How we cite our quotes: (Book.Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #7
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. (III.10.44)
Merlin has his first grown-up vision in the mineshaft beneath Vortigern's failed tower. He's not aware of what he says here, but he does learn one thing: magic hurts. And it hurts because the magic isn't something he owns—it belongs to the "god," and when the god comes by with info, it isn't always a pretty experience.
Still, it does the trick. Vortigern gets his mystical experience and the knowledge he needs to repair his walls. Not that it does him any good.
Quote #8
What I had done at Dinas Brenin, I had not done of myself. It was not I who had decided to send Vortigern fleeing out of Wales. Out of the dark, out of the wild and whirling stars, I had been told. […] The voice that had said so, that said so now in the musty dark of Camlach's room, was not my own; it was the god's. (IV.2.89)
Merlin slowly begins to understand the power that sets him apart from other people. It really isn't about him. He's more like a vessel for the power of the divine. That's pretty humbling—and also a little scary. Merlin's never really sure if his power will be useful or good for him or the ones he loves. He literally has one job: to obey the god in all things.
Quote #9
I had felt something of the same thing in Brittany as I first passed among the avenues of stone; a breathing on the back of the neck as if something older than time were looking over one's shoulder; but this was not quite the same. It was as if the ground, the stones that I touched, though still warm from the spring sunlight, were breathing cold from somewhere deep below. (IV.7.6)
Merlin encounters the "Giants' Dance" (a.k.a. Stonehenge) for the first time and realizes that the ancient stones have the same kind of creepiness as the standing stones he'd encountered on his first desperate night in Less Britain. There's definitely power in those stones—and Merlin likes power—but it's not friendly at all. He understands that he has to grapple with the forces at Stonehenge, to put it back to order, but there's something really scary and unsavory about some of the ancient stones.