Oour wee hag unnerstands spells bettern Rincey-win, we ken.
You will, assuming you keep following along here, come to realize that Rincewind is about as indestructible as The Luggage.
There’s a good reason for that.
Well…there’s a reason for that.
It stems from his time at Unseen University (UU) during which he made (as many university attendees will do from time to time) a bet, presumably with some fellow wizards-in-training. Someone dared him to open…cue ominous music…The Octavo. This is the most magical of all books that even the most powerful and experienced wizard (so definitely not Rincewind) would rather run away from than try to remember where it is. It contains a number of spells that no one presently at UU would ever dare speak.
When Rincewind attempts to win the bet, one of the spells – known hereafter as The Spell – leaps out at him and buries itself “deeply into his mind”. Despite the best efforts of the UU faculty, no one has been able to reverse the process and get The Spell back into The Octavo.
Since The Spell cannot die, neither will Rincewind, so long as it remains in his brain.
I’m going to skip ahead a bit in The Colour of Magic at this point because in the chapter called The Lure of the Wyrm, we almost – but not quite – learn what The Spell is.
It seems that almost every time Rincewind is in grave danger and Death is near, The Spell tries to get itself spoken. In the chapter mentioned, Rincewind is falling to (almost – but not quite) certain death. He begins to speak the two-times-four words of The Spell. Each word appears in the air as one of the colors of the rainbow.
- Ashonai
- Ebiris
- Urshoring
- Kvanti
- Pythan
- N’gurad
- Feringomalee
The last word, whatever it is, would have appeared as the eighth color of the rainbow, octarine, but Twoflower comes out of nowhere (not literally, but…you know….) to save Rincewind. (I’ll probably discuss the details of this scene with you later.)
This is as close as we ever get to learning what The Spell is in full. We don’t know if each word means anything on its own. Most likely they only have significance as part of the full Spell.
As far as I know, the first seven words of The Spell don’t mean anything in any real language. If you know differently, let us know.
What do you imagine the last word was? Don’t say it. I think writing it is safe though.
