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.But it was not only his coordination: his mind had rotted too.The effort of summoning and controlling the feya-kori had battered the frail mush of his physical brain, turned him addled and senile, and he saw now the damage it had wreaked and how much more it would do next time he roused the blight demons from their pall-pits.For a short time, he knew what he was, saw the ruin he had visited on his body and mind, and he screamed and cried and clawed himself; but it passed, and the thoughts became too hard to hold on to, and dissipated like smoke.Fahrekh found him like that: curled up, a heap of rags and hide, the dead-skin Mask pressed to the floor, caked with grey dust.He stood in the doorway for a time, his angular face of bronze, silver and gold expressionless.‘Weave-lord Kakre,’ he said.‘You seem unwell.’‘Get out,’ Kakre croaked.‘I think not,’ came the reply.He walked into the room, until he was standing over the Weave-lord, who strained his neck to look up at the younger Weaver.‘Get out!’ he hissed again, and was racked with spasms.‘We have matters to discuss, you and I,’ Fahrekh said slowly.‘Matters of succession.Specifically, mine.’Kakre’s head snapped up, suddenly lucid.Fahrekh’s impassive Mask gazed back at him.They plunged into the Weave together, and battle was joined.It was in the abyss that they met, the endless, watery dark which was Kakre’s preferred visualisation of the fabric of reality.Whether by accident or design, it was Fahrekh’s too, and he was equally happy with the interpretation.As they attacked each other, their interactions with the Weave took on the form of fish to fit their surroundings.Thousands of individual strings of thought became shoals of piranhas, riding the invisible cross-currents which flowed in mazy twists all around them.On either side of the fray, the masters of the conflict floated, maintaining their positions amid the whip and slide of the Weave.Kakre was a ray, Fahrekh a massive black jellyfish, its tentacles deadly purple streamers.These were the representations of their physical bodies, the core of their presence in the Weave.The piranhas were their fighters, a dizzying multitude of mind-strands that darted through the space between them, seeking for a way through the enemy shoal.They savaged one another, bursting into bright blooms of scrabbling gold threads as they hit, illuminating the darkness with brief globes of light that knotted inward to infinity and collapsed.The squabbling of the piranhas was enacted faster than the eye could follow.They arced and looped in squads of dozens, thrusting or retreating or laying decoys.Smaller fish darted around the periphery of the thrashing battlefield, trying to circumvent the conflict and reach the enemy: some would be caught by their opponent’s defences, others dashed to pieces in the cross-currents.The Weavers had innumerable tricks: using fish to shield other fish, slingshotting off the edge of invisible whirlpools, laying sluggish bait which would explode into an insoluble labyrinth of tangles when engaged.It was a dizzying tableau of astonishing viciousness, hidden beneath a thin skin of illusion to protect the minds of the combatants from the raw and maddening beauty of the Weave.And Kakre was losing.Though less than a second had passed in the world outside the Weave, where time was governed by the sun and the moons, the private battle had passed through a multitude of shifts and phases, as of a military campaign enacted at extreme speed.Kakre was canny, and had tricks learned from long experience; gaining mastery of the feya-kori had taught him some things that Fahrekh had yet to fathom.But he was making mistakes.Little slips, infinitesimal blank spots in his mind where once a reaction would have been instinctive, sinister patches of forgetfulness that drifted across his psyche, robbing him of focus.Fahrekh was young and burning with energy; his vigour made up for his relative lack of finesse.Kakre’s shoal was losing ground, becoming tattered.Holes were opening in his defences faster than he could stitch them shut.But there was worse.Kakre was exhausted
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