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《THE AMBER SPYGLASS》
ONE - THE ENCHANTED SLEEPER-1
In a valley shaded with rhododendrons, close to the snow line, where a stream milky with meltwater splashed and where doves and lis flew among the immense pines, lay a cave, half-hidden by the crag above and the stiff heavy leaves that clustered below.
The woods were full of sound: the stream between the rocks, the wind among the needles of the pine brahe chitter of is and the cries of small arboreal mammals, as well as the birdsong; and from time to time a strust of wind would make one of the branches of a cedar or a fir move against another and groan like a cello.
It lace of brilliant sunlight, never undappled. Shafts of lemon-gold brilliance lanced down to the forest floor between bars and pools of brown-green shade; and the light was ill, never stant, because drifting mist would often float among the treetops, filtering all the sunlight to a pearly sheen and
brushing every pine e with moisture that glistened when the mist lifted. Sometimes the wetness in the clouds densed into tiny drops half mist and half rain, which floated downward rather than fell, making a soft rustling patter among the millions of needles.
There was a narrow path beside the stream, which led from a village, little more tha9９lｉｂ?n a cluster of herdsmens dwellings, at the foot of the valley to a half-mined shrihe glacier at its head, a place where faded silken flags streamed out in the perpetual winds from the high mountains, and s of barley cakes and dried tea were placed by pious villagers. An odd effect of the light, the ice, and the vapor enveloped the head of the valley iual rainbows.
The cave lay some way above the path. Many years before, a holy man had lived there, meditating and fasting and praying, and the place was veed for the sake of his memory. It was thirty feet or so deep, with a dry floor: an ideal den for a bear or a wolf, but the only creatures living in it for years had been birds and bats.
But the form that was croug ihe entrance, his black eyes watg this way and that, his sharp ears pricked, was her bird nor bat. The sunlight lay heavy and ri his lustrous golden fur, and his monkey hands turned a pine e this way and that, snapping off the scales with sharp fingers and scratg out the sweet nuts.
Behind him, just beyond the point where the sunlight reached, Mrs. Coulter was heating some water in a small pan over a naphtha stove. Her daemon uttered a warning murmur and Mrs. Coulter looked up.
ing along the forest path was a young village girl. Mrs. Coulter knew who she was: Ama had been bringing her food for some days now. Mrs. Coulter had let it be known when she first arrived that she was a holy woman engaged iation and prayer, and under a vow o speak to a man. Ama was the only person whose vis藏书网its she accepted.
This time, though, the girl wasnt alone. Her father was with her, and while Ama climbed up to the cave, he waited a little way off.
Ama came to the cave entrand bowed.
"My father sends me with prayers for yoodwill," she said.
"Greetings, child," said Mrs. Coulter.
The girl was carrying a bundle ed in faded cotton, which she laid at Mrs. Coulters feet. Then she held out a little hunch of flowers, a dozen or so anemones bound with a cotton thread, and began to speak in a rapid, nervous voice. Mrs. Coulter uood some of the language of these mountain people, but it would never do to let them know how much. So she smiled and motioo the girl to close her lips and to watch their two daemons. The golden monkey was holding out his little black hand, and Amas butterfly daemon was fluttering closer and closer until he settled on a horny forefinger.
The monkey brought him slowly to his ear, and Mrs. Coulter felt a tiny stream of uanding flow into her mind, clarifying the girls words. The villagers were happy for a holy woman, such as herself, to take refuge in the cave, but it was rumored that she had a panion with her who was in some way dangerous and powerful.
It was that which made the villagers afraid. Was this other being Mrs. Coulters master, or her servant? Did she mean harm? Why was she there in the first place? Were they going to stay long? Ama veyed these questions with a thousand misgivings.
A novel answer occurred to Mrs. Coulter as the daemons uanding filtered into hers. She could tell the truth. Not all of it, naturally, but some. She felt a little quiver of laughter at the idea, but kept it out of her voice as she explained:
"Yes, there is someone else with me. But there is nothing to be afraid of. She is my daughter, and she is under a spell that made her fall asleep. We have e here to hide from the enter who put the spell on her, while I try to cure her and keep her from harm. e and see her, if you like."
Ama was half-soothed by Mrs. Coulters soft voice, and half-afraid still; and the talk of enters and spells added to the awe she felt. But the golden monkey was holding her daemon so gently, and she was curious, besides, so she followed Mrs. Coulter into the cave.
Her father, oh below, took a step forward, and his crow daemon raised her wings once or twice, but he stayed where he was.
Mrs. Coulter lit a dle, because the light was fading rapidly, and led Ama to the back of the cave. Amas eyes glittered widely in the gloom, and her hands were moving together in a repetitive gesture of finger on thumb, finger on thumb, to ward off danger by fusing the evil spirits.
"You see?" said Mrs. Coulter. "She do no harm. Theres nothing to be afraid of."
Ama looked at the figure in the sleeping bag. It was a girl older than she was, by three or four years, perhaps; and she had hair of a a had never seen before, a tawny fairness like a lions. Her lips were pressed tightly together, and she was deeply asleep, there was no doubt about that, for her daemon lay coiled and unscious at her throat. He had the form of some creature like a mongoose, but red-gold in color and smaller. The golden monkey was tenderly smoothing the fur between the sleeping daemons ears, and as Ama looked, the mongoose creature stirred uneasily and uttered a hoarse little mew. Amas daemon, mouse-formed, pressed himself close to Amas ned peered fearfully through her hair.
"So you tell your father what youve seen," Mrs. Coulter went on. "No evil spirit. Just my daughter, asleep under a spell, and in my care. But, please, Ama, tell your father that this must be a secret. No o you two must know Lyra is here. If the enter knew where she was, he would seek her out aroy her, and me, and everything nearby. So hush! Tell your father, and no one else."
She k beside Lyra and smoothed the damp hair back from the sleeping face before bending low to kiss her daughters cheek. Then she looked up with sad and loving eyes, and smiled at Ama with such brave, wise passion that the little girl felt tears fill her gaze.
Mrs. Coulter took Amas hand as they went back to the cave entrance, and saw the girls father watg anxiously from below. The ut her hands together and bowed to him, and he responded with relief as his daughter, having bowed both to Mrs. Coulter and to the ented sleeper, turned and scampered down the slope iwilight. Father and daughter bowed once more to the cave and the off, to vanish among the gloom of the heavy rhododendrons.
ONE - THE ENCHANTED SLEEPER-2
Mrs. Coulter turned back to the water oove, which was nearly at the boil.
Croug down, she crumbled some dried leaves into it, two pinches from this bag, one from that, and added three drops of a pale yellow oil. She stirred it briskly, ting in her head till five minutes had gone by. Theook the pan off the stove and sat down to wait for the liquid to cool.
Arouhere lay some of the equipment from the camp by the blue lake where Sir Charles Latrom had died: a sleeping bag, a rucksack with ges of clothes and washing equipment, and so on. There was also a case of vas with a tough wooden frame, lined with kapok, taining various instruments; and there istol in a holster.
The deco cooled rapidly ihin air, and as soon as it was at blood heat, she poured it carefully into a metal beaker and carried it to the rear of the cave. The monkey daemon dropped his pine e and came with her.
Mrs. Coulter placed the beaker carefully on a low rod k beside the sleeping Lyra. The golden monkey crouched oher side, ready to seize Pantalaimon if he woke up.
Lyras hair was damp, and her eyes moved behind their closed lids. She was beginning to stir: Mrs. Coulter had felt her eyelashes flutter when shed kissed her, and knew she didnt have long before Lyra woke up altogether.
She slipped a hand uhe girls head, and with the other lifted the damp strands of hair off her forehead. Lyras lips parted and she moaned softly; Pantalaimon moved a little closer to her breast. The golden monkeys eyes never left Lyras daemon, and his little black fiwitched at the edge of the
sleeping bag.
A look from Mrs. Coulter, a go and moved back a hands breadth. The womaly lifted her daughter so that her shoulders were off the ground and her head lolled, and then Lyra caught her breath and her eyes half-opened, fluttering, heavy.
&quer," she murmured. &quer... where are you... I t see..."
"Shh," her mother whispered, "shh, my darling, drink this."
Holding the beaker in Lyras mouth, she tilted it to let a drop moisten the girls lips. Lyras tongue se and moved to lick them, and then Mrs. Coulter let a little more of the liquid trickle into Lyras mouth, very carefully, letting her swallow each sip before allowing her more.
It took several minutes, but eventually the beaker was empty, and Mrs. Coulter laid her daughter down again. As soon as Lyras head lay on the ground, Pantalaimon moved back arouhroat. His red-gold fur was as damp as her hair. They were deeply asleep again.
The golden monkey picked his way lightly to the mouth of the cave and sat once more watg the path. Mrs. Coulter dipped a flannel in a basin of cold water and mopped Lyras face, and then unfastehe sleeping bag and washed Lyras arms and ned shoulders, for Lyra was hot. Then her mother took a b aly teased out the tangles in Lyras hair, smoothing it back from her forehead, parting it ly.
She left the sleeping hag open so the girl could cool down, and unfolded the buhat Ama had brought: some flat loaves of bread, a cake of pressed tea, some sticky rice ed in a large leaf. It was time to build the fire. The chill of the mountains was fierce at night. W methodically, she shaved some dry tinder, set the fire, and struck a match. That was something else to think of: the matches were running out, and so was the naphtha for the stove; she must keep the fire alight day and night from now on.
Her daemon was distented. He didnt like what she was doing here in the cave, and wheried to express his , she brushed him away. He turned his back, pt in every line of his body as he flicked the scales from his pine e out into the dark. She took no notice, but worked stbbr>９9ｌｉｂ.eadily and skillfully to build up the fire ahe pan to heat some water for tea.
heless, his skepticism affected her, and as she crumbled the dark gray tea brito the water, she wondered what in the world she thought she was doing, and whether she had gone mad, and, over and ain, what would happehe Church 9９ｌiｂ.found out. The golden monkey was right. She wasnt only hiding Lyra: she was hiding her own eyes.
—
Out of the dark the little boy came, hopeful and frightened, whispering over and over:
"Lyra, Lyra, Lyra... "
Behind him there were ures, even more shadowy than he was, even more silent. They seemed to be of the same pany and of the same kind, but they had no faces that were visible and no voices that spoke; and his voiever rose above a whisper, and his face was shaded and blurred like something half-fotten.
"Lyra... Lyra..."
Where were they?
On a great plain, where no light shone from the iron-dark sky, and where a mist obscured the horizon on every side. The ground was bare earth, beaten flat by the pressure of millions of feet, even though those feet had less weight thahers; so it must have been time that pressed it flat, even though time had been stilled in this place; so it must have been the way things were. This was the end of all places and the last of all worlds.
"Lyra..."
Why were they there?
They were imprisoned. Someone had itted a crime, though no one knew what it was, or who had do, or what authority sat in judgment.
Why did the little boy keep calling Lyras name?
Hope.
Who were they?
Ghosts.
And Lyra couldnt touch them, no matter how she tried. Her baffled hands moved through and through, and still the little boy stood there pleading.
&quer," she said, but her voice came out in a whisper. "er, where are you? What is this place?"
He said, "Its the world of the dead, Lyra, I dunno what to do, I dunno if Im here forever, and I dunno if I done bad things or what, because I tried to be good, but I hate it, Im scared of it all, I hate it...”
And Lyra said, "Ill
"Be quiet," said ..Will, "just be quiet. Dont disturb me."
TWO - BALTHAMOS AND BARUCH-1
It was just after Lyra had been taken, just after Will had e down from the mountaintop, just after the witch had killed his father. Will lit the little tin lanteraken from his fathers pack, using the dry matches that hed found with it, and crouched in the lee of the rock to open Lyras rucksack.
He felt ih his good hand and found the heavy velvet-ed alethiometer. It glittered in the lantern light, and he held it out to the two shapes that stood beside him, the shapes who called themselves angels.
" you read this?" he said.
"No," said a voice. "e with us. You must e. e now to Lord Asriel."
"Who made you follow my father? You said he didnt know you were following him. But he did," Will said fiercely. "He told me to expect you. He knew more than you thought. Who sent you?"
"No o us. Ourselves only," came the voice. "We want to serve Lord Asriel. And the dead man, what did he want you to do with the knife?"
Will had to hesitate.
"He said I should take it to Lord Asriel," he said.
"Then e with us."
"No. Not till Ive found Lyra."
He folded the velvet over the alethiometer and put it into his rucksack. Seg it, he swung his fathers heavy cloak around him against the rain and crouched where he was, looking steadily at the two shadows.
"Do you tell the truth?" he said.
"Yes."
"Then are you strohan human beings, or weaker?"
"Weaker. You have true flesh, we have not. Still, you must e with us."
"No. If Im stronger, you have to obey me. Besides, I have the knife. So I and you: help me find Lyra. I dont care how long it takes, Ill find her first and then Ill go to Lord Asriel."
The two figures were silent for several seds. Then they drifted away and spoke together, though
Will could hear nothing of what they said.
Finally they came close again, and he heard:
"Very well. You are making a mistake, though you give us no choice. We shall help you find this child."
Will tried to pierce the darkness ahem more clearly, but the rain filled his eyes.
"e closer so I see you," he said.
They approached, but seemed to bee even more obscure.
"Shall I see you better in daylight?"
"No, worse. We are not of a high order among angels."
"Well, if I t see you, no one else will, either, so you stay hidden. Go and see if you find where Lyras gone. She surely t be far away. There was a woman, shell be with her, the woman took her. Go and search, and e bad tell me what you see."
The angels rose up into the stormy air and vanished. Will felt a great sullen heaviness settle over him; hed had little strength left before the fight with his father, and now he was nearly finished. All he wao do was close his eyes, which were so heavy and so sore with weeping.
He tugged the cloak over his head, clutched the rucksack to his breast, and fell asleep in a moment.
"Nowhere," said a voice.
Will heard it in the depths of sleep and struggled to wake. Eventually (and it took most of a minute, because he was so profoundly unscious) he mao open his eyes to the bright m in front of him.
"Where are you?" he said.
"Beside you," said the angel. "This way."
The sun was newly risen, and the rocks and the lis and mosses on them shone crisp and brilliant in the m light, but nowhere could he see a figure.
"I said we would be harder to see in daylight," the voice went on. "You will see us best at half-light, at dusk or daw best in darkness; least of all in the sunshine. My panion and I searched farther down the mountain, and fouher woman nor child. But there is a lake of blue water where she must have camped. There is a dead man there, and a witch eaten by a Specter."
"A dead man? What does he look like?"
"He was in late middle age. Fleshy and smooth-skinned. Silver-gray hair. Dressed in expensive clothes, and with traces of a heavy st around him."
"Sir Charles," said Will. "Thats who it is. Mrs. Coulter must have killed him. Well, thats something good, at least."
"She left traces. My panion has followed them, and he will return when hes found out where she went. I shall stay with you."
Will got to his feet and looked around. The storm had cleared the air, and the m was fresh and , whily made the se around him more distressing; for nearby lay the bodies of several of the witches who had escorted him and Lyra toward the meeting with his father. Already a brutal-beaked carrion crow was tearing at the face of one of them, and Will could see a bigger bird cirg above, as if choosing the richest feast.
Will looked at each of the bodies in turn, but none of them was Serafina Pekkala, the queen of the witch , Lyras particular friend. Then he remembered: hadnt she left suddenly on another errand, not long before the evening?
So she might still be alive. The thought cheered him, and he sed the horizon for any sign of her, but found nothing but the blue air and the sharp ro every dire he looked.
"Where are you?" he said to the angel.
"Beside you," came the voice, "as always."
Will looked to his left, where the voice was, but saw nothing.
"So no one see you. Could anyone else hear you as well as me?"
"Not if I whisper," said the aartly.
"What is your name? Do you have names?"
"Yes, we do. My name is Balthamos. My panion is Baruch."
Will sidered what to do. When you choose one way out of many, all the ways you dont take are snuffed out like dles, as if theyd never existed. At the moment all Wills choices existed at once. But to keep them all ience meant doing nothing. He had to choose, after all.
"Well go back down the mountain," he said. "Well go to that lake. There might be something there I use. And Im getting thirsty anyway. Ill take the way I think it is and you guide me if I g."
It was only when hed been walking for several minutes dowhless, rocky slope that Will realized his hand wasnt hurting. In fact, he hadnt thought of his wound since he woke up.
He stopped and looked at the rough cloth that his father had bound around it after their fight. It was greasy with the oi hed spread on it, but there was not a sign of blood; and after the incessant bleeding hed undergone sihe fingers had been lost, this was so wele that he felt his heart leap almost with joy.
He moved his fingers experimentally. True, the wounds still hurt, but with a different quality of pain: not the deep life-sapping ache of the day before, but a smaller, duller sensation. It felt as if it were healing. His father had dohat. The witches spell had failed, but his father had healed him.
He moved on down the slope, cheered.
It took three hours, and several words of guidance, before he came to the little blue lake. By the time he reached it, he arched with thirst, and in the baking sun the cloak was heavy and hot, though wheook it off, he missed its cover, for his bare arms and neck were soon burning. He dropped cloak and rucksad ran the last few yards to the water, to fall on his fad swallow mouthful after freezing mouthful. It was so cold that it made his teeth and skull ache.
Once hed slaked the thirst, he sat up and looked around. Hed been in no dition to notice things the day before, but now he saw more clearly the intense color of the water, and heard the strident i noises from all around.
"Balthamos?"
"Always here."
"Where is the dead man?"
"Beyond the high ro yht."
"Are there any Specters around?"
"No, none. I dont have anything the Specters want, and nor have you."
Will took up his rucksad cloak and made his way along the edge of the lake and up onto the rock Balthamos had pointed out.
Beyond it a little camp had bee up, with five or six tents and the remains of cooking fires. Will moved down warily in case there was someoill alive and hiding.
But the silence rofound, with the i scrapings only scratg at the surface of it. The tents were still, the water lacid, with the ripples still drifting slowly out from where hed been drinking. A flicker of green movement near his foot made him start briefly, but it was only a tiny lizard.
The tents were made of camouflage material, whily made them stand out more among the dull red
rocks. He looked in the first and found it empty. So was the sed, but ihird he found something valuable: a mess tin and a box of matches. There was also a strip of some dark substance as long and as thick as his forearm. At first he thought it was leather, but in the sunlight he saw it clearly to be dried meat.
Well, he had a knife, after all. He cut a thin sliver and found it chewy and very slightly salty, but full of good flavor. He put the meat and the matches together with the mess tin into his rucksad searched the other tents, but found them empty.
He left the largest till last.
"Is that where the dead man is?" he said to the air.
"Yes," said Balthamos. "He has been poisoned."
Will walked carefully around to the entrance, which faced the lake. Sprawled beside aurned vas chair was the body of the man known in Wills world as Sir Charles Latrom, and in Lyras as Lord Boreal, the man who stole her alethiometer, which theft in turn led Will to the subtle kself. Sir Charles had been smooth, disho, and powerful, and now he was dead. His face was distorted unpleasantly, and Will didnt want to look at it, but a glanside the tent showed that there were plenty of things to steal, so he stepped over the body to look more closely.
His father, the soldier, the explorer, would have knowly what to take. Will had to guess. He took a small magnifying glass in a steel case, because he could use it to light fires and save his matches; a reel of tough twine; an alloy teen for water, much lighter than the goatskin flask he had been carrying, and a small tin cup; a small pair of binoculars; a roll of gold s the size of a mans thumb, ed in paper; a first-aid kit; water-purifying tablets; a packet of coffee; three packs of pressed dried fruit; a bag of oatmeal biscuits; six bars of Kendal Mint Cake; a packet of fishhooks and nylon line; and finally, a notebook and a couple of pencils, and a small electric torch.
He packed it all in his rucksack, cut another sliver of meat, filled his belly and then his teen from the lake, and said to Balthamos:
"Do you think I need anything else?"
"You could do with some sense," came the reply. "Some faculty to enable you tnize wisdom and ine you to resped obey it."
"Are you wise?"
"Much more so than you."
"Well, you see, I t tell. Are you a man? You sound like a man."
"Baruch was a man. I was not. Now he is angelic."
"So...” Will stopped what he was doing, which was arranging his rucksack so the heaviest objects were itom, and tried to see the ahere was nothing there to see. "So he was a man," he went on, "and then... Do people bee angels when they die? Is that what happens?"
"Not always. Not in the vast majority of cases...Very rarely."
"When was he alive, then?"
"Four thousand years ago, more or less. I am much older."
"And did he live in my world? Or Lyras? Or this one?"
"In yours. But there are myriads of worlds. You know that."
"But how do people bee angels?"
"What is the point of this metaphysical speculation?"
"I just want to know."
"Better to stick to your task. You have pluhis dead mans property, you have all the toys you o keep you alive; now may we move on?"
"When I know which way to go."
"Whichever way we go, Baruch will find us."
"Then hell still find us if we stay here. Ive got a couple more things to do."
Will sat down where he couldnt see Sir Charless body and ate three squares of the Kendal Mint Cake. It was wonderful how refreshed and strengthened he felt as the food began to nourish him. Then he looked at the alethiometer again. The thirty-six little pictures painted on ivory were each perfectly clear: there was no doubt that this was a baby, that a puppet, this a loaf of bread, and so on. It was what they meant that was obscure.
"How did Lyra read this?" he said to Balthamos.
"Quite possibly she made it up. Those who use these instruments have studied for many years, and evehey only uand them with the help of many books of reference."
"She wasnt making it up. She read it truly. She told me things she could never have known otherwise."
"Then it is as much of a mystery to me, I assure you," said the angel.
Looking at the alethiometer, Will remembered something Lyra had said about reading it: something about the state of mind she had to be in to make it work. It had helped him, in turn, to feel the subtleties of the silver blade.
Feeling curious, he took out the knife and cut a small window in front of where he was sitting. Through it he saw nothing but blue air, but below, far below, was a landscape of trees and fields: his own world, without a doubt.
So mountains in this world didnt correspond to mountains in his. He closed the window, using his left hand for the first time. The joy of being able to use it again!
Then an idea came to him so suddenly it felt like aric shock.
If there were myriads of worlds, why did the knife only open windows between this one and his own?
Surely it should cut into any of them.
He held it up agaiing his mind flow along to the very tip of the blade as Giao Paradisi had told him, until his sciousness led among the atoms themselves and he felt every tiny snag and ripple in the air.
Instead of cutting as soon as he felt the first little halt, as he usually did, he let the knife move on to another and another. It was like trag a row of stitches while pressing so softly that none of them was harmed.
"What are you doing?" said the voice from the air, bringing him back.
"Expl," said Will. "Be quiet and keep out of the way. If you e his youll get cut, and if I t see you, I t avoid you."
Balthamos made a sound of muted distent. Will held out the knife again a for those tiny halts aations.
There were far more of them thahought. And as he felt them without the o cut through at once, he found that they each had a different quality: this one was hard and defihat one cloudy; a third was slippery, a fourth brittle and frail...
But among them all there were some he felt more easily than others, and, already knowing the answer, he cut ohrough to be sure: his own world again.
He closed it up a with the kip for a snag with a different quality. He found ohat was elastid resistant, ahe knife feel its way through.
Ahe world he saw through that window was not his own: the ground was closer here, and the landscape was not green fields and hedges but a desert of rolling dunes.
He closed it and opened ahe smoke-laden air over an industrial city, with a line of ed and
sullen workers trudging into a factory.
He closed that ooo, and came baself. He felt a little dizzy. For the first time he uood some of the true power of the knife, and laid it very carefully on the ro front of him.
"Are you going to stay here all day?" said Balthamos.
"Im thinking. You only move easily from one world to another if the grounds in the same place. And maybe there are places where it is, and maybe thats where a lo藏书网t of cutting-through happens... And youd have to know what your own world felt like with the point or you might never get back. Youd be lost forever."
"Indeed. But may we...”
"And youd have to know which world had the ground in the same place, or there wouldnt be any point in opening it," said Will, as muself as to the angel. "So its not as easy as I thought. We were just lucky in Oxford and Cittagazze, maybe. But Ill just..."
He picked up the knife again. As well as the clear and obvious feeli wheouched a point that would open to his own world, there had been another kind of sensatioouched more than once: a quality of resonance, like the feeling of striking a heavy w藏书网ooden drum, except of course that it came, like every other one, ii movement through the empty air.
There it was. He moved away a somewhere else: there it was again.
He cut through and found that his guess was right. The resonance meant that the ground in the world hed opened was in the same place as this one. He found himself looking at a grassy upland meadow under an overcast sky, in which a herd of placid beasts was grazing, animals such as hed never seen before, creatures the size of bison, with wide horns and shaggy blue fur an?d a crest of stiff hair along their backs.
He stepped through. The animal looked up incuriously and then turned back to the grass. Leaving the window open, Will, iher-world meadow, felt with the knifepoint for the familiar snags and tried them.
Yes, he could open his own world from this one, and he was still high above the farms and hedges; and yes, he could easily find the solid resohat meant the Cittagazze-world hed jus.99ｌib.t left.
With a deep sense of relief, Will went back to the camp by the lake, closing everything behind him. Now he could find his way home; now he would not get lost; now he could hide when he o, and move about safely.
With every increase in his knowledge came a gain in strength. He sheathed the k his waist and swung the rucksack over his shoulder.
"Well, are you ready now?" said that sarcastic voice.
"Yes. Ill explain if you like, but you dont seem very ied."
"Oh, I find whatever you do a source of perpetual fasation. But never mind me. What are you going to say to these people who are ing?"
Will looked around, startled. Farther dowrail, a long way down, there was a line of travelers with packhorses, making their way steadily up toward the lake. They hadnt seen him yet, but if he stayed where he was, they would soon.
Will gathered up his fathers cloak, which hed laid over a ro the sun. It weighed much less now that it was dry. He looked around: there was nothing else he could carry.
"Lets go farther on," he said.
He would have liked to retie the bandage, but it could wait. He set off along the edge of the lake, away from the travelers, and the angel followed him, invisible in the bright air.
Much later that day they came down from the bare mountains onto a spur covered in grass and dwarf rhododendrons. Will was ag for rest, and soon, he decided, hed stop.
Hed heard little from the angel. From time to time Balthamos had said, "Not that way," or "There is an easier path to the left," and hed accepted the advice; but really he was moving for the sake of moving, and to keep away from those travelers, because until the el came back with more news, he might as well have stayed where they were.
Now the sun was setting, he thought he could see his strange panion. The outline of a man seemed to quiver in the light, and the air was thicker i.
"Balthamos?" he said. "I want to find a stream. Is there one nearby ?"
"There is a spring halfway down the slope," said the angel, "just above those trees."
"Thank you," said Will.
He found the spring and drank deeply, filling his teen. But before he could go on down to the little wood, there came an exclamation from Balthamos, and Will turo see his outline dart across the slope toward, what? The angel was visible only as a flicker of movement, and Will could see him better when he didnt look at him directly; but he seemed to pause, and listen, and then launch himself into the air to skim back swiftly to Will.
"Here!" he said, and his voice was free of disapproval and sarcasm for once. "Baruch came this way! And there is one of those windows, almost invisible. e, e. e now."
Will followed eagerly, his weariness fotten. The window, he saw when he reached it, opened onto a dim, tundra-like landscape that was flatter than the mountains itagazze world, and colder, with an overcast sky. He went through, and Balthamos followed him at once.
"Which world is this?" Will said.
"The girls own world. This is where they came through. Baruch has gone ahead to follow them."
"How do you know? Do you read his mind?"
"Of course I read his mind. Wherever he goes, my heart goes with him; we feel as ohough we are two."
Will looked around. There was no sign of human life, and the chill in the air was increasing by the minute as the light failed.
"I dont want to sleep here," he said. "Well stay itagazze world for the night and e through in the m. At least theres wood back there, and I make a fire. And now I know what her world feels like, I find it with the knife...Oh, Balthamos? you take any other shape?"
"Why would I wish to do that?"
"In this world human beings have daemons, and if I go about without oheyll be suspicious. Lyra was frightened of me at first because of that. So if were going to travel in her world, youll have to pretend to be my daemon, and take the shape of some animal. A bird, maybe. Then you could fly, at least."
TWO - BALTHAMOS AND BARUCH-2
"Oh, how tedious."
" you, though?"
"I could..."
"Do it now, the me see."
The form of the angel seemed to dense and swirl into a little vortex in midair, and then a blackbird swooped down onto the grass at Wills feet.
"Fly to my shoulder," said Will.
The bird did so, and then spoke in the angels familiar acid tone:
"I shall only do this when its absolutely necessary. Its unspeakably humiliating."
"Too bad," said Will. "Whenever we see people in this world, you bee a bird. Theres no point in fussing uing. Just do it."
The blackbird flew off his shoulder and vanished in midair, and there was the angel again, sulking in the half-light. Before they went back through, Will looked all around, sniffing the air, taking the measure of the world where Lyra was captive.
"Where is your panion now?" he said.
"Following the woman south."
