pushing me, and finally one night something in me pushed back, and he died. I didn't mean to hurt him."
"I know you didn't," Arden said quietly. "What happened?"
"You want to know what happened?" The turmoil just beneath the surface of Arden's control threatened to break free. He tightened his hold on the other's emotions and nodded. "For real? All of it?"
Arden nodded again. "Yes, I really want to know. . . may I know your name, as well?"
"Matta Thal, that's me. Journeyman fisherman, despite the problems I've had these last few annums with water. Apprenticed with Old Man Jelness, but he passed on in the middle of my first Journeyman annum. So I was sent to serve out the rest of my contract with Master Veld. Now this Master, he weren't so kind and understanding as the Old Man. Old Man, he'd see the Sea try and get me, and help me work out some way around the Sea's anger. Weren't easy, of course, but we'd do it more often than not. Master Veld, now, he'd just beat me. Call me stupid, incompetent, claim I was sabotaging the fishing—all sorts of things I wasn't. Not no way did I try to anger the Sea on purpose. I'm no fool."
Matta paused. Arden waited.
"And then. . . then he got drunk. Almost two annums he'd been beating on me, kept getting worse and worse, made me want to die sometimes. Then a real bad day happened and he got drunk. Real drunk. Drunk enough that he came belowdecks to my berth and woke me up. 'You're a lousy seaman,' he said, and started undoing his pants. 'Might as well be good for something.'"
Arden heaved a deep, shuddering breath. "Now I'm no good with women. Always figured I must be flit, even though I never saw a man I had much hankering for, either. No big problem, happens all the time, although I reckon my papa might have something negative to say if it's really the case. Reckon he plans to have me repopulate the entire Thal dynasty all by myself. Along with some willing woman, of course. Old Man, now, he didn't care one way or the other. 'It's all the same, boy,' he'd say. 'The Sea, she don't care who you lay with on land, as long as she gets your undivided attention when you're out with your boat.'
"Anyway, that Master of mine, he comes at me undoing his pants, and I don't think 'Looks like I get to find out if I'm flit after all.' No, I think instead I don't want any part of it, and I start to get all panicky inside. And the Sea, she catches on to my panic and starts getting all riled, pitching the boat up and down, and I'm getting hotter and hotter. . . and the evil happened. It just burst out of me. Nothing I could do could stop it, it was evil and it was going to happen anyway. So the evil came and burned him. And it followed me, it stayed around me when I jumped into the water, and the Sea spit me and the evil both right out onto the dock."
Matta paused again, thinking. Arden waited patiently, not even breaking the silence to point out that the fire-calling wasn't evil. He could feel something encouraging coming from the young fisherman, a desperate hope that everything would turn out well, that he wasn't really evil at all.
"I don't rightly know what happened next," Matta went on eventually. "I know I ran. And I know that black wizard Gemmel found me and took me. He threw some kind of spell on me, wrapped me up in it and took me back where he came from, all wrapped up in the spell and floating like a tame cloud behind him and his horse all the way. Very strange, that. I remember getting to his stronghold. I thought things would get better. Was I wrong! He tied me to a pole in a stone room and I remember what he said. He looked at me up one side and down the other, and said 'I wonder what it takes to make a fine young man like you call fire?' I thought about the fire eating the Master. I probably shouldn't have, guess he could read my mind, but I couldn't help it. And he saw it. He laughed. 'Oh, is that all?' he said, and then there he was, undoing his robe, because he didn't wear no pants. And there was the evil, too, only Gemmel didn't burn up with it, he took it for his own use. And he did that to me, over and over again, and he used the evil, and he made me watch while he did horrible things. And if that didn't raise up enough of the evil, he'd do horrible things to me, too. Even more horrible than that, if you can imagine.
"So there it is. Journeyman fisherman Matta Thal, filled with evil, and not flit, after all, because I sure didn't enjoy any of that. And now I expect you'll want to get rid of me somehow, so I won't spread the evil to these nice people who took me in, even if they did pen me up with that infernal giggling spring. And I reckon I'll just let you do whatever you want, since I don't much want to spend the rest of my days with evil riding in my heart and soul."
