The Colour of Magic

Terry Pratchett

Summary

Discworld -- perched on the backs of four cosmically gargantuan elephants (who themselves are traveling through the intergalactic void atop a giant sea turtle) -- is a place where anything can happen.

And it does when Twoflower, a naive insurance salesman turned tourist, makes the mistake of selling fire insurance to an arson-prone innkeeper. One burning town later, Towflower and his amazing, sentient Luggage -- which follows him everywhere on its hundreds of little feet -- find themselves rescued by the inept wizard Rincewind, who is only too happy to turn tour guide as long as the gold flows free. And off this mismatched threesome go on an incredible adventure in the wildest realms of fantasy!

Quotes

An alternative [theory], favoured by those of a religious persuation, was that A'Tuin was crawling from the Birthplace to the Time of Mating ... When they arrived they would briefly and passionately mate, for the first and only time, and from that fiery union new turtles would be born to carry a new pattern of worlds. This was known as the Big Bang hypothesis.

-- Discworld origins

Fire roared through the bifurcated city of Ankh-Morpork. ... By now the whole of downtown Morpork was alight, and the richer and worthier citizens of Ankh on the far bank were bravely responding to the situation by feverishly demolishing the bridges.

...on the disc, the Gods are not so much worshipped as blamed.

He pointed back down the road to where his traveling companion was still approaching, having adopted a method of riding that involved falling out of the saddle every few seconds.

"You don't understand at all," said the wizard wearily. "I’m so scared of you my spine has turned to jelly, it's just that I’m suffering from an overdose of terror right now. I mean, when I’ve got over that then I'll have time to be decently frightened of you."

"Fire-raiser, is he?" said Bravd at last.

"No," said Rincewind. "Not precisely. Let's just say that if complete and utter chaos was lightning, he'd be the sort to stand on a hilltop in a thunderstorm wearing wet copper armour and shouting 'All gods are bastards'."

The stranger smiled widely and fumbled yet again in the pouch. This time his hand came out holding a large gold coin. It was in fact slightly larger than an 8,000-dollar Ankhian crown and the design on it was unfamiliar, but it spoke inside Hugh's mind in a language he understood perfectly. My current owner, it said, is in need of succour and assistance; why not give it to him, so you and me can go off somewhere and enjoy ourselves?

Look at him. Scrawny, like most wizards, and clad in a dark red robe on which a few mystic sigils were embroidered in tarnished sequins. Some might have taken him for a mere apprentice enchanter who had run away from his master out of defiance, boredom, fear and a lingering taste for heterosexuality.

-- Meet Rincewind

Rincewind switched to High Borogravian, to Vanglemesht, Sumtri and even Black Oroogu, the language with no nouns and only one adjective, which is obscene.

In desperation he tried heathen Trob, and the little man's face split into a delighted grin.

"At last!" he said. "My good sir! This is remarkable!" (Although in Trob the last word in fact became "a thing which may happen but once in the usable lifetime of a canoe hollowed diligently by axe and fire from the tallest diamondwood tree that grows in the noted diamondwood forests on the lower Slopes of Mount Awayawa, home of the firegods or so it is said.").

"Oh, come now," said the stranger, looking around. "This looks like a delightful place. A genuine Morporkian tavern. I've heard so much about them, you know. All these quaint old beams. And so reasonable, too."

Rincewind glance around quickly ... No -- this was still the interior of the Drum, its walls stained with smoke, its floor a compost of old rushes and nameless beetles, its sour beer not so much purchased as nerely hired for a while. He tried to fit the image around the word "quaint" ... His mind reeled back from the effort.

"You say this is a tough place. Frequented, you mean, by heroes and men of adventure?"

Rincewind considered this. "Yes?" he managed.

"Excellent. I would like to meet some... So that when I get home I can say that I did it."

Rincewind thought that a meeting with most of the Drum's clientele would mean that Twoflower never went home again, unless he lived downriver and happened to float.

At about this time a hitherto unsuccessful fortune-teller living on the other side of the block chanced to glance into her scrying bowl, gave a small scream, and, within the hour, had sold her jewellry, various magical accoutrements, most of her clothes and almost all her other possessions that could not be conveniently carried on the fastest horse she could buy. The fact that later on, when her house collapsed in flames, she herself died in a freak landslide in the Morpork Mountains proves that Death, too, has a sense of humour.

