The Colour of Magic

by Terry Pratchett

  The Sergeant glowered at Rincewind, and then peered at Twoflower with interest.

  “Everything all right here, then?” he said.

  “Oh, fine,” said Rincewind. “Got held up, did you?”

  The sergeant ignored him. “This the foreigner, then?” he inquired.

  “We were just leaving,” said Rincewind quickly, and switched to Trob. “Twoflower, I think we ought to get lunch somewhere else. I know some places.”

  He marched out into the corridor with as much aplomb as he could muster. Twoflower followed, and a few seconds later there was a strangling sound from the sergeant as the Luggage closed its lid with a snap, stood up, stretched, and marched after them.

  Watchmen were dragging bodies out of the room downstairs. There were no survivors. The Watch had ensured this by giving them ample time to escape via the back door, a neat compromise between caution and justice that benefited all parties.

  “Who are all these men?” said Twoflower.

  “Oh, you know. Just men,” said Rincewind. And before he could stop himself some part of his brain that had nothing to do took control of his mouth and added, “Heroes, in fact.”

  “Really?”

  When one foot is stuck in the Grey Miasma of H’rull it is much easier to step right in and sink rather than prolong the struggle. Rincewind let himself go.

  “Yes, that one over there is Erig Stronginthearm, over there is Black Zenell—”

  “Is Hrun the Barbarian here?” said Twoflower, looking around eagerly. Rincewind took a deep breath.

  “That’s him behind us,” he said.

  The enormity of this lie was so great that its ripples did in fact spread out one of the lower astral planes as far as the Magical Quarter across the river, where it picked up tremendous velocity from the huge standing wave of power that always hovered there and bounced wildly across the Circle Sea. A harmonic got as far as Hrun himself, currently fighting a couple of gnolls on a crumbling ledge high in the Caderack Mountains, and caused him a moment’s unexplained discomfort.

  Twoflower, meanwhile, had thrown back the lid of the Luggage and was hastily pulling out a heavy black cube.

  “This is fantastic!” he said. “They’re never going to believe this at home!”

  “What’s he going on about?” said the sergeant doubtfully.

  “He’s pleased you rescued us,” said Rincewind. He looked sidelong at the black box, half expecting it to explode or emit strange musical tones.

  “Ah,” said the sergeant. He was staring at the box, too.

  Twoflower smiled brightly at them.

  “I’d like a record of the event,” he said. “Do you think you could ask them all to stand over by the window, please? This won’t take a moment. And, er, Rincewind?”

  “Yes?”

  Twoflower stood on tiptoe to whisper.

  “I expect you know what this is, don’t you?”

  Rincewind stared down at the box. It had a round glass eye protruding from the center of one face, and a lever at the back.

  “Not wholly,” he said.

  “It’s a device for making pictures quickly,” said Twoflower. “Quite a new invention. I’m rather proud of it but, look, I don’t think these gentlemen would—well, I mean they might be—sort of apprehensive? Could you explain it to them? I’ll reimburse them for their time, of course.”

  “He’s got a box with a demon in it that draws pictures,” said Rincewind shortly. “Do what the madman says and he will give you gold.”

  The Watch smiled nervously.

  “I’d like you in the picture, Rincewind. That’s fine.” Twoflower took out the golden disc that Rincewind had noticed before, squinted at its unseen face for a moment, muttered “Thirty seconds should about do it,” and said brightly, “Smile please!”

  “Smile,” rasped Rincewind. There was a whirr from the box.

  “Right!”

  High above the Disc the second albatross soared; so high in fact that its tiny mad orange eyes could see the whole of the world and the great, glittering, girdling Circle Sea. There was a yellow message capsule strapped to one leg. Far below it, unseen in the clouds, the bird that had brought the earlier message to the Patrician of Ankh-Morpork flapped gently back to its home.

  Rincewind looked at the tiny square of glass in astonishment. There he was, all right—a tiny figure, in perfect color, standing in front of a group of Watchmen whose faces were each frozen in a terrified rictus. A buzz of wordless terror went up from the men around him as they craned over his shoulder to look.

  Grinning, Twoflower produced a handful of the smaller coins Rincewind now recognized as quarter-rhinu. He winked at the wizard.

  “I had similar problems when I stopped over in the Brown Islands,” he said. “They thought the iconograph steals a bit of their souls. Laughable, isn’t it?”

  “Yarg,” said Rincewind and then, because somehow that was hardly enough to keep up his side of the conversation, added, “I don’t think it looks very like me, though.”

  “It’s easy to operate,” said Twoflower, ignoring him. “Look, all you have to do is press this button. The iconograph does the rest. Now, I’ll just stand over here next to Hrun, and you can take the picture.”

  The coins quietened the men’s agitation in the way that gold can, and Rincewind was amazed to find, half a minute later, that he was holding a little glass portrait of Twoflower wielding a huge notched sword and smiling as though all his dreams had come true.

  They lunched at a small eating house near the Brass Bridge, with the Luggage nestling under the table. The food and wine, both far superior to Rincewind’s normal fare, did much to relax him. Things weren’t going to be too bad, he decided. A bit of invention and some quick thinking, that was all that was needed.

