that the life span of a humming bird or a nightingale can be astoundingly short in the wild. Life in flight is so much more enjoyable if you don't have to constantly scan the sky for predators that might want to make a meal of you. Not to forget that these pretty small birds will not really increase your traveling speed as much as you could wish for."
This time Sarah's grumbles were too low even for the goblin king to hear, but she set out to copy Jareth's instructions as best she could. Shape shifting was tricky business, and she had a few failed starts, her shape blurring and dissolving only to reinstate in her own form. She swore under her breath. Just as well that it was the labyrinth that concealed her identity as Eir, she knew she would never have been able to perform the necessary magic before the goblin king's extensive tutoring.
Jareth watched her with fascinated interest. Her face tight with concentration, she seemed to try to force the transformation by sheer will. Humans had no patience, and Sarah was certainly a prime example. On the other hand, her impatience might have something to do with speed that she picked up on all he heaped on her. In just a few month his queen had acquired a control of magic that took the long-lived kindreds of the underground as many years. While she was clearly taken by his flamboyant use of magic, the glamour and the strange beauty he wove without effort, and delighted in all he showed her, the poetry of her own mind manifested itself only in her dreams become reality in the labyrinth. Sarah had the makings of an excellent mage, but her interest in most of what he taught her was strongly pragmatic, and he was delighted how she would invariably find a practical use for any magicks he taught her. Fae were given to value the beauty and intricacy of a spell as much as its function. He grinned. Sarah preferred blunt efficiency, and beauty be damned, and he knew she took some perverse pride in being as different from the fae as she could.
As he waited patiently for her to master the transformation, he imagined she would change to a raven or a crow. Whatever she claimed, Sarah was a predator as much as he was, proud, wild, and cruel when necessary, and much too smart to choose a silly songbird just to be contrary. But she would clearly not choose a more traditional bird of prey. His eyes lit up as the air around the queen dissolved in a flutter of movement and white and grey feathers, and when the movement died, a dazed-looking seagull sat on the grass, clearly unaccustomed to wings, as she fell over as soon as she stretched them out. Jareth laughed out loud as he approached the bird and went into a crouch before it.
"The most common bird you could think of, my dear, isn't it? Not exactly a meek song-bird, though. Gulls can be quite nasty, as anyone can vouch who ever came between them and their intended dinner. Smart, vicious and true acrobats of the air. And surprisingly beautiful as well. An excellent choice," his attempt at touching the bird was quickly curtailed as the large gull hacked at his hand with her sharp long beak. He got up with a grin. "A perfect choice, my lady, the bird is your spitting image indeed. You may want to give the wings a try, just in case you made some mistake and they are just for decoration."
The seagull gave him a pointed glare and flapped with her wings rather ineffectually. She seemed to get riled that it did not get her airborne.
"Do not think about it, Sarah, let your body do what it must. Your mind has no knowledge of flying, so do not attempt to use it. You never think about how to walk, but simply do it to get where you want, so let this body do the work. Do you see the peaches on the tree over there?" and Jareth pointed to the crown of a peach tree visible at some distance. "Get a peach, my lady, and bring it back to me."
The gull gave him a distinctly disgusted glare and with powerful beating wings she threw herself into the air and gained height quickly. For a moment, uncertainty seemed to overcome her and her flight became erratic, but she caught herself quickly and flew towards the peach tree with strong and steady wing beats, diving down to tear a peach of a high branch. The fruit was not cooperative and refused to break off easily, and from the distance Jareth could see the gull struggle against the branch, a flurry of feathers and leaves seemingly still in the air until the peach broke off and the gull flew up again and turned back. When she was over the clearing again, she pulled her wings close to her body and hurtled her body towards the goblin king. Jareth stood ready, should she be unable to catch her fall, but at the last moment Sarah spread her wings and caught her wild dive but a hand span over the king's head, and with a triumphant kwee-kwee-kwee she dropped the peach and flew up to a lower branch of the birch tree, where she landed utterly ungraciously and was vainly trying to get a hold.
Jareth caught the peach with quicksilver grace a hair's width over his face, and turned to the struggling bird just in time to see it change back to its human form. Sarah found herself on a thin branch over two yards above the ground, a branch much too small to bear the weight of a woman, and it promptly broke. With a startled squeak the goblin queen fell, and the hard landing knocked the air out of her, although a lightning quick spell of the goblin king had made sure that she was not truly hurt. After all, it was a teacher's responsibility to make sure their ward did not come to harm under their safekeeping. Jareth walked over, carelessly throwing the peach in the air and finally taking a bite out of it before he looked down at her with slanted head.
"Chivalry is obviously dead," Sarah hissed at him when she finally had caught her breath and stood up slowly, making sure nothing was broken even though everything felt like it.
The goblin king grinned down at her with undisguised mirth in his face. "You were planning to splatter me with the peach, my lady," he pointed out unrepentantly. "You cannot have expected me to go searching for my deeply-buried better impulses to save you, after such an uncalled-for attack. And you must admit, the only thing that sustained any damage was your pride."
"Yeah, but I missed and you did not, so I owe you another successful attack," she told him threateningly. "Wasn't I supposed to turn into a bird mid-fall? You know, instincts kicking in and all that?"
Jareth laughed out loud. "You might want to spend a little more time as a gull before you can hope for instincts, my dearest Sarah. I doubt that five minutes can do it. And you should have thought about your choice of bird, should you not? Gulls do not possess the kind of feet that you need for trees. Webbed feet are not really meant to hold on to twigs."
He turned teacher in a heart beat. "I am sure you by now that your physical aspect is open to change, my lady. I doubt you will be spending much time with other gulls, and your most common landing spot will be trees, so let us go about changing your feet, Sarah. Now, change back to your gull shape, lady, and do not peck at me when I touch you," and under his expectant glance Sarah changed back to a gull, She was proud to notice that she had managed on the first attempt this time. The goblin king picked the shaking gull up and calmed the agitated bird with a gentle voice. He held her body gently in a firm hold, and with a controlled gesture of his hand over the gull's webbed feet they changed into the strong feet of a raptor, with three toes facing forwards and a powerful one pointing in the opposite direction. Before he could move his hand away, Sarah had clamped her toes around his fingers, and when he gently opened the hand that held the gull quiet, she managed to get herself into the upright, perched on his hand. Jareth smiled at the preening bird. "Should I consider starting a new fashion, my dear Sarah, what do you think? Forget falconry, I do not believe anyone has ever managed to train a sea gull to their hand."
With an indignant craw Sarah flew up and changed back to her human shape, not the smartest maneuver as she found herself back in her body encircled in the arms of the goblin king. Fortunately for her, or so she firmly told herself, Jareth was as surprised as she was by the unexpected development, and for once her reaction was faster than his. She managed to wiggle out of his embrace before he had a chance to tighten it. She turned away from him to hide his burning face and to collect herself before she called over her shoulder with the cheekiest grin she could muster: "How about a race to back to the castle, goblin king? Let us see who'll win in a competition of wings," and she managed to turn herself back to a gull - nice feet these were, she had to admit - and flew as fast as she could towards the castle beyond the goblin city. As she had expected, it did not take long to hear the flapping of powerful wings come up behind her, and before long the beautiful night owl overtook her. The close-up view of the silver-brown owl took her breath away, he was as beautiful in his bird-shape as in his normal body.
Since Sarah was not too sure which window in which tower they were actually going for, she did not try to get ahead but rather started to perform foolhardy maneuvers around the straight-flying owl, diving around it and making as much of a nuisance of herself as she dared, without actually risking a collision. When the goblin king suddenly pulled his wings close and dived into a window, Sarah just about managed to follow him, clearing the window frame with barely an inch to spare.
"I am sure you would have liked seeing me plastered against the wall, wouldn't you?"
she said somewhat sourly when she had changed back.
Jareth smiled at her in the most infuriating way. "It might have taught you not to perform aerial acrobatics before you are ready, my lady. Although, you have taken to flying extremely well, and your choice was an excellent one. Gulls are powerful birds, dangerous yet unobtrusive. You will travel fast and safe."
Sarah smiled back at him, the goblin king was not given to easy praise, and she valued his words, especially when she knew that she had behaved rashly. "So am I ready now for time magic, goblin king?" She looked at him pleadingly, and Jareth had to stifle a grin. Sarah's insatiable hunger for knowledge was a most seductive trait, as too many of the fae let the knowledge of their long lives dull their desires and their eagerness even at a young age, protecting their lives at the cost of all else. Sarah had been middle-aged in her human life, facing the end of all that she was, but given a second chance on future she lived to the fullest, and her hunger far outweighed any fears she might have. A creature who'd given himself to wild magic and all its dangers, Jareth could understand with all his being.
"Let us talk about this another time, Sarah? Whatever else, time magic cannot be taught in a short hour. But I promise you this, my queen: I will teach you to control time, and if not tomorrow, it will be soon, even for your impatient nature. And now, wake your shadow and be gone. I have work to do, and I cannot laze about as my queen does. So shoo."
With a laugh Sarah ran over to the alcove and grabbed Nehorai's sleeve. He was on his feet in a heartbeat, a loudly cursing Eek at his feet. "We're leaving, my friends, as we are not wanted here any longer," she declaimed theatrically with a deep curtsy to the goblin king, and with her entourage in tow she was out of the room in a moment, only to stick her head back in. "I will hold you to your promise, goblin king, as I am sure you know. Thank you."
