Dawn's light cast long shadows as it seeped over the treetops and across the fading night sky, making an austere image of the figures gathering at the edge of the camp. Alibaba arrived first, awake with the sun, with Morgiana not far behind him. They stood sharing a brief breakfast of fruit they tore open with their fingers as first Pisti, then Spartos arrived, Judal and Hakuryuu between them.
Unlike his Seelie counterpart, Hakuryuu was not nearly as jubilated to be up with the sun. Though not precisely a scowl, his expression was one tinged with displeasure, and when he spoke his voice was brisk and sharp around the edges with stinging irritation. No one seemed at all offended by it. In fact, Alibaba seemed almost amused.
Judal yawned and only made a vague attempt to cover it with his hand. He was barely awake and trying not to sag under the weight of the traveling cloak Hakuryuu had bundled him up into. It was warm and comforting, and it wasn't doing much to dissuade his mind from the idea of more sleep.
He stood there blearily as Hakuryuu instructed their companions on… something. Probably something important, but since he was mostly there to ride along and look pretty, he figured he didn't really need to pay attention. If it was imperative he know, Hakuryuu would look him in the eye and tell him, since that was about the only way to totally guarantee his attention.
By the time the sun had illuminated the trees and knoll beyond them, the party was already mounted and setting out in the direction of the faerie's alleged home. Judal's hands tangled in warm, auburn fur as the cool morning air splashed against him, washing away the last of his drowsiness. He rode upon one of Hakuryuu's dire wolves, a sleek female who was more than capable of keeping pace with Hakuryuu's own mount, but chose to keep just behind his shoulder.
The other four all rode beasts of varying sizes and shapes, creating quite the wandering menagerie. Pisti's petite form was almost lost amidst her mount's copious feathers, which looked invitingly soft, even if Judal couldn't quite tell what creature was underneath them. Alibaba loped alongside Hakuryuu on the back of a fierce looking grphyon with the head of a falcon and the sleek body of a lion, which the dire wolves seemed familiar with. Morgiana favored a large feline of some kind, though the large horns protruding from its brow made the term feline questionable.
Spartos was riding on the back of what appeared to be a perfectly normal, pale horse. Judal decided that this was completely unnerving on the basis that the horse's presence in Sidhe implied that horses were not, in fact, a naturally occurring part of the mortal world.
They rode in relative silence, tossing the odd comment back and forth between themselves before they quieted again. Time in Sidhe didn't pass as it had in the mortal realm, it was difficult to tell how many hours had gone by, if any had at all. The sun rose higher into the sky, but for all Judal knew they could have been riding for more than a day. However he found that he wasn't hungry, or otherwise uncomfortable, and supposed it didn't really matter.
Then he supposed that that may be the key to dealing with time in this realm; accepting that it just didn't really matter.
When the camp was long behind them and the plain was beginning to amass far steeper hills than before, they took a sharp turn into the woodland. The trees were far enough apart to create natural pathways, none of which they were led to follow. Instead, they broke stride from a gallop to a steady trot as Hakuryuu relinquished the lead to Morgiana.
Since their pace was already slowed, they took the chance to eat something and make idle conversation. Nothing much was being said between bites of bread, cheese, and fruit, but the jaunty melody of voices was comforting. Judal licked his fingers clean after devouring his food, then waited for a lull before he spoke.
"Alright so, pretend I was raised in another world for a minute," he said, speaking to the group at large. "And that I totally don't get what why a faerie is a big deal. Why's a faerie a big deal?"
Pisti laughed brightly, as if he had just said something particularly funny.
"How much has Prince Hakuryuu taught you about Sidhe?" asked Spartos, affixing him with his level gaze.
"I taught him about the courts and Queens," Hakuryuu supplied. "Some about the Wildlands. I delved into some history, but the faerie never came up in conversation."
He looked to Judal and said, without accusation; "You could have asked me this last night."
Judal shrugged.
"I wasn't thinking about it."
Another one of Pisti's delighted laughs bounced jauntily through the air.
"Faerie are where fae come from!" she tittered, which explained a grand total of absolutely nothing.
Spartos gracefully caught the end of her lackluster explanation and spun it into his own, as if he were used to expanding upon her less than clear thoughts.
