The Colour of Magic

homunculus was leaning against the frame, smoking a pipe and watching the proceedings with amusement.

‘I’ll take you in with me, at least,’ said Rincewind through gritted teeth.

The imp took the pipe out of his mouth. ‘What did you say?’ he said.

‘I said I’ll take you in with me, dammit!’

‘Suit yourself.’ The imp tapped the side of the box meaningfully. ‘We’ll see who sinks first.’

The Luggage yawned, and moved forward a fraction of an inch.

‘Oh all right,’ said Rincewind irritably. ‘But you’ll have to give me time to think.’

The Luggage backed off slowly. Rincewind edged his way back onto reasonably safe land and sat down with his back against a wall. Across the river the lights of Ankh city glowed.

‘You’re a wizard,’ said the picture imp. ‘You’ll think of some way to find him.’

‘Not much of a wizard, I’m afraid.’

‘You can just jump down on everyone and turn them into worms,’ the imp added encouragingly, ignoring his last remark.

‘No. Turning To Animals is an Eighth Level spell. I never even completed my training. I only know one spell.’

‘Well, that’ll do.’

‘I doubt it,’ said Rincewind hopelessly

‘What does it do, then?’

‘Can’t tell you. Don’t really want to talk about it. But frankly,’ he sighed, ‘no spells are much good. It takes three months to commit even a simple one to memory, and then once you’ve used it, pouf! it’s gone. That’s what’s so stupid about the whole magic thing, you know. You spend twenty years learning the spell that makes nude virgins appear in your bedroom, and then you’re so poisoned by quicksilver fumes and half-blind from reading old grimoires that you can’t remember what happens next.’

‘I never thought of it like that,’ said the imp.

‘Hey, look—this is all wrong. When Twoflower said they’d got better kind of magic in the Empire I thought—I thought …’

The imp looked at him expectantly. Rincewind cursed to himself.

‘Well, if you must know, I thought he didn’t mean magic. Not as such.’

‘What else is there, then?’

Rincewind began to feel really wretched. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘A better way of doing things, I suppose. Something with a bit of sense in it. Harnessing—harnessing the lightning, or something.’

The imp gave him a kind but pitying look.

‘Lightning is the spears hurled by the thunder giants when they fight,’ it said gently. ‘Established meteorological fact. You can’t harness it.’

‘I know,’ said Rincewind miserably. ‘That’s the flaw in the argument, of course.’

The imp nodded, and disappeared into the depths of the iconograph. A few moments later Rincewind smelled bacon frying. He waited until his stomach couldn’t stand the strain any more, and rapped on the box. The imp reappeared.

‘I’ve been thinking about what you said,’ it said before Rincewind could open his mouth. ‘And even if you could get a harness on it, how could you get it to pull a cart?’

‘What the hell are you talking about?’

‘Lightning. It just goes up and down. You’d want it to go along, not up and down. Anyway, it’d probably burn through the harness.’

‘I don’t care about the lightning! How can I think on an empty stomach?’

‘Eat something, then. That’s logic.’

‘How? Every time I move that damn box flexes its hinges at me!’

The Luggage, on cue, gaped widely.

‘See?’

‘It’s not trying to bite you,’ said the imp. ‘There’s food in there. You’re no use to it starved.’

Rincewind peered into the dark recesses of the Luggage. There were indeed, among the chaos of boxes and bags of gold, several bottles and packages in oiled paper. He gave a cynical laugh, mooched around the abandoned jetty until he found a piece of wood about the right length, wedged it as politely as possible in the gap between the lid and the box, and pulled out one of the flat packages.

It held biscuits that turned out to be as hard as diamond-wood.

‘’loody ’ell,’ he muttered, nursing his teeth.

‘Captain Eightpanther’s Travellers’ Digestives, them,’ said the imp from the doorway to his box. ‘Saved many a life at sea, they have.’

‘Oh, sure. Do you use them as a raft, or just throw them to the sharks and sort of watch them sink? What’s in the bottles? Poison?’

‘Water.’

‘But there’s water everywhere! Why’d he want to bring water?’

‘Trust.’

‘Trust?’

‘Yes. That’s what he didn’t, the water here. See?’

Rincewind opened a bottle. The liquid inside might have been water. It had a flat, empty flavour, with no trace of life. ‘Neither taste nor smell.’ he grumbled.

The Luggage gave a little creak, attracting his attention. With a lazy air of calculated menace it shut its lid slowly, grinding Rincewind’s impromptu wedge like a dry loaf.

‘All right, all right,’ he said. ‘I’m thinking.’

* * *

Ymor’s headquarters were in the Leaning Tower at the junction of Rime Street and Frost Alley. At midnight the solitary guard leaning in the shadows looked up at the conjoining planets and wondered idly what change in his fortunes they might herald.

There was the faintest of sounds, as of a gnat yawning.

The guard glanced down the deserted street, and now caught the glimmer of moonlight on something lying in the mud a few yards away. He picked it up. The lunar light gleamed on gold, and his intake of breath was almost loud enough to echo down the alleyway.

There was a slight sound again, and another coin rolled into the gutter on the other side of the street.

By the time he had picked it up there was another one, a little way off and still spinning. Gold was, he remembered, said to be formed from the crystallised light of stars. Until now he had never believed it to be true, that something as heavy as gold could fall naturally from the sky.

As he drew level with the opposite alley mouth some more fell. It was still in its bag, there was an awful lot of it, and Rincewind brought it down heavily onto his head.

When the guard came to he found himself looking up into the wild-eyed face of a wizard, who was menacing his throat with a sword. In the darkness, too, something was gripping his leg.

It was the disconcerting sort of grip that suggested that the gripper could grip a whole lot harder, if he wanted to.

‘Where is he, the rich foreigner?’ hissed the wizard. ‘Quickly!’

‘What’s holding my leg?’ said the man, with a note of terror in his voice. He tried to wriggle free. The pressure increased.

‘You wouldn’t want to know,’ said Rincewind. ‘Pay attention, please. Where’s the foreigner?’

‘Not here. They’ve got him at Broadman’s place! Everyone’s looking for him! You’re Rincewind aren’t you? The box—the box that bites people—ononono … pleasssse …’

Rincewind had gone. The guard felt the unseen leg-gripper release his—or, as he was beginning to fear, it’s—hold. Then, as he tried to pull himself to his feet, something big and heavy and square cannoned into him out of the dark and plunged off after the wizard. Something with hundreds of tiny feet.

* * *

With only his home-made phrase book to help him, Twoflower was trying to explain the mysteries of