‘It’s my hearing, Derfel. Quite gone.’ He banged an ear. ‘Deaf as a bucket. It’s age, Derfel, sheer old age. I decay visibly.’

He did nothing of the sort. He looked better now than he had for a long time and his hearing, I am sure, was as acute as his sight — and that, despite his eighty or more years, was still as sharp as a hawk’s. Merlin did not decay but seemed to have a new energy, one brought to him by the Treasures of Britain. Those thirteen Treasures were old, old as Britain, and for centuries they had been lost, but Merlin had at last succeeded in finding them. The power of the Treasures was to summon the ancient Gods back to Britain, a power that had never been tested, but now, in the year of Dumnonia’s turmoil, Merlin would use them to work a great magic.

I had sought Merlin on the day I took Guinevere to Ynys Wydryn. It was a day of hard rain and I had climbed the Tor, half expecting to find Merlin on its summit, but discovered the hilltop empty and sad. Merlin had once possessed a great hall on the Tor with a dream tower attached to it, but the hall had been burned. I had stood amidst the Tor’s ruin and felt a great desolation. Arthur, my friend, was hurt. Ceinwyn, my woman, was far away in Powys. Morwenna and Seren my two daughters, were with Ceinwyn, while Dian, my youngest, was in the Otherworld, despatched there by one of Lancelot’s swords. My friends were dead, or else far away. The Saxons were making ready to fight us in the new year, my house was ashes and my life seemed bleak. Maybe it was Guinevere’s sadness that had infected me, but that morning, on Ynys Wydryn’s rain-washed hill, I felt more alone than I had ever felt in all my life and so I knelt in the hall’s muddy ashes and prayed to Bel.