AN EXTRACT
Why immortal Merlyn’s mortal guise should be a six-foot-tall, angular-looking monk with ginger hair, green eyes and large hands, Myrddin the elfin wizard didn’t know. But skimming through the great Enchanter’s treatise Upon the Engendering and Nurture of Humanoids showed that it appeared to involve some tricky procedures with human ova and spermatozoa. He therefore guessed, it had to be down to the luck of the draw from the gene cells available to the ancient wizard at the time. The skin also had a grey-blue tinge – a giveaway that its veins ran with ichor, the fluid said to run in the veins of the Greek gods instead of blood.

Since Myrddin’s own height was just nine inches, the real magic for him was Merlyn’s amethyst thumb-ring by which the humanoid body could be put on or off as desired, and allow Myrddin the best of both worlds – including the use of an electric typewriter. The first part of the manuscript he was working on had just gone to the Warden of Weir Forest, Sir Humphrey We’ard; the second lay in a pile of typewritten sheets beside him. He gathered the pages and shook them together on the desktop until, squared and neat, they were ready to read and check …