The Colour of Magic Page 8

  He stood up and untied his now-biddable horse from a sapling. He wasn’t sure which way the Hub lay, but there seemed to be an old track of sorts leading away between the trees. This Bel-Shamharoth seemed prepared to go out of his way to help stranded travelers. In any case, it was that or the wolves. Twoflower nodded decisively.

  It is interesting to note that, several hours later, a couple of wolves who were following Twoflower’s scent arrived in the glade. Their green eyes fell on the strange eight-legged carving—which may indeed have been a spider, or an octopus, or may yet again have been something altogether more strange—and they immediately decided that they weren’t so hungry, at that.

  About three miles away a failed wizard was hanging by his hands from a high branch in a beech tree.

  This was the end result of five minutes of crowded activity. 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 then been amazed at the speed with which he reached and climbed the nearest tree, without apparently touching it.

  Now there was just the matter of the snake.

  It was large and green, and wound itself along the branch with reptilian patience. Rincewind wondered if it was poisonous, then chided himself for asking such a silly question. Of course it would be poisonous.

  “What are you grinning for?” he asked the figure on the next branch.

  I CAN’T HELP IT, said Death. NOW WOULD YOU BE SO KIND AS TO LET GO? I CAN’T HANG AROUND ALL DAY.

  “I can,” said Rincewind defiantly.

  The wolves clustered around the base of the tree looked up with interest at their next meal talking to himself.

  IT WON’T HURT, said Death. If words had weight, a single sentence from Death would have anchored a ship.

  Rincewind’s arms screamed their agony at him. He scowled at the vulturelike, slightly transparent figure.

  “Won’t hurt?” he said. “Being torn apart by wolves won’t hurt?”

  He noticed another branch crossing his dangerously narrowing one a few feet away. If he could just reach it…

  He swung himself forward, one hand outstretched.

  The branch, already bending, did not break. It simply made a wet little sound and twisted.

  Rincewind found that he was now hanging onto the end of a tongue of bark and fiber, lengthening as it peeled away from the tree. He looked down, and with a sort of fatal satisfaction realized that he would land right on the biggest wolf.

  Now he was moving slowly as the bark peeled back in a longer and longer strip. The snake watched him thoughtfully.

  But the growing length of bark held. Rincewind began to congratulate himself until, looking up, he saw what he had hitherto not noticed. There was the largest hornets’ nest he had ever seen, hanging right in his path.

  He shut his eyes tightly.

  Why the troll? he asked himself. Everything else is just my usual luck, but why the troll? What the hell is going on?

  Click. It may have been a twig snapping, except that the sound appeared to be inside Rincewind’s head. Click, click. And a breeze that failed to set a single leaf atremble.

  The hornets’ nest was ripped from the branch as the strip passed by. It shot past the wizard’s head and he watched it grow smaller as it plummeted toward the circle of upturned muzzles.

  The circle suddenly closed.

  The circle suddenly expanded.

  The concerted yelp of pain as the pack fought to escape the furious cloud echoed among the trees. Rincewind grinned inanely.

  Rincewind’s elbow nudged something. It was the tree trunk. The strip had carried him right to the end of the branch. But there were no other branches. The smooth bark beside him offered no handholds.

  It offered hands, though. Two were even now thrusting through the mossy bark beside him; slim hands, green as young leaves. Then a shapely arm followed, and then the hamadryad leaned right out and grasped the astonished wizard firmly and, with that vegetable strength that can send roots questing into rock, drew him into the tree. The solid bark parted like a mist, closed like a clam.

  Death watched impassively.

  He glanced at the cloud of mayflies that were dancing their joyful zigzags near His skull. He snapped His fingers. The insects fell out of the air. But, somehow, it wasn’t quite the same.

  Blind Io pushed his stack of chips across the table, glowered through such of his eyes that were currently in the room, and strode out. A few demigods tittered. At least Offler had taken the loss of a perfectly good troll with precise, if somewhat reptilian, grace.

  The Lady’s last opponent shifted his seat until he faced her across the board.

  “Lord,” she said, politely.

  “Lady,” he acknowledged. Their eyes met.

  He was a taciturn god. It was said that he had arrived in the Discworld after some terrible and mysterious incident in another Eventuality. It is of course the privilege of gods to control their apparent outward form, even to other gods; the Fate of the Discworld was currently a kindly man in late middle age, graying hair brushed neatly around features that a maiden would confidently proffer a glass of small beer to, should they appear at her back door. It was a face a kindly youth would gladly help over a stile. Except for his eyes, of course.

  No deity can disguise the manner and nature of his eyes. The nature of the two eyes of the Fate of the Discworld was this: that while at a mere glance they were simply dark, a closer look would reveal—too late!—that they were but holes opening onto a blackness so remote, so deep that the watcher would feel himself inexorably drawn into the twin pools of infinite night and their terrible, wheeling stars…

  The Lady coughed politely, and laid twenty-one white chips on the table. Then from her robe she took another chip, silvery and translucent and twice the size of the others. The soul of a true Hero always finds a better rate of exchange, and is valued highly by the gods.