  Twoflower seemed to be thinking too. Looking reflectively into his wine cup he said, “Tavern fights are pretty common around here, I expect?”

  “Oh, fairly.”

  “No doubt fixtures and fittings get damaged?”

  “Fixt—Oh, I see. You mean like benches and whatnot. Yes, I suppose so.”

  “That must be upsetting for the innkeepers.”

  “I’ve never really thought about it. I suppose it must be one of the risks of the job.”

  Twoflower regarded him thoughtfully.

  “I might be able to help there,” he said. “Risks are my business. I say, this food is a bit greasy, isn’t it?”

  “You did say you wanted to try some typical Morporkean food,” said Rincewind. “What was that about risks?”

  “Oh, I know all about risks. They’re my business.”

  “I thought that’s what you said. I didn’t believe it the first time either.”

  “Oh, I don’t take risks. About the most exciting thing that happened to me was knocking some ink over. I assess risks. Day after day. Do you know what the odds are against a house catching fire in the Red Triangle district of Bes Pelargic? Five hundred and thirty-eight to one. I calculated that,” he added with a trace of pride.

  “What—” Rincewind tried to suppress a burp—“what for? ’Scuse me.” He helped himself to some more wine.

  “For—” Twoflower paused. “I can’t say it in Trob,” he said. “I don’t think the beTrobi have a word for it. In my language we call it—” he said a collection of outlandish syllables.

  “Inn-sewer-ants,” repeated Rincewind. “Tha’s a funny word. Wossit mean?”

  “Well, suppose you have a ship loaded with, say, gold bars. It might run into storms or, or be taken by pirates. You don’t want that to happen, so you take out an inn-sewer-ants-polly-sea. I work out the odds against the cargo being lost, based on weather reports and piracy records for the last twenty years, then I add a bit, then you pay me some money based on those odds—”

  “—and the bit—” Rincewind said, waggling a finger solemnly.

  “—and then, if the cargo is lost, I reimburse you.”

  “Reeburs?”

&nb
sp; “Pay you the value of your cargo,” said Twoflower patiently.

  “I get it. It’s like a bet, right?”

  “A wager? In a way, I suppose.”

  “And you make money at this inn-sewer-ants?”

  “It offers a return on investment, certainly.”

  Wrapped in the warm yellow glow of the wine, Rincewind tried to think of inn-sewer-ants in Circle Sea terms.

  “I don’t think I unnerstan’ this inn-sewer-ants,” he said firmly, idly watching the world spin by. “Magic, now. Magic I unnerstan’.”

  Twoflower grinned. “Magic is one thing, and reflected-sound-of-underground-spirits is another,” he said.

  “Wha’?”

  “What?”

  “That funny wor’ you used,” said Rincewind impatiently.

  “Reflected-sound-of-underground-spirits?”

  “Never heard o’ it.”

  Twoflower tried to explain.

  Rincewind tried to understand.

  In the long afternoon they toured the city Turnwise of the river. Twoflower led the way, with the strange picture box slung on a strap around his neck. Rincewind trailed behind, whimpering at intervals and checking to see that his head was still there.

  A few others followed, too. In a city where public executions, duels, fights, magical feuds and strange events regularly punctuated the daily round the inhabitants had brought the profession of interested bystander to a peak of perfection. They were, to a man, highly skilled gawpers. In any case, Twoflower was delightedly taking picture after picture of people engaged in what he described as typical activities, and since a quarter-rhinu would subsequently change hands “for their trouble” a tail of bemused and happy nouveauxriches was soon following him in case this madman exploded in a shower of gold.

  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 colorful and instructive pictures, a number of which Rincewind concealed about his person for detailed perusal in private. As the fumes cleared from his brain he began to speculate seriously as to how the iconograph worked.

  Even a failed wizard knew that some substances were sensitive to light. Perhaps the glass plates were treated by some arcane process that froze the light that passed through them? Something like that, anyway. Rincewind often suspected that there was something, somewhere, that was better than magic. He was usually disappointed.

  However, he soon took every opportunity to operate the box. Twoflower was only too pleased to allow this, since that enabled the little man to appear in his own pictures. It was at this point that Rincewind noticed something strange. Possession of the box conferred a kind of power on the wielder—which was that anyone, confronted with the hypnotic glass eye, would submissively obey the most peremptory orders about stance and expression.

  It was while he was thus engaged in the Plaza of Broken Moons that disaster struck.

  Twoflower had posed alongside a bewildered charm seller, his crowd of newfound admirers watching him with interest in case he did something humorously lunatic.

  Rincewind got down on one knee, the better to arrange the picture, and pressed the enchanted lever.

  The box said, “It’s no good. I’ve run out of pink.”

  A hitherto unnoticed door opened in front of his eyes. A small, green and hideously warty humanoid figure leaned out, pointed at a color-encrusted palette in one clawed hand, and screamed at him.

  “No pink! See?” screeched the homunculus. “No good you going on pressing the lever when there’s no pink, is there? If you wanted pink you shouldn’t of took all those pictures of young ladies, should you? It’s monochrome from now on, friend. All right?”

