The Colour of Magic

and turns a graceful cartwheel to bring their hooks, with a faint clang, against a couple of the walking rings in the ceiling .
    Only now it is the floor. The world has changed. Now she is standing on the edge of a deep bowl or crater, floored with the little rings across which the dragonriders are already strolling with a pendulum gait. In the center of the bowl their huge mounts wait among the herd. Far above are the distant rocks of the cavern floor, discolored by centuries of dragon droppings .
    Moving with the easy gliding movement that is second nature Liessa sets off toward her own dragon, Laolith, who turns his great horsey head toward her. His jowls are greasy with pork fat .
    It was very enjoyable, he says in her mind .
    “I thought I said there were to be no unaccompanied flights?” she snaps .
    I was hungry, Liessa .
    “Curb your hunger. Soon there will be horses to eat.”
    The reins stick in our teeth. Are there any warriors? We like warriors.
    Liessa swings down the mounting ladder and lands with her legs locked around Laolith’s leathery neck.
    “The warrior is mine. There are a couple of others you can have. One appears to be a wizard of sorts,” she adds by way of encouragement.
    Oh, you know how it is with wizards. Half an hour afterward you could do with another one, the dragon grumbles.
    He spreads his wings and drops.

    “They’re gaining!” screamed Rincewind. He bent even lower over his horse’s neck and groaned. Twoflower was trying to keep up while at the same time craning round to look at the flying beasts.
    “You don’t understand!” screamed the tourist, above the terrible noise of the wingbeats. “All my life I’ve wanted to see dragons!”
    “From the inside?” shouted Rincewind. “Shut up and ride!” He whipped at his horse with the reins and stared at the wood ahead, trying to drag it closer by sheer willpower. Under those trees they’d be safe. Under those trees no dragons could fly…
    He heard the clap of wings before shadows folded around him. Instinctively he rolled in the saddle and felt the white-hot stab of pain as something sharp scored a line across his shoulders.
    Behind him Hrun screamed, but it sounded more like a bellow of rage than a cry of pain. The barbarian had vaulted down into the heather and had drawn the black sword, Kring. He flourished it as one of the dragons curved in for another low pass.
    “No bloody lizard does that to me!” he roared.
    Rincewind leaned over and grabbed Twoflower’s reins.
    “Come on !” he hissed.
    “But, the dragons—” said Twoflower, entranced.
    “Blast the—” began the wizard, and froze. Another dragon had peeled off from the circling dots overhead and was gliding toward them. Rincewind let go of Twoflower’s horse, swore bitterly, and spurred his own mount toward the trees, alone. He didn’t look back at the sudden commotion behind him and, when a shadow passed over him, merely gibbered weakly and tried to burrow into the horse’s mane.
    Then, instead of the searing, piercing pain he had expected, there was a series of stinging blows as the terrified animal passed under the eaves of the wood. The wizard tried to hang on but another low branch, stouter than the others, knocked him out of the saddle. The last thing he heard before the flashing blue lights of unconsciousness closed in was a high reptilian scream of frustration, and the thrashing of talons in the treetops.

    When he awoke a dragon was watching him; at least, it was staring in his general direction. Rincewind groaned and tried to dig his way into the moss with his shoulderblades, then gasped as the pain hit him.
    Through the mists of agony and fear he looked back at the dragon.
    The creature was hanging from a branch of a large dead oak tree, several hundred feet away. Its bronze-gold wings were tightly wrapped around its body but the long equine head turned this way and that at the end of a remarkably prehensile neck. It was scanning the forest.
    It was also semitransparent. Although the sun glinted off its scales, Rincewind could clearly make out the outlines of the branches behind it.
    On one of them a man was sitting, dwarfed by the hanging reptile. He appeared to be naked except for a pair of high boots, a tiny leather hold-all in the region of his groin, and a high-crested helmet. He was swinging a short sword back and forth idly, and stared out across the treetops with the air of one carrying out a tedious and unglamorous