When Jareth left the meeting room he was well neigh sure that his polite smile was frozen indelibly to his face. Today's meeting with his council of ministers had dragged on long after his last spark of interest had died, not that it had been terribly strong in the first place. He attended the meetings as a king had to, and if the information he learned was mind-numbingly dull, Jareth knew he would ignore it at his peril. In his younger years he had sometimes left the duties in the capable hands of his clerks and ministers, since most of the time he followed their advice anyway, but he had learned to his regret that they each of them were too closely identified with their own area of expertise to be able to see it in perspective. After spending more time resolving problems that had come to pass because none of his ministers had been able to look beyond their own responsibilities, he resigned himself to join the meetings and save himself future trouble. At least none of them needed supervision in what they did - he was blessed with capable and smart ministers who were mostly excellent at what they were doing, and Jareth thought wryly that at least he rarely needed to do anything more than keep an eye on them and give them a push in the right direction to keep things running smoothly. Yet even immortal life seemed to short to have to deal with a whole morning of this, and another one coming up in a sennight. He groaned and put the thought out of his mind. Enough time to face this when he could no longer ignore it. And he set out to the kitchens in search of some sustenance.
As always the kitchen was bustling with activity, and Jareth wove his way to Bergljot, the dwarf pastry chef, to beg a cup of larak and some cakes from her.
The smiling woman handed him a mug of hot larak. "You don't want any cakes from me, my lord," she said with a nod to the table in the corner. "I know you like Eir's pastries, and they just came out of the oven."
Jareth bowed to her with an easy smile and walked over the grey-haired dwarf woman who was busy braiding three long strands of sweet yeast dough to a wreath.
Eir noticed his approach and looked up with a smile on her face, then turned back to the yeast cake to spread egg mixture over the surface, and finally sprinkled slivered nuts on top. "Admit it, goblin king, you have found yourself another innocent maiden to toy with and break her heart, as you did mine," she addressed him, trying hard to fashion her features into a tragic expression, concentrated on her work. "What else could be the reason that you have so cruelly deserted me for so long? You have not come to talk to me for two weeks now."
"Never would I look at another woman but you, Eir," Jareth grabbed a piece of pastry from a hot tray on a ledge behind the woman, but quickly threw it back and forth from one hand to the other as to not burn his hands. "Who could possibly hold my attention as you do, my dear? Even if you are neither innocent nor a maiden. And I am not sure that you have a heart."
"I thought that is how you like your women, goblin king?" she inquired with an salacious grin.
"You have been listening to what people say about me, my dear Eir, haven't you? Just because everyone claims something does not make it true, as a woman of your experience ought to know. And for my long absences, beloved, my time is not my own, as well you know. Last week I had to fend of barely veiled threats from the delegation from Matagamon instead of coming down here to bother you. Believe me, Eir, there is no man alive who would not prefer your company. Though come to think of it, you never tell me the sweet nothings that most women vying for my attention offer up for my edification. Instead you tell me gossip from the street s. Yours is a strange courtship, Eir," and with a quick movement of his hand his mug refilled with larak.
"If you don't like my love offerings, goblin king, I will not bother telling you anything I hear in the streets no more," and with her hands on her hips Eir regarded the goblin king with mock anger on her face.
"Ah, my sweetest lady, I was not offering any criticism of your courtship but an observation. You may rest assured that your sweet voice finds much more favor with me than any of those shameless, shapely, willing, desirable .. where was I? ...oh yes, inconsequential women," he looked at her with a wide-eyed grin of miserably-faked innocence.
"Far be it from me to disappoint your expectations, goblin king," and the dwarf trader walked over to a counter and poured herself a mug of larak before she returned and leaned against the work-bench. "I don't know what is going on in the city in the last two months or so, goblin king, for the harvest was good and food is plentiful again, yet people are dying all over the city."
Jareth sat down heavily on the work bench and looked grimly into his mug. "The healers tell me it is a new strange disease, Eir, but they do not yet know what causes it. All victims die of suffocation, their lungs full of phlegm, and no rhyme nor reason to who may be struck with the illness."
Sarah's face was shadowed by disquiet. She had been a veterinarian in the above, and she had observed that true diseases in the underground followed the same rules of epidemiology as in the above, unless magic was involved, and she knew without a doubt that whatever killed the people in town was not a disease, as death struck haphazardly and without logic. But how could she tell the goblin king without giving herself away? "I don't know your healers, goblin king, but there is more to this. You understand as well as I do that you and the healers only know of those who died in the better parts of town." Jareth inclined his head in agreement.
"There are many more dead in the poorer parts of the goblin city, too poor for their deaths to be noticed by anyone, as their families bury them and grieve without notice. Goblin king, I do not care what your healers say, I have been a healer of the animals and the poor for a very long time, and thanks to your largesse I have been able to help those in need without asking for payment. But you know that even the poorest will give all they have to help their kin without hesitation, and yet never have I been called to one who is sick and was found dead the next day. This ... disease ... tears people from life without a warning, without sickness before." Eir looked at him with worry writ large on her face. "I truly do not know what is happening in the city, goblin king, but I believe magic is killing your subjects. Many of them, and many of them children."
Jareth swore extensively. "I did not know this, Eir. I will make sure that the healers will spread out into all parts of the goblin city and learn all there is." He looked at the worried, lined face of the no-longer-young dwarf trader with gratitude. "What will I do when you leave the goblin city again, Eir?" and his voice mirrored his worries. "You tell me things my councilors do not know, nor do I. Your help is invaluable, lady, and I hope you understand that I owe you a debt that cannot be repaid."
With a deep blush creeping up her face, Eir tried to make light of the goblin king's heartfelt gratitude. "You need to sweet-talk more common women, goblin king. You don't know what you are missing out by restricting yourself to the ladies of the court. And I am not only talking about the knowledge you might gain," she added with a smirk.
"I believe I need to follow your advice, my lady Eir," Jareth looked her over from head to toe with a grin. "Although I doubt that many as are sharp-eyed as you are. You know, I had not thought of it before, but you seem to be in the kitchens much more often than you used to be. Can't bear to be parted from me?"
"You are vain as a peacock, goblin king. I am not wasting my time in the goblin city for you, but for my true love, Lazarus. When we came into town the last time, he had a bad case of stringhalt, and it is still not completely healed. Yet I can see the open road beckoning me and Ankimo soon again, for it will not be much longer until Lazarus can pull our cart again. Luckily he did not fall ill before the first harvest. I have been cooped up here so long, I'd like to leave the city before the second harvest comes in." Her face became wistful.
"What is it with the women around me? They all seem to be longing for the road when they should be longing for me," Jareth informed her dryly.
"That's the price you pay for surrounding yourself with smart women." Eir looked at him with unadulterated curiosity in her face. "Don't you long to wander sometimes, goblin king? They say before you came to power in the kingdom, you traveled widely through the underground, footloose and never making a home anywhere. Now you spend most of you time here in the heart of the goblin kingdom, gone only short times occasionally, when none know where you are. Do you ever see the beauty of your kingdom any more, my lord?"
Eir was sure he would not answer when, after a long silence, he said softly: "I am the king, Eir, and my life is not my own any more. I knew this when I became the goblin king, and I knowingly traded the freedom of the roads for the restrictions of a ruler. I know the goblin kingdom and its beauty, and if I don't spend as much time following my own desires as I might like to, I still am not as entrapped as you may think." Jareth thought that the time magic he had been teaching the goblin queen in the last month made life bearable even for the most put-upon monarch, which he readily admitted was not him most of the times. In the early years of his reign he had spend a very considerable amount of work and time on surrounding himself with capable stewards, and it had paid out in the long run. Now, with a silent war fought within and without the goblin kingdom and the pressures on him mounting relentlessly, when his duties became too pressing and he longed for beauty and respite, he had often enough moved outside time to steal a few hours in the countryside, or for flying over the kingdom, at peace with the wind, without demands or pressures. He was not as restricted as his subjects might think.
"And what is it that keeps drawing you out to the road, Eir? Do you so hate live in the goblin city?" he inquired with equal directness.
"No, against all my expectations I enjoy my life here, goblin king," the older woman gave him an undecipherable look. "I have friends, and I find that much of what I am good at I can do here as much as anywhere else. I am a pretty good healer, and there are as many suffering creatures here as in the countryside. I meet people and I talk with even more than I do when I am on the road, as you well know. I cannot understand how people here in the goblin city can possibly know of any of the things they so avidly gossip about, but you must admit that much of what I told you of the talk in the streets has shown itself to be correct. How does a pickpocket in the lower city, a gnome who has never left the city gates in his life, know about foreign armor found along the river marshes of the Naryn in Quaraghandy, with fields of bones bleaching on the river banks? And yet they do. The city knows and cares about the demesne, and I never noticed this before. And I have learned that there is much more beauty here in the city than I had ever expected." She went silent, deep in thought for a moment. "I believe I will enjoy coming back to the city and spend some weeks or months here, whenever I come back from my travels, but I could not choose a life like you did. I need time alone with my thoughts and dreams, and when I sit on the coachman's seat going from one place to another with my caravan, I can hear myself think. I need to feel the hot wind from the Plain of Ashes on my face to know I am really there, and only when the cold air in the Simien mountains bites into my body do I truly understand it. How can you feel all of the goblin kingdom is yours when you cannot be there sometimes, to feel its reality on your skin?" Eir looked up at the goblin king with a serene face, the lines around her eyes crinkling in a smile. "If I spend too much time here in the city I forget myself, goblin king, and I change in ways I don't understand or like. So many people, so many desires, and everyone wants something of you. I cannot bear it too long, for it makes me feel like a wild animal caged. The road sets me free and gives me the strength to be me."
