Терри Пратчетт - The Colour of Magic

“Don’t say it!”

Twoflower backed away from this madman

“Don’t say it!”

“Don’t say what?”

“The number.”

“Number?” said Twoflower. “Hey, Rincewind—”

“Yes, number! Between seven and nine. Four plus four”

“What, ei—”

Rincewind’s hands clapped over the man’s mouth. “Say it and we’re doomed. Just don’t think about, right. Trust me!”

“I don’t understand,” wailed Twoflower.

Rincewind relaxed slightly; which was to say that he still made a violin string look like a bowl of jelly.

“Come on,” he said. “Let’s try and get out. And I’ll try and tell you.”

After the first Age of Magic the disposal of grimoires began to become a severe problem on the Discworld. A spell is still a spell even when imprisoned temporarily in parchment and ink. It has potency. This is not a problem while the book’s owner still lives, but on his death the Spell book becomes a source of uncontrolled power that cannot easily be defused.

In short, spell books leak magic. Various solutions have been tried. Countries near the Rim simply loaded down the books of dead mages with leaden pentagrams and threw them over the Edge. Near the Hub less satisfactory alternatives were available. Inserting the offending books in canisters of negatively polarized octiron and sinking them in the fathomless depths of the sea was one (burial in deep caves on land was earlier ruled out after some districts complained of walking trees and five-headed cats) but before long the magic seeped out and eventually fishermen complained of shoals of invisible fish or psychic clams.

A temporary solution was the construction, in various centres of magical lore, of large rooms made of denatured octiron, which is impervious to most forms of magic. Here the more critical grimoires could be stored until their potency had attenuated.

That was how there came to be at Unseen University the Octavo, greatest of all grimoires, formerly owned by the Creator of the Universe. It was this book that Rincewind had once opened for a bet. He had only a second to stare at a page before setting off various alarm spells, but that was time enough for one spell to leap from it and settle in his memory like a toad in a stone.

“Then what?” said Twoflower.

“Oh, they dragged me out. Thrashed me, of course.”

“And no-one knows what the spell does?”

Rincewind shook his head.

“It’d vanished from the page,” he said. “No-one will know until I say it. Or until I die, of course. Then it will sort of say itself. For all I know it stops the universe, or ends Time, or anything.”

Twoflower patted him on the shoulder.

“No sense in brooding,” he said cheerfully. “Let’s have another look for a way out.”

Rincewind shook his head. All the terror had been spent now. He had broken through the terror barrier, perhaps, and was in the dead calm state of mind that lies on the other side. Anyway, he had ceased to gibber.

“We’re doomed,” he stated. “We’ve been walking around all night. I tell you, this place is a spiderweb. It doesn’t matter which way we go, we’re heading twoards the centre.”

“It was very kind of you to come looking for me, said Twoflower. “How did you manage it it was very impressive.”

“Well,” began the wizard awkwardly. “I just ‘I can’t leave old Twoflower there’ and—”

“So what we’ve got to do now is find this Bel-Shamharoth person and explain things to him and perhaps he’ll let us out,” said Twoflower.

Rincewind ran a finger around his ear.

“It must be the funny echoes in here,” he said. “I thought I heard you use words like find and explain.

“That’s right.”

Rincewind glared at him in the hellish purple glow. “Find Bel-Shamharoth?” he said.

“Yes. We don’t have to get involved.”

“Find the Soul Render and not get involved? Just give him a nod, I suppose, and ask the way to the exit? Explain things to the Sender of Eignnnngh,” Rincewind bit off the end of the word just in time and finished, “You’re insane. Hey! Come back!”

He darted down the passage after Twoflower, and after a few moments came to a halt with a groan.

The violet light was intense here, giving everything new and unpleasant colours. This wasn’t a passage, it was a wide room with walls to a number that Rincewind didn’t dare to contemplate, and 7 passages radiating from it.

Rincewind saw, a little way off, a low altar with the Same number of sides as four times two. It didn’t occupy the centre of the room, however. The centre was occupied by a huge stone slab with twice as many sides as a square. It looked massive. In the strange light it appeared to be slightly tilted with one edge standing proud of the slabs around it.

Twoflower was standing on it.

“Hey. Rincewind! Look what’s here!

The Luggage came ambling down one of the other passages that radiated from the room.

“That’s great,” said Rincewind. “Fine. It can lead us out of here. Now.”

Twoflower was already rummaging in the chest

“Yes,” he said. “After I’ve taken a few pictures Just let me fit the attachment—”

“I said now—”

Rincewind stopped. Hrun the Barbarian was standing in the passage mouth directly opposite him, a great black sword held in one ham-sized fist.

“You?” said Hrun uncertainly.

“Ahaha. Yes,” said Rincewind. “Hrun, isn’t it? Long time no see. What brings you here?”

Hrun pointed to the luggage.

“That,” he said. This much conversation seemed to exhaust Hrun. Then he added, in a tone that combined statement, claim, threat and ultimatum: “Mine.”

“It belongs to Twoflower here,” said Rincewind.

“Here’s a tip. Don’t touch it.”

It dawned on him that this was precisely the wrong thing to say, but Hrun had already pushed Twoflower away and was reaching for the Luggage… which sprouted legs, backed away, and raised its lid threateningly. In the uncertain light Rincewind thought he could see rows of enormous teeth, white as bleached beechwood.

“Hrun,” he said quickly, “there’s something I ought to tell you.”

Hrun turned a puzzled face to him.

“What?” he said.

“It’s about numbers. Look, you know if you add seven and one, or three and five, or take two from ten. You get a number. While you’re here don’t say it and we might all stand a chance of getting out of here alive. Or merely just dead.”

“Who is he?” asked Twoflower. He was holding a cage in his hands, dredged from the bottom-most depths of the Luggage. It appeared to be full of sulking pink lizards.

“I am Hrun,” said Hrun proudly. Then he looked at Rincewind.

“What?” he said.

“Just don’t say it, okay?” said Rincewind.

He looked at the sword in Hrun’s hand. It was black, the sort of black that is less a colour than a graveyard of colours, and there was a highly ornate runic inscription up the blade. More noticeable still was the faint octarine glow that surrounded it. The sword must have noticed him, too, because it suddenly spoke in a voice like a claw being scraped across glass.

“Strange,” it said. “Why can’t he say eight?”

Eight , hate, ate said the echoes. There was the faintest of grinding noises, deep under the earth.

And the echoes, although they became softer, refused to die away. They bounced from wall to wall, crossing and recrossing, and the violet light flickered in time with the sound.

“You did it!” screamed Rincewind. “I said you shouldn’t say eight!”

He stopped, appalled at himself. But the word was out now, and joined its colleagues in the general susurration.