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The Color of Magic
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Part 3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 3 Summary: “The Lure of the Wyrm”
The Wyrmberg rises half a mile above the valley floor, an upside-down mountain with a narrow base barely 20 yards across and a plateau at the top half a mile wide. In the sides of the mountain, a few yards under the lip of the plateau, there are a number of cave mouths with a curiously regular look. Rincewind observes gloomily that they are in a strong magical field. It is the site of some old mage war where the fallout from a powerful spell is slowly decaying and distorting reality. As they are debating whether to depart at high speed, they hear a clap of wings, and something they can’t see swoops overhead and snatches the pig carcass off the spit over their fire.
At the Wyrmberg, Lady Liessa Wyrmbidder and her deceased father watch in a scrying glass as Rincewind and company accelerate hubward, followed by a priceless box of sapient pear wood. Liessa and her two brothers are all in contention for their father’s throne. Liessa considers it hers by right, but traditionally, a woman can’t rule. She is in the market for a husband: “Someone who, for preference, was a big strapping lad but short on brains. Someone who would do what he was told” (127). She has her eye on the largest of the three men currently fleeing her territory. Hrun the Barbarian might just fit the bill.
Liessa enters the hollow center of the mountain where the dragons roost. The roof of the cavern is covered in metal rings—small ones the riders use to reach their dragons and bigger ones where the dragons roost. With effort, Liessa imagines the dragons into full reality—big and ugly with bronze scales and leathery wings. She mounts her own dragon and goes in pursuit of Rincewind and his companions.
Rincewind and Hrun flee toward the tree line as fast as their horses can run; the dragons won't be able to follow them there. Twoflower keeps twisting around to look at the dragons pursuing them. All his life, he has wanted to see dragons.
Hrun bellows in rage. Rincewind pauses and looks back to see the barbarian on foot, flourishing Kring. Rincewind tries to get Twoflower to follow him toward the forest, but Twoflower can’t take his eyes off the dragons. Rincewind gives up and flies for the trees alone, reaching cover just in time to escape the dragons and knock himself unconscious on a tree limb.
He wakes on the forest floor. A semi-transparent dragon and its rider, perched a nearby tree, scan the forest. Rincewind creeps away through the underbrush. He has run about a mile when he collapses against a tree. A metallic voice hisses to get his attention. He looks up and sees Kring stuck in a tree branch, where it was dropped when Hrun was snatched by a dragon. The sword instructs Rincewind to pull him out of the branch so they can go rescue Hrun and Twoflower. The sword takes control of Rincewind’s hand and arm and threatens to cut his throat. Rincewind yells, “I don’t know how to be a hero!” (133), but Kring promises to guide him. With Kring in charge, Rincewind slinks back to the clearing.
The dragon alerts his rider, K!sdra, to the wizard’s approach. K!sdra expects an easy fight but finds himself fighting Kring’s expertise, not Rincewind’s. The dragon tries to join the fight, but Rincewind warns the rider that if he doesn’t call it off, Rincewind will let the sword go. Realizing that the sword is the one in charge, not the wizard, the rider calls off his dragon. Rincewind (and Kring) force the dragonrider to take them to the Wyrmberg.
The dragon sweeps through one of the openings in the rock and arrives in the central cavern. Scores of dragons hang from huge rings and men walk along the ceiling like flies. Their boots have hooks on the bottom which allow them to walk upside down by hooking their boots into rings set into the ceiling. The dragon alights on one of the rings.
Liessa’s brother Lio!rt challenges Rincewind to combat. The dragonriders stick Rincewind into a pair of the hooked boots and hoist him up until he hangs upside down from the rings in the ceiling. Rincewind warns Lio!rt that his sword is enchanted. Unfortunately, so is Lio!rt’s.
