The Color of Magic

Rincewind and Twoflower are halfway to Quirm. Rincewind has come to rather like Twoflower. Rincewind is trying to explain that magic was once wild, but has been tamed and made to obey laws like the Conservation of Reality. Rincewind, dejected by the illogical nature of the world and in strong favor of organization and mathematics, has to admit that it is “all very well going on about pure logic […], but the plain fact of the matter [is] that the Disc [is] manifestly traversing space on the back of a giant turtle and the gods [have] a habit of going around to atheists’ houses and smashing their windows” (82-83).

They hear the sound of rolling dice and a troll appears out of nowhere in the road before them. Rincewind tries to throw his sword at the creature charging them but misses completely. Luckily, a rock bounces up from the ground and strikes the troll in the neck, killing it. Both horses bolt into the woods, separating the two travelers.

Twoflower finds himself lost in the woods. His Luggage was left behind when his horse bolted. When his horse ran away with him, it disturbed a she-bear and her cubs and a wolf pack, but it had been moving so fast none of them had chased it. The stone Twoflower sits on is carved with an image of something like a spider or a squid. The runes beneath the image read: “Traveler, the hospitable temple of Bel-Shamharoth lies one thousand paces hubward” (85). Twoflower sets out for the temple.

Meanwhile, Rincewind hangs from the branch of a beech tree. His horse was killed by an enraged she-bear, then Rincewind was pursued by a wolf pack. He climbed a tree to escape the wolves and now a large green snake makes its leisurely way along the branch toward him. Death sits on the next branch, waiting for him to either fall to the wolves or be bitten by the snake.

Rincewind tries to swing himself to another branch nearby. Instead, his own branch splits and he falls slowly toward the ground, dangling from a strip of peeling bark. As he nears the trunk of the tree, a pair of green hands reaches from the mossy bark and drags the wizard into the tree. The trunk closes behind him.

In Dunmanifestin, the game is down to two players. The Lady now faces off with Fate. Fate places his piece, Bel-Shamharoth, on the board. He rolls the dice.

Rincewind finds himself inside the tree in a palace with Druellae, the hamadryad of the tree, sitting nearby. She tells him that Twoflower is in the temple of Bel-Shamharoth, The Soul Eater. Bel-Shamharoth represents—or is represented by—the number eight, which must never be spoken in his presence. The Octavo Rincewind had once opened, the book containing the magic spell lodged in his brain, had had an image of Bel-Shamharoth on it: “He was not Evil, for even Evil has a certain vitality—Bel-Shamharoth was the flip side of the coin of which Good and Evil are but one side” (91).

Rincewind asks why anybody would be stupid enough to worship the Soul Eater. The dryad shrugs and says that there were advantages, and the people who used to worship it had strange ideas. Druellae “invites” Rincewind to go with her and watch Twoflower’s fate. Rincewind would rather not, but when a troupe of burly he-dryads appears, he gives in.

The inside of the tree is full of rooms and staircases while the outside had seemed narrow enough for Rincewind to put his arms around. The tree in his world is a four-dimensional representation of an independent universe. They arrive at a central chamber full of dryads and he-dryads, and Druellae tells Rincewind they are going to show him some of the old wild magic, the kind that that used to be free in the world before it was tamed.

The dryads join hands in a circle and begin to turn “widdershins” against the revolution of the Discworld, creating astral friction and building up a charge of wild magic. A shaft of octarine light forms the image of a temple on a hill. The shape of the temple has an unpleasant effect on the eye of the beholder. A great white horse stands outside—not Twoflower’s horse, but one Rincewind is sure he has seen before.

The image shifts to the inside of the temple, where Rincewind sees Hrun the Barbarian. At that moment, Rincewind hears the sound of dice rattling. He makes a bolt for freedom and dashes across the image in the middle of the circle. There is a flash, and Rincewind disappears.

Hrun the Barbarian is in a magical temple, which is nothing new for him. He followed a magical trunk full of gold into the temple, but he has lost track of it. He carries a magical sword, Kring, which has a soul and is annoyingly chatty.

Twoflower is in the temple as well. The inside of the building appears to be bigger than the outside. A point of light appears in the distance and grows. Then Rincewind arrives with a bump at Twoflower’s feet. When the wizard gets his bearings and realizes where he is, he warns Twoflower not to speak the number you get when you add four plus four.

Twoflower proposes that they find Bel-Shamharoth and explain their predicament, whereupon he will no doubt show them the way out. They eventually find themselves in a chamber “with walls to a number that Rincewind didn’t dare to contemplate, and ei—and 7a passages radiating from it” (105). The Luggage emerges from one passage, followed by Hrun. Twoflower begins rummaging for the flash attachment for his camera. Rincewind warns Hrun not to speak the number you get if you subtract two from ten. Kring the talking sword asks why they shouldn't say “eight.”

The air turns thick, and an octagonal slab of stone in the center of the floor rises and overturns, exposing a pit. A tentacle slithers out, grabs Rincewind by the ankle, and pulls him toward the opening. While Rincewind, Hrun, and the sword fight Bel-Shamharoth (the Sender of Eight), Twoflower sets up his camera on a tripod, attaching a cage of salamanders to the box.

Rincewind tries to drag him away. Rincewind has almost convinced Twoflower to leave when Twoflower notices that the Sender of Eight has gotten a grip on the Luggage. He goes back to save it. Hrun is muffled in coils of tentacle. His magic sword is wrenched from his grasp.

Rincewind stares at the thing rising from the pit. It stares back at him with a single eye. The tails of the salamanders in their cage have swelled up and are pulsing with white light. The imp in the camera box tells everyone to “smile, please” (110), and the salamanders set off a blinding flash. Bel-Shamharoth screams and retracts its tentacles to cover its eye as it falls back into its pit. A moment later, it grabs the slab of stone and pulls it back over the opening.

The temple begins to collapse in an astral storm created by Bel-Shamharoth being sucked into the Dungeon Dimensions. Rincewind hears a sound like rattling dice, and Hrun’s warhorse thunders into the room. The humans scramble onto its back, and it charges toward the exit, pursued by the Luggage. They escape the temple just in time and set out together toward Quirm.