Sam Gordon is followed by someone dressed like a wizard. He figures the guy to be another San Francisco lunatic until the man meets Sam at his favorite café carrying on about time continuum portals. Assured of the man's insanity, Sam escapes out the back door, which drops him into a strange place.

In a land of green grass and no automobiles, Sam cannot find the door back to the café. He questions his sanity and sets out to find someone who can give him directions. When he is attacked by a swordsman on horseback, a beautiful young woman named Margot, intervenes. She speaks an archaic dialect of Anglo-Saxon — a language Sam didn't know until that moment. Sam travels with them to Camelot and finds himself in King Arthur's court. Working as a blacksmith and studying the druidic arts under Merlin's tutelage, Sam learns he must complete an unknown task before a portal can open to his own place and time.

Merlin's Apprentice is created by B. K. Kerley, an eGlobal Creative Publishing author.

Merlin's Apprentice

Merlin and I rode hard, and we soon escaped the range of the Pictish shafts, but my packhorse took an arrow in the rump — it slowed me down. I relayed this to the wizard, and he said, “Let it go. They pursue us.”


I looked back, and sure enough, the Picts were mounted and coming after us. Our wounded packhorse slowed to a limping halt. The Picts caught up to the beast — one stopped to deal with the animal while the rest swarmed around it and continued after us.


There were too many for me to fight alone, and I didn’t want to anyway. Moreover, Arthur had spoken of forming an alliance with the Pictish tribes, so I did not want to begin negotiations by killing any of them.


We soon left the forest and entered treeless rolling hills. Topping a rise, we encountered the rest of the company of Picts. They were all mounted and marching in a column. There must’ve been five hundred warriors coming in our direction. We had no choice but to rein in and stop.


Chapter 18