Discworld 01 - The Colour of Magic Read online

  THE COLOR OF MAGIC

  A Discworld® Novel

  Terry Pratchett

  Contents

  Foreword

  The Color of Magic Prologue

  The Sending of Eight Prologue

  1. THE COLOR OF MAGIC

  2. THE SENDING OF EIGHT

  3. THE LURE OF THE WYRM

  4. CLOSE OF THE EDGE

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  PRAISE

  OTHER BOOKS BY TERRY PRATCHETT

  COPYRIGHT

  ABOUT THE PUBLISHER

  Foreword

  IF I HAD A PENNY for every time someone asked me where I got the idea of the Discworld, I’d have—hang on a moment—£4.67.

  Anyway, the answer is that it was lying around and didn’t look as though it belonged to anyone.

  The world rides through space on the back of a turtle. It’s one of the great ancient myths, found wherever men and turtles were gathered together; the four elephants were an Indo-European sophistication. The idea has been lying in the lumber rooms of legend for centuries. All I had to do was grab it and run away before the alarms went off.

  Since this is a reprint by popular demand—gosh—of the first book in a series that will, eventually, contain at least ten, there’s a very good chance that you already know what happens after this book, which is more than I did when I wrote it.

  The Discworld is not a coherent fantasy world. Its geography is fuzzy, its chronology unreliable. A small traveling circle of firelight in a chilly infinity has turned out to be the home of defiant jokes and last chances.

  There are no maps. You can’t map a sense of humor. Anyway, what is a fantasy map but a space beyond which There Be Dragons? On the Discworld we know that There Be Dragons Everywhere. They might not all have scales and forked tongues, but they Be Here all right, grinning and jostling and trying to sell you souvenirs.

  Enjoy.

  Terry Pratchett

  October 1989

  The Color of Magic

  Prologue

  IN A DISTANT AND SECONDHAND SET OF DIMENSIONS, in an astral plane that was never meant to fly, the curling star-mists waver and part…

  See…

  Great A’Tuin the turtle comes, swimming slowly through the interstellar gulf, hydrogen frost on his ponderous limbs, his huge and ancient shell pocked with meteor craters. Through sea-sized eyes that are crusted with rheum and asteroid dust He stares fixedly at the Destination.

  In a brain bigger than a city, with geological slowness, He thinks only of the Weight.

  Most of the weight is of course accounted for by Berilia, Tubul, Great T’Phon and Jerakeen, the four giant elephants upon whose broad and star-tanned shoulders the Disc of the World rests, garlanded by the long waterfall at its vast circumference and domed by the baby-blue vault of Heaven.

  Astropsychology has been, as yet, unable to establish what they think about.

  The Great Turtle was a mere hypothesis until the day the small and secretive kingdom of Krull, whose rim-most mountains project out over the Rimfall, built a gantry and pulley arrangement at the tip of the most precipitous crag and lowered several observers over the Edge in a quartz-windowed brass vessel to peer through the mist veils.

  The early astrozoologists, hauled back from their long dangle by enormous teams of slaves, were able to bring back much information about the shape and nature of A’Tuin and the elephants but this did not resolve fundamental questions about the nature and purpose of the universe.

  For example, what was A’Tuin’s actual sex? This vital question, said the astrozoologists with mounting authority, would not be answered until a larger and more powerful gantry was constructed for a deep-space vessel. In the meantime they could only speculate about the revealed cosmos.

  There was, for example, the theory that A’Tuin had come from nowhere and would continue at a uniform crawl, or steady gait, into nowhere, for all time. This theory was popular among academics.

  An alternative, favored by those of a religious persuasion, was that A’Tuin was crawling from the Birthplace to the Time of Mating, as were all the stars in the sky which were, obviously, also carried by giant turtles. 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.

  Thus it was that a young cosmochelonian of the Steady Gait faction, testing a new telescope with which he hoped to make measurements of the precise albedo of Great A’Tuin’s right eye, was on this eventful evening the first outsider to see the smoke rise hubward from the burning of the oldest city in the world.

  Later that night he became so engrossed in his studies he completely forgot about it. Nevertheless, he was the first.

  There were others…

  The Sending of Eight

  PROLOGUE

  THE DISCWORLD OFFERS SIGHTS far more impressive than those found in universes built by Creators with less imagination but more mechanical aptitude.

  Although the Disc’s sun is but an orbiting moonlet, its prominences hardly bigger than croquet hoops, this slight drawback must be set against the tremendous sight of Great A’Tuin the Turtle, upon Whose ancient and meteor riddled shell the Disc ultimately rests. Sometimes, in His slow journey across the shores of Infinity, He moves His country-sized head to snap at a passing comet.

  But perhaps the most impressive sight of all—if only because most brains, when faced with the sheer galactic enormity of A’Tuin, refuse to believe it—is the endless Rimfall, where the seas of the Disc boil ceaselessly over the Edge into space. Or perhaps it is the Rimbow, the eight-colored, world-girdling rainbow that hovers in the mist-laden air over the Fall. The eighth color is octarine, caused by the scatter effect of strong sunlight on an intense magical field.

