A ladder banged against the side of the slab and the head of an elderly druid appeared over the edge. He gave the two passengers a puzzled glance, and then looked up at Belafon.
‘About bloody time,’ he said. ‘Seven weeks to Hogswatchnight and it’s gone down on us again.’
‘Hallo, Zakriah,’ said Belafon. What happened this time?’
‘It’s all totally fouled up. Today it predicted sunrise three minutes early. Talk about a klutz, boy, this is it.’
Belafon clambered onto the ladder and disappeared from view. The passengers looked at each other, and then tared down into the vast open space between the inner circle of stones.
‘What shall we do now?’ said Twoflower.
‘We could go to sleep?’ suggested Rincewind.
Twoflower ignored him, and climbed down the ladder.
Around the circle druids were tapping the megaliths with little hammers and listening intently. Several of the huge stones were lying on their sides, and each was surrounded by another crowd of druids who were examining it carefully and arguing amongst themselves. Arcane phrases floated up to where Rincewind sat:
‘It can’t be software incompatibility – the Chant of the Trodden Spiral was designed for concentric rings, idiot . . .’
‘I say fire it up again and try a simple moon ceremony . . .’
‘. . . all right, all right, nothing’s wrong with the stones, it’s just that the universe has gone wrong, right? . . .’
Through the mists of his exhausted mind Rincewind remembered the horrible star they’d seen in the sky. Something had gone wrong with the universe last night.
How had he come to be back on the Disc?
He had a feeling that the answers were somewhere inside his head. And an even more unpleasant feeling began to dawn on him that something else was watching the scene below – watching it from behind his eyes.
The Spell had crept from its lair deep in the untrodden dirtroads of his mind, and was sitting bold as brass in his forebrain, watching the passing scene and doing the mental equivalent of eating popcorn.
He tried to push it back – and the world vanished . . .
He was in darkness; a warm, musty darkness, the darkness of the tomb, the velvet blackness of the mummy case. There was a strong smell of old leather and the sourness of ancient paper. The paper rustled.
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—’
‘Pardon me, the slime—’
‘Distinctly rubbery, I thought—’
There was a pause. Then a voice said carefully, ‘Anyway, whatever it was, we remember it distinctly.’
‘Quite so.’
‘Exactly.’
‘And our task is to see that nothing dreadful happens to it, Rincewind.’
Rincewind squinted into the blackness. ‘Would you kindly explain what you’re talking about?’
There was a papery sigh. ‘So much for metaphor,’ said one of the voices. ‘Look, it is very important you safeguard the Spell in your head and bring it back to us at the right time, you understand, so that when the moment is precisely right we can be said. Do you understand?’
Rincewind thought: we can be said!
And it dawned on him what the tracery was, ahead of him. It was writing on a page, seen from underneath.
‘I’m in the Octavo?’ he said.
‘In certain metaphysical respects,’ said one of the voices in offhand tones. It came closer. He could feel the dry rustling right in front of his nose . . .
He ran away.
The single red dot glowed in its patch of darkness. Trymon, still wearing the ceremonial robes from his inauguration as head of the Order, couldn’t rid himself of the feeling that it had grown slightly while he watched. He turned away from the window with a shudder.
‘Well?’ he said.
‘It’s a star,’ said the Professor of Astrology, ‘I think.’
‘You think?’
The astrologer winced. They were standing in Unseen University’s observatory, and the tiny ruby pinpoint on the horizon wasn’t glaring at him any worse than his new master.
‘Well, you see, the point is that we’ve always believed stars to be pretty much the same as our sun —’
‘You mean balls of fire about a mile across?’
‘Yes. But this new one is, well—big.’
‘Bigger than the sun?’ said Trymon. He’d always considered a mile-wide ball of fire quite impressive, although he disapproved of stars on principle. They made the sky look untidy.
‘A lot bigger,’ said the astrologer slowly.
‘Bigger than Great A’Tuin’s head, perhaps?’
The astrologer looked wretched.
‘Bigger than Great A’Tuin and the Disc together,’ he said. ‘We’ve checked,’ he added hurriedly, ‘and we’re quite sure.’
That is big,’ agreed Trymon. The word “huge” comes to mind.’
‘Massive,’ agreed the astrologer hurriedly.
‘Hmm.’
Trymon paced the broad mosaic floor of the observatory, which was inlaid with the signs of the Disc zodiac. There were sixty-four of them, from Wezen the Double-headed Kangaroo to Gahoolie, the Vase of Tulips (a constellation of great religious significance whose meaning, alas, was now lost).
He paused on the blue and gold tilework of Mubbo the Hyaena, and turned suddenly.
‘We’re going to hit it?’ he asked.
‘I am afraid so, sir,’ said the astrologer.
‘Hmm.’ Trymon walked a few paces forward, stroking his beard thoughtfully. He paused on the cusp of Okjock the Salesman and The Celestial Parsnip.
‘I’m not an expert in these matters,’ he said, ‘but I imagine this would not be a good thing?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Very hot, stars?’
The astrologer swallowed. ‘Yes, sir.’
‘We’d be burned up?’
‘Eventually. Of course, before that there would be discquakes, tidal waves, gravitational disruption and probably the atmosphere would be stripped away.’
‘Ah. In a word, lack of decent organisation.’
The astrologer hesitated, and gave in. You could say so, sir.’
‘People would panic?’ ‘Fairly briefly, I’m afraid.’
Hmm,’ said Trymon, who was just passing over The Perhaps Gate and orbiting smoothly towards the Cow of Heaven. He squinted up again at the red gleam on the horizon. He appeared to reach a decision.
‘We can’t find Rincewind,’ he said, ‘and if we can’t find Rincewind we can’t find the eighth spell of the Octavo. But we believe that the Octavo must be read to avert catastrophe – otherwise why did the Creator leave it behind?’
‘Perhaps He was just forgetful,’ suggested the astrologer.
Trymon glared at him.
‘The other Orders are searching all the lands between here and the Hub,’ he continued, counting the points on his fingers, ‘because it seems unreasonable that a man can fly into a cloud and not come out . . .’