The Colour of Magic (22 page)

Rincewind's mouth twisted. He whimpered a little. One of his legs came up convulsively and caught him painfully in the chest.

Twoflower swirled his own drink thoughtfully while he considered the flavour.

'Ghlen Livid,' he said. 'The fermented
vul
nut drink they freeze-distil in my home country. A certain smokey quality . . . Piquant. From the western plantations in, ah, Rehigreed Province, yes? Next year's harvest, I fancy, from the colour. May I ask how you came by it?'

(Plants on the disc, while including the categories known commonly as
annuals
, which were sown this year to come up later this year,
biennials
, sown this year to grow next year, and
perennials
, sown this year to grow until further notice, also included a few rare
re-annuals
which, because of an unusual four-dimensional twist in their genes, could be planted this year to come up
last year.
The
vul
nut vine was particularly exceptional in that it could flourish as many as eight years prior to its seed actually being sown.
Vul
nut wine was reputed to give certain drinkers an insight into the future which was, from the nut's point of view, the past. Strange but true.)

'All things drift into the Circumfence in time,' said the troll, gnomically, gently rocking in his chair. 'My job is to recover the flotsam. Timber, of course, and ships. Barrels of wine. Bales of cloth. You.'

Light dawned inside Rincewind's head.

'It's a net, isn't it? You've got a net right on the edge of the sea!'

'The Circumfence,' nodded the troll. Ripples ran across his chest.

Rincewind looked out into the phosphorescent darkness that surrounded the island, and grinned inanely.

'Of course,' he said. 'Amazing! You could sink piles and attach it to reefs and – good grief! The net would have to be
very
strong.'

'It is,' said Tethis.

'It could be extended for a couple of miles, if you found enough rocks and things,' said the wizard.

'Ten thousands of miles. I just patrol this league.'

'That's a third of the way around the disc!'

Tethis sloshed a little as he nodded again. While the two men helped themselves to some more of the green wine, he told them about the Circumfence, the great effort that had been made to build it, and the ancient and wise Kingdom of Krull which had constructed it several centuries before, and the seven navies that patrolled it constantly to keep it in repair and bring its salvage back to Krull, and the manner in which Krull had become a land of leisure ruled by the most learned seekers after knowledge, and the way in which they sought constantly to understand in every possible particular the wondrous complexity of the universe, and the way in which sailors marooned on the Circumfence were turned into slaves, and usually had their tongues cut out. After some interjections at this point he spoke, in a friendly way, on the futility of force, the impossibility of escaping from the island except by boat to one of the other three hundred and eighty isles that lay between the island and Krull itself, or by leaping over the Edge, and the high merit of muteness in comparison to, for example, death.

There was a pause. The muted night-roar of the Rimfall only served to give the silence a heavier texture.

Then the rocking chair started to creak again. Tethis seemed to have grown alarmingly during the monologue.

'There is nothing personal in all this,' he added. 'I too am a slave. If you try to overpower me I shall have to kill you, of course, but I won't take any particular pleasure in it.'

Rincewind looked at the shimmering fists that rested lightly in the troll's lap. He suspected they could strike with all the force of a tsunami.

'I don't think you understand,' explained Twoflower. 'I am a citizen of the Golden Empire. I'm sure Krull would not wish to incur the displeasure of the Emperor.'

'How will the Emperor know?' asked the troll. 'Do you think you're the first person from the Empire who has ended up on the Circumfence?'

'I won't be a slave!' shouted Rincewind. 'I'd – I'd jump over the Edge first!' He was amazed at the sound in his own voice.

'Would you, though?' asked the troll. The rocking chair flicked back against the wall and one blue arm caught the wizard around the waist. A moment later the troll was striding out of the shack with Rincewind gripped carelessly in one fist.

He did not stop until he came to the rimward edge of the island. Rincewind squealed.

'Stop that or I really will throw you over the edge,' snapped the troll. 'I'm holding you, aren't I? Look.'

Rincewind looked.

In front of him was a soft black night whose mist-muted stars glowed peacefully. But his eyes turned downwards, drawn by some irresistible fascination.

