How we cite our quotes: (Book.Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #7
The king-star rose again that night, looking, men said, like a fiery dragon, and trailing a cloud of lesser stars like smoke. But it did not need an omen to tell me what I had known since that night on the crest of Killare, when I had vowed to carry the stone from Ireland, and lay it upon his grave. (IV.10.45)
It's hard to say how Merlin knows what he knows here. Stewart makes it sound like, "Duh, anyone looking at that dying star would know that the Ambrosius had died." But that's just not true. Merlin has a special way of seeing that helps him read signs in the natural world. He does it again when the mighty King Arthur is conceived—and it saves him from despair. It's good to have special knowledge. Sometimes.
Quote #8
It took two hundred men to each stone as it was moved, drilled teams who worked by numbers and who kept up their rhythms, as rowers do, by music. The rhythms of the movement were of course laid down by the work, and the tunes were old tunes that I remembered from my childhood… (V.1.5)
If Merlin were one of your crew, he'd be the know-it-all who annoyed everyone. He knows everything. Everything. And not just obscure engineering formulae and bits of herbal folklore—nope, he knows all the pop songs of the day. Stack that up with his formal education, and Merlin's an unstoppable figure. In this case, he does the "impossible" by applying his knowledge and using old poetry to synchronize his massive work crew. Massive creepy stones, look out: you've met your match.
Quote #9
In the east night slackened, drew back like a veil, and the sun came up. Straight as a thrown torch, or an arrow of fire, light pierced through the grey air and laid a line clear from the horizon to the king-stone at our feet. For perhaps twenty heart-beats the huge sentinel trilithon before us stood black and stark, framing the winter blaze. (V.2 49)
Merlin has used his serious engineering cred to realign the stones at Stonehenge so that the rising sun on the winter solstice shoots a beam of light across his dad's grave. Even Uther is impressed at Merlin's mad skills—but he's also kind of turned off by them. He basically fires Merlin from any official position with his court, precisely because his knowledge comes from a place that Uther doesn't understand.