Book excerpt: Bladud, the father of King Lear. A leper and a swineherd... a necromancer and a wise king... his memory lives on. Restless at the royal court, the young Prince Bladud sets off to consult an oracle in the west country - a wild wooded place near a mysterious hot spring that gushes from a cave. There the priestess tells him that he will be a great king, and that one day he will fly like an eagle. But when he returns to his father's hill-fort at Trinovantum, his head is full of magnificent dreams, trickery entraps him in a loveless marriage... Full of brilliant imagination, this colourful fantasy draws its strength and inspiration from the strange and beautiful realms of Celtic and Greek myth and legend.