The Colour of Magic (13 page)

He tried to remember the little he knew about them. They were magical creatures. They also had no mouths, since they subsisted entirely on the nourishing quality of the octarine wavelength in the discworld's sunlight, which they absorbed through their skins. Of course, they also absorbed the rest of the sunlight as well, storing it in a special sac until it was excreted in the normal way. A desert inhabited by discworld salamanders was a veritable lighthouse at night.

Rincewind put them down and nodded grimly. With all the octarine light in this magical place the creatures had been gorging themselves, and then nature had taken its course.

The picturebox sidled away on its tripod. Rincewind aimed a kick at it, and missed. He was beginning to dislike sapient pearwood.

Something small stung his cheek. He brushed it away irritably.

He looked around at a sudden grinding noise, and a voice like a carving knife cutting through silk said, 'This is very undignified.'

'Shuddup,' said Hrun. He was using Kring to lever the top off the altar. He looked up at Rincewind and grinned. Rincewind hoped that rictus-strung grimace was a grin.

'Mighty magic,' commented the barbarian, pushing down heavily on the complaining blade with a hand the size of a ham. 'Now we share the treasure, eh?'

Rincewind grunted as something small and hard struck his ear. There was a gust of wind, hardly felt.

'How do you know there's treasure in there?' he said.

Hrun heaved, and managed to hook his fingers under the stone. 'You find chokeapples under a chokeapple tree,' he said. 'You find treasure under altars. Logic.'

He gritted his teeth. The stone swung up and landed heavily on the floor.

This time something struck Rincewind's hand, heavily. He clawed at the air and looked at the thing he had caught. It was a piece of stone with five-plus-three sides. He looked up at the ceiling. Should it be sagging like that? Hrun hummed a little tune as he began to pull crumbling leather from the desecrated altar.

The air crackled, fluoresced, hummed. Intangible winds gripped the wizard's robe, flapping it out in eddies of blue and green sparks. Around Rincewind's head mad, half-formed spirits howled and gibbered as they were sucked past.

He tried raising a hand. It was immediately surrounded by a glowing octarine corona as the rising magical wind roared past. The gale raced through the room without stirring one iota of dust, yet it was blowing Rincewind's eyelids inside out. It screamed along the tunnels, its banshee-wail bouncing madly from stone to stone.

Twoflower staggered up, bent double in the teeth of the astral gale.

'What the hell is
this
?' he shouted.

Rincewind half-turned. Immediately the howling wind caught him, nearly pitching him over. Poltergeist eddies, spinning in the rushing air, snatched at his feet.

Hrun's arm shot out and caught him. A moment later he and Twoflower had been dragged into the lee of the ravaged altar, and lay panting on the floor. Beside them the talking sword Kring sparkled, its magical field boosted a hundredfold by the storm.

'Hold on!' screamed Rincewind.

'The wind!' shouted Twoflower. 'Where's it coming from? Where's it blowing
to
?' He looked into Rincewind's mask of sheer terror, which made him redouble his own grip on the stones.

'We're doomed,' murmured Rincewind, while overhead the roof cracked and shifted. 'Where do shadows come from?
That's
where the wind is blowing!'

What was in fact happening, as the wizard knew, was that as the abused spirit of Bel-Shamharoth sank through the deeper chthonic planes his brooding spirit was being sucked out of the very stones into the region which, according to the discworld's most reliable priests, was both under the ground and Somewhere Else. In consequence his temple was being abandoned to the ravages of Time, who for thousands of shamefaced years had been reluctant to go near the place. Now the suddenly released, accumulated weight of all those pent-up seconds was bearing down heavily on the unbraced stones.

Hrun glanced up at the widening cracks and sighed. Then he put two fingers into his mouth and whistled.

Strangely the real sound rang out loudly over the pseudosound of the widening astral whirlpool that was forming in the middle of the great octagonal slab. It was followed by a hollow echo which sounded, Rincewind fancied, strangely like the bouncing of strange bones. Then came a noise with no hint of strangeness. It was hollow hoofbeats.

