The Colour of Magic

and—and—well, then we can think of something. How about it?”
    “That doesn’t sound like a very good idea,” said Twoflower. “Anyhow, it’s a bit ungracious isn’t it?”
    “Tough buns,” snapped Rincewind. “This is a rough universe.”
    He rummaged through the piles around the walls and selected a heavy, wavy-bladed scimitar that had probably been some pirate’s pride and joy. It looked the sort of weapon that relied as much on its weight as its edge to cause damage. He raised it awkwardly.
    “Would he leave that sort of thing around if it could hurt him?” Twoflower wondered aloud.
    Rincewind ignored him and took up a position beside the door. When it opened some ten minutes later he moved unhesitatingly, swinging it across the opening at what he judged was the troll’s head height. It swished harmlessly through nothing at all and struck the doorpost, jerking him off his feet and onto the floor.
    There was a sigh above him. He looked up into Tethis’s face, which was shaking sadly from side to side.
    “It wouldn’t have harmed me,” said the troll, “but nevertheless I am hurt. Deeply hurt.” He reached over the wizard and jerked the sword out of the wood. With no apparent effort he bent its blade into a circle and sent it bowling away over the rocks until it hit a stone and sprang, still spinning, in a silver arc that ended in the mists forming over the Rimfall.
    “ Very deeply hurt,” he concluded. He reached down beside the door and tossed a sack toward Twoflower.
    “It’s the carcass of a deer that is just about how you humans like it, and a few lobsters, and a sea salmon. The Circumfence provides,” he said casually.
    He looked hard at the tourist, and then down again at Rincewind.
    “What are you staring at?” he said.
    “It’s just that—” said Twoflower.
    “—compared to last night—” said Rincewind.
    “You’re so small ,” finished Twoflower.
    “I see , said the troll carefully. “Personal remarks now.” He drew himself up to his full height, which was currently about four feet. “Just because I’m made of water doesn’t mean I’m made of wood, you know.”
    “I’m sorry,” said Twoflower, climbing hastily out of the furs.
    “You’re made of dirt ,” said the troll, “but I didn’t pass comments about things you can’t help, did I? Oh, no. We can’t help the way the Creator made us, that’s my view. But if you must know, your moon here is rather more powerful than the ones around my own world.”
    “The moon?” said Twoflower. “I don’t under—”
    “If I’ve got to spell it out,” said the troll, testily, “I’m suffering from chronic tides.”
    A bell jangled in the darkness of the shack. Tethis strode across the creaking floor to the complicated devices of levers, strings and bells that was mounted on the Circumfence’s topmost strand where it passed through the hut.
    The bell rang again, and then started to clang away in an odd jerky rhythm for several minutes. The troll stood with his ear pressed close to it.
    When it stopped he turned slowly and looked at them with a worried frown.
    “You’re more important than I thought,” he said. “You’re not to wait for the salvage fleet. You’re to be collected by a flyer. That’s what they say in Krull.” He shrugged. “And I hadn’t even sent a message that you’re here, yet. Someone’s been drinking vul nut wine again.”
    He picked up a large mallet that hung on a pillar beside the bell and used it to tap out a brief carillon.
    “That’ll be passed from lengthman to lengthman all the way back to Krull,” he said. “Marvelous really, isn’t it?”

    It came speeding across the sea, floating a man-length above it, but still leaving a foaming wake as whatever power that held it up smacked brutally into the water. Rincewind knew what power held it up. He was, he would be the first to admit, a coward, an incompetent, and not even very good at being a failure; but he was still a wizard of sorts, he knew one of the Eight Great Spells, he would be claimed by Death himself when he died, and he recognized really finely honed magic when he saw it.
    The lens skimming toward the island was perhaps twenty feet across, and totally transparent. Sitting around its circumference were a large number of black-robed men, each one strapped securely to the Disc by a leather harness and each one staring down at the waves with an expression so tormented, so agonizing, that the transparent