The Colour of Magic

struck his ear. There was a gust of wind, hardly felt.
    “How do you know there’s treasure in there?” he said.
    Hrun heaved, and managed to hook his fingers under the stone. “You find chokeapples under a chokeapple tree,” he said. “You find treasure under altars. Logic.”
    He gritted his teeth. The stone swung up and landed heavily on the floor.
    This time something struck Rincewind’s hand, heavily. He clawed at the air and looked at the thing he had caught. It was a piece of stone with five-plus-three sides. He looked up at the ceiling. Should it be sagging like that? Hrun hummed a little tune as he began to pull crumbling leather from the desecrated altar.
    The air crackled, fluoresced, hummed. Intangible winds gripped the wizard’s robe, flapping it out in eddies of blue and green sparks. Around Rincewind’s head mad, half-formed spirits howled and gibbered as they were sucked past.
    He tried raising a hand. It was immediately surrounded by a glowing octarine corona as the rising magical wind roared past. The gale raced through the room without stirring one iota of dust, yet it was blowing Rincewind’s eyelids inside out. It screamed along the tunnels, its banshee-wail bouncing madly from stone to stone.
    Twoflower staggered up, bent double in the teeth of the astral gale.
    “What the hell is this ?” he shouted.
    Rincewind half-turned. Immediately the howling wind caught him, nearly pitching him over. Poltergeist eddies, spinning in the rushing air, snatched at his feet.
    Hrun’s arm shot out and caught him. A moment later he and Twoflower had been dragged into the lee of the ravaged altar, and lay panting on the floor. Beside them the talking sword Kring sparkled, its magical field boosted a hundredfold by the storm.
    “Hold on!” screamed Rincewind.
    “The wind!” shouted Twoflower. “Where’s it coming from? Where’s it blowing to ?” He looked into Rincewind’s mask of sheer terror, which made him redouble his own grip on the stones.
    “We’re doomed,” murmured Rincewind, while overhead the roof cracked and shifted. “Where do shadows come from? That’s where the wind is blowing!”
    What was in fact happening, as the wizard knew, was that as the abused spirit of Bel-Shamharoth sank through the deeper chthonic planes his brooding spirit was being sucked out of the very stones into the region which, according to the Discworld’s most reliable priests, was both under the ground and Somewhere Else. In consequence his temple was being abandoned to the ravages of Time, who for thousands of shamefaced years had been reluctant to go near the place. Now the suddenly released, accumulated weight of all those pent-up seconds was bearing down heavily on the unbraced stones.
    Hrun glanced up at the widening cracks and sighed. Then he put two fingers into his mouth and whistled.
    Strangely the real sound rang out loudly over the pseudo-sound of the widening astral whirlpool that was forming in the middle of the great octagonal slab. It was followed by a hollow echo which sounded, he fancied, strangely like the bouncing of strange bones. Then came a noise with no hint of strangeness. It was hollow hoofbeats.
    Hrun’s warhorse cantered through a creaking archway and reared up by its master, its mane streaming in the gale. The barbarian pulled himself to his feet and slung his treasure bags into a sack that hung from the saddle, then hauled himself onto the beast’s back. He reached down and grabbed Twoflower by the scruff of his neck, dragging him across the saddle tree. As the horse turned around Rincewind took a desperate leap and landed behind Hrun, who raised no objection.
    The horse pounded surefooted along the tunnels, leaping sudden slides of rubble and adroitly sidestepping huge stones as they thundered down from the straining roof. Rincewind, clinging on grimly, looked behind them.
    No wonder the horse was moving so swiftly. Close behind, speeding through the flickering violet light, were a large ominous-looking chest and a picture box that skittered along dangerously on its three legs. So great was the ability of sapient pearwood to follow its master anywhere, the gravegoods of dead emperors had traditionally been made of it…
    They reached the outer air a moment before the octagonal arch finally broke and smashed into the flags.
    The sun was rising. Behind them a column of dust rose as the temple collapsed in on itself, but they did not look back. That was a shame, because