The Colour of Magic
Chapters - Terry Pratchett
Section: Ankh-Morpork Burns
On a hillside outside the burning city of Ankh-Morpork, two adventurers - Bravd the Hublander and his partner the Weasel - watch the conflagration and wonder who started it. Two riders approach: Rincewind, a failed wizard from Unseen University, and a small unconscious man called Twoflower, who Rincewind identifies as the cause of the catastrophe. Behind them trundles the Luggage, a large chest made of sentient sapient pearwood that walks on hundreds of tiny legs.
Rincewind explains how the disaster began several days earlier, when Twoflower arrived by ship from the distant Agatean Empire on the Counterweight Continent - the Disc's first ever tourist. Carrying a fortune in pure gold coins called rhinu and armed only with a phrasebook, Twoflower was led to the Broken Drum tavern by Blind Hugh, a beggar working for Ymor, the greatest thief in Ankh-Morpork. Rincewind, recognising the Luggage as impossibly valuable sapient pearwood, offered his services as translator through the beTrobi tongue.
Twoflower hired Rincewind as his guide, paying him in gold rhinu worth a staggering fortune by local standards. But when Rincewind tried to flee the city on horseback, he was captured by guards and brought before the Patrician of Ankh-Morpork, who threatened him with a gruesome death unless he ensured Twoflower's safety - for the Agatean Emperor's mercenary fleet could destroy them all if his subject came to harm.
POV: Rincewind·On page: Twoflower, The Luggage, Bravd the Hublander, The Weasel, Ymor, Olaf Quimby II
Section: Brawl at the Broken Drum
Rincewind returns to the Broken Drum to find a violent brawl already in progress, with various thieves and assassins fighting over the right to rob Twoflower. He fights his way upstairs and rescues the oblivious tourist, who is delighted by the spectacle. Over lunch, Twoflower explains his profession back home: he assesses risks and sells something called 'inn-sewer-ants' - a concept so alien to the Disc that Rincewind cannot grasp it. Twoflower also reveals his 'iconograph', a picture-making box containing a small imp who paints tiny portraits at remarkable speed.
While touring the city and taking pictures, Twoflower is kidnapped by Stren Withel, Ymor's one-eyed lieutenant. The Luggage pursues, killing a thief who tried to steal from it. Rincewind, now forcibly bonded to the Luggage, is compelled to mount a rescue. Wandering through the evening bazaar, he encounters Death himself - a tall skeletal figure visible only to those with magical sight - who is confused because he was supposed to meet Rincewind in a city five hundred miles away.
Rincewind raids Ymor's headquarters, then storms the Broken Drum where Twoflower is being held. He throws bags of gold as distractions while the Luggage wreaks havoc. Meanwhile, in the cellar, the innkeeper Broadman prepares to burn down his own establishment - having taken out Twoflower's 'inn-sewer-ants policy' for two hundred rhinu. Death helpfully provides a taper.
POV: Rincewind·On page: Twoflower, The Luggage, Stren Withel, Death, Ymor
Section: Fleeing the Burning City
Rincewind and Twoflower escape the burning Broken Drum, but Withel ambushes them outside. The fire explodes outward from the tavern as Broadman's arson ignites, and in the confusion Rincewind manages to knock Withel unconscious with a roll of gold coins hidden in his fist. The fire spreads rapidly through the city, driven by wind, and they flee on horseback through the Widdershin Gate just before it collapses in flames.
As the fire consumes Ankh-Morpork, Rincewind tries to explain Twoflower's concept of 'echo-gnomics' to Bravd and the Weasel. The Luggage catches up with them, and the tale is complete. Meanwhile, the inn-sewer-ants policy document floats high into the atmosphere and eventually lands on an uloruaha bush in the beTrobi Islands, where the natives worship it as a god.
On the road from Ankh-Morpork to Chirm, Rincewind and Twoflower travel through picturesque and quaint country - words the wizard learns mean 'horribly precipitous' and 'fever-ridden and tumbledown' respectively. Twoflower questions magic's tedious memorisation requirements, and the picture imp mentions Rincewind's odd ideas about 'harnessing the lightning'. A mountain troll suddenly materialises on the road - seemingly teleported from thousands of miles away - and their horses bolt into the forest, separating them.
POV: Rincewind·On page: Twoflower, The Luggage, Bravd the Hublander, The Weasel, Stren Withel, Death
Section: Druellae's Tree
Separated in the forest, Twoflower follows a strange carved signpost to the Temple of Bel-Shamharoth, the Soul Eater, whose number is eight. Rincewind, hanging from a tree above a wolf pack while Death waits patiently on the next branch, is rescued by Druellae, a green-skinned dryad who pulls him inside her tree - which contains a vast palace within its trunk.
High above the Disc, on a plane where gods play games with mortal lives, the Lady - the goddess of luck who must never be named - faces off against Fate in a board game using living souls as pieces. Fate deploys a terrible piece: a representation of Bel-Shamharoth.