After a short exchange of blows, one of Rincewind’s rings comes loose, leaving him dangling by one foot. Lio!rt is about to deliver a death blow, and Rincewind knows that, despite his failures, he is “still a wizard, and thus by the inexorable laws of magic this meant that upon his demise it would be Death himself who appeared to claim him (instead of sending one of his numerous servants, as is usually the case)” (142). Time slows, the world is suddenly lit by octarine light, and Death appears beside Lio!rt. Rincewind ducks, evading the blow. His one remaining ring comes loose, and he grabs Lio!rt’s arm. Lio!rt strikes at Rincewind’s hands, and Rincewind lets go.
Hrun and Twoflower are in a cell. Twoflower thinks the dragonriders seem nice. He assumes the whole thing is a misunderstanding, and they will soon be released. He is thrilled to finally see dragons. Twoflower has always longed to see dragons, but the dragons of the Wyrmberg are disappointing. They’re too small; dragons should be big and exotic and fire breathing. He sees something move in the darkest corner of the dungeon and hears the faint scrabble of claws.
He is about to investigate when a handful of guards burst through the door with weapons aimed at Hrun, who goes on snoring. Liessa strides in. She draws a dagger and stabs down at Hrun. He grabs her wrist before he fully wakes. Liessa announces he has passed the first test.
The guards with her remove Twoflower from the room, leaving her alone with Hrun. She offers Hrun a bargain: kill her two brothers, and he can marry her and become lord of the Wyrmberg. Hrun studies her gold jewelry mounted with rare diamonds and decides it sounds like a good deal.
Twoflower sits in the straw in his new cell, thinking about fresh air, greenery, and dragons. Something scrabbles in the darkness, and Twoflower wishes he had a light. A fireball flashes past his head, and Twoflower looks up at a real dragon—not one of the disappointing little dragons of the Wyrmberg but one like he imagined when he was a child. Twoflower has imagined it into being. It calls him “lord,” and Twoflower orders it to open the door of the cell. It spits fire at the door, and iron turns to slag.
The dragon follows him out. Twoflower asks it how it got into the cell, and it says that Twoflower summoned it by imagination: “In this place the frontier between thought and reality is probably a little confused” (151). Twoflower names it Ninereeds. They make their way deep into the Wyrmberg, eventually reaching a chamber stacked with coffins. In the center, a slumped figure in a stone chair invites Twoflower to enter. The figure is Greicha the First—deceased dragonlord, former ruler of the Wyrmberg. Greicha is impressed by Twoflower’s dragon. Twoflower has the “Power” to imagine dragons into being—as long as he is in a strong magical field.
Greicha was poisoned three months ago by Liessa. He has no hard feelings; that’s how succession happens in the Wyrmberg. The problem is that none of his three children is strong enough to rule the Wyrmberg, so he’s hanging around to see which of the three will be the last one standing. Greicha tells Twoflower he’d better be on his way if he wants to rescue his friend, the skinny wizard.
Leaving the ex-ruler behind, Twoflower climbs on Ninereeds’s neck, and they fly through the caverns and up a spiral staircase big enough for an army. They emerge into the great cavern where there is a flurry of excitement going on up near the roof. A moment later, Rincewind loses his grip on Lio!rt’s arm and falls… onto the back of Twoflower’s dragon, which swoops out through a cave mouth into open air.
Hrun is in a grassy arena atop the mountain, surrounded by senior dragonlords and facing Liessa’s brothers Lio!rt and Liartes. Hrun challenges both of them to combat at the same time. The brothers choose to fight on their dragons. Hrun defeats both brothers and their dragons by knocking the riders unconscious, causing their imaginary dragons to wink out of existence. Just as Hrun is about to seize his prize (Liessa and the kingdom of the Wyrmberg), he is snatched up by Ninereeds with Rincewind and Twoflower. Liessa summons her dragon and launches herself after her champion.
Ninereeds flies higher, and the air grows thinner, until Twoflower passes out. Without Twoflower to imagine the dragon, it disappears. Liessa catches Hrun, but Rincewind and Twoflower are still falling. Rincewind tries desperately to imagine a dragon, to no avail. Death appears beside him, mocking: “IT WON’T WORK, laughed a voice like the dull toning of a funeral bell, YOU DON’T BELIEVE IN THEM” (171). The sight of Death startles Rincewind right into another universe. He finds himself in an airplane. In this universe, he is Dr. Rjinswand, a nuclear physicist. He has arrived in the middle of a hijacking and inadvertently disarms the hijacker.
