01 - The Colour Of Magic

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The Colour Of Magic
Terry Pratchett
© Copyright by Terry Pratchett
eBook graphics by Laurie McCanna, http://www.mccannas.com
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.
"Verbally witty, imaginatively resourceful and with a nine line in comic-book
action, this novel will be enjoyed by those who enjoy high-spirited fantasy"
British Book News
"Frothy, inventive, and fun"
Kirkus Review
"Heroic barbarians, chthonic monsters, beautiful princesses and fiery dragons,
they're all here, but none of them is doing business as usual"
Publishers weekly
Some erudite jokes on one dimension and a rollicking story on another"
Oxford Anual
"He has the exceptional gift of humour ... The plot is so ridiculous ... and so much
Fun÷that it shouldn't be revealed in a serious newspaper ...
Pratchett is very good indeed"
The Scotsman
"There is no end to the wacky wonders tastes as consistently, inventively mad
wonderful"
Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction magazine
Wild and no fan
His concoction of wacky adventures is a delight clever in language and characters
and situations"
Library Journal
The Colour Of Magic: Prologue
n 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.
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 startanned 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 quartzwindowed 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 Atuin'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, 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
ire roared through the bifurcated city of AnkhMorpork. 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.
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 widershins gate had been one of the first to
colapse 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
halflight, 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?"
*The shape and cosmology of the disc system are perhaps worthy of note at this point.
There are, of course, two major directions on the disc: Hubward and Rimward. But since the
disc itself revolves at the rate of once every eight hundred days (in order to distribute the weight
fairly upon its supportive pachyderms, according to Reforgule of Krull) there are also two lesser
directions, which are Turnwise and Widdershins.
Since the disc's tiny orbiting sunlet maintains a fixed orbit while the majestic disc turns slowly
beneath it, it will be readily deduced that a disc year consists of not four but eight seasons. The
summers are those times when the sun rises or sets at the nearest point on the Rim, the
winters those occasions when it rises or sets at a point around ninety degrees along the
circumference.
Thus, in the lands around the Circle Sea, the year begins on Hogs' Watch Night, progresses
through a Spring Prime to its first midsummer (Small Gods' Eve) which is followed by Autumn
Prime and, straddling the half-year point of Crueltide, Winter Secundus (also known as the
Spindlewinter, since at this time the sun rises in the direction of spin). Then comes Secundus
Spring with Summer Two on its heels, the three quarter mark of the year being the night of Alls
Fallow÷the one night of the year, according to legend, when witches and warlocks stay in bed.
Then drifting leaves and frosty nights drag on towards Backspindlewinter and a new Hogs'
Watch Night nestling like a frozen jewel at its heart.
Since the Hub is never closely warmed by the weak sun the lands there are locked in
permafrost. The Rim, on the other hand, is a region of sunny islands and balmy days There are,
of course, eight days in a disc week and eight colours in its light spectrum. Eight is a number of
some considerable occult significance on the disc and must never, ever, be spoken by a wizard.
Precisely why all the above should be so is not clear, but goes some way to explain why, on
the disc, the Gods are not so much worshipped as blamed.
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?" 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 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 . " "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 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 ribs, 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. 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?
Subtle changes in the beggar's posture made the stranger feel more at ease. He consulted
the small book again.
"I wish to be directed to an hotel, tavern, lodging house, inn, hospice, caravanserai," he said.
"What, all of them?" said Hugh, taken aback.
"?" said the stranger.
Hugh was aware that a small crowd of fishwives, shellfish diggers and freelance gawpers
were watching them with interest.
"Look," he said, "I know a good tavern, is that enough?" He shuddered to think of the gold
coin escaping from his life. He'd keep that one, even if Ymor confiscated all the rest. And the
big chest that comprised most of the newcomer's luggage looked to be full of gold, Hugh
decided.
The four-eyed man looked at his book.
I would like to be directed to an hotel, place of repose, tavern, a÷"
"Yes, all right. Come on then," said Hugh hurriedly.
He picked up one of the bundles and walked away quickly. The stranger, after a moment's
hesitation, strolled after him.
A train of thought shunted its way through Hugh's mind. Getting the newcomer to the Broken
Drum so easily was a stroke of luck, no doubt of it, and Ymor would probably reward him. But
for all his new acquaintance's mildness there was something about him that made Hugh
uneasy, and for the life of him he couldn't figure out what it was.
Not the two extra eyes, odd though they were. There was something else. He glanced back.
The little man was ambling along in the middle of the street, looking around him with an
expression of keen interest.
Something else Hugh saw nearly made him gibber.
