The Colour of Magic

is the point I’m broadly trying to get across, master.”
    Twoflower shook his head wearily. “I wish Rincewind was here,” he said. “He’d know what to do.”
    “Him?” sneered the demon. “Can’t see a wizard coming here. They can’t have anything to do with the number eight.” The demon slapped a hand across his mouth guiltily.
    Twoflower looked up at the ceiling.
    “What was that?” he asked. “Didn’t you hear something?”
    “Me? Hear? No! Not a thing!” the demon insisted. It jerked back into its box and slammed the door. Twoflower tapped on it. The door opened a crack.
    “It sounded like a stone moving,” he explained. The door banged shut. Twoflower shrugged.
    “The place is probably falling to bits,” he said to himself. He stood up.
    “I say!” he shouted. “Is anyone there?”
    AIR, Air, air, replied the dark tunnels.
    “Hullo?” he tried.
    LO, Lo, lo.
    “I know there’s someone here, I just heard you playing dice!”
    ICE, Ice, ice.
    “Look, I had just—”
    Twoflower stopped. The reason for this was the bright point of light that had popped into existence a few feet from his eyes. It grew rapidly, and after a few seconds was the tiny bright shape of a man. At this stage it began to make a noise, or, rather, Twoflower started to hear the noise it had been making all along. It sounded like a sliver of a scream, caught in one long instant of time.
    The iridescent man was doll-sized now, a tortured shape tumbling in slow motion while hanging in midair. Twoflower wondered why he had thought of the phrase “a sliver of a scream”…and began to wish he hadn’t.
    It was beginning to look like Rincewind. The wizard’s mouth was open, and his face was brilliantly lit by the light of—what? Strange suns, Twoflower found himself thinking. Suns men don’t usually see. He shivered.
    Now the turning wizard was half man-size. At that point the growth was faster, there was a sudden crowded moment, a rush of air, and an explosion of sound. Rincewind tumbled out of the air, screaming. He hit the floor hard, choked, then rolled over with his head cradled in his arms and his body curled up tightly.
    When the dust had settled Twoflower reached out gingerly and tapped the wizard on the shoulder. The human ball rolled up tighter.
    “It’s me,” explained Twoflower helpfully. The wizard unrolled a fraction.
    “What?” he said.
    “Me.”
    In one movement Rincewind unrolled and bounced up in front of the little man, his hands gripping his shoulders desperately. His eyes were wild and wide.
    “Don’t say it!” he hissed. “Don’t say it and we might get out!”
    “Get out? How did you get in? Don’t you know—”
    “Don’t say it!”
    Twoflower backed away from this madman.
    “Don’t say it!”
    “Don’t say what?”
    “The number!”
    “Number?” said Twoflower. “Hey, Rincewind—”
    “Yes, number! Between seven and nine. Four plus four!”
    “What, ei—”
    Rincewind’s hands clapped over the man’s mouth. “Say it and we’re doomed. Just don’t think about it, right? Trust me!”
    “I don’t understand!” wailed Twoflower. Rincewind relaxed slightly, which was to say that he still made a violin string look like a bowl of jelly.
    “Come on,” he said. “Let’s try and get out. And I’ll try and tell you.”

    After the first Age of Magic the disposal of grimoires began to become a severe problem on the Discworld. A spell is still a spell even when imprisoned temporarily in parchment and ink. It has potency. This is not a problem while the book’s owner still lives, but on his death the spell book becomes a source of uncontrolled power that cannot easily be defused.
    In short, spell books leak magic. Various solutions have been tried. Countries near the Rim simply loaded down the books of dead mages with leaden pentalphas and threw them over the Edge. Near the Hub less satisfactory alternatives were available. Inserting the offending books in canisters of negatively polarized octiron and sinking them in the fathomless depths of the sea was one (burial in deep caves on land was earlier ruled out after some districts complained of walking trees and five headed cats) but before long the magic seeped out and eventually fishermen complained of shoals of invisible fish or psychic clams.
    A temporary solution was the construction, in various centers of magical lore, of large rooms made of denatured octiron, which is impervious to most forms of magic. Here