The Mage on the Hill Read online

  The thought weighed his limbs down, bleeding a poisoned lassitude inside. That was a fancy word. Lassitude. He supposed he could amuse himself with vocabulary while he waited.

  Wait….

  If this was a hospice room, why could he think with relative clarity? Where were the drugs that were supposed to keep him in a near-comatose state? With a frown of concentration, Toby rolled to the edge of the admittedly comfy bed and managed to sit up with the help of the headboard. From there, he snagged a corner of one of the curtains and tugged it open. He scooted forward but still couldn’t see much more than a tree directly outside. Finally, he used the windowsill to force his abused and shuddering muscles to allow him to stand.

  A garden lay below, unkempt but cheerful enough with a weeping cherry shadowing a little pond. Bright shapes darted here and there in the dark water from one stone outcropping to another. Humming came from somewhere, a tune Toby couldn’t immediately identify, the notes deep and breathy. Whisper humming. It’s a thing. Rustling underlay the soft humming, at first a disembodied sound, but then the source became apparent as the branches of the weeping cherry trembled.

  A pair of work boots peeked out from beneath the sweeping branches, more visible by the moment as the humming person pruned the branches back from the fishpond. A moment later, the mysterious gardener stepped into sight.

  Darius.

  No hospice, then. Darius hadn’t chucked him out and had upgraded Toby to an actual guest room. He couldn’t think about what that meant yet. His head was about to fall off his shoulders. Still he watched, unwilling to look away yet. Something about Darius’s hands, their sure competence even with the occasional tremor running through them—No, no, no. I can’t start skipping down that thought road. I’m lonely and sick and he’s the first person to offer anything besides death. That’s what I’m reacting to. He’s old. He’s half-crazy. He’s so not my type.

  But it was hard not to think about how gentle those gaunt, chapped hands were with the cherry branches. Toby crawled back into bed, not quite up to hoping yet, not quite drifting back into despair. Both of those things took energy that he didn’t have. The attack of wild magic had probably happened because he’d pushed himself too fast, too hard. Better to just rest and carefully not think.

  A SHARP rapping accompanied by the scent of bacon woke him later. Why is bacon knocking on the door?

  The door shoved open and Toby blinked in muzzy confusion. The large blob in the doorway wasn’t bacon, of course, but Darius, apparently with bacon. He struggled to sit up, unnerved by the glare from that single blue eye. Was it just a default setting, being angry around other people? Or was it Toby specifically?

  Oooh, that bed tray had more than bacon on it. Eggs with the bacon, a bagel, cream cheese, orange juice…. “Did you go shopping?” Toby cringed even as he blurted it out. One of these days, he’d figure out that whole mouth-brain connection.

  “Delivery,” Darius muttered as he placed the tray across Toby’s lap.

  “Thank you. Wow. This is—” Toby stopped himself from saying too much as that one eye narrowed. “Great. This is really great.”

  Darius pointed emphatically to the tray. Only that before he turned and shuffled out. At least he left the door open behind him.

  The comfy bed, the wonderful smells of breakfast, the soft breeze teasing at the sheers—this was heaven or as close to heaven as he was likely to get right now. But what was all this? Obviously he hadn’t killed Darius or destroyed the house with his last wild magic fit, so the exiled mage must have had a way to contain the blast. He had a fuzzy memory of Darius roaring at him to get down, some odd rumbling from the ground underneath him, but not much more than that.

  Was this his alternative to hospice? If it was, Toby supposed he couldn’t complain. Or was Darius actually offering to try to teach him? Seemed a long shot, but why else keep him there? Awful lot of trouble to go to if he’s just waiting for someone to come get me.

  “Guess I better assume I’m a student and do what sensei says,” Toby told the eggs as he dug in. The eggs made no protest, and the food really was great after too long on institutional meals. He managed a little bit of everything—half the bagel, a piece of bacon, most of the eggs—before he had to stop. He hoped Darius didn’t think it was too pitiful a showing, but it was more than he’d eaten in weeks.

