Libari,

I consider my suggestion “before the crown’s inquisitors do” to be dangling out there,? an incomplete sentence for you to finish.? I don’t know enough about your story to know why the inquisitor must find it, too.? ?All I know? is it makes for better drama if they both? MUST have the same thing.

Either the artifact is a general wish-granting object (like? Aladdin’s lamp) or it is only good for one purpose, to raise the dead.? If it’s the latter, then who would the inquisitor want to resurrect?

Well, the most obvious candidate would be the king the bounty hunter killed.? So he can wreak revenge on the bounty hunter.?

Here’s another option: a tickling clock on the power of the artifact.? It can only resurrect the dead within X number of hours or days (not many).

Both the true love and the king could have been killed around the same time, say in the same battle.? So both the protagonist and antagonist are racing against time to resurrect their preferred person.

But it seems to me that there would need to be a bigger pay off for the inquisitor than having the king avenge his own death.? What’s in it for inquisitor?? What’s his selfish agenda?? What makes the king’s death a personal offense, not just a legal one?? ?Why did the bounty killer kill the king in the first place?? What did the inquisitor lose by the king’s death?? What does he stand to gain personally by resurrecting him?? What does he stand to gain personally by killing the bounty hunter?

I’m just spit balling.? My takeaway is that the king’s death in the past (back story) is of dramatic import to the degree it comes back to haunt the protagonist in the present tense of the plot.

FWIW