Two years after the Grail Quest's end, Camelot hosts an elaborate but hollow tournament for the Feast of the Ascension. Arthur watches with Bedivere, Lancelot, and Guinevere as knights cheat and theatrical pageantry replaces real adventure. Sir Galleron of Galway is mortally wounded by a lance splinter to the eye, and Sir Selises is caught having bolted himself to his saddle. Arthur, sensing decay beneath the splendor, pardons the offenders. He spots a mysterious Red Knight in the crowd who vanishes when he looks again.

At the lavish feast that evening, Arthur grows increasingly melancholy, troubled by his break with God, the strange fertility of the land, and a creeping conviction that Britain has secretly become a waste land disguised as itself. After learning Galleron has died, Bedivere urges Arthur to go hunting and get lost in the forest as he used to. Arthur agrees and announces a hunt for dawn.

Arthur, Gawain, and Lancelot hunt a hart, then push deeper into the Old Weald on foot. Arthur recognizes the uncanny feeling of his old adventure and leads them to the castle of King Bran's children, Elidir and Ystradel, where Arthur once killed their cursed father with Excalibur. Arthur kneels and asks forgiveness for his arrogance. Ystradel refuses to forgive but suggests Arthur is now the cursed king, and offers to show them something the children recently found.

She leads them to a stone circle in a meadow, where the Holy Grail sits on a fallen obelisk, filled with rainwater, birds bathing in it. Lancelot is horrified; Arthur experiences a profound revelation that Britain's wounds cannot be healed by miracles or perfect knights, only slowly, through self-forgiveness and time. He sees that Camelot itself is an illusion that will eventually fall, and new things will be built from its stones.

Ystradel tells a pagan myth about lovers separated even in death, becoming the Milky Way—a story about brokenness striving toward wholeness. Arthur resolves to approach the Grail. Lancelot, gripped by holy fury, denounces it as false and Arthur as a false king. He seizes Excalibur from Arthur's side, charges the Grail to cleave it, but the cup and stone vanish; Excalibur buries itself in the earth. Lancelot flees back to Camelot, straight to Guinevere's chamber.