The Color of Magic

In the kingdom of Krull on the edge of the Circle Sea, the Arch-astronomer watches the slaves polish the bronze sides of a spaceship shaped like a giant metal fish. In three days, the Disc will be in a perfect position to observe the tail of Great A’Tuin. The ship will be lowered over the edge of the Disc, and the astrozoologists of the Discworld will be able to determine the sex of the great star turtle. Everything is ready for launch. All they need is a couple of human sacrifices, and the god Fate, still annoyed over having lost the game to the Lady in Part 2, has demanded Rincewind and Twoflower.

Rincewind and Twoflower are adrift on the Circle Sea, not far from Krull. Six months have passed since the burning of Ankh-Morpork. After adventures all over the Disc, they have escaped a slave ship but were forced to leave the Luggage behind. They now find themselves in a leaky boat, drifting toward the Rimfall. Their boat is surrounded by flotsam. Rincewind sees a little frog struggling against the current and, in a rare moment of sympathy, rescues it. They are about to go over the Rim when the boat comes up against the Circumfence that runs around the edge of the world and prevents things from falling over.

Rincewind and Twoflower are rescued by a sea troll. The troll brings them back to his house, a shack perched atop a crag that almost overhangs the void. The troll tells them about the kingdom of Krull. The people of Krull live on salvage from the Circumfence and have grown wealthy on the flotsam, including slaves captured from floundering ships.

Realizing that they are doomed to be made slaves, Rincewind announces that he would rather jump over the edge of the world first. The troll seizes Rincewind in one fist and holds him out over the void. Looking down, Rincewind sees “the head of an elephant as big as a reasonably sized continent. One mighty tusk cut like a mountain against the golden light, trailing a widening shadow toward the stars” and, further down, “something that for all its city-sized scales, its crater-pocks, its lunar cragginess, [is] indubitably a flipper” (196). Twoflower strolls up and looks over the edge, wishing he had his picture box. He asks what else is down there.

The troll tells them his own world is out there somewhere. He had fallen off the edge and drifted through space for an unknown length of time—frozen except when he came near another world, of which he had seen many—and finally splashed down on the Disc. Twoflower says wistfully that it would be a wonderful thing if you could sail to other worlds.

The next day, a retrieval party comes from Krull to fetch Rincewind and Twoflower. They ride on a transparent lens that floats above the water held up by the focused revulsion of 24 magical hydrophobes. Rincewind is encouraged by this: They wouldn’t expend so much magic just to retrieve a couple of slaves. As the lens rises and soars away, no one notices a sharp V of water headed straight toward the troll’s island. The Luggage has freed itself from the pirate ship and is tracking its owner.

Krull, the capital city of the nation of Krull, stands at the highest point of an island that slightly overhangs the edge of the world. Rincewind and Twoflower are taken to a luxuriously-decorated room containing, among other things, a table set with exotic Krullish foods like purée of sea cucumber and jellyfish wine. An old man meets them and introduces himself as the Guestmaster. His task is to make sure their stay in Krull is as pleasant as possible, as they are ordained by Fate to be sacrificed in the morning. Rincewind snatches up a bottle of jellyfish wine and hurls it. The Guestmaster raises a hand and slows time relative to the bottle. It stops, hanging in midair. The Guestmaster locks them in their room.

Rincewind grumbles that they don’t even know why they’re going to be killed. A small voice asks if he would like to. Rincewind reaches into his pocket and pulls out the frog he rescued the previous day. The Lady emerges from the frog’s mind, where she has been riding. She tells them about the plan to sacrifice them to ensure the success of the mission to study Great A’Tuin. Rincewind and Twoflower amuse the Lady; she can offer them one chance to escape, but they will have to make the best of it, as Fate has all his focus on them. She disappears. A moment later, the Guestmaster opens the door and enters with a pair of guards.

The bottle, which has been hanging in the air for the last eight hours, snaps back into reality and completes its flight, crashing into the Guestmaster’s head. Rincewind kicks one of the guards in the groin, grabs Twoflower, and runs for the corridor. They duck into an unoccupied room and shut the door behind them. They find themselves in a kind of planetarium containing an astrolabe depicting the Discworld system. Rincewind is troubled by two suits of white leather and big round copper helmets with little glass windows in front.

Two beefy young men enter the room. They assume Rincewind and Twoflower are slaves there to help them into their suits. Instead, Rincewind brings one of the helmets down on the head of one of the chelonauts while Twoflower knocks the other unconscious with a telescope. Seeing no other way out of the room, Rincewind and Twoflower put on the suits.

At the launch arena, the watching crowd is becoming impatient. They were expecting a sacrifice and a launch, and neither has happened yet. At last, a pair of suited chelonauts appears and crosses the arena. The Arch-astronomer realizes there is something wrong with the scene and prepares to cast a fireball at Twoflower and Rincewind. A commotion breaks out, and the Luggage charges into the arena. Every magician in the arena begins throwing curses at the chest, creating a storm of magic. The Luggage, immune to all forms of magic, walks steadily toward the Arch-astronomer, radiating menace.

All the magicians finally give up and flee. Twoflower calls the Luggage and it abandons its pursuit of the Arch-astronomer, changing course and coming to settle at Twoflower’s feet. It opens its lid and disgorges the sea troll.

Soldiers have rallied and begin to fire crossbows. Twoflower tells Rincewind and the troll to get into the ship where they’ll be safe from arrows. Rincewind considers refusing, but a spear whistle past his ear, so he climbs the ladder behind the other two. Inside the ship, a timer trips a switch that starts the launch sequence. The ship jolts. The troll has already climbed through the top hatch, and Twoflower is right behind him.

The ship rocks, dropping Twoflower inside and slamming the hatch shut with Rincewind still hanging on the hull. Then the ship reaches the end of its launch ramp and plunges into the void. A moment later, the Luggage bounds after it, “legs still pumping determinedly” as it “[plunges] down into the universe” (236).

In a coda to Part 4 entitled “The End,” Rincewind falls into a thorn tree growing in a crevice of rock projecting over the Rimfall. A black cloaked figure appears in the air beside him. It carries a scythe. Rincewind finds that for the first time in his life, he doesn’t feel frightened. He asks what he is going to die of; a person has to be killed by something in order to die. The cowled figure puts its hood down. It’s not Death, just the demon of Scrofula. Death couldn’t make it in person. The demon swings his scythe, but at that moment, Rincewind’s branch breaks, and he plummets into the interstellar gulf.