  Or perhaps, again, the most magnificent sight is the Hub. There, a spire of green ice ten miles high rises through the clouds and supports at its peak the realm of Dunmanifestin, the abode of the Disc gods. The Disc gods themselves, despite the splendor of the world below them, are seldom satisfied. It is embarrassing to know that one is a god of a world that only exists because every improbability curve must have its far end; especially when one can peer into other dimensions at worlds whose Creators had more mechanical aptitude than imagination. No wonder, then, that the Disc gods spend more time in bickering than in omnicognizance.

  On this particular day Blind Io, by dint of constant vigilance the chief of the gods, sat with his chin on his hand and looked at the gaming board on the red marble table in front of him. Blind Io had got his name because, where his eye sockets should have been, there were nothing but two areas of blank skin. His eyes, of which he had an impressively large number, led a semi-independent life of their own. Several were currently hovering above the table.

  The gaming board was a carefully carved map of the Discworld, overprinted with squares. A number of beautifully modeled playing pieces were now occupying some of the squares. A human onlooker would, for example, have recognized in two of them the likenesses of Bravd and the Weasel. Others represented yet more heroes and champions, of which the Disc had a more than adequate supply.

  Still in the game were Io, Offler the Crocodile God, Zephyrus the god of slight breezes, Fate, and the Lady. There was an air of concentration around the board now that the lesser players had been removed from the Game. Chance had been an early casualty, running her hero into a full house of armed gnolls (the result of a lucky throw by Offler) and shortly afterward Night has cashed his chips, pleading an appointment with Destiny. Several minor deities had drifted up and were kibitzing over the shoulders of the players.


  Side bets were made that the Lady would be the next to leave the board. Her last champion of any standing was now a pinch of potash in the ruins of still-smoking Ankh-Morpork, and there were hardly any pieces that she could promote to first rank.

  Blind Io took up the dice box, which was a skull whose various orifices had been stoppered with rubies, and with several of his eyes on the Lady he rolled three fives.

  She smiled. This was the nature of the Lady’s eyes: they were bright green, lacking iris or pupil, and they glowed from within.

  The room was silent as she scrabbled in her box of pieces and, from the very bottom, produced a couple that she set down on the board with two decisive clicks. The rest of the players, as one god, craned forward to peer at them.

  “A wenegade wiffard and fome fort of clerk,” said Offler the Crocodile God, hindered as usual by his tusks. “Well, weally!” With one claw he pushed a pile of bone-white tokens into the center of the table.

  The Lady nodded slightly. She picked up the dice cup and held it as steady as a rock, yet all the gods could hear the three cubes rattling about inside. And then she sent them bouncing across the table.

  A six. A three. A five.

  Something was happening to the five, however. Battered by the chance collision of several billion molecules, the die flipped onto a point, spun gently and came down a seven.

  Blind Io picked up the cube and counted the sides.

  “Come on,” he said wearily. “Play fair.”

  1

  THE COLOR OF MAGIC

  Fire roared through the bifurcated city of Ankh-Morpork. Where it licked the Wizards’ Quarter it burned blue and green and was even laced with strange sparks of the eighth color, octarine; where its outriders found their way into the vats and oil stores all along Merchant Street it progressed in a series of blazing fountains and explosions; in the streets of the perfume blenders it burned with a sweetness; where it touched bundles of rare and dry herbs in the storerooms of the drugmasters it made men go mad and talk to God.

  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. But already the ships in the Morpork docks—laden with grain, cotton and timber, and coated with tar—were blazing merrily and, their moorings burnt to ashes, were breasting the river Ankh on the ebb tide, igniting riverside palaces and bowers as they drifted like drowning fireflies toward the sea. In any case, sparks were riding the breeze and touching down far across the river in hidden gardens and remote rickyards.

  The smoke from the merry burning rose miles high, in a wind-sculpted black column that could be seen across the whole of the Discworld.

  It was certainly impressive from the cool, dark hilltop a few leagues away, where two figures were watching with considerable interest.

  The taller of the pair was chewing on a chicken leg and leaning on a sword that was only marginally shorter than the average man. If it wasn’t for the air of wary intelligence about him it might have been supposed that he was a barbarian from the Hubland wastes.

  His partner was much shorter and wrapped from head to toe in a brown cloak. Later, when he has occasion to move, it will be seen that he moves lightly, catlike.

  The two had barely exchanged a word in the last twenty minutes except for a short and inconclusive argument as to whether a particularly powerful explosion had been the oil bond store or the workshop of Kerible the Enchanter. Money hinged on the fact.

  Now the big man finished gnawing at the bone and tossed it into the grass, smiling ruefully.

  “There go all those little alleyways,” he said. “I liked them.”

  “All the treasure houses,” said the small man. He added thoughtfully, “Do gems burn? I wonder. ’Tis said they’re kin to coal.”