"Faerie are the oldest known beings to have existed in Sidhe." he said. "In the Beginning, there were only faerie, and from them came all other beings that now thrive in this realm. Either they were born of faerie blood, or created by faerie magic. They are the progenitors of all of us."
"If you go back far enough, everyone's got a faerie somewhere in their bloodline, even if it's all the way back at the beginning." Alibaba added with a lopsided smile. "Sometimes you don't need to go back very far at all."
"But, if they're the oldest thing in Sidhe, shouldn't there be way more of them?"
Judal felt the wolf beneath him shift her gait, then right herself as if nothing had happened. It was a split second, the air had changed and he had felt something unpleasant dart past his ear. A whisper on the breeze he didn't quite catch, but left him with a sense that he had been taunted.
"Faerie are less likely to conceive among their own, there is a higher chance of offspring through crossbreeding." Hakuryuu said. "Or so my vassals tell me."
He flicked his eyes over Judal, assessing him in the careless way that meant he was looking for something. A sign that he had noticed the half-second change in mood, perhaps. Judal blinked back at him steadily, and Hakuryuu smiled.
"Which is why you are more likely to meet the descendant of a faerie than one of pure blood."
"Unless you choose to venture to the heart of Seelie court, of course!" Pisti chirped. "The Queen is a faerie!"
"She is?"
Judal's interest had been piqued, and he sat straighter, looking quizzically at his prince.
"Are you, then?" he asked him.
Hakuryuu's faint smile became a short, bright laugh. It shivered pleasantly like the frosty morning after the first snow of winter, and Judal found himself wanting to taste the sound on his tongue. Another time, perhaps.
"No, sweetling, I am not. Nor is my mother, nor any of our kin. There is not a name for what we are, only that we can recognize one another, and have ruled UnSeelie for a very long time."
"That seems kind of vague."
"Speaking of your vassals, Hakuryuu," No one interrupted Alibaba to mention that they hadn't been. "Isn't the one just a step away from faerie?"
"Yes. Belial is only two generations removed, if not only one. I suspect Zagan is of similar heritage, but he tends to become unreasonable if I pry."
"What kind of fae are they, then?" Judal asked.
Hakuryuu's smile was back.
"There is no name for them either."
"That seems relatively inconvenient."
"Perhaps. Some things are best left unspoken."
Somehow, Judal didn't think he was talking about his vassals.
The journey continued, led by Morgiana who as far as Judal could tell held neither compass nor map, but seemed to have an idea of where she was going. His curiosity encouraged him to question it, however the answers he'd been given were enough to mull over for one day. He allowed his mind to pick apart the sparse facts he'd learned about the faerie, and the little slip in atmosphere that had gone unmentioned. When day faded to night, he looked up at the star laden sky and thought of Belial's countless eyes.
The next day, Judal asked about faeries again. He learned that they were capable of the most powerful magic in Sidhe, that they shaped Sidhe to their liking when the whim came to them, and that they were governed only by what they chose. They had wings, Pisti told him with so much excitement she was practically vibrating. Glorious wings, which none of their progeny inherited. Pixie wings came from dragonflies and the wings of a bird were nothing like the wings of a faerie.
When, on the third day, Judal had yet more questions, he fully expected someone to tell him to shut up. Yet, rather than begrudging his curiosity, his traveling companions seemed to find his endless stream of interest endearing. Everyone had something to tell him, from Spartos's wealth of historical knowledge to Alibaba's adventurous anecdotes, always accompanied by Hakuryuu's dry quips. Judal was allowed to chatter on for hours and then fall silent for just as long to process everything he'd learned, only to do the same all over again.
Over dinner on the third evening, Spartos offered to teach Judal how to begin exploring and controlling his magic.
"If you would be amendable, of course, Prince Hakuryuu."
Hakuryuu probably wasn't amendable, if the expression that twisted his face was any indication. It was swept away immediately by a gentle smile when Judal gasped with delight and looked at him eagerly, all but bursting with excitement. Alibaba laughed.
"Oh come on, say yes, Hakuryuu!" he said, jabbing his elbow into his friend's ribs. "You're good at a lot of things, but teaching isn't your strong suit."
