posted October 27, 2007 12:33 AM              

Anyway, I absolutely loved these books and know I'll read them again in the future. If anyone else has any books on Merlin I can read, please recommend.

I found a few quotes that resonated with me:

quote:

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...But he moved restlessly, fidgeting with the pins that were stuck here and there in the clay map. 'The trouble is, one always feels there is something one should be doing. I like to load the dice, not sit waiting for someone else to throw them. Oh, yes, I knew what you will say - that the essence of wisdom is to know when to be doing, and when it is useless even to try. But I sometimes think I shall never be old enough to be wise.' (said by Arthur)

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quote:

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...Silence then, and the scent of apple trees, and the nightmare sense of grief that comes when a man wakes again to feel a loss he has forgotten in sleep.

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quote:

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...Like the first breath of living wind to the sailor becalmed and starving, I felt hope stir. It was, then, not enough to accept, to wait on the god's return in all his light and strength. In the dark ebbtide, as much as in the flow, could be felt the full power of the sea.

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quote:

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'I had to.' He spoke simply, stating a fact. 'I have thought of nothing else since that night. I was afraid, because... I was afraid, but there are things that you have to do, they won't let you alone, it's as if you were being driven. More then driven, hounded. Do you understand?'

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quote:

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Late, looking back, I wondered if for a brief hour my malady had blanketed me from consciousness of the present. It would have pleased me to think so. But it seems probable that the malady that overtook me was age, and the weakness left by the chill, and the lulling drug of contentment.

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posted October 27, 2007 01:36 PM            

For those who haven't read it yet, Dame Mary Stewart's "Merlin Trilogy" is fiction based upon "fact" (Le Morte d'Arthur by Malory)..... she has Merlin as the b@stard great-grandson of Maximus (or Macsen, as the Welsh would have it), a seer who finds Macsen's sword which had been lost since he went to Aquileia and was killed, sees to Arthur's begetting and boyhood, and sets him on the throne of England..... wonderful wonderful reading!! The way she writes is absolute magic!! The best kind of writing -- a spur to one's own imagination and an enhancement to what's within the mind's eye -- one can see and feel and experience the story as if one was there with the characters ;-)))

An excerpt?? (Merlin is narrating)
It was time, I thought, that I made an end. I had heard enough. I said clearly, in the Old Tongue: "Stand back from the fire, Areth."
There was a sudden complete silence. I did not look at them. I fixed my eyes on the smoking logs. I blotted out the bite of my bound wrists, the pain of my bruises, the discomfort of my soaked clothes. And, as easily as a breath taken and then released on the night air, the power ran through me, cool and free. Something dropped through the dark, like a fire arrow, or a shooting star. With a flash, a shower of white sparks that looked like burning sleet, the logs caught, blazing. Fire poured down through the sleet, caught, gulped, billowed up again gold and red and gloriously hot. The sleet hissed in onto the fire, and, as if it had been oil, the fire fed on it, roaring. The noise of it filled the forest and echoed like horses galloping.
I took my eyes from it at last, and looked about me. There was no one there. They had vanished as if they had indeed been spirits of the hills. I was alone in the forest, lying against the tumbled rocks, with the steam rising already from my drying clothes, and the bonds biting painfully into my wrists.
Something touched me from behind. The blade of a stone knife. It slid between the flesh of my wrists and the ropes, sawing at my bonds. They gave way. Stiffly, I flexed my shoulders and began to chafe the bruised wrists. There was a thin cut, bleeding, where the knife had caught me. I neither spoke nor looked behind me, but sat still, chafing my wrists and hands.
From somewhere behind me a voice spoke. It was Llyd's. He spoke in the Old Tongue.
"You are Myrddin called Emrys or Ambrosius, son of Ambrosius the son of Constantius who sprang from the seed of Macsen Wledig?"
"I am Myrddin Emrys."
"My men took you in error. They did not know."
(above from "The Hollow Hills", Vol. 2)

Here's an excerpt from Vol. 1 where the usurper and Saxon-sympathizer King Vortigern kidnaps Merlin ~

