“No sudden movements,” Val said, his pace slowing.
“All right.” Roman stifled another cough.
Half a minute later, he understood why. Through the curls of sulfurous steam, a huge shadow of a wyvern loomed on the ground, as if waiting for them. An eithral, Roman realized with a sharp intake of breath. Its pronged wings were outstretched and soaking in the heat from the pools, its white-scaled body shining with iridescence. Its maw was closed, but long, needlelike teeth still protruded and gleamed like ice, and its uncanny red eyes were the size of Roman’s palm, one of them fixed upon him and his abrupt halt.
“Keep walking,” Val said in a low voice. “Slow and steady. Follow my approach to its left side.”
Approach? Roman wanted to protest, but he did as Val instructed. He eased into a walk and kept to Val’s shadow, and that was when he saw the saddle buckled to the eithral, nestled on its horn-ridged back between its wings.
“Are you bloody serious?” Roman said, his teeth clicking together as a shudder rippled through him. “How will you control it? There’s no bridle.”
Val began to haul himself up into the saddle with practiced ease. “Do you want to walk to Oath, or do you want to fly?”
A protest melted on Roman’s tongue. He didn’t know if he had the strength to pull himself up, to sit on the back of the very creature that had played a part in his wounds. But his legs were trembling—I can’t walk to Oath—and his heart was striking his chest like a hammer. He was both exhausted and electrified, and he finally thought of the poetic justice. That an eithral would carry him and his map to the city, where Dacre was destined to lose.
An eithral was about to fly him to Iris.
Roman followed Val’s path, pulling himself up the eithral’s side to the slope of the saddle. He settled on what felt like impossibility incarnate.
“Don’t let go,” Val said gruffly. “It’s always a bumpy takeoff.”
Roman grasped the edge of the leather saddle with a white-knuckled grip, pressing his knees inward until they ached. He felt in no way secure enough to be lifting off the ground astride one of Dacre’s not-so-mythical creatures. A creature that had caused fathomless devastation and pain and death.
He clenched his eyes shut. He struggled to hold his last meal down. Cold sweat was breaking out over his skin, but then he firmly told himself, Open your eyes.
Roman did, taking in his surroundings again. He would have never believed he would be here, in this moment, months ago. Weeks ago, even. And he wanted to soak it all in. He would have never believed that he would be in the realm below, beneath layer after layer of earth, in a world made of starless night and languid smoke, about to ride an eithral.
In that moment before flight, when the air took on a hush of awe and expectation, Roman heard Iris’s voice in his memory.
I find that I am leaning more on the side of impossibility these days. I am leaning toward the edge of magic.
Her words grounded him. He envisioned Iris typing by candlelight, as if she were his gravity.
Val withdrew a small flute, hanging on a chain, from beneath his shirt. He blew three long silver notes—they shimmered in the air like sunlight catching rain—and the eithral jerked its head up and began to flap its wings.
Of course. Roman nearly laughed. They’re controlled by an instrument. By music.
The eithral was beholden to the flute’s three notes, even after they had faded into shadows. Its wings spun up the steam and flashes of heat and golden light until it felt like Roman was lost in a windstorm, the sulfur stinging his eyes and making him cough again. But then the eithral took a lurch forward. One lumbering step after the other, expertly dodging the hissing pools.
They took flight as if they had done so a hundred times before.
* * *
It was a bumpy takeoff, but once the eithral was fully in the air, the ride was smooth.
Roman was initially surprised that they never left the under realm. He hadn’t realized that this innermost world was so open and vast—an endless waste of landscape, pocketed with bubbling sulfur pools and veiled with steam. A few times, when Roman dared to look down, he saw something glittering through the haze. His eyes widened when he realized it was rusted chains and skeletons, the bones scattered across the rock paths. They looked like animal bones, until Roman undoubtedly spotted a human skull.
His throat burned as he glanced away. His mouth was parched and held a strange aftertaste, but he was relieved to discover that the warm, moist air eased his cough. Now that has panic had subsided, he could draw a deep breath here and not feel that awful pinch in his lungs.