Jareth looked at her pensively, not surprised by the dwarf trader's thoughtful words. For all her banter and good-natured affability there was a core of stillness to her, a quietness that he suspected she needed to replenish in solitude at times. He surmised the goblin queen might feel much the same as Eir did, for did she not seem like a confined wild thing at times, drained by the never-ending demands besetting the goblin queen in the castle beyond the goblin city? And he knew that she felt the need to escape his nearness and her own desires, for she knew not what she wanted yet.
Himself, he had spent so many great years wandering the underground, drinking in its magic and its beauty, that it had slaked his need to wander. His wildness was given full reign in the abundance of wild magic of the labyrinth, his mind roaming endlessly in the presence of a creature as unpredictable and strange as he would ever encounter, and his powerful and dominant nature was well suited to the life he led. Yet Sarah was human, ever changeable, her strengths not of power and control but of love and protection, and he reluctantly thought she might never be happy being confined as the goblin king was in many ways. The labyrinth had selected its chosen well, a high-born fae mage with the skills and desire for ruling, and a restless human dreamer to tend to its subjects and countryside.
He pushed these thoughts out of his mind and returned his attention to Eir, who had taken several more trays of pastries from the ovens and picked up a fragrant crescent to offer to the king. "You will like the poppy roll, goblin king. It's my mother's recipe," she said with a wistful smile, "she used to say that feeding us poppy cakes bought her a few hours of silence as we'd stare at our toes in maudlin absorption. Not that it ever happened, I think baking kills the poppy juice's powers."
"Thank you, Eir. Do not worry about some poppy rendering me incapable, however much you might enjoy the sight, " he said with his mouth full. "But tell me, if you so crave solitude, is not your companion Ankimo a hindrance in finding it?"
"Ankimo is my very shadow, goblin king, as I am his. He has his own silence, and he makes no demands on me, nor I on him, but our presence in each others life. He is my friend, and he needs nothing from me but what I need from him."
"And what is that, lady?"
"Acceptance for what we are without judgment or demands, love without expectations or jealousy, care and companionship in a terrifying and unpredictable life, what all creatures want. We none of us know what the future holds, what mistakes we may make, but we know that someone holds our back and trusts us."
The poppy cake like ash in his mouth suddenly, Jareth managed to swallow it still and keep talking about inconsequential topics, his mind reeling. The dwarf woman's words had cut him where he had thought no pain was possible.
Never in his life had there been companionship like Eir talked about, for how could it be? The women whom he had loved and who had loved him had shared his life, his bed, his worldly power, but always there had been expectations and judgments, and never had they trusted to hold each others back no matter what. Discontent with life at his parents' court or any other, and without a place to feel at ease he had taken to wandering as a young man, never belonging until he happened upon the labyrinth, being made whole in the binding. His was a content life, full of challenges, of joy and pleasure, of belonging, but he had never known the love between equals that Eir talked about. The labyrinth was part of him as he was part of it, and he had bound himself inextricably and irrevocably, fully willing to sacrifice himself in this life and any other to protect the being that had chosen him. Love was much too small a concept to describe the goblin king's connection with the labyrinth, but they were not equals, for what was a fae compared to a creature as near limitless as the labyrinth? And while Jareth loved fiercely and deeply, willing to sacrifice for friends or kin, their love in his mind was always cautioned by the fact that none of them could afford to have him as their enemy. He could not even imagine love without demands, for how could you not desire and need something from the one you loved? Yet he had to believe that the dwarf trader had happened upon this with the Hundun, for what other love could there be between them?
With a determined effort the goblin king tried to shake off the sudden feeling of violent envy he felt towards Eir, and while he knew that the astute trader could tell the change in his demeanor, she was too kind to press him, and he fled the kitchen as soon as he could.
Sarah pushed her way through the throng of people in jeweler's row near the castle, Eek on her shoulder and Nehorai like a shadow a step behind her. When the shedim had suggested, early in his unexpected career as her sworn guard, that it might a better idea for him to clear the goblin queen's way, she had sweetly pointed out that it made a lot more sense for him to protect her back since she hadn't yet mastered the fine art of noticing what was going on in her wake. After all, people made space for her immediately, once they realized whom they were hustling. The problem was that they usually only found out after they had spend some energy backing into her and cursing her out before lifting their eyes to her face. Sarah did not mind, and found her peoples' reaction rather amusing, but she wondered how it was that such never happened to the goblin king. She had accompanied him to the old market hall for court day, with people thick in the streets, all heading the same way, but nobody ever cut him off or jostled him. It was as if they had a sixth sense to his presence, and they were as reverential as could be. Sarah grinned. People tended to notice her only when she stepped on them, and then were more likely to invite her to join them for food or drink or whatever they could think of than show her reverence, treating her like a beloved grandmother instead of a remote queen.
As she was admiring a lovely set of thick golden hoops in a small shop, doing her best to discourage the owner trying to give the earrings to her while she kept a wary eye on Eek, who was moving around a tad too casually among the glittering jewelry, a sudden commotion stopped the crowd a block back, a woman's scream rising over the murmur, and people curiously pushed back towards the screaming. Sarah looked at Nehorai and as one they moved away from the clamor, as Sarah had no desire to be caught up in one of the many thefts so common in the markets, not caring to be asked for summary judgment on the thief. Yet before they had gone further than a couple of yards, Eek stopped the goblin queen by pulling hard on the skirt of her dress.
"Is a dead child, Sarra, odei girl not even ten. She look asleep, but her mother scream."
Sarah paled, but determinedly turned to the impenetrable mass of curious onlookers in the narrow alley to push her way through to heart of the crowd. To her immediately forgotten surprise the press of people receded as she walked up, even though she came up on them from the behind, and a path opened before her, the incessant hum of the crowd dying down as the queen passed. Within a minute the goblin queen arrived at the stall of the odei goldsmith, the screams of the desperate woman cradling the body of a motionless child echoing eerily through the inexplicably silent alley. Sarah looked at the woman with pain and pity, the goldsmith might have been beautiful but her pain and terror obliterated all else as she shrieked in disbelieving grief at the motionless figure in her arms. Sarah had never seen any of those who had died of the strange new disease that haunted the goblin city before, but when she looked at the dead child in the arms of her desperate mother, she knew with a sick feeling of dread in her stomach that she had been right - blood-sworn were being killed in the heart of the goblin kingdom without anyone knowing, not even the labyrinth itself.
Sarah walked up to the half-mad odei who threw herself at feet of the goblin queen, clutching the dead body of her child in her arms, and the wild-eyed woman wailed like a animal, begging the queen to save her child, she would give and do anything at all, just make her whole, please, take my life but bring my daughter back my lady, oh please, and Sarah kneeled before the disbelieving woman and gathered the heaving slight body of the odei clutching the child in a tight embrace, until the begging died down and turned to hopeless wails and tears, and the goblin queen pushed down her involuntary revulsion to give what comfort she could to the despairing mother.
At length Sarah stood up, her heart as cold as stone, and she gently talked to the numb odei clutching her child until the woman looked at up her, her face wet and distorted, and hesitantly offered her dead child to the hands of the goblin queen. Sarah kept her face well under control and refused to allow herself to drop the lifeless body of the child to the ground, but held the slight body of the little girl close to her, barely feeling the weight of the little body. The crowd in the street parted quietly before their queen with the dead child cradled in her arms, walking towards the castle with a face as pale as snow. The queen's goblin walked before her, looking more dangerous than he ever had, as terrifying as Sed and as willing to do harm to anyone crossing his queen, and the queen's shadow even more terrifying than usual behind her, emanating a constant sibilant hiss raising the hackles on everyone who heard him. The broken mother of the dead girl followed numbly, looking lost and barely rational.
As Sarah walked through the gates of the castle, she roughly inquired of the guards about the goblin kings whereabouts, and with one look at his queen's face one of the goblins turned on his heel and led the way. Sarah ordered the other one to call together the war councilors immediately, to meet in the king's presence.
Her guide stopped before the door of a reception room, guarded by fae sentries that had accompanied the small group of delegates from Matagamon, which were now cloistered in an audience with the goblin king. When one of the sentries tried to block Sarah's way, she carelessly pushed him out of the way with but a word of power. As the others tried to reach for their weapons to stop the human woman they considered no more than a worthless plaything of a perverted king, they froze in their tracks as they found themselves surrounded by unnumbered furious goblins with weapons drawn, talons and claws extended, eyes whirling, happy to tear to pieces any who offered violence to their queen.
Sarah looked at the men with eyes as cold as death, her voice rough and low, its raw power sending shivers of terror through the wide-eyed fae. "I would advise you to keep your weapons in their sheaths if you care to see the sun rise again. Not that I give a damn one way or the other. Now get out of my way." The fae warriors stumbled over each other in their hurried attempt to clear her way, and without another glance at them the goblin queen passed through the doors that opened to her on their own.