Arden tried to make his eyes, voice, and empathic ability convey his compassion, speaking to the desperately hopeful inner self as well as the resigned public face. "Matta. You've had a horrible time of it these last two annums. I know nothing I can say or do will make any of it go away. But I will tell you one thing for absolute certain: you, Matta Thal, are not evil. What you are filled with is a force indeed, but it is neither good nor evil, it just is. Let me give you an example."
Arden reached into his belt pouch and found his lightstick. "See this? A lightstick, common and ordinary. You've probably seen a hundred, a thousand of them, right? Now watch."
He uncapped the lightstick and the tip lit with a cheerful glow, easily visible in the afternoon shade.
"This is light. It is neither good nor evil. Would you agree with that?"
Puzzled, Matta nodded.
"The lightstick is made of a stick," Arden tapped the thin wooden rod, "and the light of collected elements of fire."
Matta's eyes widened. "Didn't you use the words 'fire elemental' earlier? Talking about me."
"Yes," Arden nodded. "I'm going to assume nobody's told you about elementals yet. Each element of nature—earth, air, fire, water, and spirit—is made up of countless tiny little bits. Each little bit is mindless, and it is utterly pure. There is nothing but fire in the bits that comprise the element fire. This little glowing thing here," Arden touched the lighted end of the stick, "is made of a substance with an affinity for fire and a spell to restrict a certain amount of those little bits to the substance, providing a steady light source. Are you following this so far?"
"Yes. Are you saying, then, that I'm like the substance there? I have an affinity for the element fire?"
"Yes, I am, and I'm about to prove it to you. I'm going to relax this empathic hold I have on you, and you'll be able to sense the fire elementals in the lightstick. Ready?"
Matta nodded, then his eyes grew wide. "I can feel it! Like they're singing a happy little song, perfectly willing to sit there and shine forever."
"That's precisely right. That's how all the magical gizmos and gadgets we use work, with bits of each element all set to work for us. Does that seem evil to you?"
"No," Matta shook his head, then his expression darkened. "But killing people does. I can't see how this ability, this affinity, I have can be anything but evil. What good's it do anyone if I kill anyone that upsets me?"
"Matta," Arden called on annums of experience dealing with younglings and kept his patience. "You will not kill anyone who upsets you. What you need is control. Once you get your power to obey you consciously, then you'll no longer be a danger to anyone."
"Sure. Give me one example of how this evil of mine might be useful instead of harmful."
"Glass blowing," Arden replied promptly, the first trade to come to mind. "Glass blowers need mastery over fire to achieve their goals. Elemental magic is a tremendous boon to them. Creating magical devices, like this lightstick. Also metalworking, both regular smithcraft and weaponscraft, although I rather doubt that would appeal to you. Healing. I know it hardly seems likely, but a good many healers have elemental talents as well."
"Healing?" Matta's stubbornness dissolved into skepticism. "What good's it do a healer to be able to burn a patient up? They want to cure, not kill."
"They do. Cure, I mean. I asked a healer about that, one with a minor affinity for fire. She uses her skill to help burn out fevers, infections, and also to purify medical instruments. Imagine you're in a hall full of people stricke
n with winter fever. You'd be able to cure each and every one of them with your fire, which is something only another elemental healer can do."
"Healing," Matta said again, this time in a voice tinged with wonder. Arden felt his attention shifting onto the new thought and away from the old pain, and released more of his control, until Matta sat free of external control for the first time in an entire lunation.
"You could come back to Scholastica with me," Arden offered. "I'm an instructor there. I teach people what to do with their elemental affinities. You could stay here, of course, but I know from experience that the Vindrians have no idea how to train an elemental. I studied with them myself until we all realized I've got more to me than just the ability to channel magic through my Voice."
"Scholastica? Someone teaches healing?"
"And metalworking, and glassblowing, and even the building and maintenance of hypocaust systems, another area in which knowledge of fire and its behavior is essential. What do you say?"
"Let me think on it," Matta said, rubbing his chin. "I'd like to talk to these Vindrians of yours, that saved me from—" he broke off, swallowed hard, and clamped down on his emotions before they could get the better of him. "Anyway, they're good people, and I'd like to talk to them before I go making any