The Colour of Magic Page 6

  “Who’s that?” said Zlorf.

  “I know him,” said Ymor. “His name’s Rerpf. He runs the Groaning Platter tavern down by Brass Bridge. Stren—remove him.”

  Rerpf held up a beringed hand. Stren Withel hesitated halfway to the door as several very large trolls ducked under the doorway and stood on either side of the fat man, blinking in the light. Muscles the size of melons bulged in forearms like floursacks. Each troll held a double-headed ax. Between thumb and forefinger.

  Broadman erupted from cover, his face suffused with rage.

  “Out!” he screamed. “Get those trolls out of here!”

  No one moved. The room was suddenly quiet. Broadman looked around quickly. It began to dawn on him just what he had said, and to whom. A whimper escaped from his lips, glad to be free.

  He reached the doorway to his cellars just as one of the trolls, with a lazy flick of one ham-sized hand, sent his ax whirling across the room. The slam of the door and its subsequent splitting as the ax hit it merged into one sound.

  “Bloody hell!” exclaimed Zlorf Flannelfoot.

  “What do you want?” said Ymor.

  “I am here on behalf of the Guild of Merchants and Traders,” said Rerpf evenly. “To protect our interests, you might say. Meaning the little man.”

  Ymor wrinkled his brows.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I thought I heard you say the Guild of Merchants?”

  “And traders,” agreed Rerpf. Behind him now, in addition to more trolls, were several humans that Ymor vaguely recognized. He had seen them, maybe, behind counters and bars. Shadowy figures, usually—easily ignored, easily forgotten. At the back of his mind a bad feeling began to grow. He thought about how it might be to be, say, a fox confronted with an angry sheep. A sheep, moreover, that could afford to employ wolves.

  “How long has this—Guild—been in existence, may I ask?” he said.

  “Since this afternoon,” said Rerpf. “I’m vice-guildmaster in charge of tourism, you know.”

  “What is this tourism of which you speak?”

  “Uh—we are not quite sure…” said Rerpf. An old bearded man poked his head over the guildmaster’s shoulder and cackled, “Speaking on behalf of the winesellers of Morpork, Tourism means Business. See?”

  “Well?” said Ymor coldly.

  “Well,” said Rerpf, “we’re protecting our interests, like I said.”

  “Thieves OUT, Thieves OUT!” cackled his elderly companion.” Several others took up the chant. Zlorf grinned. “And assassins,” chanted the old man. Zlorf growled.

  “Stands to reason,” said Rerpf. “People robbing and murdering all over place, what sort of impression are visitors going to take away? You come all the way to see our fine city with its many points of historical and civic interest, also many quaint customs, and you wake 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? Let’s face it, you’ve got to move with the times.”

  Zlorf and Ymor met each other’s gaze.

  “We have, have we?” said Ymor.

  “Then let us move, brother,” agreed Zlorf. In one movement he brought his blowgun to his mouth and sent a dart hissing toward the nearest troll. It spun around, hurling its ax, which whirred over the assassin’s head and buried itself in a luckless thief behind him.

  Rerpf ducked, allowing a troll behind him to raise its huge iron crossbow and fire a spear length quarrel into the nearest assassin. That was the start…

  It has been remarked before that those who are sensitive to radiations in the far octarine—the eighth color, the pigment of the Imagination—can see things that others cannot.

  Thus it was that Rincewind, hurrying through the crowded, flare-lit evening bazaars of Morpork with the Luggage trundling behind him, jostled a tall dark figure, turned to deliver a few suitable curses, and beheld Death.

  It had to be Death. No one else went around with empty eye sockets and, of course, the scythe over one shoulder was another clue. As Rincewind stared in horror a courting couple, laughing at some private joke, walked straight through the apparition without appearing to notice it.

  Death, insofar as it was possible in a face with no movable features, looked surprised.

  RINCEWIND? Death said, in tones as deep and heavy as the slamming of leaden doors, far underground.

  “Um,” said Rincewind, trying to back away from that eyeless stare.