"Then we shall go that way, too, in the m."
day Will walked for hours and saw no ohe try sisted for the most part of low hills covered in short dry grass, and whenever he found himself on any sort of high point, he looked all around fns of human habitation, but found he only variation in the dusty brown-greeiness was a distant smudge of darker green, which he made for because Balthamos said it was a forest and there was a river there, which led south. When the sun was at its height, he tried and failed to sleep among some low bushes; and as the evening approached, he was footsore and weary.
"Slress," said Balthamos sourly.
"I t help that," said Will. "If you t say anything useful, dont speak at all."
By the time he reached the edge of the forest, the sun was low and the air heavy with pollen, so much so that he sneezed several times, startling a bird that flew up shrieking from somewhere nearby.
"That was the first living thing Ive seen today," Will said.
"Where are you going to camp?" said Balthamos.
The angel was occasionally visible now in the long shadows of the trees. What Will could see of his expression etulant.
Will said, "Ill have to stop here somewhere. You could help look food spot. I hear a stream, see if you find it."
The angel disappeared. Will trudged on, through the low clumps of heather and bog myrtle, wishing there was such a thing as a path for his feet to follow, and eyeing the light with apprehension: he must choose where to stop soon, or the dark would force him to stop without a choice.
"Left," said Balthamos, an arms length away. "A stream and a dead tree for firewood. This way..."
Will followed the angels void soon found the spot he described. A stream splashed swiftly between mossy rocks, and disappeared over a lip into a narrow little chasm dark uhe overarg trees. Beside the stream, a grassy baended a little way back to bushes and undergrowth.
Before he let himself rest, he set about colleg wood, and soon came across a circle of charred stones in the grass, where someone else had made a fire long before. He gathered a pile of twigs and heavier branches and with the k them to a useful length before trying to get them lit. He didnt know the best way to go about it, and wasted several matches before he mao coax the flames into life.
The angel watched with a kind of atience.
Ohe fire was going, Will ate two oatmeal biscuits, some dried meat, and some Kendal Mint Cake, washing it down with gulps of cold water. Balthamos sat nearby, silent, and finally Will said:
"Are you going to watch me all the time? Im not going anywhere."
"Im waiting for Baruch. He will e back soon, and then I shall ignore you, if you like."
"Would you like some food?"
Balthamos moved slightly: he was tempted.
"I mean, I dont know if you eat at all," Will said, "but if youd like something, youre wele."
"What is that..." said the angel fastidiously, indig the Kendal Mint Cake.
"Mostly sugar, I think, and peppermint. Here."
Will broke off a square and held it out. Balthamos ined his head and shen he picked it up,
his fingers light and cool against Wills palm.
"I think this will nourish me," he said. "One piece is quite enough, thank you."
He sat and nibbled quietly. Will found that if he looked at the fire, with the angel just at the edge of his vision, he had a much stronger impression of him.
"Where is Baruch?" he said. " he unicate with you?"
"I feel that he is close. Hell be here very soon. Wheurns, we shall talk. Talking is best."
And barely ten minutes later the soft sound of wis came to their ears, and Balthamos stood up eagerly. The moment, the two angels were embrag, and Will, gazing into the flames, saw their mutual affeore than affe: they loved each other with a passion.
Baruch sat down beside his panion, and Will stirred the fire, so that a cloud of smoke drifted past the two of them. It had the effect of outlining their bodies so that he could see them both clearly for the first time. Balthamos was slender; his narrow wings were folded elegantly behind his shoulders, and his face bore an expression that mingled haughty disdain with a tender, ardent sympathy, as if he would love all things if only his nature could let him fet their defects. But he saw s in Baruch, that was clear. Baruch seemed younger, as Balthamos had said he was, and was more powerfully built, his wings snow-white and massive. He had a simpler nature; he looked up to Balthamos as to the fount of all knowledge and joy. Will found himself intrigued and moved by their love for each other.
"Did you find out where Lyra is?" he said, impatient for news.
"Yes," said Baruch. "There is a Himalayan valley, very high up, near a glacier where the light is turned into rainbows by the ice. I shall draw you a map in the soil so you dont mistake it. The girl is captive in a cave among the trees, kept asleep by the woman."
"Asleep? And the womans alone? No soldiers with her?"
"Alone, yes. In hiding."
"And Lyras not harmed?"
"No. Just asleep, and dreaming. Let me show you where they are."
With his pale finger, Baruch traced a map in the bare soil beside the fire. Will took his notebook and copied it exactly. It showed a glacier with a curious serpentine shape, flowing dowween three almost identical mountain peaks.
"Now," said the angel, "we go closer. The valley with the cave runs down from the left side of the glacier, and a river of meltwater runs through it. The head of the valley is here..."
He drew another map, and Will copied that; and then a third, getting closer in each time, so that Will felt he could find his way there without difficulty, provided that hed crossed the four or five thousand miles betweeundra and the mountains. The knife was good for cuttiween worlds, but it couldnt abolish distahin them.
"There is a shrihe glacier," Baruded by saying, "with red silk banners half-torn by the winds. And a young girl brings food to the cave. They think the woman is a saint who will bless them if they look after her needs."
"Do they," said Will. "And shes hiding... Thats what I dont uand. Hiding from the Church?"
"It seems so."
Will folded the maps carefully away. He had set the tin cup oo the edge of the fire to heat some water, and now he trickled some powdered coffee into it, stirring it with a stick, and ed his hand in a handkerchief before pig it up to drink.
A burning stick settled in the fire; a night bird called.
Suddenly, for no reason Will could see, both angels looked up and in the same dire. He followed their gaze, but saw nothing. He had seen his cat do this once: look up alert from her half-sleep and watch
something or someone invisible e into the room and walk across. That had made his hair stand up, and so did this.
"Put out the fire," Balthamos whispered.
Will scooped up some earth with his good hand and doused the flames. At ohe cold struto his bones, and he began to shiver. He pulled the cloak around himself and looked up again.
And now there was something to see: above the clouds a shape was glowing, and it was not the moon.
He heard Baruch murmur, "The Chariot? Could it be?"
"What is it?" Will whispered.
Baruch leaned close and whispered back, "They know were here. Theyve found us. Will, take your knife and...”
Before he could finish, something hurtled out of the sky and crashed into Balthamos, In a fra of a sed Baruch had leapt on it, and Balthamos was twisting to free his wings. The three beings fought this way and that in the dimness, like great s caught in a mighty spiders web, making no sound: all Will could hear was the breaking twigs and the brushing leaves as they struggled together.
He couldnt use the khey were all moving too quickly. Instead, he took the electric torch from the rucksad switched it on.
None of them expected that. The attacker threw up his wings, Balthamos flung his arm across his eyes, and only Baruch had the presenind to hold on. But Will could see what it was, this enemy: anel, much bigger and strohan they were, and Baruchs hand was clamped over his mouth.
"Will!" cried Balthamos. "The knife … cut a way out …"
And at the same moment the attacker tore himself free of Baruchs hands, and cried:
"Lent! I have them! Lent!"
His voice made Wills head ring; he had never heard such a cry. And a moment later the angel would have sprung into the air, but Will dropped his tord leapt forward. He had killed a cliff-ghast, but using the knife on a being shaped like himself was much harder. heless, he gathered the great beating wings into his arms and slashed again and again at the feathers until the air was filled with whirling flakes of white, remembering even in the sweep of violeions the words of Balthamos: You have true flesh, we have not. Human beings were strohan angels, stronger even tha powers like this one, and it was true: he was bearing the angel down to the ground.
The attacker was still shouting in that ear-splitting voice: "Lent! To me, to me!"
Will mao glance upward and saw the clouds stirring and swirling, and that gleam, something immense, growing more powerful, as if t..
he clouds themselves were being luminous with energy, like plasma.
Balthamos cried, "Will, e away and cut through, before he es...”
But the angel was struggling hard, and now he had one wing free and he was f himself up from the ground, and Will had to hang on or lose him entirely. Baruch sprang to help him, and forced the attackers head bad back.
"No!" cried Balthamos again. "No! No!"
He hurled himself at Will, shaking his arm, his shoulder, his hands, and the attacker was trying to shout again, but Baruchs hand was over his mouth. From above came a deep tremor, like a mighty dynamo, almost too low to hear, though it shook the very atoms of the air and jolted the marrow in Wills bones.
"Hes ing...” Balthamos said, almost sobbing, and now Will did cate of his fear. "Please, please, Will...”
Will looked up.
The clouds were parting, and through the dark gap a figure eeding down: small at first, but as it
came closer sed by sed, the form became bigger and more imposing. He was making straight for them, with unmistakable malevolence.
"Will, you must," said Baruch urgently.
Will stood up, meaning to say "Hold him tight," but even as the words came to his mind, the angel sagged against the ground, dissolving and spreading out like mist, and then he was gone. Will looked around, feeling foolish and sick.
"Did I kill him?" he said shakily.
"You had to," said Baruch. "But now...”
"I hate this," said Will passionately, "truly, truly, I hate this killing! When will it stop?"
"We must go," said Balthamos faintly. "Quickly Will, quickly, please...”
They were both mortally afraid.
Will felt in the air with the tip of the knife: any world, out of this one. He cut swiftly, and looked up: that el from the sky was only seds away, and his expression was terrifying. Even from that distance, and even in that urgent sed or so, Will felt himself searched and scoured from one end of his being to the other by some vast, brutal, and merciless intellect.
And what was more, he had a spear, he was raising it to hurl...
And in the moment it took the ao check his flight and turn upright and pull back his arm to fling the on, Will followed Barud Balthamos through and closed the window behind him. As his fingers pressed the last inch together, he felt a shock of air, but it was gone, he was safe: it was the spear that would have passed through him in that other world.
They were on a sandy beader a brilliant moon. Giant ferrees grew some way inland; low duended for miles along the shore. It was hot and humid.
"Who was that?" said Will, trembling, fag the two angels.
"That was Metatron," said Balthamos. "You should have...”
"Metatron? Whos he? Why did he attack? And dont lie to me."
"We must tell him," said Baruch to his companion. "You should have done so already."
"Yes, I should have," Balthamos agreed, "but I was cross with him, and anxious for you."
"Tell me now, then," said Will. "And remember, its no good telling me what I should do, none of it matters to me, none. Only Lyra matters, and my mother. And that," he added to Balthamos, "is the point of all this metaphysical speculation, as you called it."
Baruch said, "I think we should tell you our information. Will, this is o have been seeking you, and why we must take you to Lord Asriel. We discovered a secret of the Kingdom, of the Authoritys world, and we must share it with him. Are we safe here?" he added, looking around. "There is no way through?"
"This is a different world. A different universe."
The sand they stood on was soft, and the slope of the dune nearby was inviting. They could see for miles in the moonlight; they were utterly alone.
"Tell me, then," said Will. "Tell me about Metatron, and what this secret is. Why did that angel call him Regent? And what is the Authority? Is he God?"
He sat down, and the two angels, their forms clearer in the moonlight than he had ever seen them before, sat with him.
Balthamos said quietly, "The Authority, God, the Creator, the Lord, Yahweh, El, Adonai, the King, the Father, the Almighty, those were all names he gave himself. He was he creator. He was an angel like ourselves, the first arue, the most powerful, but he was formed of Dust as we are, and Dust is only a name for what happens when matter begins to uand itself. Matter loves matter. It seeks to know more
about itself, and Dust is formed. The first angels densed out of Dust, and the Authority was the first of all. He told those who came after him that he had created them, but it was a lie. One of those who came later was wiser than he was, and she found out the truth, so he banished her. We serve her still. And the Authority still reigns in the Kingdom, aron is his Regent.
"But as for what we discovered in> the Clouded Mountain, we t tell you the heart of it. We swore to each other that the first to hear should be Lord Asriel himself."
"Then tell me what you . Dont keep me in the dark."
"We found our way into the Clouded Mountain," said Baruch, and at once went on: "Im sorry; we use these terms too easily. Its sometimes called the Chariot. Its not fixed, you see; it moves from place to place. Wherever it goes, there is the heart of the Kingdom, his citadel, his palace. Whehority was young, it wasnt surrounded by clouds, but as time passed, he gathered them around him more and more thickly. No one has seen the summit for thousands of years. So his citadel is known now as the Clouded Mountain."
"What did you find there?"
"The Authority himself dwells in a chamber at the heart of the Mountain. We could close, although we saw him. His power...”
"He has delegated much of his power," Balthamos interrupted, "to Metatron. Youve seen what hes like. We escaped from him before, and now hes seen us again, and what is more, hes seen you, and hes seen the knife. I did say...”
"Balthamos," said Baruch gently, "dont chide Will. We need his help, and he t be blamed for not knowing what it took us so long to find out."
Balthamos looked away.
Will said, "So youre not going to tell me this secret of yours? All right. Tell me this, instead: what happens when we die?"
Balthamos looked back, in surprise.
Baruch said, "Well, there is a world of the dead. Where it is, and what happens there, no one knows. My ghost, thanks to Balthamos, never went there; I am what was ohe ghost of Baruch. The world of the dead is just dark to us."
"It is a prison camp," said Balthamos. "The Authority established it in the early ages. Why do you want to know? You will see it in time."
"My father has just died, thats why. He would have told me all he knew, if he hadnt been killed. You say its a world, do you mean a world like this one, another universe?"
Balthamos looked at Baruch, whed.
"And what happens in the world of the dead?" Will went on.
"Its impossible to say," said Baruch. "Everything about it is secret. Even the churches dont know; they tell their believers that theyll live in Heaven, but thats a lie. If people really knew..."
"And my fathers ghost has gohere."
"Without a doubt, and so have the tless millions who died before him."
Will found his imagination trembling.
"And why didnt you go directly to Lord Asriel with yreat secret, whatever it is," he said, "instead of looking for me?"
"We were not sure," said Balthamos, "that he would believe us unless we brought him proof of ood iions. Two angels of low rank, among all the powers he is dealing with, why should he take us seriously? But if we could bring him the knife and its bearer, he might listen. The knife is a potent on, and Lord Asriel would be glad to have you on his side."
"Well, Im sorry," said Will, "but that sounds feeble to me. If you had any fiden your secret,
you wouldnt need an excuse to see Lord Asriel."
"Theres another reason," said Baruch, "We khat Metatron would be pursuing us, and we wao make sure the knife didnt fall into his hands. If we could persuade you to e to Lord Asriel first, then at least...”
"Oh, no, thats not going to happen," said Will. "Youre making it harder for me to reach Lyra, not easier. Shes the most important thing, and youre fetting her pletely. Well, Im not. Why dont you just go to Lord Asriel and leave me alone? Make him listen. You could fly to him much more quickly than I walk, and Im going to find Lyra first, e what may. just do that, just go, just leave me."
"But you need me," said Balthamos stiffly, "because I pretend to be your daemon, and in Lyras world youd stand out otherwise."
Will was too angry to speak. He got up and walked twenty steps away through the soft, deep sand, and then stopped, for the heat and humidity were stunning.
He turned around to see the two aalking closely together, and then they came up to him, humble and awkward, but proud, too.
Baruch said, "We are sorry. I shall go on my own to Lord Asriel and give him our information, and ask him to send you help to find his daughter. It will be two days flying time, if I navigate truly."
"And I shall stay with you, Will," said Balthamos.
"Well," said Will, "thank you."
The two angels embraced. Then Baruch folded his arms around Will and kissed him on both cheeks. The kiss was light and cool, like the hands of Balthamos.
"If we keep moving toward Lyra," Will said, "will you find us?”
"I shall never lose Balthamos," said Baruch, and stepped hack.
Then he leapt into the air, soared swiftly into the sky, and vanished among the scattered stars. Balthamos was looking after him with desperate longing.
"Shall we sleep here, or should we move on?" he said finally, turning to Will.
"Sleep here," said Will.
"Then sleep, and Ill watch out for danger. Will, I have been short with you, and it was wrong of me. You have the greatest burden, and I should help you, not chide you. I shall try to be kinder from now on."
So Will lay down on the warm sand, and somewhere nearby, he thought, the angel was keeping watch; but that was little fort.
—
get us out of here, Roger, I promise. And Wills ing, Im sure he is!"
He didnt uand. He spread his pale hands and shook his head.
"I dunno who that is, and he wont e here," he said, "and if he does, he wont know me."
"Hes ing to me," she said, "and me and Will, oh, I dont know her, but I swear well help. And dont fet theres others on our side. Theres Serafina and theres Iorek, andSerafina Pekkala, the queen of the witches of Lake Enara, wept as she flew through the turbid skies of the Arctic. She wept with rage and fear and remorse: rage against the woman Coulter, whom she had sworn to kill; fear of what was happening to her beloved land; and remorse... She would face the remorse later.
Meanwhile, looking down at the melting ice cap, the flooded lowland forests, the swollen sea, bbr>she felt heartsick.
THREE - SCAVENGERS
But she didnt stop to visit her homeland, or to fort and ence her sisters. Instead, she flew north and farther north, into the fogs and gales around Svalbard, the kingdom of Iorek Byrnison, the armored bear.
She hardly reized the main island. The mountains lay bare and black, and only a few hidden valleys fag away from the sun had retained a little snow in their shaded ers; but what was the sun doing here anyway, at this time of year? The whole of nature was overturned.
It took her most of a day to find the bear-king. She saw him among the rocks off the northern edge of the island, swimming fast after a walrus. It was harder for bears to kill ier: when the land was covered in id the great sea-mammals had to e up to breathe, the bears had the advantage of camouflage and their prey was out of its element. That was how things should be.
But Iorek Byrnison was hungry, and eveabbing tusks of the mighty walrus couldnt keep him at bay. Serafina watched as the creatures fought, turning the white sea-spray red, and saw Iorek haul the carcass out of the waves and onto a broad shelf of rock, watched at a respectful distance by three ragged-furred foxes, waiting for their turn at the feast.
When the bear-king had finished eating, Serafina flew down to speak to him. Now was the time to face her remorse.
"King Iorek Byrnison," she said, "please may I speak with you? I lay my ons down."
She placed her bow and arrows o rock between them. Iorek looked at them briefly, and she khat if his face could register aion, it would be surprise.
"Speak, Serafina Pekkala," he growled. "We have never fought, have we?"
"King Iorek, I have failed your rade, Lee Scoresby."
The bears small black eyes and bloodstained muzzle were very still. She could see the wind ruffling the tips of the creamy white hairs along his back. He said nothing.
"Mr. Scoresby is dead," Serafi on. "Before I parted from him, I gave him a flower to summoh, if he should need me. I heard his call and flew to him, but I arrived too late. He died fighting a foruscovites, but I know nothing of what brought them there, or why he was holding them off when he could easily have escaped. King Iorek, I am wretched with remorse."
"Where did this happen?" said Iorek Byrnison.
"In another world. This will take me some time to tell."
"Then begin."
She told him what Lee Scoresby had set out to do: to find the man who had been known as Stanislaus Grumman. She told him about how the barrier between the worlds had been breached by Lord Asriel, and about some of the sequehe melting of the ice, for example. She told of the witch Ruta Skadis flight after the angels, and she tried to describe those flying beings to the bear-king as Ruta had described them to her: the light that shone ohe crystalline clarity of their appearahe riess of their wisdom.
Then she described what she had found when she answered Lees call.
"I put a spell on his body to preserve it from corruption," she told him. "It will last until you see him, if you wish to do that. But I am troubled by this, King Iorek. Troubled by everything, but mostly by this."
"Where is the child?"
"I left her with my sisters, because I had to answer Lees call."
"In that same world?"
"Yes, the same."
"How I get there from here?"
She explained. Iorek Byrnison listened expressionlessly, and then said, "I shall go to Lee Scoresby. And then I must go south."
"South?"
"The ice has gone from these lands. I have been thinking about this, Serafina Pekkala. I have chartered a ship."
The three little foxes had been waiting patiently. Two of them were lying down, heads on their paws, watg, and the other was still sitting up, following the versation. The foxes of the Arctic, sgers that they were, had picked up some language, but their brains were so formed that they could only uand statements in the present tense. Most of what Iorek an>?d Serafina said was meaningless o them. Furthermore, when they spoke, much of what they said was lies, so it didnt matter if they repeated what theyd heard: no one could sort out which parts were true, though the credulous cliff-ghasts often believed most of it, and never learned from their disappoi. The bears and the witches alike were used to their versations being sged as well as the meat theyd finished with.
"And you, Serafina Pekkala?" Iorek went on. "What will you do now?"
"Im going to find the gyptians," she said. "I think they will be needed."
"Lord Faa," said the bear, "yes. Good fighters. Go well."
He turned away and slipped into the water without a splash, and began to swim in his steady, tireless paddle toward the new world.
And some time later, Iorek Byrnison stepped through the blaed undergrowth and the heat-split rocks at the edge of a burned forest. The sun was glaring through the smoky haze, but he ighe heat as he ighe charcoal dust that blaed his white fur and the midges that searched in vain for skin to bite.
He had e a long way, and at one point in his journey, he had found himsel..f swimming into that other world. He noticed the ge iaste of the water and the temperature of the air, but the air was still good to breathe, and the water still held his body up, so he swam on, and now he had left the sea behind and he was nearly at the place Serafina Pekkala had described. He cast around, his black eyes gazing up at the sun-shimmering rocks and the wall of limestone crags above him.
Between the edge of the burned forest and the mountains, a rocky slope of heavy boulders and scree was littered with. scorched and twisted metal: girders and struts that had beloo some plex mae. Iorek Byrnison looked at them as a smith as well as a warrior, but there was nothing in these fragments he could use. He scored a lih a mighty claw along a strut less damaged than most, and feeling a flimsiness in the quality of the metal, turned away at ond sed the mountain w>藏书网all again.
Then he saw what he was looking for: a narrow gully leading back between jagged walls, and at the entrance, a large, low boulder.
He clambered steadily toward it. Beh his huge feet, dry bones snapped loudly iillness, because many men had died here, to be picked by coyotes and vultures and lesser creatures; but the great bear ighem and stepped up carefully toward the rock. The going was loose and he was heavy, and more than ohe scree shifted under his feet and carried him down again in a scramble of dust and gravel. But as soon as he slid down, he began to move up once more, relentlessly, patiently, until he reached the rock itself, where the footing was firmer.
The boulder itted and chipped with bullet marks. Everything the witch had told him was true. And in firmation, a little Arctic flower, a purple saxifrage, blossomed improbably where the witch had pla as a signal in a y of the rock.
Iorek Byrnison moved around to the upper side. It was a good shelter from an enemy below, but not good enough; for among the hail of bullets that had chipped fragments off the rock had been a few that had found their targets and lay where they had e to rest, in the body of the man lying stiff in the shadow.
He was a body still, and not a skeleton, because the witch had laid a spell to preserve him from corruption. Iorek could see the face of his old rade drawn and tight with the pain of his wounds, ahe jagged holes in his garments where the bullets had ehe witchs spell did not cover the blood that must have spilled, and is and the sun and the wind had dispersed it pletely. Lee Scoresby looked not asleep, nor at peace, he looked as if he had died in battle, but he looked as if he khat his fight had been successful.
And because the Texan aeronaut was one of the very few humans Iorek had ever esteemed, he accepted the mans last g藏书网ift to him. With deft movements of his claws, he ripped aside the dead mans clothes, opehe body with one slash, and began to feast on the flesh and blood of his old friend. It was his first meal for days, and he was hungry.
But a plex web of thoughts was weaving itself in the bear-kings mind, with more strands in it than hunger and satisfa. There was the memory of the little girl Lyra, whom he had named Silvertongue, and whom he had last seen crossing the fragile sne across a crevasse in his own island of Svalbard. Then there was the agitation among the witches, the rumors of pacts and alliances and war; and then there was the surpassingly strange fact of this new world itself, and the witchs insistehat there were many more such worlds, and that the fate of them all hung somehow oe of the child.
And then there was the melting of the ice. He and his people lived on the ice; ice was their home; ice was their citadel. Sihe vast disturbances in the Arctic, the ice had begun to disappear, and Iorek khat he had to find an icebound fastness for his kin, or they would perish. Lee had told him that there were mountains in the south so high that even his balloon could not fly over them, and they were ed with snow and ice all year round. Expl those mountains was j his ask.
But for now, something simpler possessed his heart, something bright and hard and unshakable: vengeance.
Scoresby, who had rescued Iorek from danger in his balloon and fought beside him in the Arctic of his own world, had died. Iorek would avenge him. The good mans flesh and bone would both nourish him and keep him restless until blood illed enough to still his heart.
The sun was setting as Iorek finished .his meal, and the air was cooling down. After gathering the remaining fragments of Lees body into a single heap, the bear lifted the flower in his mouth and dropped it in the ter of them, as humans liked to do. The witchs spell was broken now; the rest of the body was free to all who came. Soon it would be nourishing a dozen different kinds of life.
Then Iorek set off down the slope toward the sea again, toward the south.
Cliff-ghasts were fond of fox, when they could get it. The little creatures were ing and hard to catch, but their meat was tender and rank.
Before he killed this ohe cliff-ghast let it talk, and laughed at its silly babble.
"Bear must go south! Swear! Witch is troubled! True! Sromise!"
"Bears dont go south, lying filth!"
"True! King bear must go south! Show you walrus, fi good...”
"King bear go south?"
"And flying things got treasure! Flying things, angels, crystal treasure!"
"Flying things, like cliff-ghasts? Treasure?"
"Like light, not like cliff-ghast. Rich! Crystal! And witch troubled, witch sorry, Scoresby dead...”
"Dead? Balloon man dead?" The cliff-ghasts laugh echoed around the dry cliffs.
"Witch kill him, Scoresby dead, king bear go south...” "Scoresby dead! Ha, ha, Scoresby dead!" The cliff-ghast wrenched off the foxs head, and fought his brothers for the entrails.
—
they will e, they will."
"But where are you, Lyra?"
And that she couldnt answer. "I think Im dreaming, Roger," was all she could find to say.
Behind the little boy she could see mhosts, dozens, hundreds, their heads crowded together, peering close and listening to every word.
"And that woman?" said Roger. "I hope she ent dead. I hope she stays alive as long as ever she . Because if she es down here, then therell be o hide, shell have us forever then. Thats the only good thing I see about being dead, that she ent. Except I know she will be one day… "
Lyra was alarmed.
"I think Im dreaming, and I dont know where she is." she said.
FOUR - AMA AND THE BATS
Ama, the herdsmans daughter, carried the image of the sleeping girl in her memory: she could not stop thinking about her. She didnt question for a moment the truth of what Mrs. Coulter had told her. Sorcerers existed, beyond a doubt, and it was only too likely that they would cast sleeping spells, and that a mother would care for her daughter in that fierd tender way. Ama ceived an admiration amounting almost to worship for the beautiful woman in the cave and her ented daughter.
She went as often as she could to the little valley, to run errands for the woman or simply to chatter and listen, for the woman had wonderful tales to tell. Again and again she hoped flimpse of the sleeper, but it had only happened once, and; she accepted that it would probably never be allowed again.
And during the time she spent milking the sheep, or carding and spinning their wool, rinding barley to make bread, she thought incessantly about the spell that must have been cast, and about why it had happened. Mrs. Coulter had old her, so Ama was free to imagine.
One day she took some flat bread sweetened with honey; walked the three-hour journey along the trail to Cho-Lung Se, where there was a monastery. By wheedling and patiend by bribing the porter with some of the honey bread, mao gain an audieh the great healer Pagdzin tulku, who had cured an outbreak of the white fever only the year before, and who was immensely wise.
Ama ehe ?９９lｉb?great mans cell, bowing very low and her remaining honey bread with all the humility she could muster. The monks bat daemon swooped and darted around her, frightening her own daemon, Kulang, who crept into her hair to hide, but Ama tried to remain still and silent until Pagdzin tulku spoke.
"Yes, child? Be quick, be quick," he said, his long gray beard wagging with every word.
In the dimhe beard and his brilliant eyes were most of what she could see of him. His daemoled on the beam above him, hanging still at last, so she said, "Please, Pagdzin tulku, I want to gain wisdom. I would like to know how to make spells and entments. you teach me?"
"No," he said.
She was expeg that. "Well, could you tell me just one remedy?" she asked humbly.
"Maybe. But I wont tell you what it is. I give you the medie, not tell you the secret."
"All right, thank you, that is a great blessing," she said, bowing several times.
"What is the disease, and who has it?" the old man said.
"Its a sleeping siess," Ama explained. "Its e upon the son of my fathers cousin."
She was beira clever, she knew, ging the sex of the sufferer, just in case the healer had heard of the woman in the cave.
"And how old is this boy?"
"Three years older than me, Pagdzin tulku," she guessed, "so he is twelve years old. He sleeps and sleeps and t wake up."
"Why havent his parents e to me? Why did they send you?"
"Because they live far oher side of my village and they are very poor, Pagdzin tulku. I only heard of my kinsmans illness yesterday and I came at oo seek your advice."
"I should see the patient and examine him thhly, and inquire into the positions of the plas at the hour when he fell asleep. These things t be done in a hurry."
"Is there no medie you give me to take back?"
The bat daemon fell off her beam and fluttered blackly aside before she hit the floor, darting silently across the room again and again, too quickly for Ama to follow; but the bright eyes of the healer saw exactly where she went, and when she had hung once more upside down on her beam and folded her dark wings around herself, the old man got up and moved around from shelf to shelf and jar to jar and box to box, here tapping out a spoonful of powder, there adding a pinch of herbs, in the order in which the daemon had visited them.