The small group of men in the center of the room looked up in surprise, and the fae from Matagamon sneered at the woman with the small body in her arms. Jareth's face hardened as he beheld the grim little procession, all his senses heightened, and he gathered his power to him. Sarah paid none of them any attention and cleared the table with a burst of magic, paper scattered over the floors as she gently lowered the body of the child on the gleaming wood of the table, the sobs of the child's mother the only sound that filled the air for a moment.
With a nasty jeer on his face, one of the Matagan lords walked over to the table to look at the pitiful little body. "We are talking about important issues, ... majesty. So, a dead odei, enough of those around. Why don't you take that thing where it belongs and leave us to our work?"
Before any of the others could even blink, the body of the hapless man was thrown with tremendous force against the wall, where he hung suspended several yards above the ground with blood seeping out of his nose and mouth, his pain-racked face slowly turning purple as he tried to desperately draw a breath.
The queen's low voice cut into the very minds of all in the room, and the sheer power emanating from the quiet human woman pressed hard on the disbelieving fae who suddenly found it difficult to breathe as her overwhelming magic encircled them.
"This child was one of mine, fae. I would have moved the sky for her, I would have turned time for her. Yet she is dead. I do not care for any of your lives, and if you insist on insulting what's mine, I will happily take it from you." Sarah was white as the paper strewn on the ground, her eyes huge in her sharp face, black as coals. With a cruel smile she watched a drop of blood fall from the man hanging against the wall, and no pity marred her cold features as he whimpered.
Jareth regarded Sarah with admiration in his face and walked to her side, facing the stunned delegation from Matagamon. They felt the room closing in on them even more as the hitherto cloaked power of the goblin king and the goblin queen engulfed the senses of them.
Jareth turned to Sarah and gently touched her frozen face, catching one of the tears running down her cold cheeks unheeded. "Leave him be, my queen, for he is not worth soiling your hands."
Sarah blinked a few times and finally looked straight into Jareth's eyes. She saw her own fury mirrored there, and the pain and pity she felt, and most unexpectedly an unquestioning acceptance of whatever she might do. It sent her thoughts into a spin, and she felt the desperate anger that had sustained her seep away. With a careless gesture her stranglehold on the fae loosened, and the man fell to the ground with a resounding thud, weakly coughing and painfully drawing in a breath.
Jareth looked at the hurt man without pity. "Forever in the goblin kingdom you are herem, Askuwheteau of the Okwáho. You have insulted my queen and my people, and this I will not forgive. If you are found within the borders of our demesne by daybreak tomorrow, you will be killed, your body will be destroyed, and the spot you died on will be sown with salt."
He turned to the leader of the Matagamon delegation with an impatient gesture. "Take him away, my lord Hurin, and be assured that I do not utter idle threats."
The goblin king's eyes were hard as flint. "I tire of the threats of a demesne who refuses to offer any assistance yet dares to threaten us should we not fulfill their ludicrous demands based on nothing but pretension."
His smile was predatory, as a cat considers a mouse before the kill. "Take these words home to your ruling council, lord Hurin. If Matagamon turns against the goblin kingdom in any way, you better start a successful breeding program among your people, for never again will a child from the above find new parents among the fae of your demesne. Decide to throw in your lot with the man without a name, and you will learn that there is a steep price to pay when you finally loose."
The Matagan fae looked at the rulers of the goblin kingdom with white, shocked faces, for fae never let negotiations move to a position where there was no way out, and always in the past had the goblin king joined in the intricate dance of diplomacy they were familiar with.
Jareth looked at them with cool arrogance and pulled back the sleeve of his shirt. A cut opened on his arm and his blood dripped to the ground. "My subjects matter more to me than any of you and yours, my lords. I swear on my blood that I will give no children to the fae of Matagamon to make their own, if the ruling council decides to give any kind of aid to the man without a name or if you advance, by commission and omission both, any threat or attack on the goblin kingdom."
Sarah stood next to the goblin king and held out her arm, and from the slash that appeared her dripping blood mingled with the king's on the floor. "I swear on my blood that the goblin queen will honor the king's oath now and forever, and the fae of Matagamon will dwindle into the oblivion of their choice if so they decide."
As the wounds on their arms healed with barely a flicker of their lids, movement in the puddle of blood on the tiled floor caught the attention of the disbelieving fae, and for a moment they beheld the slender elegant form of a blood-red salamander before the newly-minted creature vanished with quicksilver speed in the crackling embers of the fireplace.
"You may leave now," and with dismissive finality the goblin king turned away from the Matagan fae and walked to the dead child on the table, the queen close by his side.
As the doors closed, Jareth and Sarah turned to the councilors who had quietly arrived in the reception room as the ultimatum unfolded. 'Lo lani and Ikiaq stood white-faced by the dead child and did their best to comfort the mother. Sarah gently touched the numb woman's shoulder and looked at Ikiaq: "Please, Ikiaq, could you assist the lady Uluwehi in the search for the father of Nai'a? She will take you to him, and I want you to help them prepare Nai'a for her funeral." The odei's shoulders shook, but she held on gratefully to Ikiaq's warm grip. With a quick smile to the queen and an inclination of her head, Ikiaq lead the crying woman out of the deathly silent room.
Tiernan walked up to the queen and spoke to her urgently: "My lady Sarah, I heard the commotion in the markets on my daily route through town, but I could not make hand nor foot of the gossip. Are you well, lady?"
Sarah looked at him with a remote expression in her face. "I am well, Lord Tiernan, thank you for your concern. But I must ask you to leave us now."
The commander of the goblin army looked at her with a hurt and confused expression on his face. "But lady Sarah, if this is an attack I need to prepare the army."
"This is a matter for the oathbound, my lord, which you are not. Forgive me, Lord Tiernan, but until you swear a blood oath there are things that are not for your ears."
Tiernan bit back a remark and gave the queen a brisk, insulted bow, then turned on his heel and left the room without a backwards glance, his back ramrod straight.
As Sarah looked up, she saw the goblin king rub the bridge of his nose with his fingers as he always did under pressure. "It seems to me that this is another case of the terrible disease that has been wreaking havoc in the city. Sarah, there are no signs of any magic attack on the child, whatever killed her was not a spell, I am sure of this. What is it that you see, my lady, that none of us can?"
He looked at her in confusion, and Sarah could tell that he did not know what she perceived. A look in the faces of the councilors convinced the goblin queen that they did neither.
Nehorai laid a comforting hand on Sarah's shoulder. "Magic is the essence surrounding all creatures of the underground, Sarah, and we cannot see it as it is at the core of all we are. None but the Shedim ever control magic on the level of creation itself, and even I can only see the barest shadow of what is so obvious to you. You need to show their hearts what their eyes cannot see."
Sarah turned back and looked at the goblin king who had not heard any of the words Nehorai had spoken under the spell of silence. "Nehorai can see it, but you cannot, goblin king? 'Lo lani, the child is odei, can you not see the difference?" The odei shook her head helplessly.
Sarah took a deep breath and tried to put into words what she had never even thought about before. "There is a glow to all that is, sentient creatures, animals, plants, even inanimate matter has it. It is not light, but an inner essence that makes reality look as it does. And this is not only in the Underground, for whenever I am called by a runner to the Above, I can see in all things, weaker but undeniably there. It is a completeness, a trueness to all that exists, even a rock glows with the magic of creation. I never knew this until I saw the child, for this dead body does not have it." The goblin queen looked at the girl and a shudder of revulsion ran through her body. She looked up pleadingly to Jareth and the councilors. "I have seen so many dead, but none like her. There is nothing but pain and loss to a dead body, the one who inhabited it gone to the night, but nothing is terrible about what is left behind." Sarah unconsciously rubbed her hands against her skirts. "There is a void where the child's body is, a tear in the fabric of reality." She swallowed. "I have seen creation in the mists, and before magic congeals into reality, it is unrestrained wild magic, full of that which is part of all that exists. It is gone from this child."
Jareth looked at the dead child, his face white as chalk, and with rising dread he laid his hands on the little body. Sarah could feel him draw on the labyrinth's power through her own mind link, and as she observed the goblin king closely, she was able to grab his arm and hold him upright as he suddenly swayed back on his heels.
He looked at her with horror on his face. "Night, what has happened to this child?" he whispered in a strained voice. Without another word he marched over to a side table and poured two glasses to the rim with brandy. He passed one of them to Sarah and drank down his own in a single gulp. Sarah finished her glass no slower than he did, and the fire burning down her throat and warming her stomach fought back the nausea that had been threatening to overwhelm her since she had first laid eyes on the child.
The lady Sindri put in words what all of the councilors thought. "I cannot see what you see, Sarah, and I am not sure I understand what you meant with your words. But it seems Jareth did."
The goblin king looked at his councilors with undisguised fury, his face sharper, wilder, and more determined than ever. "It is as Sarah described, magic lies at the core of creation, so anything in creation is imbued with magic. The child's body has not a sliver of magic left to it, nothing that made her what she was is left. She was not killed by magic, but by the loss of magic." He stared into the empty glass in his hand and poured himself another drink. "I have never seen with my own eyes what Falin do to those whose existence they destroy beyond the night, but I fear this is what happened to the child. All she was, or ever could be, was wiped out by her killer, and nothing is left that could go on to the other side of night."
The blood drained out of the faces of the horror-struck councilors, and the lady Sindri would have fallen had not Porr caught her in her faint. It took her but a moment to come to, and she gave Porr a grateful smile, but made no attempt to free herself from his arm holding her protectively around the waist, grateful for the comfort of his touch. She was not the only one who instinctively searched out the consolation of touch as the councilors moved closer to each other.
