The Enchanter

1794 (Book three) 

Prisoner in the golden cage of Mithra, lost in the labyrinth of Haoma, the elixir of memory and immortality, fascinated by the yellow eyes of the Father of fathers staring out from under his hood, Emile no longer knows: is he really a Fairy-child? Is he the Atar of the end of time, the king of kings whose advent approaches, since Terror and Revolution are just a stage in a secular plan? What remains to him of the water maidens and the mission entrusted to him by Melusine?
"The spirit of evil transforms men's suffering into hate and sets them against each other." In the West civil war is raging. Sometimes fighting for the Blues, sometimes for the Catholic Royal army, Cornuaud strides spiritedly across flaming Vendée, still possessed by the African witch, and reaches Nantes where Carrier is turning the Loire into a national bloodbath of repression.
In a masterly fashion Pierre Bordage brings to a close his fantasy about the black years of the Revolution in fire and blood. But also in the "deep narrow tracks watched over by clumps of broom" in "this obscure, solemn country of his childhood". At the end, the Enchanter is this country.

Imaginales Prize 2007