The Colour of Magic

Rincewind translated freely.
    “I doubt it,” said Withel.
    “Bet?”
    “No.”
    As Withel tensed himself to turn on the tourist Rincewind lashed out and caught the thief on the jaw. Withel stared at him in amazement for a moment, and then quietly toppled into the mud.
    The wizard uncurled his stinging fist and the roll of gold coins slipped between his throbbing fingers. He looked down at the recumbent thief.
    “Good grief,” he gasped.
    He looked up and yelled as another ember landed on his neck. Flames were racing along the rooftops on either side of the street. All around him people were hurling possessions from windows and dragging horses from smoking stables. Another explosion in the white-hot volcano that was the Drum sent a whole marble mantelpiece scything overhead.
    “The Widdershin Gate’s the nearest!” Rincewind shouted above the crackle of collapsing rafters. “Come on!”
    He grabbed Twoflower’s reluctant arm and dragged him down the street.
    “My Luggage—”
    “Blast your luggage! Stay here much longer and you’ll go where you don’t need luggage! Come on!” screamed Rincewind.
    They jogged on through the crowd of frightened people leaving the area, while the wizard took great mouthfuls of cool dawn air. Something was puzzling him.
    “I’m sure all the candles went out,” he said. “So how did the Drum catch fire?”
    “I don’t know,” moaned Twoflower. “It’s terrible, Rincewind. We were getting along so well, too.”
    Rincewind stopped in astonishment, so that another refugee cannoned into him and spun away with an oath.
    “Getting on?”
    “Yes, a great bunch of fellows, I thought—language was a bit of a problem, but they were so keen for me to join their party, they just wouldn’t take no for an answer—really friendly people, I thought…”
    Rincewind started to correct him, then realized he didn’t know how to begin.
    “It’ll be a blow for old Broadman,” Twoflower continued. “Still, he was wise. I’ve still got the rhinu he paid as his first premium.”
    Rincewind didn’t know the meaning of the word premium, but his mind was working fast.
    “You inn-sewered the Drum?” he said. “You bet Broadman it wouldn’t catch fire?”
    “Oh yes. Standard valuation. Two hundred rhinu . Why do you ask?”
    Rincewind turned and stared at the flames racing toward them, and wondered how much of Ankh-Morpork could be bought for two hundred rhinu . Quite a large piece, he decided. Only not now, not the way those flames were moving…
    He glanced down at the tourist.
    “You—” he began, and searched his memory for the worst word in the Trob tongue; the happy little beTrobi didn’t really know how to swear properly.
    “You,” he repeated. Another hurrying figure bumped into him, narrowly missing him with the blade over its shoulder. Rincewind’s tortured temper exploded.
    “You little (such a one who, while wearing a copper nose ring, stands in a footbath atop Mount Raruaruaha during a heavy thunderstorm and shouts that Alohura, goddess of lightning, has the facial features of a diseased uloruaha root)!”
    J UST DOING MY JOB , said the figure, stalking away.
    Every word fell as heavily as slabs of marble; moreover, Rincewind was certain that he was the only one who heard them.
    He grabbed Twoflower again.
    “Let’s get out of here!” he suggested.

    One interesting side effect of the fire in Ankh-Morpork concerns the inn-sewer-ants policy, which left the city through the ravaged roof of the Broken Drum, was wafted high into the Discworld’s atmosphere on the ensuing thermal, and came to earth several days and a few thousand miles away on an uloruaha bush in the beTrobi islands. The simple, laughing islanders subsequently worshipped it as a god, much to the amusement of their more sophisticated neighbors. Strangely enough the rainfall and harvests in the next few years were almost supernaturally abundant, and this led to a research team being dispatched to the islands by the Minor Religions faculty of Unseen University. Their verdict was that it only went to show.

    The fire, driven by the wind, spread out from the Drum faster than a man could walk. The timbers of the Widdershin Gate were already on fire when Rincewind, his face blistered and reddened from the flames, reached them. By now he and Twoflower were on horseback—mounts hadn’t been that hard to obtain. A wily merchant had asked fifty times their worth, and had been left gaping when one