The Colour of Magic
( Discworld - 1 )
Terry David John Pratchett
Jerome K. Jerome meets Lord of the Rings (with a touch of Peter Pan)…
On a world supported on the back of a giant turtle (sex unknown), a gleeful, explosive, wickedly eccentric expedition sets out. There’s an avaricious but inept wizard, a naive tourist whose luggage moves on hundreds of dear little legs, dragons who only exist if you believe in them, and of course THE EDGE of the planet…
The wackiest and most original fantasy since Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.
Annotations collected and edited by Leo Breebaarted at http://www.lspace.org/books/apf/index.html
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 travelling circle of firelight in a chilly infinity has turned out to be the home of defiant jokes and last chances.
The are no maps. You can’t map a sense of humour. 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
by Terry Pratchett
Prologue
In a distant and second-hand 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.{1}
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. [1]
For example, what was A’Tuin’s actual sex?{2} 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.{3} This theory was popular among academics.
An alternative, favoured 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 Colour of Magic
Fire roared through the bifurcated city of Ankh-Morpork.{4} Where it licked the Wizards’ Quarter it burned blue and green and was even laced with strange sparks of the eighth colour, octarine; where its outriders found their way into the vats and oil stores all along Merchants 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 towards 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, cat-like.{5}
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, thoug
h, 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 dishevelled figure.
‘Why, it’s Rincewind the wizard, isn’t it?’{6} he said in tones of delight, meanwhile filing the wizard’s description of him in his memory for leisurely vengeance. ‘I thought I recognised 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 towards 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 travelling 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 was lightning, then he’d be the sort to stand on a hilltop in a thunderstorm wearing wet copper armour 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.’{7}
‘Twoflower?’ said Bravd. ‘What a funny name.’
‘You,’ said Rincewind, dismounting, ‘do not know the half of it. Chicken, you say?’
‘Devilled,’ 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 colours 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.’
‘What is it called then, this mighty magic?’
Rincewind shrugged. ‘In our tongue it is called reflected-sound-as-of-underground-spirits. Is there any wine?’
‘You must know that I am not without artifice where magic is concerned,’ said Weasel. ‘Only last year did I—assisted by my friend there—part the notoriously powerful Archmage of Ymitury from his staff, his belt of moon jewels and his life, in that approximate order. I do not fear this reflected-sound-of-underground-spirits of which you speak. However,’ he added, ‘you engage my interest. Perhaps you would care to tell me more?’
Bravd looked at the shape on the road. It was closer now, and clearer in the pre-dawn light. It looked for all the world like a—
‘A box on legs?’ he said.
‘I’ll tell you about it,’ said Rincewind. ‘If there’s any wine, that is.’
Down in the valley there was a roar and a hiss. Someone more thoughtful than the rest had ordered to be shut the big river gates that were at the point where the Ankh flowed out of the twin city. Denied its usual egress, the river had burst its banks and was pouring down the fire-ravaged streets. Soon the continent of flame became a series of islands, each one growing smaller as the dark tide rose. And up from the city of fumes and smoke rose a broiling cloud of steam, covering the stars. Weasel thought that it looked like some dark fungus or mushroom.
The twin city of proud Ankh and pestilent Morpork, of which all the other cities of time and space are, as it were, mere reflections, has stood many assaults in its long and crowded history and has always risen to flourish again. So the fire and its subsequent flood, which destroyed everything left that was not flammable and added a particularly noisome flux to the survivors’ problems, did not mark its end. Rather it was a fiery punctuation mark, a coal-like comma, or salamander semicolon, in a continuing story.
* * *
Several days before these events a ship came up the Ankh on the dawn tide and fetched up, among many others, in the maze of wharves and docks on the Morpork shore. It carried a cargo of pink pearls, milk-nuts, pumice, some official letters for the Patrician of Ankh, and a man.
It was the man who engaged the attention of Blind Hugh, one of the beggars on early duty at Pearl Dock. He nudged Cripple Wa in the rib
s, and pointed wordlessly.
Now the stranger was standing on the quayside, watching several straining seamen carry a large, brass-bound chest down the gangplank. Another man, obviously the captain, was standing beside him. There was about the seaman—every nerve in Blind Hugh’s body, which tended to vibrate in the presence of even a small amount of impure gold at fifty paces, screamed into his brain—the air of one anticipating imminent enrichment.
Sure enough, when the chest had been deposited on the cobbles, the stranger reached into a pouch and there was the flash of a coin. Several coins. Gold. Blind Hugh, his body twanging like a hazel rod in the presence of water, whistled to himself. Then he nudged Wa again, and sent him scurrying off down a nearby alley into the heart of the city.
When the captain walked back onto his ship, leaving the newcomer looking faintly bewildered on the quayside, Blind Hugh snatched up his begging cup and made his way across the street with an ingratiating leer. At the sight of him the stranger started to fumble urgently with his money pouch.
‘Good day to thee, sire,’ Blind Hugh began, and found himself looking up into a face with four eyes in it.{8} He turned to run.
‘!’ said the stranger, and grabbed his arm. Hugh was aware that the sailors lining the rail of the ship were laughing at him. At the same time his specialised senses detected an overpowering impression of money. He froze. The stranger let go and quickly thumbed through a small black book he had taken from his belt. Then he said ‘Hallo.’
‘What?’ said Hugh. The man looked blank.
‘Hallo?’ he repeated, rather louder than necessary and so carefully that Hugh could hear the vowels tinkling into place.
‘Hallo yourself,’ Hugh riposted. The stranger smiled widely, 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?
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