Seven

Chapter 7: The Greatest Judgment

Jareth lay awake on his back in the early morning hours. The first shafts of cold grey light were beginning to filter through the frosted glass windows, streaking the stone floor in alternating stripes of light and dark. He would have to act soon if he planned to get his hands on the black book.

Jareth looked down at the sleeping woman at his side. She lay with a slight smile on her lips, her silky hair spilling in all directions over her pillow, her hands folded as if in prayer. Jareth kissed her bare shoulder and slid silently from the bed. He padded quietly toward the table where the book lay, careful not to make a sound and wake the sorceress or the snoring imps above in the rafters.

Reaching the table, he examined the thick black book. Its cover was beautifully ornate with bold lettering and gold filigree swirls along the edges. Figures of imps hid amongst the lettering on the cover, staring out at him as if to say, "Touch me, I dare you."

Jareth extended a hand and lightly touched the book's ebony cover. It shuddered and shivered beneath his fingers and sent an echoing tingle back through his fingertips. He drew back for a moment and turned to look at the bed. Sarah was still sleeping; he could see the gentle rise and fall of her chest. He turned back to the book. The imps on the cover were now smiling, encouraging him to lift the cover and read.

Slowly, quietly, he opened the book and looked at the first page. The elaborate scrolling letters were difficult for him to read at first, but he quickly deciphered them. The content itself was of little help or interest. It was all histories of gods and goddesses and battles and conquests, nothing about the sorceress.

Jareth sighed impatiently and flipped through the pages. He cursed silently as he thumbed through page after page of war histories and chronicles of deities.

"Where is Sarah?" he whispered to himself. As if in answer to his question, the leaves began flipping of their own accord, falling open at a page near the middle of the book. Jareth squinted in the dark, peering closer. The page contained an illuminated picture of a beautiful woman, a woman who bore a striking resemblance to the sorceress Sarah. She stood naked with her gaze forward and her arms outstretched. Looping chains were bound around her ankles, wrists, middle, neck, and head. Jareth studied the page carefully. Surely this was the curse that bound Sarah! He turned the page to read the passage describing her crimes and the curse brought down upon her by her former Teacher:

Sarah, Serah, Sorcha, Sydelle, Zahra: Daughter of Coll the Summoner, Mistress of the Half Moon, Keeper of the Book of Secrets. Cursed of the Morrigan to dwell in shadow and decay as reckoning for the theft of spells and enchantments. Bound by the Book of Secrets until such time as the questions of Man are answered.

Jareth continued reading through the passage as the questions of Man were listed, questions with which he was already familiar.

What is Man's greatest magic? What is his greatest treasure? Who is the greatest fool of all Men? What lay at Man's greatest crossroad? What is Man's greatest judgment? What is the—

"Jareth?" called a female voice. He quietly closed the book and turned to look at Sarah. She was sitting up in the bed, stretching her arms in the dull light. The bedding was bunched around her waist, leaving her breasts and belly exposed.

"What are you doing, my love?" she asked sleepily. "Come back to bed." She patted the space on the mattress beside her and smiled. Jareth nodded and walked back to the large bed. Drawing back the covers, he slipped in beside her and pressed himself against her warm flesh. His chilled skin hummed to life as it touched the heat of her body.

"Sarah," he whispered as he nuzzled into the curve of her neck. She bent her face down to his and kissed his lips and he rose up to meet her. They made love as the dim morning light crept further into the corners of the room, dispelling the shadows and casting a glow over the grimacing gold imps on the Book of Secrets.

"Do you want today's challenge?" asked Sarah later as she ran her fingers through Jareth's hair, lightly massaging his scalp with her long nails and sending buzzing jolts of pleasure down his spine. She sat on the cushioned settee and he lay with his head in her lap, letting her pet and stroke him. He looked up at her and smiled.

"Yes, I do," he told her. He had expected her to show disappointment at him wishing to continue the challenge to earn his freedom, but her expression remained unchanged.

