Merlin and the Tower

In days after the fall of Rome, you remember those days...

The empire still existed and yet had lost all of its power. It became quarantined to tiny area of Europe in those days. Tribes of barbarians roamed the former imperial landscape at large: the Franks, the Picts, the Celts, the Jutes, the Normans, the Saxons and the Brits. It was in this day that Vortigern ruled the isles of Britain. He was a tyrant: a conqueror who towered above his adversaries.

To celebrate his reign, he decided that he would have a tower built in his name atop Dinas Emrys. It was a spectacular hill, and upon it would be a spectacular sight, a tower taller than any in all of Britain. Vortigern employed the best architects and the most skilled laborers. These men built for him a tower fit for a king, but as Vortigern approached to see the finished work, the tower fell. With the ire of the king stirred, the workers worked again, but the more they built, the harder it became to keep the tower standing, until it came that they could not lay a single brick without it falling down the hill.

Vortigern, frustrated by this, sought out his best soothsayer. The soothsayer looked into the inner realms of the spirits and told Vortigern that there was a curse upon the hill. Any structure he would build upon it would fall. There would be little hope of success. Vortigern lamented this for Dinas Emrys was the best hill and surely, his tower must be built upon it. Was there no way to break the curse, he wondered.

The soothsayer told him that the only way to break the curse was to sacrifice the life of a child that was not born of man, and to mix the blood with the cement of the foundation, then surely the tower would stand tall and strong. At this Vortigern lamented even more, for where could such a child be found? Surely no child could be born without the aide of a man, but the soothsayer told Vortigern that it was said that in a nearby village, just such a child existed.

In this small town, a young child was celebrating his eighth birthday. He never knew his father and the dreams which plagued him told him that he simply did not have one. He knew that he special, different from the other children, but he knew not why. When soldiers came to take him away, he cried for his mother, but she could do nothing to help her child.

The child was brought before Vortigern first.

"Young child," he said, "are you not proud to be here to serve your king."

The child, whose name was Merlin, felt no such wonder and said rather flatly, "You're no king of mine."

Had this been a man, Vortigern would have been angry, but with the child, he was gently patient. "I have conquered these lands and many more. Surely you must pay homage to me."

"But like all men you will come to dust. Why pay homage to that which has no permanence?"

Vortigern was impressed by this child, for he spoke with the wisdom of an elder. He decided to press. "Child do you know why you are here?"

"I am here on a fool's errand at a fool's request."

"And why do think me a fool?"

"Because any man with wits about him would know that the reason your tower will not stand is because of no curse, but because a pool of water stands beneath the hill."

Vortigern was so taken aback that he sent his men to investigate. They dug into the hill, and sure enough, there they found a pool of water. Surely no foundation built over it would support even a house. Just as his men came to announce this, a brace of dragons emerged from the hill. The men's digging had disturbed their prison and had released a white dragon and a red dragon. They commenced battle over the field.

Upon seeing this, Merlin began to speak in tongues after a moment of this he said, "The tyrant king shall give way to the dragon of the south and from the south shall rise a king who will unify Britian. When the white dragon screams, this is when Britain shall fall and this king will die and invaders from the west shall make Britain their own. They will plant a tree in London and this tree shall have three branches. Two of the branches shall destroy the third by their sheer abundance..."

And so Merlin went on for several hours. After this episode, Vortigern placed his soothsayer in irons and made Merlin his new soothsayer. The day would soon come when Merlin would help Uther bring about the downfall of the tyrant Vortigern and usher in the era of King Arthur, and all of Merlin's prophecies would come to pass, but that is another story.