  He was dozing when Darius came back. That single blue eye roved over the remains of breakfast, though Darius’s only comment was a soft huff, which could’ve been good or bad. Who knew? Toby was debating whether he should get out of bed—for a shower at least if not to ask what he should do next—when Darius returned a second time. On this visit he brought a canvas bag and an oversized lap desk with a fabric beanbag underside, the cheery yellow ducky pattern completely at odds with Darius’s glower.

  He plopped the absurd lap desk atop Toby’s legs and set the bag beside him on the bed.

  “Web.”

  Well, that’s all cheery and instructive. Toby opened the bag and peered inside, hoping the contents would make things clear before he had to ask annoying questions. All sorts of unrelated objects filled the bag—a matchbox, a little plastic bag of dirt, a miniature bottle of water, and a number of other things he couldn’t make out yet.

  He chanced a quizzical glance toward Darius, who pointed to the bag, then the lap desk and repeated, “Web.”

  Dirt… water… fire? “Oh. Um. Really? You want me to build an arcana web. Like they use to teach little kids?”

  His possibly new mentor leaned against one of the posts at the foot of the bed, crossed his arms over his chest, and glared, which might have been more intimidating if he hadn’t been wearing a ratty cardigan with shiny elbow patches.

  Okay. Right. Building a web. It wasn’t like the webs for kids, really. Those boards had a web already drawn with little indentations where each major and minor arcanum symbol was supposed to fit. The symbol markers were usually plastic, though the ones at his parents’ house had been colored stones. The lap desk in front of him didn’t have any web lines or spots for markers, and the items he pulled from the bag appeared to be random household bits and pieces.

  From Darius’s imitation of a perpetually irritated statue, Toby concluded he wouldn’t get any help regarding what item represented what arcanum location.

  Toby did a cursory sorting of the items, some of which he couldn’t even identify. He picked up what was probably an electronic component, though the shape reminded him of an alien spaceship made of glass. “What’s this?”

  The statue impersonation didn’t crack. No help there.

  “Okay. Got it. Process of elimination it is.” Pleased that his hands were steady, Toby did a more careful sorting and began to pick out the obvious items. “Bag of dirt. Oh, I guess it’s potting soil. Shouldn’t matter, though, right? Still Earth.”

  He placed it with a fair amount of confidence at the top of what would be his outer octagon—the major arcana. A glance at Darius for approval got him nothing, so he shrugged and went on.

  “Great. That’s one.” He picked up a miniature bottle of water next. “Easy one. Easy ones first. That’s how you do puzzles.”

  Water went on the right side of the octagon, his second major arcanum. A little bottle of compressed air anchored the bottom right. Air, of course. So far, he had three points on the outer hub, the major arcana, each separated by a missing element. Good start. Now Fire…. He reached immediately for the matchbox, then hesitated when he realized one of the other objects was a fancy lighter shaped like a dragon. Curious, he opened the matchbox. Empty.

  “Right. So the matchbox is something else I’m too tired to think of yet. Dragon lighter gets the Fire spot.”

  The rest of the items swam around in a sea of incomprehension for a few moments. Darius pulled a chair close to the bed and lowered himself into it, never taking his eyes from Toby and his work. Unnerving? Yeah. Understatement of the year, but Toby was determined not to fail his first test. A rusty nail caught the corner of his thoughts. Rusted, so it was iron. Iron was part of the Metal group in the minor arcana. He placed the nail below and to the right of Earth as his first anchor on the inner octagon.

  The nail suddenly made a few other placements more obvious on the inner ring of the minor arcana. The crumpled bit of aluminum foil belonged in the Icosagens. A picture cut out of a catalogue was an oxygen canister—Chalcogens. The travel-sized tube of toothpaste represented fluorine for the fluoride in it—Halogens.

  When he got stuck again, he reached for his tablet. “Can I use this? Is it cheating?”

  Darius quirked an eyebrow at him, the expression even more disquieting than his stone face since the eyebrow was the one over his ruined eye. “Research. Yes.”

  “Cool.” Toby couldn’t help a grin. Even little bits of communication were something.