"Very well," she told him. "Tonight I want a song about the greatest of judgments."

Jareth smiled to himself. He had already known what the challenge would be; he had read it in the book. He was sorry that he had not been able to read more before she'd awakened, despite the pleasant distraction that followed. He wanted to know more about this strange woman. He wanted to know what secrets she so carefully guarded from him. She had given him her name, but little else. He knew that in order to defeat or free her, he had to know more of who and what she was.

He sat up and kissed her lips. "You are not upset that I am choosing to continue the challenge?" he asked.

Sarah laughed and stroked his cheek. "My love, I would be disappointed if you gave up so easily," she replied. She stood and pulled him to his feet and kissed him soundly. "Don't waste time, Jareth. The hour already grows late."

Jareth nodded, called his guitar to his hand and then headed off into the barren wilderness to answer the riddle and write his song.

"Each song is a key," he thought to himself as he walked in long strides over the marshy hillside. "The answer unlocks a bond. When the questions are answered, the chains are broken and another part of her is freed."

He wondered exactly what her freedom meant. Would the bonds simply fall away, giving her the power to free him as well? Or would the curse of darkness on her be lifted, making her something else entirely? Without the book, he couldn't know.

"How can I make this decision without knowing what I am up against?" he asked aloud. He looked up at the menacing clouds that hung low, threatening rain, and thought of her tears. She had wept when he sang of his love. He had moved her with his words, touched her heart with the depth of his emotions and in return, she had made passionate love to him. Surely that was a sign that the darkness in her could be broken. Perhaps, locked behind the curse, there was a sweet spirit that he could free and make his own.

The words of the passage in the book echoed through his mind. It described her as a thief, a keeper of secrets, the Mistress of the Half-Moon, light and dark, duplicitous. Jareth kicked at the soggy ground in frustration. How could he know whom to trust? How could he pass judgment on a woman for whom his heart ached, but his mind railed against?

His discovery of the answer to the riddle did little to soothe his disquieted spirits as he marched on across the muddy terrain to compose his song.

The book throbbed and warmed under Sarah's touch and the imps on the cover looked out at her with disdain. Her freedom was so close to being secured. She had seen Jareth looking at the book earlier that morning and wondered just how much he had read. He had said nothing of it to her, so she suspected he had not discovered much.

Her heart ached heavy in her chest under the burden of the awful truth. She would have to choose a path. She would have to pass a judgment on the mortal, a man she suspected she could love were she not so bent on freeing herself. He offered such warmth and passion. He had made love to her like no one ever had before, sweet and deep and tender.

She clutched at her breast as the cord around her heart tightened. It was unbearable, a ghastly, grossly unfair choice. To remain bound was unthinkable, even for Jareth's sake. However, freeing herself meant either binding him, or giving him the power to destroy her. She hung her head as a tear spattered onto the cover of the black book, hissing and dissolving into vapor.

"Show me Jareth," she said between choking sobs. The book thumped open and Sarah leaned forward to gaze at the image of Things That May Be.

She groaned at the picture she was shown. Jareth, regal and beautiful, stood with his hand outstretched, holding a crystal sphere. His face was as handsome as always, but his eyes were so sad and tired. Sarah peered closer. There was another person in the picture, a female, but her features were blurred and distorted. Jareth was holding out the crystal to her in offering, a pleading look of desperation marring his noble features.

Sarah closed her eyes and spoke again to the book. "Show me later days for Jareth," she said softly. The pages turned again and opened to another picture. Sarah gasped and her hand flew to her mouth at what she saw. Jareth sat alone in the dark, pale and emaciated. His back was hunched over in despair, his skin stretched tight against his sharp shoulder blades, giving him the appearance of a living skeleton. The darkness surrounded him on all sides, but in one small corner there was a faint shimmer. Leaning in as far as she could to look closer, Sarah was able to make out the image of a woman. The woman's face was hidden in the glow of the crystal she carried. She stood with the crystal stretched out toward the shallow hull of Jareth, its light piercing through the blackness of his prison.