The massive wooden chest, which he had last seen resting solidly on the quayside, was
following on its master's heels with a gentle rocking gait. Slowly, in case a sudden movement
on his part might break his fragile control over his own legs, Hugh bent slightly so that he could
see under the chest.
There were lots and lots of little legs.
Very deliberately, Hugh turned around and walked very carefully towards the Broken Drum.
"Odd," said Ymor.
"He had this big wooden chest," added Cripple Wa.
"He'd have to be a merchant or a spy," said Ymor.
He pulled a scrap of meat from the cutlet in his hand and tossed it into the air. It hadn't
reached the zenith of its arc, before a black shape detached itself from the shadows in the
corner of the room and swooped down, taking the morsel in mid-air.
"A merchant or a spy," repeated Ymor. "I'd prefer a spy. A spy pays for himself twice,
because there's always the reward when we turn him in. What do you think, Withel?"
Opposite Ymor the second greatest thief in Ankhmorpork half-closed his one eye and
shrugged.
"I've checked on the ship," he said. "It's a freelance
trader. Does the occasional run to the Brown islands. People there are just savages. They
don't understand about spies and I expect they eat merchants."
"He looked a bit like a merchant," volunteered Wa. "Except he wasn't fat."
There was a flutter of wings at the window. Ymor shifted his bulk out of the chair and crossed
the room, coming back with a large raven. After he'd unfastened the message capsule from its
leg it flew to join its fellows lurking among the rafters.
Withel regarded it without love. Ymor's ravens were notoriously loyal to their master, to the
extent that Withel's one attempt to promote himself to the rank of greatest thief in Ankh-
Morpork had cost their master's right hand man his left eye. But not his life, however. Ymor
never grudged a man his ambitions.
"Go?," said Ymor, tossing the little phial aside and unrolling the tiny scroll within.
"Gorrin the Cat," said Withel automatically. "On station up in the gong tower at the Temple of
Small Gods."
He says Hugh has taken our stranger to the Broken Drum. Well, that's good enough.
Broadman is a÷friend of ours, isn't he?"
"Aye," said Withel. "If he knows what's good for trade."
"Among his customers has been your man Gorrin," said Ymor pleasantly, "for he writes here
about a box on legs, if I read this scrawl correctly." He looked at Withel over the top of the
paper. Withel looked away. "He will be disciplined," he said flatly. Wa looked at the man leaning
back in his chair, his black-clad frame resting as nonchalantly as a Rimland puma on a jungle
branch, and decided that Gorrin atop Small Gods temple would soon be joining those little
deities in the multifold dimensions of Beyond. And he owed Wa three copper pieces.
Ymor crumpled the note and tossed it into a corner. "I think we'll wander along to the Drum
later on, Withel. Perhaps, too, we may try this beer that your men find so tempting."
Withel said nothing. Being Ymor's right-hand man was like being gently flogged to death with
scented bootlaces.
The twin city of Ankh-Morpork, foremost of all the cities bounding the Circle Sea, was as a
matter of course the home of a large number of gangs, thieves" guilds, syndicates and similar
organisations. This was one of the reasons for its wealth. Most of the humbler folk on the
widdershin side of the river, in Morpork's mazy alleys, supplemented their meagre incomes by
filling some small role for one or other of the competing gangs.
So it was that by the time Hugh and Twoflower entered the courtyard of the Broken Drum the
leaders of a number of them were aware that someone had arrived in the city who appeared to
have much treasure. Some reports from the more observant spies included details about a book
that told the stranger what to say, and a box that walked by itself. These facts were immediately
discounted. No magician capable of such enchantments ever came within a mile of Morpork
docks.
It still being that hour when most of the city was just rising or about to go to bed there were
few people in the Drum to watch Twoflower descend the stairs. When the Luggage appeared
behind him and started to lurch confidently down the steps the customers at the rough wooden
tables, as one man, looked suspiciously at their drinks.
Broadman was browbeating the small troll who swept the bar when the trio walked past him.
"What in hell's that?" he said.
"Just don't talk about it," hissed Hugh. Twoflower was already thumbing through his book.
"What's he doing?" said Broadman, arms akimbo.
"It tells him what to say. I know it sounds ridiculous," muttered Hugh.
"How can a book tell a man what to say?"
"I wish for an accommodation, a room, lodgings, the lodging house, full board, are your
rooms clean, a room with a view, what is your rate for one night?" said Twoflower in one
breath.
Broadman looked at Hugh. The beggar shrugged.
"He's got plenty money," he said.
"Tell him it's three copper pieces, then. And that Thing will have to go in the stable."