Sindri, still leaning into the chancellor, was the first to speak. "It is worse than I have ever believed it could be. We always knew that those who use heart magic can tear it from their victims if they want to, yet the man without a name has moved beyond all who have come before. Those who hoarded heart magic to the point of murdering victims for their power were stark raving mad by then, and their mistakes were glaring. Yet it does not seem that the man without a name is making mistakes."
The goblin king looked at Sarah with an expression she could not read. "I needed all the Labyrinth's help to get even a glimpse of what has been torn from the child, and I thank the night that I cannot see it by just looking at the girl. But this means I cannot see clearly enough to control it." Guilt, she could see it now, he felt guilty, and she felt fear creep up on her. "Sarah, you need to draw the magic out of the glass in your hand, all of it, and contain it in a crystal. We need to know how much power the man without a name is amassing. Once I understand how much magic this piece of creation contains, I can figure out how powerful he has become with all the lives he has stolen."
She stared at him with wide eyes. "You cannot ask me that," she pleaded hoarsely, "please, it is wrong, you are asking me to destroy creation itself, and I cannot do it," and she did not even realize that tears had begun running down her face again. With a few steps the goblin king stood close to her and talked to her in a soft but urgent voice, his hand holding up her chin so she was forced to look into his eyes. For the first time since Sarah had ever known Jareth, his nearness did not overpower her senses with desire and need, as her instinctive terror of what he asked threatened to overcome her rational mind.
"Sarah, forgive me, but we need to understand the enemy. Goblin queen, you know as well as I do that we have no choice. I swear I would do it myself, but I cannot."
Sarah could hear the despair in his voice as she felt his thumb run along the line of her jaw gently. His mismatched eyes bore into hers with a trust that Sarah did not know she warranted. "It is wrong, Jareth, you know it is. You are asking me to tear a hole into existence itself, destroy creation. How can I do this?"
He gently wiped the unconscious tears from her face. "I will never ask you to destroy life or magic, even if my own life depended on it, but we have been chosen to defend those sworn to us, Sarah. The man without a name walks the streets of the goblin city and kills those we are sworn to protect, my queen. How many of ours will die because we don't know something about him we could have learned? But a glass, my queen, it has never lived or felt, nor ever will. And we will know something more about the man without a name. And the magic will not be lost, Sarah, just taken from an inanimate thing."
I WILL TAKE THE CHILD AND THE GLASS TO THE MISTS, CHOSEN, TO BE REMADE IN THE CAULDRON OF CREATION, AS ALL WHO DIED LIKE THIS CHILD. I WILL FIND THEM ALL WHEREVER THEY ARE BURIED, NOW THAT I KNOW WHAT TO LOOK FOR.
Sarah stood unmoving as the tears rolled down her cheeks, and only her shoulders sagged as she accepted that her duty was to do what was abhorrent. The goblin king stood before her like a supplicant, his hand softly on her shoulder, and for once she drew comfort from his closeness. At last she looked up and sniffed as she determinedly squared her shoulders. Jareth picked a silk kerchief from the air and handed it to the queen, who blew her nose, necessary if most inelegant. Her eyes were red and swollen from crying, her nose was running and her face blotchy, yet the goblin queen commanded admiration as she forced a grin on her face and refilled the glass with brandy, which she emptied in one gulp. "Just to steady my nerves," she said grimly as she concentrated on the empty glass in her hand. Sarah would never know that she stood absolutely still for well over two hours, her eyes boring into the glass she held before her eyes, a crystal held loosely in her other hand. Only Jareth knew her desperate struggle to find a way to strip the very essence from the glass she concentrated her magic on, drawing on all her strength and all the power the labyrinth and the goblin king shared with the queen. Bound tightly to the labyrinth, Jareth could pinpoint the moment when Sarah recognized how to drain the magic off the glass in her hand, and with a sick feeling he saw the glass in her hand loose its actuality, becoming something obscenely glass-like without any of the reality of it. He realized that he never wanted to see anything that had lived like this.
The crystal in the goblin queen's other hand filled up with all the magic that she drew from the glass the had concentrated her magic on, and it began to glow in a warm pulsing light.
"It is done," she said in a dull, lifeless voice, and dropped what had been the glass but now was but a hole in reality from her suddenly nerveless hand. It never reached the ground.
IT IS PART OF THE MISTS NOW TO BE IMBUED WITH MAGIC AGAIN, CHOSEN. IT NEVER LIVED IT NEVER DIED, BUT IT WILL BE PART OF CREATION AGAIN.
And when Sarah crumbled on the spot she stood, Jareth caught her and lifted her into his arms without noticeable effort, carrying her off to his quarters without looking back once, the crystal she had dropped forgotten on the ground until Porr picked it up for safe-keeping. The councilors began to discuss the matters at hand between themselves as soon as they realized that the goblin king was not coming back.
After a time Ikiaq returned to the reception room accompanied by the numb parents of the dead girl, but they left soon with the child in their arms, to prepare her for the funeral.
Before they finished their meeting for the day, Toby turned to Lord Ningyo with a final curious look into the fireplace. "What was the meaning of the red salamander created from their blood, my lord? I have never seen such a thing before." Ningyo and 'Lo lani exchanged a quick look, then the lord from the sea turned back to the young fae. "Nobody has, Tobias, for such has never happened before. If the magic of a fae is very strong, it has been known that soaking the earth with their blood may cause a plant to grow. But never has a living creature been created from the blood of anyone."
'Lo lani spoke up, recalling an old story she had heard as a young girl. "In the cold borderlands a field grows of black nightshade, which are only seen in the warm counties otherwise. A Fian from Annwyn died there in one of the wars of old, and their blood dyed red the field where they were slaughtered," and her face was wistful. "I heard tell that a goblin queen in the past died in Ikh Bogd Uul, the canyon lands on the western reaches, killed in a hunting accident, and they say that a ghost orchid blooms in the crevice where she lay dying."
"When Jareth swore a blood-oath of protection to Makemba, I saw a cobra pitcher grow in the sand where his blood fell to the ground," Toby said quietly.
Ningyo smiled at his lady. "But lord Jareth's and lady Sarah's blood never touched on earth, but pooled on the tiles."
'Lo lani looked at the puddle of blood on the floor. "Salamanders stand for loyalty and courage with many kindreds, but for odei they are a symbol of temptation and desire."
Porr gave a barking laugh. "It seems that a salamander is an apt creation of the king's and queen's blood then," he said tiredly. "We will meet again for the council tomorrow, my friends. Until then I bid you goodbye."
When Sarah slowly fought her way to near wakefulness after her ordeal, she found herself in a beautiful if stark room in a tower, the high walls covered with exquisitely embroidered hangings, open windows on all sides letting in blood red sun-light, and a cool breeze caressed her sleep-heated skin. The bedclothes were soft and silky against her face and arms, and an seductive smell of wood, storm and something she could not identify seemed to draw her back to sleep and dreams.
As she turned her head to sleepily look around, she noticed the slender figure of the goblin king reclining in a deep chair with his long legs pulled up to the bed, awake but deep in thought and oblivious to the fact that she had wakened. In her but half-awake state she was not unduly alarmed and took advantage of the rare chance to observe unnoticed the man who haunted her dreams more than she cared to admit, without distraction or dissimulation.
His face was stark and beautiful, not the impeccable beauty and refined perfection of the fae, but harsher, wilder and more powerful than mere beauty could be. And in repose just now, it was harsher even than usual, narrow and angular with sharp cheekbones and a nose like a knife, but no smile graced his wide, thin-lipped mouth, and Sarah thought if he ever looked at her with the vengeful expression she saw on his features now, she'd probably run as fast as she could without ever turning back.
As her eyes traveled down his body, a slow smile spread on her lips. She did not understand how a man could wear clothes like he did and not look like a complete idiot and poser, and her memory supplied her with the image of several men in her past who had sported open shirts, some with medallions on their chests as well, and she shuddered. Against all odds Jareth managed to make his shirt, open slightly too low, look appealing, not disgusting. It made you wonder how he'd look without that bloody shirt, not want to run away before he came any closer.
As her eyes moved ever lower, she noticed with some disappointment that the most mesmerizing part of his pants was shadowed by the way he sat in his chair, then immediately beat herself up mentally. Really, looking at a man like this, it was a disgrace. And in a woman her age. She ruthlessly suppressed the niggling suspicion that Jareth did not consider age an indicator of appropriateness, on either side of the acceptable scale for humans. But it was simply unacceptable, really, since she could not stand the man. Objectifying him, as it were, she was ashamed of herself. And in the meantime her eyes moved down over his lean legs, long and shapely, and she idly wondered if he had hairy legs, since his chest was as smooth as silk, and she hoped not.
Without ever noticing she stretched languorously like a cat, and her curious gaze moved up his body again slowly, when she suddenly realized that Jareth was returning her interested gaze with a look of unrestrained amusement on his face, and full alertness slammed into her. With a squeak she pulled up the sheets to her chin, which did not help any to cover the violent blush that spread over her face.