It was far more thickly overgrown than I remembered, and certainly nobody had been this way in a long time, probably not since Cerdic and I had pushed our way through. But I remembered the way as clearly as if it had still been noon on that winter's day. I went fast, and even where the bushes grew more than shoulder height I tried to go smoothly, unregarding, wading through them as if they were a sea. Next day I paid for my wizard's dignity with cuts and scratches and ruined clothes, but I have no doubt that at the time it was impressive. I remember when my cloak caught and dragged on something how the torch-bearer jumped forward to loosen and hold it for me.
Here was the thicket, right up against the side of the dell. More rock had fallen from the slope above, piling between the stems of the thorn trees like froth among the reeds of a backwater. Over it the bushes crowded, bare elderberry, honeysuckle like trails of hair, brambles sharp and whippy, ivy glinting in the torchlight. I stopped.
The mule slipped and clattered to a halt at my shoulder. The King's voice said: "What's this? What's this? Where are you taking us? I tell you, Merlin, your time is running out. If you have nothing to show us-- "
"I have plenty to show you." I raised my voice so that all of them, pushing behind him, could hear me. "I will show you, King Vortigern, or any man who has courage enough to follow me, the magic beast that lies beneath your stronghold and eats at your foundations. Give me the torch."
The man handed it to me. Without even turning my head to see who followed, I plunged into the darkness of the thicket and pulled the bushes aside from the mouth of the adit.
It was still open, safely shored and square, with the dry shaft leading level into the heart of the hill.
I had to bend my head now to get in under the lintel. I stooped and entered, with the torch held out in front of me.
I had remembered the cave as being huge, and had been prepared to find that this, like other childhood memories, was false. But it was bigger even than I remembered. Its dark emptiness was doubled in the great mirror of water that had spread till it covered all the floor save for a dry crescent of rock six paces deep, just inside the mouth of the adit. Into this great, still lake the jutting ribs of the cave walls ran like buttresses to meet the angle of their own reflections, then on down again into darkness. Somewhere deeper in the hill was the sound of water falling, but here nothing stirred the burnished surface. Where, before, trickles had run and dripped like leaking faucets, now every wall was curtained with a thin shining veil of damp which slid down imperceptibly to swell the pool.
I advanced to the edge, holding the torch high. The small light of the flame pushed the darkness back, a palpable darkness, deeper even than those dark nights where the black is thick as a wild beast's pelt, and presses on you like a stifling blanket. A thousand facets of light glittered and flashed as the flames caught the sliding water. The air was still and cold and echoing with sounds like birdsong in a deep wood.
I could hear them scrambling along the adit after me. I thought quickly.
I could tell them the truth, coldly. I could take the torch and clamber up into the dark workings and point out faults which were giving way under the weight of the building work above. But I doubted if they would listen. Besides, as they kept saying, there was no time. The enemy was at the gates, and what Vortigern needed now was not logic and an engineer; he wanted magic, and something -- anything -- that promised quick safety, and kept his followers loyal. He himself might believe the voice of reason, but he could not afford to listen to it. My guess was that he would kill me first, and attempt to shore up the workings afterwards, probably with me in them. He would lose his workman else.
The men came pouring in at the dark mouth of the adit like bees through a hive door. More torches blazed, and the dark slunk back. The floor filled with coloured cloaks and the glint of weapons and the flash of jewels. Eyes showed liquid as they looked around them in awe. Their breath steamed on the cold air. There was a rustle and mutter as of folk in a holy place, but no one spoke aloud.
I lifted a hand to beckon the King, and he came forward and stood with me at the edge of the pool. I pointed downwards. Below the surface, something -- a rock perhaps -- glimmered faintly, shaped like a dragon. I began to speak slowly, as it were testing the air between us. My words fell clear and leaden, like drops of water on rock.
"This is the magic, King Vortigern, that lies beneath your tower. This is why your walls cracked as fast as they could build them. Which of your soothsayers could have showed you what I show you now?"
His two torch-bearers had moved forward with him; the others still hung back. Light grew, wavering on the walls, as they advanced. The streams of sliding water caught the light and flowed down to meet their reflections, so that fire seemd to rise through the pool like bubbles in sparkling wine to burst at the surface. Everywhere, as the torches moved, water glittered and sparked, jets and splashes of light breaking and leaping and coalescing across the still surface till the lake was liquid fire, and down the walls the lightfalls ran and glittered like crystals; like the crystal cave come alive and moving and running round me; like the starred globe of midnight whirling and flashing.
I took my breath in painfully, and spoke again. "If you could drain this pool, King Vortigern, to find what lay beneath it --"
I stopped. The light had changed. Nobody had moved and the air was still, but the torchlight wavered as men's hands shook. I could no longer see the King: the flames ran between us. Shadows fled across the streams and staircases of fire, and the cave was full of eyes and wings and hammering hoofs and the scarlet rush of a great dragon stooping on his prey . . .
A voice was shouting, high and monotonous, gasping. I could not get my breath. Pain broke through me, spreading from groin and belly like blood bursting from a wound. I could see nothing. I felt my hands knotting and stretching. My head hurt, and the rock was hard and streaming wet under my cheekbone, I had fainted, and they had seized me as I lay and were killing me; this was my blood seeping from me to spread into the pool and shore up the foundations of their rotten tower. I choked on breath like bile. My hands tore in pain at the rock, and my eyes were open, but all I could see was the whirl of banners and wings and wolves' eyes and sick mouths gaping, and the tail of a comet like a brand, and stars shooting through a rain of blood.
Pain went through me again, a hot knife into the bowels. I screamed and suddenly my hands were free. I threw them up between me and the flashing visions and I heard my own voice calling, but could not tell what I called. In front of me the visions whirled, fractured, broke open in intolerable light, then shut again into darkness and silence.

