The Color of Magic (Discworld 1)

Rincewind tried to understand.

In the long afternoon they toured the city Turnwise of the river. Twoflower led the way, with the strange picture-box slung on a strap round his neck, Rincewind trailed behind, whimpering at intervals and checking to see that his head was still there. A few others followed, too. In a city where public executions, duels, fights, magical feuds and strange events regularly punctuated the daily round the inhabitants had brought the profession of interested bystander to a peak of perfection. They were, to a man, highly skilled yawpers. In any case, Twoflower was delightedly taking picture after picture of people engaged in what he described as typical activities, and since a quarter-rhinu would subsequently change hands “for their trouble” a tail of bemused and happy nouveux-riches was soon following him in case this madman exploded in a shower of gold.

At the Temple of the Seven-Handed Sek a hasty convocation of priests and ritual heart-transplant artisans agreed that the hundred-span high statue of Sek was altogether too holy to be made into a magic picture, but a payment of two rhinu left them astoundedly agreeing that perhaps He wasn’t as holy as all that.

A prolonged session at the Whore Pits produced a number of colourful and instructive pictures, a number of which Rincewind concealed about his person for detailed perusal in private. As the fumes cleared from his brain he began to speculate seriously as to how the iconograph worked. Even a failed wizard knew that some substances were sensitive to light. Perhaps the glass plates were treated by some arcane process that froze the light, that passed through them: or something like that, anyway. Rincewind often suspected that there was something, somewhere, that was better than magic. He was usually disappointed.

However, he soon took every opportunity to operate the box. Twoflower was only too pleased to allow this, since that enabled the little man to appear in his own pictures. It was at this point that Rincewind noticed something strange. Possession of the box conferred a kind of power on the wielder which was that anyone, confronted with the hypnotic glass eye, would submissively obey the most peremptory orders about stance and expression.

It was while he was thus engaged in the Plaza of Broken Moons that disaster struck. Twoflower had posed alongside a bewildered charm-seller, his crowd of new-found admirers watching him with interest in case he did something humorously lunatic.

Rincewind got down on one knee, the better to arrange the picture, and pressed the enchanted lever.

The box said, “It’s no good. I’ve run out of pink.”

A hitherto unnoticed door opened in front of his eyes. A small, green and hideously warty humanoid figure leaned out, pointed at a colour-encrusted palette in one clawed hand, and screamed at him. “No pink, See?” screeched the homunculus. “No good you going on pressing the lever when there’s no pink, is there? If you wanted pink you shouldn’t of took all those pictures of young ladies, should you? It’s monochrome from now on, friend. Alright?”

“Alright. Yeah, Sure,” said Rincewind. In one dim corner of the little box he thought he could see an easle, and a tiny unmade bed. He hoped he couldn’t.

“So long as that’s understood,” said the imp, and shut the door. Rincewind thought he could hear the muffled sound of grumbling and the scrape of a stool being dragged across the floor.

“Twoflower-” he began, and looked up.

Twoflower had vanished. As Rincewind stared at the crowd, with sensations of prickly horror traveling up his spine, there came a gentle prod in the small of his back.

“Turn without haste,” said a voice like black silk. “Or kiss your kidneys goodbye.”

The crowd watched with interest. It was turning out to be quite a good day.

o;That’s him behind us,” he said.

The enormity of this lie was so great that its ripples did in fact spread out one of the lower astral planes as far as the Magical Quarter across the river, where it picked up tremendous velocity from the huge standing wave of power that always hovered there and bounced wildly across the Circle Sea. A harmonic got as far as Hrun himself, currently fighting a couple of gnolls on a crumbling ledge high in the Caderack Mountains, and caused him a moment’s unexplained discomfort. Twoflower, meanwhile, had thrown back the lid of the Luggage and was hastily pulling out a heavy black cube.

“This is fantastic,” he said. “They’re never going to believe this at home.”

“What’s he going on about?” said the sergeant doubtfully.

“He’s pleased you rescued us,” said Rincewind. He looked sidelong at the black box, half-expecting it to explode or emit strange musical tones.

“Ah,” said the sergeant. He was staring at the box, too.

Twoflower smiled brightly at them.

“I’d like a record of the event,” he said. “Do you think you could ask them all to stand over by the window, please? This won’t take a moment. And, er, Rincewind? “

“Yes?”

Twoflower stood on tiptoe to whisper.

“I expect you know what this is, don’t you?” Rincewind stared down at the box. It had a round glass eye protruding from the centre of one face, and a lever at the back.

“Not wholly, ” he said.

“It’s a device for making pictures quickly,” said Twoflower. “Quite a new invention. I’m rather proud of it but, look, I don’t think these gentlemen would -well, I mean they might be -sort of apprehensive? Could you explain it to them? I’ll reimburse them for their time, of course.”

“He’s got a box with a demon in it that draws pictures,” said Rincewind shortly. ‘do what the madman says and he will give you gold.”

The Watch smiled nervously.