The Strongest Archmage Who Retired to Become a Farmer,

He's the only Archmage the world has seen in three hundred years. He just wants to grow apples.

Ambrose closed the breach at Caldhane in a single morning—walked alone into a dying city, unmade the devils pouring out of a hole in the world, and sealed the hole with his hand. Then he walked away from the king who owned his name and bought a falling-down farm at the quiet end of nowhere.

The world has other ideas.

A cruel mage bleeding a market town dry. A proud lady whose hills have filled with stitched-together monsters. A wyrm. A charlatan. A grasping lord with a very dangerous friend. One after another they come to his valley, each certain they've found something they can frighten. Each one is wrong. Ambrose deals with them the way you'd deal with a weed in the carrots—without hurrying, without breaking a sweat, usually before lunch—and then he goes back to his farm.

His name has started to travel, farther every season. The latest to come looking rode in from the other side of the world, asking after the man who shut a thousand-year door in the high country. Whatever it is they've crossed an ocean to ask him, it can wait until the pruning's done.