The Book of Secrets snapped shut and Sarah jumped backwards. Her mind whirled with the images she had seen. She knew that the pictures were of a future yet woven. The threads were laid out into a pattern for the tapestry, but they had yet to pass through the loom of Time. Once they were woven into the frame, there was no changing them. Until then, the threads were in flux, variable.

"What tapestry shall I weave?" Sarah asked herself. "Shall I bind this mortal with the threads of my choosing or shall I give the weft over to him?" She opened the double window and sat down on the stone alcove. She could see Jareth's tall, proud form stalking confidently over the hills toward the cliffside. He was gaining strength even as she was loosed. Sarah had seen the small manifestations of his power in the last day and knew that with every completed task he would receive even more magic.

"If he breaks the curse, he must choose my fate," she sighed sadly. "I must decide now as well. Do I damn myself to eternal chains, or do I punish a man whose only crime is loving me?"

Jareth sat against the cliffside and listlessly strummed his guitar, his fingers now easily gliding over the strings without pain. He frowned though, as he played. The words which normally came to him as easily as a dream had suddenly become elusive. He knew it was from the swirling storm in his brain over the choice he knew he must make.

He had to decide whether to believe what he had been told regarding Sarah, or to trust his heart and what he felt to be the truth. The dwarf gardener and the fox knight had both warned him to be wary of the sorceress. The Book of Secrets labeled her untrustworthy. Still, his heart desperately wanted to believe that she was a victim of circumstance, that her darkness lay not in her nature, but in the curse. He wanted to believe he could save her and be saved by her.

"I'll never finish the song this way," Jareth announced bitterly. His head pounded from hours of fierce concentration. "Where can I find the words?" he asked the sky.

The storm on the horizon seemed to match the one in his brain. Black clouds loomed ominously and thunder rumbled, shaking the ground. A charged breeze blew up across the cliffside and a whispered echo brushed his ear. "The magic," it sighed.

"Yes," breathed Jareth, leaning his head back against the cold cliff wall and closing his eyes. "Magic."

"You have the power. You have the power. You have the power..." chanted the bodiless voice.

The Power. Jareth loved the power. It both terrified and thrilled him when he felt it burning beneath his fingertips. It was getting stronger, making him stronger. He could wield it and shape it and use it to do his bidding. He could use it to find the words.

Jareth took a deep breath and let his body go slack against the cliff wall. He released his hold on the natural world and let himself slip into the uncertain place between. The air pulsed around him as he drifted out of himself and down the spiraling vortex of What Is and What Was and What Is To Come.

Opening his eyes, he found himself standing in an impossible room. There were stairs going up and down and left and right, except there was no up or down or left or right. The room was without a center of gravity and what seemed to be the ceiling may have been the floor and vice versa. Jareth looked all around. Arched passages led to stairs going nowhere and everywhere. He followed one set of stairs downward, yet found himself going higher. He turned to the left, yet ended up further right. He climbed and searched for a way out, a path that made sense, and was soon frustrated and disoriented. He sat down on the sheer edge of the stairs and looked down. Below him on a landing sat a wreck of a man. Jareth could not see his face, only his tangled hair and hunched back covered in rags.

"You there!" he called. "How do I get down?" The man made no reply, didn't even look up. "Hello," he called again, the sound bouncing off the stone steps and the walls. He received no answer.

Rising to his feet, Jareth gazed around the nonsensical room. It was a room of uncertainty, a room where one could wander forever. It was a room in which decisions were made and the truth found, not by following a sensible path, but by taking a leap of faith. Jareth looked down again at the man below him. The man had begun rocking back and forth, softly humming. The tune echoed through Jareth's soul and mind like a lost memory.

"No, not a memory," he told himself, "A dream. A dream of things yet to be." He took a deep breath and bent his knees and leapt from the ledge, spreading his arms like wings. Time seemed to slow as he fell. He drifted as gracefully and as light as a feather to the stone landing and his feet softly touched the ground. He looked up and saw that he was no longer in the impossible room, but a musty nine-sided chamber with slime covered walls and little light. The man in rags squatted in the center of room, his long matted hair hanging from his dark hood like dead brown weeds.