"?" said the stranger. Broadman held up three thick red fingers and the man's face was
suddenly a sunny display of comprehension. He reached into his pouch and laid three large
gold pieces on Broadman's palm.
Broadman stared at them. They represented about four times the worth of the Broken Drum,
Staff included. He looked at Hugh. There was no help there. He looked at the stranger. He
swallowed.
"Yes," he said, in an unnaturally high voice. "And then there's meals, o'course. Uh. You
understand, yes? Food. You eat. No?" He made the appropriate motions.
"Fut?" said the little man.
"Yes," said Broadman, beginning to sweat. "Have a look in your little book, I should."
The man opened the book and ran a finger down one page. Broadman, who could read after
a fashion, peered over the top of the volume. What he saw made no sense.
"Fooood," said the stranger. "Yes. Cutlet, hash chop, stew, ragout, fricassee, mince, collops,
souffle, dumpling, blancmange, sorbet, gruel, sausage, not to have a sausage, beans, without
a hear, kickshaws, jelly, jam. Giblets." He beamed at Broadman.
"All that?" said the innkeeper weakly.
"It's just the way he talks," said Hugh, "Don't ask me why. He just does."
All eyes in the room were watching the stranger except for a pair belonging to Rincewind the
wizard, who was sitting in the darkest corner nursing a mug of very small beer.
He was watching the Luggage.
Watch Rincewind.
Look at him. Scrawny, like most wizards, and clad in a dark red robe on which a few mystic
sigils were embroidered in tarnished sequins. Some might have taken him for a mere apprentice
enchanter who had run away from his master out of defiance, boredom, fear and a lingering
taste for heterosexuality. Yet around his neck was a chain bearing the bronze octagon that
marked him as an alumnus of Unseen University, the high school of magic whose time-and-
space transcendent campus is never precisely Here or There. Graduates were usually destined
for mageship at least, but Rincewind÷after an unfortunate event÷had left him knowing only one
spell and made a living of sorts around the town by capitalising on an innate gift for languages.
He avoided work as a rule, but had a quickness of wit that put his acquaintances in mind of a
bright rodent. And he knew sapient pearwood when he saw it. He was seeing it now, and didn't
quite believe it.
An archmage, by dint of great effort and much expenditure of time, might eventually obtain a
small staff made from the timber of the sapient peartree. It grew only on the sites of ancient
magic there were probably no more than two such staffs in all the cities of the circle sea. A
large chest of it ... Rincewind tried to work it out, and decided that even if the box were
crammed with star opals and sticks of auricholatum the contents would not be worth one-tenth
the price of the container. A vein started to throb in his forehead.
He stood up and made his way to the trio.
"May I be of assistance?" he ventured.
"Shove off, Rincewind," snarled Broadman.
"I only thought it might be useful to address this gentleman in his own tongue," said the
wizard gently.
"He's doing all right on his own," said the innkeeper, but took a few steps backward.
Rincewind smiled politely at the stranger and tried a few words of Chimeran. He prided
himself on his fluency in the tongue, but the stranger only looked bemused.
"It won't work," said Hugh knowledgeably. "It's the book, you see. It tells him what to say.
Magic."
Rincewind switched to High Borogravian, to Vanglemesht, Sumtri and even Black Oroogu,
the language with no nouns and only one adjective, which is obscene. Each was met with polite
incomprehension. In desperation he tried heathen Trob, and the little man's face split into a
delighted grin.
"At last! ' he said. "My good sir! This is remarkable! "
(Although in Trob the last word in fact became "a thing which may happen but once in' the
usable lifetime of a canoe hollowed diligently by axe and fire from the tallest diamondwood tree
that grows in the noted diamondwood forests on the lower Slopes of Mount Awayawa, home of
the firegods or so it is said.").
"What was all that?" said Broadman suspiciously.
"What did the innkeeper say?" said the little man.
Rincewind swallowed. "Broadman," he said. "Two mugs of your best ale, please."
"You can understand him?"
"Oh, sure."
"Tell him tell him he's very welcome. Tell him breakfast is÷uh÷one gold piece."
For a moment Broadman's face looked as though some vast internal struggle was going on,
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TheColourOfMagicTerryPratchett©CopyrightbyTerryPratchetteBookgraphicsbyLaurieMcCanna,http://www.mccannas.comOnaworldsupportedonthebackofagiantturtle(sexunknown),agleeful,explosive,wickedlyeccentricexpeditionsetsout.There'sanavariciousbutineptwizard,anaivetouristwhoseluggagemovesonhundredsofdearlittl...

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