The Colour of Magic

is no.”
    “I knew it,” screamed the innkeeper, and started toward the door.
    “I’m not sure that I’m making myself clear,” said the alchemist. Broadman turned around angrily.
    “What do you mean?”
    “Well, you see, what with one thing and another our coinage has been somewhat watered, over the years. The gold content of the average coin is barely four parts in twelve, the balance being made up of silver, copper—”
    “What of it?”
    “I said this coin isn’t like ours. It is pure gold.”
    After Broadman had left, at a run, the alchemist spent some time staring at the ceiling. Then he drew out a very small piece of thin parchment, rummaged for a pen amongst the debris on his workbench, and wrote a very short, small, message. Then he went over to his cages of white doves, black cockerels and other laboratory animals. From one cage he removed a glossy coated rat, rolled the parchment into the phial attached to a hind leg, and let the animal go.
    It sniffed around the floor for a moment, then disappeared down a hole in the far wall.
    At about this time a hitherto unsuccessful fortune teller living on the other side of the block chanced to glance into her scrying bowl, gave a small scream and, within the hour, had sold her jewelry, various magical accoutrements, most of her clothes and almost all her other possessions that could not be conveniently carried on the fastest horse she could buy. The fact that later on, when her house collapsed in flames, she herself died in a freak landslide in the Morpork Mountains, proves that Death, too, has a sense of humor.

    Also at about the same moment as the homing rat disappeared into the maze of runs under the city, scurrying along in faultless obedience to an ancient instinct, the Patrician of Ankh-Morpork picked up the letters delivered that morning by albatross. He looked pensively at the topmost one again, and summoned his chief of spies.
    And in the Broken Drum Rincewind was listening open-mouthed as Twoflower talked.
    “So I decided to see for myself,” the little man was saying. “Eight years’ saving up, this has cost me. But worth every half- rhinu . I mean, here I am. In Ankh-Morpork. Famed in song and story, I mean. In the streets that have known the tread of Heric Whiteblade, Hrun the Barbarian, and Bravd the Hublander and the Weasel…It’s all just like I imagined, you know.”
    Rincewind’s face was a mask of fascinated horror.
    “I just couldn’t stand it any more back in Bes Pelargic,” Twoflower went on blithely, “sitting at a desk all day, just adding up columns of figures, just a pension to look forward to at the end of it…where’s the romance in that? Twoflower, I thought, it’s now or never. You don’t just have to listen to stories. You can go there. Now’s the time to stop hanging around the docks listening to sailors’ tales. So I compiled a phrase book and bought a passage on the next ship to the Brown Islands.”
    “No guards?” murmured Rincewind.
    “No. Why? What have I got that’s worth stealing?”
    Rincewind coughed. “You have, uh, gold,” he said.
    “Barely two thousand rhinu . Hardly enough to keep a man alive for more than a month or two. At home, that is. I imagine they might stretch a bit further here.”
    “Would a rhinu be one of those big gold coins?” said Rincewind.
    “Yes.” Twoflower looked worriedly at the wizard over the top of his strange seeing lenses. “Will two thousand be sufficient, do you think?”
    “Yarrrt,” croaked Rincewind. “I mean, yes—sufficient.”
    “Good.”
    “Um. Is everyone in the Agatean Empire as rich as you?”
    “Me? Rich? Bless you, whatever put that idea into your head? I am but a poor clerk! Did I pay the innkeeper too much, do you think?” Twoflower added.
    “Uh. He might have settled for less,” Rincewind conceded.
    “Ah. I shall know better next time. I can see I have a lot to learn. An idea occurs to me. Rincewind, would you perhaps consent to be employed as a, I don’t know, perhaps the word ‘guide’ would fit the circumstances? I think I could afford to pay you a rhinu a day.”
    Rincewind opened his mouth to reply but felt the words huddle together in his throat, reluctant to emerge in a world that was rapidly going mad. Twoflower blushed.
    “I have offended you,” he said. “It was an impertinent request to make of a professional man such as yourself. Doubtless you have many projects you wish to return to—some works of high