It was midnight on the disc and so, therefore, the sun was far, far below, swinging slowly under Great A'Tuin's vast and frosty plastron. Rincewind tried a last attempt to fix his gaze on the tips of his boots, which were protruding over the rim of the rock, but the sheer drop wrenched it away.

On either side of him two glittering curtains of water hurtled towards infinity as the sea swept around the island on its way to the long fall. A hundred yards below the wizard the largest sea salmon he had ever seen flicked itself out of the foam in a wild, jerky and ultimately hopeless leap. Then it fell back, over and over, in the golden underworld light.

Huge shadows grew out of that light like pillars supporting the roof of the universe. Hundreds of miles below him the wizard made out the shape of something, the edge of something—

Like those curious little pictures where the silhouette of an ornate glass suddenly becomes the outline of two faces, the scene beneath him flipped into a whole new, terrifying perspective. Because down there was the head of an elephant as big as a reasonably sized continent. One mighty tusk cut like a mountain against the golden light, trailing a widening shadow towards the stars. The head was slightly tilted, and a huge ruby eye might almost have been a red supergiant that had managed to shine at noonday.

Below the elephant—

Rincewind swallowed and tried not to think—

Below the elephant there was nothing but the distant, painful disc of the sun. And, sweeping slowly past it, was something that for all its city-sized scales, its crater-pocks, its lunar cragginess, was indubitably a flipper.

'Shall I let go?' suggested the troll.

'Gnah,' said Rincewind, straining backwards.

'I have lived
here on the Edge
for five years and I have not had the courage,' boomed Tethis. 'Nor have you, if I'm any judge.' He stepped back, allowing Rincewind to fling himself onto the ground.

Twoflower strolled up to the rim and peered over.

'Fantastic,' he said. 'If only I had my picturebox . . . What else is down there? I mean, if you jumped off, what would you see?'

Tethis sat down on an outcrop. High over the disc the moon came out from behind a cloud, giving him the appearance of ice.

'My home is down there, perhaps,' he said slowly. 'Beyond your silly elephants and that ridiculous turtle. A real world. Sometimes I come out here and look, but somehow I can never bring myself to take that extra step . . . A real world, with real people. I have wives and little ones, somewhere down there . . .' He stopped, and blew his nose. 'You soon learn what you're made of,
here on the Edge
!

'Stop saying that. Please,' moaned Rincewind. He turned over and saw Twoflower standing unconcernedly at the very lip of the rock. 'Gnah,' he said, and tried to burrow into the stone.

'There's another world down there?' said Twoflower, peering over. 'Where, exactly?'

The troll waved an arm vaguely. 'Somewhere,' he said. 'That's all I know. It was quite a small world. Mostly blue.'

'So why are you here?' said Twoflower.

'Isn't it obvious?' snapped the troll. 'I fell off the edge!'

He told them of the world of Bathys, somewhere among the stars, where the seafolk had built a number of thriving civilizations in the three large oceans that sprawled across its disc. He had been a meatman, one of the caste which earned a perilous living in large, sail-powered land yachts that ventured far out to land and hunted the shoals of deer and buffalo that abounded in the storm-haunted continents. His particular yacht had been blown into uncharted lands by a freak gale. The rest of the crew had taken the yacht's little rowing trolley and had struck out for a distant lake, but Tethis, as master, had elected to remain with his vessel. The storm had carried it right over the rocky rim of the world, smashing it to matchwood in the process.

'At first I fell,' said Tethis, 'but falling isn't so bad, you know. It's only the landing that hurts, and there was nothing below me. As I fell I saw the world spin off into space until it was lost against the stars.'

'What happened next?' said Twoflower breathlessly, glancing towards the misty universe.

'I froze solid,' said Tethis simply. 'Fortunately it is something my race can survive. But I thawed out occasionally when I passed near other worlds. There was one, I think it was the one with what I thought was this strange ring of mountains around it that turned out to be the biggest dragon you could ever imagine, covered in snow and glaciers and holding its tail in its mouth – well, I came within a few leagues of that, I shot over the landscape like a comet, in fact, and then I was off again. Then there was a time I woke up and there was your world coming at me like a custard pie thrown by the Creator and, well, I landed in the sea not far from the Circumfence widdershins of Krull. All sorts of creatures get washed up against the Fence, and at the time they were looking for slaves to man the way stations, and I ended up here.' He stopped and stared intently at Rincewind. 'Every night I come out here and look down,' he finished, 'and I never jump. Courage is hard to come by,
here on the Edge
.'