(Wizards, even failed wizards, have in addition to rods and cones in their eyeballs the tiny octagons that enable them to see into the far octarine, the basic colour of which all other colours are merely pale shadows impinging on normal four-dimensional space. It is said to be a sort of fluorescent greenish-yellow purple.)

"I’m sure you won't dream of trying to escape from your obligations by fleeing the city. I judge you to be a born city person. But you may be sure that the lords of the other cities will be appraised of these conditions by nightfall."

"I assure you the thought never even crossed my mind, lord."

"Indeed? Then if I were you I'd sue my face for slander."

The big man was already reaching for another knife. Rincewind looked around wildly, and then with wild improvisation drew himself up into a wizardly pose.

His hand was flung back. "Asoniti! Kyorucha! Beazlebor!"

The man hesitated, his eyes flicking nervously from side to side as he waited for the magic. The conclusion that there was not going to be any hit him at the same time as Rincewind, whirring wildly down the passage, kicked him sharply in the groin.

The only heroes he had much time for were Bravd and the Weasel, who were out of town at the moment, and Hrun the Barbarian, who was practically an academic by Hub standards in that he could think without moving his lips.

At the Temple of the Seven-Handed Sek a hasty convocation of priests and ritual heart-transplant artisans agreed that the hundred-span high statue of Sek was altogether too holy to be made into a magic picture, but a payment of two rhinu left them astoundedly agreeing that perhaps He wasn't as holy as all that.

A prolonged session at the Whore Pits produced a number of colourful and instructive pictures, a number of which Rincewind concealed about his person for detailed perusal in private.

There are said to be some mystic rivers -- one drop of which can steal a man's life away. After its turbid passage through the twin cities the Ankh could have been one of them.

"That's what's so stupid about the whole magic thing, you know. You spend twenty years learning the spell that makes nude virgins appear in your bedroom, and then you're so poisoned by quicksilver fumes and half-blind from reading old grimoires that you can't remember what happens next."

It held biscuits that turned out to be as hard as diamondwood.

"Captain Eightpanther's Travellers' Digestives, them," said the imp from the doorway to his box. "Saved many a life at sea, they have."

"Oh, sure. Do you use them as a raft, or just throw them to the sharks and sort of watch them sink?"

Promotion in the Assassins Guild was by competitive examination, the Practical being the most important -- indeed, the only -- part.

"You come all the way to see our fine city with its many points of historical and civic interest, also many quaint customes, and you end up dead in some back alley or as it might be floating down the Ankh, how are you going to tell all your friends what a great time you're having?"

Death: I WAS SURPRISED THAT YOU JOSTLED ME, RINCEWIND, FOR I HAVE AN APPOINTMENT WITH THEE THIS VERY NIGHT.
Rincewind: "Oh no, not--"
Death: OF COURSE, WHAT'S SO BLOODY VEXING ABOUT THE WHOLE BUSINESS IS THAT I WAS EXPECTING TO MEET THEE IN PSEPHOPOLOLIS.
Rincewind: "But that's five hundred miles away!"
Death: YOU DON'T HAVE TO TELL ME. THE WHOLE SYSTEM'S GOT SCREWED UP AGAIN, I CAN SEE THAT. LOOK, THERE'S NO CHANCE OF YOU--?

"You--" he began, and searched his memory for the worst word in the Trob tongue; the happy little beTrobi didn't really know how to swear properly.

"You little (such a one who, while wearing a copper nose ring, stands in a footbath atop Mount Raruaruaha during a heavy thunderstorm and shouts that Alohura, Goddess of Lightning, has the facial features of a diseased uloruaha root!)"

-- Swearing in Trob

A man who owned a needle made of octiron would never lose his way, since it always pointed to the Hub of the Discworld, being acutely sensitive to the disc's magical field; it would also miraculously darn his socks.

"Well, my point is, you see, that gold also has its sort of magical field. Sort of financial wizardry. Echo-gnomics."

Picturesque meant -- [Rincewind] decided after careful observation of the scenery that inspired Twoflower to use the word -- that the landscape was horribly precipitous. Quaint, when used to describe the occassional village through which they passed, meant fever-ridden and tumbledown.