  Fate raised an eyebrow.

  “And no cheating, Lady,” he said.

  “But who could cheat Fate?” she asked. He shrugged.

  “No one. Yet everyone tries.”

  “And yet, again, I believe I felt you giving me a little assistance against the others?”

  “But of course. So that the endgame could be the sweeter, Lady. And now…”

  He reached into his gaming box and brought forth a piece, setting it down on the board with a satisfied air. The watching deities gave a collective sigh. Even the Lady was momentarily taken aback.

  It was certainly ugly. The carving was uncertain, as if the craftsman’s hands were shaking in horror of the thing taking shape under his reluctant fingers. It seemed to be all suckers and tentacles. And mandibles, the Lady observed. And one great eye.

  “I thought such as He died out at the beginnings of Time,” she said.

  “Mayhap our necrotic friend was loath even to go near this one,” laughed Fate. He was enjoying himself.

  “It should never have been spawned.”

  “Nevertheless,” said Fate gnomically. He scooped the dice into their unusual box, and then glanced up at her.

  “Unless,” he added, “you wish to resign…?”

  She shook her head.

  “Play,” she said.

  “You can match my stake?”

  “Play.”

  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 room was high, wide and lit with a soft yellow
light which came from no particular source that Rincewind could identify. Through gnarled and knotted archways he could see other rooms, and what looked like a very large winding staircase. And it had looked a perfectly normal tree from the outside, too.

  The girl was green—flesh green. Rincewind could be absolutely certain about that, because all she was wearing was a medallion around her neck. Her long hair had a faintly mossy look about it. Her eyes had no pupils and were a luminous green. Rincewind wished he had paid more attention to anthropology lectures at University.

  She had said nothing. Apart from indicating the couch and offering him the wine she had done no more than sit watching him, occasionally rubbing a deep scratch on her arm.

  Rincewind hurriedly recalled that a dryad was so linked to her tree that she suffered wounds in sympathy—

  “Sorry about that,” he said quickly. “It was just an accident. I mean, there were these wolves, and—”

  “You had to climb my tree, and I rescued you,” said the dryad smoothly. “How lucky for you. And for your friend, perhaps?”

  “Friend?”

  “The little man with the magic box,” said the dryad.

  “Oh, sure, him,” said Rincewind vaguely. “Yeah. I hope he’s okay.”

  “He needs your help.”

  “He usually does. Did he make it to a tree, too?”

  “He made it to the Temple of Bel-Shamharoth.”

  Rincewind choked on his wine. His ears tried to crawl into his head in terror of the syllables they had just heard. The Soul Eater! Before he could stop them the memories came galloping back. Once, while a student of practical magic at Unseen University, and for a bet, he’d slipped into the little room off the main library—the room with walls covered in protective lead pentagrams, the room no one was allowed to occupy for more than four minutes and thirty-two seconds, which was a figure arrived at after two hundred years of cautious experimentation…

  He had gingerly opened the Book, which was chained to the octiron pedestal in the middle of the rune-strewn floor not lest someone steal it, but lest it escape; for it was the Octavo, so full of magic that it had its own vague sentience. One spell had indeed leapt from the crackling pages and lodged itself in the dark recesses of his brain. And, apart from knowing that it was one of the Eight Great Spells, no one would know which one until he said it. Even Rincewind did not. But he could feel it sometimes, sidling out of sight behind his Ego, biding its time…

  On the front of the Octavo had been a representation of Bel-Shamharoth. He was not Evil, for even Evil has a certain vitality—Bel-Shamharoth was the flip side of the coin of which Good and Evil are but one side.

  “The Soul Eater. His number lyeth between seven and nine; it is twice four,” Rincewind quoted, his mind frozen with fear. “Oh no. Where’s the Temple?”

  “Hubward, toward the center of the forest,” said the dryad. “It is very old.”

  “But who would be so stupid as to worship Bel—him? I mean, devils yes, but he’s the Soul Eater—”

  “There were—certain advantages. And the race that used to live in these parts had strange notions.”

  “What happened to them, then?”

  “I did say they used to live in these parts.” The dryad stood up and stretched out her hand. “Come. I am Druellae. Come with me and watch your friend’s fate. It should be interesting.”

  “I’m not sure that—” began Rincewind.

  The dryad turned her green eyes on him.

  “Do you believe you have a choice?” she asked.

  A staircase broad as a major highway wound up through the tree, with vast rooms leading off at every landing. The sourceless yellow light was everywhere. There was also a sound like—Rincewind concentrated, trying to identify it—like far off thunder, or a distant waterfall.

  “It’s the tree,” said the dryad shortly.

  “What’s it doing?” said Rincewind.

  “Living.”