Rincewind began to crawl determinedly towards the shack. He gave a little scream as the troll picked him up, not unkindly, and set him on his feet.

'Amazing,' said Twoflower, and leaned further out over the Edge. 'There are lots of other worlds out there?'

'Quite a number, I imagine,' said the troll.

'I suppose one could contrive some sort of, I don't know, some sort of a
thing
that could preserve one against the cold,' said the little man thoughtfully. 'Some sort of a ship that one could sail over the Edge and sail to far-off worlds, too. I wonder . . .'

'Don't even think about it!' moaned Rincewind. 'Stop talking like that, do you hear?'

'They all talk like that in Krull,' said Tethis. 'Those with tongues, of course,' he added.

'Are you awake?'

Twoflower snored on. Rincewind jabbed him viciously in the ribs.

'I said, are you awake?' he snarled.

'Scrdfngh . . .'

'We've got to get out of here before this salvage fleet comes!'

The dishwater light of dawn oozed through the shack's one window, slopping across the piles of salvaged boxes and bundles that were strewn around the interior. Twoflower grunted again and tried to burrow into the pile of furs and blankets that Tethis had given them.

'Look, there's all kinds of weapons and stuff in here,' said Rincewind. 'He's gone out somewhere. When he comes back we could overpower him and – and – well, then we can think of something. How about it?'

'That doesn't sound like a very good idea,' said Twoflower. 'Anyhow, it's a bit ungracious isn't it?'

'Tough buns,' snapped Rincewind. 'This is a rough universe.'

He rummaged through the piles around the walls and selected a heavy, wavy-bladed scimitar that had probably been some pirate's pride and joy. It looked the sort of weapon that relied as much on its weight as its edge to cause damage. He raised it awkwardly.

'Would he leave that sort of thing around if it could hurt him?' Twoflower wondered aloud.

Rincewind ignored him and took up a position beside the door. When it opened some ten minutes later he moved unhesitatingly, swinging it across the opening at what he judged was the troll's head height. It swished harmlessly through nothing at all and struck the doorpost, jerking him off his feet and on to the floor.

There was a sigh above him. He looked up into Tethis' face, which was shaking sadly from side to side.

'It wouldn't have harmed me,' said the troll, 'but nevertheless I am hurt. Deeply hurt.' He reached over the wizard and jerked the sword out of the wood. With no apparent effort he bent its blade into a circle and sent it bowling away over the rocks until it hit a stone and sprang, still spinning, in a silver arc that ended in the mists forming over the Rimfall.

'
Very
deeply hurt,' he concluded. He reached down beside the door and tossed a sack towards Twoflower.

'It's the carcass of a deer that is just about how you humans like it, and a few lobsters, and a sea salmon. The Circumfence provides,' he said casually.

He looked hard at the tourist, and then down again at Rincewind.

'What are you staring at?' he said.

'It's just that—' said Twoflower.

'—compared to last night—' said Rincewind.

'You're so
small
,' finished Twoflower.

'I
see
!' said the troll carefully. 'Personal remarks now.' He drew himself up to his full height, which was currently about four feet. 'Just because I'm made of water doesn't mean I'm made of wood, you know.'

'I'm sorry,' said Twoflower, climbing hastily out of the furs.

'You're made of
dirt
,' said the troll, 'but I didn't pass comments about things you can't help, did I? Oh, no. We can't help the way the Creator made us, that's my view. But if you must know, your moon here is rather more powerful than the ones around my own world.'

'The moon?' said Twoflower. 'I don't under—'

'If I've got to spell it out,' said the troll, testily, 'I'm suffering from chronic tides.'

A bell jangled in the darkness of the shack. Tethis strode across the creaking floor to the complicated device of levers, strings and bells that was mounted on the Circumfence's topmost strand where it passed through the hut.