  He took pictures of a couple of the items to do image searches. The alien-spaceship-looking thing revealed itself as a vacuum tube, probably for an old radio. He’d heard of them, but he’d never seen one. Most of them used argon, so there was his stand-in for the Noble Gases arcanum. A little plastic tube filled with slender filaments turned out to be refills for a mechanical pencil. Graphite—Crystallogens. The internet told him that the matchbox used phosphorus as part of the striker panel—Pnictogens.

  When he got to the gummi bear that looked like it hadn’t been polished, Toby had to do some searching. A laugh got away from him when he figured it out, and he clapped a hand over his mouth. No way he would’ve guessed that Darius would keep gummi bear calcium supplements in the house. There was his Alkaline. The Minor Arcana were complete.

  Now he just needed to finish the Major, fitting Light, Dark, Life, and Animus between the symbols he’d already placed. The keyring
flashlight was, well, Light. Duh. Of the three objects remaining—a tightly sealed wooden box no larger than his palm, a test tube with a budding plant, and a little figurine of two golden fish—the box had to represent Dark. The tiny seedling and the fishies? Which one was supposed to be Animus?

  Ah. The fishies are a thing. His image search brought up listings about the gaur matsya, a Buddhist symbol for a fearless mind in the sea of existence, floating from teaching to teaching. That one got the Animus spot. The seedling got the Life spot between Water and Air. Though Toby picked the fishies back up to squint at the intricate etching before he finally settled them between Fire and Earth.

  “Done.” Toby looked up with a triumphant smile, though his head ached by now. “Do I pass, Professor?”

  Darius scowled and rose with the creaking hesitance of a man twice his age. He nodded at the web, placed all the symbolic items back in the bag, and tucked the lap desk under his arm. Then he pointed a finger at Toby. “More rest. Fewer explosions.”

  “Got it, boss.” That answered the question of what he should be doing, anyway. Toby slid down into a burrow of soft sheets and down duvet. “Nestling in as ordered.”

  He got a snort back for that—oooh, a reaction!—and a soft click as Darius closed the door behind him. What little the man said made sense, though. The magic explosion so soon after Toby’s last one at the guild had to have happened because he’d pushed himself too hard. Just about anything was pushing himself too hard right now. Hell, eating breakfast had tired him out. A huge yawn snuck up on him.

  More sleep sounded good right then.

  FUCKING MOLDHEADED guilds. Bunch of dusty fucking skeletons masquerading as mentors. Darius did his best not to stomp down the stairs in case Toby had fallen asleep, but it was a near thing.

  Emaciated, exhausted, with tremors manifesting during simple tasks, his foundling was past the point of most people’s endurance. How could the guild have let him get in such a state?

  No. Stupid question. The Kovar Protocol.

  In theory, Kovar’s method worked under controlled circumstances. The young person who was unable to settle into magical channels sat in a secure guidance chamber. Two or even three experienced mages from opposing points on the web channeled their disparate magic into the room, creating an uncomfortable field of magic dissonance. The discomfort, which often translated into terrible pain, forced the subject to channel their own magic, herding them into their natural arcana, major or minor. Sometimes both.

  When it worked the first time, the world was bright and wonderful. The sun shone. Birds sang. But most young wild mages were unplaceable for a reason. Their channels eluded them. The guilds would bring in different combinations of mages, trying again and again, draining the subject physically and magically, until they reached the end of their strength. Rarely, that end led to finding the correct paths for the wild magic.

  More often the results produced people like Toby, judged completely unplaceable and too dangerous to live. To be fair, people like Toby were rare to begin with. Most people came to the guild already comfortable with their place in the web. The problem was that because the condition was rare and the Kovar Protocol worked sometimes, the guilds were unwilling to consider other solutions.

  The essence of wild magic was its unpredictable nature, which those rule-bound idiots refused to see. One method would never work for all students.

  And you did so much better. Darius stared out the kitchen window, rubbing a hand carefully over the ruined half of his face. Doesn’t matter. If it all goes wrong, it’s just the two of us up here.

