He felt that the darkness was full of unimaginable horrors – and the trouble with unimaginable horrors was that they were only to easy to imagine . . .
'Rincewind,' said a voice. Rincewind had never heard a lizard speak, but if one did it would have a voice like that.
'Um,' he said. 'Yes?'
The voice chuckled – a strange sound, rather papery.
'You ought to say “Where am I?” ' it said.
'Would I like it if I knew?' said Rincewind. He stared hard at the darkness. Now that he was accustomed to it, he could see something. Something vague, hardly bright enough to be anything at all, just the merest tracery in the air. Something strangely familiar.
'All right,' he said. 'Where am I?'
'You're dreaming.'
'Can I wake up now, please?'
'No,' said another voice, as old and dry as the first but still slightly different.
'We have something very important to tell you,' said a third voice, if anything more corpse-dry than the others. Rincewind nodded stupidly. In the back of his mind the Spell lurked and peered cautiously over his mental shoulder.
'You've caused us a lot of trouble, young Rincewind,' the voice went on. 'All this dropping over the edge of the world with no thought for other people. We had to seriously distort reality, you know.'
'Gosh.'
'And now you have a very important task ahead of you.'
'Oh. Good.'
'Many years ago we arranged for one of our number to hide in your head, because we could foresee a time coming when you would need to play a very important role.'
'Me? Why?'
'You run away a lot,' said one of the voices. That is good. You are a survivor.'
'Survivor? I've nearly been killed dozens of times!'
'Exactly.'
'Oh.'
'But try not to fall off the Disc again. We really can't have that.'
'Who are we, exactly?' said Rincewind.
There was a rustling in the darkness.
'In the beginning was the word,' said a dry voice right ehind him.
'It was the Egg,' corrected another voice. 'I distinctly remember. The Great Egg of the Universe. Slightly rubbery.'
'You're both wrong, in fact. I'm sure it was the primordial slime.'
A voice by Rincewind's knee said: 'No, that came afterwards. There was firmament first. Lots of firmament. Rather sticky, like candyfloss. Very syrupy, in fact—.'
'In case anyone's interested,' said a crackly voice on Rincewind's left, 'you're all wrong. In the beginning was the Clearing of the Throat—'
'—then the word—'