  “All the gold, melting and running down the gutters,” said the big one, ignoring him. “And all the wine, boiling in the barrels.”

  “There were rats,” said his brown companion.

  “Rats, I’ll grant you.”

  “It was no place to be in high summer.”

  “That, too. One can’t help feeling, though, a—well, a momentary—”

  He trailed off, then brightened. “We owed old Fredor at the Crimson Leech eight silver pieces,” he added. The little man nodded.

  They were silent for a while as a whole new series of explosions carved a red line across a hitherto dark section of the greatest city in the world. Then the big man stirred.

  “Weasel?”

  “Yes?”

  “I wonder who started it.”

  The small swordsman known as the Weasel said nothing. He was watching the road in the ruddy light. Few had come that way since the Deosil Gate had been one of the first to collapse in a shower of white-hot embers.

  But two were coming up it now. The Weasel’s eyes, always at their sharpest in gloom and half-light, made out the shapes of two mounted men and some sort of low beast behind them. Doubtless a rich merchant escaping with as much treasure as he could lay frantic hands on. The Weasel said as much to his companion, who sighed.

  “The status of footpad ill suits us,” said the barbarian, “but, as you say, times are hard and there are no soft beds tonight.”

  He shifted his grip on his sword and, as the leading rider drew near, stepped out onto the road with a hand held up and his face set in a grin nicely calculated to reassure yet threaten.

  “Your pardon, sir—” he began.

  The rider reined in his horse and drew back his hood. The big man looked into a face blotched with superficial burns and punctuated by tufts of singed beard. Even the eyebrows had gone.

  “Bugger off,” said the face. “You’re Bravd the Hublander,* aren’t you?”

  Bravd became aware that he had fumbled the initiative.

  “Just go away, will you?” said the rider. “I just haven’t got time for you, do you understand?”

  He looked around and added: “That goes for your shadow-loving fleabag partner, too, wherever he’s hiding.”

  The Weasel stepped up to the horse and peered at the disheveled figure.

  “Why, it’s Rincewind the wizard, isn’t it?” he said in tones of delight, meanwhile filing the wizard’s description of him in his memory for leisurely vengeance. “I thought I recognized the voice.”

  Bravd spat and sheathed his sword. It was seldom worth tangling with wizards, they so rarely had any treasure worth speaking of.

  “He talks pretty big for a gutter wizard,” he muttered.

  “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.”

  The Weasel pointed toward the burning city.

  “You’ve been through that?” he asked.

  The wizard rubbed a red-raw hand across his eyes. “I was there when it started. See him? Back there?” 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.

  “Well?” said Weasel.

  “He started it,” said Rincewind simply.

  Bravd and Weasel looked at the figure, now hopping across the road with one foot in a stirrup.

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

  “No,” said Rincewind. “Not precisely. Let’s just say that if complete and utter chaos were lightning, then he’d be the sort to stand on a hilltop in a thunderstorm wearing wet copper armor and shouting ‘All gods are bastards.’ Got any food?”

  “There’s some chicken,” said Weasel. “In exchange for a story.”

  “What’s his name?” said Bravd, who tended to lag behind in conversations.

  “Twoflower.”

  “Twoflower?” said Bravd. “What a funny name.”

&nbs
p; “You,” said Rincewind, dismounting, “do not know the half of it. Chicken, you say?”

  “Deviled,” said Weasel. The wizard groaned.

  “That reminds me,” added the Weasel, snapping his fingers, “there was a really big explosion about, oh, half an hour ago—”

  “That was the oil bond store going up,” said Rincewind, wincing at the memory of the burning rain.

  Weasel turned and grinned expectantly at his companion, who grunted and handed over a coin from his pouch. Then there was a scream from the roadway, cut off abruptly. Rincewind did not look up from his chicken.

  “One of the things he can’t do, he can’t ride a horse,” he said. Then he stiffened as if sandbagged by a sudden recollection, gave a small yelp of terror and dashed into the gloom. When he returned, the being called Twoflower was hanging limply over his shoulder. It was small and skinny, and dressed very oddly in a pair of knee length britches and a shirt in such a violent and vivid conflict of colors that Weasel’s fastidious eye was offended even in the half-light.

  “No bones broken, by the feel of things,” said Rincewind. He was breathing heavily. Bravd winked at the Weasel and went to investigate the shape that they assumed was a pack animal.

  “You’d be wise to forget it,” said the wizard, without looking up from his examination of the unconscious Twoflower. “Believe me. A power protects it.”

  “A spell?” said Weasel, squatting down.

  “No-oo. But magic of a kind, I think. Not the usual sort. I mean, it can turn gold into copper while at the same time it is still gold, it makes men rich by destroying their possessions, it allows the weak to walk fearlessly among thieves, it passes through the strongest doors to leach the most protected treasuries. Even now it has me enslaved—so that I must follow this madman willynilly and protect him from harm. It’s stronger than you, Bravd. It is, I think, more cunning even than you, Weasel.”