  BUT WHY ARE YOU HERE? (Boom, boom went crypt lids, in the worm haunted fastnesses under old mountains…)

  “Um, why not?” said Rincewind. “Anyway, I’m sure you’ve got lots to do, so if you’ll just—”

  I WAS SURPRISED THAT YOU JOSTLED ME, RINCEWIND, FOR I HAVE AN APPOINTMENT WITH THEE THIS VERY NIGHT.

  “Oh no, not—”

  OF COURSE, WHAT’S SO BLOODY VEXING ABOUT THE WHOLE BUSINESS IS THAT I WAS EXPECTING TO MEET THEE IN PSEPHOPOLOLIS.

  “But that’s five hundred miles away!”

  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—?

  Rincewind backed away, hands spread protectively in front of him. The dried fish salesman on a nearby stall watched this madman with interest.

  “Not a chance!”

  I COULD LEND YOU A VERY FAST HORSE.

  “No!”

  IT WON’T HURT A BIT.

  “No!” Rincewind turned and ran. Death watched him go, and shrugged bitterly.

  SOD YOU, THEN, Death said. He turned, and noticed the fish salesman. With a snarl Death reached out a bony finger and stopped the man’s heart, but he didn’t take much pride in it.

  Then Death remembered what was due to happen later that night. It would not be true to say that Death smiled, because in any case His features were perforce frozen in a calcareous grin. But He hummed a little tune, cheery as a plague pit, and—pausing only to extract the life from a passing mayfly, and one ninth of the lives from a cat cowering under the fish stall (all cats can see into the octarine)—Death turned on His heel and set off toward the Broken Drum.

  Short Street, Morpork, is in fact one of the longest in the city. Filigree Street crosses its turnwise end in the manner of the crosspiece of a T, and the Broken Drum is so placed that it looks down the full length of the street.

  At the furthermost end of Short Street a dark oblong rose on hundreds of tiny legs, and started to run. At first it moved at no more than a lumbering trot, but by the time it was halfway up the street it was moving arrow-fast…

  A darker shadow inched its way along one of the walls of the Drum, a few yards from the two trolls who were guarding the door. Rincewind was sweating. If they heard the faint clinking of the specially prepared bags at his belt…

  One of the trolls tapped his colleague on the shoulder, producing a noise like two pebbles being knocked together. He pointed down the starlit street…

  Rincewind darted from his hiding place, turned, and hurled his burden through the Drum’s nearest window.

  Withel saw it arrive. The bag arced across the room, turning slowly in the air, and burst on the edge of a table. A moment later gold coins were rolling across the floor, spinning, glittering.

  The room was suddenly silent, save for the tiny noises of gold and the whimpers of the wounded. With a curse Withel dispatched the assassin he had been fighting. “It’s a trick!” he screamed. “No one move!”

  Three score men and a dozen trolls froze in mid-grope.

  Then, for the third time, the door burst open. Two trolls hurried through it, slammed it behind them, dropped the heavy bar across it and fled down the stairs.

  Outside there was a sudden crescendo of running feet. And, for the last time, the door opened. In fact it exploded, the great wooden bar being hurled far across the room and the frame itself giving way.

  Door and frame landed on a table, which flew into splinters. It was then that the frozen fighters noticed that there
was something else in the pile of wood. It was a box, shaking itself madly to free itself of the smashed timber around it.

  Rincewind appeared in the ruined doorway, hurling another of his gold grenades. It smashed into a wall, showering coins.

  Down in the cellar Broadman looked up, muttered to himself, and carried on with his work. His entire spindlewinter’s supply of candles had already been strewn on the floor, mixed with his store of kindling wood. Now he was attacking a barrel of lamp oil.

  “Inn-sewer-ants,” he muttered. Oil gushed out and swirled around his feet.

  Withel stormed across the floor, his face a mask of rage. Rincewind took careful aim and caught the thief full in the chest with a bag of gold.

  But now Ymor was shouting, and pointing an accusing finger. A raven swooped down from its perch in the rafters and dived at the wizard, talons open and gleaming.

  It didn’t make it. At about the halfway point the Luggage leapt from its bed of splinters, gaped briefly in midair, and snapped shut.

