Azaiah went down, into the dark.
A slick staircase, damp and overgrown with moss, led him down into a vast, cavernous room filled with magelights and candles. A group of people were sitting in a circle around an altar covered with flowers, fresh fruit, and branches of the olive trees that accounted for the only real export from Katoikos. Each person in the circle wore a black cloak, the hood pulled up, and each held two coins in their hands.
“Bless us with your presence, Storm Lord,” they cried as the thunder picked up, loud enough that it sounded like a warning.
Azaiah stayed in the shadows, but he asked, “Why have you called me here? My scythe cannot be wielded in any name but mine.”
They cried out in joy at the sound of his voice, which drifted from the dark corners of the room all at once.
“We seek not to control, Lord, but to receive your blessing! We would show you that you are revered, not feared, and ask you to walk with us and grant us your favor!”
“My favor is a lantern in the dark,” Azaiah said, words punctuated by the continued thunder. “A hand to help you aboard my boat. I think you are not ready to sail my river, so why would you call for me, ask for my blessing? Are there those you would have me take in your stead?”
“No, Lord!” a woman cried, rising to her feet. Her cowl fell back, revealing a tumble of dark hair and features twisted in ecstatic praise. “We only ask that you favor us as we favor you! Let us see you, Lord of Storms! Let us shower you with gifts of flowers and fruit!”
Azaiah thought about what Ares had said, about finding a tether to humanity while he waited for Nyx. This cult did not seem to want him to reap souls or inflict deaths that would benefit them in some way. If this cult meant only to adore, to adorn him with flowers and weep in joy at his presence, welcoming him and reminding him he had a place in the world but not seeking to use the scythe he bore on his back… there was no harm in that. Perhaps they would revere Azaiah the man behind the cowl, and while it was nothing like the bright flame of Nyx’s love for him, this soft magelight in the dark would have to be enough.
Azaiah stepped from the shadows and pushed his own cowl back to reveal himself. “You have called for me, and I am here.”
The worshippers were on their feet, weeping, singing, drawing him into the center of their rite. They danced with him, adorning him in a wreath of flowers, and for a moment, it reminded Azaiah of when he’d been a mortal walking to the altar, how the villagers had thrown flowers at his feet. He no longer remembered their names or their faces, but he remembered the scent of dried flowers thrown at him, the high winter sun a cold, distant light in the sky above.
It grew humid in the cave, warm with the people’s breaths and the dancing, and Azaiah knew he should be careful. Their adoration made him drunk as he could never be on the wine he shared with Nyx, and he could not deny that he enjoyed it. But he had to remember that while it felt a bit like it did when he lay under Nyx, it wasn’t the same. Nyx had never courted him as Death. He’d courted Azaiah. These revelers did not know his true name, and while they praised him, they did not want that part of him.
But if they did not seek to turn him to a purpose, merely asking to know that he was with them… it might work. He knew it couldn’t be forever; eventually, they’d want something from him, and they would no longer celebrate him when he refused to grant their wish. Not the death of anyone else, in this case—Azaiah had a feeling it was the opposite, that they wanted to live forever and thought worshipping him would enable them to do so. It wouldn’t, but if the pretense gave them joy and kept him grounded… he would let it be what it was.
And why should I always be reviled? Even my corrupt sibling Avarice has acolytes. Ares, who causes strife wherever they walk, has those who curry their favor in songs and rites. Leviathan, in his underwater hoards, has trinkets from sailors who make offerings to him.
He thought of Pallas, of her wild laugh and the jester puppet on its strings. The woman trapped for however long in stone. Pallas had been loved by her acolytes, revered, but that hadn’t been enough to stave off the corruption. No, Azaiah must be smart about this, must remember this was a temporary measure that would not cure a complex problem.
When he left at dawn, the revelers were sleeping, exhausted and dreaming of their Lord’s favor. The sky was heavy with clouds, and thunder rolled behind him as he walked, but for the moment there was no rain… and that was enough, for now.
Azaiah turned from the cult that he had blessed with his presence and went to his river, thinking of using the currents there to return to the empire’s mainland. Perhaps he would go and see Nyx, or visit Ares. But a tickle at the back of his mind told him he was needed in a mountain village to the west.
In his pocket was a single gold coin. Someone had pressed it into his hand during the rite, and he fished it out and looked at it. There was no face on the coin, just a cowled figure with the hint of a scythe rising above their back.
Lord, may I fashion coins with your likeness so that those of us who know of this place, this secret, may give them to each other and recognize that we are together in your blessing?
Azaiah had said that yes, they might. It was… gratifying, in its way, to think of people carrying his face about as a token of adoration. How often did he walk past villages and see marks made to keep him away, trinkets borne into battle to stay his hand? To be wanted, celebrated… Ah, yes, he would have to be careful, indeed. But he did not think a coin with his likeness was too terrible a thing. Perhaps he would collect one, on his next visit to his small temple, and bring it back for Nyx.
He smiled and slipped the coin back into his pocket, drew his cowl up once more to hide his face, and turned toward the west and the souls that needed him not for worship and dancing… but to guide them to the boat, to the river. Home. He would retain his compassion, and when Nyx was finally ready to make the bond with him, he would have no need for revelry, for a cult that cried out to him like a lover.
The thunder rumbled, like a threat. Like an omen.
Azaiah stepped into the quiet waters of the bay and did not notice when it began to rain.
* * *
Nyx had just finished meeting with the matriarch of the western hillside when the messenger came.
Technically, the matriarch should have been dead. If Nyx had obeyed orders, he would have put her and her daughters to the sword a week ago, when he and his most trusted soldiers crept into the enemy’s camp and dragged them out in a line. Instead, he’d walked them to the back of the camp, let them scream their lungs out while his soldiers bloodied their swords with a sacrificial war bird, and let them go.
Freja Ironhammer, the matriarch of six villages bordering the mountains, had smiled at Nyx in the dark as she was released and promised to find him again. Which she had, bearing terms of a truce Nyx could throw at Lamont to ignore in a few months.
“It’s a shame you aren’t a woman,” she said as Nyx poured her tea in his tent. “Or a hillman, without an emperor to bend the knee to. I could use a person like you in our army.”
“Your army, which doesn’t exist,” Nyx said.
She smiled. “Of course.”
