No One Remembered

He would not mourn her.

Hers had been a heroic death, all told – valiant and selfless, if hardly picturesque. Two out of three wasn't bad. But he would not mourn her. He would not grant her such an early death; he would not let her go so easily, nor lie so heavy on his conscience. He would keep her exhausted and beautiful, radiantly defiant, not angry but joyous in her epiphany, denying him. He would not mourn her.

After all, he had no power over her.


She lay a few yards from him, amongst the tawny rubble charred with smoke. From here she looked like the imprint of an owl's kill, in winter – a pale blur, a flash of red. The image seared into his mind like too-bright sun, sunk in like the clawed foot of some great iron gate, seeped into the cracks like a stench that would never leave, but he would not mourn her.

It took him awhile to notice the hooks the cold air set into him. When he did, he tried to stand, but his body failed him. Instead he pulled himself over the rough ground, washing gold stone with silver blood, to her. The remains of an arch stood at her head, to shelter her from the wind's sharp edge. Against this he leaned, exhausted, until he could move enough to wriggle out of his cloak and drape it over her, to keep her from getting cold. The lower half of her face was gone, where the magic had scorched its way out of flesh not built to withstand it; he pulled the collar up to just under her nose, because the air must be even chiller on skinless flesh.

He pulled her head onto his lap. The ground was hard, and she deserved better. He'd given her power, years ago – how many, by her world's reckoning, he did not know – without thinking he might need it. His power was vast, and his skill great, and the reservoir of magic under the Labyrinth greater yet. All the more fool he, to think he would never have need of it all.

After awhile, it started to snow. He put out a bare hand – when had his gloves burnt away? – to catch a few flakes, and tasted them before he brought them to her lips. They tasted of acrid dust and charcoal; ash, not snow. His hand fell back to stroke her hair, leaving silver streaks in black shading, slowly, through to white.
He could have done it without her. The Labyrinth and he shared, between them, enough power to stave off the leech-world that had latched on to the kingdom, but in reaching as deep as he needed, to the very core and heart of its power, he would have lost himself, leaving a kingdom in shambles and without a king. Goblins could not very well rebuild and Didymus, bless him…Didymus would try, and best to leave it at that.

He hadn't called out. Had he?

He hadn't called out, for that last, missing scrap of power to tip the balance. He had not, and he would not mourn her, because without him she'd have had no power at all, save that of strong body and keen mind. The other, he had given her, and once given, a gift belongs to the one to whom it is given.

To save his land, his people, she had given it back. He would not flatter himself that she had done it, in any part, for him. Nor would he mourn her.

It was there his subjects found him, spilled like a broken candle against the shattered arch. He lay so pale and so still, one hand at rest on the dead woman's head, that at first they thought him dead as well, but when they made to move him he stirred and ordered, hoarsely, through cracked and blistered lips, "Take care of her."

So they did. Goblins can occasionally be competent; and then, of course, Didymus's courtly sensibilities got into the affair, and Hoggle's gruff affection, and Ludo's talent with stone, and the end of that story is that Sarah Williams's tomb may well be the most beautiful place in the Labyrinth. She was Jewish; but her tomb, at a distance, appears surmounted by a cross. As one approaches, it reveals itself – a slim white sword, upright and shining against all comers.

While Hoggle and Didymus arranged things and the goblins dug and chiseled and Ludo shaped the glimmering marble, their king slowly mended. At first the Wise Man hovered over him; and then, at his behest, goblin hedge-witches; and, eventually, a sidhe doctor from far away. When the doctors had gone, and the tomb was made, folks came, quiet, careful, as even goblins are with the ill, to ask what had happened; how he had defeated the terrible thing that was draining them; as it gone, now, really.

"You're safe," he told them, "the Lady saved you. Take good care of her."

That turn of phrase worried the Wise Man and irritated his hat, but the Wise Man fell asleep before he could tell anyone, and nobody paid attention to the hat anyway. Therein lay the risk of always grumbling.
When the Wise Man at last allowed him out of bed, the king did not go to see the Lady's tomb. He simply went back to being the king – holding court, arbitrating legal decisions, keeping the peace with neighbouring kingdoms, and other such royal duties. He never did go to the tomb, which mystified Didymus, angered Hoggle, and saddened Ludo.

One thing he did not return to was dancing. If, in the turmoil of rebuilding and recuperating, anyone noticed, they said his wounds pained him, or that his workload wearied him, and, goblins being what they are, within a few decades no one remembered that the King had danced at all.