"I do hope you like what you see, my dearest Sarah," Jareth's merry voice cut mercilessly through the haze of embarrassment that Sarah desperately hoped would swallow her alive. "To judge by your appreciative smile, I have high hopes of having found approval in your eyes, but should you have missed anything you feel you need to take a second look at, by all means, do not restrain yourself," and with these words he got up easily and stood in front of the bed in his full glory, every inch of him clearly outlined in the rays of the sun coming in through the windows, and he turned slowly before her eyes with arms outstretched. Sarah was caught helplessly on the edge of hysterical laughter and embarrassed tears, and she thought that she never would have believed that such a thing could happen to an adult woman so long out of her teenage years she could not even remember them any longer.
Determinedly she pulled the silk sheets over her head and pulled all the anger she could muster to her. "What the hell are you doing here, goblin king? I thought this was a dream, and you have been spying on me?" she screamed at the now mercifully invisible man through the sheets.
"You dream of me then, my dear? And with such an expression on your face?" Jareth's silky voice caressed her like a lover's touch. "This just keeps getting better and better, Sarah. But for your information, I do not believe it can be called spying to watch a woman who spent the night in my room. And in my bed."
Sarah pulled down the sheet from her head and stared at him. "Night?" She forced her voice to a lower register by sheer willpower. "What the hell have I been doing in your bed all night, you bastard?"
She thought that Jareth's laughter illustrated his terminal lack of delicacy rather well. "To my utmost regret, my sweet lady, nothing but sleep." He sat down in the chair again, leaning into a corner to face her directly. "And you slept the sleep of the innocent, Sarah, undisturbed and alone in a bed that could have easily accommodated both of us without anything untoward happening." He ginned salaciously. "However, I suspected you might overreact when you woke up, so I dragged out the very reluctant gentleman I had buried deep inside of me millennia ago, when I was still idealistic, and had him sleep on the chair this night."
Sarah suddenly was hit with doubt as to what might have happened to her clothes and tried to figure out as unobtrusively as possible what she actually still wore.
Her inspection was interrupted by what she judged Jareth's unacceptably coarse laughter. "Do not worry, Sarah, you will find that you are still dressed in your shift. I have taken the liberty of removing your overdress and your boots, but I decided that the risk of dismemberment far outweighed any discomfort you might experience by sleeping still mostly dressed", he observed her embarrassment with obvious amusement.
For a moment Sarah sat quietly seething on the bed with the sheets around her waist and clenched her fists, forcing her breathing to slow down and calm. Night, she was no blushing virgin, so what was wrong with her? Had she been in Jareth's shoes, she would have taunted him as mercilessly, she knew, and really, had his actions not been a kindness?
She determinedly ignored the goblin king quietly starting to sing a spectacularly suggestive song she had taught him in the kitchens as Eir, and when he reached the second verse she had calmed down enough to open her eyes and harmonize with him on the song. Jareth looked at her with raised eyebrows, and without missing a beat broke merrily into the even more suggestive chorus, and together they finished the song in immaculate harmony. She flashed him a wide grin. "I am not much of a morning person, as you may have noticed, goblin king. You caught me by surprise, which is not a good idea at the best of times. And it definitely isn't when I am barely awake."
"I shall do my best to remember this for future reference, my dearest Sarah."
"Don't bother, goblin king, there is no need to retain a bit of information you will never have the need to use again, now is there?"
He looked at her with a smile on his face the could not read. "We shall see, my dear, shall we not?"
For a moment Sarah considered just giving up on being a mature adult and really letting him have an earful, but the thought that this was probably what he was fishing for gave her strength and kept a smile on her face, if somewhat strained. "Well, enough of this chitchat, time I got some breakfast." Sarah thought that she was going to have a shower sometime later today, as there was no way she would take her clothes off anywhere in his vicinity, but she had spied her clothes on a chest under a window, and knowing her shift to be as modest as could be, she got up.
Jareth leaned back in his chair, such a pity that she had not answered back, although she had been on the verge of blowing up on him again, he could tell. Well, one thing he could be sure of, his queen would not be able to keep her temper in check when he set his mind to it, and his canines showed in a lopsided smile as he looked at her.
Now, Sarah stretching under the silken sheets in his bed had been a breathtaking sight to behold, and the sensual smile on her face as she had looked him over, unaware of being observed, was all a man could wish for, but he was hard-pressed whether she was not even more seductive now. Safe in her sensible linen shift, his queen was utterly unaware that standing against the early-morning light she gave him a perfect view of her curvaceous body silhouetted against the light, and as she tried to put on her boots while jumping around on one foot, muttering low curses, she cut a more seductive figure than Jareth had seen for longer than he could remember. All fae ladies were tall and willowy, and none of them was ever anything but beautiful, graceful, elegant, and, dared he admit it, insipid in her perfection. And not one of them had ever called him a bastard. He looked at Sarah sitting on the floor now, the hem of her shift hitched up to her thighs as she tried to pull the boots over her naked feet by sheer force of ill will, her short curls tangled and her whole attention riveted on the uncooperative footwear, and he told himself sternly he better get control of his arousal if he wanted to get up when Sarah finally was dressed.
When she had finally managed to put on her boots and donned her overdress, Sarah was ravenous and followed Jareth into small sunny room adjacent to his bedroom, where Ikiaq was just emptying an enormous tray of food onto a table. When Sarah walked in, she found herself immediately admonished by the castellaine to sit down and eat, and for the next five minutes, while both the goblin king and the goblin queen made some serious headway of the many dishes that graced the table, Ikiaq gave both of them a stern sermon on the dangers of rash actions and unintended consequences. It didn't make all that much sense to Sarah, but she understood well that Ikiaq had been worried about her and needed to vent, and she smiled at her guiltily.
"Now, lady Sarah, do you see the tower over there?" and Ikiaq pointed out of the window. Sarah looked and was about to patiently agree with whatever Ikiaq said, when she stopped and stared out of the window again, Jareth obviously as surprised as she was. The castle had but one tower, she was sure of that, the one that held the king's rooms. Ikiaq looked at them with forbearance. "It grew up overnight, lady Sarah, and it contains the queen's rooms. I have worked with Eek, Nehorai, and Sindri, and we have already brought your clothes and personal items to your new quarters, my lady. Your rooms are waiting for you, lady Sarah," and Ikiaq bowed to the queen and quickly left the room before Sarah had a chance to gather her thoughts.
"But I don't want to move," Sarah called after the castellaine indignantly, but the closed door gave no indication of caring much.
"I am quite in agreement with you there, Sarah, I don't think you should move either." Sarah looked at Jareth with narrowed eyes. "I cannot tell you how long I have looked for the final piece that would render my rooms perfect, and I after seeing you in my bed, I have no doubt that I have found it." He looked at her with glittering eyes. "Although I feel you would complement my decor even better without your shift. And the bedclothes, of course. I believe we should test this out to see if I am right."
Sarah tried her best to hold on to indignation, but she found she could not keep it up in view of his saucy grin. "You, goblin king, are incorrigible, and you know exactly that this is not what I talked about."
"But I am a master in changing topics to suit my desires, as well you know, Sarah, so why don't we continue with the subtle changes I introduced? I am sure it would be a highly edifying conversation," and he laughed at her when she began to lay into him with considerable passion.
"You may as well give in gracefully, Sarah," he said a good while later when Sarah finished off her larak, offering him a chance to change the topic again. "I understand that you would prefer to go back to your own rooms, but since the labyrinth grew your new quarters - and please, let me assure you I had nothing to do with this - I doubt that you have all that much of a choice. As you have mentioned in the past, when the labyrinth has decided on something, it is nearly impossible to change its mind."
Sarah looked mutinously into her mug, then heaved a deep sigh. "I am afraid you are right, goblin king. It has hung around you for too long, that has obviously been rubbing off. I probably should consider myself lucky that I at least warrant my own tower." She grinned. "I bet the labyrinth did not want to add another floor to your tower, goblin king. Just imagine the endless fighting on who gets the highest floor!"
"Obviously I would. After all, I precede you, Sarah." Jareth serenely ignored her protestations.
"But what I would really like to know is why you persist in calling me 'goblin king', my dearest Sarah, as you are well aware of my name by now."
"Sheerest self-protection," Sarah answered promptly, wiping the grin off his face rather effectively. He had not expected this answer. "You are an insufferable, arrogant, conceited, overbearing bastard. Oh, and manipulative."
"Let's not forget beautiful, seductive, charming and brilliant," he said unperturbed.
"Well, of course. And modest. But be this as it may, I find it much easier to point out the errors of your ways when I address you by your title, goblin king. The only way I can stay sane around you is addressing you honestly. Calling you by your name might make this more difficult, since being honest with you and insulting you, well, it's pretty much the same. You see my dilemma." She smiled sweetly. "And I was brought up right, goblin king, so I could never presume to address an old man like you by his first name. It's just not done."
"You did call me by my name yesterday, Sarah," he said quietly, and Sarah looked up sharply to see him study her face with an unreadable expression.
"You may have noticed that I was not exactly at my sanest or most coherent yesterday, goblin king," she said with as much finality in her voice as she could muster. "I do not recall all that I said, and I feel I should be glad of this. Let us leave it at that." The smile on her face was polite and strained.