  It landed lightly. Rincewind saw its lid open again, slightly. Just far enough for a tongue, large as a palm leaf, red as mahogany, to lick up a few errant feathers.

  At the same moment the giant candlewheel fell from the ceiling, plunging the room into gloom. Rincewind, coiling himself like a spring, gave a standing jump and grasped a beam, swinging himself up into the relative safety of the roof with a strength that amazed him.

  “Exciting, isn’t it!” said a voice by his ear.

  Down below, thieves, assassins, trolls and merchants all realized at about the same moment that they were in a room made treacherous of foothold by gold coins and containing something, among the suddenly menacing shapes in the semidarkness, that was absolutely horrible. As one they made for the door, but had two dozen different recollections of its exact position.

  High above the chaos Rincewind stared at Twoflower.

  “Did you cut the lights down?” he hissed.

  “Yes.”

  “How come you’re up here?”

  “I thought I’d better not get in everyone’s way.”

  Rincewind considered this. There didn’t seem to be much he could say. Twoflower added: “A real brawl! Better than anything I’d imagined! Do you think I ought to thank them? Or did you arrange it?”

  Rincewind looked at him blankly. “I think we ought to be getting down now,” he said hollowly. “Everyone’s gone.”

  He dragged Twoflower across the littered floor and up the steps. They burst out into the tail end of the night. There were still a few stars but the moon was down, and there was a faint gray glow to rimward. Most important, the street was empty.

  Rincewind sniffed.

  “Can you smell oil?” he said.

  Then Withel stepped out of the shadows and tripped him up.

  At the top of the cellar steps Broadman knelt down and fumbled in his tinderbox. It turned out to be damp.

  “I’ll kill that bloody cat,” he muttered, and groped for the spare box that was normally on the ledge by the door. It was missing. Broadman said a bad word.

  A lighted taper appeared in midair, right beside him.

  HERE, TAKE THIS.

  “Thanks,” said Broadman.

  DON’T MENTION IT.

  Broadman went to throw the taper down the steps. His hand paused in midair. He looked at the taper, his brow furrowing. Then he turned around and held the taper up to illuminate the scene. It didn’t shed much light, but it did give the darkness a shape…

  “Oh, no—” he breathed.

  BUT YES, said Death.

  Rincewind rolled.

  For a moment he thought Withel was going to spit him where he lay. But it was worse than that. He was waiting for him to get up.

  “I see you have a sword, wizard,” he said quietly. “I suggest you rise, and we shall see how well you use it.”

  Rincewind stood up as slowly as he dared, and drew from his belt the short sword he had taken from the guard a few hours and a hundred years ago. It was a short blunt affair compared to Withel’s hair-thin rapier.

  “But I don’t know how to use a sword,” he wailed.

  “Good.”

  “You know that wizards can’t be killed by edged weapons?” said Rincewind desperately.

  Withel smiled coldly. “So I have heard,” he said. “I look forward to putting it to the test.” He lunged.

  Rincewind caught the thrust by sheer luck, jerked his hand away in shock, deflected the second stroke by coincidence, and took the third one through his robe at heart height.

  There was a clink.

  Withel’s snarl of triumph died in his throat. He drew the sword out and prodded again at the wizard, who was rigid with terror and guilt. There was another clink, and gold coins began to drop out of the hem of the wizard’s robe.

  “So you bleed gold, do you?” hissed Withel. “But have you got gold concealed in that raggedy beard, you little—”

  As his sword went back for his final sweep the sullen glow that had been growing in the doorway of the Broken Drum flickered, dimmed, and erupted into a roaring fireball that sent the walls billowing outward and carried the roof a hundred feet into the air before bursting through it, in a gout of red-hot tiles.

  Withel stared at the boiling flames, unnerved. And Rincewind leapt. He ducked under the thief’s sword arm and brought his own blade around in an arc so incompetently misjudged that it hit the man flat first and jolted out of the wizard’s hand. Sparks and droplets of flaming oil rained down as Withel reached out with both gauntleted hands and grabbed Rincewind’s neck, forcing him down.

  “You did this!” he screamed. “You and your box of trickery!”