  Better for that bright mind to be working toward saving himself, whether the effort was successful or not, than to be put down like an ailing pet. The raw power coursing through Toby reminded him far too much of Kara, though his resistance to placement was greater than hers had been. Clues to her arcana channels had been there from the beginning. Toby? Not a hint.

  Darius pulled in a deep, shuddering breath. Against all odds and sense, he would be teaching again.

  HOORAY! I’VE been here before! Toby snickered at his own elation when he woke up in the same bed. Things were looking up since he’d managed to wake up twice now without having to go through the whole where am I now dance.

  Cautiously, he sat up. The room stayed steady. Good start. He did feel better after resting for—holy cow, five o’clock—almost a whole day without anyone coming to badger him about another session in the guidance room or more rounds of questions he couldn’t answer.

  The evening light poked careful fingers through the lace curtains, and a forgotten feeling swept over Toby. He could breathe again. Of course he’d been breathing, otherwise he’d be dead, but a full, unharried, safe breath? Not since he’d started having attacks of wild magic.

  Safe didn’t make much sense since he was staying with a virtual stranger with a sketchy past and possibly a sketchier grip on reality from what Toby had seen, a man who hadn’t invited him here, who really hadn’t wanted him here….

  “Maybe I should get up.” No need to be a complete slug and annoy his not-quite-consensual host more. Though Darius would’ve called them to come get me, right? If he really didn’t want me here? Grumpy was probably a default setting and grumpier probably the default dealing with people one.

  Toby untangled his legs from his nest of covers and scooted out of the bed on the window side. Whistling drifted up from the garden, a familiar tune he couldn’t quite place. Gardener? He had a minor shock when he spotted Darius trundling around with a wheelbarrow carrying a variety of sacks. Still whistling, he gathered a double handful of something and tossed it into the pond, where glorious flashes of gold, black, and white illuminated a feeding frenzy of koi.

  Leaning against the windowpane, Toby felt distinctly stalker-y, but he couldn’t look away as Darius took the handles of the wheelbarrow and shambled onward to the first cluster of bird feeders. The whistling shifted into humming as he filled the triple tube feeder with black seed. When Darius turned to lift the roof off one of the house-shaped feeders, Toby strained to catch the notes, unable to believe what he was hearing. Yes… yes, Darius was singing.

  The murmured singing gained volume and confidence with each note, as if Darius had to remind himself that this was a possibility for the human voice. Toby snapped his mouth shut when he became aware of it hanging open. Not only was Darius singing, but also he was really freaking good at it. Baritone? Maybe? Not something Toby knew a lot about.

  To you, I’ll give the world.

  He realized why he hadn’t been able to place the song. He was used to hearing it sung by Christine McVie. Songbird. Sweet and beautiful, and shocking coming from the barely verbal exiled mage. Toby reached up to wipe at the equally unexpected moisture on his cheeks, completely taken off guard by the tender cradling of the words. He wanted to call down, say something like, I’m so sorry, but he couldn’t have explained why.

  Instead he turned from the window, found some clean clothes set out for him, and struggled into sweatpants with legs that were too long and a waist that was too big on his bony frame. Not a tragedy. He pulled the drawstring tight and rolled up the legs. The T-shirt and sweater hung on him too, though there wasn’t anything he could do about those. Socks? Yes, and slippers, for which he was grateful. The house was warm, sure, but Toby chilled easily.

  Stairs. I can do stairs. With the help of the sturdy carved railing, he was surprised at how easily he conquered them. Not that he wanted to push things, but he was feeling better, something he hadn’t been able to say in a while.

  A stomach-hollowing scent reached him long before he’d shuffled into the kitchen—beef, potatoes, sage? Darius must have stuffed something into the oven before he’d ventured outside. When Toby reached the kitchen, he couldn’t help a smile. The reality was so much more domestic and touched a soft spot of nostalgia inside. Darius had a Crock-Pot going with a roast and potatoes, a far cry from let’s see if there’s anything still edible in the almost empty fridge.