The Crystal Cave Summary

The legendary wizard Merlin tells the story of how he played a starring role in the creation of King Arthur, the most awesome High King of Britain who ever lived. Merlin is now an old man and is possibly already imprisoned by a female enchantress in a crystal cave as he narrates this tale.

Er, more on that later…

We start with Merlin at age seven, growing up as an illegitimate prince in his grandfather's crummy palace in southern Wales. His mom is Niniane, princess of Demetia. Grandpa hates Merlin's guts and thinks that the boy's father was a demon. Niniane won't reveal the real name of Merlin's dad, mostly to protect both father and son.

Niniane's bro Camlach returns to the palace to take his place as heir to the throne. He acts like a cool uncle to Merlin, but it turns out that he really wants to kill him to make sure that Merlin won't grow up and take his kingdom away. He tries to poison the boy with a tainted apricot, but Merlin already has "second sight" and can see through the plot. The tension remains.

Merlin has a tutor and a servant called Cerdic, but he's mostly left on his own. He wanders into the hills and finds a hermit called Galapas, who teaches Merlin everything he can about the natural world and healing. He also shows him the crystal cave. When filled with light, the crystal cave can bring on visions in a person who has supernatural powers—which Merlin does have.

Merlin's first vision is of a mineshaft with a pool of water. It means nothing to him at the time. Galapas advises Merlin to travel with his grandfather to meet with Vortigern, the High King of Britain. Vortigern is in deep trouble with the hostile Saxon army, which he had invited into Britain to help him keep control of his kingdom.

Merlin and Cerdic find the opening to an old mineshaft under a hill and go exploring. It looks an awful lot like the one in his vision. Merlin files that info away for a later date.

On his second visit to the crystal cave, Merlin sees something disturbing: both his grandfather and Cerdic are dead. He observes a convo between Camlach and Niniane about the fate of the kingdom and of himself. When he returns to the palace, he finds that it's all true. Merlin sets fire to Cerdic's body (out of respect for Cerdic's Saxon origins) and winds up torching half the palace. Then he runs away to save his life.

But he's kidnapped by two men who serve the exiled Ambrosius. The two men take him on a ship to Brittany in northwestern France, hoping that he will give important intelligence info to Ambrosius, who wants to take back Britain from Vortigern.

Merlin escapes from the two men when they land in Brittany and tries to make his own way to Ambrosius. He has a vision of a man slaughtering a white bull and is then discovered by an angry soldier who nearly has him beaten to death. But he's rescued by Ambrosius himself, who recognizes that Merlin has had a vision of the god Mithras.

Ambrosius adopts Merlin and hires the druid Belasius to tutor him. In the meantime, Ambrosius and his bro Uther (the angry young soldier) prepare their troops for an invasion of Britain. Through a series of accidents and observations, both Ambrosius and Merlin realize that Merlin is actually Ambrosius' son.

Merlin makes an unconscious prediction that Ambrosius will be High King of Britain one day. Ambrosius is excited and wants Merlin to churn out another prophecy for him. But no dice: Merlin doesn't have control over his powers and can't summon them at will.

Fast forward five years. Merlin's become a useful engineer and is being sent back to Britain to scope things out. There's been a rebellion against Vortigern, and Camlach was on the wrong side of it. Now there's unrest, and it's possibly a good time to invade.

Merlin returns to Wales to find Galapas' badly decomposed body on the hill above his cave. He runs into Dinias, a cousin of his who used to bully him all the time, and finds him living in the old palace, which is in ruins. He and Dinias have a run-in with Vortigern's men at the local pub, and Merlin gets hauled before the High King. Niniane is also "invited" along.

Vortigern has a plan for Merlin: he needs to sacrifice a boy with no human father in order to help the walls of his new tower stand. Pretty cray, no? Niniane repeats the story about Merlin's father being a demon, and it plays right into their hands. Merlin, hoping to save his own life, tells Vortigern and company that he can help find the problem with the tower walls.

He leads Vortigern's men straight to the mineshaft that he'd found years ago with Cerdic and shows him a great pool of water. He makes a prophecy: if they drain the pool, the walls will stand. He also predicts that Vortigern will be defeated by the red dragon (that's Ambrosius).

On his way back to Maridunum, Merlin learns two things: his mother is ill, and his father has landed in Britain. Merlin checks on his mom in St. Peter's nunnery and finds that she's recovering. Meanwhile, Ambrosius has killed Vortigern and is preparing to fight the Saxon leader Hengist.

Merlin joins Ambrosius' army for the battle against Hengist as a "prophet" (no battle time for him). In the end, Hengist is taken prisoner, and Merlin senses that his mother has died back in Maridunum.

Hengist is dead, but his kinsmen and allies are still on the loose. Eventually, Ambrosius sends Merlin to Ireland to help Uther crush an enemy ally—and to take a sacred stone from the fortress at Killare. He tells Merlin to revamp Stonehenge and put the stone there as a memorial to the Brits slain by Hengist.

Merlin manages to move the great stone, but as he and his men move it back to Britain, he has a vision of Ambrosius' death. When they arrive, Merlin finds that his father has been poisoned and has died. Merlin restores Stonehenge and places the king-stone from Killare on Ambrosius' grave.

Uther is crowned High King and immediately gets into trouble: he falls in lust with Gorlois' beautiful young wife, Ygraine. Merlin sees this as fate—Uther and Ygraine must get together and make a new little kinglet (that's Arthur). So he concocts an elaborate plan.

The plan goes badly wrong. While Uther and Ygraine do hook up and conceive Arthur, the good Gorlois ends up dead—as does Merlin's trusted servant, Cadal. Uther is very displeased with Merlin and wants nothing more to do with him.

But Merlin's mission is complete: the High King of Britain has been conceived. As the book closes, Merlin looks up to see a king-star burning in the sky, announcing the conception of King Arthur.