  His thumb found Rincewind’s windpipe. This is it, the wizard thought. Wherever I’m going, it can’t be worse than here…

  “Excuse me,” said Twoflower.

  Rincewind felt the grip lessen. And now Withel was slowly getting up, a look of absolute hatred on his face.

  A glowing ember landed on the wizard. He brushed it off hurriedly, and scrambled to his feet.

  Twoflower was behind Withel, holding the man’s own needle-sharp sword with the point resting in the small of the thief’s back. Rincewind’s eyes narrowed. He reached into his robe, then withdrew his hand bunched into a fist.

  “Don’t move,” he said.

  “Am I doing this right?” asked Twoflower anxiously.

  “He says he’ll skewer your liver if you move,” Rincewind translated freely.

  “I doubt it,” said Withel.

  “Bet?”

  “No.”

  As Withel tensed himself to turn on the tourist Rincewind lashed out and caught the thief on the jaw. Withel stared at him in amazement for a moment, and then quietly toppled into the mud.

  The wizard uncurled his stinging fist and the roll of gold coins slipped between his throbbing fingers. He looked down at the recumbent thief.

  “Good grief,” he gasped.

  He looked up and yelled as another ember landed on his neck. Flames were racing along the rooftops on either side of the street. All around him people were hurling possessions from windows and dragging horses from smoking stables. Another explosion in the white-hot volcano that was the Drum sent a whole marble mantelpiece scything overhead.

  “The Widdershin Gate’s the nearest!” Rincewind shouted above the crackle of collapsing rafters. “Come on!”

  He grabbed Twoflower’s reluctant arm and dragged him down the street.

  “My Luggage—”

  “Blast your luggage! Stay here much longer and you’ll go where you don’t need luggage! Come on!” screamed Rincewind.

  They jogged on through the crowd of frightened people leaving the area, while the wizard took great mouthfuls of cool dawn air. Something was puzzling him.

  “I’m sure all the candles went out,” he said. “So how did the Drum catch fire?”

  “I don’t know,” moaned Twoflower. “It’s terrible, Rincewind. We were getting alon
g so well, too.”

  Rincewind stopped in astonishment, so that another refugee cannoned into him and spun away with an oath.

  “Getting on?”

  “Yes, a great bunch of fellows, I thought—language was a bit of a problem, but they were so keen for me to join their party, they just wouldn’t take no for an answer—really friendly people, I thought…”

  Rincewind started to correct him, then realized he didn’t know how to begin.

  “It’ll be a blow for old Broadman,” Twoflower continued. “Still, he was wise. I’ve still got the rhinu he paid as his first premium.”

  Rincewind didn’t know the meaning of the word premium, but his mind was working fast.

  “You inn-sewered the Drum?” he said. “You bet Broadman it wouldn’t catch fire?”

  “Oh yes. Standard valuation. Two hundred rhinu. Why do you ask?”

  Rincewind turned and stared at the flames racing toward them, and wondered how much of Ankh-Morpork could be bought for two hundred rhinu. Quite a large piece, he decided. Only not now, not the way those flames were moving…

  He glanced down at the tourist.

  “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,” he repeated. Another hurrying figure bumped into him, narrowly missing him with the blade over its shoulder. Rincewind’s tortured temper exploded.

  “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)!”

  JUST DOING MY JOB, said the figure, stalking away.

  Every word fell as heavily as slabs of marble; moreover, Rincewind was certain that he was the only one who heard them.

  He grabbed Twoflower again.

  “Let’s get out of here!” he suggested.

  One interesting side effect of the fire in Ankh-Morpork concerns the inn-sewer-ants policy, which left the city through the ravaged roof of the Broken Drum, was wafted high into the Discworld’s atmosphere on the ensuing thermal, and came to earth several days and a few thousand miles away on an uloruaha bush in the beTrobi islands. The simple, laughing islanders subsequently worshipped it as a god, much to the amusement of their more sophisticated neighbors. Strangely enough the rainfall and harvests in the next few years were almost supernaturally abundant, and this led to a research team being dispatched to the islands by the Minor Religions faculty of Unseen University. Their verdict was that it only went to show.