He tipped all the ingredients into a mortar and ground them up together, muttering a spell as he did so. Theapped the pestle on the ringing edge of the mortar, dislodging the final grains, and took a brush and ink and wrote some characters on a sheet of paper. When the ink had dried, he tipped all the powder onto the inscription and folded the paper swiftly into a little square package.
"Let them brush this powder into the nostrils of the sleeping child a little at a time as he breathes in," he told her, "and he will wake up. It has to be doh great caution. Too much at ond he will choke. Use the softest of brushes."
"Thank you, Pagdzin tulku" said Ama, taking the package and plag it in the pocket of her innermost shirt. "I wish I had another honey bread to give you."
"One is enough," said the healer. "Now go, aime you e, tell me the whole truth, not part of it."
The girl was abashed, and bowed very low to hide her fusion. She hoped she hadnt given too much away.
evening she hurried to the valley as soon as she could, carrying some sweet rice ed in a heart-fruit leaf. She was bursting to tell the woman what she had done, and to give her the medie and receive her praise and thanks, and eager most of all for the ented sleeper to wake and talk to her. They could be friends!
But as she turhe er of the path and looked upward, she saw no golden monkey, no patient womaed at the cave mouth. The place was empty. She ran the last few yards, afraid they had gone forever, but there was the chair the woman sat in, and the cooking equipment, and everything else.
Ama looked into the darkness farther ba the cave, her heart beating fast. Surely the sleeper hadnt woken already: in the dimness Ama could make out the shape of the sleeping bag, the lighter patch that was the girls hair, and the curve of her sleeping daemon.
She crept a little closer. There was no doubt about it, they had gonebbr>.99liｂ? out ahe ented girl alone.
A thought struck Ama like a musiote: suppose she woke her before the womaurned...
But she had hardly time to feel the thrill of that idea before she heard sounds oh outside, and in a shiver of guilt she and her daemon darted behind a ridge of rock at the side of the cave. She shouldnt be here. She ying. It was wrong.
And now that golden monkey was squatting irance, sniffing and turning his head this way and that. Ama saw him bare his sharp teeth, a her own daemon burrow into her clothes, mouse-formed
and trembling.
">What is it?" said the womans voice, speaking to the monkey, and then the cave darkened as her form came into the entrance. "Has the girl beeheres the food she left. She shouldnt e in, though. We must arrange a spot oh for her to leave the food at."
Without a gla the sleeper, the woman stooped t the fire to life, a a pan of water to heat while her daemon crouched nearby watg over the path. From time to time he got up and looked around the cave, and Ama, getting cramped and unfortable in her narrow hiding place, wished ardently that shed waited outside and not gone in. How long was she going to be trapped?
The woman was mixing some herbs and powders into the heating water. Ama could smell the astri flavors as they drifted out with the steam. Then came a sound from the back of the cave: the girl was murmuring and stirring. Ama turned her head: she could see the ented sleeper moving, tossing from side to side, throwing an arm across her eyes. She was waking!
And the woman took no notice!
She heard all right, because she looked up briefly, but she soon turned back to her herbs and the boiling water. She poured the deco into a beaker a stand, and only then turned her full attention to the waking girl.
Ama could uand none of these words, but she heard them with increasing wonder and suspi:
"Hush, dear," the woman said. "Dont worry yourself. Youre safe."
&quer," the girl murmured, half-awake. "Serafina! Wheres Rone... Where is he?"
"No one here but us," her mother said, in a singsong voice, half-ing. "Lift yourself a Mama wash you...Up you e, my love..."
Ama watched as the girl, moaning, struggling into wakefulness, tried to push her mother away; and the woman dipped a spoo the bowl of water and mopped at her daughters fad body before patting her dry.
By this time the girl was nearly awake, and the woman had to move more quickly.
"Wheres Serafina? And Will? Help me, help me! I dont want to sleep, No, no! I wont! No!"
The woman was holding the beaker ieely-firm hand while her other was trying to lift Lyras head.
"Be still, dear, be calm, hush now, drink your tea...”
But the girl lashed out and nearly spilled the drink, and cried louder:
"Leave me alone! I want to go! Let me go! Will, Will, help me, oh, help me…”
The woman was gripping her hair tightly, f her head back, cramming the beaker against her mouth.
"I wont! You dare touch me, and Iorek will tear your head off! Oh, Iorek, where are you? Iorek Byrnison! Help me, Iorek! I wont, I wont...”
Then, at a word from the woman, the golden monkey sprang on Lyras daemon, gripping him with hard black fingers. The daemon flicked from shape to shape more quickly than Ama had ever seen a daemon ge before: cat-s-fox-bird-wolf-cheetah-lizard-polecat-
But the monkeys grip never slaed; and then Pantalaimon became a pore.
The monkey screeched a go. Three long quills were stuck shivering in his paw. Mrs. Coulter snarled and with her free hand slapped Lyra hard across the face, a vicious bad crack that threw her flat; and before Lyra could gather her wits, the beaker was at her mouth and she had to swallow or choke.
Ama wished she could shut her ears: the gulping, g, coughing, sobbing, pleading, retg was almost too much to hear. But little by little it died away, and only a shaky sob or two came from the girl, who was now sinking once more into sleep, ented sleep? Poisoned sleep! Drugged, deceitful sleep!
Ama saw a streak of white materialize at the girls throat as her daemon effortfully ged into a long, sinuous, snowy-furred creature with brilliant black eyes and black-tipped tail, and laid himself alongside her neck.
And the woman was singing softly, ing baby songs, smoothing the hair off the girls brow, patting her hot face dry, humming songs to which even Ama could tell she didnt know the words, because all she could sing was a string of nonsense syllables, la-la-la, ba-ba-boo-boo, her sweet voice mouthing gibberish.
Eventually that stopped, and then the woman did a curious thing: she took a pair of scissors and trimmed the girls hair, holding her sleepihis way and that to see the best effect. She took one dark blond curl and put it in a little gold locket she had around her own neck. Ama could tell why: she was going to work some further magic with it. But the woman held it to her lips first... Oh, this was strange.
The golden monkey drew out the last of the pore quills and said something to the woman, who reached up to snatch a roosting bat from the cave ceiling. The little black thing flapped and squealed in a needle-thin voice that pierced Ama from oo the other, and then she saw the woman hand the bat to her daemon, and she saw the daemon pull one of the black wings out and out and out till it snapped and broke and hung from a white string of sinew, while the dying bat screamed and its fellows flapped around in anguished puzzlement. Crack, crack, snap, as the golden monkey pulled the little thing apart limb by limb, and the woman lay moodily on her sleeping bag by the fire and slowly ate a box of chocolate.
Time passed. Light faded and the moon rose, and the woman and her daemon fell asleep.
Ama, stiff and painful, crept up from her hiding plad tiptoed out past the sleepers, and didnt make a sound till she was halfway dowh.
With fear giving her speed, she ran along the narrow trail, her daemon as an owl on silent wings beside her. The cold air, the stant motion of the treetops, the brilliance of the moon-painted clouds in the dark sky, and the millions of stars all calmed her a little.
She stopped in sight of the little huddle of stone houses and her daemon perched on her fist.
"She lied!" Ama said. "She lied to us! What we do, Kulang? we tell Dada? What we do?"
"Dont tell," said her daemon. "More trouble. Weve got the medie. We wake her. We go there when the womans away again, and wake the girl up, and take her away."
The thought filled them both with fear. But it had been said, and the little paper package was safe in Amas pocket, and they knew how to use it.
—
wake up, I t see her, I think shes close by, shes hurt me...”
"Oh, Lyra, dont be frightened! If youre frighteoo, Ill go mad...”
They tried to hold each ht, but their arms passed through the empty air. Lyra tried to say what she meant, whispering close to his little pale fa the darkness:
"Im just trying to wake up, Im so afraid of sleeping all my life and then dying, I want to wake up first! I wouldnt care if it was just for an hour, as long as I roperly alive and awake. I dont know if this is real or not, even, but I will help yer! I swear I will!"
"But if youre dreaming, Lyra, you might not believe it when you wake up. Thats what Id do, Id just think it was only a dream."
FIVE - THE ADAMANT TOWER
"No!" she said fiercely, A lake of molten sulphur extehe length of an immense yon, releasing its mephitic vapors in sudden gusts and belches and barring the way of the solitary winged figure who stood at its edge.
If he took to the sky, the enemy scouts who had spotted him, and lost him, would find him again at once; but if he stayed on the ground, it would take so long to get past this noxious pit that his message might arrive too late.
He would have to take the greater risk. He waited until a cloud of stinking smoke billowed off the yellow surface, and darted upward into the thick of it.
Four pairs of eyes in different parts of the sky all saw the brief movement, and at once four pairs of wings beat hard against the smoke-fouled air, hurling the watchers forward to the cloud.
Then began a hunt in which the pursuers couldhe quarry and the quarry could see nothing at all. The first to break out of the cloud on the far side of the lake would have the advantage, and that might mean survival, or it might mean a successful kill.
And unluckily for the single flier, he found the clear air a few seds after one of his pursuers. At ohey closed with each other, trailing streams of vapor, and dizzy, both of them, from the siing fumes. The quarry had the best of it at first, but then another hunter flew free of the cloud. In a swift and furious struggle, all three of them, twisting in the air like scraps of flame, rose and fell and rose again, only to fall, finally, among the rocks on the far side. The other two hunters never emerged from the cloud.
At the western end of a range of saw-toothed mountains, on a peak that anded wide views of the plain below and the valleys behind, a fortress of basalt seemed to grow out of the mountain as if some volo had thrust it up a million years ago.
In vast caverh the rearing walls, provisions of every sort were stored and labeled; in the arsenals and magazines, engines of war were being calibrated, armed, aed; in the mills below the mountain, volic fires fed mighty fes where phosphor and titanium were beied and bined in alloys never known or used before.
On the most exposed side of the fortress, at a point deep in the shadow of a buttress where the mighty walls rose sheer out of the a lava-flows, there was a small gate, a postern where a sentry watched day and night and challenged all who sought to enter.
While the watch was being ged on the ramparts above, I the sentry stamped once or twid slapped his gloved hands on his upper arms for warmth, for it was the coldest hour of the night, and the little naphtha flare in the bracket beside him gave . His relief would e in aen minutes, and he was looking forward to the mug of chocolate, the smokeleaf, and most of all his bed.
To hear a hammering at the little door was the last thing he expected. However, he was alert, and he snapped open the spy hole, at the same time opening the tap that allowed a flow of naphtha past the pilot light itress outside. In the glare it threw, he saw three hooded figures carryiween them a fourth, whose shape was indistinct, and who seemed ill, or wounded.
The figure in front threw hack his hood. He had a face the sentry knew, but he gave the password anyway and said, "We found him at the sulphur lake. Says his name is Baruch. Hes got an urgent message for Lord Asriel."
The sentry unbarred the door, and his terrier daemon quivered as the three figures maneuvered their burden with difficulty through the narrow entrahen the daemon gave a soft involuntary howl, quickly cut off, as the sentry saw that the figure being carried was an angel, wounded: an angel of low rank and little power, but an angel, heless.
"Lay him in the guardroom," the sentry told them, and as they did so, he turhe k of the telephone bell and? reported what was happening to the officer of the watch.
On the highest rampart of the fortress was a tower of adamant: just one flight of steps up to a set of rooms whose windows looked out north, south, east, a. The largest room was furnished with a table and chairs and a map chest, another with a camp bed. A small bathroom pleted the set.
Lord Asriel sat in the adamant tower fag his spy captain across a mass of scattered papers. A naphtha lamp hung over the table, and a brazier held burning coals against the bitter chill of the night. Ihe door,
a small blue haerg on a bracket.
The spy captain was called Lord Roke. He was striking to look at: he was no taller than Lord Asriels hand span, and as slender as a dragonfly, but the rest of Lord Asriels captains treated him with profound respect, for he was armed with a Poisonous sting in the spurs on his heels.
It was his to sit oable, and his mao repel anything but the greatest courtesy with a haughty and malevolent tongue. He and his kind, the Gallivespians, had few of the qualities of good spies except, of course, their exceptional smallness: they were so proud and touchy that they would never have remained inspicuous if they had been of Lord Asriels size.
"Yes," he said, his voice clear and sharp, his eyes glittering like droplets of ink, "your child, my Lord Asriel: I know about her. Evidently I know more than you do."
Lord Asriel looked at him directly, and the little ma ohat hed taken advantage of his anders courtesy: the force of Lord Asriels glance flicked him like a finger, so that he lost his baland had to put out a hand to steady himself on Lord Asriels wineglass. A moment later Lord Asriels expression was bland and virtuous, just as his daughters could be, and from then on Lord Roke was more careful.
"No doubt, Lord Roke," said Lord Asriel. "But for reasons I dont uand, the girl is the focus of the Churchs attention, and I o know why. What are they saying about her?"
"The Magisterium is alive with speculation; one branch says ohing, another is iigating something else, and each of them is trying to keep its discoveries secret from the rest. The most active branches are the sistorial Court of Discipline and the Society of the Work of the Holy Spirit, and," said Lord Roke, "I have spies in both of them."
"Have you turned a member of the Society, then?" said Lord Asriel. "I gratulate you. They used to be impregnable."
"My spy in the Society is the Lady Salmakia," said Lord Roke, "a very skillful agent. There is a priest whose daemon, al mouse, she approached in their sleep. My agent suggested that the man perform a forbidden ritual desigo ihe presence of Wisdom. At the critical moment, the Lady Salmakia appeared in front of him. The priest now thinks he unicate with Wisdom whenever he pleases, and that she has the form of a Gallivespian and lives in his bookcase."
Lord Asriel smiled and said, "And what has she learned?" "The Society thinks that your daughter is the mo藏书网st important child who has ever lived. They think that a great crisis will e before very long, and that the fate of everything will depend on how she behaves at that point. As for the sistorial Court of Disciplis holding an inquiry at the moment, with witnesses from Bolvangar and elsewhere. My spy in the Court, the Chevalier Tialys, is in touch with me every day by means of the lodestone resonator, and he is letting me know what they discover. In short, I would say that the Society of the Work of the Holy Spirit will find out very soohe child is, but they will do nothing about it. It will take the sistorial Court a little longer, but when they do, they will act decisively, and at once."
"Let me know the moment you hear any more." Lord Roke bowed and snapped his fingers, and the small blue hawk perg on the bracket beside the door spread her wings and glided to the table. She had a bridle, a saddle, and stirrups. Lord Roke sprang on her ba a sed, and they flew out of the window, which Lord Asriel held wide for them. He left it open for a minute, in spite of the bitter air, and leaned on the windolaying with the ears of his snow-leopard daemon.
"She came to me on Svalbard and I ignored her," he said. "You remember the shock... I needed a sacrifice, and the first child to arrive was my own daughter... But when I realized that there was another child with her, so she was safe, I relaxed. Was that a fatal mistake? I didnt sider her after that, not for a moment, but she is important, Stelmaria!"
"Lets think clearly," his daemon replied. "What she do?"
"Do, not much. Does she know something?"
"She read the alethiometer; she has access to knowledge."
"Thats nothing special. So have others. And where in Hells name she be?"
There was a knock at the door behind him, aur once.
"My lord," said the officer who came in, "an angel has just arrived at the western gate, wounded, he insists on speaking to you."
And a mier, Baruch was lying on the camp bed, which had been brought through to the main room. A medical orderly had been summoned, but it was clear that there was little hope for the angel: he was wounded sorely, his wings torn and his eyes dimmed.
Lord Asriel sat close by and threw a handful of herbs onto the coals in the brazier. As Will had found with the smoke of his fire, that had the effect of defining the angels body so he could see it more clearly.
"Well, sir," he said, "what have you e to tell me?"
"Three things. Please let me say them all before you speak. My name is Baruch. My panion Balthamos and I are of the rebels party, and so we were drawn to your standard as soon as you raised it. But we wa you something valuable, because our power is small, and not long ago we mao find our way to the heart of the Clouded Mountain, the Authoritys citadel in the Kingdom. And there we learned..."
He had to stop for a moment to breathe in the smoke of the herbs, which seemed to steady him. He tinued:
"We learhe truth about the Authority. We learhat he has retired to a chamber of crystal deep within the Clouded Mountain, and that he no longer runs the daily affairs of the Kingdom. Instead, he plates deeper mysteries. In his place, ruling on his behalf, there is an angel called Metatron. I have reason to know that angel well, though when I knew him..."
Baruchs voice faded. Lord Asriels eyes were blazing, but he held his tongue and waited for Baruch to tinue.
"Metatron is proud," Baruch went on when he had recovered a little strength, "and his ambition is limitless. The Authority chose him four thousand years ago to be his Regent, and they laid their plans together. They have a new plan, which my panion and I were able to discover. The Authority siders that scious beings of every kind have bee dangerously indepe, so Metatron is going to intervene much more actively in human affairs. They io move the Authority secretly away from the Clouded Mountain, to a perma citadel somewhere else, and turn the mountain into an engine of war. The churches in every world are corrupt and weak, he thinks, they promise too readily... He wants to set up >.99lｉb?a perma inquisition in every world, run directly from the Kingdom. And his first campaign will be to destroy your Republic..."
They were both trembling, the angel and the man, but one from weakness and the other from excitement.
Baruch gathered his remaining strength, a on:
"The sed thing is this. There is a khat cut openings between the worlds, as well as anything in them. Its power is unlimited, but only in the hands of the one who knows how to use it. And that person is a boy..."
Once again the angel had to stop and recover. He was frightened; he could feel himself drifting apart. Lord Asriel could see the effort he made to hold himself together, and sat tensely gripping the arms of his chair until Baruch found the strength to go on.
"My panion is with him noa him directly to you, but he refused, because... This is the third thing I must tell you: he and your daughter are friends. And he will not agree to e to you until he has found her. She is...” "Who is this boy?"
"He is the son of the shaman. Of Stanislaus Grumman." Lord Asriel was so surprised he stood up
involuntarily, sending billows of smoke swirling around the angel.
"Grumman had a son?" he said.
"Grumman was not born in your world. Nor was his real name Grumman. My panion and I were led to him by his own desire to find the knife. We followed him, knowing he would lead us to it and its bearer, intending t the bearer to you. But the boy refused to..."
" Once again Baruch had to stop. Lord Asriel sat down again, cursing his own impatience, and sprinkled some more herbs on the fire. His daemon lay nearby, her tail sweeping slowly across the oaken floor, her golden eyes never leaving the angels pain-filled face. Baruch took several slow breaths, and Lord Asriel held his silehe slap of the rope on the flagpole above was the only sound.
"Take your time, sir," Lord Asriel said gently. "Do you know where my daughter is?"
"Himalaya... in her own world," whispered Baruch. "Great mountains. A cave near a valley full of rainbows..."
"A long way from here in both worlds. You flew quickly."
"It is the only gift I have," said Baruch, "except the love of Balthamos, whom I shall never see again."
"And if you found her so easily...”
"Then any el may, too."
Lord Asriel seized a great atlas from the map chest and flung it open, looking for the pages that showed the Himalaya.
" you be precise?" he said. " you show me exactly where?"
"With the knife..." Baruch tried to say, and Lord Asriel realized his mind was wandering. "With the knife he enter and leave any world at will... Will is his name. But they are in danger, he and Balthamos... Metatron knows we have his secret. They pursued us... They caught me alone on the borders of your world... I was his brother... That was how we found our way to him in the Clouded Mountairon was onoch, the son of Jared, the son of Mahalalel... Enoch had many wives. He was a lover of the flesh... My brother Enoch cast me out, because I... Oh, my dear Balthamos..." "Where is the girl?"
"Yes. Yes. A cave... her mother... valley full of winds and rainbows... tattered flags on the shrine..." He raised himself to look at the atlas.
Then the snow-leopard daemon got to her feet in one swift movement a to the door, but it was too late: the orderly who had knocked had opened without waiting. That was the way things were do was no ones fault; but seeing the expression on the soldiers face as he looked past him, Lord Asriel turned back to see Baruch straining and quivering to hold his wounded form together. The effort was too much. A draft from the open door sent an eddy of air across the bed, and the particles of the angels form, loosened by the waning of his strength, swirled upward into randomness and vanished. "Balthamos!" came a whisper from the air. Lord Asriel put his hand on his daemons neck; she felt him tremble, and stilled him. He turo the orderly. "My lord, I beg your...”
"Not your fault. Take my pliments to King Ogunwe. I would be glad if he and my other anders could step here at once. I would also like Mr. Basilides to attend, with the alethiometer. Finally I want No. 2 Squadron of gyropters armed and fueled, and a tanker zeppelin to take off at ond head southwest. I shall send further orders in the air."
The orderly saluted and, with one more swift uneasy gla the empty bed, went out and shut the door.
Lord Asriel tapped the desk with a pair of brass dividers, and crossed to open the southern window. Far below, the deathless fires put out their glow and smoke on the darkling air, and even at this great height the g of hammers could be heard in the snapping wind.
"Well, weve learned a lot, Stelmaria," he said quietly.
"But not enough," she replied.
There came another knock at the door, and the alethiometrist came in. He ale, thin man in early middle age; his name was Teukros Basilides, and his daemon was a nightingale.
"Mr. Basilides, good evening to you," said Lord Asriel. "This is our problem, and I would like you to put everything else aside while you deal with it..."
He told the man what Baruch had said, and showed him the atlas.
"Pinpoint that cave," he said. "Get me the coordinates as precisely as you . This is the most important task you have ever uaken. Begin at once, if you please,"
—
stamped her foot so hard it even hurt her in the dream. "You dont believe Id do that, Roger, so dont say it. I will wake up and I wont fet, so there."
She looked around, but all she could see were wide eyes and hopeless faces, pale faces, dark faces, old faces, young faces, all the dead cramming and crowding, close and silent and sorrowful.
Rogers face was different. His expression was the only ohat tained hope.
She said, "Why dyou look like that? Why ent you miserable, like them? Why ent you at the end of your hope?"
And he said, "
SIX - PREEMPTIVE ABSOLUTION
"Now, Fra Pavel," said the Inquirer of the sistorial Court of Discipline, "I want you to recall exactly, if you , the words you heard the witch speak on the ship."
The twelve members of the Court looked through the dim afternoon light at the cleri the stand, their last witness. He was a scholarly-looking priest whose daemon had the form of a frog. The Court had been hearing eviden this case fht days already, in the a high-towered College of St. Jerome.
"I ot call the witchs words exactly to mind," said Fra Pavel wearily. "I had not seen torture before, as I said to the Court yesterday, and I found it made me feel faint and sick. So exactly what she said I ot tell you, but I remember the meaning of it. The witch said that the child Lyra had been reized by the s of the north as the subject of a prophecy they had long known. She was to have the power to make a fateful choice, on which the future of all the worlds depended. And furthermore, there was a hat would bring to mind a parallel case, and which would make the Church hate and fear her."
"And did the witch reveal that name?"
"No. Before she could utter it, another witch, who had bee under a spell of invisibility, mao kill her and escape."
"So on that occasion, the woman Coulter will not have heard the name?"
"That is so."
"And shortly afterwards Mrs. Coulter left?"
"Indeed."
"What did you discover after that?"
"I learhat the child had goo that other world opened by Lord Asriel, and that there she has acquired the help of a boy who owns, or has got the use of, a knife of extraordinary powers," said Fra Pavel. Then he cleared his throat nervously a on: "I may speak entirely freely in this court?"
"With perfect freedom, Fra Pavel," came the harsh, clear tones of the President. "You will not be punished for telling us what you in turn have been told. Please tinue."
Reassured, the clerit on:
"The knife in the possession of this boy is able to make openings between worlds. Furthermore, it has a preater than that, please, once again, I am afraid of what I am saying ... It is capable of killing the most high angels, and what is higher thahere is nothing this knife ot destroy."
He was sweating and trembling, and his frog daemon fell from the edge of the witness stand to the floor in her agitation. Fra Pavel gasped in pain and scooped her up swiftly, letting her sip at the water in the glass in front of him.
"And did you ask further about the girl?" said the Inquirer. "Did you discover this he witch spoke of?"
"Yes, I did. Once again I crave the assurance of the court that...”
"You have it," she President. "Dont be afr.９9ｌｉb?aid. You are not a heretic. Report what you have learned, and waste no more time."
"I beg your pardon, truly. The child, then, is in the position of Eve, the wife of Adam, the mother of us all, and the cause of all sin."
The stenographers taking down every word were nuns of the order of St. Philomel, sworn to silence; but at Fra Pavels words there came a smasp from one of them, and there was a flurry of hands as they crossed themselves. Fra Pavel twitched, a on:
"Please, remember, the alethiometer does not forecast; it says, If certain things e about, then the sequences will be..., and so on. And it says that if it es about that the child is tempted, as Eve was, then she is likely to fall. Oe will depend... everything. And if this temptatioake place, and if the child gives in, then Dust and sin will triumph."
There was silen the courtroom. The pale sunlight that filtered in through the great leaded windows held in its slanted beams a million golden motes, but these were dust, not Dust, though more than one of the members of the Court had seen in them an image of that other invisible Dust that settled over every human being, no matter how dutifully they kept the laws.
"Finally, Fra Pavel," said the Inquirer, "tell us what you know of the childs present whereabouts."
"She is in the hands of Mrs. Coulter," said Fra Pavel. "And they are in the Himalaya. So far, that is all I have been able to tell. I shall go at ond ask for a more precise location, and as soon as I have it, I shall tell the Court; but..."
He stopped, shrinking in fear, ahe glass to his lips with a trembling hand.
"Yes, Fra Pavel?" said Father MacPhail. "Hold nothing back."
"I believe, Father President, that the Society of the Work of the Holy Spirit knows more about this than I do."
Fra Pavels voice was so faint it was almost a whisper.
"Is that so?" said the President, his eyes seeming to radiate his passion as they glared.
Fra Pavels daemon uttered a little frog whimper. The cleriew about the rivalry between the different branches of the Magisterium, and khat to get caught in the cross fire between them would be very dangerous; but to hold back what he knew would be more dangerous still.
"I believe," he went on, trembling, "that they are much closer to finding out exactly where the child is. They have other sources of knowledge forbidden to me."
"Quite so," said the Inquirer. "And did the alethiometer tell you about this?"
"Yes, it did."
"Very well. Fra Pavel, you would do well to tihat line of iigation. Whatever you need in the way of clerical or secretarial help is yours to and. Please stand down."
Fra Pavel bowed, and with his frog daemon on his shoulder, he gathered his notes ahe
courtroom. The nuns flexed their fingers.
Father MacPhail tapped a pencil on the oak ben front of him.
"Sister Agnes, Sister Monica," he said, "you may leave us now. Please have the transcription on my desk by the end of the day."
The two nuns bowed their heads a.
"Gentlemen," said the President, for that was the mode of address in the sistorial Court, "lets adjourn."
The twelve members, from the oldest (Father Makepwe, a and rheumy-eyed) to the you (Father Gomez, pale and trembling with zealotry), gathered their notes and followed the President through to the cil chamber, where they could fae another across a table and talk imost privacy.
The current President of the sistorial Court was a Scot called Hugh MacPhail. He had beeed young. Presidents served for life, and he was only in his forties, so it was to be expected that Father MacPhail would mold the destiny of the sistorial Court, and thus of the whole Church, for many years to e. He was a dark-featured man, tall and imposing, with a shock of wiry gray hair, and he would have been fat were it not for the brutal discipline he imposed on his body: he drank only water and ate only bread and fruit, and he exercised for an hour daily uhe supervision of a trainer of champion athletes. As a result, he was gaunt and lined aless. His daemon was a lizard.
Ohey were seated, Father MacPhail said:
"This, then, is the state of things. There seem to be several points to bear in mind.
"Firstly, Lord Asriel. A witch friendly to the Church reports that he is assembling a great army, including forces that may be angelic. His iions, as far as the witows, are malevolent toward the Church, and toward the Authority himself.
"Sedly, the Oblation Board. Their as iing up the research program at Bolvangar, and in funding Mrs. Coulters activities, suggest that they are hoping to replace the sistorial Court of Discipline as the most powerful and effective arm of the Holy Church. We have been outpaced, gentlemen. They have acted ruthlessly and skillfully. We should be chastised for our laxity iing it happen. I shall return to what we might do about it shortly.
"Thirdly, the boy in Fra Pavels testimony, with the khat do these extraordinary things. Clearly we must find him and gain possession of it as soon as possible.
"Fourthly, Dust. I have takeo find out what the Oblation Board has discovered about it. One of the experimental theologians w at Bolvangar has been persuaded to tell us what exactly they discovered. I shall talk to him this afternoon downstairs."
One or two of the priests shifted unfortably, for "downstairs" meant the cellars below the building: white-tiled rooms with points for anbaric current, soundproofed and well-drained.