"I should take a look at my new quarters now, to make sure that my things have indeed all been brought here." Sarah was on the verge of leaving without a further word, but she knew that Jareth deserved to know. Even if she had not planned on telling him like this. "Not that I will be using them for long, goblin king." She did not look into his face. "I have been in the city for nearly eight months now, and I while I am still a long way from being real fighter or mage, I can hold my own for long enough to survive until the cavalry arrives. I am tired of all the people, of the never-ending demands, of the endless noise and bustle. I cannot hear myself think any more, goblin king. I need to feel the labyrinth in my mind again." Sarah's face softened as she thought of the places she would see. "I long for the quiet of the Queen's Palisades, and I have never even seen the canyons of Ikh Bogd Uul." She looked at Jareth with regret in her eyes. "I have truly enjoyed my time in the city, and I hope that you may find time to teach me again when I come back, goblin king, but I have had as much of the court as I can bear." Her smile was rueful. "I am not made for ruling, goblin king, and when I am here for too long, I am torn in too many directions until I forget who I am."
"There is no need to apologize, Sarah. You had made it very clear from the beginning that your stay was going to be a very limited one, and let me congratulate you for all you have achieved in your months here. Do not underestimate yourself, Sarah, for your skills in magic are quite considerable already," and even though Jareth's tone was easy and understanding, she heard the sound of an invisible door slamming shut in her face, and found herself looking at the charming and carefree goblin king she had known before she began her training in the goblin city, the beautiful goblin king who could not be trusted, who cared for aught but what he wanted; and she could not detect a trace of the man she had come to like in the months since, who had worked hard to help her when there was no benefit for him. Helplessly, Sarah bid him a polite goodbye and went to inspect her new quarters, and when she got weepy and despondent later in the morning, she knew it was but an after-effect of the heartbreaking events of the day before.
Sarah woke up dazedly, was it time to leave already? Yet only soft moonlight lit the night outside her window, sunrise still hours away, and she did not understand the terror in her heart. The last few days had been hectic, as she needed to finish all she had to in the city before she'd be able to get back on the road again, but now they were ready and their few belongings were packed. By all appearances, the trader Eir had left town three days ago, and she had boarded Lazarus and her caravan at Sulio's mill for a fee, so she and Nehorai would soon be back on the road in their caravan, in their familiar guises of dwarf and Hundun. In a few hours they would leave the queen's quarters through the door in her library which opened to her little house in the lower city, a thoughtful touch in her new quarters in the castle that Sarah sincerely appreciated, and life would be back to normal. Now she just needed to get back to sleep.
Yet her unease grew stronger and stronger, and after some more tossing and turning Sarah gave up and clambered out of bed. It was a not a cold night, but her thin silk chemise was more ornamental than practical, and she grabbed a robe from one of the wardrobes. It was not noticeably more substantial, but not everything is at it seems, and despite its lightness the robe was much warmer than its looks suggested. And still her anxiety grew.
I CANNOT HELP HIM, CHOSEN, THE PAIN IS EVER WORSE, BEYOND MY POWERS TO HEAL. I DO NOT KNOW WHAT AILS HIM BUT HE CANNOT BEAR MUCH MORE. HE CANNOT DIE, CHOSEN, I CANNOT BE WITHOUT HIM.
The mind voice of the labyrinth cut her to the bone, and the terror that threatened to overwhelm her had her on her feet and running towards Jareth's quarters before she even had time to gather her thoughts.
The goblin king's bedroom was lit brightly despite the early hours, and through the open door the worried voices of Ikiaq and the healer Hina'ea carried into the ante-rooms. When Sarah burst through the door, she was stuck by how ordinary the scene seemed. Jareth sat in a chair, and on first glance there seemed nothing wrong with him. Sed stood like a statue behind the chair and Etain's head rested on his thighs, and Ikiaq and Hina'ea talked in low voices at the bed. Yet as Sarah came closer to Jareth, she was appalled how unwell he looked. He wore nothing but breeches, and despite everything Sarah couldn't help but catch her breath when she looked at his half-clad body, he was the most seductive man she had ever known. He was however paler than she had ever seen him, his skin as colorless as to be near translucent, his eyes blood-shoot and deep-set in his peaked face, with bruised-looking shadows under his eyes and white lips so tight as to be practically invisible he looked like his own death-mask.
Jareth looked up as she came up to him and still managed a suggestive smile: "I knew it, Sarah, you would not be able to stay away from me. I have this effect on women, or so I am told. And let me tell you, my dear, these barely-there robes are most certainly an improvement over your usual clothes. You should visit me in the middle of the night more often."
Sarah managed to answer him lightly, but it was hard. "By the look of you, goblin king, there is not a lot you could do with anyone in your present state, so I must take your ramblings as delirium."
By then Ikiaq and Hina'ea had come over and looked at her anxiously. Sarah was able to extract the bare bones of information from Ikiaq, it seemed that some two hours ago Sed had woken the castellaine to inform her that the king was suffering from terrible headaches, and despite his insistence that it was nothing to worry about, Sed had decided that his master's inability to heal himself most certainly qualified as an emergency. When Ikiaq's attempts at healing magic failed, she had called Hina'ea to the king's quarters, but the odei healer had not been able to bring him relief either. Jareth was resolutely downplaying his pain, but Sarah knew that if the labyrinth was half-mad with worry, his pain had to be far worse than he let on. She was awed how well he had himself under control, still courteous and his voice even, for she knew that in his situation she probably would have been screaming at anyone even looking at her.
"You know I was a healer in the Above, goblin king, and our healing does not have the advantage of magic, so we go about it differently. So please, answer my questions as best you can and I see if I can find out anything."
"You were a horse doctor, were you not, Sarah? I am not sure how this will be much help to me."
Sarah grinned crookedly. "Well, you are a stubborn ass, so my background might come in handy, who knows? What do you have to loose? And if it helps, I could loosen my robe a bit, it might distract you?"
Sarah could barely believe it, but Jareth actually managed a leer. "That sounds like an excellent trade, and I am willing to answer your questions if you do what your said. And I want it a lot more loose than you had in mind originally, Sarah."
Sarah had Sed help the king get into his bed and opened her robe as she sat down on the edge. "You keep your promises, lady," he said with a slight grimace.
"Your turn now, goblin king. Fever?" Hina'ea shook her head. "You are completely lucid and quite yourself, goblin king, and you obliviously don't have a problem with the light and noise here. Can you put your chin on your chest?" Jareth had no difficulty with this. Sarah worked her way through the symptoms of all diseases she knew could cause severe headaches, but impossible as it seemed, headaches were the only thing Jareth suffered from.
"If 0 is no pain at all, and 10 is the worst pain you have ever felt in all your days, goblin king, how bad is this?"
Sarah thought he might not answer, but finally he said so quietly only she could hear, "Thirteen, perhaps fourteen, my lady. And it is getting worse."
Sarah looked at him in sudden shock. "We will find a way to help you, goblin king."
She went over to the healer and began a quiet discussion with her, but it was as if something was itching at the back of her mind, and she found she could not concentrate. She excused herself and went back to sit down on the bed at Jareth's side. "There is something trying to come up in my memory. Sometimes silence helps. Do you mind if I just sit here?"
"I'd be glad for you company, and at present I would welcome silence. Especially since I still can look at you in all your glory. Even headaches can not distract me from your beauty, Sarah."
Sarah blushed deeply down the throat to her décolleté, and with interest Jareth observed that the myth that a woman would blush on all her visible skin was seemingly not a myth at all. He could not help wonder if she would blush all over in the nude. An interesting thought to keep the pain at bay for a while longer.
Sarah sat quietly next to Jareth and let her mind go blank, but even so she noticed that he seemed to be getting more pinched all the time. Finally the elusive memory wiggled its way into her consciousness. She got up abruptly and looked down at Jareth with a grim smile. "I will be back shortly, goblin king. I need to see if my memory serves me right."
When the goblin queen came back half an hour later, the goblin king's room was a lot more crowded than it had been before she had left. Not only was Tiernan pacing restlessly from one end of the room to the other, but Porr and Sindri were standing at Jareth's bed, looking worried. Sarah noticed that neither of them seemed to have spent much time getting dressed, and with rising amusement she realized that while Porr wore some comfortable clothes, as a man might wear in his rooms, Sindri's dress was the same formal gown she had worn in court during the afternoon the day before. She pushed the thought aside and walked up to the goblin king's bed. As she looked down, she forgot the presence of all the others in the room.
"I have some bad news, goblin king," Sarah addressed the pale man on the bed with her best careless grin.
"You put fear in my heart, my lady," Jareth looked up at her, attempting a smile, but it looked more like a grimace.
"It is my most unpleasant duty to inform you that you will live, Jareth," Sarah sat down on the bed next to the goblin king and leaned forward to him. "You have been poisoned, but I understand that the antidote effects an absolute reversal of all symptoms, and you will not suffer any ill effects from this unpleasant episode. But really, Jareth, I feel I should kill you myself for scaring me as you did. Being a stoic hero just made sure that you suffered in noble silence a few hours more than necessary. Well played indeed, Jareth." Sarah looked down at him with a slow sensual smile on her lips and put her hand on his chest.
They had never touched but their hands enclosed in leather gloves, and Sarah had not known what to expect, which was just as well as she might not have had the courage to do it again otherwise. She had ignored the presence of the others in the goblin king's room when she had entered, but now the knowledge of any existence but his left her head completely.
