The whims of the people of Eden are insignificant in the face of those blessed with the ability to manipulate the arcane. All across the continents of man, those with power are held aloft as champions, despots, and reckoners of change – good and bad. For sorcerers, there is no more an important site as the primordial wells. The sources of all magical energy on Eden. Opened during a great calamity millennia ago, none of Eden’s children can remember a time before magic.
In the western continent, the Oshorn Well, the second of those opened in the calamity, lies at the centre of a great basin. Its wilds are tranquil and untarnished, the highly concentrated aether preventing all but the most resilient from approaching. Resting over her eternal watch site, the azure sorceress ensures none shall harm or upset the flow of magic from the well. But this story is from before her watch began. When her name had not been lost to time, and the world knew of no calamity since the great. Born to an unknown mother, and raised by two farmhands, and given the name Bronwen – her life drew stirring from quietened parts of the world.
Found abandoned amongst the reeds of the River Aln, her adoptive parents were quick to take her in, their own misfortune with fertility relieved as if by the turning hands of fate. Her youth was calm, normal, until her fifth birthday. The manifestation of her powers had left her home destroyed and her parents dead. Her remaining family: her mother’s sister, and her grandmother, shunned the girl. Her coming was not a blessing, her grandmother yelled, but a curse wrought upon those who would struggle against their god given circumstance.
Alone, and left to wander the logging fields of the city of Caleah, a crying Bronwen was found by an old man and taken to his hunting lodge, deep in the forest of claws.
“Yours is a terrible power, Bronwen,” he taunted the distraught girl, her face already red with sorrow and guilt. “But with training such a disaster needs never happen again.”
The man revealed himself to be Arthur, a retired old wizard, now nothing more than a hermit practicing druidic magics alone in the woods. She remembered seeing him, once. His daughter lived on the neighbouring farm to her parents’. She found him talking to the birds in the great oaks that surrounded their fields and approached him with equal parts fear and curiosity. His scraggly beard was littered with leaves and twigs, and wispy white hairs reached across his bald head. He whispered to a bluetit perched on his fingers, and it flew over to Bronwen and landed on her shoulder. This was the first act of magic she ever witnessed. With a smile, he waved to the young girl, who responded with stunned astonishment, gently stroking the calm and docile bluetits’ feathery head. A few moments later, and he retreated further into the hedge row, and the bluetit followed suit.
A few days in his company, and Bronwen had learnt the self-same spell she witnessed that day. Kept in secret by Arthur, she seldom left the forests. Until her tenth birthday. Already an adept spellcaster, and learned alchemist, Arthur had exhausted his own repertoire, teaching her all of the skills and techniques his own master bestowed unto him.
“Would you like to come with me into the city?” he asked her one day.
She nodded with vehement approval and donned her sapphire cape. Arthur tucked the excess fabric around her head, fashioning it into a hood, and they began their day’s journey into the city.
Old and frail, their trip was slowed by Arthur’s caned locomotion, but Bronwen was well used to his low mobility by now, happily holding her master’s hand as they traipsed through the forest. Later thereafter, they arrived at the city gates, as merchants and tourists alike flooded in and out of the heady opening of the stone walls, the flow of traffic near unstoppable. Bronwen was pulled along the old cobble footpaths through the pedestrian access gates, stopped briefly by the city guard who questioned the reason for their travel today. Arthur responded that he was taking his granddaughter shopping, and that was that.
The city opened up as they exited the crowded and dark passageway through the walls. Its buzz of activity swarmed around the entire cityscape, and the tall and dense buildings stood over Bronwen, as the sun of the afternoon seemed to vanish into the sky far above. People and creatures she’d never seen before covered every street corner: the cat-folk of Nordelia flogged fish in a stinky and bloody stall; great Leaf Bison hauled caravans down far too narrow side alleys, the twigs and greenery of their fur littering the way as they rubbed against the city’s brickwork; dark echoes of familiar forest sprites pulled at a sheepish looking red-skinned man’s hair as he tried to swat them away from the front-door of his bookshop.
As she stared at the spectacles of the city unravelling all around her, Arthur tugged her down an even darker side street, the tall buildings flanking its either side plunging it into dank gloom.