Twoflower was a tourist, the first ever seen on the Discworld. Tourist, Rincewind decided, meant "idiot".

It was all very well going on about pure logic and how the universe was ruled by logic and the harmony of numbers, but the plain fact of the matter was that the disc was manifestly traversing space on the back of a giant turtle and the gods had a habit of going around to atheists' houses and smashing their windows.

Twoflower: "What a strange creature. Is it dangerous?"
Rincewind: "Only to people!"

[Twoflower] racked his brains trying to remember what sort of accomodation forests traditionally offered ... perhaps there was a gingerbread house or something?

First, an enraged she-bear had barged through the undergrowth and taken the throat out of his horse with one swipe of her paw. Then, as Rincewind had fled the carnage, he had run into a glade in which a number of irate wolves were milling about. His instructors at Unseen University, who had despaired of Rincewind's inability to master levitation, would have been amazed at the speed with which he reached and climbed the nearest tree, without apparently touching it.

Rincewind knew what was inside trees: wood, sap, possibly squirrels. Not a palace.

Still -- the cushions underneath him were definitely softer than wood, the wine in the wooden cup beside him was much tastier than sap, and there could be absolutely no comparison between a squirrel and the girl sitting before him, clasping her knees and watching him thoughtfully, unless mention was made of certain hints of furriness.

The three handsome giants looked down at [Rincewind] with wooden menace. Their skins were the colour of walnut husks, and under it muscles bulged like sacks of melons.

He turned around again and grinned weakly at Druellae. Life was beginning to take on a familiar shape again.

Hrun was one of the Circle Sea's more durable heroes: a fighter of dragons, a despoiler of temples, a hired sword, the kingpost of every street brawl. He could even -- and unlike many heroes of Rincewind's acquaintance -- speak words of more than two syllables, if given time and maybe a hint or two.

...in [Rincewind's] experience, it was only a matter of time before the normal balance of the universe restored itself and started doing the usual terrible things to him.

On the whole, the unpleasant carvings and occasional disjointed skeletons he passed held no fears for Hrun. This was partly because he was not exceptionally bright while being at the same time exceptionally unimaginative...

[Hrun] spent a great deal of time in similar situations, seeking gold or demons or distressed virgins and relieving them respectively of their owners, their lives, and at least one cause of their distress.

...whoever had done those carvings on the wall, Twoflower thought charitably, had probably been drinking too much. For years.

Twoflower: "So what we've got to do now is find this Bel-Shamharoth person and explain things to him and perhaps he'll let us out."
Rincewind: "It must be the funny echoes in here. I thought I heard you use words like find and explain."
Twoflower: "That's right."
Rincewind: "Find Bel-Shamharoth?"
Twoflower: "Yes. We don't have to get involved."
Rincewind: "Find the Soul Render and not get involved? Just give him a nod, I suppose, and ask the way to the exit?"

Twoflower: "Run away and leave Hrun with that thing?"
Rincewind: "Why not? it's his job."
Twoflower: "But it'll kill him."
Rincewind: "It could be worse."
Twoflower: "What?"
Rincewind: "It could be us."

Hrun: "Now we share the treasure, eh?"
Rincewind: "How do you know there's treasure in there?"
Hrun: "You find chokeapples under a chokeapple tree. You find treasure under altars. Logic."

-- Barbarian logic, anyway

"You're getting quite good at using the picture box, you know that?"

"Yar."

"So you might like to have this." Twoflower held out a picture.

"What is it?" asked Rincewind.

"Oh, just the picture you took in the temple."

Rincewind looked in horror. There, bordered by a few glimpses of tentacle, was a huge, whorled, calloused, potion-stained and unfocused thumb.

"That's the story of my life," he said wearily.

...great and pyrotechnic were the battles that followed -- the sun wheeled across the sky, the seas boiled, weird storms ravaged the land, small white pigeons mysteriously appeared in people's clothing...

-- Magic wars on the Disc

Twoflower: "You don't understand! All my life I've wanted to see dragons!"
Rincewind: "From the inside? Shut up and ride!"

He was armed, but the dragonrider observed with some interest the strange way in which the man held the sword in front of him at arm's length, as though embarassed to be seen in its company.

