RS01. The Reluctant Sorcerer Read Online Free PDF

thought this rather than saying it out loud), then he mentally corrected himself when he saw that the man, while very small, was nevertheless perfectly proportioned, which made him not a dwarf, but a midget. A little person, Brewster mentally corrected himself again. They don’t like to be called midgets, they like to be called little people.
    “My bull!” a new voice suddenly cried out. “What have you done to my prize bull?” A man was running toward them across the field, shaking his fist and, in his other hand, brandishing a very nasty looking pitchfork. He was dressed in a peculiar fashion, tight black breeches and what appeared to be a brown potato sack belted around his waist, with a hole in it for his head and arms. He was wearing high, soft leather moccasins and he had long, shoulder-length hair. For that matter, the little man who’d rescued him was dressed in a peculiar fashion too, thought Brewster. He had on some kind of belted, brown leather jerkin cut in scallops around the hem and sleeves, baggy green trousers tucked into high, laced leather boots, and a large dagger at his waist. Brewster wondered if he hadn’t somehow transported himself to some sort of hippie commune in the country. Or perhaps these were circus people. In fact, he wondered, where had he transported himself? He should have been back in the lab, but this most definitely was not his laboratory. He glanced around. It wasn’t even London. Something had very definitely gone wrong.
    “Mick O’Fallon!” said the farmer as he came running up. “I should have known you’d be at the bottom of this! You and your blasted alchemical mixtures! Now look what you’ve gone and done! You’ve killed my bull!” “S’trewth, and I didn’t touch your bleedin’ bull, Robie McMurphy,” the little man said as he got up to a sitting position. “And have a care, or can you not recognize a wizard when you see one?” The farmer’s eyes grew wide as he gazed at Brewster. “A wizard!” he exclaimed.
    “A master sorcerer, I should think,” said Mick, “judgin’ by the way he blasted that great, big, foolish bull of yours. You’d best show proper respect, else you’re liable to find yourself gettin’ some of the same.” “Beggin’ your pardon. Good Master,” said McMurphy, lowering his gaze and dropping to one knee. “I didn’t know!” “Dropped right out of the sky, he did,” said Mick, “in some kind of magic chariot. Faith, and didn’t I see it myself?” Brewster blinked at them with confusion. “Where am I?” he asked, looking around him. The countryside didn’t look familiar, but then again, he hadn’t spent much time outside of London. Then his gaze fell, on the blasted, smoldering wreckage of his time machine. “Oh, no! Ruined! It’s absolutely ruined!” “Your stupid, bloody bull attacked his magic chariot,” Mick said to the farmer, by way of explanation.
    McMurphy looked chagrined. More than that, he suddenly looked terrified. “Forgive me. Good Master!” he pleaded. “I beg of you, don’t punish me! I shall make amends, somehow, L swear it!” Brewster wasn’t paying very close attention. Now that the fireworks were over, it was dawning on him that he must have seriously miscalculated. Somehow, he had transported himself right out of the city and, worse still, the machine had been utterly destroyed. Now he would have to find out exactly where he was and call Pamela to come and pick him up. He sighed heavily. She was bound to be very much annoyed. He’d have to ask these people if he could use a telephone.
    Then it suddenly occurred to him that he hadn’t even thanked the little man for pulling him out of the time machine before it exploded and thereby saving his life. He turned back toward him, somewhat sheepishly.
    “I’m sorry,” he said to the little man, “I’m forgetting my manners. I’m very grateful for your help. The door was stuck and if you hadn’t forced it open...” He swallowed