Amid an English landscape that attests to more than a millennium of human activity, two teenaged boys are at the focus of bizarre events in which the past penetrates the present. David and John find themselves caught in a web of legend when they see a drummer boy, who disappeared in the 18th century, walk out of a hillside. This tale is a blend of the old and the modern, the forces of time and nature merging at a single point to unleash inexplicable events.

Two modern British boys are caught up in a growing wave of ancient magic in the English countryside. Standing stones walk; strange things are heard in the earth and air; a pale-flamed candle gives them disturbing visions that draw them further from the world they know. In the caves beneath, a King sleeps until his people need him again. But a curious drummer-boy, from the garrison of a castle long since in ruins, has disturbed the King's rest too soon. Can our heroes set the world right before it is destroyed?