enjoy some exercise after such a satisfying meal.” He pushed his chair away from the table, rose, and gave a small bow to his host.
Outside, they rambled the meticulously manicured grounds, and Turjan praised the lawn, the hedges, and even the ornamental rocks that flanked the long, eastward-curving path.
“The miners care for the grounds,” Bosk told him. “That’s part of our pact with them.”
Turjan nodded. “I trust that, in return, they live well. Your delicacies certainly fetch high enough prices in the south.”
“They live well,” said Bosk. “Better in some ways than we do. Their halls never echo hollow in the night, and their fires warm their chambers better than ours.”
Turjan looked back to the manse, which sprawled, wing upon wing, over a series of eminences. “Your halls are impressive. Your family has wealth that many would envy.”
Bosk clasped his hands behind his back. “We have gained it all through serving our customers,” he said, and he could hear his father’s voice in the words.
“A fine merchant’s attitude,” observed Turjan.
They passed through a scatter of trees, and beyond, abruptly, lay the gorge of the River Derna, nearly a mile deep. At the bottom, the river was a narrow bronze ribbon, its flow glinting dully in the ruddy afternoon sunlight.
“Ah,” said Turjan, and like other visitors, he paused with one leg closer to the chasm, the knee bent as if to push off backward, his whole weight swaying uncertainly from front leg to back. “At Miir, the river is bounded by heights, but none like this.” He peered downward. “Not a sight for the faint of heart.”
Bosk stood a single pace from the brink. He could not recall being afraid of the gorge, so early in life had his father brought him here. He watched Turjan flirt with it, fear showing in the damp sheen of his forehead, and he did not smile, though he knew Fluvio would have done so.
“Was there never a bridge nearby?” Turjan wondered.
Bosk pointed to the south. “They say there was, in the old days, and great conveyances crossed on a frequent schedule. A few stones still marked the approach on this side when my father was a boy, but they have crumbled away since.”
Turjan drew back, leaving a comfortable margin between himself and the chasm. He motioned for Bosk to join him. “Has anyone ever fallen?”
The answer his father always insisted upon was negative, but Bosk had decided he would not lie to Turjan. “My mother,” he said. “She fell, or perhaps jumped.”
Turjan laid a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “I am sorry to have asked such a painful question. I beg your forgiveness.”
Bosk shook his head. “I don’t remember her. It was soon after Fluvio and I were born.”
“Hard to grow up without a mother,” Turjan murmured.
Bosk took a deep breath. “Hard to grow up a Septentrion.” Knowing only two ways to ask for anything — to beg, as he did with his father, or to negotiate, as he did with the miners — he chose to beg. He dropped to one knee. “Sir, whatever you require, I will do it with my whole heart. Only let me apprentice to you and learn the lore of sorcery.”
Turjan crossed his arms over his chest and gazed at the boy for a long moment. “It seems exciting, doesn’t it? To conjure a tree out of a table.”
“I know there is more,” said Bosk. “There is wisdom beyond measure and a thousand miracles to be wrought. How can any trade in mushrooms compare?”
Turjan shook his head. “None who practice sorcery today know more than a fraction of the edifice Phandaal once commanded. We spend our lives in frustration, trying to retrieve so much that has been lost. Better to be a traveling acrobat, young Bosk, than commit yourself to the lore we seek.”
Bosk swallowed hard. “I ask only a small corner of the whole, sir. I would not presume to think myself capable of more than that.”
Turjan glanced back toward the manse. “Why would you give up a soft life with a firm future for a world of endless questions?”
“Sir…”
“Bosk.” He turned to the boy once more. “You are young to make such an important change.”
“Is your answer no, then?”
“Your father would surely say so. I would guess that you have not discussed this with him.”
The boy shook his head.
“Do so, then,” said Turjan. “And if he approves, we can speak again someday. Possibly next year, when you have had time to consider this matter further.”
Bosk felt his shoulders sag. “You doubt he will approve.”
“As do you, or you would never have asked me first.” Turjan gripped the boy’s shoulder and urged him to rise. “Come, let’s walk a little closer to the manse and speak of mushrooms. That’s the lore you know already, after all.”
Bosk sighed and nodded.
For ten generations, the Septentrions had dealt in mushrooms from Boreal Verge, and their knowledge of their wares was as deep as the gorge itself. Countless times, Bosk had gone with his father and brother on the day-long journey to the north, where the western face of the gorge was pocked by tunnel openings, and perilous trails of green serpentine, cut by centuries of miners, slanted down to those entrances. In the tunnels, the miners nourished their pale bounty and dried a dozen varieties that could only thus survive the journey to the south. Twice a year, the Septentrions transported this produce and returned with golden coins and foodstuffs that southerners took for granted but which were delicacies in the north — flour, dried fruit, vegetables preserved in oil.
It was a commerce that made Bosk feel trapped.
Turjan had been gone almost a month when the boy finally broached the subject of sorcery.
“What nonsense is this?” thundered his father. The family was at dinner with a newly carpentered table, the one with the tree having been consigned to a windowed alcove. “You will do as we all have done, and there’s an end to it!”
Bosk pushed his plate of gratineed mushrooms away. “Father, please. Fluvio can serve the family as well as I can.”
“Let him go, Father,” said Fluvio.
“Be silent!” said their father. “We will not discuss this further.”
Two nights later, after family and servants had retired, Bosk tucked a few coins into his waistband, packed panniers with clothing, provisions, a handful of fresh mushrooms for himself, and a sack of dried mushrooms for trade, and crept out of the manse. He was in the stable, saddling his favorite horse, when he heard a step behind him. A chill ran up his spine as he turned to face his father’s wrath, but instead, there was his brother, in robe and slippers.
“He’ll never change his mind,” said Bosk.
“I’ll tell him you went to the mines. That should be good for at least three days.”
Bosk nodded. “You’re welcome to every part of it.”
Fluvio smiled slowly. “I was wondering when you would finally say that.”
“He’ll be as hard on you as he has been on me.”
“I doubt that. He doesn’t have another child waiting behind me.”
Bosk turned back to the horse and sealed the pannier on the near side of the saddle. “I’m sorry it’s been that way.”
“I doubt that, too. But it won’t matter once you’re gone.” Without another word, he turned and left the stable.
Bosk moved south by starlight, following the familiar route toward the markets of Ascolais. There was a road of sorts, and with dawn its fragmentary pavement was occasionally visible beneath the vigorous undergrowth. Bosk knew that road, knew the isolated dwellings that dotted it, some in ruins, some still inhabited. He stopped at a few of the latter and traded mushrooms for hospitality, a long-established custom. The householders would tell his father he had passed, but that mattered little, for his father would surely guess his destination. He was surprised to see that the last of the ruins, which, in his memory, was a crumbling hovel half hidden by tall grass, had been
