The Color of Magic
by Terry Pratchett
Prologue
In a distant and second-hand set of dimensions, in an astral plane
That was never meant to fly, the curling star-mists waver and part…
See…
Great A’Tuin the turtle comes, swimming slowly through the
Interstellar gulf, hydrogen frost on his ponderous limbs, his huge and
Ancient shell pocked with meteor craters. Through sea-sized eyes that
Are crusted with rheum and asteroid dust He stares fixedly at the
Destination.
In a brain bigger than a city, with geological slowness, He thinks
Only of the Weight.
Most of the weight is of course accounted for by Berilia, Tubul,
Great T’Phon and Jerakeen, the four giant elephants upon whose broad
And startanned shoulders the disc of the World rests, garlanded by the
Long waterfall at its vast circumference and domed by the baby-blue
Vault of Heaven.
Astropsychology has been, as yet, unable to establish what they
Think about.
The Great Turtle was a mere hypothesis until the day the small and
Secretive kingdom of Krull, whose rim-most mountains project out over
The Rimfall, built a gantry and pulley arrangement at the tip of the
Most precipitous crag and lowered several observers over the Edge in a
Quartzwindowed brass vessel to peer through the mist veils.
The early astrozoologists, hauled back from their long dangle by
Enormous teams of slaves, were able to bring back much information
About the shape and nature of A’Tuin and the elephants but this did
Not resolve fundamental questions about the nature and purpose of the
Universe. [ 1 ]
For example, what was Atuin’s actual sex? This vital question,
Said the Astrozoologists with mounting authority, would not be
Answered until a larger and more powerful gantry was constructed for a
Deep-space vessel. In the
meantime they could only speculate about the
Revealed cosmos.
There was, for example, the theory that A’Tuin had come from
Nowhere and would continue at a uniform crawl, or steady gait, into
Nowhere, for all time. This theory was popular among academics. 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.
Thus it was that a young cosmochelonian of the Steady Gait
Faction, testing a new telescope with which he hoped to make
Measurements of the precise albedo of Great A’Tuin’s right eye, was on
This eventful evening the first outsider to see the smoke rise hubward
From the burning of the oldest city in the world.
Later that night he became so engrossed in his studies he
Completely forgot about it. Nevertheless, he was the first. There were
Others…
The Colour of Magic
Fire roared through the bifurcated city of Ankh-Morpork. Where it
Licked the Wizards’ Quarter it burned blue and green and was even
Laced with strange sparks of the eighth colour, octarine; where its
Outriders found their way into the vats and oil stores all along
Merchants Street it progressed in a series of blazing fountains and
Explosions; in the Streets of the perfume blenders it burned with a
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