Borl Horgan was enjoying a lovely afternoon sipping tea and nibbling on some crackers (rather hard crackers, but still quite palatable) when a resounding crash rattled his little cabin.
He spilled the tea down his front and dropped his half-eaten cracker—a great shame—and then spent a nervous moment eyeing the ceiling beams. He’d built the cabin himself, and, even without outside disturbances, he often expected it to crash down upon his head. His non-magical creations collapsed with distressing frequency.
Luckily, though, as the cabin walls finally settled, it seemed that the crash would cap its victim count at three: the tea, the cracker, and an unfortunate ceramic vase.
Borl waited a moment more, just in case, and then darted across the room to peer through his front window. He was careful to lift his eyes just barely over the sill in case something was peering back, but it seemed the disturbance had come from some ways down the mountainside. A great pine tree that Borl recalled exhibiting peak physical condition just the day before was now keeled over on its side, looking quite put-out, and, as he raised his head up an inch further, he could make out the likely cause.
“Blaze it!” he swore, dropping immediately to the cabin floor. He didn’t think the two interlopers had spotted him through the window, but they couldn’t well overlook the entire cabin, which meant he had very little time.
Ah, his poor cabin! His poor teapot! He would have to leave them all behind. He paused only to grab a lumpy hat to smash onto his head before making a beeline for the back window.
But, of course, as he made to open it, it jammed. His creations always failed him in the crucial moments. He grit his teeth and tugged, but he wasn’t the most muscular fellow, and, even after giving up on strength and resorting to coaxing the window tracks with little taps and wiggles, he only managed to move it a few more inches, leaving an opening of about a foot, before he heard voices and footsteps outside.
Borl hopped up and tried to squeeze himself through, but he’d only gotten one leg, one arm, and the foot of the other leg out when the door burst open and he had to relax into what he could only hope was a natural-looking posture, pasting on his best attempt at a serene and all-knowing expression.
Standing in his doorway were two unfortunately familiar men, brandishing sticks. Luckily, the sticks had the smooth, blunted look of windsticks, so Borl wasn’t terribly worried that he was about to be bashed over the head. For once he could take comfort in knowing that his demise had already been foretold in a different manner.
The men were young, though perhaps no longer much younger-looking than Borl himself. A mage’s physical aging naturally slowed as their power matured, resulting in a disproportionate number who appeared to be thirty-something. These two were not quite there yet, closer to twenty-five still, but half a decade was pocket change to a mage.
The one on the left, Cormara Qualzee, was squinting at Borl with the perpetually hostile expression that Borl remembered well, while Binion Pilgon, to the right, beamed.
“Master Horgan!” Binion exclaimed, arms open as if to enclose everything in Borl’s cabin in one, crushing hug. “We found you!”
Cormara continued to glare, and though he echoed Binion’s, “Master Horgan,” the sentiment it conveyed was precisely the opposite. Perhaps he would be hit with a stick after all.
“Disciples,” Borl greeted in his most-sedate, wise-master voice. “I trust you have been keeping up with your studies.” If they weren’t going to mention the fact that he was stuck halfway through a window, he certainly wasn’t going to bring it up.
“We aren’t disciples anymore,” Cormara stated bluntly. “It’s been five years.”
“But we’ll always be Master Horgan’s disciples!” Binion was quick to insist. His smile stretched, and Borl wondered, not for the first time, if he didn’t intentionally delude himself. He had long suspected that neither of them was entirely sane, and the fact that they spent so much time together couldn’t be helping.
“Five years,” Borl echoed, as if this warranted deep thought. He tapped his chin to distract them from the leg he was sliding out the window. “Time passes quickly when one reaches my age. I had not realized it had been so long.”
Cormara did not relent. “Aren’t you only fifty-two?”
Borl coughed delicately. It was true that fifty-two was still quite young for a mage. Borl was old enough to have his own disciples, true, but it would have been at least five more decades before he could even be considered for promotion to Arch Mage had he stayed at Holey Hill, and no one under the age of 175 had ever actually been promoted. Still. “One does not ask after a mage’s age,” he said, and then hurriedly changed the subject. “Did you not bring Sharine and Yaka?” He’d rather ask why Cormara and Binion had come at all, and how they’d managed to find him, but he couldn’t think of a way to do so without sounding suspicious.
