“Hello.” Somnus’s voice emanated from the rocks, from a small circle that opened and closed like a mouth. “Azaiah. I’m glad you’re here. Something is wrong with Pallas.”
A chill washed over him. “What is it?”
There was a moment of silence, and the stones seemed to sigh. “She won’t see me.”
Azaiah’s eyebrows raised. Dreams and art were inexorably linked, so Somnus and Pallas had a similar relationship to that of Ares and Azaiah. “Is it because of her companion bond? Perhaps she’s, ah. Enjoying some time with her?”
The water rippled in a way that suggested agitation. “No, it can’t be. She hasn’t made a bond. I’d know.”
“I visited her not too long ago,” Azaiah said. “She mentioned that she would be making one, though Avarice said he didn’t believe it. Curious.”
There was another ripple, a wave that grew and grew until it washed over the shore on the far side of the river. “She has never refused to see me before. Even with a companion, she wouldn’t. That’s not how it works. And… Azaiah. I went to her temple, through the paintings. Something is wrong with it.”
Azaiah remembered the tattered curtains, the discordant music, Pallas’s manic behavior—not unusual, for a being sustained by the fires of creation, but even for her there’d been something off.
Decay.Remembering Avarice’s words, he shivered in the cool water of his river. “I… thought maybe it was me. That somehow I was corrupting her, and her realm.” Azaiah felt a flare of guilt at the thought that he should have mentioned it to someone. But his concern was the living, not the gods. They were not meant to meddle with each other’s realms.
“I tried to speak with her. She wouldn’t have it. She… she turned all the paintings to the wall, Azaiah. The one in her chambers, where I would appear to speak with her. It’s not even turned away—it’s been painted over. It’s gone.”
“Did you perhaps quarrel?” Pallas could be a bit dramatic.
“No. But… she smelled like you.”
Azaiah leaned down, pushing his hair back as he peered into the water. “Like me?”
“Like Death. As if she had your mark on her. And there is hardly anyone there. They’ve all left her, the painters and the weavers, the musicians, the dancers, even the sculptors. She’s destroyed paintings, torn tapestries from the wall. Even her favorite statue has a crack in it—the dancer behind her throne? She loves that statue. I’m worried.”
Azaiah had no idea what to do. “Do you think she’s been corrupted?”
The water began to swirl, a whirlpool forming at the base of the stone face, obscuring it. “I don’tknow.” Somnus’s voice, always so languid and kind, sounded pinched, worried. “I wouldn’t have thought it possible, but something’s wrong. She won’t let me enter her temple, and she doesn’t… care for the others, not like she cares for me. If she won’t letmein…”
That was true. Pallas had very little use for the other gods; War benefited her if they inspired great works of art, but rampaging armies often destroyed the art of the cultures they annihilated or annexed, and she of course loathed that. Leviathan was interesting but ultimately useless to her—natural disasters might provide inspiration, but that was nothing if the sailors who saw the tempest died in it—and she despised Avarice, who represented earthly desire and fleeting comforts over artistic pursuits. How many times had he heard her say it: “Art is supposed tobe, for its own sake, not for some princeling to hoard in a palace because he thinks it’s worth a lot of gold, or so he can lord owning it over other people.”
If she wouldn’t see Dreams, if her temple was barred to him… then Azaiah really was the only one who could reach her. No earthly place could refuse his presence, and while she was a god, her temple was firmly in the realm of the mortals she inspired. “I will go to her,” he promised his brother, though he ached at the thought of having to wait to see Nyx.
“And if she’s corrupted, will you take her on the boat?”
Azaiah answered very carefully. “I will if she wants me to. You know the rules, Somnus. I cannot take the soul of a god until they decide they want to give it to me.”
“Do what you can, please, Brother. It can’t be too late. I won’t let it be.”
With that, the stones tumbled out of their formation, and the water calmed, becoming once again the river Azaiah was used to. But for a moment he didn’t move, wondering what he should do.
Time flowed strangely here on the river. But time passed consistently throughout the mortal realm, in Pallas’s templeandthe Palace of the Moon. It was possible he could ask Nyx to come with him, and they could visit Pallas’s temple together. What if Nyx refused, though? Or said yes, but they had to visit Pallas before the bond was made, and he changed his mind? What if she really was corrupted… and harmed him. Without a bond, Nyx would be mortal. Azaiah would not force a bond on him, even to keep him safe. He didn’t think hecoulddo that, even if he wanted to.
No. Best to go and see about this first, then go to Nyx. He could send a message to Ares if he needed to, and he wasn’t sure what he might find in Art’s temple. So instead of letting the river carry him to the imperial wedding and his—hopefully—future companion, Azaiah slipped beneath the cool water and let it carry him to Kallistos.
He emerged from the grotto in the center of the island in the lake at the bottom of the hill, and the moment he arrived, he knew he wasn’t going to have anything good to report to Somnus.
Pallas’s temple was falling apart.
On the left side, one of the colonnades had collapsed, tilting sharply with a pile of crumbled stone on the porch beneath. The friezes above the temple doors, once beautifully painted scenes of artists parading behind a figure of a woman wreathed in laurel and flowers, were chipped, and some were bone white, devoid of any color at all. The grass around the temple, usually verdant and lush with flowers and full of artists with their easels, musicians and dancers with ribbons in their hair, was dry and empty. As he walked closer, he caught the scent of dead flowers, spoiled fruit, mold, and the sickly sweet, chemical smell of ink left too long in the sun.
Decay. The place smelled likerot, and the sense of wrongness grew exponentially the closer he got to the temple itself. There was no one there, nary a musician with a violin nor a painter with a brush, and he moved silently through the empty space, his cloak brushing against a floor gone patchy with mud and water. Glancing up, he saw that great swaths of the roof were missing entirely.
How had this happened so quickly? Or had it been this bad, or nearly, and she’d somehow hidden it from him? With growing dread, Azaiah moved through the empty salons, took note of the paintings turned toward the wall, other canvases slashed or painted over with pitch black. There were broken instruments on the floor, tangled messes of fiber that used to be beautiful wall tapestries, and still, he could hear the same melody from the last time he’d visited—which sounded as if all the instruments playing it were out of tune.
“Pallas? Sister?” Azaiah called, but no answer came. He could feel her presence, of course, so he went to her throne room, filled with apprehension of what he was going to find there.