"Whatever we do learn about Dust, though," the Preside on, "we must bear our purpose firmly in mind. The Oblation Board sought to uand the effects of Dust; we must destroy it altogether. Nothihan that. If in order to destroy Dust we also have to destroy the Oblation Board, the College of Bishops, every single agency by which the Holy Church does the work of the Authority, then so be it. It may be, gentlemen, that the Holy Church itself was brought into being to perform this very task and to perish in the doing of it. But better a world with no Churd no Dust than a world where every day we have tle uhe hideous burden of sier a world purged of all that!"
Blazing-eyed, Father Gomez nodded passionately.
"And finally," said Father MacPhail, "the child. Still just a child, I think. This Eve, who is going to be tempted and who, if pret is any guide, will fall, and whose fall will involve us all in ruilemen, of all the ways of dealing with the problem she sets us, I am going to propose the most radical, and I have fiden yreement.
"I propose to send a man to find her and kill her before she be tempted."
"Father President," said Father Gomez at once, "I have done preemptive penance every day of my adult life. I have studied, I have trained...”
The President held up his hand. Preemptive penand absolution were does researched and developed by the sistorial Court, but not known to the wider Church. They involved doing penance for a sin not yet itted, intense and fervent penance apanied by sc and flagellation, so as to build up, as it were, a store of credit. When the penance had reached the appropriate level for a particular sin, the pe was granted absolution in advahough he might never be called on to it the sin. It was sometimes necessary to kill people, for example; and it was so much less troubling for the assassin if he could do so in a state of grace. "I had you in mind," said Father MacPhail kindly. "I have the agreement of the Court? Yes. When Father Gomez leaves, with our blessing, he will be on his own, uo be reached or recalled. Whatever happens to anyone else, he will make his way like the arrow of God, straight to the child, and strike her down. He will be invisible; he will e in the night, like the ahat blasted the Assyrians; he will be silent. How much better for us all if there had been a Father Gomez in the Garden of Eden! We would never have left paradise."
The young priest was nearly weeping with pride. The Cave its blessing.
And in the darkest er of the ceiling, hidden among the dark oak beams, sat a man ner than a hand span. His heels were armed with spurs, and he heard every word they said.
In the cellars the man from Bolvangar, dressed only in a dirty white shirt and loose trousers with , stood uhe bare light bulb clutg the trousers with one hand and his rabbit daemon with the other. In front of him, in the only chair, sat Father MacPhail.
"Dr. Cooper," the President began, "do sit down." There was no furniture except the chair, the wooden bunk, and a bucket. The Presidents voice echoed unpleasantly off, the white tiles that lihe wall and ceiling.
Dr. Cooper sat on the bunk. He could not take his eyes off the gaunt and gray-haired President. He licked his dry lips and waited to see what new disfort was ing.
"So you nearly succeeded in severing the child from her daemon?" said Father MacPhail.
Dr. Cooper said shakily, "We sidered that it would serve no purpose to wait, sihe experiment was due to take playway, a the child in the experimental chamber, but then Mrs. Coulter herself intervened and took the child to her own quarters."
The rabbit daemon opened her round eyes and gazed fearfully at the President, and then shut them again and hid her face.
"That must have been distressing," said Father MacPhail.
"The whole program was intensely difficult," said Dr. Cooper, hastening to agree.
"I am s藏书网urprised you did not seek the aid of the sistorial Court, where we have strong nerves."
"We, I, we uood that the program was lised by... It was an Oblation Board matter, but we were told it had the approval of the sistorial Court of Discipline. We would never have taken part otherwise. Never!"
"No, of course not. And now for another matter. Did you have any idea," said Father MacPhail, turning to the real subject of his visit to the cellars, "of the subject of Lord Asriels researches? Of what might have been the source of the colossal energy he mao release on Svalbard?"
Dr. Cooper swallowed. Iense silence a drop of sweat fell from his to the crete floor, and both men heard it distinctly.
"Well..." he began, "there was one of our team who observed that in the process of severahere was a release of energy. trolling it would involve enormous forces, but just as an atomic explosion is detonated by ventional explosives, this could be done by fog a powerful anbaric current... However,
he wasnt taken seriously. I paid no attention to his ideas," he added early, "knowing that without authority they might well be heretical."
"Very wise. And that colleague now? Where is he?" "He was one of those who died iack." The President smiled. It was so kindly an expression that Dr. Coopers daemon shivered and swooned against his breast. "Ce, Dr. Cooper," said Father MacPhail. "We need you to be strong and brave! There is great work to be done, a great battle to be fought. You must earn the fiveness of the Authority by cooperating fully with us, by holding nothing baot even wild speculation, not even gossip. Now I want you to devote all your attention to what you remember your colleague saying. Did he make any experiments? Did he leave any notes? Did he take anyone else into his fidence? What equipment was he using? Think of everything, Dr. Cooper. Youll have pen and paper and all the time you need.
"And this room is not very fortable. Well have you moved to somewhere more suitable. Is there anything you need in the way of furnishing, for example? Do you prefer to write at a table or a desk? Would you like a typewriting mae? Perhaps you would rather dictate to a stenographer? "Let the guards know, and you shall have everything you need. But every moment, Dr. Cooper, I want you to think back I to your colleague and his theory. Yreat task is to recall, and if necessary to rediscover, what he knew. Once you know what instruments you require, you shall have those as well. It is a great task, Dr. Cooper! You are blessed to be entrusted with it! Give thanks to the Authority."
"I do, Father President! I do!" Grasping the loose waistband of his trousers, the philosopher stood up and bowed almost without realizing it, again and again, as the President of the sistorial Court of Discipli his cell.
That evening the Chevalier Tialys, the Gallivespian spy, made his way through the lanes and alleys of Geo meet his colleague, the Lady Salmakia. It was a dangerous journey for both of them: dangerous for anyone or anything that challehem, too, but certainly full of peril for the small Gallivespians. More than one prowling cat had met its death at their spurs, but only the week before, the Chevalier had nearly lost an arm to the teeth of a mangy dog; only the Ladys swift a had saved him.
They met at the seventh of their appointed meeting places, among the roots of a plaree in a shabby little square, and exged their news. The Lady Salmakias ta the Society had told her that earlier that evening they had received a friendly invitation from the President of the sistorial Court to e and discuss matters of mutual i.
"Quick work," said the Chevalier. "A huo one he doeshem about his assassin, though."
He told her about the plan to kill Lyra. She was not surprised.
"Its the logical thing to do," she said. "Very logical people. Tialys, do you think we shall ever see this child?"
"I dont know, but I should like to. Go well, Salmakia. Tomorrow at the fountain."
Unsaid behind that brief exge was the ohing they never spoke of: the shortness of their lives pared with those of humans. Gallivespians lived to nine years or ten, rarely more, and Tialys and Salmakia were both in their eighth year. They didnt fear old age, their people died in the full strength and vigor of their prime, suddenly, and their childhoods were very brief, but pared with their lives, the life of a child like Lyra would extend as far into the future as the lives of the witches extended past Lyras own.
The Chevalier returo the College of St. Jerome and began to pose the message he would send to Lord Roke on the lodestone resonator.
But while Tialys was at the rendezvous talking to Salmakia, the Preside for Father Gomez. In his study they prayed together for an hour, and then Father MacPhail grahe young priest the preemptive absolution that would make his murder of Lyra no murder at all. Father Gomez seemed transfigured; the certainty that ran through his veins seemed to make his very eyes indest.
They discussed practical arras, money, and so forth; and then the President said, "Once you leave here, Father Gomez, you will be pletely cut off, forever, from any help we give. You
never e back; you will never hear from us. I t offer you aer advice than this: dont look for the child. That would give you away. Instead, look for the tempter. Follow the tempter, and she will lead you to the child."
"She?" said Father Gomez, shocked.
"Yes, she," said Father MacPhail. "We have learhat much from the alethiometer. The world the tempter es from is a strange one. You will see many things that will shod startle you, Father Gomez. Do yourself be distracted by their oddness from the sacred task you have to do. I have faith," he added kindly, "in the power of your faith. This woman is traveling, guided by the powers of evil, to a place where she may, eventually, meet the child in time to tempt her. That is, of ark>se, if we do not succeed in removing the girl from her present location. That remains our first plan. You, Father Gomez, are our ultimate guarahat if that falls through, the infernal powers will still not prevail."
Father Gomez nodded. His daemon, a large and iridest green-backed beetle, clicked her wing cases.
The President opened a drawer and hahe young priest a folded packet of papers.
"Here is all we know about the woman," he said, "and the world she es from, and the place she was last seen. Read it well, my dear Luis, and go with my blessing."
He had never used the priests given name before. Father Gomez felt tears of joy prick his eyes as he kissed the President farewell.
—
youre Lyra."
Then she realized what that meant. She felt dizzy, even in her dream; she felt a great burdele on her shoulders. And to make it even heavier, sleep was closing in again, and Rogers face was reg into shadow.
"Well, I... I know... Theres all kinds of people on our side, like Dr. Malone.. .You know theres another Oxford, Roger, just like ours. Well, she ... I found her in... Shed help ... But theres only one person really who..."
It was almost impossible now to see the little boy, ahoughts were spreading out and wandering away like sheep in a field.
"But we trust him, Roger, I swear," she said with a final effort,
SEVEN - MARY MALONE
Almost at the same time, the tempter whom Father Gomez was setting out to follow was beied herself.
"Thank you, no, no, thats all I need, no more, holy, thank you," said Dr. Mary Maloo the old couple in the olive grove as they tried to give her more food than she could carry.
They lived here isolated and childless, and they had been afraid of the Specters theyd seen among the silver-gray trees; but when Mary Malone came up the road with her rucksack, the Specters had taken fright and drifted away. The old couple had weled Mary into their little vine-sheltered farmhouse, had plied her with wine and cheese and bread and olives, and now didnt want to let her go.
"I must go on," said Mary again, "thank you, youve been very kind, I t carry, oh, all right, another little cheese, thank you...”
They evidently saw her as a talisman against the Specters. She wished she could be. In her week in the world of Cittagazze, she had seen enough devastation, enough Specter-eaten adults and wild, sging children, to have a horror of those ethereal vampires. All she knew was that they did drift away when she approached; but she couldnt stay with everyone who wanted her to, because she had to move on.
She found room for the last little goats cheese ed in its vine leaf, smiled and bowed again, and took a last drink from the spring that bubbled up among the gray rocks. Then she clapped her hands gently together as the old couple were doing, and turned firmly away a.
She looked more decisive than she felt. The last unication with those entities she called shadow particles, and Lyra called Dust, had been on the s of her puter, and at their instru she had destroyed that. Now she was at a loss. Theyd told her to gh the opening in the Oxford she had lived in, the Oxford of Wills world, which shed doo find herself dizzy and quaking with wonder in this extraordinary other world. Beyond that, her only task was to find the boy and the girl, and then play the serpent, whatever that meant.
So shed walked and explored and inquired, and found nothing. But now, she thought, as she turned up the little track away from the olive grove, she would have to look fuidance.
Once she was far enough away from the little farmstead to be sure she wouldnt be disturbed, she sat uhe pirees and opened her rucksack. At the bottom, ed in a silk scarf, was a book shed had for twenty years: a entary on the ese method of divination, the I g.
She had taken it with her for two reasons. One was seal: her grandfather had given it to her, and she had used it a lot as a schoolgirl. The other was that when Lyra had first found her way to Marys laboratory, she had asked: "Whats that?" and poio the poster on the door that showed the symbols from the I g; and shortly afterward, in her spectacular reading of the puter, Lyra had learned (she claimed) that Dust had many other ways of speaking to human beings, and one of them was the method from a that used those symbols.
So in her swift pag to leave her own world, Mary Malone had taken with her the Book of ges, as it was called, and the little yarrow stalks with which she read it. And now the time had e to use them.
She spread the silk on the ground and began the process of dividing and ting, dividing and ting aing aside, which shed done so often as a passionate, curious teenager, and hardly ever since. She had almost fotten how to do it, but she soon found the ritual ing back, and with it a sense of that calm and trated attention that played su important part in talking to the Shadows.
Eventually she came to the hat indicated the hexagram she was being given, the group of six broken or unbroken lines, and then she looked up the meaning. This was the difficult part, because the Book expressed itself in su enigmatic style. She read:
Turning to the summit
For provision of nourishment
Brings goo d fortun e.
Spying about with sharp eyes
Like a tiger with insatiable craving.
That seemed encing. She read on, following the entary through the mazy paths it led her on, until she came to: Keeping still is the mountain; it is a bypath; it means little stones, doors, and openings.
She had to guess. The mention of "openings" recalled the mysterious window in the air through which she had ehis world; and the first words seemed to say that she should go upward.
Both puzzled and enced, she packed the book and the yarrow stalks away a off up the path.
Four hours later she was very hot and tired. The sun was low over the horizon. The rough track she was following had petered out, and she was clambering with more and more disfort among tumbled boulders and smaller stoo her left the slope fell away toward a landscape of olive and lemon groves, of poorly tended vineyards and abandoned windmills, lying hazy in the evening light. Tht a scree of small rocks and gravel sloped up to a cliff of crumbling limestone.
Wearily she hoisted her rucksack again a her foot on the flat stone, but before she even transferred her weight, she stopped. The light was catg something curious, and she shaded her eyes against the glare from the scree and tried to find it again.
"And there it was: like a sheet of glass hanging u>..nsupported in the air, but glass with no attention-catg refles in it, just a square patch of difference. And then she remembered what the I g had said: a bypath . . . little stones, doors, and openings.
It was a window like the one in Sunderland Avenue in Oxford. She could only see it because of the light: with the sun any higher it probably wouldnt show up at all.
She approached the little patch of air with passionate curiosity, because she hadnt had time to look at the first one: shed had to get away as quickly as possible. But she examihis one iail, toug the edge, moving around to see how it became invisible from the other side, noting the absolute differeween this and that, and found her mind almost bursting with excitement that such things could be.
The knife bearer who had made it, at about the time of the Ameri Revolution, had been too careless to close it, but at least hed cut through at a point very similar to the world on this side: o a rock face. But the ro the other side was different, not limesto granite, and as Mary stepped through into the new world she found herself not at the foot of a t cliff but almost at the top of a low outcrop overlooking a vast plain.
It was evening here, too, and she sat down to breathe the air a her limbs and taste the wonder without rushing.
Wide golden light, and an endless prairie or savanna, like nothing she had ever seen in her own world. To begin with, although most of it was covered in shrass in an infinite variety of buff-brown-green-ocher-yellow-golden shades, and undulating very gently in a way that the long evening light showed up clearly, the prairie seemed to be laced through and through with what looked like rivers of rock with a light gray surface.
And sedly, here and there on the plain were stands of the tallest trees Mary had ever seen. Attending a high-energy physics feren California, she had taken time out to look at the great redwood trees, and marveled; but whatever these trees were, they would have overtopped the redwoods by half again, at least. Their foliage was dense and dark green, their vast trunks gold-red in the heavy evening light.
And finally, herds of creatures, too far off to see distinctly, grazed on the prairie. There was a strangeness about their movement that she couldnt quite work out.
She was desperately tired, and thirsty and hungry besides. Somewhere nearby, though, she heard the wele trickle of a spring, and only a mier she found it: just a seepage of clear water from a mossy fissure, and a tiny stream that led away down the slope. She drank long and gratefully, and filled her bottles, and the about making herself fortable, fht was falling rapidly.
Propped against the rock, ed in her sleeping bag, she ate some of the rough bread and the goats cheese, and then fell deeply asleep.
She awoke with the early sun full in her face. The air was cool, and the dew had settled in tiny beads on her hair and on the sleeping bag. She lay for a few minutes lapped in freshness, feeling as if she were the first human being who had ever lived.
She sat up, yawned, stretched, shivered, and washed in the chilly spring before eating a couple of dried figs and taking stock of the place.
Behind the little rise she had found herself on, the land sloped gradually down and then up again; the fullest view lay in front, across that immense prairie. The long shadows of the trees lay toward her now, and she could see flocks of birds wheeling in front of them, so small against the t green opy that they looked like motes of dust.
Loading her rucksack again, she made her way down onto the coarse, rich grass of the prairie, aiming for the stand of trees, four or five miles away.
The grass was knee-high, and growing among it were low-lying bushes, no higher than her ankles, of something like juniper; and there were flowers like poppies, like buttercups, like fliving a haze of different tints to the landscape; and then she saw a large bee, the size of the top segment of her thumb,
visiting a blue flower head and making it bend and sway. But as it backed out of the petals and took to the air again, she saw that it was no i, for a moment later it made for her hand and perched on her finger, dipping a long needle-like beak against her skin with the utmost delicad then taking flight agai found ar. It was a minute hummingbird, its bronze-feathered wings moving too fast for her to see.
How every biologist oh would envy her if they could see what she was seeing!
She moved on and found herself getting closer to a herd of those grazing creatures she had seen the previous evening, whose movement had puzzled her without her knowing why. They were about the size of deer or antelopes, and similarly colored, but what made her stop still and rub her eyes was the arra of their legs. They grew in a diamond formation: two in the ter, o the front, and one uhe tail, so that the animals moved with a curious rog motion. Mary loo examine a skeleton and see how the structure worked.
For their part, the grazing creatures regarded her with mild, incurious eyes, showing no alarm. She would have loved to go closer and take time to look at them, but it was getting hot, and the shade of the great trees looked inviting; and there lenty of time, after all.
Before long she found herself stepping out of the grass onto one of those rivers of stone shed seen from the hill: something else to wo.
It might once have been some kind of lava-flow. The underlying color was dark, almost black, but the surface aler, as if it had been ground down or worn by crushing. It was as smooth as a stretch of well-laid road in Marys own world, aainly easier to walk on than the grass.
She followed the one she was on, which flowed in a wide curve toward the trees. The closer she got, the more astounded she was by the enormous size of the trunks, as wide, she estimated, as the house she lived in, and as tall, as tall as... She couldnt even make a guess.
When she came to the first trunk, she rested her hands on the deeply ridged red-gold bark. The ground was covered ankle-deep in brown leaf skeletons as long as her hand, soft and fragrant to walk on. She was soon surrounded by a cloud of midgelike flying things, as well as a little flock of the tiny hummingbirds, a yellow butterfly with a wingspread as broad as her hand, and too many crawling things for fort. The air was full of humming and buzzing and scraping.
She walked along the floor of the grove feeling much as if she were in a cathedral: there was the same stillness, the same sense of upwardness iructures, the same awe within herself.
It had taken her lohahought it would to walk here. It was getting on toward midday, for the shafts of light ing down through the opy were almost vertical. Drowsily Mary wondered why the grazing creatures didnt move uhe shade of the trees during this hottest part of the day.
She soon found out.
Feeling too hot to move any farther, she lay down to rest between the roots of one of the giant trees, with her head on her rucksack, and fell into a doze.
Her eyes were closed for twenty minutes or so, and she was not quite asleep, when suddenly, from very close by, there came a resounding crash that shook the ground.
Then came another. Alarmed, Mary sat up and gathered her wits, and saw a movement that resolved itself into a round object, about three feet across, rolling along the ground, ing to a halt, and falling on its side.
And then another fell, farther off; she saw the massive thing desd, and watched it crash into the buttress-like root of the runk and roll away.
The thought of one of those things falling on her was enough to make her take her rucksad run out of the grove altogether. What were they? Seedpods?
Watg carefully upward, she ventured uhe opy again to look at the of the fallen objects. She pulled it upright and rolled it out of the grove, and then laid it on the grass to look at it more
closely.
It erfectly circular and as thick as the width of her palm. There ression in the ter, where it had been attached to the tree. It wasnt heavy, but it was immensely hard and covered in fibrous hairs, which lay along the circumference so that she could run her hand around it easily one way but not the other. She tried her knife on the surface; it made no impression at all.
Her fingers seemed smoother. She smelled them; there was a faint fragrahere, uhe smell of dust. She looked at the seedpod again. In the ter there was a slight glistening, and as she touched it again, she felt it slide easily under her fingers. It was exuding a kind of oil.
Mary laid the thing down and thought about the way this world had evolved.
If her guess about these universes was right, and they were the multiple worlds predicted by quantum theory, then some of them would have split off from her own much earlier than others. And clearly in this world evolution had fa?vored enormous trees and large creatures with a diamond-framed skeleton.
She was beginning to see how narrow her stific horizons were. No botany, no geology, no biology of any sort, she was as ignorant as a baby.
And then she heard a low thunder-like rumble, which was hard to locate until she saw a cloud of dust moving along one of the roads, toward the stand of trees, and toward her. It was about a mile away, but it wasnt moving slowly, and all of a sudden she felt afraid.
She darted bato the grove. She found a narrow space between two great roots and crammed herself into it, peering over the buttress beside her and out toward the approag dust cloud.
What she saw made her head spin. At first it looked like a motorcycle gang. Thehought it was a herd of wheeled animals. But that was impossible. No animal could have wheels. She wasnt seeing it. But she was.
There were a dozen or so. They were roughly the same size as the grazing creatures, but leaner and gray-colored, with horned heads and short trunks like elephants. They had the same diamond-shaped structure as the grazers, but somehow they had evolved, on their front and rear single legs, a wheel.
But wheels did in nature, her mind insisted; they couldnt; you needed an axle with a bearing that was pletely separate from the rotating part, it couldnt happen, it was impossible…
Then, as they came to a halt not fifty yards away, and the dust settled, she suddenly made the e, and she couldnt help laughing out loud with a little cough of delight.
The wheels were seedpods. Perfectly round, immensely hard and light, they couldnt have been designed better. The creatures hooked a claw through the ter of the pods with their front and rear legs, and used their two lateral legs to push against the ground and move along. While she marveled at this, she was also a little anxious, for their horns looked formidably sharp, and even at this distance she could see intelligend curiosity in their gaze.
And they were looking for her.
One of them had spotted the seedpod she had taken out of the grove, arundled off the road toward it. When he reached it, he lifted it onto an edge with his trunk and rolled it over to his panions.
They gathered around the pod and touched it delicately with those powerful, flexible trunks, and she found herself interpreting the soft chirrups and clicks and hoots they were making as expressions of disapproval. Someone had tampered with this: it was wrong.
Thehought: I came here for a purpose, although I dont uand it yet. Be bold. Take the initiative. So she stood up and very self-sciously called:
"Over here. This is where I am. I looked at your seedpod. Im sorry. Please dont harm me."
Instantly their heads snapped around, trunks held out, glittering eyes fag forward. Their ears had all flicked upright.
She stepped out of the shelter of the roots and faced them directly. She held out her hands, realizing that such a gesture might mean nothing to creatures with no hands themselves. Still, it was all she could do. Pig up her rucksack, she walked across the grass and stepped onto the road.
Close up, not five steps away, she could see much more about their appearance, but her attention was held by something lively and aware in their gaze, by an intelligehese creatures were as different from the grazing animals nearby as a human was from a cow.
Mary poio herself and said, "Mary."
The creature reached forward with its trunk. She moved closer, and it touched her on the breast, where she had pointed, and she heard her voiing back to her from the creatures throat: "Merry."
"What are you?" she said.
"Watahyu?" the creature responded.
All she could do was respond. "I am a human," she said.
"Ayama yuman," said the creature, and then something even odder happehe creatures laughed.
Their eyes wriheir trunks waved, they tossed their heads, and from their throats came the unmistakable sound of merriment. She couldnt help it: she laughed, too.
Then another creature moved forward and touched her hand with its trunk. Mary offered her other hand as well to its soft, bristled, questing touch.
"Ah," she said, "youre smelling the oil from the seedpod..."
"Seepot," said the creature.
"If you make the sounds of my language, we might be able to unicate, one day. God knows how. Mary," she said, pointing to herself again.
Nothing. They watched. She did it again: "Mary."
The creature touched its ow with its trunk and spoke. Was it three syllables, or two? The creature spoke again, and this time Mary tried hard to make the same sounds: "Mulefa," she said tentatively.
Others repeated, "Mulefa" in her voice, laughing, and even seemed to be teasing the creature who had spoken. "Mulefa!" they said again, as if it were a fine joke.
"Well, if you laugh, I dont suppose youll eat me," Mary said. And from that moment, there was an ease and friendliness between her and them, and she felt nervous no more.
And the group itself relaxed: they had things to do, they werent roaming at random. Mary saw that one of them had a saddle or pa its back, and two others lifted the seedpod onto it, making it secure by tying straps around it, with deft and intricate movements of their trunks. Wheood still, they balanced with their lateral legs, and when they moved, they turned both front and back legs to steer. Their movements were full of grad power.
One of them wheeled to the edge of the road and raised its trunk to utter a trumpeting call. The herd of grazers all looked up as one and began to trot toward them. When they arrived, they stood patiently at the verge ahe wheeled creatures move slowly through them, cheg, toug, ting.
Then Mary saw one reach beh a grazer and milk it with her trunk; and then the wheeled one rolled over to her and raised her trunk delicately to Marys mouth.
At first she flinched, but there was an expectation in the creatures eye, so she came fain and opened her lips.
The creature expressed a little of the sweet, thin milk into her mouth, watched her swallow, and gave her some more, again and again. The gesture was so clever and kindly that Mary impulsively put her arms around the creatures head and kissed her, smelling the hot, dusty hide and feeling the hard bones underh and the muscular power of the trunk.
Presently the leader trumpeted softly and the grazers moved away. The mulefa were preparing to leave.
She felt joy that they had weled her, and sadhat they were leaving; but then she felt surprise as well.
One of the creatures was l itself, kneeling down on the road, auring with its trunk, and the others were being and inviting her...No doubt about it: they were to carry her, to take her with them.
Aook her rucksad faste to the saddle of a third, and awkwardly Mary climbed on the back of the kneeling one, w where to put her legs, in front of the creatures, or behind? And what could she hold on to?
But before she could work it out, the creature had risen, and the group began to move away along the highway, with Mary riding among them.
—
because hes Will."
EIGHT - VODKA
Balthamos felt the death of Baruch the moment it happened. He cried aloud and soared into the night air over the tundra, flailing his wings and sobbing his anguish into the clouds; and it was some time before he could pose himself and go back to Will, ide awake, knife in hand, peering up into the damp and chilly murk. They were ba Lyras world.
"What is it?" said Will as the angel appeared trembling beside him. "Is it danger? Get behind me...”
"Baruch is dead," cried Balthamos, "my dear Baruch is dead...”
"When? Where?"
But Balthamos couldnt tell; he only khat half his heart had beeinguished. He couldnt keep still: he flew up again, sc the sky as if to seek out Baru this cloud or that, calling, g, calling; and then hed be overe with guilt, and fly down te Will to hide and keep quiet, and promise to watch over him tirelessly; and then the pressure of his grief would crush him to the ground, and hed remember every instance of kindness and ce that Baruch had ever shown, and there were thousands, and hed fotten none of them; and hed cry that a nature so gracious could never be snuffed out, and hed soar into the skies again, casting about in every dire, reckless and wild and stri, cursing the very air, the clouds, the stars.
Finally Will said, "Balthamos, e here."
The angel came at his and, helpless. Shivering inside his cloak, iter cold gloom of the tundra, the boy said to him, "You must try to keep quiet now. You know there are things out there thatll attack if they hear a noise. I protect you with the knife if youre nearby, but if they attack you up there, I wont be able to help. And if you die, too, thatll be the end for me. Balthamos, I need you to help guide me to Lyra. Please dont fet that. Baruch was strong, be strong, too. Be like him for me."
At first Balthamos didnt speak, but then he said, "Yes. Yes, of course I must. Sleep now, Will, and I shall stand guard, I shant fail you."
Will trusted him; he had to. And presently he fell asleep again.
When he woke up, soaked with dew and cold to his bohe angel was standing nearby. The sun was just rising, and the reeds and the marsh plants were all tipped with gold.
Before Will could move, Balthamos said, "Ive decided what I must do. I shall stay with you day and night, and do it cheerfully and willingly, for the sake of Baruch. I shall guide you to Lyra, if I , and then I shall guide you both to Lord Asriel. I have lived thousands of years, and unless I am killed, I shall live many thousands of years more; but I never met a nature that made me so ardent to do good, or to be kind, as Baruchs did. I failed so many times, but each time his goodness was there to redeem me. Now its not, I
shall have to try without it. Perhaps I shall fail from time to time, but I shall try all the same."
"Then Baruch would be proud of you," said Will, shivering.
"Shall I fly ahead now and see where we are?"
"Yes," said Will, "fly high, and tell me what the lands like farther on. Walking on this marshland is going to take forever."
Balthamos took to the air. He hadnt told Will everything he was anxious about, because he was trying to do his best and not worry him; but he khat the angel Metatron, the Regent, from whom theyd escaped so narrowly, would have Wills face firmly imprinted on his mind. And not only his face, but everything about him that angels were able to see, including parts of which Will himself was not aware, such as that aspect of his nature Lyra would have called his daemon. Will was i danger from Metatron now, and at some time Balthamos would have to tell him; but not quite yet. It was too difficult.
Will, reing that it would be quicker to get warm by walking than by gathering fuel and waiting for a fire to catch, simply slung the rucksack over his shoulders, ed the cloak around everything, a off toward the south. There ath, muddy and rutted and potholed, so people did sometimes e this way; but the flat horizon was so far away on every side that he had little sense of making progress.
Sometime later, when the light was brighter, Balthamoss voice spoke beside him.