I woke in a room splendidly lined with embroidered hangings, where sunlight spilled through the window to lay bright oblongs on a boarded floor.
I moved cautiously, testing my limbs. I had not been hurt. There was not even a trace of headache. I was naked, softly and warmly bedded in furs, and my limbs moved without a hint of stiffness. I blinked wonderingly at the window, then turned my head to see Cadal standing beside the bed, relief spreading over his face like light after cloud.
"And about time," he said.
"Cadal! Mithras, but it's good to see you! What's happened? Where is this?"
"Vortigern's best guest chamber, that's where it is. You fixed him, young Merlin, you fixed him proper."
"Did I? I don't remember. I got the impression that they were fixing me. Do you mean they're not still planning to kill me?"
"Kill you? Stick you in a sacred cave, more like, and sacrifice virgins to you. Pity it'd be such a waste. I could use a bit of that myself."
"I'll hand them over to you."
"You put the wind up them proper, that you have."
"Yes, but how exactly? Did they tell you?"
"Well I couldn't make head or tail of what Berric told me. He swore he had it nearly word for word -- it seems he has ambitions to be a singer or something . . . well, what he said, you just stood there staring at the water running down the walls and then you started to talk, quite ordinary to start with, to the King, as if you was explaining how the shaft had been driven into the hill and the veins mined, but then the old priest started to shout 'This is fools' talk,' or something, when suddenly you lets out a yell that fair froze the balls on them -- Berric's expression, not mine, he's not used to gentlemen's service -- and your eyes turned up white and you put your hands up as if you was pulling the stars out of their sockets -- Berric again, he ought to be a poet -- and started to prophesy."
"Yes?"
"That's what they all say. All wrapped up, it was, with eagles and wolves and lions and boars and as many other beasts as they've ever had in the arena and a few more besides, dragons and such -- and going hundreds of years forward, which is safe enough Dia knows. It was all dressed up, like poets' stuff, red dragons and white dragons fighting and laying the place waste, showers of blood, all that kind of thing. But it seems you gave them chapter and verse for everything that's going to happen; the white dragon of the Saxons and the red dragon of Ambrosius fighting it out, then a bear coming out of Cornwall to sweep the field clear. Artos was the word . . . or Arthur, something like that."

Anybody shivering, or hair standing up on the back of their necks, or breathing a little faster?? Or is that just the way I react to her storytelling?? I have no problem suspending disbelief ;-))) I re-read the first two books every couple years or so, just to immerse myself in the gorgeous use of language, and to commune with a life-long friend I met in the early 70's.....

posted October 29, 2007 09:30 PM            

Morgan LeFey [IMG]

posted February 28, 2014 07:48 PM            

I really love Mary Stewart.

She wrote "Thornyhold" too, didnt' she? I named my daughter after one of her characters.

I feel the same way when I finish a Marion Zimmer Bradley or a Dion Fortune.