The novel is set in the 1480s, during the war in which the French
annexed Bretagne.
At the Benedictine Abbey in Paimpol, a scholarly monk named Ollivier,
reputed to have practiced necromancy, is buried under the watchful eyes
of two Dominican heresy hunters, the burial only attended by his fellow
scholar Brother Primael, who believes him to be innocent of any
wrongdoing, and believes the same of Gilles de Rais, whose court at
Tiffauges both men visited in their youth.
Before falling ill, Ollivier had spent three months at the Château de
Tardivel and the forested region of Herbriant, where the epileptic
chatelaine was once locked away by her husband as a madwoman, and her
daughter Aidrena, is also chronically ill, while the young Vicomte who
has recently inherited the title, Corentin, has indeed been practicing
necromancy with Ollivier's aid. Primael is sent to Tardivel at
Corentin's request, ostensibly to give succor to his mother and sister,
but actually to assist him in his experiments in necromancy, now aimed
at the summoning of Ollivier's spirit.
Primael is immediately engulfed in a nightmarish series of events, both
hallucinatory and real, through which he must negotiate a path in the
hope of deciding in which direction virtue really lies, and solving the
puzzle of exactly what Ollivier and Corentin had accomplished in their
necromancy, and what its consequences might be for the inhabitants of
Tardivel.