Later, he remembered only two things about the fight. He recalled the uncanny way in which the wizard's sword curved up and caught his own blade with a shock that jerked it out of his grip. The other thing ... was that the wizard was covering his eyes with one hand.

Rincewind looked down at him and grinned slowly. It was a wide, manic and utterly humourless rictus that was the sort of grin that is normally accompanied by small riverside birds wandering in and out picking scraps out of the teeth.

Rincewind: "Well? Any suggestions?"
Kring: "Obviously you attack."
Rincewind: "Why didn't I think of that? Could it be because they all have crossbows?"

Rincewind looked up at a number of impassive, upside-down faces. ... There were several women among them. The inversion did strange things to their anatomy.

Twoflower: "What happens next?"
Hrun: "Oh, I expect in a minute the door will be flung back and I'll be dragged off to some sort of temple arena where I'll fight maybe a couple of giant spiders and an eight-foot slave from the jungles of Klatch and then I'll rescue some kind of a princess from the altar and then kill off a few guards or whatever and then this girl will show me the secret passage out of the place and we'll liberate a couple of horses and escape with the treasure."
Twoflower: "All that?"
Hrun: "Usually."

Twoflower glanced up and down the corridor, and decided against following the guards. Since he knew himself to be totally lost already, any direction was probably an improvement.

Twoflower said hurriedly, "You keep saying you're dead..."

"Well?"

"Well, the dead, er, they, you know, don't talk much."

Liartes: "You'll fight us both together?"
Hrun: "Yah."
Liartes: "That's pretty uneven odds, isn't it?"
Hrun: "Yah. I outnumber you one to two."

Liessa: "The dragons--"
Hrun: "Yah?"
Liessa: "They're imaginary."
Hrun: "Like all these imaginary burns on my arm, you mean?"
Liessa: "Yes. No! I'll have to tell you later!"
Hrun: "Fine, if you can find a really good medium."

It is a little known but true fact that a two legged creature can usually beat a four legged creature over a short distance, simply because of the time it takes the quadruped to get its legs sorted out.

[Hrun] thought about his life to date. It suddenly seemed to him to have been full of long damp nights sleeping under the stars, desperate fights with trolls, city guards, countless bandits and evil priests and, on at least three occassions, actual demigods -- and for what? Well, for quite a lot of treasure, he had to admit--

Rincewind: "Don't you get scared of heights?"
Twoflower: "No. Why should I? You're just as dead if you fall from forty feet as you are from four thousand fathoms, that's what I say."

Possibly the most important point that would have to be borne in mind by anyone outside the sum totality of the multiverse was that although the wizard and the tourist had indeed only recently appeared in an aircraft in mid-air, they had also at one and the same time been riding on that aeroplane in the normal course of things. That is to say: while it was true that they had just appeared in this particular set of dimensions, it was also true that they had been living in them all along. It is at this point that normal language gives up, and goes and has a drink.

Twoflower: "Would you like something to eat?"
Rincewind: "Don't you understand? We're going over the Edge, godsdammit!"
Twoflower: "Can't we do anything about it?"
Rincewind: "No!"
Twoflower: "Then I can't see the sense in panicking."

The captain, a thickset man who wore the elbow-turbans typical of a Great Nef tribesman, was much travelled and had seen many strange peoples and curious things, many of which he had subsequently enslaved or stolen.

Some pirates achieved immortality by great deeds of cruelty or derring-do. Some achieved immortality by amassing great wealth. But the captain had long ago decided that he would, on the whole, prefer to achieve immortality by not dying.

It was the King Colour, of which all the lesser colours are merely partial and wishy-washy reflections. it was octarine, the colour of magic. it was alive and glowing and vibrant and it was the undisputed pigment of the imagination, because wherever it appeared it was a sign that mere matter was a servant of the powers of the magical mind. It was enchantment itself.

But Rincewind always thought it looked a sort of greenish-purple.

Instead of the rotting, betentacled monstrosity he had been expecting Rincewind found himself looking at a rather squat but not particularly ugly old man who would quite easily passed for normal on any city street, always provided that other people on the street were used to seeing old men who were apparently composed of water and very little else. It was as if the ocean had decided to create life without going through all that tedious business of evolution, and had simply formed a part of itself into a biped and sent it walking squishily up the beach.