Druellae reveals that Twoflower has entered the temple and will be consumed by the Sender of Eight. She intends to sacrifice Rincewind for damaging her tree, but when she reads his mind and discovers the Great Spell lodged there - one of the eight spells from the Creator's own grimoire, the Octavo - she recoils in terror. Rincewind flees through the dryads' magic circle and is teleported directly into the temple, where he finds Twoflower wandering the octagon-obsessed corridors.
POV: Rincewind·On page: Twoflower, The Luggage, Death, Druellae, The Lady, Fate
Section: Temple of Bel-Shamharoth
Inside the temple, Rincewind desperately warns Twoflower never to say the number between seven and nine. Hrun the Barbarian - a famous hero of the Circle Sea, not overly bright but practically an academic by Hub standards - has also found his way inside, lured by the Luggage which he mistook for unguarded treasure.
Hrun carries Kring, a magical black sword forged from a thunderbolt that talks incessantly and has its own opinions. When Kring says the forbidden number, the word echoes endlessly through the temple. The great octagonal slab in the central chamber rises, revealing a pit, and Bel-Shamharoth's black tentacles emerge. The Soul Eater seizes Rincewind, Twoflower and Hrun in its coils, its enormous eye rising from the pit.
Twoflower has attached salamanders - creatures that store sunlight and excrete it as brilliant light - to his iconograph as a flash. As Rincewind is dragged toward the Eye, the overcharged salamanders release a devastating blast of white light that blinds Bel-Shamharoth. The entity screams and retreats, pulling the slab down over its pit. As its spirit drains away, the temple collapses under the weight of accumulated centuries. Hrun's warhorse carries all three to safety as Time reclaims the ancient structure, reducing it to mossy ruins in minutes.
Afterward, Rincewind negotiates with Hrun using pictures: the barbarian will protect them in exchange for heroic portraits taken with the iconograph. The Lady wins her game against Fate. Death, watching from a milestone, declares Rincewind his new hobby.
POV: Rincewind·On page: Twoflower, The Luggage, Hrun the Barbarian, Kring, Death, The Lady, Fate
Section: The Wyrmberg Appears
The trio enters a region of intense residual magic - a zone where coins land on their edges, turn into caterpillars, or vanish entirely. A flying creature steals their roasting pig from the spit. The Wyrmberg appears: an impossible inverted mountain, narrow at its base and widening upward, with cave mouths and a plateau a quarter-mile across at its summit.
Liessa Wyrmbidder, daughter of the dead wizard Greicha the First, watches them from the mountain's crypt. She commands dragons that exist through the Power of imagination - creatures that are semi-transparent, becoming more solid near the Wyrmberg's magical field. Her father, poisoned three months ago, remains undead in his stone chair, able to see all of time simultaneously, refusing to pass on until only one of his three children survives.
Dragons attack, wounding Hrun and separating the group. Twoflower and Hrun are captured and imprisoned in the Wyrmberg's dungeons. Rincewind escapes into the forest, where Kring (dropped during the attack) forces him to mount a rescue. He defeats a dragonrider named K!sdra and rides the semi-transparent dragon Psepha into the Wyrmberg's vast interior cavern, where dragonriders walk upside-down on the ceiling using hooked boots.
POV: Rincewind·On page: Twoflower, The Luggage, Hrun the Barbarian, Kring, Liessa Wyrmbidder, Greicha the First
Section: Upside-Down Duel
Inside the Wyrmberg, Rincewind is forced to fight Liessa's brother Lio!rt Dragonlord in single combat while hanging upside-down from the ceiling by hookboots. Kring fights brilliantly on Rincewind's behalf, but when Lio!rt knocks him loose, the wizard plummets toward the cavern floor. As he falls, the Great Spell in his mind surges forward - he begins speaking its terrible syllables, seven blazing words forming in rainbow colours around him.
Meanwhile, Twoflower, locked in a separate cell, discovers that his lifelong obsession with dragons has given him the Power to imagine real ones into existence. A magnificent dragon materialises before him - green and fire-breathing, exactly as he always dreamed. It calls him 'master' and melts through the cell door. Twoflower names it Ninereeds after his old employer.
Flying through the cavern on Ninereeds, Twoflower catches the falling Rincewind at the last possible moment, interrupting the Great Spell just before its final, world-altering word can be spoken. They burst out of the Wyrmberg into the morning air.
Twoflower finds the dead wizard Greicha in his crypt, who explains the nature of the Power: true dragons can only exist when imagined by a sufficiently skilled mind in a place saturated with magic. Greicha's dragon-riding civilisation depends entirely on this talent.
POV: Rincewind, Twoflower·On page: The Luggage, Hrun the Barbarian, Kring, Lio!rt Dragonlord, Liessa Wyrmbidder, Greicha the First, Ninereeds, Death
Section: Hrun's Three Tests
Liessa proposes to use Hrun as her champion to defeat her brothers and claim the Wyrmberg's throne. The second test requires him to kill both siblings; the third test she reveals by removing her clothes. Hrun fights the brothers' dragons on foot - leaping onto Lio!rt's dragon mid-flight and knocking him unconscious (causing the dragon to vanish), then outrunning Liartes's dragon and defeating him in hand-to-hand combat.
