"No doubt," he said with a tired smile, reaching down for it. It was still hot. She must have swiped it right off someone's dinner table with her Conjuring.

The goose was perfectly cooked-she'd probably Conjured it off some inn's main dining table-and the first bite unleashed an onslaught of ravenous hunger. He stripped both drumsticks before Sarraya had much of a chance to do anything, and he began working on the main body of the bird with his claws and teeth by the time she was sedately perched on a rock facing him. She'd Conjured up some berries for herself, and they shared a meal in relative silence, at least until Tarrin slowed down in his eating enough to speak between bites.

"How long was I asleep?" he asked.

"Just over the night," she replied. "I brought you over here to get you away from that mess you made."

"What mess?" he asked, but Sarraya was already pointing. He looked in the direction she indicated, and he saw a black pillar of smoke boiling up from the ground some distance away, spreading out into the high sky. The smoke was being distorted by the morning wind, wind caused by the sun's heating of the air, wind that rushed from the east to the west, then was turned back by the prevailing winds that came in from the west once the sun had heated the desert.

"That's your doing," she told him archly. "In ten years, there's going to be a mountain there."

"A mountain? What did I do?"

"You ripped a hole in the earth that runs all the way to the magma," she said casually, but he could tell that just saying it was of monumental importance to her. "I can't fix something that big, so it's just going to have to stay."

"Magma?"

"Liquid rock," she explained. "The earth rests on an ocean of liquid rock, so hot that you wouldn't even have time to feel pain if you fell into it. Not that you'd live long enough to get that close to it in the first place."

"Oh. My father calls it lava. He saw some when a volcano in Shace erupted."

"Lava, magma, it's the same thing," Sarraya shrugged. "Since your little hole goes all the way through, now it's spewing out of it. It'll cool off and turn back into rock, then build itself up into a mountain."

"The land isn't going to sink, is it?" he asked fearfully.

Sarraya gave him a curious look. "Whatever gave you that idea?"

"You said that the land floats on it. When you put a hole in a boat, it sinks."

She glanced at him, then laughed. "No, that's not going to happen. You don't know very much about the real way the world works, do you?"

"I'm not Phandebrass, Sarraya," he said defensively. "I know what my parents taught me, that's about it."

"All that time in the school in Suld, and you didn't learn anything?"

"They didn't give me much time to learn anything but Sorcery," he grunted in reply.

"Funny that you didn't know about the magma, yet you wove a spell to cause it to erupt."

"I do things I don't understand when I do that," he told her. "It's like when I'm like that, I know things I don't really know, and I forget them when it's over."

"Probably because you're in touch with the Weave," she speculated. "Nevermind. You don't look like you're up to a debate right now."

"No, not really," he said, looking back at the smoke. "So, that'll be a mountain?"

"A volcano, to be precise," she answered. "We can call it Mount Fury."

Tarrin chuckled ruefully. "At least it'd be a fitting name."

"Do you remember much about what happened?"

"Some," he replied. "I get the feeling that after a while, the rest will come back to me. What happened to that Sha'Kar woman?"

"She disappeared not long after you passed out," Sarraya said worriedly. "Tarrin, you were being Consumed. What happened? How did you weasel out of it?"

"I, I have no idea," he replied. "I don't really remember very much about that."

"The Sha'Kar spoke to me before she disappeared," she said. "She said she was there to test you. She said that she was sent to make you lose control."

"I had a feeling that was the case," he said calmly. "I thought about that a bit just before I opened my eyes. I couldn't think of any sane or rational reason she would have come here and attacked me that way."

"At least you're thinking," she teased, then she got serious again. "She said that you had to lose control if you were ever going to get stronger. She said that all Weavespinners had to face being Consumed. She said that if you survived, you were a Weavespinner."

"I thought I already was one."

"Maybe in name, but I think you had to do that to be able to use the power that the Weavespinners use. Can you feel anything different right now?"

"I can see the Weave, Sarraya," he answered, looking around and surveying it with his strange second sight. "I can see every strand, and I can feel the pulsing of the power flowing through them like blood through a body. I can feel that power pool up in the strands nearest to me, and feel them bend in towards me. Almost like I'm attracting them."

"I think you are," she agreed. "Look at your amulet."

Tarrin picked it up off his chest, and immediately saw the difference. The central star now had two bent lines coming out of each side, reaching out and touching the triangles that surrounded the star. The star looked vaguely like a spider with those little leg-like formations extending from it.

Spider. Weavespinner. How appropriate.

He touched the new features in his amulet gently, feeling it through the pad in his finger, marvelling at it. If this was what it meant to be a Weavespinner, why didn't he feel very much like celebrating?

"I didn't get much out of that Sha'Kar woman, but she did say that she was sent by the Goddess herself. I guess your patroness got tired of you figuring out ways to avoid losing control."

Tarrin chuckled. "That does seem to fit with what I know of her. My Goddess isn't one to wait too long, for just about anything." He stroked the amulet gently, almost lovingly, his emotions for his Goddess taking control of him for a brief moment. "In a way, I'm glad she did it this way. Better to face that moment here, against someone that wouldn't immediately finish me off if I survived, and where nobody else would get hurt."

"Hmm. That's a good point. I didn't think of that," Sarraya grunted in agreement. "Maybe it's why she told you to come out here. If you would have failed, the result would have been… momentous. To say the least."

"I can imagine. I remember a bit of what happened. I was full of power. When my body would have finally succumbed to it, all that power would have been released into the physical world. It would have been released as a Wildstrike. A really big Wildstrike."

"I know. When I realized what was happening, I tried to get as far away from you as I could. I hope you don't mind," she said quickly.

"I don't blame you at all," he told her with a warm smile. "I would have done the same thing."

"Good," she sighed. "I didn't want you to think I was running away from you, or abandoning you."

"You were doing the smart thing, Sarraya. I won't be mad at you for that. I completely understand."

She beamed for a moment, then started on another berry. "I hate to say it, but your sword is gone," she told him. "It's still over there. I was too busy worrying about you to look for it."

"Not a problem," he told her, holding out his paw. He was tired, but he felt strong enough to Summon it, and the sooner he did, the less energy it would take to retrieve it. He reached within, reached through the Cat within, and made contact with the vast source of power known as the All. The image and intent in his mind were clear, plain, and the All responded to the simple request immediately. But Sarraya had suddenly jumped into the air and screamed "Tarrin, no don't!"