Brother Jacob Magister, a novice, imagines that he can find something more glorious than monastery life. He does not mind it when certain unloving brother-monks sell him to the traveling circus. Quickly  his servitude becomes unbearable, and he manages to escape into the forbidden forest.
 
After a hazardous encounter with a band of real adventurers camping in the woods, Brother Jacob hurries back to the safety of his religious brothers. But now he is newly aware of the malevolent power under which Whitehawk's waning kingdoms, must, without some spirit-champion, forever remain: the Dire of Melancholy,

An Archdruid of immense learning and wickedness, the Dire drains souls to emptiness. This dark cleric, enemy of all righteousness, will not cease to magically imprison all opposers in the dungeons of his impregnable fortress.
 
The Friars of Whigg, a rival monastery, propose to confront the dark lord with powerful magic, magic lost to time's judgement. By the power of holy thaumaturgy they could raise up from the dead high-level wizards of pre-christian times, waking them from the abyss, and so use the devastating power of their ancient magic against the troll-armies.

Great plan, but the problem: invoking the Resurrection on lost pagan souls abuses the power of the Church.

As suspicion and fear engulf the monastery, Jacob is falsely accused of arcane summoning. He is unjustly expelled from the monastery. Joining up with a renegade band led by a brave but hot-headed amazon, he sets out into a world of sword and sorcery, a world at the brink of a new dawn of evil...

When the quest brings him into a contest of wits with the Dire of Melancholy himself, Jacob realizes that he could become the dupe by which all the world is deceived, and forfeit even his immortal soul.