Twoflower and Rincewind fly back on Ninereeds to rescue Hrun, snatching him from Liessa's clutches moments before the third test concludes. The pursuing dragonriders give chase. As they climb too high, the thin air causes Twoflower to lose consciousness, and his imaginary dragon vanishes. Hrun lands on Liessa's pursuing dragon, but Rincewind and Twoflower fall freely through space.
Death appears, riding alongside them, laughing that Rincewind does not believe in dragons and cannot imagine one. In a flash of desperate magic, Rincewind and Twoflower are transported to an alternate reality - a 'plane' (aircraft) in another universe, where they briefly exist as Dr Rjinswand and Jack Zweiblumen. When the Luggage arrives on the aircraft and terrifies the passengers, reality snaps back and they plunge into the Circle Sea. They use the Luggage as a raft.
POV: Rincewind, Twoflower·On page: The Luggage, Hrun the Barbarian, Liessa Wyrmbidder, Liartes, Lio!rt Dragonlord, Greicha the First, Ninereeds, Death·Mentioned: Kring
Section: Caught on the Circumfence
After months of further adventures - slavers, the Dehydrated Ocean, floating ice mountains - Rincewind and Twoflower are adrift on a leaking boat being pulled by the Rimfall current toward the Edge of the Disc. Rincewind is horrified; Twoflower suggests they might sail through space and land on another world.
Their boat catches on the Circumfence - a vast net of ropes and posts stretching ten thousand miles along the Rim, built by the island kingdom of Krull to catch salvage. They are rescued by Tethis, a sea troll made entirely of water who patrols this stretch. Tethis is himself a castaway from another world called Bathys, where seafolk sail land-yachts across continents. He fell off his world's edge, froze in interstellar space, and crashed into the Disc's ocean.
Tethis shows Rincewind the view over the Edge: the vast elephants that support the Disc, and far below them the enormous shell of Great A'Tuin the World Turtle, swimming through the void. The Rimbow - a double rainbow including the eighth colour, octarine - arches through the mist. Tethis explains that all salvage from the Circumfence belongs to Krull, and that he himself is a slave. Those who learn about the Circumfence have their tongues cut out.
POV: Rincewind·On page: Twoflower, Tethis, Great A'Tuin, Great A'Tuin·Mentioned: The Luggage
Section: The Hydrophobe Wizards
A flying lens crewed by hydrophobic wizards - men trained from birth to loathe water so intensely that they repel it - arrives to collect Rincewind and Twoflower. Their commander is Marchesa, a young dark-skinned woman of the fifth wizard level, who knows all about Rincewind and the Great Spell lodged in his mind. She threatens him with Ajandurah's Wand of Utter Negativity.
In Krull, a city built from salvaged ships perched on the Edge of the Disc, they are treated as honoured guests and told by the Guestmaster Garhartra that they will be sacrificed in the morning. Death sits in His garden sharpening His scythe when Fate visits, smugly informing Him of the planned deaths. Death is unimpressed.
The Lady appears to Rincewind and Twoflower in their luxurious cell, explaining that the Krullians have built a bronze space ship called the Potent Voyager, designed by the master craftsman Goldeneyes Silverhand Dactylos, to sail over the Edge and discover the sex of Great A'Tuin. The Arch-astronomer of Krull has bargained with Fate: two sacrifices at the moment of launch in exchange for Fate's favour on the voyage. Fate specified Rincewind and Twoflower. The Lady gives them one small chance.
POV: Rincewind·On page: Twoflower, The Luggage, Marchesa, Garhartra, The Lady, Fate, Death, Goldeneyes Silverhand Dactylos, The Arch-astronomer of Krull, Tethis, Great A'Tuin
Section: Escape Through Krull
The Lady's chance arrives: a bottle Rincewind threw hours earlier, frozen in a time-spell, finally completes its arc and smashes into Garhartra's head. They escape through the palace, where Rincewind spits at a hydrophobe (causing the water-loathing wizard to recoil in agony) and Twoflower punches another into a pond.
They stumble into the launch preparation room and find the chelonauts' space suits. The Luggage arrives at Krull's harbour, rampages through the city, and reaches the launch arena covered in seaweed. Every magician in Krull unleashes spells at it, creating a towering storm of wild magic - but the sapient pearwood chest is totally impervious. When the storm subsides, Tethis emerges from inside the Luggage, having been swallowed at his island and transported to Krull.
Disguised as chelonauts, Rincewind and Twoflower are marched to the Potent Voyager. The automated launch sequence triggers. Rincewind tries to escape but the ship accelerates along its rails, hits the upward ramp at the Edge, and leaps into space. The Luggage follows, legs pumping, clearing the rim of the world.
Rincewind wakes in a thorn tree growing from a rock in the Rimfall. A minor demon named Scrofula, standing in for Death (who is busy with a plague in Pseudopolis), tries unsuccessfully to claim his soul. The branch snaps, and Rincewind tumbles into the void - falling past Great A'Tuin, past the distant stars, into the whole of Creation.
POV: Rincewind·On page: Twoflower, The Luggage, Tethis, Garhartra, The Arch-astronomer of Krull, Great A'Tuin·Mentioned: Death