Mariam has ten or twelve questions and she doesn’t know which one to ask first. Why did he wander off? What happened to his head? How did he find his way back here? ‘What the fuck happened to you?’ she asks, eventually. It has the advantage of being versatile.

‘From saving the realm and banishing evil. The tree of time splits ahead of us, as always.’ ‘Not the bloody tree of time again,’ says Kay. Merlin’s scowl grows fiercer. ‘Yes, the tree of time! There are two branches ahead of us. The first is a blasted bough of blackness and corruption, down which we must not travel or the realm will perish and all

The Welsh are here in huge numbers, wearing dragon armbands, with leeks and daffodils pinned to their uniforms. They look like a proper army. One that he might not mind fighting for, if they have their wits about them. It’s funny how it still lines up, how the mardier parts of Britain are still the same as they were two thousand years ago. Wild and

Marlowe’s already here, standing on the grass. Wearing his hat and his long grey raincoat, even in this hot weather. He updates his wardrobe once every hundred years or so. It used to be doublets and pantaloons. Then it became tailcoats and powdered wigs. Since the First World War it’s been brogues, briefcase, three-piece suit. Now he’s smoking a c

Kay crawls up from under his hill, up through the claggy earth.

Something odd happens in your bones and stomach when you see someone you’ve hated for fourteen hundred years. It’s been half a century, at least, since they last saw each other. It doesn’t feel like long enough.

‘But it’s crazy,’ she says. ‘I’m not from Wales. I don’t speak Welsh. I don’t even like leeks!’ ‘But you have slain a dragon,’ says Gethin. ‘Look, this whole business of restoring the Welsh monarchy, it was all Dai’s idea. Twenty years ago, people would have laughed, if you told them there ought to be a King of Wales. But then Dai came along, and h

The woman is getting further away. That’s what matters. He’s keeping the Saxons distracted. All he needs to do is stay where he is. He learnt a few hundred years ago that sometimes the most useful thing he can do is to just let himself get killed. Merlin’s covenant with the earth didn’t grant him the strength of an ox, it didn’t make his flesh repe

It looks more like Venice than London. The river has swelled its banks enormously, flooding Chiswick and Shepherd’s Bush. Half the city drowned with floodwater, glistening in the sun.