"About half a days walk ahead, there is a wide river and a town, where theres a wharf for boats to tie up. I flew high enough to see that the river goes a long way directly south and north. If you could get a passage, then you could move much more quickly."
"Good," said Will fervently. "And does this path go to the town?"
"It goes through a village, with a churd farms and orchards, and then on to the town."
"I wonder what language they speak. I hope they dont lock me up if I t speak theirs."
"As your daemon," said Balthamos, "I shall translate for you. I have learned many human languages; I certainly uand the ohey speak in this try."
Will walked on. The toil was dull and meical, but at least he was moving, and at least every step took him closer to Lyra.
The village was a shabby place: a huddle of wooden buildings, with paddocks taining reindeer, and dogs that barked as he approached. Smoke crept out of the tin eys and hung low over the shingled roofs. The ground was heavy and dragged at his feet, and there had obviously been a ret flood: walls were marked with mud to half the doors, and broken beams of wood and loose-hanging sheets of cated iron showed where sheds and verandas and outbuildings had bee away.
But that was not the most curious feature of the place. At first he thought he was losing his bala even made him stumble once or twice, for the buildings were two or three degrees out of the vertical, all leaning the same way. The dome of the little church had cracked badly. Had there been ahquake?
Dogs were barking with hysterical fury, but not daring to e close. Balthamos, being a daemon, had taken the form of a large snow white dog with black eyes, thick fur, and tight-curled tail, and he snarled so fiercely that the real dogs kept their distahey were thin and mangy, and the few reindeer Will could see were scabby-coated and listless.
Will paused in the ter of the little village and looked around, w where to go, and as he stood there, two or three men appeared ahead and stood staring at him. They were the first people he had ever seen in Lyras world. They wore heavy felt coats, muddy boots, and fur hats, and they didnt look friendly.
The white dog ged into a sparrow and flew to Wills shoulder. No one blinked a this: each of the men had a daemon, Will saw, dogs, most of them, and that was how things happened in this world. On his shoulder, Balthamos whispered: "Keep moving. Dont look them in the eye. Keep your head down. That is the respectful thing to do."
Will kept walking. He could make himself inspicuous; it was his greatest talent. By the time he got
to them, the men had already lost i in him. But then a door opened in the biggest house in the road, and a voice called something loudly.
Balthamos said softly, "The priest. You will have to be polite to him. Turn and bow."
Will did so. The priest was an immense, gray-bearded man, wearing a black cassock, with a crow daemon on his shoulder. His restless eyes moved over Wills fad body, taking everything in. He beed.
Will went to the doorway and bowed again.
The priest said something, and Balthamos murmured, "Hes asking where you e from. Say whatever you like."
"I speak English," Will said slowly and clearly. "I dont know any other languages."
"Ah, English!" cried the priest gleefully in English. "My dear young man! Wele to our village, our little no-longer-perpendicular Kholodnoye! What is your name, and where are you going?"
"My name is Will, and Im going south. I have lost my family, and Im trying to find them again."
"Then you must e inside and have some refreshment," said the priest, and put a heavy arm around Wills shoulders, pulling him in through the doorway.
The mans crow daemon was showing a vivid i in Balthamos. But the angel was equal to that: he became a mouse and crept into Wills shirt as if he were shy.
The priest led him into a parlor heavy with tobaoke, where a cast-iron samovar steamed quietly on a side table.
"What was your name?" said the priest. "Tell me again."
"Will Parry. But I dont know what to call you."
"Otyets Semyon," said the priest, stroking Wills arm as he guided him to a chair. "Otyets means Father. I am a priest of the Holy Church. My given name is Semyon, and the name of my father was Boris, so I am Semyon Borisovitch. What is your fathers name?"
"John Parry."
"John is Ivan. So you are Will Ivanovitch, and I am Father Semyon Borisovitch. Where have you e from, Will Ivanovitch, and where are you going?"
"Im lost," Will said. "I was traveling with my family to the south. My father is a soldier, but he was expl in the Arctid then something happened a lost. So Im traveling south because I know thats where we were goi."
The priest spread his hands and said, "A soldier? An explorer from England? No one so iing as that has trodden the dirty roads of Kholodnoye for turies, but in this time of upheaval, how we know that he will not appear tomorrow? You yourself are a wele visitor, Will Ivanovitch. You must stay the night in my house and we will talk aogether. Lydia Alexandrovna!" he called.
An elderly woman came in silently. He spoke to her in Russian, and she nodded and took a glass and filled it with hot tea from the samovar. She brought the glass of tea to Will, together with a little saucer of jam with a silver spoon.
"Thank you," said Will.
"The serve is to sweeteea," said the priest. "Lydia Alexandrovna made it from bilberries."
The result was that the tea was sickly as well as bitter, but Will sipped it, heless. The priest kept leaning forward to look closely at him, a his hands to see whether he was cold, and stroked his knee. In order to distract him, Will asked why the buildings in the village sloped.
"There has been a vulsion in the earth," the priest said. "It is all foretold in the Apocalypse of St. John. Rivers flow backward... The great river only a short way from here used to flow north into the Arctic O. All the way from the mountains of tral Asia it flowed north for thousands and thousands of years,
ever sihe Authority of God the Almighty Father created the earth. But when the earth shook and the fog and the floods came, everything ged,.. and then the great river flowed south for a week or more before it turned again a north. The world is turned upside down. Where were you when the great vulsion came?"
"A long way from here," Will said. "I didnt know what was happening. When the fog cleared, I had lost my family and I dont know where I am now. Youve told me the name of this place, but where is it? Where are we?"
&qu me that large book otom shelf," said Semyon Borisovitch. "I will show you."
The priest drew his chair up to the table and licked his fingers before turning the pages of the great atlas.
"Here," he said, pointing with a dirty fingernail at a spot iral Siberia, a long way east of the Urals. The river nearby flowed, as the priest had said, from the northern part of the mountains in Tibet all the way to the Arctic. He looked closely at the Himalaya, but he could see nothing like the map Baruch had sketched.
Semyon Borisovitch talked and talked, pressing Will for details of his life, his family, his home, and Will, a practiced dissembler, answered him fully enough. Presently the housekeeper brought in some beetroot soup and dark bread, and after the priest had said a long grace, they ate.
"Well, how shall we pass our day, Will Ivanovitch?" said Semyon Borisovitch. "Shall we play at cards, or would you prefer to talk?"
He drew anlass of tea from the samovar, and Will took it doubtfully.
"I t play cards," he said, "and Im anxious to get on araveling. If I went to the river, for example, do you think I could find a passage on a steamer going south?"
The priests huge face darkened, and he crossed himself with a delicate flick of the wrist.
"There is trouble iown," he said. "Lydia Alexandrovna has a sister who came here and told her there is a boat carrying bears up the river. Armored bears. They e from the Arctic. You did not see armored bears when you were in the north?"
The priest was suspicious, and Balthamos whispered so quietly that only Will could hear: "Be careful." And Will k once why hed said it: his heart had begun to pound when Semyon Borisovitch mentiohe bears, because of what Lyra had told him about them. He must try to tain his feelings.
He said, "We were a long way from Svalbard, and the bears were occupied with their own affairs."
"Yes, that is what I heard," said the priest, to Wills relief, "But now they are leaving their homeland and ing south. They have a boat, and the people of the town will not let them refuel. They are afraid of the bears. And so they should be, they are children of the devil. All things from the north are devilish. Like the witches, daughters of evil! The Church should have put them all to death many years ago. Witches, have nothing to do with them, Will Ivanovitch, you hear me? You know what they will do when you e to the right age? They will try to seduce you. They will use all the soft, ing, deceitful ways they have, their flesh, their soft skin, their sweet voices, and they will take your seed, you know what I mean by that, they will drain you and leave you hollow! They will take your future, your children that are to e, and leave you nothing. They should be put to death, every one."
The priest reached across to the shelf beside his chair and took down a bottle and two small glasses.
"Now I am going to offer you a little drink, Will Ivanovitch," he said. "You are young, so not very many glasses. But yrowing, and so you o know some things, like the taste of vodka. Lydia Alexandrovna collected the berries last year, and I distilled the liquor, and here itle is the result, the only place where Otyets Semyon Borisovitd Lydia Alexandrovna lie together!"
He laughed and uncorked the bottle, filling each glass to the rim. This kind of talk made Will hideously uneasy. What should he do? How could he refuse to drink without discourtesy?
"Otyets Semyon," he said, standing, "you have been very kind, and I wish I could stay loo taste your drink and to hear you talk, because what you tell me has been very iing. But you uand I am unhappy about my family, and very anxious to find them again, so I think I must move on, much as I would like to stay."
The priest pushed out his lips, ihicket of his beard, and frowned; but then he shrugged and said, "Well, you shall go if you must. But before you leave, you must drink your vodka. Stand with me now! Take it, and down all in one, like this!"
He threw back the glass, swallowing it all at once, and then hauled his massive body up and stood very close to Will. In his fat, dirty fihe glass he held out seemed tiny; but it was brimming with the clear spirit, and Will could smell the heady tang of the drink and the stale sweat and the food stains on the mans cassock, and he felt sick before he began.
"Drink, Will Ivanovitch!" the priest cried, with a threateniiness.
Will lifted the glass and uatingly swallowed the fiery, oily liquid in one gulp. Now he would have to fight hard to avoid being sick.
There was one more ordeal to e. Semyon Borisovitch leaned forward from?. his great height, and took Will by both shoulders.
"My boy," he said, and then closed his eyes and began to intone a prayer or a psalm. Vapors of tobacd alcohol and sweat came powerfully from him, and he was close enough for his thick beard, wagging up and down, to brush Wills face. Will held his breath.
The priests hands moved behind Wills shoulders, and then Semyon Borisovitch was hugging him tightly and kissing his cheeks, right, left, right again. Will felt Balthamos dig tiny claws into his shoulder, a still. His head was swimming, his stomach lurg, but he didnt move.
Finally it was over, and the priest stepped bad pushed him away.
"Go, then," he said, "go south, Will Ivanovitch. Go."
Will gathered his cloak and the rucksack, and tried to walk straight as he left the priests house and took the road out of the village.
He walked for two hours, feeling the nausea gradually subside and a slow, pounding headache take its place. Balthamos made him stop at one point, and laid his cool hands on Wills ned forehead, and the ache eased a little; but Will made himself a promise that he would never drink vodka again.
And ie afternooh widened and came out of the reeds, and Will saw the town ahead of him, and beyond it an expanse of water so broad it might have been a sea.
Even from some way off, Will could see that there was trouble. Puffs of smoke were erupting from beyond the roofs, followed a few seds later by the boom of a gun.
"Balthamos," he said, "youll have to be a daemon again. Just keep near me and watch out for danger."
He walked into the outskirts of the scruffy little town, where the buildings leaned even more perilously than the village, and where the flooding had left its mud stains on the walls high above Wills head. The edge of the town was deserted, but as he made his way toward the river, the noise of shouting, of screams, and of the crackle of rifle fire got louder.
And here at last there were people: some watg from upper-floor windows, some ing anxiously around the ers of buildings to look ahead at the waterfront, where the metal fingers of es and derricks and the masts of big vessels rose above the rooftops.
An explosion shook the walls, and glass fell out of a nearby window. People drew bad then peered around again, and more cries rose into the smoky air.
Will reached the er of the street and looked along the waterfront. When the smoke and dust cleared a little, he saw one rusting vessel standing offshore, keeping its place against the flow of the river, and on the wharf a mob of people armed with rifles or pistols surrounding a great gun, which, as he watched,
boomed again. A flash of fire, a lurg recoil, ahe vessel, a mighty splash.
Will shaded his eyes. There were figures in the boat, but, he rubbed his eyes, even though he knew what to expect, they werent human. They were huge beings of metal, or creatures in heavy armor, and on the foredeck of the vessel, a bright flower of flame suddenly bloomed, and the people cried out in alarm. The flame sped into the air, rising higher and ing closer and shedding sparks and smoke, and then fell with a great splash of fire he gun. Men cried and scattered, and some ran in flames to the waters edge and plunged in, to be swept along and out of sight in the current.
Will found a man close by who looked like a teacher, and said:
"Do you speak English?"
"Yes, yes, indeed...”
"What is happening?"
"The bears, they are attag, ary to fight them, but it is difficult, we have only one gun, and...”
The fire thrower on the boat hurled anout of blazing pitch, and this time it landed even closer to the gun. Three big explosions almost immediately afterward showed that it had found the ammunition, and the gunners leapt away, letting the barrel swing down low.
"Ah," the man lamented, "its no good, they t fire...”
The ander of the boat brought the vessels head around and moved in toward the shore. Many people cried out in alarm and despair, especially when anreat bulb of flame burst into being on the foredeck, and some of those with rifles fired a shot or two and turo flee; but this time the bears didnt launch the fire, and soon the vessel moved broadside on toward the wharf, engiing hard to hold it against the current.
Two sailors (human, not bears) leapt down to throw ropes around the bollards, and a great hiss and cry of anger rose from the townsfolk at these human traitors. The sailors took no notice, but ran to langplank.
Then as they turo go ba board, a shot was fired from somewhere near Will, and one of the sailors fell. His daemon, a seagull, vanished as if shed been pinched out of existence like a dle flame.
The rea from the bears ure fury. At ohe fire thrower was relit and hauled around to face the shore, and the mass of flame shot upward and then cascaded in a hundred spilling gouts over the rooftops. And at the top of the gangeared a hear larger than any of the others, an apparition of ironclad might, and the bullets that rained on him whined and ged and thudded uselessly, uo make the slightest dent in his massive armor.
Will said to the man beside him, "Why are they attag the town?"
"They want fuel. But we have no dealings with bears. Now they are leaving their kingdom and sailing up the river, who knows what they will do? So we must fight them. Pirates, robbers...”
The great bear had e down the gangway, and massed behind him were several others, so heavy that the ship listed; and Will saw that the men on the wharf had gone back to the gun and were loading a shell into the breech.
An idea came, and he ran out onto the quayside, right into the empty space between the gunners and the bear.
"Stop!" he shouted. "Stop fighting. Let me speak to the bear!"
There was a sudden lull, and everyoood still, asto this crazy behavior. The bear himself, who had been gathering his strength to charge the gunners, stayed where he was, but every line of his body trembled with ferocity. His great claws dug into the ground, and his black eyes glowed with rage uhe iro.
"What are you? What do you want?" he roared in English, since Will had spoken in that language.
The people watg looked at one another in bewilderment, and those who could uand translated for the others.
"Ill fight you, in single bat," cried Will, "and if you give way, then the fighting has to stop."
The bear didnt move. As for the people, as soon as they uood what Will was saying, they shouted and jeered and hooted with mog laughter. But not for long, because Will turo face the crowd, and stood cold-eyed, tained, and perfectly still, until the laughter stopped. He could feel the blackbird-Balthamos trembling on his shoulder.
When the people were silent, he called out, "If I make the bear give way, you must agree to sell them fuel. Then theyll go on along the river and leave you alone. You must agree. If you dont, theyll destroy all of you."
He khat the huge bear was only a few yards behind him, but he didnt turched the townspeople talking, gesticulating, arguing, and after a minute, a voice called, "Boy! Make the bear agree!"
Will turned back. He swallowed hard and took a deep breath and called:
"Bear! You must agree. If you give way to me, the fighting has to stop, and you buy fuel and go peacefully up the river."
"Impossible," roared the bear. "It would be shameful to fight you. You are as weak as an oyster out of its shell. I ot fight you."
"I agree," said Will, and every scrap of his attention was now focused on this great ferocious being in front of him. "Its not a fair test at all. You have all that armor, and I have none. You could take off my head with one sweep of your paw. Make it fairer, then. Give me one piece of your armor, any one you like. Your helmet, for example. Then well be better matched, and itll be no shame to fight me."
With a snarl that expressed hatred, rage, and s, the bear reached up with a great claw and unhooked the that held his helmet in place.
And now there was a deep hush over the whole waterfront. No one spoke, no one moved. They could tell that something was happening such as theyd never seen before, and they couldnt tell what it was. The only sound now was the splashing of the river against the wooden pilings, the beat of the ships engine, and the restless g of seagulls overhead; and then the great g as the hear hurled his helmet down at Wills feet.
Will put his rucksack down and hoisted the helmet up on its end. He could barely lift it. It sisted of a single sheet of iron, dark aed, with eyeholes on top and a massive underh. It was as long as Wills forearm, and as thick as his thumb.
"So this is your armor," he said. "Well, it doesnt look very strong to me. I dont know if I trust it. Let me see."
Aook the knife from the r?.ucksad rested the edge against the front of the helmet, and sliced off a er as if he were cutting butter.
"Thats what I thought," he said, and cut another and another, redug the massive thing to a pile ments ihan a minute. He stood up and held out a handful.
"That was your armor," he said, and dropped the pieces with a clatter onto the rest at his feet, "and this is my knife. And since your helmet was no good to me, Ill have to fight without it. Are you ready, bear? I think were well matched. I could take off your head with one sweep of my knife, after all."
Utter stillness. The bears black eyes glowed like pitch, and Will felt a drop of sweat trickle down his spine.
Then the bears head moved. He shook it and took a step backward.
"To a on," he said. "I t fight that. Boy, you win."
Will khat a sed later the people would cheer and hoot and whistle, so even before the bear had
finished saying the word win, Will had begun to turn and call out, to keep them quiet:
"Now you must keep the bargain. Look after the wounded people and start repairing the buildings. Thehe boat tie up and refuel."
He khat it would take a mio translate that ahe message spread out among the watg townsfolk, and he koo, that the delay would prevent their relief and anger from bursting out, as a of sandbanks baffles and breaks up the flow of a river. The bear watched and saw what he was doing and why, and uood more fully than Will himself did what the boy had achieved.
Will put the knife ba the rucksack, and he and the bear exged anlance, but a different kind this time. They approached, and behind them as the bears began to dismaheir fire thrower, the other two ships maneuvered their way to the quayside.
Onshore some of the people set about clearing up, but several more came crowding to see Will, curious about this boy and the power he had to and the bear. It was time for Will to bee inspicuous again, so he performed the magic that had deflected all kinds of curiosity away from his mother ahem safe for years. Of course it wasnt magic, but simply a way of behaving. He made himself quiet and dull-eyed and slow, and in under a minute he became less iing, less attractive to human attention. The people simply became bored with this dull child, and fot him and turned away.
But the bears attention was not human, and he could see what was happening, and he k was yet another extraordinary power at Wills and. He came close and spoke quietly, in a voice that seemed to throb as deeply as the ships engines.
"What is your name?" he said.
"Will Parry. you make another helmet ?"
"Yes. What do you seek?"
"Yoing up the river. I want to e with you. Im going to the mountains and this is the quickest way. Will you take me?"
"Yes. I want to see that knife."
"I will only show it to a bear I trust. There is one bear Ive heard of whos trustworthy. He is the king of the bears, a good friend of the girl Im going to the mountains to find. Her name is Lyra Silvertohe bear is called Iorek Byrnison."
"I am Iorek Byrnison," said the bear.
"I know you are," said Will.
The boat was taking fuel on board; the railcars were hauled alongside and tilted sideways to let coal thunder down the chutes into the hold, and the black dust rose high above them. Unnoticed by the townspeople, who were busy sweeping up glass and haggling over the price of the fuel, Will followed the bear-king up the gangway and aboard the ship.
NINE - UPRIVER
"Let me see the knife," said Iorek Byrnison. "I uaal. Nothing made of iron or steel is a mystery to a bear. But I have never seen a knife like yours, and I would be glad to look at it closely."
Will and the bear-king were on the foredeck of the river steamer, in the warm rays of the setting sun, and the vessel was making swift progress upstream; there lenty of fuel on board, there was food that Will could eat, and he and Iorek Byrnisoaking their seeasure of each other. They had taken the first already.
Will held out the koward Iorek, handle first, and the bear took it from him delicately. His thumb claw opposed the four finger claws, letting him manipulate objects as skillfully as a human, and now he turhe khis way and that, bringing it closely to his eyes, holding it to catch the light, testing the edge, the steel edge, on a piece of scrap iron.
"This edge is the one you cut my armor with," he said. "The other is very strange. I ot tell what it is, what it will do, how it was made. But I want to uand it. How did you e to possess it?"
Will told him most of what had happened, leaving out only what ed him alone: his mother, the man he killed, his father.
"You fought for this, and lost two fingers?" the bear said. "Show me the wound."
Will held out his hand. Thanks to his fathers oi, the raw surfaces were healing well, but they were still very tehe bear s them.
"Bloodmoss," he said. "And something else I ot identify. Who gave you that?"
"A man who told me what I should do with the khen he died. He had some oi in a horn box, and it cured my wound. The witches tried, but their spell didnt work."
"And what did he tell you to do with the knife?" said Iorek Byrnison, handing it carefully back to Will.
"To use it in a war on the side of Lord Asriel," Will replied. "But first I must rescue Lyra Silvertongue."
"Then we shall help," said the bear, and Wills heart leapt with pleasure.
Over the few days Will learned why the bears were making this voyage into tral Asia, so far from their homeland.
Sihe catastrophe that had burst the worlds open, all the Arctic ice had begun to melt, and new and strange currents appeared ier. Sihe bears depended on id on the creatures who lived in the cold sea, they could see that they would soon starve if they stayed where they were; and being rational, they decided how they should respond. They would have to migrate to where there was snow and i plenty: they would go to the highest mountains, to the rahat touched the sky, half a world away but unshakable, eternal, and deep in snow. From bears of the sea they would bee bears of the mountains, for as long as it took the world to settle itself again.
"So youre not making war?" Will said.
"Our old enemies vanished with the seals and the walruses. If we meet new ones, we know how to fight."
"I thought there was a great war ing that would involve everyone. Which side would you fight for in that case?"
"The side that gave advao the bears. What else? But I have sard for a few among humans. One was a man who flew a balloon. He is dead. The other is the witch Serafina Pekkala. The third is the child Lyra Silvertongue. First, I would do whatever serves the bears. Sed, whatever serves the child, or the witch, or avenges my dead rade Lee Scoresby. That is why I will help you rescue Lyra Silvertongue from the abominable woman Coulter."
He told Will of how he and a few of his subjects had swum to the river mouth and paid for the charter of this vessel with gold, and hired the crew, and turhe draining of the Arctic to their own advantage by letting the river take them as far inland as it could, and as it had its sour the northern foothills of the very mountains they sought, and as Lyra was imprisohere, too, things had fallen out well so far.
So time went past.
During the day Will dozed on deck, resting, gathering strength, because he was exhausted in every part of his being. He watched as the sery began to ge, and the rolling steppe gave way to low grassy hills and then to higher land, with the occasional ge or cataract; and still the boat steamed south.
He talked to the captain and the crew, out of politeness, but lag Lyras instant ease with strangers, he found it difficult to think of much to say; and in any case they were little ied in him. This was only a job, and when it was over they would leave without a backward glance, and besides, they didnt much like the bears, for all their gold. Will was a fner, and as long as he paid for his food, they cared little what he did. Besides, there was that strange daemon of his, which seemed so like a witchs: sometimes it was there, and sometimes it seemed to have vanished. Superstitious, like many sailors, they were happy to leave him
alone.
Balthamos, for his part, kept quiet, too. Sometimes his grief would bee to for him to put up with, and hed leave the boat and fly high among the clouds, searg for any patch of light or taste of air, any shooting stars or pressure ridges that might remind him of experiences he had shared with Baruch. Whealked, at night in the dark of the little Will slept in, it was only to report on how far they had gone, and how much farther ahead the cave and the valley lay. Perhaps he thought Will had little sympathy, though if hed sought it, he would have found plenty. He became more and more curt and formal, though never sarcastic; he kept that promise, at least.
As for Iorek, he examihe knife obsessively. He looked at it for hours, testing both edges, flexing it, holding it up to the light, toug it with his tongue, sniffing it, and even listening to the sound the air made as it flowed over the surface. Will had no fear for the knife, because Iorek was clearly a craftsman of the highest aplishment; nor for Iorek himself, because of the delicaovement in those mighty paws.
Finally Iorek came to Will and said, "This e. It does something you have not told me about. What is it, and how does it work?"
"I t show you here," said Will, "because the boat is moving. As soon as we stop, Ill show you."
"I think of it," said the bear, "but not uand what I am thinking. It is the strahing I have ever seen."
And he gave it back to Will, with a discerting, unreadable long stare out of his deep black eyes.
The river by this time had ged color, because it was meeting the remains of the first floodwaters that had swept down out of the Arctic. The vulsions had affected the earth differently in different places, Will saw; village after village stood up to its roofs in water and hundreds of dispossessed people tried to salvage what they could with rowboats and oes. The earth must have sunk a little here, because the river broadened and slowed, and it was hard for the skipper to trace his true course through the wide and turbid streams. The air was hotter, and the sun higher in the sky, and the bears found it hard to keep cool; some of them swam alongside as the steamer made its way, tasting their native waters in this fn land.
But eventually the river narrowed and deepened again, and soon ahead of them began to rise the mountains of the great tral Asian plateau. Will saw a rim of white on the horizon one day and watched as it grew and grew, separating itself into different peaks and ridges and passes between them, and so high that it seemed that they must be close at hand, only a few miles. But they were far off still; it was just that the mountains were immense, and with every hour that they came closer, they seemed yet more inceivably high.
Most of the bears had never seen mountains, apart from the cliffs on their own island of Svalbard, and fell silent as they looked up at the giant ramparts, still so far off.
"What will we hunt there, Iorek Byrnison?" said one. "Are there seals in the mountains? How shall we live?"
"There is snow and ice," was the kings reply. "We shall be fortable. And there are wild creatures there iy. Our lives will be different for a while. But we shall survive, and when things return to what they should be, and the Arctic freezes once more, we shall still be alive to go bad claim it. If we had stayed there, we would have starved. Be prepared for strangeness and for new ways, my bears."
Eventually the steamer could sail no farther, because at this point the riverbed had narrowed and bee shallow. The skipper brought the vessel to a halt in a valley bottom that normally would have been carpeted with grass and mountain flowers, where the river would have meandered ravel beds; but the valley was now a lake, and the captain insisted that he dared not go past it. Beyond this point, he explaihere would be not enough depth below the keel, even with the massive flood from the north.
So they drew up to the edge of the valley, where an outcrop of roed a sort of jetty, and disembarked.
"Where are we now?" said Will to the captain, whose English was limited.
The captain found a tattered old map and jabbed at it with his pipe, saying, "Thi藏书网s valley here, we now. You take, go on."
"Thank you very much," Will said, and wondered if he ought to offer to pay; but the captain had turned away to supervise the unloading.
Before long all thirty or so bears and all their armor were on the narrow shore. The captain shouted an order, and the vessel began to turn ponderously against the current, maneuvering out into midstream and giving a blast on the whistle that echoed for a long time around the valley.
Will sat on a rock, reading the map. If he was right, the valley where Lyra was captive, acc to the shaman, lay some way to the east and the south, and the best way there led through a pass called Sung.
"Bears, mark this place," said Iorek Byrnison to his subjects. "Wheime es for us to move back to the Arctic, we shall assemble here. Now go your ways, hunt, feed, and live. Do not make war. We are not here for war. If war threatens, I shall call for you."
The bears were solitary creatures for the most part, and they only came together in times of war or emergenow that they were at the edge of a land of snow, they were impatient to be off, each of them, expl on their own.
"e, then, Will," said Iorek Byrnison, "and we shall find Lyra."
Will lifted his rucksad they set off.
It was good walking for the first part of their jourhe sun was warm, but the pines and the rhododendrohe worst of the heat off their shoulders, and the air was fresh and clear. The ground was rocky, but the rocks were thick with moss and pine needles, and the slopes they climbed were not precipitous. Will found himself relishing the exercise. The days he had spent on the boat, the enforced rest, had built up his strength. When he had e across Iorek, he had been at the very last of it. He didnt know that, but the bear did.
And as soon as they were alone, Will showed Iorek how the e of the knife worked. He opened a world where a tropical rain forest steamed and dripped, and where vapors laden with heavy st drifted out into the thin mountain air. Iorek watched closely, and touched the edge of the window with his paw, and s it, and stepped through into the hot, moist air to look around in silehe monkey shrieks and birdcalls, the i scrapings and frog croakings, and the incessant drip-drip of densing moisture sounded very loud to Will, outside it.
Then Iorek came bad watched Will close the window, and asked to see the knife again, peering so closely at the silver edge that Will thought he was in danger of cutting his eye. He exami for a long time and ha back with hardly a word, only saying, "I was right: I could not have fought this."
They moved on, speaking little, which suited them both, Iorek Byrnison caught a gazelle and ate most of it, leaving the tender meat for Will to cook; and ohey came to a village, and while Iorek waited in the forest, Will exged one of his gold s for some flat, coarse bread and some dried fruit, and for boots of yak leather and a waistcoat of a kind of sheepskin, for it was being cold at night.
He also mao ask about the valley with the rainbows. Balthamos helped by assuming the form of a crow, like the daemon of the man Will eaking to; he made the passage of uanding easier between them, and Will got dires, which were helpful and clear.