While the two men helped themselves to some more of the green wine, [Tethis] told them about the Circumfence, the great effort that had been made to build it, and the ancient and wise Kingdom of Krull which had constructed it several centuries before, and the seven navies that patrolled it constantly to keep it in repair and bring its salvage back to Krull, and the manner in which Krull had become a land of leisure ruled by the most learned seekers after knowledge, and the way in which they sought constantly to understand in every possible particular the wondrous complexity of the universe, and the way in which sailors marooned on the Circumfence were turned into slaves, and usually had their tongues cut out.

[Rincewind] reached for a cup and looked at the green pool shimmering inside it. It'd better be drinkable, he thought. Because I'm going to drink it.

Rincewind sighed with relief. This was such an unusual sound that it made Twoflower take his eyes off the approaching disc and turn them on him.

"A really good hydrophobe has to be trained on dehydrated water from birth. I mean, that costs a fortune in magic alone. But they make great weather magicians. Rain clouds just give up and go away."

"Sometimes I think a man could wander across the disc all his life and not see everything there is to see," said Twoflower. "And now it seems there are lots of other worlds as well. When I think I might die without seeing a hundredth of all there is to see it makes me feel," he paused, then added, "well, humble, I suppose. And very angry, of course."

"We know all about you, Rincewind the magician. You are a man of great cunning and artifice. You laugh in the face of Death. Your affected air of craven cowardice does not fool me."

It fooled Rincewind.

Rincewind: "Doesn't anything every worry you?"
Twoflower: "We're still alive, aren't we?"

...directly under the stricken keel was the Gorunna Trench -- a chasm in the Disc's surface that was so black, so deep and so reputedly evil that even the krakens went there fearfully, and in pairs. In less reputedly evil chasms the fish went about with natural lights on their heads and on the whole managed quite well. In Gorunna they left them unlit and, insofar as it is possible for something without legs to creep, they crept; they tended to bump into things, too.

Some time later the islanders on a little rimward atoll were amazed to find, washed into their little local lagoon, the wave-rocked corpse of a hideous sea monster, all beaks, eyes, and tentacles. They were further astonished at its size, since it was rather larger than their village. But their surprise was tiny compared to the huge, stricken expression on the face of the dead monster, which appeared to have been trampled to death.

-- Nobody messes with the Luggage

Rincewind couldn't help noticing that the hand holding the wand was shaking; this was because a piece of sudden death, wobbling uncertainly a mere five feet from your nose, is very hard to miss.

It dawned on [Rincewind] -- very slowly, because it was a completely new sensation -- that someone in the world was frightened of him. The complete reverse was so often the case that he had come to think of it as a kind of natural law.

Rincewind: "What is your name?"
Marchesa: "My name is immaterial."
Rincewind: "That's a pretty name."

Twoflower: "I hope you're not proposing to enslave us."
Marchesa: "Certainly not! Whatever could have given you that idea? Your lives in Krull will be rich, full, and comfortable--"
Rincewind: "Oh, good."
Marchesa: "--just not very long."

"Gosh," said Twoflower ineffectually, after a pause during which he had tried unsuccessfully to find a better word.

"The puree of sea cucumbers is very good too," said the face, conversationally. "Those little green bits are baby starfish."

"Thank you for telling me," said Rincewind weakly.

"Actually, they're rather good," said Twoflower, his mouth full. "I thought you liked seafood?"

"Yes, I thought I did," said Rincewind.

Rincewind: "Are these biscuits made of something really nauseating, do you suppose?"
Garhartra: "They're made of pressed seaweed."
Rincewind: "Yes, I thought it would be something like seaweed. They certainly taste like seaweed would taste if anyone was masochistic enough to eat seaweed."

"What he means is, are you about to start being generally unpleasant again? Is this just a break for lunch?"

Rincewind: "Sacrificed? You're going to kill us?"
Garhartra: "Kill? Yes, of course. Certainly! It would hardly be a sacrifice if we didn't, would it? But don't worry -- it'll be comparatively painless."
Rincewind: "Comparatively? Compared to what?"

Twoflower: "But what do you want to sacrifice us for? You hardly know us!"
Garhartra: "That's rather the point, isn't it? It's not very good manners to sacrifice a friend."

