a farm boy named Greg, of age 18. In this world the peasants weren't serfs, but the common folk who had no access to magic still rarely travelled more than ten miles from their home in their lifetime. Few of them could read, and disease was rampant given an inadequate number of priests with healing spells, most of whom helped the rich, anyway.
As he pushed his plow with his calloused hands, a backbreaking job he had to do without even a mule, he silently cursed the rulers of the land. Damn that king, for forcing these taxes out of us and making us work even more. Damn those spoiled princes and princesses. Of course, whether a prince or princess was spoiled or "honest" didn't much matter to him. They were still symbols of the rolay family, and destined to live in luxury, looking beautiful, wearing what they wanted, receiving the best magical medical care. They even had running water in that castle, thanks to magic!
The stone in the furrow looked like one of the thousands of rocks found in his meager field. It would have remained unnoticed if it wasn't accompanied by a piece of paper. Paper! With writing! Needless to say, Greg couldn't read, but he knew the stone was something special.
Dusk finally brought the end of the farm day. Greg sat down and showed his aging father the stone, holding it near a candle to provide light.
"It must be cough magic," said his father, who not only was sickly, but who had lost both legs in the ogre invasion two years ago. The king, of course, was safe in his castle and wouldn't care about minor problems like that. "Most of the people who use paper are magicians."
"Wouldn't it be something," said Greg, "if I could just hold it up and say 'I wish I had magic power?'"
A voice rung out. "You do have magic power--through the use of this wish-granting stone!"
"What?" said Greg. "I wish I knew where this stone comes from and how it works! And I wish I could read and write, too, and I wish my Dad were well, and I wish the crops grew and harvested themselves!"
Greg felt he had to look away... and heard his dad say, "I don't believe it..."
He looked back to see his father with two legs, and from outside came a strange sound. In the moonlight he could barely make out the shape of the plow moving by itself. And when he looked back at the paper, he found he now understood the words. Images formed in his head about the stone.
"Dad! It's a magic stone! I can't reverse wishes with it, and it has a range limit about five times the size of the kingdom, but...." Greg proceeded to explain to his father all the things the stone could do.
After eating a meal better than anything they previously had in either of their lives, and bringing Greg's dead mother back to life, Greg went to sleep.
The next day, he woke at dawn. He knew he had to start plowing... no, he didn't. The wish. His day was free! Greg could do anything he wanted. And he decided that the next day he was going to do something about that hated monarchy. Yet he didn't want to just slaughter innocents, and rich as the princes and princesses are, they certainly hadn't collected taxes at swordpoint, forcibly taken women from the village, or filled Old Joe full of arrows when Joe refused to let the king take his land for use by his pet wizard....