Hrun's warhorse cantered through a creaking archway and reared up by its master, its mane streaming in the gale. The barbarian pulled himself to his feet and slung his treasure bags into a sack that hung from the saddle, then hauled himself onto the beast's back. He reached down and grabbed Twoflower by the scruff of his neck, dragging him across the saddle tree. As the horse turned around Rincewind took a desperate leap and landed behind Hrun, who raised no objection.

The horse pounded surefooted along the tunnels, leaping sudden slides of rubble and adroitly sidestepping huge stones as they thundered down from the straining roof. Rincewind, clinging on grimly, looked behind them.

No wonder the horse was moving so swiftly. Close behind, speeding through the flickering violet light, were a large ominous-looking chest and a picturebox that skittered along dangerously on its three legs. So great was the ability of sapient pearwood to follow its master anywhere, the grave-goods of dead emperors had traditionally been made of it . . .

They reached the outer air a moment before the octagonal arch finally broke and smashed into the flags.

The sun was rising. Behind them a column of dust rose as the temple collapsed in on itself, but they did not look back. That was a shame, because Twoflower might have been able to obtain pictures unusual even by discworld standards.

There was movement in the smoking ruins. They seemed to be growing a green carpet. Then an oak tree spiralled up, branching out like an exploding green rocket, and was in the middle of a venerable copse even before the tips of its aged branches had stopped quivering. A beech burst out like a fungus, matured, rotted, and fell in a cloud of tinder dust amid its struggling offspring. Already the temple was a half-buried heap of mossy stones.

But Time, having initially gone for the throat, was now setting out to complete the job. The boiling interface between decaying magic and ascendant entropy roared down the hill and overtook the galloping horse, whose riders, being themselves creatures of Time, completely failed to notice it. But it lashed into the enchanted forest with the whip of centuries.

'Impressive, isn't it?' observed a voice by Rincewind's knee as the horse cantered through the haze of decaying timber and falling leaves.

The voice had an eerie metallic ring to it. Rincewind looked down at Kring the sword. It had a couple of rubies set in the pommel. He got the impression they were watching him.

From the moorland rimwards of the wood they watched the battle between the trees and Time, which could only have one ending. It was a sort of cabaret to the main business of the halt, which was the consumption of quite a lot of a bear which had incautiously come within bowshot of Hrun.

Rincewind watched Hrun over the top of his slab of greasy meat. Hrun going about the business of being a hero, he realized, was quite different to the wine-bibbing, carousing Hrun who occasionally came to Ankh-Morpork. He was cat-cautious, lithe as a panther, and thoroughly at home.

And I've survived Bel-Shamharoth, Rincewind reminded himself. Fantastic.

Twoflower was helping the hero sort through the treasure stolen from the temple. It was mostly silver set with unpleasant purple stones. Representations of spiders, octopi and the tree-dwelling octarsier of the hubland wastes figured largely in the heap.

Rincewind tried to shut his ears to the grating voice beside him. It was no use.

'—and then I belonged to the Pasha of Re'durat and played a prominent part in the battle of the Great Nef, which is where I received the slight nick you may have noticed some two-thirds of the way up my blade,' Kring was saying from its temporary home in a tussock. 'Some infidel was wearing an octiron collar, most unsporting, and of course I was a lot sharper in those days and my master used to use me to cut silk handkerchiefs in mid-air and – am I boring you?'

'Huh? Oh, no, no, not at all. It's all very interesting,' said Rincewind, with his eyes still on Hrun. How trustworthy would he be? Here they were, out in the wilds, there were trolls about . . .

'I could see you were a cultured person,' Kring went on. 'So seldom do I get to meet really interesting people, for any length of time, anyway. What I'd really like is a nice mantelpiece to hang over, somewhere nice and quiet. I spent a couple of hundred years on the bottom of a lake once.'

'That must have been fun,' said Rincewind absently.

'Not really,' said Kring.

'No, I suppose not.'

'What I'd
really
like is to be a ploughshare. I don't know what that is, but it sounds like an existence with some point to it.'

Twoflower hurried over to the wizard.

'I had a great idea,' he burbled.

'Yah,' said Rincewind, wearily. 'Why don't we get Hrun to accompany us to Quirm?'

Twoflower looked amazed. 'How did you know?' he said.

'I just thought you'd think it,' said Rincewind.