Hakuryuu cast Alibaba a withering look. Nasty words curled snakelike in his throat, and the sparkle in the golden prince's eye said he knew it too, just as well as he knew that Hakuryuu would never let those words loose.
"While I am sure I would be more than capable to instruct Judal on my own," he said. "I think it may be best if you were to take over his tutelage. A differing perspective from my own will be welcome, I think."
They had started immediately, because Judal was impatient and the long hours of continuous riding were growing monotonous. His first lesson involved far less blowing things up and growing forests with a snap of his fingers than he would have liked, but it still left him awed and enthralled.
Spartos was an excellent teacher. He strung words together with a poetic grace that made their sharp efficiency easy to swallow. When he spoke of how magic felt, Judal could feel something stir inside him in response. A living thing that had begun to push against the shell that encompassed his being, slowly forming cracks in its surface.
As they traveled, Spartos taught him how to look without seeing and see without looking. Sidhe opened anew, revealing the beings that twisted at the corner of his eye and lounged in shadows. He taught him how to taste the magic cording through every word he spoke, how to swallow what he didn't want and twist what he did. During the few hours Hakuryuu finally called for a rest, Judal was instructed to explore his magic as a physical entity.
Judal buried his fingers in the earth and felt for the pulse of life, crowing with excitement when he found it. He drank crisp water from streams that turned hot on his tongue, and brought flickering flames to life on his fingertips. Wind could be coaxed into a light breeze, small buds convinced to blossom, and pixies coaxed into the palm of his hand. The feeling of magic, in all its form and shapes, were so many and varied he could never memorize them all. And somewhere amidst the ever-shifting web was his magic, his energy, waiting to be found.
Hakuryuu's praise was by no means effusive, but he watched each new trick with rapt attention, sometimes prodding for Judal to try for just a bit more. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't. Judal, luckily, thought it was far too early for frustration.
Mortals liked to portray magic as very technical, with lots of rules and instruments and specific ways of going about things lest everything else go terribly wrong. Magic wasn't like that at all in Sidhe. In Sidhe, magic was the air and the sun and the earth and the water and sky and trees and everything. There was nothing in this world that was not woven into the tapestry of magic.
Spartos never taught Judal any rules. He taught him to feel, to taste, to sense and experience the magic around him without allowing it to overwhelm him. There was magic in Judal too, and Spartos showed him how to listen to it, how to feel the thrumming of it beneath his skin like a second heartbeat. It came easily. The whispers came too, and the murmurs, and sometimes the distant song, all the voices that magic had brushing past him in a soft lull of white noise.
By the sixth day, Judal's magic was far more noticeable than when their journey began. It no longer rolled off him in vaporous waves so much as emanated from him in a tangible aura, which now affected the world around him. Their lantern lights liked to burst and pop with his laughter, and his voice had begun to take on the strange lilt of the fae.
( And, to his delight, the flowers Hakuryuu wove into his braid now burst to life whenever he chose to kiss his prince. )
"Your Judal is remarkable." Spartos murmured to Hakuryuu.
"I hardly need to be told as much."
"I am sure, but I mean more than just that. I have never had the pleasure to meet a changeling before him, so perhaps it is in their nature, but I have never seen one take so easily to magic in its rawest shape. We are taught to manage the breadth of it when we are little more than babes, but for him? It could have swallowed him whole."
Hakuryuu cast his eyes aside, to where Judal watched as Alibaba pulled tongues of fire from the air. He tipped a spark into Judal's cupped hands, and it spread across his palms and fingertips into an orange blaze. Judal laughed, delighted, and curled his fingers in until the flames disappeared.
"I had not thought of it until now," Hakuryuu said softly. "But in the mortal realm there is magic. It is weaker, hidden, not free and wild as it is here. And yet, around Judal I could call upon it and it would come, as if it were just waiting to be called."
"Perhaps it was. Waiting, that is."
"Yes." Hakuryuu agreed. "But I do not think it was waiting for me."
And then quite suddenly, they had reached the mountain.