“Master Horgan, you’ve missed so much!” Binion lamented. “Sharine is Master Culby’s MA now, and Yaka is Dooltin’s.”
“Master Dooltin,” Borl corrected automatically, though he really couldn’t care less what Binion called the bastard. It didn’t surprise him that Yaka had stayed on at Holey Hill, but it rankled that he’d picked Dooltin of all people. Even if Borl had abandoned them first, it was still bad taste! What a disloyal, little rat. “Are you both Tibello’s MAs then?”
“Yes,” Cormara said.
“And how is Tibello?”
“Fine,” Cormara said.
“Excellent!” said Binion. “Though, of course, not as excellent as you, Master. He makes us do two-thirds of his paperwork. I’ve forgotten half the talismans you taught us because, whenever I think I’ve found time to review, he pops out of nowhere and says, ‘Have you filed for the Aral rebate yet?’ or the solstice meal waiver, or the inclement weather discount. I don’t think I’ve learned more than three new energy techniques since taking the position, but I could probably reduce your annual expenditure by thirty percent.” Despite his words, he looked rather pleased with the situation. Then again, Binion was hard to displease. Borl doubted Tibello could manage it short of banishing him from Holey Hill, which wasn’t something Tibello had the power to do, and, even if it had been, Binion would probably find a way to crawl back with the sheer might of positivity.
“A valuable skill,” Borl nodded. “Magic alone cannot accomplish everything in life.” Both his legs were fully out the window now, but it was going to be hard to lower them to the ground with any approximation of grace.
“We also take shifts on the Trace Watch,” Cormara said, continuing to stare Borl down.
“Yes, that’s how we found you!” Binion jumped in. “The sensor at the base of the mountain picked something up, and, given how close it is to the border, we figured whoever it was had better be warned. We didn’t realize it was you until we got close enough to use the amplifying talisman. I love what you’ve done with the place, by the way!”
Cormara spared a moment to side-eye Binion before refocusing on Borl. “If you’ve been here for five years, why is this the first time you’ve used magic?” he demanded.
Borl could have said that he hadn’t, in fact, used magic… for precisely the reason that Cormara seemed to suspect. He hadn’t wanted to be found! He’d picked this uninhabited stretch of the border because no one would happen to wander into him, but it also meant that any magical activity that the sensors picked up would be highly suspicious. It had been five years and change since he’d used any form of magic at all, which meant there was probably some other poor lout wandering about the mountain. He’d get to that, but first to allay Cormara’s suspicions… “Sometimes,” he said, “one must distance himself from his source of power to better understand its place in his life. I have been contemplating many things these five years and have come to learn much.”
“Are you ready to return then?” Binion asked, eyes expectant in a way that sparked a small, prickle of guilt in Borl’s stomach.
“I believe it is time for me to move on, yes,” he said (because he’d have to move now that they’d found him), “but not to Holey Hill. There are other places I must visit first. Things I must do.”
“Is that what you were doing when we showed up?” Cormara asked, blinking pointedly at Borl’s position in the window, the first indication either of them had given to noticing. “Moving on to other places?”
Borl had used to be very good at maintaining his wise-master face through everything his disciples threw at him, but he’d gotten rusty in the years since he’d had to deal with them, and he could feel his ears getting a tad hot. “This window has been jammed for some time,” he explained. “I needed to ensure I could still get through it. For fire safety.”
“You couldn’t just use magic to put out the fire?” Cormara demanded.
Binion elbowed him. “He said he wasn’t using magic. Of course Master Horgan would maintain his principles even in the event of a natural disaster.”
Borl inclined his head solemnly. “Only through hardship can we progress,” he said.
“But you just used magic,” Cormara pointed out. “So if it’s about principles, you’ve already compromised them.”
Borl thought this was probably a good moment to explain that the magic hadn’t actually been him, and then hopefully convince Cormara and Binion to go look for the poor soul so he could make his escape, but he was distracted by the sudden, sharp smell of smoke. For a wild moment he thought his cabin must have caught fire in a cruel twist of fate, or perhaps a punishment for telling such outrageous lies, but then his better sense caught up to him.
The dry landers had found them.
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