Hrun ceased stuffing silverware into his saddlebags and grinned encouragingly at them. Then his eyes strayed back to the Luggage.

'If we had him with us, who'd attack us?' said Twoflower.

Rincewind scratched his chin. 'Hrun?' he suggested.

'But we saved his life in the Temple!'

'Well, if by
attack
you mean
kill
,' said Rincewind, 'I don't think he'd do that. He's not that sort. He'd just rob us and tie us up and leave us for the wolves, I expect.'

'Oh, come
on
.'

'Look, this is real life,' snapped Rincewind. 'I mean, here you are, carrying around a box full of gold, don't you think anyone in their right minds would jump at the chance of pinching it?' I would, he added mentally – if I hadn't seen what the Luggage does to prying fingers.

Then the answer hit him. He looked from Hrun to the picturebox. The picture imp was doing its laundry in a tiny tub, while the salamanders dozed in their cage.

'I've got an idea,' he said. 'I mean, what is it heroes really want?'

'Gold?' said Twoflower.

'No. I mean
really
want.'

Twoflower frowned. 'I don't quite understand,' he said. Rincewind picked up the picturebox.

'Hrun,' he said. 'Come over here, will you?'

The days passed peacefully. True, a small band of bridge trolls tried to ambush them on one occasion, and a party of brigands nearly caught them unawares one night (but unwisely tried to investigate the Luggage before slaughtering the sleepers). Hrun demanded, and got, double pay for both occasions.

'If any harm comes to us,' said Rincewind, 'then there will be no-one to operate the magic box. No more pictures of Hrun, you understand?'

Hrun nodded, his eyes fixed on the latest picture. It showed Hrun striking a heroic pose, with one foot on a heap of slain trolls.

'Me and you and little friend Two Flowers, we all get on hokay,' he said. 'Also tomorrow, may we get a better profile, hokay?'

He carefully wrapped the picture in trollskin and stowed it in his saddlebag, along with the others.

'It seems to be working,' said Twoflower admiringly, as Hrun rode ahead to scout the road.

'Sure,' said Rincewind. 'What heroes like best is themselves.'

'You're getting quite good at using the picturebox, you know that?'

'Yar.'

'So you might like to have this.' Twoflower held out a picture.

'What is it?' asked Rincewind.

'Oh, just the picture you took in the temple.'

Rincewind looked in horror. There, bordered by a few glimpses of tentacle, was a huge, whorled, calloused, potion-stained and unfocused thumb.

'That's the story of my life,' he said wearily.

'You win,' said Fate, pushing the heap of souls across the gaming table. The assembled gods relaxed. 'There will be other games,' he added.

The Lady smiled into two eyes that were like holes in the universe.

And then there was nothing but the ruin of the forests and a cloud of dust on the horizon, which drifted away on the breeze. And, sitting on a pitted and moss-grown milestone, a black and raggedy figure. His was the air of one who is unjustly put upon, who is dreaded and feared, yet who is the only friend of the poor and the best doctor for the mortally wounded.

Death, although of course completely eyeless, watched Rincewind disappearing with what would, had His face possessed any mobility at all, have been a frown. Death, although exceptionally busy at all times, decided that He now had a hobby. There was something about the wizard that irked Him beyond measure. He didn't keep appointments for one thing.

I
'LL GET YOU YET, CULLY
, said Death, in the voice like the slamming of leaden coffin lids,
SEE IF I DON'T
.

IT WAS CALLED
the Wyrmberg and it rose almost one half of a mile above the green valley; a mountain huge, grey and upside down.

At its base it was a mere score of yards across. Then it rose through clinging cloud, curving gracefully outward like an upturned trumpet until it was truncated by a plateau fully a quarter of a mile across. There was a tiny forest up there, its greenery cascading over the lip. There were buildings. There was even a small river, tumbling over the edge in a waterfall so wind-whipped that it reached the ground as rain.

There were also a number of cave mouths, a few yards below the plateau. They had a crudely carved, regular look about them, so that on this crisp autumn morning the Wyrmberg hung over the clouds like a giant's dovecote.

This would mean that the 'doves' had a wingspan slightly in excess of forty yards.