In this many-layered novel, King Arthur is seen as a mysterious presence influencing not just one time and place but many. The 100 short chapters are almost like snapshots not only of the mythic tales of King Arthur, but the earthy, uncomfortable reality of the Middle Ages. Written in the direct, open voice of a real boy living in a time of uncertainty about the future, this story touches on issues of war and peace, social inequality, religion, reason, and superstition. A thoroughly contemporary novel about the past and a brilliant new take on the Arthurian legends.

Chapter One: Arthur and Merlin

Tumber Hill! It's my clamber-and-tumble-and-beech-and-bramble hill! Sometimes, when I'm standing on the top, I fill my lungs with air and I shout. I shout.

In front of me, I can see half the world. Far down almost underneath my feet, I can see our manor house, the scarlet flag dancing, the row of beehives beyond the orchard, the stream shining. I can see Gatty's cottage and count how many people are working in the two fields. Then I look out beyond Caldicot. I gaze deep into thick Pike Forest, and away into the wilderness. That's where the raiders would come from, and where Wales begins. That's where the world starts to turn blue.

When I'm standing on top of Tumber Hill, I sometimes think of all the people, all the generations who grew up on this ground, and grew into this ground, their days and years...My Welsh grandmother Nain says the sounds trees make are the voices of the dead, and when I listen to the beech trees, they sound like whispering spirits -- they're my great-uncles and great-great-aunts, my great-great-great-grandparents, green again and guiding me.

When I climbed the hill this afternoon, I saw Merlin already sitting on the crown, and the hounds bounded ahead of me and mobbed him.

Merlin tried to swat them away with the backs of his spotty hands, and scrambled to his feet. "Get away from me!" he shouted. "You creatures!"

"Merlin!" I called out, and I pointed to the sky's peak, towering above us. "Look at that cloud!"

"I was," said Merlin.

"It's a silver sword. The sword of a giant king."

"Once," said Merlin, "there was a king with your name."

"Was there?"

"And he will be."

"What do you mean?" I demanded. "He can't live in two times."

Merlin looked at me. "How do you know?" he asked, and his slateshine eyes were smiling and unsmiling.

I don't know exactly what happened next. Or rather, I don't know how it happened, and I'm not even sure it did happen. First, Tempest pranced up to me with a rock in his mouth; I grabbed the rock and pulled it, and Tempest growled, and the two of us began a tug-of-war. Tempest was so strong that he pulled me over and I slithered across the cropped grass.

When I let go and looked round again, Merlin wasn't there. He wasn't on the crown of the hill, and he wasn't in the little stand of whispering beeches, or behind the old mound and the raspberry bushes. There was nowhere for him to go, but he wasn't anywhere.

"Merlin!" I shouted. "Merlin. Where are you?"

Merlin is strange and I sometimes wonder whether he knows some magic, but he has never done anything like this before.

High on the hill I felt quite giddy. The clouds tossed and swirled above me and the ground heaved under my feet.