Conjurers Bridge: Origin

Conjurer's Bridge

One

Vandon Kellen leaned out the window and peered down at the stone. He turned his head and saw his father's head poke out another window and smiled. His father was next door with Vandon's mother and grandfather. He didn't know what kind of pressure his mother had put on Terrill Kellen, but in only three days his father had cleared all of his official Conjurer obligations in order to satisfy his wife's request. And since Terrill Kellen was the second most powerful man around - and the busiest - Vandon knew his mother must have been unrelenting.

He sighed and stared out towards the mouth of the Aberhayle. It was low tide - he could just see the bend in the river. A handful of boats were sailing around it, no doubt heading to the shallows and whatever fish had been stranded in the deeper pools when the tide had receded.

"Vandon."

He turned back to find his father looking at him, a frown on his face.

"Did you find a path?" his father asked.

Vandon peered down again, concentrating on the stones that led all the way down the side of the bridge to the footing at the bottom. He muttered the small finding spell under his breath and placed his finger in the window ledge. His finger glowed for a moment and then the light detached itself and trailed down the stones, stepping down every foot or so until it reached the footing at the bottom. The light went out but he could still see a faint, white trail.

"Good," his father said. "Now the path to the stairs from over here."

Vandon nodded. This spell was harder since he wasn't in contact with the stone it started at. He eyed the trail. There, that was a natural landing, a section that was almost twice as long as anything else close by. He muttered the spell again, tweaking it slightly and pointed his finger. The edge of the landing glowed and then the light trailed up towards the window his father leaned out of.

"Excellent," Terrill Kellen said and Vandon sighed in relief.

As his father's apprentice, he needed his approval in order to become a full-fledged conjurer. Oh, he had lesson from the heads of all of the Ten, but it was your own family who had the final word. As long as it meant no more than two conjurers in each family.

Thank the powers he wasn't a Wailes. There were already two Wailes conjurers so Osred was stuck waiting until one of them died. The man was in his thirties but was considered a youth, living at Conjurers Hall with the rest of the unmarried conjurer's in training.

Vandon liked to think that if he was a younger son he would have chosen to become something other than a conjurer, as his brother had and. But Keetley had never wanted anything other than books anyway.

"All right," his father said. "I'll outline the door over here and you do the same. Then you need to get the stone."

"Yes Father." Vandon stepped away from the window and eyed the frame. This was his workroom so any alterations were his responsibility. Using a similar spell, he quickly outlined the doorway. A split door would be best, he thought, so he could keep the top half open for the breeze. And once they'd excavated the next floor down, he'd add another door. Assuming Keetley wanted to come back to the bridge, that is. He'd been apprenticing to the bookbinder in Waglenn Landing for the past four years and he seemed to like town life.

Vandon couldn't understand it. He liked knowing that the solid stones stretched down to the river, that the magic of conjurers had built this bridge using rocks dug from the ground and stacked together by the strongest magics.

The town - to him - was nothing but a collection of ramshackle wooden huts that were battered by wind and rain and always threatened by the mud of the mountains. He'd take the bridge, where the walls of his rooms were two feet thick and he barely noticed rain or wind.