The Colour of Magic

had he done? Something terrible, apparently.
    But in his experience it was only a matter of time before the normal balance of the universe restored itself and started doing the usual terrible things to him. He backed away, ducked between the still spinning dryads who were creating the magic circle, and watched to see what Druellae would do next.
    “Grab him,” she screamed. “Take him a long way from the Tree and kill him!”
    Rincewind turned and bolted.
    Across the focus of the circle.
    There was a brilliant flash.
    There was a sudden darkness.
    There was a vaguely Rincewind-shaped violet shadow, dwindling to a point and winking out.
    There was nothing at all.

    Hrun the Barbarian crept soundlessly along the corridors, which were lit with a light so violet that it was almost black. His earlier confusion was gone. This was obviously a magical temple, and that explained everything.
    It explained why, earlier in the afternoon, he had espied a chest by the side of the track while riding through this benighted forest. Its top was invitingly open, displaying much gold. But when he had leapt off his horse to approach it the chest had sprouted legs and had gone trotting off into the forest, stopping again a few hundred yards away.
    Now, after several hours of teasing pursuit, he had lost it in these hell-lit tunnels. On the whole, the unpleasant carvings and occasional disjointed skeletons he passed held no fears for Hrun. This was partly because he was not exceptionally bright while being at the same time exceptionally unimaginative, but it was also because odd carvings and perilous tunnels were all in a day’s work. He spent a great deal of time in similar situations, seeking gold or demons or distressed virgins and relieving them respectively of their owners, their lives and at least one cause of their distress.
    Observe Hrun, as he leaps cat-footed across a suspicious tunnel mouth. Even in this violet light his skin gleams coppery. There is much gold about his person, in the form of anklets and wristlets, but otherwise he is naked except for a leopardskin loincloth. He took that in the steaming forests of Howondaland, after killing its owner with his teeth.
    In his right hand he carries the magical black sword Kring, which was forged from a thunderbolt and has a soul but suffers no scabbard. Hrun had stolen it only three days before from the impregnable palace of the Archmandrite of B’Ituni, and he was already regretting it. It was beginning to get on his nerves.
    “I tell you it went down that last passage on the right,” hissed Kring in a voice like the scrape of a blade over stone.
    “Be silent!”
    “All I said was—”
    “Shut up!”

    And Twoflower…
    He was lost, he knew that. Either the building was much bigger than it looked, or he was now on some wide underground level without having gone down any steps, or—as he was beginning to suspect—the inner dimensions of the place disobeyed a fairly basic rule of architecture by being bigger than the outside. And why all these strange lights? They were eight-sided crystals set at regular intervals in the walls and ceiling, and they shed a rather unpleasant glow that didn’t so much illuminate as outline the darkness.
    And whoever had done those carvings on the wall, Twoflower thought charitably, had probably been drinking too much. For years.
    On the other hand, it was certainly a fascinating building. Its builders had been obsessed with the number eight. The floor was a continuous mosaic of eight-sided tiles, the corridor walls were angled to give the corridors eight sides if the walls and ceilings were counted and, in those places where part of the masonry had fallen in, Twoflower noticed that even the stones themselves had eight sides.
    “I don’t like it,” said the picture imp, from his box around Twoflower’s neck.
    “Why not?” inquired Twoflower.
    “It’s weird.”
    “But you’re a demon. Demons can’t call things weird. I mean, what’s weird to a demon?”
    “Oh, you know,” said the demon cautiously, glancing around nervously and shifting from claw to claw. “Things. Stuff.”
    Twoflower looked at him sternly. “What things?”
    The demon coughed nervously (demons do not breathe; however, every intelligent being, whether it breathes or not, coughs nervously at some time in its life. And this was one of them as far as the demon was concerned).
    “Oh, things,” it said wretchedly. “Evil things. Things we don’t talk about