The Colour of Magic   ::   Пратчетт Терри

“We know all about you, Rincewind the magician. You are a man of great cunning and artifice. You laugh in the face of Death. Your affected air of craven cowardice does not fool me.”

It fooled Rincewind. “I—” he began, and paled as the nothingness-stick was turned towards him. “I see you know all about me,” he finished weakly, and sat down heavily on the slippery surface. He and Twoflower, under instructions from the hooded commander, strapped themselves down to rings set in the transparent disc.

“If you make the merest suggestion of weaving a spell,” said the darkness under the hood, “you die. Third quadrant reconcile, ninth quadrant redouble, forward all!”

A wall of water shot into the air behind Rincewind and the disc jerked suddenly. The dreadful presence of the sea troll had probably concentrated the hydrophobes’ minds wonderfully, because it then rose at a very steep angle and didn’t begin level flight until it was a dozen fathoms above the waves. Rincewind glanced down through the transparent surface and wished he hadn’t.

“Well, off again then,” said Twoflower cheerfully. He turned and waved at the troll, now no more than a speck on the edge of the world.

Rincewind glared at him. “Doesn’t anything ever worry you?” he asked.

“We’re still alive, aren’t we?” asked Twoflower. “And you yourself said they wouldn’t be going to all this trouble if we were just going to be slaves. I expect Tethis was exaggerating. I expect it’s all a misunderstanding. I expect we’ll be sent home. After we’ve seen Krull, of course. And I must say it all sounds fascinating.”

“Oh yes,” said Rincewind, in a hollow voice. “Fascinating.” He was thinking: I’ve seen excitement, and I’ve seen boredom. And boredom was best.

Had either of them happened to look down at that moment they would have noticed a strange v-shaped wave surging through the water far below them, its apex pointing directly at Tethis’ island. But they weren’t looking. The twenty-four hydrophobic magicians were looking, but to them it was just another piece of dreadfulness, not really any different from the liquid horror around it. They were probably right.

Sometime before all this the blazing pirate ship had hissed under the waves and started the long slow slide towards the distant ooze. It was more distant than average, because directly under the stricken keel was the Gorunna Trench—a chasm in the Disc’s surface that was so black, so deep and so reputedly evil that even the krakens went there fearfully, and in pairs.