It was ahree days walk. Well, they were getting there.
And so were others.
Lord Asriels force, the squadron of gyropters and the zeppelianker, had reached the openiween the worlds: the brea the sky above Svalbard. They had a very long way to go still, but they flew without pause except for essential maintenance, and the ahe Afrig is Ogunwe, kept in twice-daily touch with the basalt fortress. He had a Gallivespian lodestone operator aboard his gyropter, and through him he was able to learn as quickly as Lord Asriel himself about what was going on elsewhere.
The news was discoing. The little spy, the Lady Salmakia, had watched from the shadows as the two powerful arms of the Church, the sistorial Court of Discipline and the Society of the Work of the Holy Spirit, agreed to put their differences aside and pool their knowledge. The Society had a swifter and more skillful alethiometrist than Fra Pavel, and thanks to him, the sistorial Court now kly where Lyra was, and more: they khat Lord Asriel had sent a force to rescue her. Wasting no time, the Court andeered a flight of zeppelins, and that same day a battalion of the Swiss Guard began to embark aboard the zeppelins waiting iill air beside the Lake of Geneva.
So each side was aware that the other was also making its way toward the cave in the mountains. And they both khat whot there first would have the advantage, but there wasnt mu it: Lord Asriels gyropters were faster than the zeppelins of the sistorial Court, but they had farther to fly, and they were limited by the speed of their own zeppelin tanker.
And there was another sideration: whoever seized Lyra first would have to fight their way out against the other force. It would be easier for the sistorial Court, because they didnt have to sider getting Lyra away safely. They were flying there to kill her.
The zeppelin carrying the President of the sistorial Court was carrying other passengers as well, unknown to him. The Chevalier Tialys had received a message on his lodestone resonator, him and the Lady Salrnakia to smuggle themselves aboard. When the zeppelins arrived at the valley, he and the Lady were to go ahead and make their way indepely to the cave where Lyra was held, and protect her as well as they could until King Ogunwes force arrived to rescue her. Her safety was to e above every other sideration.
Getting themselves aboard the zeppelin was hazardous for the spies, not least because of the equipment they had to carry. Apart from the lodestone resonator, the most important items were a pair of i larvae, and their food. When the adult is emerged, they would be more like dragon-flies than anything else, but they were not like any kind onfly that the humans of Wills world, or Lyras, would have seen before. They were very much larger, for ohing. The Gallivespians bred these creatures carefully, and each s is differed from the rest. The Chevalier Tialyss bred powerful red-and-yellow-striped dragonflies with vigorous and brutal appetites, whereas the ohe Lady Salrnakia was nurturing would be a slender, fast-flying creature with aric blue body and the power of glowing in the dark.
Every spy was equipped with a number of these larvae, which, by feeding them carefully regulated amounts of oil and hohey could either keep in suspended animation rapidly to adulthood. Tialys and Salmakia had thirty-six hours, depending on the winds, to hatch these larvae now, because that was about the time the flight would take, and they he is to emerge before the zeppelins landed.
The Chevalier and his colleague found an overlooked space behind a bulkhead, and made themselves as safe as they could while the vessel was loaded and fu藏书网eled; and then the engines began to roar, shaking the light structure from end to end as the ground crew cast off and the eight zeppelins rose into the night sky.
Their kind would have regarded the parison as a mortal insult, but they were able to ceal themselves at least as well as rats. From their hiding place, the Gallivespians could overhear a good deal, and they kept in hourly touch with Lord Roke, who was aboard King Ogunwes gyropter.
But there was ohing they couldnt learn any more about on the zeppelin, because the President never spoke of it: and that was the matter of the assassin, Father Gomez, who had been absolved already of the sin he was going to it if the sistorial Court failed in their mission. Father Gomez was somewhere else, and no one was trag him at all.
TEN - WHEELS
"Yeah," said the red-haired girl, in the garden of the deserted o. "We seen her, me and Paolo both seen her. She e through here days ago."
Father Gomez said, "And do you remember what she looked like?"
"She look hot," said the little boy. "Sweaty in the face, all right."
"How old did she seem to be?"
"About..." said the girl, sidering, "I suppose maybe forty or fifty. We didnt see her close. She could be thirty, maybe. But she was hot, like Paolo said, and she was carrying a big rucksack, much bigger than yours, this big..."
Paolo whispered something to her, screwing up his eyes to look at the priest as he did so. The sun was bright in his face.
"Yeah," said the girl impatiently, "I know. The Specters," she said to Father Gomez, "she wasn afraid of the Specters at all. She just walked through the city and never worried a bit. I ain never seen a grownup do that before, all right. She looked like she didn know about them, even. Same as you," she added, looking at him with a challenge in her eyes.
"Theres a lot I dont know," said Father Gomez mildly.
The little boy plucked at her sleeve and whispered again.
"Paolo says," she told the priest, "he thinks yoing to get the knife back."
Father Gomez felt his skin bristle. He remembered the testimony of Fra Pavel in the inquiry at the sistorial Court: this must be the knife he meant.
"If I ," he said, "I shall. The knife es from here, does it?"
"From the Torre degli Angeli," said the girl, pointing at the square stoower over the red-brown rooftops. It shimmered in the midday glare. "And the boy who stole it, he kill our brother, Tullio. The Specters got him, all right. You want to kill that boy, thats okay. And the girl, she was a liar, she was as bad as him."
"There was a girl, too?" said the priest, trying not to seem too ied.
"Lying filth," spat the red-haired child. "We nearly killed them both, but then there came some women, flying women...”
"Witches," said Paolo.
"Witches, and we couldn fight them. They took them away, the girl and boy. We don know where they went. But the woman, she came later. We thought maybe she got some kind of ko keep the Specters away, all right. And maybe you have, too," she added, lifting her to stare at him boldly.
"I have no knife," said Father Gomez. "But I have a sacred task. Maybe that is proteg me against these, Specters."
"Yeah," said the girl, "maybe. Anyway, you want her, she went south, toward the mountains. We don know where. But you ask ahey know if she go past, because there ain no one like her in Cigazze, not before and not now. She be easy to find."
"Thank you, Angelica," said the priest. "Bless you, my children."
He shouldered his pack, left the garden, a off through the hot, silent streets, satisfied.
After three days in the pany of the wheeled creatures, Mary Malone knew rather more about them, and they knew a great deal about her.
That first m they carried her for an hour or so along the basalt highway to a settlement by a river, and the journey was unfortable; she had nothing to hold on to, and the creatures back was hard. They sped along at a pace that frightened her, but the thunder of their wheels on the hard road and the beat of their scuddi made her exhilarated enough to ighe disfort.
And in the course of the ride she became more aware of the creatures physiology. Like the grazers skeletons, theirs had a diamond-shaped frame, with a limb at each of the ers. Sometime in the distant past, a line of aral creatures must have developed this structure and found it worked, just as geions
of long-ago crawling things in Marys world had developed the tral spine.
The basalt highway led gradually downward, and after a while the slope increased, so the creatures could freewheel. They tucked their side legs up and steered by leaning to one side or the other, and hurtled along at a speed Mary found terrifying, though she had to admit that the creature she was riding never gave her the slightest feeling of danger. If only shed had something to hold on to, she would have e.
At the foot of the mile-long slope, there was a stand of the great trees, and nearby a river meandered on the level grassy ground. Some way off, Mary saw a gleam that looked like a wider expanse of water, but she didnt spend long looking at that, because the creatures were making for a settlement on the riverbank, and she was burning with curiosity to see it.
There were twenty or thirty huts, roughly grouped in a circle, made of, she had to shade her eyes against the sun to see, wooden beams covered with a kind of wattle-and-daub mixture on the walls and that the roofs. Other wheeled creatures were w: some repairing a roof, others hauling a out of the river, others bringing brushwood for a fire.
So they had language, and they had fire, and they had society. And about then she found an adjustment being made in her mind, as the word creatures became the word people. These beings werent human, but they were people, she told .herself; its not them, theyre us.
They were quite close now, and seeing what was ing, some of the villagers looked up and called to each other to look. The party from the road slowed to a halt, and Mary clambered stiffly down, knowing that she would ache later on.
"Thank you," she said to her, her what? Her steed? Her cycle? Both ideas were absurdly wrong for the bright-eyed amiability that stood beside her. She settled for, friend.
He raised his trunk and imitated her words:
"Anku," he said, and again they laughed, in high spirits.
She took her rucksack from the other creature ("Anku! Anku!") and walked with them off the basalt and on to the hard-packed earth of the village.
And then her absorption truly began.
In the few days she learned so much that she felt like a child again, bewildered by school. What was more, the wheeled people seemed to be just as woruck by her. Her hands, to begin with. They could enough of them: their delicate trunks felt over every joint, searg out thumbs, knuckles, and fingernails, flexing them gently, and they watched with amazement as she picked up her rucksack, veyed food to her mouth, scratched, bed her hair, washed. Iurn, they let her feel their trunks. They were infinitely flexible, and about as long as her arm, thicker where they joihe head, and quite powerful enough to crush her skull, she guessed. The two finger-like projes at the tip were capable of enormous ford great gentleness; the creatures seemed to be able to vary the tone of their skin on the underside, on their equivalent of fiips, from a soft velvet to a solidity like wood. As a result, they could use them for both a delicate task like milking a grazer and the rough business of tearing and shaping branches.
Little by little, Mary realized that their trunks were playing a part in unication, too. A movement of the trunk would modify the meaning of a sound, so the word that sounded like "chuh" meant water when it was apanied by a sweep of the trunk from left tht, raihe trunk curled up at the tip, sadness when it curled under, and young shoots of grass when it made a quick flick to the left. As soon as she saw this, Mary imitated it, moving her arm as best she could in the same way, and when the creatures realized that she was beginning to talk to them, their delight was radiant.
Ohey had begun to talk (mostly in the wheeled peoples language, although she mao teach them a few words of English: they could say "anku" and "grass" and "tree" and "sky" and "river," and pronounce her name, with a little difficulty) they progressed much more quickly. Their word for themselves as a people was mulefa, but an individual was a zalif. Mary thought there was a differeween the
sounds for he-zalif and she-ali, but it was too subtle for her to imitate easily. She began to write it all down and pile a diary.
But before she let herself bee truly absorbed, she took out her battered paperbad the yarrow stalks, and asked the I g: Should I be here doing this, or should I go on somewhere else and keep searg?
The reply came: Keeping still, so that restlessness dissolves; then, beyond the tumult, one perceive the great laws.
It went on: As a mountain keeps still within itself, thus a wise man does not permit his will to stray beyond his situation.
That could hardly be clearer. She folded the stalks away and closed the book, and then realized that shed drawn a circle of watg creatures around her.
One said, Question? Permission? Curious.
She said, Please. Look.
Very delicately their trunks moved, s through the stalks in the same ting movement shed been making, or turning the pages of the book. Ohing they were astonished by was the doubleness of her hands: by the fact that she could both hold the book and turn the pages at the same time. They loved to watch her lace her fiogether, or play the childhood game of "This is the church, and this is the steeple," or make that over-and-over thumb-to-opposite forefinger movement that was what Ama was using, at exactly the same moment in Lyras world, as a charm to keep evil spirits away.
Ohey had examihe yarrow stalks and the book, they folded the cloth over them carefully and put them with the book into her rucksack. She was happy and reassured by the message from a a, because it meant that what she wanted most to do was exactly, at that moment, what she should do.
So she set herself to learning more about the mulefa, with a cheerful heart.
She learhat there were two sexes, and that they lived monogamously in couples. Their offspring had long childhoods, ten years at least, growing very slowly, as far as she could interpret their explanation. There were five young ones in this settlement, one almost grown and the others somewhere iween, and being smaller than the adults, they could not mahe seedpod wheels. The children had to move as the grazers did, with all four feet on the ground, but for all their energy and adventurousness (skipping up to Mary and shying away, trying to clamber up tree trunks, floundering in the shallow water, and so on), they seemed clumsy, as if they were in the wrong element. The speed and power and grace of the adults was startling by trast, and Mary saw how much a growing youngster must long for the day when the wheels would fit. She watched the oldest child, one day, go quietly to the storehouse where a number of seedpods were kept, and try to fit his foreclaw into the tral hole; but wheried to stand up, he fell over at orapping himself, and the sound attracted an adult. The child struggled to get free, squeaking with ay, and Mary couldnt help laughing at the sight, at the indignant parent and the guilty child, who pulled himself out at the last minute and scampered away.
The seedpod wheels were clearly of the utmost importance, and soon Mary began to see just how valuable they were.
The mulefa spent much of their time, to begin with, in maintaining their wheels. By deftly lifting and twisting the claw, they could slip it out of the hole, and then they used their trunks to examihe wheel all over, ing the rim, cheg for cracks. The claw was formidably strong: a spur of horn or bo right ao the leg, and slightly curved so that the highest part, in the middle, bore the weight as it rested on the inside of the hole. Mary watched one day as a zalif examihe hole in her front wheel, toug here and there, liftirunk up in the air and back again, as if sampling the st.
Mary remembered the oil shed found on her fingers when she had examihe first seedpod. With the zalif’s permission she looked at her claw, and found the surface more smooth and slick than anything shed felt on her world. Her fingers simply would not stay on the surface. The whole of the claw seemed
impregnated with the faintly fragrant oil, and after she had seen a number of the villagers sampling, testing, cheg the state of their wheels and their claws, she began to wonder which had e first: wheel or claw? Rider or tree?
Although of course there was a third element as well, and that was geology. Creatures could only use wheels on a world that provided them with natural highways. There must be some feature of the mineral tent of these stone roads that made them run in ribbon-like lines over the vast savanna, and be so resistant to weathering or crag. Little by little, Mary came to see the way everything was liogether, and all of it, seemingly, managed by the mulefa. They khe location of every herd of grazers, every stand of wheel trees, every clump of sweet grass, and they knew every individual within the herds, and every separate tree, and they discussed their well-being and their fate. On one occasion she saw the mulefa cull a herd of grazers, seleg some individuals and herding them away from the rest, to dispatch them by breaking their necks with a wrench of a powerful trunk. Nothing was wasted. Holding flakes of razor-sharp stone irunks, the mulefa skinned and gutted the animals within minutes, and then began a skillful butchery, separating out the offal and the tender meat and the tougher joints, trimming the fat, removing the horns and the hooves, and w so effitly that Mary watched with the pleasure she felt at seeing anything done well.
Soon strips of meat were hanging to dry in the sun, and others were packed in salt and ed in leaves; the skins were scraped clear of fat, which was set by for later use, and then laid to soak in pits of water filled with oak bark to tan; and the oldest child laying with a set of horns, pretending to be a grazer, making the other children laugh. That evening there was fresh meat to eat, and Mary feasted well.
In a similar way the mulefa knew where the best fish were to be had, and exa>tly when and where to lay their s. Looking for something she could do, Mary went to the -makers and offered to help. When she saw how they worked, not on their own but two by two, w their trunks together to tie a knot, she realized why theyd been so astonished by her hands, because of course she could tie knots on her own. At first she felt that this gave her an advantage, she needed no one else, and then she realized how it cut her off from others. Perhaps all human beings were like that. And from that time on, she used one hand to knot the fibers, sharing the task with a female zalif who had bee her particular friend, fingers and trunk moving in and out together.
But of all the living things the wheeled people managed, it was the seedpod trees that they took most care with.
There were half a dozen groves within the area looked after by this group. There were others farther away, but they were the responsibility of roups. Each day a party went out to che the well-being of the mighty trees, and to harvest any fallen seedpods. It was clear what the mulefa gained; but how did the trees be from this interge? One day she saw. As she was riding along with the group, suddenly there was a loud crack, and everyone came to a halt, surrounding one individual whose wheel had split. Every group carried a spare or two with it, so the zalif with the broken wheel was soon remounted; but the broken wheel itself was carefully ed in a cloth and taken back to the settlement.
There they prized it open and took out all the seeds, flat pale ovals as big as Marys little fingernail, and examined eae carefully. They explaihat the seedpods he stant pounding they got on the hard roads if they were to crack at all, and also that the seeds were difficult to germinate. Without the mulefas attention, the trees would all die.
Each species depended oher, and furthermore, it was the oil that made it possible. It was hard to uand, but they seemed to be saying that the oil was the ter of their thinking and feeling; that young ones didnt have the wisdom of their elders because they couldnt use the wheels, and thus could absorb no oil through their claws.
And that was when Mary began to see the e between the mulefa and the question that had occupied the past few years of her life.
But before she could exami any further (and versations with the mulefa were long and plex,
because they loved qualifying and explaining and illustrating their arguments with dozens of examples, as if they had fotten nothing and everything they had ever known was available immediately for referehe settlement was attacked.
Mary was the first to see the attackers ing, though she didnt know what they were.
It happened in midafternoon, when she was helping repair the roof of a hut. The mulefa only built oory high, because they were not climbers; but Mary was happy to clamber above the ground, and she could lay thatd knot it in place with her two hands, ohey had showhe teique, much more quickly than they could.
So she was braced against the rafters of a house, catg the bundles of reeds thrown up to her, and enjoying the cool breeze from the water that was tempering the heat of the sun, when her eye was caught by a flash of white.
It came from that distant glitter she thought was the sea. She shaded her eyes and saw owo, more, a fleet of tall white sails, emerging out of the heat haze, some way off but making with a silent grace for the river mouth.
Mary called the zalif from below. What are you seeing?
She didnt know the word for sail, or boat, so she said tail, white, many.
At ohe zalif gave a call of alarm, and everyone in earshot stopped work and sped to the ter of the settlement, calling the young ones. Within a minute all the mulefa were ready to flee.
Atal, her friend, called: Mary! Mary! e! Tualapil Tualapi!
It had all happened so quickly that Mary had hardly moved. The white sails by this time had already ehe river, easily making headway against the current. Mary was impressed by the discipline of the sailors: they tacked so swiftly, the sails moving together like a flock of starlings, all ging dire simultaneously. And they were so beautiful, those snow white slender sails, bending and dipping and filling...
There were forty of them, at least, and they were ing upriver much more swiftly thahought. But she saw no crew on board, and then she realized that they werent boats at all: they were gigantic birds, and the sails were their wings, one fore and o, held upright and flexed and trimmed by the power of their own muscles.
There was no time to stop and study them, because they had already reached the bank, and were climbing out. They had necks like swans, and beaks as long as her forearm. Their wings were twice as tall as she was, and, she glanced back, frightened now, over her shoulder as she fled, they had powerful legs: no wohey had moved so fast oer.
She ran hard after the mulefa, who were calling her name as they streamed out of the settlement and onto the highway. She reached them just in time: her friend Atal was waiting, and as Mary scrambled on her back, Atal beat the road with her feet, speeding a the slope after her panions.
The birds, who couldnt move as fast on land, soon gave up the chase and turned back to the settlement.
They tore open the food stores, snarling and growling and tossing their great cruel beaks high as they swallowed the dried meat and all the preserved fruit and grain. Everything edible was gone in under a minute.
And theualapi found the wheel store, and tried to smash open the great seedpods, but that was beyond them. Mary felt her friends teh alarm all around her as they watched from the crest of the low hill and saw pod after pod hurled to the ground, kicked, rasped by the claws on the mighty legs, but of course no harm came to them from that. What worried the mulefa was that several of them were pushed and shoved and oward the water, where they floated heavily dowoward the sea.
Then the great snow-white birds set about demolishing everything they could see with brutal, raking blows of their feet and stabbing, smashing, shaking, tearing movements of their beaks. The mulefa around
her were murmuring, almost ing with sorrow.
I help, Mary said. We make again.
But the foul creatures hadnt finished yet; holding their beautiful wings high, they squatted among the devastation and voided their bowels. The smell drifted up the slope with the breeze; heaps and pools of green-black-brown-white dung lay among the broken beams, the scattered thatch. Then, their clumsy movement on land giving them a swaggering strut, the birds went back to the water and sailed away dowoward the sea.
Only when the last white wing had vanished iernoon haze did the mulefa ride down the highway again. They were full of sorrow and anger, but mainly they were powerfully anxious about the seedpod store.
Out of the fifteen pods that had been there, only two were left. The rest had been pushed into the water and lost. But there was a sandbank in the bend of the river, and Mary thought she could spot a wheel that was caught there; so to the mulefas surprise and alarm, she took off her clothes, wound a length of cord around her waist, and swam across to it. On the sandbank she found not o five of the precious wheels, and passing the cord through their softeniers, she swam heavily back, pulling them behind her.
The mulefa were full of gratitude. They never ehe water themselves, and only fished from the bank, taking care to keep their feet and wheels dry. Mary felt she had done something useful for them at last.
Later that night, after a sty meal of sweet roots, they told her why they had been so anxious about the wheels. There had once been a time when the seedpods were plentiful, and when the world was rid full of life, and the mulefa lived with their trees iual joy. But something bad had happened many years ago, some virtue had go of the world, because despite every effort and all the love and attention the mulefa could give them, the wheel-pod trees were dying.
ELEVEN - THE DRAGONFLIES
Ama climbed the path to the cave, bread and milk in the bag on her back, a heavy puzzlement in her heart. How in the world could she ever mao reach the sleeping girl?
She came to the rock where the woman had told her to leave the food. She put it down, but she didnt go st99lｉb.see. And now that they were closer, they could hear the sound of cries behind it, though whether they were human voices g was impossible to tell: high, mournful shrieks and wails that hung in the air like the drifting filaments of a jellyfish, causing pain wherever they touched.
"Theres a door," said Will in a hoarse, strained voice.
It was a battered wooden postern under a slab of stone. Before Will could lift his hand and open it, one of those high, harsh cries sounded very close by, jarring their ears and frightening them horribly.
Immediately the Gallivespians darted into the air, the dragonflies like little warhorses eager for battle. But the thing that fleept them aside with a brutal blow from her wing, and theled heavily on a ledge just above the childrens heads. Tialys and Salmakia gathered themselves and soothed their shaken mounts.
The thing was a great bird the size of a vulture, with the fad breasts of a woman. Will had seen pictures of creatures like her, and the word harpy came to mind as soon as he saw her clearly. Her face was
smooth and unwrinkled, but aged beyond even the age of the witches: she had seen thousands of years pass, and the cruelty and misery of all of them had formed the hateful expression on her features. But as the travelers saw her more clearly, she became even more repulsive. Her eye sockets were clotted with filthy slime, and the redness of her lips was caked and crusted as if she had vomited a blood again and again. Her matted, filthy black hair hung down to her shoulders; her jagged claws gripped the stone fiercely; her powerful dark wings were folded along her back; and a drift of putrest stink wafted from her every time she moved.
Will and Lyra, both of them sid ful..l of pain, tried to stand upright and face her.
"But you are alive!" the harpy said, her harsh voice mog them.
Will found himself hating and fearing her more than any human being he had ever known.
"Who are you?" said Lyra, who was just as repelled as Will.
For ahe harpy screamed. She opened her mouth and directed a jet of noise right in their faces, so that their heads rang and they nearly fell backward. Will clutched at Lyra and they both g together as the scream turned into wild, mog peals of laughter, which were answered by other harpy voices in the fog along the shore. The jeering, hate-filled sound reminded Will of the merciless cruelty of children in a playground, but there were no teachers here tulate things, no oo appeal to, o hide.
He set his hand on the k his belt and looked her in the eyes, though his head was ringing and the sheer power of her scream had made him dizzy.
"If youre trying to stop us," he said, "then youd better be ready to fight as well as scream. Because were going through that door."
The harpys siing red mouth moved again, but this time it was to purse her lips into a mock kiss.
Then she said, "Your mother is alone. We shall send her nightmares. We shall scream at her in her sleep!"
Will didnt move, because out of the er of his eye, he could see the Lady Salmakia moving delicately along the branch where the harpy erg. Her dragonfly, wings quivering, was being held by Tialys on the ground, and then two things happehe Lady leapt at the harpy and spun around to dig her spur deep into the creatures scaly leg, and Tialys lauhe dragonfly upward. Ihan a sed Salmakia had spun away a off the branch, directly onto the back of her electric blue steed and up into the air.
The effe the harpy was immediate. Another scream shattered the silence, much louder than before, and she beat her dark wings so hard that Will and Lyra both felt the wind and staggered. But she g to the stoh her claws, and her face was suffused with dark red anger, and her hair stood out from her head like a crest of serpents.
Will tugged at Lyras hand, and they both tried to run toward the door, but the harpy launched herself at them in a fury and only pulled up from the dive when Will turhrusting Lyra behind him and holding up the knife.
The Gallivespians were o once, darting close at her fad then darting away again, uo get in a blow but distrag her so that she beat her wings clumsily and half-fell onto the ground.
Lyra called out, "Tialys! Salmakia! Stop, stop!"
The spies reined back their dragonflies and skimmed high over the childrens heads. Other dark forms were clustering in the fog, and the jeering screams of a hundred more harpies sounded from farther along the shore. The first one was shaking her wings, shaking her hair, stretg each leg in turn, and flexing her claws. She was unhurt, and that was what Lyra had noticed.
The Gallivespians hovered and then dived back toward Lyra, who was holding out both hands for them to land on. Salmakia realized what Lyra had meant, and said to Tialys: "Shes right. We t hurt her, for some reason."
Lyra said, "Lady, whats your name?"
The harpy shook her wings wide, and the travelers nearly fainted from the hideous smells of corruption and decay that wafted from her.
"No-Name!" she cried.
"What do you want with us?" said Lyra.
"What you give me?"
"We could tell you where weve been, and maybe youd be ied, I dont know. We saw all kinds of strahings on the way here."
"Oh, and youre to tell me a story?"
"If youd like."
"Maybe I would. And what then?"
"You might let us go in through that door and find the ghost weve e here to look for; I hope you would, anyway. If youd be so kind."
"Try, then," said No-Name.
And even in her siess and pain, Lyra felt that shed just bee the ace of trumps.
"Oh, be careful," whispered Salmakia, but Lyras mind was already rag ahead through the story shed told the night before, shaping and cutting and improving and adding: parents dead; family treasure; shipwreck; escape ...
"Well," she said, settling into her storytelling frame of mind, "it began when I was a baby, really. My father and mother were the Duke and Duchess of Abingdon, you see, and they were as rich as anything. My father was one of the kings advisers, and the king himself used to e and stay, oh, all the time. Theyd go hunting in our forest. The house there, where I was born, it was the biggest house in the whole south of England. It was called…"
Without even a cry of warning, the harpy launched herself at Lyra, claws outstretched. Lyra just had time to duck, but still one of the claws caught her scalp and tore out a clump of hair.
"Liar! Liar!" the harpy was screaming. "Liar!"
She flew around again, aiming directly for Lyras face; but Will took out the knife and threw himself in the way. No-Name swerved out of reach just in time, and Will hustled Lyra over toward the door, because she was numb with shod half-blinded by the blood running down her face. Where the Gallivespians were, Will had no idea, but the harpy was flying at them again and screaming and screaming in rage and hatred:
"Liar! Liar! Liar!"
And it sounded as if her voice were ing from everywhere, and the word echoed back from the great wall in the fog, muffled and ged, so that she seemed to be screaming Lyras name, so that Lyra and liar were one and the same thing.
Will had the girl pressed against his chest, with his shoulder curved over to protect her, and he felt her shaking and sobbing against him; but thehrust the ko the rotten wood of the door and cut out the lock with a quick slash of the blade.
Then he and Lyra, with the spies beside them on their darting dragoumbled through into the realm of the ghosts as the harpys cry was doubled and redoubled by others on the foggy shore behind them.
TWENTY-TWO - THE WHISPERERS
The first thing Will did was to make Lyra sit down, and theook out the little pot of bloodmoss oi and looked at the wound on her head. It was bleeding freely, as scalp wounds do, but it wasnt deep. He tore a strip off the edge of his shirt and mopped it , and spread some of the oi over the gash,
trying not to think of the filthy state of the claw that made it.
Lyras eyes were glazed, and she ale.
"Lyra! Lyra!" he said, and shook her gently. "e on now, weve got to move."
She gave a shudder and took a long, shaky breath, and her eyes focused on him, full of a wild despair.
"Will, I t do it anymore, I t do it! I t tell lies! I thought it was so easy, but it didnt work, its all I do, and it doesnt work!"
"Its not all you do. You read the alethiometer, t you? e os see where we are. Lets look fer."
He helped her up, and for the first time they looked around at the land where the ghosts were.
They found themselves on a great plain that extended far ahead into the mist. The light by which they saw was a dull self-luminesce that seemed to exist everywhere equally, so that there were no true shadows and no true light, and everything was the same dingy color.
Standing on the floor of this huge space were adults and children, ghost people, so many that Lyra couldnt guess their number. At least, most of them were standing, though some were sitting and some lying down listless or asleep. No one was moving about, or running or playing, though many of them turo look at these new arrivals, with a fearful curiosity in their wide eyes.
"Ghosts," she whispered. "This is where they all are, everyohats ever died..."
No doubt it was because she didnt have Pantalaimon anymore, but she g close to Wills arm, and he was glad she did. The Gallivespians had flown ahead, and he could see their bright little forms darting and skimming over the heads of the ghosts, who looked up and followed them with wonder; but the silence was immense and oppressive, and the gray light filled him with fear, and Lyras resence beside him was the only thing that felt like life.