  “I wondered about that. I mean, are we really in a tree? Have I been reduced in size? From outside it looked narrow enough for me to put my arms around.”

  “It is.”

  “Um, but here I am inside it?”

  “You are.”

  “Um,” said Rincewind.

  Druellae laughed.

  “I can see into your mind, false wizard! Am I not a dryad? Do you not know that what you belittle by the name tree is but the mere four-dimensional analogue of a whole multidimensional universe which—no, I can see you do not. I should have realized that you weren’t a real wizard when I saw you didn’t have a staff.”

  “Lost it in a fire,” lied Rincewind automatically.

  “No hat with magic sigils embroidered on it.”

  “It blew off.”

  “No familiar.”

  “It died. Look, thanks for rescuing me, but if you don’t mind I think I ought to be going. If you could show me the way out—”

  Something in her expression made him turn around. There were three he-dryads behind him. They were as naked as the woman, and unarmed. That last fact was irrelevant, however. They didn’t look as though they would need weapons to fight Rincewind. They looked as though they could shoulder their way through solid rock and beat up a regiment of trolls into the bargain. The three handsome giants looked down at him with wooden menace. Their skins were the color 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.

  “I’m not rescued, am I?” he said. “I’m captured, right?”

  “Of course.”

  “And you’re not letting me go?” It was a statement.

  Druellae shook her head. “You hurt the Tree. But you are lucky. Your friend is going to meet Bel-Shamharoth. You will only die.”

  From behind two hands gripped his shoulders in much the same way that an old tree root coils relentlessly around a pebble.

  “With a certain amount of ceremony, of course,” the dryad went on. “After the Sender of Eight has finished with your friend.”

  All Rincewind could manage to say was, “You know, I never imagined there were he-dryads. Not even in an oak tree.”

  One of the giants grinned at him.

  Druellae snorted. “Stupid! Where do you think acorns come from?”

  There was a vast empty space like a hall, its roof lost in the golden haze. The endless stair ran right up through it.

  Several hundred dryads were clustered at the other end of the hall. They parted respectfully when Druellae approached, and stared through Rincewind as he was propelled firmly along behind.

  Most of them were females, although there were a few of the giant males among them. They stood like god-shaped statues among the small, intelligent females. Insects, thought Rincewind. The Tree is like a hive.

  But why were there dryads at all? As far as he could recall, the tree people had died out centuries before. They had been out-evolved by humans, like most of the other Twilight Peoples. Only elves and trolls had survived the coming of Man to the Discworld; the elves because they were altogether too clever by half, and the trollen folk because they were at least as good as humans at being nasty, spiteful and greedy. Dryads were supposed to have died out, along with gnomes and pixies.

  The background roar was louder here. Sometimes a pulsing golden glow would race up the translucent walls until it was lost in the haze overhead. Some power in the air made it vibrate.

  “O incompetent wizard,” said Druellae, “see some magic. Not your weasel-faced tame magic, but root-and-branch magic, the old magic. Wild magic. Watch.”

  Fifty or so of the females formed a tight cluster, joined hands and walked backward until they formed the circumference of a large circle. The rest of the dryads began a low chant. Then, at a nod from Druellae, the circle began to spin widdershins.

  As the pace began to quicken and the complicated threads of the chant began to rise Rincewind found
himself watching, fascinated. He had heard about the Old Magic at University, although it was forbidden to wizards. He knew that when the circle was spinning fast enough against the standing magical field of the Discworld itself in its slow turning, the resulting astral friction would build up a vast potential difference which would earth itself by a vast discharge of the Elemental Magical Force.

  The circle was a blur now, and the walls of the Tree rang with the echoes of the chant—

  Rincewind felt the familiar sticky prickling in the scalp that indicated the build up of a heavy charge of raw enchantment in the vicinity, and so he was not utterly amazed when, a few seconds later, a shaft of vivid octarine light speared down from the invisible ceiling and focused, crackling, in the center of the circle.

  There it formed an image of a storm-swept, tree-girt hill with a temple on its crest. Its shape did unpleasant things to the eye. Rincewind knew that if it was a temple to Bel-Shamharoth it would have eight sides. (Eight was also the Number of Bel-Shamharoth, which was why a sensible wizard would never mention the number if he could avoid it. Or you’ll be eight alive, apprentices were jocularly warned. Bel-Shamharoth was especially attracted to dabblers in magic who, by being as it were beachcombers on the shores of the unnatural, were already half-enmeshed in his nets. Rincewind’s room number in his hall of residence had been 7a. He hadn’t been surprised.)

  Rain streamed off the black walls of the temple. The only sign of life was the horse tethered outside, and it wasn’t Twoflower’s horse. For one thing, it was too big. It was a white charger with hooves the size of meat dishes and leather harness aglitter with ostentatious gold ornamentation. It was currently enjoying a nosebag.

  There was something familiar about it. Rincewind tried to remember where he had seen it before.