The courtyard lay empty around him, his only company some slimy green pools and the statues of Meksha, and he felt as if the Tower’s patron goddess was watching him with stony eyes, judging his worthiness. He ran his fingers along the brass surface of the door. If he knew the picture for metal, he could melt his way through … That made him smile, and when he turned back to look at Meksha’s unmoving face he felt more proud than embarrassed. He rang the bell.
Mura answered with a smile. ‘You’re home.’
He would not have called it ‘home’, though they had given him a room with a bed and a table. Home was his dingy apartment above the fruit market. Home was his father’s boat, with the barrels of fruit he carried up the river. But more and more he was feeling that patterns were also his home: he longed to study their forms, to draw them with his fingers, to feel the delight of pulling the essence of a thing from a network of lines and shapes. And if patterns were his home, then perhaps the Tower was too. His father had believed it.
‘Well, are you coming in?’ Mura turned and walked away from him, between the lines of rock-sworn mage statues. ‘Govnan has some wonderful news, and some ideas of how to—’ she stopped. ‘First, have you seen the Great Storm, to the north?’ She was already halfway up the first flight of stairs and she turned to wave her hand at the brass portals.
Farid jogged after her to avoid them closing on him. ‘I’ve seen it – if you mean the greyness.’
‘It’s grown. To the northwest it now takes up the whole horizon, like a real storm.’ She paused, her hands on the railing, her eyes far away, focused on a memory of a different place. Then she met his gaze with a directness that shocked him. ‘But this storm doesn’t pass. It doesn’t let the sun through. It just creeps closer.’
Farid frowned. ‘I thought you said you had good news.’
‘Yes. Come.’ She turned back and ran up the stairs again and at last they reached the library. Mura threw the door wide. Inside, Govnan and Moreth were standing, looking over some parchments.
A tingling ran over Farid’s skin: he could see some of those parchments had patterns written on them.
As they entered, Govnan looked up, his eyes bright, and beckoned them forwards. ‘Ah! Here he is. Did everything go well in the desert, then? Take a look.’
Farid hurried to his side and identified the symbol in Govnan’s hands. Shack-nuth. ‘Fire.’ He felt disappointed. They had been over this before.
‘Do you know the one for water?’
Farid nodded. A quill lay on the table next to a pot of ink, so he found himself a blank piece of parchment and drew the symbol with bold, angry strokes. He wanted to see the ancient patterns Govnan had shown him before, though it made him ashamed, for he could not forget how his mother had died.
‘Here is the good news,’ said Govnan, ‘and since you were not here, I will tell it again. The Great Storm has been approaching the Blessing for some time, and that has been a great concern to us, for all it touches turns to dust. We would not last long in the desert without the Blessing to feed and carry our crops.’
Farid fell back in a chair and stared at the high mage. How could he not have known such threats existed? He had never even guessed at them … His hands curled into fists and he took a deep breath. ‘And now?’
‘Now the day has come, and we find the river is indeed a blessing.’ Govnan handed him a brass tube with pieces of glass at each end. ‘Use the spyglass and look. The Storm touches the river, but it does not consume the water, and this tells us there is a way to stop the Storm from growing, even if we cannot heal it.’
Farid stood and walked to the window. He held the glass to his eye, found the Blessing and followed it north past the Worship Gate, to where it rushed through the farmlands on its way down from the mountains. And then he saw it: a blank wall on the western side of the river, and behind it a colourless void that extended as far as the spyglass could reach, covering the world from sand to sky. It made his stomach turn and he had to look away.
But on the eastern side, all was as it ever had been. A strip of green led into the lushness of the pomegranate groves, dissolving into brush further east, and at last ended in the dunes, the start of Cerana’s harshest desert. ‘I understand,’ he murmured. The Blessing was acting as a barrier against the Storm. ‘Is it possible to direct the river across the path of the Storm from east to west?’ he asked, ‘as the farmers do in the fields?’
‘There is no time for that,’ said Govnan, ‘but I am not without hope. If pure water – the water of the gods – can stop it, what of true fire?’