There is a crash from the rear of the plane, and the Luggage charges down the aisle. A terrified Dr. Rjinswand wishes he were anywhere else. There is a flash, and then Rincewind and Twoflower are back in the Discworld, plunging into the Circle Sea.
Part 3 Analysis
Part 3 focuses on imagination. This is where the theme The Role of Imaginative Fiction comes into play (in conjunction with The Science of Discworld Magic), along with the distinctive symbolism of imagination. The Wyrmberg is located in a strong magical field, which means that imagination (or, in the case of the old murdered Dragonlord, the will) is strong enough to create reality. Liessa has the strongest imagination of any of the Dragon riders, but even she is limited in comparison to her father. He attributes her weakness in that area to the effects of progressive education, which some readers may interpret as Pratchett’s commentary on the negative influence of the education system on children’s imaginations.
There is some research indicating that children who learn in an imagination-rich environment have a more nuanced grasp of lesson materials. Modern school systems, in an effort to improve educational scores while saving money, tends to cut creative programs that promote generalized learning skills in favor of increased focus on rote memorization for standardized achievement tests. Similarly, artistic or creative job fields (like acting, writing, and art) are often low-paying, and many do not consider such jobs “careers”—at least not on the same level as a corporate position. The result is that children learn to memorize and regurgitate data at the same time that companies (which increasingly rely on machines that, ironically, regurgitate data) desperately seek employees who can think holistically and creatively.
Twoflower comes from a rigid environment where he works as a clerk performing rote tasks, yet he is the character most gifted with imagination. He had to have imagination to conceive the idea of traveling to the lands around the Circle Sea just to see what is there. His imagination represents a threat to the regulated society of the Empire. Discontented people often don’t do as they are told by those in power.
Rincewind technically possesses imagination, but he employs it in imagining the worst thing that could possibly happen and then running away from it. The result is usually at least as bad as whatever fate he was imagining. He is remarkable in Discworld terms in that he imagines a technology unrelated to magic. He imagines it so powerfully that he transports himself into a universe where technology does the things that magic does on the Disc. The ability to conceive something you have never seen is essential to writing fantasy. Writers are sometimes taught to “write what you know”; according to someone like Pratchett, who reveres the power of imagination, the recommendation would be, “write what you can imagine clearly enough to make real.”
Part 3 also continues the exploration of The Science of Discworld Magic. The explanation of how strong magical fields were left behind by devastating magical battles sounds like nuclear radiation: “The magic faded away—slowly, over the millennia, releasing as it decayed myriads of sub-astral particles that severely distorted the reality around it” (124). Just as radiation mutates plant and animal life in the real world, so do remnants of powerful magic distort certain areas on the Disc. This, too, ties back to The Role of Imaginative Fiction. In terms of education, reading about a world in which different rules apply from the familiar world of reality forces learners to hold more possibilities in their heads. A young reader reading about the origin of strong magical fields has to pay attention to the science of magic, which then carries over to real-world science.
Liessa and the dragonriders of the Wyrmberg are a nod and a wink to the Dragonriders of Pern series by Anne McCaffrey, one of the most influential speculative fiction writers of the late 19th century. The comparison ends with the names—Liessa for Lessa, the protagonist of the Pern series—and the dragons. Beyond that, Liessa is more in keeping with the sword and sorcery genre.
Pratchett satirizes the convention of the gorgeous warrior queen dressed in scraps of chain mail. Such characters typically exist as convenient plot devices—a prize for the hero and someone to rescue him, usually temporarily, from some complication. Pratchett subverts this trope by giving Liessa agency and motivation. She sees Hrun as a tool, a weapon, and a potential figurehead, and she offers him good value in return. She is not a particularly likable character. She is abrasive, selfish, and ruthless. The unpleasantness is attributed to frustrated ambition; she is prevented from achieving goals that would be within her power if she were a man.
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By Terry Pratchett
