Eventually, after what could have been half an hour of flying or three—time was impossible to measure without the sky and the sun and the moon—Roman noticed that in some places, the steam from the sulfur pools rose higher than others, as if there was a draft, drawing it upward. After the seventh instance of this, he began to surmise that those must be the places where the eithrals could emerge from the ground. More doorways, large enough to let the creatures pass from one realm to the next.
He wanted to ask Val, but Roman kept his questions captive. Val didn’t seem like a very patient individual, and if Roman wanted to press his luck, he thought he should wait until they had landed. But the roaring silence didn’t quell his imagination or his theories.
Val was obviously close with the eithrals. Perhaps he trained them, or was their caretaker? He also carried the flute beneath his clothes like Dacre did and knew all the melodies to play to control the creatures. What other commands did the eithrals know, and did they still obey musical orders when they flew in the world above?
Roman remembered his time on the front lines, how Lieutenant Lark of the Sycamore Platoon had said eithrals were rarely spotted flying over the trenches because the beasts couldn’t differentiate between enemy and friendly forces. That if Dacre had let them loose with bombs in their talons, they would have just as easily dropped them on Dacre’s soldiers as they would Enva’s, and therefore the creatures were used to bomb civilian towns, a good distance from the front lines.
Dacre’s tactics were to use the eithrals to not only strike fear into the hearts of people, but bomb, then gas, then recover wounded soldiers, so that he could heal them in what felt like complete measures before scrambling their memories to make them feel beholden and subservient to him. It was a terrible and ruthless way to build an army and a following, and Roman could feel heat rise beneath his skin.
But this thought remained at the forefront: surely the eithrals could still be commanded when they flew above. Surely Dacre wasn’t surrendering complete control of his creatures. There had to be a way he could still harness them, as Avalon Bluff had revealed. The eithrals had made two rounds over the town, carrying different materials each time.
Val shifted in the saddle in front of him. The flute flashed in the mellow light as he raised it to his lips.
Roman tucked away the anger and the wonderings when he realized they were preparing to land.
Val blew the flute again, this time two long notes followed by three short ones. The music claimed the air, spawning rings of iridescence that grew so large they faded from sight, and the eithral screeched in response. The creature tossed its head as if resisting the order, but began to angle downward, wings flapping in short but powerful bursts.
Roman clung to the saddle, rigid with dread. But the landing wasn’t as terrible as he expected, and before he could even catch his breath, the eithral had come to a halt—wings outstretched once more over the bubbling pools—and Val was dismounting.
“Let’s go,” Val said.
Roman half-slid, half-fell his way down, his right ankle hitting the stone floor with a painful jar. Val, thankfully, didn’t notice, as he was already walking along the pathway that wound through the sulfur eddies.
Roman hesitated, glancing at the eithral. It was watching him again, eye sparkling like a ruby. With a pang in his stomach, Roman realized it was just as captive as he was.
He hurried after Val, stepping over pieces of a skeleton and a chain of iron that vanished into one of the boiling pools. Soon, veins of briars began to crosshatch over the floor, and Roman found that the plants guided them to where the doorway was, its arched lintel covered entirely in thick vines, clusters of amethysts, and bloodstained thorns.
“This way,” Val said, his impatience ringing just like one of his musical notes. He stepped over the threshold and into the shadows, and Roman followed, his eyes struggling to adjust to the darkness.
He could feel the floor steadily rising beneath him. The incline turned his breath to fire, his temples throbbing in response. They passed through another door, returning to the main level of Dacre’s realm, only this time it was deathly quiet. There was no city market to greet them, and the air tasted dusty and stale. A lonely echo reverberated through the darkness.
Val struck a match. Its meager light helped more than Roman would have thought possible, and they soon began to wend through a very narrow passage that broke into multiple new routes. Cobwebs were strung thick overhead; small bones were piled in corners. Amethysts grew from the wall in clusters, glittering like a thousand eyes in the firelight, and Roman had to duck and squeeze his way through, mesmerized by the haunting beauty of it.