Pool of Radiance Read Online Free PDF Page A

weight.
    “Oof! This is heavy! I wish I were stronger!” And with her last words, she let out a gasp.
    The magic of the Ring of Three Wishes worked instantly. Shal could feel herself growing larger, stronger. The saddle became like a feather in her hands. Her once perfectly fitted riding gear bound her flesh so tightly that the seams split. She flung the saddle to the ground with a force her petite body had never been capable of and watched in horror as her delicate hands and slender arms grew into what she perceived as huge, brawny appendages. She watched her feet, calves, and thighs expand in a similar fashion, and she could feel a sheath of muscled flesh building on her once trim stomach.
    “No!” she screamed. “No!” She knew enough about wishing lore to know that she had made the cardinal mistake of wishers. She had wished carelessly. “Look at me! I’m a monster! I’m huge!” she cried. Shal fell to her knees, terrified and disgusted by what she had done. She knew the change was permanent unless she used another wish.
    Cerulean tried desperately to break into her thoughts. Her terror and revulsion registered on his brain like a stabbing knife. The image projected by Shal was of a grotesque parody of a human female, distorted almost beyond recognition by musculature and sinews. The reality was quite different. Cerulean could perceive human beauty. He certainly had a sense of what Ranthor found attractive in women. Shal had indeed changed as a result of the wish; she was considerably larger than she had been. But the basic beauty of her features and the proportion of her figure had not changed. If she was unattractive, it was only to someone who could not find beauty in a large woman. Her appearance was marred only by the ripped, ill-fitting clothing that still managed to hold a few parts of her expanded figure captive.
    But Shal was oblivious to Cerulean’s mental shouts. She stared at the big calves that protruded from where her ankles had been, and at her forearms, where they tested the limits of the wrist cuffs. She could only imagine what her face must look like.
    Her immediate thought was to wish herself back to her former size. But as much as she wanted to make that wish, she shook her head resolutely. No, Ranthor had entrusted his entire magical legacy to her. It was not to be wasted. Shal’s one goal was to make him proud. She had made a gross mistake, and she must live with it. The ring’s magic must be preserved for her quest to avenge her master’s murder.
    “What a fool I am! I can’t even trust myself with a simple ring!” she chastised herself. Shal reached for the ring to pull it off, but her hands had grown much larger than before and the ring wouldn’t budge. “Damn! Instead of wishing to be strong, I could at least have wished that me and my belongings were in Phlan—”
    “No!” Shal screamed as she felt the ring’s magic working once more. Before she could even blink, she found herself kneeling on the planks of a long wooden dock, facing the twilight silhouette of a city she had never seen but knew without a doubt was Phlan. Her bedroll, her saddle, and Cerulean were beside her. The horror of her stupidity bludgeoned her like a battle-axe, and she fell prostrate on the dock and wept, beating her fists against the planks with each rage-filled sob.
    Passersby gawked at the huge but comely woman and her seemingly shrunken leather clothing, but none moved closer or offered assistance. They could see a great war-horse standing protectively by the woman’s side, and if that wasn’t enough, the big woman was rattling the two-inch-thick boards of the dock with every blow of her massive fists. If the woman wanted to cry in public, there were few if any who would question her or try to stop her.
     
    2

The Test
    Two wagons bumped and jolted their way along the deeply rutted road. “Yo! Tarl!” Brother Donal called down from the head wagon. “Can you interrupt your hammer-throwing