Kay and his foster-brother (known as the Wart) are living in the glorious castle of Sir Ector amid the wild and beautiful Forest Sauvage. But they are given a tutor the magician Merlyn. And so begins one of the most inventive and charming retellings of the Arthurian legend, the first part of The Once and Future King. Through a series of adventures that involve being turned into animals, an encounter with a very hungry witch and a meeting with the real Robin Hood, Merlyn instructs his young charges in the ways of the world, and broader wisdom too. One of them will need it the King has died leaving no heir, and a rightful one must be found by pulling a sword from an anvil resting on a stone