"Who are you?" Jareth asked. The man was silent, except for his low hum.

"Why am I here? Where are my words?" Jareth demanded. Again, he was met with only humming

Jareth strode forward and leaned in close to the man to hear the familiar song. The melody was simple, but filled with deep emotion. It rose and fell like waves, carrying him forward and backward in Time, sweeping him further out to a place of darkness and uncertainty. He shook his head, trying to clear it of the music. The tune rang louder in his ears like iron bells, clanging and rattling him to his core. His eyes and teeth ached from the thundering echo.

"What do you sing?" he pleaded, plugging his ears. The humming stopped. The man didn't look up, but his voice swirled like mist around Jareth, seeming to come from all directions as he answered.

"I sing a song of judgment," rapsed the man. His voice sounded like broken glass.

Jareth snapped to attention at the man's response. "A song of judgment?" he hissed angrily. "Judgment of whom?"

"Of you perhaps," came the soft reply. "Of your heart, your mind, your soul. Do you think me fit to judge you?"

"No, I do not," Jareth spat. "You don't know me. You don't know who I am."

"Ah, but I do," creaked the shriveled man. "I know who you were. I know who you are. I know who you will be if you do not heed my warning. There is still time for you to escape." He paused and seem to shrink into himself even further. "There is no time for me," he continued sadly. "My tapestry is woven, my fate sealed. But for you there is still time-"

"I know how to escape, you wretched fool," Jareth snapped. "I know the answer to the challenge, but I need the words. I need the song."

"I have a song," the wrecked man sighed, "but it is not for you." He pulled his cloak around himself and turned away.

"Please," Jareth begged. "I need your song to buy my freedom."

"Hmph!" grunted the man and laughed to himself. "You don't even know what it is you're buying."

"Tell me," said Jareth. "Tell me what to do. What do I do?" He threw his hands in the air in frustration. "What am I to do about Sarah?"

"Sarah?" the man said in a breathless whisper. "I know that name." He scrambled around on the dirt floor as if searching for something precious he had lost. "Yes. Yes, I know Sarah," he chanted. "Sarah. Where is Sarah? I was lost...no, not lost...sleeping. I slept..."

"What are you babbling about?" cursed Jareth impatiently. "I need the song, the song of judgment."

The man in rags stopped in his frantic searching of the dust and groaned. "No," he said. "Not that song. I gave her that song. She tore it out of my soul and made me sleep." He began to sob. "Sarah. Sarah, I'm so sorry!"

Jareth growled angrily as the man wept and writhed on the floor. The dark power surged in his breast as he loomed over the broken man. His fingers burned with unleashed magic.

"Give me the song," he commanded, trying to maintain his composure.

"No," the man sobbed.

Finally loosing control, Jareth let the power flood from his fingertips like blue lightning. The bolt of magical energy struck the man and tossed him across the small room. He landed with a thud against the slimy wall before sliding to the floor. Jareth furiously stalked over and grabbed him and hoisted him up from the floor by his ragged cloak. The man kept his head lowered to the ground, his face hidden from view.

"Give it to me!" Jareth growled, shaking the ragged man. The man made no attempt to break free as he was abused. "I must have your song!" Jareth cried in desperation. He loosened his grip on the man and let him fall to the floor. He covered his face with his hands as the man crumpled to the ground and lay still. Jareth wondered if he were dead until he moved slightly and sighed.

"Very well," whispered the wretch at last. "But whatever you do, do not give this song to her."

Jareth didn't have to ask who he meant, and he didn't care why. He would do what he must to free himself and Sarah. What did this wreck of a human being know anyway?

He knelt down to the ruined man on the floor.

"The song..." he whispered impatiently.

The man nodded beneath his tattered cloak. "Close your eyes," he instructed.

