Hi and thanks for all the reviews. Just watced the movie again for the zillionth time yesterday and found that I have to revise some of the later scenes - somehow I imagined the throne room to be bigger and have a different layout. But nevermind, that should be easy to correct.
lemongirl: Thanks for catching the typo, have corrected now. I'm doing this without a Beta, so I guess I'm bound to make a mistake here and there.
Jareth had left more than an hour ago to "take care of the matter", and he had flatly refused to let her help him, but asked her to just stay here at the castle.
"It will be dangerous," he had said, "and I need to be able to think fast and fly fast. You can't help me this time."
She understood his reasoning, but it was infuriating to just be waiting here and not being able to do anything. Sarah was pacing up and down the kitchen when Hoggle entered, because she was too restless to sit down.
"Did you know?" she asked him immediately. "Did everyone but me know about Sir Didymus?"
The dwarf jumped at her attack and shook his head. "What do ye mean, me girl? What about Didymus?"
"That he's spying against Jareth's archenemy? Oh, Hoggle!" she suddenly sank down on a chair and stared despairingly at him. "He's been captured. Cederick is threatening to kill him!"
Hoggle scowled angrily. "Does the King know?"
"Yes of course – he's gone to rescue him, but I fear that it will be too late. Or that Cederick has planned something nasty and Jareth will get hurt as well."
"Jareth can take care of himself," Hoggle snorted and kicked at a basket on the floor in frustration. "That bastard – sending poor Didymus into such danger!"
Sarah looked at him in disbelief. "Hoggle, Jareth is not the enemy here, Cederick is."
"Cederick is his enemy, not ours. Why doesn't he fight his own battles?!" Hoggle grumbled.
Sarah shook her head and hid her head in her hands. "Just stop it, Hoggle," she said wearily. "It is not the time to be fighting amongst ourselves. I don't suppose you can think of anything we can do to help them, can you?"
Hoggle shook his head. "Better not get involved, we might get in the way of the King. He does things his own way and is very hard to predict."
"This is maddening!" she whispered and suddenly jumped to her feet. "At least he reminded me about the journal – I had forgotten about that. I'm going to my room for the night to read about Cederick. I need to understand who he is. What he is."
It was close to dawn, but the sky was an ominous dark grey and the wind howled past the castle windows. Once again, the weather mirrored Jareth's emotions, Sarah reflected as she looked at it, and it was clear that whatever confrontation was taking place between him and Cederick, it was not over yet, if it had even started yet. She was sitting in her favourite spot by the window and considered her options, slightly ill from reading the notes in the journal. The old king was clearly a psychopath – a madman – there was really no other way to put it. She had read the recounting of tales from the older guardians and Jareth's description of some of the dungeons he had found during his first years as king, and just thinking about it made her sick to her stomach. He had not spared anyone – goblins, guardians, quester – all had been subject to his cruel games. The thought that that man now was keeping Sir Didymus and Ambrosius captive, and probably doing all kinds of unspeakable things to them, was unbearable. But what could she do? She would be no match for Cederick if she went to help Jareth, and it would probably only distract him, if she showed up – and that was if she was even able to find them.
Which – actually – she might be able to do. Going through parts of the journal, she had found one very interesting little bit of information. Back in distant times, before Jareth and Cederick, a previous Goblin king had apparently experimented with making magic artefacts, and mirror in the king's room was such an artefact – a scrying glass. Jareth had mentioned being told about it in the notes, and he had used it in the beginning as a means to find and contact all the guardians in the Labyrinth. However, a later note in a more mature Jareth's handwriting had mentioned how much easier it was to use crystal magic and there was no further references to the mirror. But Sarah might be able to use it, she thought. It seemed to be a variant of her tracker crystal, where she would then be able to see the people she was looking for instead of actually being led to them.
She jumped up, eager to test it out, but then paused at the thought of going uninvited to Jareth's quarters. Now she thought of it, Jareth had never specifically forbidden her to enter his room – she had simply respected his privacy as she expected him to respect hers. But since he was away, and she had anyway just been carried there by himself, maybe Jareth wouldn't mind that she went up there to test the mirror. Hesitating only briefly, she turned left outside the door and climbed the stairs for the first time.
His room was gloomy with the fire almost burnt down in the fireplace, and it was too dark to see much. She went to the desk where several thick candles were evenly placed and took one of them to light it in the glowing embers, and then slowly carried it over to light the others to light up the area around the mirror. It looked completely ordinary – finely carved and polished, but completely normal. She paused for a moment and then spoke to it:
"I wish to see Jareth."
Nothing happened. She frowned and tried again, concentrating harder. "I wish I could see Jareth, wherever he is."
Still nothing happened. No flicker of light, no glowing green mist inside – nothing. Just her own reflection; the familiar green gown and dark hair and her eyes, larger and shinier than usual in the candlelight. She sighed and took a deep breath, trying to clear her mind and relax, and then she sat down on the floor in front of it and closed her eyes for a moment to focus. There had been no mentioning of what to do to make the mirror work, so she would just have to try whatever she could think of.
For the next half hour, Sarah did everything she could imagine to get the mirror to work, but without success. She started doubting that it actually was the mirror from the journal – maybe Jareth had replaced it since with a normal mirror or it had broken somehow. Her legs cramped up and aching, she rose stiffly and sat at the desk instead, glancing at the books scattered around. One in particular caught her interest – it was not printed as the others, but looked very much like the journal Jareth had lend her, and when she drew it closer and carefully opened it, page after page was filled with his neat spidery handwriting.
She read a few of the headlines and quickly realised that this was not about the Labyrinth as such, but more about the Goblin King's magic and duties. Interesting, but not what she was looking for. She almost closed it, when the word "Cederick" caught her eyes in a headline. She cringed at the thought of reading about any more of his atrocities, but then sighed and looked at it anyway. The headline was "Cederick's instructions on King's heirs" and it turned out to be a careful narration of how a Goblin King was made. Previous goblin kings had apparently passed this on as word of mouth, it said, but Jareth, a parson's son, was used to writing and books rather than remembering by heart, so he had documented it from Cederick's instructions to make sure the knowledge was not forgotten or misremembered. She read on, but halfway through, she paused. Something did not quite add up here.
"To create a king, two steps must be taken. First, the new king must be turned from a mere mortal to a Labyrinth creature, perfect and pure. Secondly, the power must be given freely from the old king to the new. Only then can the old king be set free and be allowed to leave the Labyrinth.
The turning must be done at the time when the Labyrinth claims the mortal as its own. The talisman necklace must be prepared and activated at the latest one full hour before that time, but beware – once activated by the King, the necklace cannot be returned to its previous state, and its magical powers will remain for only 13 hours. A King will only be able to activate the talisman necklace once and never again – beware to follow the instructions carefully."
And then a long step by step description of how to activate the necklace was written underneath – steps involving goblin blood, hair from the king, lightning and a vast amount of incomprehensible crystal magic.
Sarah read the first part again – "once and never again" – and then she pushed the book away and stared at it in dawning shock, suddenly understanding exactly what had happened on the day of her transformation. He had had one chance in his life time to create a new king and get away from the Labyrinth – but he had used that chance on her instead. He had said he couldn't pass on the crown to someone else due to his fears of how they would treat the goblins, and that might be the case as well – but the reality was that the option was now lost to him forever. Even if he one day found the perfect heir, he would not be able to use the talisman necklace again, so because of her - Jareth would be the last King of the Goblins.