  “All right. Yeah, Sure,” said Rincewind. In one dim corner of the little box he thought he could see an easel, and a tiny unmade bed. He hoped he couldn’t.

  “So long as that’s understood,” said the imp, and shut the door. Rincewind thought he could hear the muffled sound of grumbling and the scrape of a stool being dragged across the floor.

  “Twoflower—” he began, and looked up.

  Twoflower had vanished. As Rincewind stared at the crowd, with sensations of prickly horror traveling up his spine, there came a gentle prod in the small of his back.

  “Turn without haste,” said a voice like black silk. “Or kiss your kidneys goodbye.”

  The crowd watched with interest. It was turning out to be quite a good day.

  Rincewind turned slowly, feeling the point of the sword scrape along his ribs. At the other end of the blade he recognized Stren Withel—thief, cruel swordsman, disgruntled contender for the title of worst man in the world.

  “Hi,” he said weakly. A few yards away he noticed a couple of unsympathetic men raising the lid of the Luggage and pointing excitedly at the bags of gold. Withel smiled. It made an unnerving effect on his scar-crossed face.

  “I know you,” he said. “A gutter wizard. What is that thing?”

  Rincewind became aware that the lid of the Luggage was trembling slightly, although there was no wind. And he was still holding the picture box.

  “This? It makes pictures,” he said brightly. “Hey, just hold that smile, will you?” He backed away quickly and pointed the box.

  For a moment Withel hesitated. “What?” he said.

  “That’s fine, hold it just like that…” said Rincewind.

  The thief paused, then growled and swung his sword back.

  There was a snap, and a duet of horrible screams. Rincewind did not glance around for fear of the terrible things he might see, and by the time Withel looked for him again he was on the other side of the Plaza, and still accelerating.

  The albatross descended in wide, slow sweeps that ended in an undignified flurry of feathers and a thump as it landed heavily on its platform in the Patrician’s bird garden.

  The custodian of the birds, dozing in the sun and hardly expecting a long-distance message so soon after this morning’s arrival, jerked to his feet and looked up.

  A few moments later he was scuttling through the palace’s corridors holding the message capsule and—owing to carelessness brought on by surprise—sucking at the nasty beak wound on the back of his hand.

  Rincewind pounded down an alley, paying no heed to the screams of rage coming from the picture box, and cleared a high wall with his frayed robe flapping around him like the feathers of a disheveled jackdaw. He landed in the forecourt of a carpet shop, scattering the merchandise and customers, dived through its rear exit trailing apologies, skidded down another alley and stopped, teetering dangerously, just as he was about to plunge unthinkingly into the Ankh.

  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.

  In the distance the cries of rage took on a shrill note of terror. Rincewind looked around desperately for a boat, or a handhold up the sheer walls on either side of him.

  He was trapped.

  Unbidden, the Spell welled up in his mind. It was perhaps untrue to say that he had learned it; it had learned him. The episode had led to his expulsion from Unseen University, because, for a bet, he had dared to open the pages of the last remaining copy of the Creator’s own grimoire, the Octavo (while the University librarian was otherwise engaged). The spell had leapt out of the page and instantly burrowed deeply into his mind, whence even the combined talents of the Faculty of Medicine had been unable to coax it. Precisely which one it was they were also unable to ascertain, except that it was one of the eight basic spells that were intricately interwoven with the very fabric of time and space itself.

  Since then it had been showing a worrying tendency, when Rincewind was feeling
rundown or especially threatened, to try to get itself said.

  He clenched his teeth together but the first syllable forced itself around the corner of his mouth. His left hand raised involuntarily and, as the magical force whirled him around, began to give off octarine sparks…

  The Luggage hurtled around the corner, its several hundred knees moving like pistons.

  Rincewind gaped. The spell died, unsaid.

  The box didn’t appear to be hampered in any way by the ornamental rug draped roguishly over it, nor by the thief hanging by one arm from the lid. It was, in a very real sense, a dead weight. Farther along the lid were the remains of two fingers, owner unknown.

  The Luggage halted a few feet from the wizard and, after a moment, retracted its legs. It had no eyes that Rincewind could see, but he was nevertheless sure that it was staring at him. Expectantly.

  “Shoo,” he said weakly. It didn’t budge, but the lid creaked open, releasing the dead thief.

  Rincewind remembered about the gold. Presumably the box had to have a master. In the absence of Twoflower, had it adopted him?

  The tide was turning and he could see debris drifting downstream in the yellow afternoon light toward the River Gate, a mere hundred yards downstream. It was the work of a moment to let the dead thief join them. Even if it was found later it would hardly cause comment. And the sharks in the estuary were used to solid, regular meals.

  Rincewind watched the body drift away, and considered his next move. The Luggage would probably float. All he had to do was wait until dusk, and then go out with the tide. There were plenty of wild places downstream where he could wade ashore, and then—well, if the Patrician really had sent out word about him then a change of clothing and a shave should take care of that. In any case, there were other lands and he had a facility for languages. Let him but get to Chimera or Gonim or Ecalpon and half a dozen armies couldn’t bring him back. And then—wealth, comfort, security…