The Color of Magic

The Color of Magic (1983) by Terry Pratchett is the first of 41 books in his beloved Discworld series. This satirical fantasy series plays with the vagaries of human nature, culture, literature, myth, and religion. The Color of Magic has been published as a graphic novel and produced as a video game. It was produced for television in 2008 as the first half of a two-part miniseries featuring Sean Astin, Tim Curry, and Christopher Lee.

Page numbers are from the e-book (HarperCollins e-books; Reissue edition, October 13, 2009).

Plot Summary

The story is structured as four novelettes, loosely interlinked and progressing toward the conclusion.

In Part 1, “The Color of Magic,” the wizard Rincewind first meets Twoflower, an insurance adjuster from the Agatean Empire, when the little man strolls into an inn by the waterfront. Rincewind is not a very good wizard, but he can recognize priceless sentient pearwood when he sees Twoflower’s magical Luggage. Outside of the Empire, Twoflower is fabulously wealthy, but he is too innocent to recognize how much danger he is in in the criminal town of Ankh-Morpork. He hires Rincewind to be a tour guide. Rincewind tries to slip out of the city with his advance payment, but he is stopped by the Patrician, who sends him back to make sure Twoflower survives to return to the Agatean Empire.

Rincewind spends the rest of the day escorting Twoflower around the city. While Rincewind is distracted by Twoflower’s “camera” (a box containing an imp who paints pictures), Twoflower is snatched by the Thieves’ Guild. Fearing the Patrician’s ire, Rincewind considers fleeing the city, but Twoflower’s sentient Luggage stops him, so he tracks Twoflower back to the inn instead.

At the inn, Twoflower sells the innkeeper an insurance policy. The head of the Thieves’ Guild waits for Rincewind to arrive with the Luggage and Twoflower’s gold. The head of the Assassins’ Guild arrives: The Patrician has had a change of heart and arranged for Twoflower to be removed. The thieves and assassins are about to kill Twoflower when the newly-formed Merchants’ Guild arrives to protect him. Rincewind and the Luggage arrive to find Twoflower enjoying the chaos that has broken out. The innkeeper is setting fire to his inn to cash out on his policy. Rincewind and Twoflower flee the city, leaving it to burn behind them.

In Part 2, ‟The Sender of Eight,” the gods are playing a game on a carved map of the Discworld. The Lady (Luck) places her last two pieces on the board: Rincewind and Twoflower. Meanwhile, Rincewind and Twoflower hear the sound of rolling dice, and a troll appears in the road before them. Their horses bolt into the woods, separating them. Twoflower finds himself lost without his Luggage. The runes on the stone he is sitting on indicate that there is a temple nearby.

The gods’ game is down to two players: the Lady and Fate. Rincewind hangs from a tree branch with wolves below, a poisonous snake creeping towards him, and Death sitting on the next branch. He is rescued by a dryad who shows him Twoflower in the temple of Bel-Shamharoth, Eater of Souls and the Sender of Eight. The image shifts to show Hrun the Barbarian also prowling the temple.

Trying to escape the dryad, Rincewind accidentally transports himself to Twoflower’s side. When he realizes where he is, he warns Twoflower (using indirect language) not to say the word “eight.” Twoflower proposes that they find Bel-Shamharoth and ask him to show them the way out. As they explore, the Luggage arrives, having tracked Twoflower to the temple.

Hrun the Barbarian follows the Luggage, and Rincewind warns him (again indirectly) not to say “eight.” Hrun’s chatty magical sword asks why, but it says “eight” out loud, whereupon Bel-Shamharoth wakes and attacks them. They are about to be dragged into his lair when Rincewind sets off the camera flash, blinding Bel-Shamharoth long enough for everyone to escape.

In Part 3, "The Lure of the Wyrm,” the party—including Hrun—resume their journey and pass the Wyrmberg, an upside-down mountain. Rincewind observes that they must be in a strong magical field. He is explaining magic to Twoflower and Hrun when something invisible sweeps down and snatches the pig they were roasting. Hrun and Twoflower are nabbed by invisible dragons while Rincewind escapes into the forest and knocks himself unconscious on a low branch.

When he wakes, he sees a dragon and its rider scanning the forest. As he creeps away, he finds Hrun’s talking sword, Kring, stuck through a branch. It instructs Rincewind to pull it out so they can rescue Hrun and Twoflower.

Rincewind frees the sword and proposes that they flee for safety. The sword takes control of Rincewind’s arm and forces them back toward the dragon and rider. Kring overpowers the rider and forces him to fly them to the Wyrmberg. The dragons of the Wyrmberg, it turns out, are created by imagination. There, Rincewind is made to duel one of the riders; in the process, he falls into the chasm inside the mountain.

Hrun and Twoflower have been imprisoned in the dungeons. Liessa, the daughter of the former Lord of the Wyrmberg, wants to rule the dragonriders but can’t because she is a woman. She proposes that Hrun kill her brothers and marry her, and Hrun agrees. In another cell, Twoflower sits thinking about dragons. Twoflower has always longed to see dragons, but the dragons of the Wyrmberg are disappointing. A fireball flashes past his head, and Twoflower looks up at a real dragon—one like he imagined when he was a child. The dragon melts the door of the cell, and he and Twoflower escape the dungeons just in time to catch the falling Rincewind.

Hrun has just defeated Liessa’s two brothers and is about to seize his prize when he is “rescued” by Twoflower’s dragon and carried away. The dragonriders pursue them. Twoflower’s dragon flies so high that Twoflower loses consciousness from the thin air. Without Twoflower to imagine the dragon, it disappears.

Liessa catches Hrun, but Rincewind and Twoflower keep falling. Rincewind tries to imagine a dragon. Instead, he imagines himself into another universe where he is a nuclear physicist. He inadvertently foils a hijacking before popping back into the Discworld universe and falling into the Circle Sea with Twoflower.

Part 4, “Close to the Edge,” opens in the kingdom of Krull, where the astrozoologists of the Discworld have built a giant metal fish so that chelonauts may go and determine the sex of the star turtle that carries the Discworld through space. Rincewind and Twoflower are adrift on the Circle Sea; they are about to go over the Rimfall when their boat comes up against the Circumfence that runs around the edge of the world. They are rescued by a sea troll, who tells them about the kingdom of Krull, where they are doomed to be slaves.

A retrieval party comes from Krull to fetch them. They are imprisoned in a lush room where the Guestmaster assures them that they are sacrifices, not slaves. With Lady Luck’s help, Rincewind and Twoflower escape the guards. They hide in the room where the chelonauts are preparing for their mission, then knock the chelonauts unconscious and steal their spacesuits for disguises.

At the spaceship, the Arch-astronomer realizes they are not the real chelonauts. He is about to throw a curse when the Luggage arrives and attacks, distracting the assembled wizards long enough for Twoflower to climb into the “safety” of the spaceship. Rincewind hesitates, so he is still on the hull when the launch sequence begins. The ship is launched into space, and Rincewind is thrown from the hull.

In a subsection entitled “The End,” Rincewind wakes lying in a thorn tree jammed in a crevice of rock projecting out over the Rimfall. Death hovers in the air beside him. Rincewind asks what he is going to die of, since one can’t simply die of “Death.” The cloaked figure, unable to argue, drops his hood: It’s not Death, just the worried-looking demon of Scrofula. Death is too busy at the moment to show up in person. Scrofula swings his scythe, but Rincewind’s branch breaks, and he plummets into the interstellar gulf.

The narrative is picked up again in the second book of the series, The Light Fantastic.