Thomas Leekley has done more than edit these stories of Walter Map, priest, courtier and chronicler of the 12th century. He has taken and reworked them to give an air of modernity and at the same time retained the innocence and canniness that marked the Middle Ages, and Walter Map's own touching humor and wisdom. King Herla's Quest, the title story, is an old legend of the Welsh border country in pre-Anglo Saxon days. Herla, whose efforts to win a distant princess are at last rewarded, is at the same time committed to a pledge by a dwarf who invites Herla to his own wedding feast a year later and there bewitches him and his men so that they are forced to ride the countryside as ghostly figures forever. In a different vein is King Appolonides, a story that turns a theme of conquest into one of deception and rewards a man for his honesty. Eight stories in all, these make delightful reading and fine commentary on an age.