The Crystal Cave Book Five, Chapter 10 Summary

  • Merlin crawls down the path away from Tintagel and finds a very dead-looking Cadal under the overhang where he'd been waiting for Uther and company.
  • Uther comes strolling down the path as though nothing had happened, but he's really miffed at Merlin because of the whole Gorlois thing. And because of the body count, which is pretty high.
  • Uther argues that he could just have waited for tomorrow, when Gorlois would have been dead and he could have legit had Ygraine.
  • Merlin tells him to chill. Uther had to hook up with Ygraine at that moment, or the next great High King of Britain wouldn't have been made.
  • Uther doesn't get it. He accuses Merlin of manipulating him under the cover of "magic," promising to give Uther whatever he wanted by supernatural means, but actually arranging everything in a shady way.
  • Merlin assures Uther that all the stuff that they didn't know about the night—Gorlois' death, the baby's legitimacy, the succession of the crown—was all hidden by God.
  • Uther doesn't buy it, mostly because he doesn't know what God Merlin's talking about. But to Merlin, it doesn't matter. It's all about "light," or the good. Whatever god gets to that is fine.
  • Uther tells Merlin that he'll no longer play his games. He's clearly upset that things didn't go his way.
  • Uther leaves, and Merlin gets a big surprise: Cadal isn't dead. At least, not yet. He tells Merlin what he really thinks of Uther—and it's not flattering.
  • Merlin and Cadal chat a bit about the events of the evening. Cadal asks Merlin if fate could have played out without all this bother. Merlin tells him it all had to happen.
  • Merlin tells Cadal that everything they'd been hoping for—and this includes Ambrosius' hopes—would now happen. Even though Cadal is dying, he seems okay with it.
  • Merlin knows the future: when the baby is born, Ygraine will send him to Merlin. He'll teach the lad everything he knows, and the child will be the best of all of them.
  • Cadal clings to Merlin's words. He has to believe that his life and death mean something for the life of Britain. And then he dies in Merlin's arms.
  • Merlin "gives Cadal to the sea"—a nice way of saying that he rolls Cadal's body over the cliff into the sea below.
  • And still, that mystical star hangs in the sky as the sun rises over the horizon.