A charm hidden in a shipping box brings Tredan’s disgraceful past to his door.
Retired Enchanter Tredan and his wife Lanith, magical curio merchants in the seaside town of Isor, have been model citizens for years. But Tredan has harbored a terrible secret. As the victim of a Church-induced spell, he created a journal with spells to enslave the Enchanters’ magical essence to the Church.
Enchanters generate the essence powering everything in Tredan’s world. The Church has long resented the Enchanters’ exclusive control over essence. The head Church magician, His Divine, is determined to acquire Tredan’s journal and take the Enchanters’ power for his own.
With Lanith out on an errand for the morning, Tredan opens the box containing an Enforcer’s compulsion charm. This Church magician will stop at nothing to collect Tredan’s journal for His Divine. The ensnared Tredan must battle the Enforcer’s superior magic and keep the journal safe. Tredan must also find a way, even if he must enlist the help of the dead, to warn an unsuspecting Lanith before she returns home and falls prey to His Divine’s wrath.
(Short Story, 9 pages)