“How much for the pretty little girl?” asked a dishevelled cloaked figure, his hands reaching out towards Bronwen. Arthur ignored the man, and continued further down the alleyway, holding tight to Bronwen’s hand. Down another side street, and another, and another, Bronwen lost all track of her place within the city. With no way to see the sun above, her sense of direction was all but useless. Finally, they arrived. Arthur stopped at a disused storefront, its windows murky with dust and dirt and the door’s façade dark and unwelcoming.
He rasped its knocker three times and stepped back besides Bronwen. All of a sudden, she was whisked into its innards and stood in front of a frightening old woman, her black hair a mess of split ends and her dress dishevelled and ill-fitting. Candles dotted around the room provided well-needed light, but the flickering flames created ever present shadowy figures, dancing at Bronwen’s peripherals.
“I want you to teach the girl,” her master requested.
And so, the frightful figure responded, “In what skills? She seems to have neither good sense, a sharp mind, or enough wit and confidence to deal with my clientele.”
“In the arcane,” he clarified.
“And is she capable?”
“More than any I’ve ever seen.”
“Then show me.”
Arthur released Bronwen’s hand and asked her to show the lady her magic – the basics of evocation that she had mastered at age six. She was left standing alone in the centre of the disused store, her master eagerly awaiting her display and the woman watching from behind her desk, with neither interest nor enthusiasm. Bronwen bit her lower lip, unsure of herself now confronted with a test of skill she was uncertain if she was truly prepared for. Taking a deep breath, she began an incantation. The first lesson of evocation, her master had taught her, is the harnessing of nature’s elements. To assuage her fears of causing further destruction with her gift, he had taught her how to control the very thing that haunted her past.
Bronwen felt the magic surging at her fingertips. This spell, or rather set of spells, were a wizard’s first foray into manipulating the four basic elements of nature. First, a dense ball of wind formed in her hand, its vortex whipping the candles around the room into a frenzy. Second, the wind crackled with lightning, the plasma dancing around the ball like a ballerina. Third, with her other hand, Bronwen summoned water, adding it to the already complex cocktail of energy at her fingertips. And finally, she smothered the ball in a slurry of dirt, dulling all of its features but still keeping it swirling in her hands.
“Enough,” announced the lady, who uttered her own incantation and ended Bronwen’s spell. “How old is she, Arthur?”
“Her tenth birthday was a week ago.”
“And who is she?”
“My granddaughter,” he responded.
“Marybelle had a child? And one so gifted?”
“I adopted her. She was the daughter of another, a family from my village.”
“I see. Are her parents special?”
“They were not.”
The woman reached over her wooden desk, and curled her finger towards her, beckoning Bronwen over. “How long have you practised the arcane, little one?” she asked.
“Since I was five,” Bronwen responded.
“Can you read, and write?”
“She can,” responded Arthur in her stead.
“And can you tend to a house? Cook, and clean?”
“I help cook and clean at home,” she replied.
The woman pressed her hand to Bronwen’s cheek, caressing her skin gently. Her hand was cold, but her touch was gentle.
“I will teach her, but she will have to live with me. And I will expect her to earn her keep, like I would expect any of my apprentices.”
Arthur swallowed hard. It was clear that giving up his apprentice that he had grown to love so was difficult, and the woman took heed.
“Here,” she reached below her desk, emerging with a seashell. “You may keep in touch with this, so that you can assess whether the girl is truly suited for her studies.”
“Thank you,” Arthur replied.
And so, Bronwen found herself in the care of her second master. The witch, Lady Delphine.
I've just started reading some of Ursula K. Le Guin's writing, including the tales of Earthsea, and I've fallen in love with her style. It's like reading an old fashioned storybook, where plot beats are accelerated to as needed and the world is suffused with magic and interest. I was so inspired I decided to mimic her style and adapt it to my current project.
This is Bronwen's story, and I'm hoping to write an entire novel around how she becomes the azure sorceress and the guardian of the western well. In future, her character will show up in the overall 'Warren' plot established in The Shadow Over Fandelran, so I wanted to explore her story and develop her as a character. Not sure if it's going to be a full novel or a novella, just exploring my ideas currently!
