The Colour of Magic

e-veined hand to restrain him.

‘It is forbidden to fight on the Killing Ground,’ he said, and paused while he considered the sense of this.

‘You’ll fight us both together?’ said Liartes, a tall, wiry man with long black hair.

‘Yah.’

‘That’s pretty uneven odds, isn’t it?’

‘Yah. I outnumber you one to two.’

It was all very well going on about pure logic and how the universe was ruled by logic and the harmony of numbers, but the plain fact of the matter was that the disc was manifestly traversing space on the back of a giant turtle and the gods had a habit of going round to atheists’ houses and smashing their windows.

Broadman said a bad word.

It had to be Death. No-one else went around with empty eye sockets and, of course, the scythe over one shoulder was another clue.

‘?’ said the stranger.

‘!’ said the stranger, and grabbed his arm.

By now the whole of downtown Morpork was alight, and the richer and worthier citizens of Ankh on the far bank were bravely responding to the situation by feverishly demolishing the bridges.

An alternative, favoured by those of a religious persuasion, was that A’Tuin was crawling from the Birthplace to the Time of Mating, as were all the stars in the sky which were, obviously, also carried by giant turtles. When they arrived they would briefly and passionately mate, for the first and only time, and from that fiery union new turtles would be born to carry a new pattern of worlds. This was known as the Big Bang hypothesis

‘L—’ he began. She raised a hand.

‘You know that if you say my name I must depart,’ she hissed. ‘Surely you recall that I am the one goddess who comes only when not invoked?’

‘Uh. Yes, I suppose I do,’ croaked the wizard, trying not to look at the eyes. ‘You’re the one they call the Lady?’

‘Yes.’

‘Are you a goddess then?’ said Twoflower excitedly. ‘I’ve always wanted to meet one.’

Rincewind tensed, waiting for the explosion of rage. Instead, the Lady merely smiled.

‘Your friend the wizard should introduce us,’ she said.

Rincewind coughed. ‘Uh, yar,’ he said. ‘This is Twoflower, Lady, he’s a tourist—’

‘—I have attended him on a number of occasions—’

‘—and, Twoflower, this is the Lady. Just the Lady, right? Nothing else. Don’t try and give her any other name, okay?’ he went on desperately, his eyes darting meaningful glances that were totally lost on the little man.

Rincewind shivered. He was not, of course, an atheist; on the Disc the gods dealt severely with atheists. On the few occasions when he had some spare change he had always made a point of dropping a few coppers into a temple coffer, somewhere, on the principle that a man needed all the friends he could get. But usually he didn’t bother the Gods, and he hoped the Gods wouldn’t bother him. Life was quite complicated enough.