Behind them, outside the wall, the screams of the harpies were still eg up and down the shore. Some of the ghost people were looking up apprehensively, but more of them were staring at Will and Lyra, and then they began to crowd forward. Lyra shrank back; she didnt have the strength just yet to face them as she would have liked to do, and it was Will who had to speak first.
"Do you speak our language?" he said. " you speak at all?"
Shivering and frightened and full of pain as he and Lyra were, they had more authority than the whole mass of the dead put together. These phosts had little power of their own, and hearing Wills voice, the first clear voice that had souhere in all the memory of the dead, many of them came forward, eager to respond.
But they could only whisper. A faint, pale sound, no more than a soft breath, was all they could utter. And as they thrust forward, jostling and desperate, the Gallivespians flew down and darted to and from in front of them, to prevent them from crowding too close. The ghost children looked up with a passionate longing, and Lyra k once why: they thought the dragonflies were daemons; they were wishing with all their hearts that they could hold their own daemons again.
"Oh, they ent daemons," Lyra burst out passionately; "and if my own daemon was here, you could all stroke him and touch him, I promise...”
And she held out her hands to the children. The adult ghosts hung back, listless or fearful, but the children all came thronging forward. They had as much substance as fog, poor things, and Lyras hands passed through and through them, as did Wills. They crammed forward, light and lifeless, to warm themselves at the flowing blood and the strois of the two travelers, and both Will and Lyra felt a succession of cold, delicate brushiions as the ghosts passed through their bodies, warming themselves on the way. The two living childrehat little by little they were being dead, too; they hadnt got an infinite amount of life and warmth to give, and they were so cold already, and the endless crowds pressing forward looked as if they were never going to stop.
Finally Lyra had to plead with them to hold back.
She held up her hands and said, "Please, we wish we could touch you all, but we came dowo look for someone, and I need you to tell me where he is and how to find him. Oh, Will," she said, leaning her head to his, "I wish I knew what to do!"
The ghosts were fasated by the blood on Lyras forehead. It glowed as brightly as a holly berry in the dimness, and several of them had brushed through it, longing for the tact with something so vibrantly alive. One ghost girl, who when she was alive must have been about nine or ten, reached up shyly to try and touch it, and then shrank ba fear; but Lyra said, "Dont be afraid, we ent e here to hurt you, speak to us, if you !"
The ghost girl spoke, but ihin, pale voice, it was only a whisper.
"Did the harpies do that? Did they try and hurt you?"
"Yeah," said Lyra, "but if thats all they do, I ent worried about them."
"Oh, it isnt, oh, they do worse...”
"What? What do they do?"
But they were relut to tell her. They shook their heads a silent, until one boy said, "It ent so bad for them thats been here hundreds of years, because you get tired after all that time, they t fraid you up so much...”
"Its the new ohat they like talking to most," said the first girl. "Its just.. .Oh, its just hateful. They... I t tell you."
Their voices were no louder than dry leaves falling. And it was only the children who spoke; the adults all seemed sunk in a lethargy so ahat they might never move or speak again.
"Listen," said Lyra, "please listen. We came here, me and my friends, because we got to find a boy called Roger. He ent been here long, just a few weeks, so he wont know very many people, but if you know where he is..."
But even as she spoke, she khat they could stay here till they grew old, searg everywhere and looking at every face, and still they might never see more than a tiny fra of the dead. She felt despair sit on her shoulders, as heavy as if the harpy herself were perg there.
However, she ched her teeth and tried to hold her high. We got here, she thought, thats part of it anyway.
The first ghost girl was saying something in that lost little whisper.
"Why do we want to find him?" said Will. "Well, Lyra wants to speak to him. But theres someone I want to find as well. I want to find my father, John Parry. Hes here, too, somewhere, and I want to speak to him before I go back to the world. So please ask, if you , ask fer and for John Parry to e and speak to Lyra and to Will. Ask them...”
But suddenly the ghosts all turned and fled, even the grownups, like dry leaves scattered by a sudden gust of wind. In a moment the space around the children was empty, and then they heard why. screams, cries, shrieks came from the air above, and then the harpies were on them, with gusts of rotten stink, battering wings, and those raucous screams, jeering, mog, cag, deriding.
Lyra shrank to the ground at once, c her ears, and Will, knife in hand, crouched over her. He could see Tialys and Salmakia skimming toward them, but they were some way off yet, and he had a moment or two to watch the harpies as they wheeled and dived. He saw their human faces snap at the air, as if they were eating is, and he heard the words they were shouting, scoffing words, filthy words, all about his mother, words that shook his heart; but part of his mind was quite cold and separate, thinking, calculating, . None of them wao e anywhere he knife.
To see what would happeood up. One of them, it might have been No-Name herself, had to swerve heavily out of the way, because shed been diving low, intending to skim just over his head. Her
heavy wings beat clumsily, and she only just made the turn. He could have reached out and slashed off her head with the knife.
By this time the Gallivespians had arrived, and the two of them were about to attack, but Will called: "Tialys! e here! Salmakia, e to my hand!"
They landed on his shoulders, and he said, "Watch. See what they do. They only e and scream. I think it was a mistake whe Lyra. I dont think they want to touch us at all. We ighem."
Lyra looked up, wide-eyed. The creatures flew around Wills head, sometimes only a foot or so away, but they always swerved aside or upward at the last moment. He could sehe two spies eager for battle, and the dragonflies wings were quivering with desire to dart through the air with their deadly riders, but they held themselves back: they could see he was right.
And it had an effe the ghosts, too: seeing Will standing unafraid and unharmed, they began to drift back toward the travelers. They watched the harpies cautiously, but for all that, the lure of the warm flesh and blood, those strobeats, was too much to resist.
Lyra stood up to join Will. Her wound had opened again, and fresh blood was trig down her cheek, but she wiped it aside.
"Will," she said, "Im so glad we came dowogether..."
He heard a tone in her void he saw an expression on her face that he knew and liked more than anything hed ever known: it showed she was thinking of something daring, but she wasnt ready to speak of it yet.
He o show hed uood.
The ghost girl said, "This way, e with us, well find them!"
And both of them felt the stra sensation, as if little ghost hands were reag inside and tugging at their ribs to make them follow.
So they set off across the floor of that great desolate plain, and the harpies wheeled higher and higher overhead, screaming and screaming. But they kept their distance, and the Gallivespians flew above, keeping watch.
As they walked along, the ghosts talked to them.
"Excuse me," said one ghost girl, "but wheres your daemons? Excuse me for asking. But..."
Lyra was scious every single sed of her dear, abandoned Pantalaimon. She couldnt speak easily, so Will answered instead.
"We left our daemons outside," he said, "where its safe for them. Well collect them later. Did you have a daemon?"
"Yes," said the ghost, "his name was Sandling... oh, I loved him..."
"And had he settled?" said Lyra.
"No, not yet. He used to think hed be a bird, and I hoped he wouldnt, because I liked him all furry i night. But he was a bird more and more. Whats your daemon called?"
Lyra told her, and the ghosts pressed forward eagerly again. They all wao talk about their daemons, every one.
"Mine was called Matapan...”
"We used to play hide-and-seek, shed ge like a chameleon and I couldnt see her at all, she was ever so good...”
"Once I hurt my eye and I couldnt see and he guided me all the way home...”
"He never wao settle, but I wao grow up, and we used tue...”
"She used to curl up in my hand and go to sleep...”
"Are they still there, somewhere else? Will we see them again?"
"No. When you die, your daemon just goes out like a dle flame. I seen it happen. I never saw my Castor, though, I never said good-bye...”
"They ent nowhere! They must be somewhere! My daemons still there somewhere, I know he is!"
The jostling ghosts were animated and eager, their eyes shining and their cheeks warm, as if they were borrowing life from the travelers.
Will said, "Is there anyone here from my world, where we dont have daemons?"
A thin ghost boy of his own age nodded, and Will turo him.
"Oh yes," came the answer. "We didnt uand what daemons were, but we knew what it felt like to be without them. Theres people here from all kinds of worlds."
"I knew my death," said one girl, "I knew him all the while I was growing up. When I heard them talk about daemons, I thought they meant something like our deaths. I miss him now. I wont never see him again. Im over and doh, thats the last thing he said to me, and then he went forever. When he was with me, I always khere was someone I could trust, someone who knew where we was going and what to do. But I aint got him no more. I dont know whats going to happen ever again."
"There aint nothing going to happen!" someone else said. "Nothing, forever!"
"You dont know," said another. "They came, didnt they ? No one ever khat was going to happen."
She meant Will and Lyra.
"This is the first thing that ever happened here," said a ghost boy. "Maybe its all going to ge now."
"What would you do, if you could?" said Lyra.
"Go up to the world again!"
"Even if it meant you could only see it once, would you still want to do that?"
"Yes! Yes! Yes!"
"Well, anyway, Ive got to find Roger," said Lyra, burning with her new idea; but it was for Will to know first.
On the floor of the endless plain, there was a vast, slow movement among the untable ghosts. The children could, but Tialys and Salmakia, flying above, watched the little pale figures all moving with an effect that looked like the migration of immense flocks of birds or herds of reindeer. At the ter of the movemehe two children who were not ghosts, moving steadily on; not leading, and not following, but somehow fog the movement into an iion of all the dead.
The spies, their thoughts moving even more quickly than their darting steeds, exged a gland brought the dragoo rest side by side on a dry, withered branch.
"Do we have daemons, Tialys?" said the Lady.
"Since we got into that boat, I have felt as if my heart had been torn out and thrown still beating on the shore," he said. "But it wasnt; its still w in my breast. So something of mine is out there with the little girls daemon, and something of yours, too, Salmakia, because your face is drawn and your hands are pale and tight. Yes, we have daemons, whatever they are. Maybe the people in Lyras world are the only living beings to know they have. Maybe thats why it was one of them who started the revolt."
He slipped off the dragonflys bad tethered it safely, and then took out the lodestone resonator. But he had hardly begun to touch it wheopped.
"No response," he said somberly.
"So were beyond everything?"
"Beyond help, certainly. Well, we kneere ing to the land of the dead."
"The boy would go with her to the end of the world."
"Will his knife open the way back, do you think?"
"Im sure he thinks so. But oh, Tialys, I dont know."
"Hes very young. Well, they are both young. You know, if she doesnt survive this, the question of whether shell choose the right thing wheempted wont arise. It wont matter anymore."
"Do you think shes chosen already? ..When she chose to leave her daemon on the shore? Was that the choice she had to make?"
The Chevalier looked down on the slow-moving millions on the floor of the land of the dead, all drifting after that bright and living spark Lyra Silvertongue. He could just make out her hair, the lightest thing in the gloom, and beside it the boys head, black-haired and solid and strong.
"No," he said, "not yet. Thats still to e, whatever it may be."
"Then we must brio it safely."
&qu them both. Theyre bound together now."
The Lady Salmakia flicked the cobweb-light rein, and her dragonfly darted off the branch at ond sped down toward the living children, with the Chevalier close behind.
But they didnt stop with them; having skimmed low to make sure they were all right, they flew on ahead, partly because the dragonflies were restless, and partly because they wao find out how far this dismal place extended.
Lyra saw them flashing overhead a a pang of relief that there was still something that darted and glowed with beauty. Then, uo keep her idea to herself anymore, she turo Will; but she had to whisper. She put her lips to his ear, and in a noisy rush of warmth, he heard her say:
"Will, I want us to take all these poor dead ghost kids outside, the grownups as well, we could set em free! Well find Roger and your father, and thes open the way to the world outside, a em all free!"
He turned and gave her a true smile, so warm and happy she felt something stumble and falter inside her; at least, it felt like that, but without Pantalaimon she couldnt ask herself what it meant. It might have been a new way for her heart to heat. Deeply surprised, she told herself to walk straight and stop feeling giddy.
So they moved on. The whisper Roger reading out faster than they could move; the words &quer, Lyras e, Roger, Lyras here" passed from one ghost to another like the electric message that one cell in the body passes on to the .
And Tialys and Salmakia, cruising above oireless dragonflies, and looking all around as they flew, eventually noticed a new kind of movement. Some way off there was a little gyration of activity. Skimming down closer, they found themselves ignored, for the first time, because something more iing was gripping the minds of all the ghosts. They were talkiedly in their near-silent whispers, they were pointing, they were urging someone forward.
Salmakia flew down low, but couldnt land: the press was too great, and none of their hands or shoulders would support her, even if they dared to try. She saw a young ghost boy with an ho, unhappy face, dazed and puzzled by what he was being told, and she called out:
&quer? Is that Roger?"
He looked up, bemused, nervous, and nodded.
Salmakia flew back up to her panion, and together they sped back to Lyra. It was a long way, and hard to navigate, but by watg the patterns of movement, they finally found her.
"There she is," said Tialys, and called: "Lyra! Lyra! Your friend is there!"
Lyra looked up and held out her hand for the dragonfly. The great i la os red and yellow gleaming like enamel, and its filmy wings stiff and still oher side. Tialys kept his balance as she held him at eye level.
"Where?" she said, breathless with excitement. "Is he far off?"
"An hours walk," said the Chevalie.99liｂ?r. "But he knows youre ing. The others have told him, and we made sure it was him. Just keep going, and soon youll find him."
Tialys saw Will make the effort to stand up straight and force himself to find some more energy. Lyra was charged with it already, and plied the Gallivespians with questions: how did Roger seem? Had he spoken to them? No, of course; but did he seem glad? Were the other children aware of what was happening, ahey helping, or were they just in the way?
And so on. Tialys tried to answer everything truthfully and patiently, and step by step the living girl drew closer to the boy she had brought to his death.
TWENTY-THREE - NO WAY OUT
"Will," said Lyra, "what dyou think the harpies will do whe the ghosts out?"
Because the creatures were getting louder and flying closer, and there were more and more of them all the time, as if the gloom were gathering itself into little clots of malid giving them wings. The ghosts kept looking up fearfully.
"Are we getting close?" Lyra called to the Lady Salmakia.
"Not far now," she called down, h above them. "You could see him if you climbed that rock."
But Lyra didnt want to waste time. She was trying with all her heart to put on a cheerful face fer, but every moment in front of her minds eye was that terrible image of the little.. dog-Pan abandoned oty as the mist closed around him, and she could barely keep from howling. She must, though; she must be hopeful fer; she always had been.
When they did e face to face, it happened quite suddenly. In among the press of all the ghosts, there he was, his familiar features wan but his expression as full of delight as a ghost could be. He rushed to embrace her.
But he passed like cold smoke through her arms, and though she felt his little hand clutch at her heart, it had nth to hold on. They could ruly touch again.
But he could whisper, and his voice said, "Lyra, I hought Id ever see you again, I thought even if you did e down here when you was dead, youd be much older, youd be a grownup, and you wouldnt want to speak to me...”
"Why ever not?"
"Because I dohe wrong thing when Pan got my daemon away from Lord Asriels! We shouldve run, we shouldnt have tried to fight her! We shouldve run to you! Then she wouldnt have been able to get my daemon again, and when the cliff fell away, my daemon wouldve still been with me!"
"But that werent your fault, stupid!" Lyra said. "It was me that brung you there in the first place, and I shouldve let you go back with the other kids and the gyptians. It was my fault. Im so 藏书网sorry, Roger, ho, it was my fault, you wouldntve been here otherwise..."
"Well," he said, "I dunno. Maybe I wouldve got dead some other way. But it werent your fault, Lyra, see."
She felt herself beginning to believe it; but all the same, it was heartrending to see the poor little cold thing, so close a so out of reach. She tried to grasp his wrist, though her fingers closed in the empty air; but he uood and sat down beside her.
The hosts withdrew a little, leaving them alone, and Will moved apart, too, to sit down and nurse his hand. It was bleeding again, and while Tialys flew fiercely at the ghosts to force them away, Salmakia helped Will tend to the wound.
But Lyra and Roger were oblivious to that.
"And you ent dead," he said. "Howd you e here if youre still alive? And wheres Pan?"
"er, I had to leave him on the shore, it was the worst thing I ever had to do, it hurt so much, you know how it hurts, and he just stood there, just looking, oh, I felt like a murderer, Roger, but I had to, or else I couldnt have e!"
"I beeending to talk to you all the time since I died," he said. "I been wishing I could, and wishing so hard...Just wishing I could get out, me and all the other dead uns, cause this is a terrible place, Lyra, its hopeless, theres no ge when youre dead, and them bird-things... You know what they do? They wait till youre resting, you t never sleep properly, you just sort of doze, and they e up quiet beside you and they whisper all the bad things you ever did when you was alive, so you t fet em. They know all the worst things about you. They know how to make you feel horrible, just thinking of all the stupid things and bad things you ever did. And all the greedy and unkind thoughts you ever had, they know em all, and they shame you up and they make you feel sick with yourself... But you t get away from em."
"Well," she said, "listen."
Dropping her void leaning closer to the little ghost, just as she used to do when they were planning mischief at Jordan, : she went on:
"You probably dont know, but the witches, you remember Serafina Pekkala, the witchesve got a prophecy about me. They dont know I know, no one does. I never spoke to anyone about it before. But when I was in Trollesund, and Farder the gyptian took me to see the Witches sul, Dr. Lanselius, he gave me like a kind of a test. He said I had to go outside and pick out the right piece of cloud-pi of all the others to show I could really read the alethiometer.
"Well, I dohat, and then I came in quickly, because it was cold and it only took a sed, it was easy. The sul was talking to Farder , and they didnt know I could hear em. He said the witches had this prophecy about me, I was going to do something great and important, and it was going to be in another world...
"Only I never spoke of it, and I re I must have even fot it, there was so much else going on. So it sort of sunk out of my mind. I never even talked about it with Pan, cause he would have laughed, I re.
"But then later on Mrs. Coulter caught me and I was in a trance, and I was dreaming and I dreamed of that, and I dreamed of you. And I remembered the gyptian boat mother, Ma Costa, you remember, it was their boat we got on board of, in Jericho, with Simon and Hugh and them...”
"Yes! And we nearly sailed it to Abingdon! That was the best thing we ever done, Lyra! I wont never fet that, even if Im down here dead for a thousand years...”
"Yes, but listen, when I ran away from Mrs. Coulter the first time, right, I found the gyptians again and they looked after me and... er, theres so much I found out, youd be amazed, but this is the important thing: Ma Costa said to me, she said Id got witch-oil in my soul, she said the gyptians were water people but I was a fire person.
"And what I think that means is she was sort of preparing me for the witch-prophecy. I know I got something important to do, and Dr. Lanselius the sul said it was vital I never found out what my destiny was till it happened, see, I must never ask about it... So I never did. I never even thought what it might be. I never asked the alethiometer, even.
"But now I think I know. And finding you again is just a sort of proof. What I got to der, what my destiny is, is I got to help all the ghosts out of the land of the dead forever. Me and Will, we got to rescue you all. Im sure its that. It must be. And because Lord Asriel, because of something my father said... Death is going to die, he said. I dunno whatll happen, though. You mustnt tell em yet, promise. I mean you might not last up there. But...”
He was desperate to speak, so she stopped.
"Thats just what I wao tell you!" he said. "I told em, all the other dead uns, I told them youd e! Just like you came and rescued the kids from Bolvangar! I says, Lyrall do it, it anyone . They
wished itd be true, they wao believe me, but they never really did, I could tell.
"For ohing," he went on, "every kid thats ever e here, every single oarts by saying, I bet my dadll e a me, or I bet my mum, as soon as she knows where I am, shell fetch me home again. If it ent their dad or mum, its their friends, or their grandpa, but someones going to e and rescue em. Only they never do. So no one believed me when I told em youd e. Only I was right!"
"Yeah," she said, "well, I couldnt have do without Will. Thats Will over there, and thats the Chevalier Tialys and the Lady Salmakia. Theres so much to tell yer..."
"Whos Will? Wheres he e from?"
Lyra began to explain, quite unaware of how her voice ged, how she sat up straighter, and how even her eyes looked different wheold the story of her meeting with Will and the fight for the subtle knife. How could she have known? But Roger noticed, with the sad, voiceless envy of the unging dead.
Meanwhile, Will and the Gallivespians were a little way off, talking quietly.
"What are you going to do, you and the girl?" said Tialys.
"Open this world ahe ghosts out. Thats what Ive got the knife for."
He had never seen such astonishment on any faces, let alohose of people whose good opinion he valued. Hed acquired a great respect for these two. They sat silent for a few moments, and then Tialys said:
"This will undo everything. Its the greatest blow you could strike. The Authority will be powerless after this."
"How would they ever suspect it?" said the Lady. "Itll e at them out of nowhere!"
"And what then?" Tialys asked Will.
"What then? Well, then well have to get out ourselves, and find our daemons, I suppose. Dont think of then. Its enough to think of now. I havent said anything to the ghosts, in case…, in case it doesnt work. So dont you say anythiher. Now Im going to find a world I open, and those harpies are watg. So if you want to help, you go and distract them while I do that."
Instantly the Gallivespians urged their dragonflies up into the murk overhead, where the harpies were as thick as blowflies. Will watched the great is charging fearlessly up at them, for all the world as if the harpies were flies and they could snap them up in their jaws, big as they were. He thought how much the brilliant creatures would love it when the sky en and they could skim about over bright water again.
Theook up the knife. And instantly there came back the words the harpies had thrown at him, taunts about his mother, aopped. He put the knife down, trying to clear his mind.
He tried again, with the same result. He could hear them clam above, despite the ferocity of the Gallivespians; there were so many of them that two fliers alone could do little to stop them.
Well, this was what it was going to be like. It wasnt going to get any easier. So Will let his mind relax and bee disengaged, and just sat there with the knife held loosely until he was ready again.
This time the k straight into the air, a rock. He had opened a window in this world into the underground of another. He closed it up and tried again.
And the same thing happehough he k was a different world. Hed opened windows before to find himself above the ground of another world, so he shouldnt have been surprised to find he was underground for a ge, but it was discerting.
ime he felt carefully in the way hed learned, letting the tip search for the resohat revealed a world where the ground was in the same place. But the touch was wrong wherever he felt. There was no world anywhere he could open into; everywhere he touched, it was solid rock.
Lyra had sehat something was wrong, and she jumped up from her close versation with Rhost to hurry to Wills side.
"What is it?" she said quietly.
He told her, and added, "Were going to have to move somewhere else before I find a world en into. And those harpies arent going to let us. Have you told the ghosts what we were planning?"
"No. Only Roger, and I told him to keep it quiet. Hell do whatever I tell him. Oh, Will, Im scared, Im so scared. We might not ever get out. Suppose we get stuck here forever?"
"The knife cut through rock. If we o, well just cut a tunnel. Itll take a long time, and I hope we wont have to, but we could. Dont worry."
"Yeah. Youre right. Course we could."
But she thought he looked so ill, with his face drawn in pain and with dark rings around his eyes, and his hand was shaking, and his fingers were bleeding again; he looked as sick as she felt. They couldnt go on much longer without their daemons. She felt her own ghost quail in her body, and hugged her arms tightly, ag for Pan.
Meanwhile, the ghosts were pressing close, poor things, and the children especially couldnt leave Lyra alone.
"Please," said one girl, "you wont fet us when you go back, will you?"
"No," said Lyra, "never."
"Youll tell them about us?"
"I promise. Whats your name?"
But the pirl was embarrassed and ashamed: shed fotten. She turned away, hiding her face, and a boy said:
"Its better tet, I re. Ive fotten mine. Some ent been here long, and they still know who they are. Theres some kids beehousands of years. Theyre no older than us, and theyve fotten a whole lot. Except the sunshine. No one fets that. And the wind."
"Yeah," said another, "tell us about that!"
And more and more of them clamored for Lyra to tell them about the things they remembered, the sun and the wind and the sky, and the things theyd fotten, such as how to play; and she turo Will and whispered, "What should I do, Will?"
"Tell them."
"Im scared. After what happened back there, the harpies...”
"Tell them the truth. Well keep the harpies off."
She looked at him doubtfully. In fact, she felt sick with apprehension. She turned back to the ghosts, who were thronging closer and closer.
"Please!" they were whispering. "Youve just e from the world! Tell us, tell us! Tell us about the world!"
There was a tree not far away, just a dead trunk with its bone white brahrusting into the chilly gray air, and because Lyra was feeling weak, and because she didnt think she could walk and talk at the same time, she made for that so as to have somewhere to sit. The crowd of ghosts jostled and shuffled aside to make room.
When she and Will were nearly at the tree, Tialys landed on Wills hand and indicated that he should bend his head to listen.
"Theyre ing back," he said quietly, "those harpies. More and more of them. Have your knife ready. The Lady and I will hold them off as long as we , hut you might o fight."
Without w Lyra, Will loosehe knife in its sheath a his hand close to it. Tialys took off again, and then Lyra reached the tree and sat down on one of the thick roots.
So many dead figures clustered around, pressing hopefully, wide-eyed, that Will had to make them keep bad leave room; but he let Roger stay close, because he was gazing at Lyra, listening with a
passion.
And Lyra began to talk about the world she knew.
She told them the story of how she and Roger had climbed over Jordan College roof and found the rook with the broken leg, and how they had looked after it until it was ready to fly again; and how they had explored the wine cellars, all thick with dust and cobwebs, and drunk some ary, or it might have been Tokay, she couldnt tell, and how drunk they had been. And Rhost listened, proud and desperate, nodding and whispering, "Yes, yes! Thats just what happehats true all right!"
Theold them all about the great battle between the Oxford townies and the clayburners.
First she described the claybeds, making sure she got ihing she could remember, the wide ocher-colored washing pits, the draglihe kilns like great brick beehives. She told them about the willow trees along the rivers edge, with their leaves all silvery underh; and she told how when the sun shone for more than a couple of days, the clay began to split up into great handsome plates, with deep cracks between, and how it felt to squish your fingers into the cracks and slowly lever up a dried plate of mud, trying to keep it as big as you could without breaking it. Underh it was still wet, ideal for throwing at people.
And she described the smells around the place, the smoke from the kilns, the rotten-leaf-mold smell of the river when the wind was in the southwest, the warm smell of the baking potatoes the clayburners used to eat; and the sound of the water slipping slickly over the sluices and into the washing pits; and the slow, thick suck as you tried to pull your foot out of the ground; and the heavy, wet slap of the gate paddles in the clay-thick water.
As she spoke, playing on all their sehe ghosts crowded closer, feeding on her words, remembering the time when they had flesh and skin and nerves and senses, and willing her o stop.
Theold how the clayburners children always made war oownies, but how they were slow and dull, with clay in their brains, and how the townies were as sharp and quick as sparrows by trast; and how one day all the townies had swallowed their differences and plotted and planned and attacked the claybeds from three sides, pinning the clayburners children back against the river, hurling handfuls and handfuls of heavy, claggy clay at one another, rushing their muddy castle and tearing it down, turning the fortifications into missiles until the air and the ground and the water were all mixed iricably together, and every child looked exactly the same, mud from scalp to sole, and none of them had had a better day in all their lives.
When shed finished, she looked at Will, exhausted. Then she had a shock.
As well as the ghosts, silent all around, and her panions, close and living, there was another audieoo: the branches of the tree were clustered with those dark bird forms, their womens faces gazing down at her, solemn and spellbound.
She sto９９ｌｉｂ?od up in sudden fear, but they didnt move.
"You," she said, desperate, "you flew at me before, when I tried to tell you something. Whats stopping you now? Go on, tear at me with your claws and make a ghost out of me!"
"That is the least we shall do," said the harpy in the ter, who was No-Name herself. "Listen to me. Thousands of years ago, when the first ghosts came down here, the Authority gave us the power to see the worst in every one, and we have fed on the worst ever siill our blood is rank with it and our very hearts are sied.
"But still, it was all we had to feed on. It was all we had. And now we learn that you are planning to open a way to the upper world and lead all the ghosts out into the air...”
And her harsh voice was drowned by a million whispers, as every ghost who could hear cried out in joy and hope; but all the harpies screamed aheir wings until the ghosts fell silent again.
"Yes," cried No-Name, "to lead them out! What will we do now? I shall tell you what we will do: from
now on, we shall hold nothing back. We shall hurt and defile and tear and rend every ghost that es through, and we shall send them mad with fear and remorse and self-hatred. This is a wasteland now; we shall make it a hell!"
Every single harpy shrieked and jeered, and many of them flew up off the tree and straight at the ghosts, making them scatter in terror. Lyra g to Wills arm and said, "Theyve given it away now, and we t do it. Theyll hate us, theyll thirayed them! Weve made it worse, not better!"
"Quiet," said Tialys. "Dont despair. Call the harpies bad make them listen to us."
So Will cried out, "e back! e back, every one of you! e bad listen!"
One by ohe harpies, their faces eager and hungry and suffused with the lust for misery, turned and flew back to the tree, and the ghosts drifted back as well. The Chevalier left his dragonfly in the care of Salmakia, and his little tense figure, green-clad and dark-haired, leapt to a rock where they could all see him.
"Harpies," he said, "we offer you somethier than that. Answer my questions truly, and hear what I say, and then judge. When Lyra spoke to you outside the wall, you flew at her. Why did you do that?"