His skin burned like frozen fire under her hand, and Sarah suddenly knew what it had to be like to touch a life wire. Every hair on her body stood on end, and every inch of her skin was burning with a painful need for his touch. Sarah was scarce able to contain the need to run her hand over his skin, drawn by the desperate compulsion to touch all of him. Her breath caught in her chest, and her heart beat in a hard rhythm of desire that would drive her to madness if unanswered. Her world shrunk to the awareness of him, and she knew only the heat of his body, and her need to be closer to him. Her eyes wide and black as night, she looked into Jareth's eyes and saw her own hunger and desire mirrored in the depths of the goblin king's eyes, his pain pushed to oblivion in the burning touch of her naked hand on his chest. Sarah felt his heart beat in an urgent beat of desire that matched her own. No coherent thought left in her mind, she lowered her head towards Jareth, and then his hand was at the back of her head and drew her down in a hard kiss, his lips like scented silk, searing her mouth with their touch, and she felt his mouth move against hers, demanding and urgent, driving all but a primal need for his closeness from her, the heat of his breath, the wild scent of him, and she knew his smile against her mouth, and when his tongue touched her lip, Sarah ... stopped.
She sat up breathing hard, shaking all over, and her hand contracted on Jareth's chest, her nails pushing into his flesh, and it took several minutes until she realized that all eyes in the room were riveted on her and the immobile figure of the goblin king, a cacophony of voices around her. She realized that Tiernan was given her an odd look she could not fathom, as if he had never seen her before.
The goblin queen stood up and shook her head, and the commotion in the king's room died down. Tiernan walked up close and spoke in a voice rough with emotion. "What ... what happened, lady Sarah? What do you mean he was poisoned? He lies there like dead, what happened to my brother?"
Sarah stepped back from him, she could understand his agitation yet she did not care for anyone to be so close to her just now. "He was poisoned with Dragon-arum." The silence was only broken by the shocked intake of breath from Ikiaq and Sindri, and Sarah smiled. Ikiaq knew all there was to know about herb-lore, so it was not surprising that she would have heard the name, but Sindri's knowledge was deepest about the past, as she was a scholar of history. It would seem that Dragon-arum had an infamous name in the annals of politics. "Dragon-arum is a rare poison mainly known to dwarves, and it kills its victims by unbearable pain. However, as I told the goblin king, if the patient receives the antidote within twelve hours, he will recover fully."
With these words Sarah looked at the still figure of the goblin king on the bed, and with a wry smile she turned her hand, and a crystal rolled to her palm from nowhere. She threw the crystal at Jareth, and it dissolved in a glowing orb around the goblin king's prone form, enveloping him in a shimmering globe of light. With another gesture the brilliant globe shrunk to an equally brilliant crystal, smaller than her palm, and it came back to Sarah's hand like a falcon to its master.
"The problem is the antidote needs to be fresh, and it takes near two day to brew. Not to mention the fact that it calls for rather esoteric ingredients, several of which cannot be found in the goblin kingdom." With these words she walked to the chair and sat down heavily. "I have stopped time for him, and like a fly in amber he will remain exactly seven hours after he was poisoned, until we have the antidote." And with a smile and a flick of her wrist the crystal in her hand was gone.
"Dwarf poison? What do the dwarves have to do with this?" Tiernan was furious, his agitation looking for an outlet, and his voice took on a threatening ring. Really, men could be so aggravating. Sarah thought tiredly that the next step would be banging on his chest.
"The dwarves were the first to ever use Dragon-arum, lord Tiernan, and they kept its secret for countless great years, but of course it eventually was used by other kindreds." Sarah glanced at Tiernan's stubborn face and went on pointedly. "Fae have been especially enamored by this poison. I hear that Lleu of Ardar Iforas has hugely increased his personal wealth lately, as unhappily many of his fae courtiers died screaming in agony." Tiernan had the grace to look embarrassed, but Sarah was taking no risks. "I will not take kindly to hear anyone malign any kindred within the goblin kingdom. Have I made myself clear?"
Ikiaq's face was set in fury. "Who poisoned Jareth, lady Sarah?"
"The dwarf woman Bergljot put the poison in some dishes he had for dinner. She has come to the city but a few years ago, the last of the dwarves to escape from Tahat. She choose to work as a cook in the kitchens, and she is well trusted and beloved among the servants. And if she did not swear a bloodoath, who could blame her? After Lleu many dwarves have found it difficult to trust a fae lord."
Ikiaq had flinched when she heard Bergljot's name, the quiet pastry chef had seemed as reliable as the earth itself, but her protectiveness of her milk-son won out over her good sense, and without another word both she and Tiernan were halfway to the door before Sarah's voice stopped them.
"If you are looking for Bergljot, she is here," and everyone in the room stared at the two crystals the goblin queen held in her hand. "I don't know what made her do as she did, but when I went to her rooms she was in much worse shape than the goblin king, as she herself had taken the poison hours earlier. She seemed content to die in pain."
Sarah lifted the crystals to her eyes, the light in one much dimmer and paler than in the other. "She did not have the antidote, but that was all she would tell me." Sarah looked at the globe with a cold face. "But we will know all there is to know at her trial, won't we? I am sure between Jareth and me we will get to the truth." And with these words the globes grew translucent in her hands until they were gone.
"Lady Sarah," Tiernan looked respectful but determined. "Please forgive me my inexcusable lack of manners earlier, living through a shock is no excuse to loose control. But we have not time to loose, lady, as an unknown enemy has attacked the goblin kingdom and its sovereign. The war council must meet and decide on what needs to be done, and soon. The news of Jareth's fate cannot be kept silent, and we need to prepare for unrest. This may be the time the enemy has chosen to attack the demesne." He turned to chancellor Porr and bowed deeply. "You have been Jareth's right hand for many great years, lord Porr, you must know that there is no time to loose."
"You are right, lord Tiernan," Porr said with a worried face to the tall fae lord. "Your majesty, what do you want us to do next? I fear lord Tiernan's appraisal may be correct."
Tiernan gave the chancellor a surprised look. "This is ridiculous. I know that you are called goblin queen, lady Sarah, but you are but human, and young. You have never ruled, nor shown any inclination to learn as far I can make out," he said without hesitation.
Sarah smiled. Tiernan reminded her strongly of his brother just then, he was not afraid to say what was on his mind, and he was as convinced that he was right as Jareth had ever been. It had to be a family thing.
"I do not doubt your strength and intelligence, lady Sarah, but there are no kindreds in the underground that will accept the rule of a human. And what do you know of being ruler of a kingdom?"
Sarah still said nothing, but kept her seat in the chair next to Jareth's bed, hair tousled, her robe now loosely closed over her chemise and her feet tucked under, and Eek had found his way onto her shoulder. She had rarely looked less regal. And then Sed, the king's goblin, walked up to the queen and kneeled before her, followed in seconds by the goblins who made up the king's personal guard. Without hesitation Porr and Sindri followed the goblins' obeisance, as did Ikiaq and Hina'ea, and Tiernan stood alone in the room, his face unbelieving.
"My people will follow me, Lord Tiernan, for I am the goblin queen." Sarah looked in his eyes, and it was Tiernan who broke the contact first. "What will you do, my lord?"
"I withhold my judgment, lady Sarah," Tiernan said stiffly. "Yet tonight I believe you are endangering the goblin kingdom for your own vanity, and you are risking more than you even understand. Yet Jareth is my brother, and I will give everything I can to keep his kingdom. Lady," and with a bow Tiernan turned on his heels and left the goblin king's rooms.
Ikiaq was talking soothingly to Sarah before he had even left the room completely, but Sarah just laughed at her. "No need to baby me, Ikiaq, I am not insulted, well, at least not much. That man has a stick up his behind, and he is full of fae superiority." She looked around at the people in the room, trustworthy friends, she knew, not subjects. "Unfortunately he is right that I know squat about ruling. I am afraid the next weeks or months will be interesting ones. For you all as well - I need all help I can get."
Sarah rose from the chair. "The sun will be rising shortly, Ikiaq, can you feed us breakfast in the war room? I want all of you there in an hour, and also the ministers of the council. We need to a plan, and I'll need all your help."
As they left the room, Sindri hung back and turned to Sarah. "Sarah, Tiernan's words might have some kernel of truth in them in any other demesne, but not here in the goblin kingdom. You are the goblin kingdom, and the goblin kingdom is you. How could anyone without the binding rule the land? And for everything else you have the councilors. You might not get much sleep until we have the antidote, but at least you'll know why you hate ruling." She grinned. "That was an impressive kiss, Sarah, if rather unexpected. You two had been very cold to each other in the last days."
"He must have been in unspeakable agony, Sindri, and how could I stop time when his mind was full of nothing but never-ending pain? How does it feel to be frozen in one moment? I believe he deserves to be waiting without agony, the last sensation in his mind other than pain." She blushed as she recalled the kiss. "It was a bit more than I had expected." She looked at the very formally clad Sindri with a wide grin. "Seems I am not the only one who knows that feeling. Lovely dress, Sindri, really, I liked it yesterday, and I like it even more today ."
The very prim tactical advisor to the rulers of the goblin kingdom blushed deeply through a irrepressible smile and decided that discretion was the better side of valor as she fled the laughter of her queen.
Sarah thought she should go back to her rooms and have shower to wake herself up before she faced her responsibilities, however unwillingly. She was just going to sit down on the bed for a moment, really, but then she took a look at Sed's wide grin and figured, who am I kidding? And she laid down on the goblin king's bed and rolled herself in his silken sheets, and the intoxicating scent on his pillow sent her to sleep within moments.