Nothing made one accustomed to Sidhe's morphing landscapes quite like a week long, nearly non-stop ride through them. Judal had gone from confused to relatively unsurprised when forests became beaches and beaches became plains that became a whole different type of forest. Somehow, between the moment the sun rose and the moon fell they had gone from traveling along a single-file cliff edge to a heavy wood that smell of old magic and damp.
It still hadn't quite prepared him for the mountain to just suddenly appear. Morgiana led them through a tangled mess of ivy and tree branches, and then there it was, rising up above them as if it had been there all along. The gentle slope of its base quickly gave way to a harsh incline swallowed by shadowed trees, cut by a thick stream which wound its way up towards the peak.
There was someone standing at the base of the mountain.
"Well you got here fast." the someone sighed, hands on their hips and expression caught somewhere between exasperation and amusement. "But I guess she would explain that. Personally, I think using a Fanalis to sniff me out is cheating but, oh well. Here you are."
Hakuryuu brought them to a halt, eyes trained warily on the stranger. Alibaba had a similar look in his eyes, but his caution was betrayed by an intense curiosity that tugged the corners of his mouth. The others all seemed mildly surprised by the appearance of the new fae, though all equally ready to spring to action at the first hint of hostility. Judal hung back, just behind Hakuryuu.
"I see king whatshisface, with the hair, is not with you so let me see..." The stranger lifted his hand to point at each of them. "Elf, Fanalis, prince, Prince, some kind of mix and… Changeling. Huh."
Eyes of rich, royal blue fixed on Judal, and suddenly he was falling. He wasn't actually, he knew that, he could feel the dire wolf beneath him breathing and hear the thud of his own heartbeat but it felt as though the earth disappeared and suddenly there was- The sky. The endless emptiness of midnight, the harsh light of dawn, the thousands of stars all bright, all burning, all flying past him faster and faster and fast-
Hakuryuu's back appeared before him, blocking his line of sight. Judal blinked, and the world righted itself, leaving him dizzy but otherwise unaffected. Hakuryuu, on the other hand, was tensed and his next words came out biting.
"Name yourself!" he snapped. "Since you seem bold enough as it is!"
The stranger chuckled.
"Bold, am I? When you go around demanding names, o Prince? But fair enough, I suppose, since I seem to have caused you undo distress. T'was not my intention."
Alibaba cocked his head without moving his eyes. Hakuryuu shifted in response, and they seemed to hold some kind of wordless conversation in the space of a heartbeat. The gryphon took one step to the right, and Hakuryuu led his dire wolf to the left, allowing Judal back into sight while framing him between the two princes.
Judal looked at the stranger properly this time, scanning his eyes over him without meeting his gaze. He was dressed in a single piece of fabric wrapped around his body like a tunic that fell open along one thigh, cinched at his waist by a cord of silk. Impossibly long hair fell from his neck and spooled on the ground in a braid, and a red jewel anointed his forehead. It was hard to guess his age, certainly not a child but definitely not an adult either. And he was just a guess, because deeming him either masculine or feminine seemed contradictory in a way Judal couldn't put his finger on.
He was beautiful, but then again, all fae were. Except that it was more than that. Judal had looked into his eyes and seen something, between the sun and sky and stars that seemed to exist inside him. Something raw, different than in Hakuryuu, or Alibaba, or even Sinbad.
It dawned on Judal, before anyone else, that this was the faerie.
"You may call me Aladdin," the faerie smiled. "I am what you came here looking for."
Pisti gasped, exuberant.
"How did you know we were coming?" Alibaba asked, at the same time as Hakuryuu said; "Then you know why we are here."
Aladdin looked between them with the same, bemused smile, and settled on Alibaba first.
"Yes, I knew you were coming. Yunan," Judal felt the name rake across his eardrums. "Was kind enough to let me know that he had brushed you lot off on me, before wandering off to moon knows where. I do not, however, know why you came. Yunan neglected to mention that rather pressing detail."
Hakuryuu opened his mouth, but Aladdin held up a hand.
"Whatever the reason, I am willing to hear it out, provided that you can make it up the mountain."
A condition had been set, and the magic that came with the beginning of a trial tasted faintly burnt. Like torches lining a path into unknown darkness. Judal found it kind of thrilling.