Rincewind: "Have you tried the door?"
Twoflower: "Yes. And it isn't any less locked than it was the last time you asked. There's the window, though."
Rincewind: "A great way of escape. You said it looks out over the Edge. Just step out, eh, and plunge through space and maybe freeze solid or hit some other world at incredible speeds or plunge wildly into the blazing heart of a sun."
Twoflower: "Worth a try. Want a seaweed biscuit?"

"It's happened at last," he moaned. "I'm going out of my mind."

Good idea, said the voice. It's getting pretty crowded in here.

"Are you a goddess then?" said Twoflower excitedly. "I’ve always wanted to meet one."

Rincewind shivered. He was not, of course, an atheist; on the Disc the gods dealt severely with atheists. On the few occasions when he had some spare change he had always made a point of dropping a few coppers into a temple coffer somewhere, on the principle that a man needed all the friends he could get. But usually he didn't bother the Gods, and he hoped the Gods wouldn't bother him. Life was quite complicated enough.

There were no temples at all to the Lady, although she was arguably the most powerful goddess in the entire history of Creation. A few of the more daring members of the Gamblers' Guild had once experimented with a form of worship, in the deepest cellars of Guild headquarters, and had all died of penury, murder or just Death within the week. She was the Goddess Who Must Not Be Named; those who sought her never found her, yet she was known to come to the aid of those in greatest need. And, then again, sometimes she didn't. She was like that.

[The Lady] didn't like the clicking of rosaries, but was attracted to the sound of dice. No man knew what She looked like, although there were many times when a man who was gambling his life on the turn of the cards would pick up the hand he had been dealt and stare Her full in the face.

"The Krullians intend to launch a bronze vessel over the edge of the Disc. Their prime purpose is to learn the sex of A'tuin the World Turtle."

"Seems rather pointless," said Rincewind.

"No. Consider. One day Great A'tuin may encounter another member of the species chelys galactica, somewhere in the vast night in which we move. Will they fight? Will they mate? A little imagination will show you that the sex of Great A'tuin could be very important to us."

Death shrugged, a particularly expressive gesture for someone whose visible shape was that of a skeleton.

Whoever would be wearing those suits, Rincewind decided, was expecting to boldly go where no man -- other than the occasional luckless sailor, who didn't really count -- had boldly gone before...

Twoflower: "Why must you always panic?"
Rincewind: "Because the whole of my future life just flashed in front of my eyes, and it didn't take very long..."

"You know, as soon as I saw the suits I just knew I'd end up wearing one. Don't ask me how I knew -- I suppose it was because it was just about the worst possible thing that was likely to happen."

"Well?" he said, filling a mere four letters with a full lexicon of anger and menace.

The Arch-astronomer frowned. "What else have you got to say, man?"

The Launchcontroller swallowed. All this was very unfair on him, he was a practical magician rather than a diplomat, and that was why some wiser brains had seen to it that he would be the one to pass on the news.

One of his arms shot out and back fingers spread dramatically in the traditional spell-casting position, and any passing lip-reader who was also familiar with the standard texts on magic would have recognized the opening words of Vestcake's Floating Curse, and would then have prudently run away.

The Luggage had an elemental nature, absolutely no brain, a homicidal attitude towards anything that threatened its master, and [Rincewind] wasn't quite sure that its inside occupied the same space-time framework as its outside.

Arrows whistled around them as they came out on to the narrow catwalk that led along the spine of the Potent Voyager. Twoflower led the way, jogging along with what Rincewind considered to be too much suppressed excitement.

For about the first time in [Rincewind's] life he wasn't frightened. Pity the experience didn't look like lasting for long.

"Death couldn't come," said the demon wretchedly. "There's a big plague on in Pseudopolis. He had to go and stalk the streets. So he sent me."

"No-one dies of scrofula! I've got rights. I'm a wizard!"

"All right, all right. This was going to be my big chance," said Scrofula, "but look at it this way - if I hit you with this scythe you'll be just as dead as you would be if Death had done it. Who'd know?"

"I'd know!" snapped Rincewind.

"You wouldn't. You'd be dead," said Scrofula logically.

"Why not try to see things from my point of view? This means a lot to me, and you've got to admit that your life isn't all that wonderful. Reincarnation can only be an improvement."