Where It All Goes Down
South Wales; Less Britain (Brittany)
Merlin is quite the ramblin' man in this book, but Stewart focuses on two main locations for the action. The first is Merlin's home in Maridunum, which is on the southern coast of Wales. From there, our dude wanders into the countryside to meet Galapas at his cave, and then goes further east to Caerleon (another coastal town) and way north to Segontium to meet Vortigern.
Here's an important thing to understand about the island of Britain in the 5th century: it's not a united country. And no, we're not talking about the whole England-Scotland thing. Those countries, as we know them today, weren't even in existence back then.
At this time, each bit of Britain is ruled by an independent king or duke. So Merlin's Gramps is king of South Wales, Gorlois is Duke of Cornwall, and Eldol is Count of Gloucester. These guys have their own armies, and they tolerate a High King (like Vortigern)—until they don't.
Despite all the political shenanigans in the background, Merlin's description of his home country sounds like a piece straight out of a Lonely Planet guidebook:
South Wales is a lovely country, with green hills and deep valleys, flat water-meadows yellow with flowers where cattle grow sleek, oak forests full of deer, and the high blue uplands where the cuckoo shouts in springtime, but where, come winter, the wolves run, and I have seen lightning even with the snow. (I.2.2)
If that doesn't make you want to (time) travel, we don't know what will move you.
The second major setting here is Ambrosius' settlement in Less Britain (or Brittany). This is part of modern-day France—remember how much Merlin pukes when he has to cross the Narrow Sea (i.e., the English Channel)? Basically, Brittany is that big peninsula that juts out of northwestern France. It's a Celtic region with its own language—Breton, which is somewhat similar to Welsh—and history.
We don't get much about the lay of the land in Brittany, but we do learn about those creepy standing stones that line the avenue into town:
I took the first of these for a huge milestone, but then I saw others, in ranks, thrusting from the turf like storm-blasted avenues of trees. Or like colonnades where the gods walked—but no gods that I knew. (II.2.7)
Merlin takes these huge mystical stones as a sign that power lives in this place. After he meets Ambrosius and Belasius, he knows that he's right.