Jareth did as he was told and felt the man lean in to his face. His breath was hot against Jareth's lips, close enough to touch in a kiss. He blew his words into Jareth's mouth. They flowed in as thick and sweet as honey, but turned bitter as they passed over his tongue and rushed down into his body. Jareth gasped as the words burned through his veins and cold, tingling power zigzagged across his nerve endings. He bit his bottom lip against the beautiful pain.

"I mean what I say, young Jareth," the ragged figure spoke gravely. "Do not give it to her."

"I'll do whatever I wish-" Jareth snapped, opening his eyes to look at the man. He stopped, wide-eyed with horror as the man's cloak fell back and he could see his face for the first time. A pair of mismatched eyes glared back from a sunken skull of a face. The man's mouth, his mouth, curled into a wild sneer.

"Wake up, you fool!" his doppelganger screamed.

Jareth jolted upright from the rock wall, a terrified shriek still on his lips, as the vision was broken and he returned to the natural world. The rain had begun in earnest, falling in cold, heavy drops upon his head. He stumbled away from the cliffside and took shelter under a small ledge. His heart was pounding and he felt a chill run through his blood at the memory of what he had seen. Drawing his knees against his chest, he rested his pounding head on them.

"It was just a dream," he told himself. "A vision of things that may happen, not a prophecy of things that are certain to come to pass."

His head throbbed and his stomach churned as he tried to shake away the horrific images. The vision was cryptic, at best. That man, his future self, warned him not to give the song to the sorceress, yet he cried and called out for Sarah. It made no sense. Why were there no clear answers? Jareth thought of the impossible room of stairs. It had no clear path, only shifting perceptions and endless twists and turns. His leap from the ledge had brought him to the man and the song. Perhaps that was what was called for in his judgment of Sarah. Perhaps he must step out into the void of uncertainty and trust that he would land on his feet.

Jareth shook his head, still uncertain. It was all so unfair.

His hands were shaking as he took up his guitar to play the melody that still echoed in his mind.

"I give you my song of judgment," Jareth told Sarah as he stood before her in her chambers. "A song of the heart and the mind. Of perceived truth and whispered hope. Of love and trust, freedom and forgiveness."

The sorceress nodded from her throne for him to continue. She had been very quiet that evening, pensive. Her pale face was drawn tight, her brow furrowed in thought. She wore a shimmering gown of vibrant purple with a tightly fitted bodice and a slit up the side that came almost to her hip. Her hair was woven into a long shining braid that fell over her creamy shoulder.

Jareth breathed deeply and strummed a clashing chord on the guitar. The discordant notes stirred the imps above his head and they flapped and squealed in agitation as the sounds rang up into the rafters.

Only you are fit to judge this case
Four locks stand betwixt me and my rightful place.
I'll cause harm to those of good and evil nature
And arbitrary joy; such is my stature.
But here I wait and am constrained.
Bound forever, bound by name.

Only you are able to open your box.
Bound round about with magical locks.
No wickedness done should earn such pain
Nor any joy you give excuse constraint.
I say awake you, and then be free.
I absolve you. Let another absolve me.

The last notes faded and the room began to spin around Jareth. He dropped the wicked guitar and stumbled to the wall to brace himself. He looked out and saw Sarah staring at him in bewilderment.

"Sarah..." he called to her as the scene began to darken. "Sarah, I..." His words faded to silence as the world went black.

A/N:

As of this posting, this is the longest fan fiction piece I've written. *swings swagger stick and does a shimmy*

What are your thoughts so far? Let's open the discussion here. Why do you think the sorceress has been unable to answer the riddles? Where do you think Jareth's power is coming from? Do you think it's possible for Jareth and Sarah to fairly judge one another based on what they know? Talk amongst yourselves.

The song in this happy little chapter belongs to Ellen Weaver. If you're following her story, "Seven: Descant", you'll notice some other familiar themes. If you've not read her take on this prompt, I suggest you do so this minute. Go. Now. Shoooo!