Spell-Bound

A history of dark magic........

Spell-Bound

Copyright © 2019 Clare Blanchard

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

Cover design by C. Krojzlova

FOREWORD

There is dark magic in the world, of a very ancient kind. Except that today it often comes masked as entertainment. It dances its spells into our lives in music and movies and games. For all its modern style, its spells are no less dark now than they were when the world was still young. The battle for control of the human soul rages on, in the most surprising of battlefields and in the most ordinary of places. And make no mistake, it is a battle for territory, both on the ground, and in the human soul.

The Wizards series looks at how that battle has been fought, and won, both on land and in the human mind. There is a little voice inside us that will tell us a simple truth, if only we will listen: goodness leads, but evil drives. We do our best to drown out that little voice, with noise, with substances, or by keeping ourselves so busy we don't have time to think, but something about that little voice just won't let us go.

Beware the angel of light that comes with beauty in one hand, and chains for your soul in the other.

Chapter 1: A Sudden Disappearance

It was six o'clock on a dark, chilly Friday evening, and the start of a long weekend at Kostlow's convenience store in Eastborough in Yorkshire. It was cold and blowy outside. People were hurrying home to get warm, just darting in and out of Kostlow's, rain dripping off hoods and delinquent umbrellas, to pick up a few things for the weekend.

Eastborough had the general air of a town struggling to make ends meet. Apart from the spectacular natural beauty of the hills around it, it could have been the prototype for a place called Grungeville. Hardly a town, then, you would expect a mystery to unfold that had its roots in ancient times and the darkest of dark magic. A mystery that would lead our main characters on a journey around Europe and the Middle East, and through some of the most arcane literature in the world to uncover the magic that still exerts power in the very streets we walk today.

We might call Sylvia Smetana, sitting that night at her check-out in Kostlow's, one of the catalysts in our story. She will certainly pop up with a few important things to say later on. Forty-something and a bit chubby around the edges, Sylvia was just starting her shift at the checkout. She was getting a taste of a job she might even end up doing permanently, if she decided to give up her teaching career, which was now looking more and more likely. Sylvia taught Religious Studies at Precious Hall School, a boarding school in a beautiful cathedral town in the south of England – as different from Eastborough as you could imagine. A cheap tea mug had been plonked on a shelf near her checkout, containing the umpteenth cup of tea that almost always went cold before she had time to drink it. The garish strip lighting in the ceiling overhead buzzed ominously as usual, while her legs and feet bore the brunt of the rain-sodden gusts of wind from the door every time anyone came in or went out.

Suddenly, Sylvia became aware of a cold presence near her and a triumphantly amused expectancy in the air. When she looked up, there in front of her, of all people, stood Pauline Jenkins, the arctic Deputy Principal of Precious Hall School. Sylvia had completely forgotten that Pauline had been born in the Eastborough area, as she herself had. She must be visiting relatives. Away from the career and status she was used to in the beautiful southern cathedral town of Newbourne, Pauline Jenkins looked even more dried up and forbidding than Sylvia remembered her. The packets of green tea and organic ginger biscuits Pauline was about to buy stood to attention in her two bony hands as she quietly savoured her position of command over Sylvia, sitting in her grungy Kostlow's overall at her grotty little checkout. Sylvia could almost hear the cogs turning in Pauline Jenkins' brain: "Sylvia, working at a corner store checkout? What a come-down!"