"If you wanted us to climb the mountain, why did you bother coming to meet us in the first place?" Alibaba questioned. "We were going to do it anyway."
"Well, mostly, I had no desire to deal with you lot invading my home and mucking about unattended. Plus, it would be unfortunate if you met Ugo under the wrong circumstances."
The name Ugo didn't so much brush by as it did slam into Judal like a physical force. He felt it tear through him, leaving him wide eyed and feeling exposed, whole body tense. Ugo wasn't like Aladdin, or Yunan- It felt a lot like Hakuryuu, when he called upon him properly, but less controlled. Who, or what, ever Ugo was, Judal had absolutely no desire to meet them.
The others seemed to share his sentiments.
"Forewarning us of the dangers of our task seems somewhat antithetical."
Aladdin offered Spartos a placating smile and a lazy shrug.
"Warning will not do much in the face of actual danger, Elf. If you come across Ugo, anything I say will matter about as much as a fly to a storm."
Well, wasn't that reassuring.
Judal looked up at the mountain from the corner of his eye and saw nothing different than when he stared straight ahead. It hid nothing, he realized, because it didn't have to. The mountain, and the faerie that lived on it, had no reason to disguise the dangers that lay there. Once the boundary between where they stood and the base of the mountain was crossed, they were in a domain that no longer belonged to Sidhe, but to Aladdin alone.
"Before we accept your condition," Hakuryuu said, pulling Judal's attention back to the group. "I think it would be wise to address the glaring flaw in your claim; if you are who you say you are, there seems to be a key feature missing."
Aladdin's eyes rolled to fix onto Hakuryuu with unsettling slowness. Something shifted in his posture, though it was impossible to say if he had moved.
"My wings, you mean?" he spoke in a low voice. "I hide them, o Prince. As most of us do. After everything that has happened, did you not think that we might find a way?"
That same whisper from days before whisked past Judal's ear, and with it this time came a roll of nausea. He gripped onto the shoulders of his mount, forcing himself not to double over and clutch at his belly as the sensation swam through him. It was gone in a second, but not before the whisper had turned into a violent hiss.
Something about wings.
Something about betrayal.
Aladdin was still speaking.
"I know you have met Scheherazade," he was saying. "Surely you do not doubt the blood of the Seelie Queen?"
"I, and most of Sidhe, know the Seelie Queen and her heritage quite well. You, however, are a stranger."
Aladdin seemed to consider Hakuryuu's words for a moment, then inclined his head.
"Fair enough. Still, I have no intention of revealing anything here. If you wish to speak to me about anything more, I will be at the mountain's peak."
He smiled, turned, and was suddenly gone. Everyone stared at the spot where he had been mutely for several long moments before someone finally laughed. It was, unsurprisingly, Pisti.
"He wasn't like I pictured at all!" she giggled.
"Nor I." Morgiana admitted, accompanied by an agreeing hum from Spartos.
Alibaba joined in the laughter and Hakuryuu sighed, tension draining from his shoulders.
"So, are we going after him?" Judal asked, surprised to find himself undisturbed compared to his somewhat shaken companions. Hakuryuu smiled wearily and brushed his fingers through Judal's hair, which he seemed to do when he needed reassurance.
"Not right now. For now, we should rest. We have ridden for days and exhaustion will do us no favors."
"Sounds good to me!" Alibaba said enthusiastically, as he swung from his gryphon's back. The beast spread her wings and beat them once before taking off above the trees. She soared low, but wide, her master in sight at all times.
Judal slid off his dire wolf along with the others, and soon a joint effort was being made to set up camp. It felt good to be on solid ground again, and the idea of a full night's rest was incredibly appealing. Yet, for some reason, Judal got the sense that sleep wasn't going to come easy to him tonight. Maybe it was the shadow of the mountain looming over them, or the thousand stars burning overhead, or maybe it was the feeling of magic pulling at his skin.
He refused to give in to the yearning pull, but followed it, curious, until he found himself staring once more up at the faraway peak. Something dragged at him from the very depths of his being, urging him to begin his ascent.
Judal stared, then turned back and slid his arm through the crook of Hakuryuu's, as if to anchor himself in place.