Wee cannae unnerstand whut some folks seez in yon dry-ads, but ’tis nae cause tae mak us run awa’.
In the chapter The Sending of the Eight in The Colour of Magic, Rincewind the wizard manages to get himself rescued (aka captured) from Death by a dryad named Druellae. She allows him inside her tree which she starts to describe as “the mere four-dimensional analog of a whole multidimensional universe….”
This is one of those concepts in fantasy literature that is so cool that I really wish it were true. Wouldn’t it be fun to get inside of a tree (preferably with a nice, friendly dryad) and see a whole new world that’s as large or larger than the world outside?
There’s an interesting paragraph in this chapter about several of the non-human races on the Disc. I won’t quote the whole thing, but it’s the one that starts, “But why were there dryads at all?”
Rincewind thought they had died out centuries ago, along with gnomes and pixies. Only elves and trolls supposedly had survived from ancient times. We’ll see later that Terry decides not to keep all of this as truth in Discworld.
While Rincewind is inside the tree with Druellae and other dryads, Druellae uses some of the old magic to conjure up the real image of the Temple of Bel-Shamharoth where Twoflower already was poking around. I’ll explore what goes on there with you later.
It’s while everyone is enthralled with the goings on at the Temple that Rincewind tries to make a break for it. He doesn’t get very far for now.
Druellae and her he-dryad guards block him, and she demands a spell of him. She has said that she can read Rincewind’s mind, so he invites her to do so. When she recognizes The Spell residing in his brain, she (and everyone else) is horrified. Rincewind this time is able to escape, or rather, disappear.
This is just one of the many times The Spell saves Rincewind from certain death.
Unfortunately, he materializes near Twoflower inside the Temple. If ever “out of the frying pan and into the fire” were true….
This isn’t really so surprising. Unexplained, but not surprising. There’s so much magic lurking in these areas that you just know something like this was bound to happen.
I guess it’s not too surprising either then that a sentient sword causes a disaster by saying the unspeakable a little while later. More on that next time.