"Lies!" the harpies all cried. "Lies and fantasies!"
"Yet when she spoke just now, you all listened, every one of you, and you kept silent and still. Again, why was that?"
"Because it was true," said No-Name. "Because she spoke the truth. Because it was nourishing. Because it was feeding us. Because we couldnt help it. Because it was true. Because we had no idea that there was anything but wiess. Because it brought us news of the world and the sun and the wind and the rain. Because it was true."
"Then," said Tialys, "lets make a bargain with yo>..u. Instead of seeing only the wiess and cruelty and greed of the ghosts that e down here, from now on you will have the right to ask all the ghosts to tell you the stories of their lives, and they will have to tell the truth about what theyve seen and touched and heard and loved and known in the world. Every one of these ghosts has a story; every single ohat es down iure will have true things to tell you about the world. And youll have the right to hear them, and they will have to tell you."
Lyra marveled at the nerve of the little spy. How did he dare speak to these creatures as if he had the power to give them rights? Any one of them could have snapped him up in a moment, wrenched him apart in her claws or carried him high and then hurled him down to the ground to smash in pieces. Ahere he stood, proud and fearless, making a bargain with them! And they listened, and ferred, their faces turning to one aheir voices low.
All the ghosts watched, fearful and silent.
Then No-urned back.
"Thats not enough," she said. "We want more than that. We had a task uhe old dispensation. We had a plad a duty. We fulfilled the Authoritys ands diligently, and for that we were honored. Hated and feared, hut hooo. What will happen to our honor now? Why should the ghosts take any notice of us, if they simply walk out into the world again? We have our pride, and you should not let that be dispensed with. We need an honorable place! We need a duty and a task to do, ohat will bring us the respect we deserve!"
They shifted on the branches, muttering and raising their wings. But a moment later Salmakia leapt up to join the Chevalier, and called out:
"You are quite right. Everyone should have a task to do thats important, ohat brings them honor, ohey perform with pride. So here is your task, and its ohat only you do, because you are the guardians and the keepers of this place. Your task will be to guide the ghosts from the landing place by the lake all the way through the land of the dead to the new opening out into the world. In exge, they will
tell you their stories as a fair and just payment for this guidance. Does that seem right to you?"
No-Name looked at her sisters, and they nodded. She said: "And we have the right to refuse to guide them if they lie, or if they hold anything back, or if they have nothing to tell us. If they live in the world, they should see and toud hear and learn things. We shall make an exception for infants who have not had time to learn anything, but otherwise, if they e down here bringing nothing, we shall not guide them out."
"That is fair," said Salmakia, and the other travelers agreed.
So they made a treaty. And in exge for the story of Lyras that theyd already heard, the harpies offered to take the travelers and their ko a part of the land of the dead where the upper world was close. It was a long way off, through tunnels and caves, hut they would guide them faithfully, and all the ghosts could follow.
But before they could begin, a voice cried out, as loudly as a whisper could cry. It was the ghost of a thin man with an angry, passionate face, and he cried:
"What will happen? When we leave the world of the dead, will we live again? Or will we vanish as our daemons did? Brothers, sisters, we shouldnt follow this child aill we know whats going to happen to us!"
Others took up the question: "Yes, tell us where were going! Tell us what to expect! We wont go unless we know whatll happen to us!"
Lyra turo Will in despair, but he said, "Tell them the truth. Ask the alethiometer, ahem what it says."
"All right," she said.
She took out the golden instrument. The answer came at once. She put it away and stood up.
"This is whatll happen," she said, "and its true, perfectly true. When you go out of here, all the particles that make you up will loosen and float apart, just like your daemons did. If youve seen people dying, you know what that looks like. But your daemo just nothing now; theyre part of everything. All the atoms that were them, theyve goo the air and the wind and the trees and the earth and all the living things. Theyll never vanish. Theyre just part of everything. And thats exactly whatll happen to you, I swear to you, I promise on my honor. Youll drift apart, its true, but youll be out in the open, part of everything alive again."
No one spoke. Those who had seen how daemons dissolved were remembering it, and those who hadnt were imagining it, and no one spoke until a young woman came forward. She had died as a martyr turies before. She looked around and said to the hosts:
"When we were alive, they told us that when we died wed go to Heaven. And they said that Heaven lace of joy and glory and we would speernity in the pany of saints and angels praising the Almighty, in a state of bliss. Thats what they said. And thats what led some of us to give our lives, and others to spend years in solitary prayer, while all the joy of life was going to waste around us and we never knew.
"Because the land of the dead isnt a place of reward or a place of punishment. Its a place of nothing. The good e here as well as the wicked, and all of us languish in this gloom forever, with no hope of freedom, or joy, or sleep, or rest, or peace.
"But now this child has e us a way out and Im going to follow her. Even if it means oblivion, friends, Ill wele it, because it wohing. Well be alive again in a thousand blades of grass, and a million leaves; well be falling in the raindrops and blowing in the fresh breeze; well be glittering in the dew uhe stars and the moon out there in the physical world, which is our true home and always was.
"So I urge you: e with the child out to the sky!"
But her ghost was thrust aside by the ghost of a man who looked like a monk: thin and pale, with dark, zealous eyes even in his death. He crossed himself and murmured a prayer, and then he said:
"This is a bitter message, a sad and cruel joke. t you see the truth? This is not a child. This is a of the Evil One himself! The world we lived in was a vale of corruption and tears. Nothing there could satisfy us. But the Almighty has granted us this blessed place for all eternity, this paradise, which to the fallen soul seems bleak and barren, but which the eyes of faith see as it is, overflowing with milk and honey and resounding with the sweet hymns of the angels. This is Heaven, truly! What this evil girl promises is nothing but lies. She wants to lead you to Hell! Go with her at your peril. My panions and I of the true faith will remain here in our blessed paradise, and speernity singing the praises of the Almighty, who has given us the judgment to tell the false from the true."
Once again he crossed himself, and then he and his panions turned away in horror and loathing.
Lyra felt bewildered. Was she wrong? Was she making some great mistake? She looked around: gloom and desolation on every side. But shed been wrong before about the appearance of things, trusting Mrs. Coulter because of her beautiful smile and her sweet-sted glamour. It was so easy to get things wrong; and without her daemon to guide her, maybe she was wrong about this, too.
But Will was shaking her arm. The his hands to her fad held it roughly.
"You know thats not true," he said, "just as well as you feel this. Take no notice! They all see hes lying, too. And theyre depending on us. e os make a start."
She nodded. She had to trust her body and the truth of what her seold her; she knew Pan would have.
So they set off, and the numberless millions of ghosts began to follow them. Behind them, too far back for the children to see, other inhabitants of the world of the dead had heard what was happening and were ing to join the great march. Tialys and Salmakia flew back to look and were overjoyed to see their own people there, and every other kind of scious being who had ever been punished by the Authority with exile ah. Among them were beings who didnt look human at all, beings like the mulefa, whom Mary Malone would have reized, and stranger ghosts as well.
But Will and Lyra had nth to look back; all they could do was move on after the harpies, and hope.
"Have we almost do, Will?" Lyra whispered. "Is it nearly over?"
He couldnt tell. But they were so weak and sick that he said, "Yes, its nearly over, weve nearly do. Well be out soon."
TWENTY-FOUR - MRS. COULTER IN GENEVA
Mrs. Coulter waited till nightfall before she approached the College of St. Jerome. After darkness had fallen, she brought the iion craft down through the cloud and moved slowly along the lakeshore at treetop height. The College was a distinctive shape among the other a buildings of Geneva, and she soon found the spire, the dark hollow of the cloisters, the square tower where the President of the sistorial Court of Discipline had his lodging. She had visited the College three times before; she khat the ridges and gables and eys of the roof cealed plenty of hiding places, even for something as large as the iion craft.
Flying slowly above the tiles, which glistened with the ret rain, she edged the mae into a little gully between a steep tiled roof and the sheer wall of the tower. The place was only visible from the belfry of the Chapel of the Holy Penitenearby; it would do very well.
She lowered the aircraft delicately onto the roof, letting its six feet find their own purchase and adjust themselves to keep the level. She was beginning to love this mae: it sprang to her bidding as fast as she could think, and it was so silent; it could hover above peoples heads closely enough for them to touch, and theyd never know it was there. In the day or so since shed stolen it, Mrs. Coulter had mastered the
trols, but she still had no idea how it owered, and that was the only thing she worried about: she had no way of telling when the fuel or the batteries would run out.
Once she was sure it had settled, and that the roof was solid enough to support it, she took off the helmet and climbed down.
Her daemon was already prizing up one of the heavy old tiles. She joined him, and soon they had lifted half a dozen out of the way, and then she snapped off the battens on which theyd been hung, making a gap big enough to get through.
"Go in and look around," she whispered, and the daemon dropped through into the dark.
She could hear his claws as he moved carefully over the floor of the attid then his gold-fringed black face appeared in the opening. She uood at ond followed him through, waiting to let her eyes adjust. In the dim light she gradually saw a long attic where the dark shapes of cupboards, tables, bookcases, and furniture of all kinds had been put into ste.
The first thing she did was to push a tall cupboard in front of the gap where the tiles had been. Theiptoed to the door in the wall at the far end and tried the ha was locked, of course, but she had a hairpin, and the lock was simple. Three minutes later she and her daemon were standing at one end of a long corridor, where a dusty skylight let them see a narrow staircase desding at the other.
And five minutes after that, they had opened a window in the pantry o the kit two floors below and climbed out into the alley. The gatehouse of the College was just around the er, and as she said to the golden monkey, it was important to arrive ihodox way, no matter how they inteo leave.
"Take your hands off me," she said calmly to the guard, "and show me some courtesy, or I shall have you flayed. Tell the President that Mrs. Coulter has arrived and that she wishes to see him at once."
The man fell back, and his pinscher daemon, who had been barieeth at the mild-mannered golden monkey, instantly cowered and tucked her tail stump as low as it would go.
The guard ked the handle of a telephone, and under a mier a fresh-faced young priest came hastening into the gatehouse, wiping his palms on his robe in case she wao shake hands. She didnt.
"Who are you?" she said.
"Brother Louis," said the man, soothing his rabbit daemon, "vener of the Secretariat of the sistorial Court. If you would be so kind...”
"I havent e here to parley with a scrivener," she told him. "Take me to Father MacPhail. And do it now."
The man bowed helplessly and led her away. The guard be hind her blew out his cheeks with relief.
Brother Louis, after trying two or three times to make versation, gave up and led her in sileo the Presidents rooms iower. Father MacPhail was at his devotions, and poor Brother Louiss hand shook violently as he khey heard a sigh and a groan, and then heavy footsteps crossed the floor.
The Presidents eyes widened as he saw who it was, and he smiled wolfishly.
"Mrs. Coulter," he said, his hand. "I am very glad to see you. My study is cold, and our hospitality is plain, but e in, e in."
"Good evening," she said, following him ihe bleak stone-walled room, allowing him to make a little fuss and show her to a chair. "Thank you," she said to Brother Louis, who was still h, "Ill take a glass of chocolate."
Nothing had been offered, and she knew how insulting it was to treat him like a servant, but his manner was so abject that he deserved it. The President nodded, and Brother Louis had to leave and deal with it, to his great annoyance.
"Of course you are under arrest," said the President, taking the other chair and turning up the lamp.
"Oh, why spoil our talk before weve even begun?" said Mrs. Coulter. "I came here voluntarily, as soon as I could escape from Asriels fortress. The fact is, Father President, I have a great deal of information about his forces, and about the child, and I came here to give it to you."
"The child, then. Begin with the child."
"My daughter is now twelve years old. Very soon she will approach the cusp of adolesce, and then it will be too late for any of us to prevent the catastrophe; nature and opportunity will e together like spark and tihanks to your intervention, that is now far more likely. I hope youre satisfied."
"It was your duty t her here into our care. Instead, you chose to skulk in a mountain cave, though how a woman of your intelligence hoped to remain hidden is a mystery to me."
"Theres probably a great deal thats mysterious to you, my Lord President, starting with the relatioween a mother and her child. If you thought for one moment that I would release my daughter into the care, the care! , of a body of men with a feverish obsession with sexuality, men with dirty fingernails, reeking of a sweat, men whose furtive imaginations would crawl over her body like cockroaches, if you thought I would expose my child to that, my Lord President, you are more stupid than you take me for."
There was a kno the door before he could reply, and Brother Louis came in with two glasses of chocolate on a wooden tray. He laid the tray oable with a nervous bow, smiling at the President in hopes of being asked to stay; but Father MacPhail oward the door, and the young ma relutly.
"So what were you going to do?" said the President.
"I was going to keep her safe until the danger had passed."
"What danger would that he?" he said, handing her a glass.
"Oh, I think you know what I mean. Somewhere there is a tempter, a serpent, so to speak, and I had to keep them from meeting."
"There is a boy with her."
"Yes. And if you hadnt interfered, they would both be under my trol. As it is, they could be anywhere. At least theyre not with Lord Asriel."
"I have no doubt he will be looking for them. The boy has a knife of extraordinary power. They would be worth pursuing for that alone."
"Im aware of that," said Mrs. Coulter. "I mao break ? it, and he mao get it mended again."
The President wondered why she was smiling. Surely she didnt approve of this wretched boy?
"We know," he said shortly.
"Well, well," she said. "Fra Pavel must be getting quicker. When I knew him, it would have taken him a month at least to read all that."
She sipped her chocolate, which was thin and weak; how like these wretched priests, she thought, to take their self-righteous absti on their visitors, too.
"Tell me about Lord Asriel," said the President. "Tell me everything."
Mrs. Coulter settled bafortably and began to tell him, not everything, but he hought for a moment that she would. She told him about the fortress, about the allies, about the angels, about the mines and the foundries.
Father MacPhail sat without moving a muscle, his lizard daemon abs and remembering every word.
"And how did you get here?" he asked.
"I stole a gyropter. It ran out of fuel and I had to abandon it in the tryside not far from here. The rest of the way I walked."
"Is Lord Asriel actively searg for the girl and the boy?"
"Of course."
"I assume hes after that knife. You know it has a he cliff-ghasts of the north call it the god-destroyer," he went on, crossing to the window and looking dowhe cloisters. "Thats what Asriel is aiming to do, isnt it? Destroy the Authority? There are some people who claim that God is dead already. Presumably, Asriel is not one of those, if he retains the ambition to kill him."
"Well, where is God," said Mrs. Coulter, "if hes alive? And why doesnt he speak anymore? At the beginning of the world, God walked in the Garden and spoke with Adam and Eve. Then he began to withdraw, and he forbade Moses to look at his face. Later, iime of Daniel, he was aged, he was the A of Days. Where is he now? Is he still alive, at some inceivable age, decrepit aed, uo think or act or speak and uo die, a rotten hulk? And if that is his dition, wouldnt it be the most merciful thing, the truest proof of our love fod, to seek him out and give him the gift of death?"
Mrs. Coulter felt a calm exhilaration as she spoke. She wondered if shed ever get out alive; but it was intoxig, to speak like that to this man.
"And Dust?" he said. "From the depths of heresy, what is your view of Dust?"
"I have no view of Dust," she said. "I dont know what it is. No one does."
"I see. Well, I began by reminding you that you are under arrest. I think its time we found you somewhere to sleep. Youll be quite fortable; no one will hurt you; but youre not going to get away. And we shall talk more tomorrow."
He rang a bell, and Brother Louis came in almost at once. "Show Mrs. Coulter to the best guest room," said the President. "And lock her in."
The best guest room was shabby and the furniture was cheap, but at least it was . After the lock had turned behind her, Mrs. Coulter looked around at once for the microphone and found one in the elaborate light-fitting and another uhe frame of the bed. She disected them both, and then had a horrible surprise.
Watg her from the top of the chest of drawers behind the door was Lord Roke.
She cried out and put a hand on the wall to steady herself. The Gallivespian was sitting cross-legged, entirely at his ease, aher she nor the golden monkey had seen him. Ohe pounding of her heart had subsided, and her breathing had slowed, she said, "And when would you have dohe courtesy of letting me know you were here, my lord? Before I undressed, or afterwards?"
"Before," he said. "Tell your daemon to calm down, or Ill disable him."
The golden moeeth were bared, and all his fur was standing on end. The scorg malice of his expression was enough to make any normal person quail, but Lord Roke merely smiled. His spurs glitter>ed in the dim light.
The little spy stood up and stretched.
"Ive just spoken to my agent in Lord Asriels fortress," he went on. "Lord Asriel presents his pliments and asks you to let him know as soon as you find out what these peoples iions are."
She felt winded, as if Lord Asriel had thrown her hard iling. Her eyes widened, and she sat down slowly on the bed.
"Did you e here to spy on me, or to help?" she said.
"Both, and its lucky for you Im here. As soon as you arrived, they set some anbaric work in motion down in the cellars. I dont know what it is, but theres a team of stists w on it right now. You seem to have galvahem."
"I dont know whether to be flattered or alarmed. As a matter of fact, Im exhausted, and Im going to sleep. If youre here to help me, you keep watch. You begin by looking the other way."
He bowed and faced the wall until she had washed in the chipped basin, dried herself ohin towel, and undressed and got into bed. Her daemon patrolled the room, cheg the wardrobe, the picture rail, the curtains, the view of the dark cloisters out of the window. Lord Roke watched him every inch of the way. Finally the golden monkey joined Mrs. Coulter, and they fell asleep at once.
Lord Roke hadnt told her everything that hed learned from Lord Asriel. The allies had been trag the flight of all kinds of beings in the air above the frontiers of the Republid had noticed a tration of what might have been angels, and might have been something else entirely, in the west. They had sent patrols out to iigate, but so far they had learned nothing: whatever it was that hung there had ed itself in imperable fog.
The spy thought it best not to trouble Mrs. Coulter with that, though; she was exhausted. Let her sleep, he decided, and he moved silently about the room, listening at the door, watg out of the window, awake and alert.
An hour after she had first e into the room, he heard a quiet side the door: a faint scratd a whisper. At the same moment a dim light outlihe door. Lord Roke moved to the farthest er and stood behind one of the legs of the chair on which Mrs. Coulter had thrown her clothes.
A minute went by, and then the key turned very quietly in the lock. The door opened an ino more, and then the light went out.
Lord Roke could see well enough in the dim glow through the thin curtains, but the intruder was having to wait for his eyes to adjust. Finally the door opened farther, very slowly, and the young priest Brother Louis stepped in.
He crossed himself and tiptoed to the bed. Lord Roke prepared t, but the priest merely listeo Mrs. Coulters steady breathing, looked closely to see whether she was asleep, and then turo the bedside table.
He covered the bulb of the battery light with his hand and switched it oing a thin gleam escape through his fingers. He peered at the table so closely that his nose nearly touched the surface, but whatever he was looking for, he didnt find it. Mrs. Coulter had put a few things there before she got into bed, a couple of s, a ring, her watch, but Brother Louis wasnt ied in those.
He turain, and then he saw what he was looking for, uttering a soft hiss between his teeth. Lord Roke could see his dismay: the object of his search was the locket on the gold around Mrs. Coulters neck.
Lord Roke moved silently along the skirting board toward the do?
or.
The priest crossed himself again, for he was going to have to touch her. Holding his breath, he bent over the bed, and the golden moirred.
The young man froze, hands outstretched. His rabbit daemon trembled at his feet, no use at all: she could at least have kept watch for the poor man, Lord Roke thought. The mourned over in his sleep and fell still again.
After a minute poised like a waxwork, Brother Louis lowered his shaking hands to Mrs. Coulters neck. He fumbled for so long that Lord Roke thought the dawn would break before he got the catdone, but finally he lifted the locket gently away and stood up.
Lord Roke, as quid as quiet as a mouse, was out of the door before the priest had turned around. He waited in the dark corridor, and when the young man tiptoed out and turhe key, the Gallivespian began to follow him.
Brother Louis made for the tower, and when the President opened his door, Lord Roke darted through and made for the priedieu in the er of the room. There he found a shadowy ledge where he crouched and listened.
Father MacPhail was not alone: Fra Pavel, the alethiometrist, was busy with his books, and another
figure stood nervously by the window. This was Dr. Cooper, the experimental theologian from Bolvangar. They both looked up.
"Well done, Brother Louis," said the President. &qu it here, sit down, show me, show me. Well done!"
Fra Pavel moved some of his books, and the young priest laid the gold oable. The others bent over to look as Father MacPhail fiddled with the catch. Dr. Cooper offered him a pocketknife, and then there was a soft click.
"Ah!" sighed the President.
Lord Roke climbed to the top of the desk so that he could see. In the naphtha lamplight there was a gleam of dark gold: it was a lock of hair, and the President was twisting it between his fingers, turning it this way and that.
"Are we certain this is the childs?" he said.
"I am certain," came the weary voice of Fra Pavel.
"And is there enough of it, Dr. Cooper?"
The pale-faced ma low and took the lock from Father MacPhails fingers. He held it up to the light.
"Oh yes," he said. "One single hair would he enough. This is ample."
"Im very pleased to hear it," said the President. "Now, Brother Louis, you must return the locket to the good ladys neck."
The priest sagged faintly: he had hoped his task was over. The President placed the curl of Lyras hair in an envelope and shut the locket, looking up and around as he did so, and Lord Roke had to drop out of sight.
"Father President," said Brother Louis, "I shall of course do as you and, hut may I know why you he childs hair?"
"No, Brother Louis, because it would disturb you. Leave these matters to us. Off you go."
The young man took the locket a, sm his rese. Lord Roke thought of going back with him and waking Mrs. Coulter just as he was trying to replace the , in order to see what shed do; but it was more important to find out what these people were up to.
As the door closed, the Gallivespia bato the shadows and listened.
"How did you know where she had it?" said the stist.
"Every time she mentiohe child," the President said, "her hao the locket. Now then, how soon it be ready?"
"A matter of hours," said Dr. Cooper.
"And the hair? What do you do with that?"
"We place the hair in the resonating chamber. You uand, eadividual is unique, and the arra of geic particles quite distinct... Well, as soon as its analyzed, the information is coded in a series of anbaric pulses and transferred to the aiming device. That locates the in of the material, the hair, wherever she may be. Its a process that actually makes use of the Barnard-Stokes heresy, the many-worlds idea..."
"Dont alarm yourself, Doctor. Fra Pavel has told me that the child is in another world. Please go on. The force of the bomb is directed by means of the hair?"
"Yes. To each of the hairs from which these ones were cut. Thats right."
"So when its detohe child will be destroyed, wherever she is?"
There was a heavy indrawh from the stist, and then a relut "Yes." He swallowed, a on, "The power needed is enormous. The anbaric power, just as an atomib needs a high
explosive to force the uranium together a off the rea, this devieeds a colossal current to release the much greater power of the severance process. I was w...”
"It doesnt matter where its detonated, does it?"
"No. That is the point. Anywhere will do."
"And its pletely ready?"
"Now we have the hair, yes. But the power, you see...”
"I have seen to that. The hydro-anbarierating station at Saint-Jean-les-Eaux has been requisitioned for our use. They produough power there, wouldnt you say?"
"Yes," said the stist.
"Then we shall set out at once. Please go ao the apparatus, Dr. Cooper. Have it ready for transportation as soon as you . The weather ges quickly in the mountains, and there is a storm on the way."
The scie藏书网ntist took the little envelope taining Lyras hair and bowed nervously as he left. Lord Roke left with him, making no more han a shadow.
As soon as they were out of earshot of the Presidents room, the Gallivespian sprang. Dr. Cooper, below him oairs, felt an agonizing stab in his shoulder and grabbed for the banister; but his arm was strangely weak, and he slipped and tumbled down the whole flight, to land semiscious at the bottom.
Lord Roke hauled the envelope out of the mans twitg hand with some difficulty, for it was half as big as he was, a off in the shadows toward the room where Mrs. Coulter was asleep.
The gap at the foot of the door was wide enough for him to slip through. Brother Louis had e and gone, but he hadnt dared to try and fasten the around Mrs. Coulters neck: it lay beside her on the pillow.
Lord Roke pressed her hand to wake her up. She rofoundly exhausted, but she focused on him at ond sat up, rubbing her eyes.
He explained what had happened and gave her the envelope.
"You should destroy it at once," he told her. "One single hair would be enough, the man said."
She looked at the little curl of dark blond hair and shook her head.
"Too late for that," she said. "This is only half the lock I cut from Lyra. He must have kept bae of it."
Lord Roke hissed with anger.
"When he looked around!" he said. "Ach… I moved to be out of his sight, he must have set it aside then..."
"And theres no way of knowing where hell have put it," said Mrs. Coulter. "Still, if we find the bomb...”
"Shh!"
That was the golden monkey. He was croug by the door, listening, and then they heard it, too: heavy footsteps hurrying toward the room.
Mrs. Coulter thrust the envelope and the lock of hair at Lord Roke, who took it a for the top of the wardrobe. Then she lay dowo her daemon as the key turned noisily in the door.
"Where is it? What have you doh it? How did you attack Dr. Cooper?" said the Presidents harsh voice as the light fell across the bed.
Mrs. Coulter threw up an arm to shade her eyes and struggled to sit up.
"You do like to keep yuests eained," she said drowsily. "Is this a new game? What do I have to do? And who is Dr. Cooper?"
The guard from the gatehouse had e in with Father MacPhail and was shining a torto the ers of the room and uhe bed. The President was slightly discerted: Mrs. Coulters eyes were heavy with sleep, and she could hardly see in the glare from the corridht. It was obvious that she had her bed.
"You have an aplice," he said. "Someone has attacked a guest of the College. Who is it? Who came here with you? Where is he?"
"I havent the fai idea what youre talking about. And whats this... ?"
Her hand, which shed put down to help herself sit up, had found the locket on the pillow. She stopped, picked it up, and looked at the President with wide-open sleepy eyes, and Lord Roke saerb piece of ag as she said, puzzled, "But this is my... whats it doing here? Father MacPhail, whos been in here? Someone has taken this from around my neck. And, where is Lyras hair? There was a loy childs hair in here. Whos taken it? Why? Whats going on?"
And now she was standing, her hair disordered, passion in her voice, plainly just as bewildered as the President himself.
Father MacPhail took a step backward and put his hand to his head.
"Someone else must have e with you. There must he an a9９ｌib.plice," he said, his voice rasping at the air. "Where is he hiding?"
"I have no aplice," she said angrily. "If theres an invisible assassin in this place, I only imagis the Devil himself. I dare say he feels quite at home."
Father MacPhail said to the guard, "Take her to the cellars. Put her in s. I know just what we do with this woman; I should have thought of it as soon as she appeared."
She looked wildly around a Lord Rokes eyes for a fra of a sed, glittering in the darkness he ceiling. He caught her expression at ond uood exactly what she meant him to do.
TWENTY-FIVE - SAINT-JEAN-LES-EAUX
The cataract of Saint-Jean-les-Eaux plunged between pinnacles of rock at the eastern end of a spur of the Alps, and the geing station g to the side of the mountain above it. It was a wild region, a bleak and battered wilderness, and no one would have built anything there at all had it not been for the promise of driving great anbarierators with the power of the thousands of tons of water that roared through the ge.
It was the night following Mrs. Coulters arrest, and the weather was stormy. he sheer stone front of the geing station, a zeppelin slowed to a hover in the buffeting wind. The searchlights below the craft made it look as if it were standing on several legs of light and gradually l itself to lie down.
But the pilot wasnt satisfied; the wind was swept into eddies and cross-gusts by the edges of the mountain. Besides, the cables, the pylons, the transformers were too close: to be swept in among them, with a zeppelin full of inflammable gas, would be instantly fatal. Sleet drummed slantwise at the great rigid envelope of the craft, making a hat almost drowhe clatter and howl of the straining engines, and obsg the view of the ground.
"Not here," the pilot shouted over the noise. "Well go around the spur."
Father MacPhail watched fiercely as the pilot moved the throttle forward and adjusted the trim of the ehe zeppelin rose with a lurd moved over the rim of the mountain. Those legs of light suddenly lengthened and seemed to feel their way down the ridge, their lower ends lost in the whirl of sleet and rain.
"You t get closer to the station than this?" said the President, leaning forward to let his voice carry to the pilot.
"Not if you want to land," the pilot said.
"Yes, we want to land. Very well, put us down below ..the ridge."
The pilot gave orders for the crew to prepare to moor. Sihe equipment they were going to unload was heavy as well as delicate, it was important to make the craft secure. The Presideled back, tapping his fingers on the arm of his seat, gnawing his lip, but saying nothing aing the pilot work unflustered.
From his hiding pla the transverse bulkheads at the rear of the , Lord Roke watched. Several times during the flight his little shadowy form had passed along behind the metal mesh, clearly visible to anyone who might have looked, if only they had turheir heads; but in order to hear what was happening, he had to e to a place where they could see him. The risk was unavoidable.
He edged forward, listening hard through the roar of the ehe thunder of the hail and sleet, the high-pitched singing of the wind in the wires, and the clatter of booted feet oal walkways. The flight engineer called some figures to the pilot, who firmed them, and Lord Roke sank bato the shadows, holding tight to the struts and beams as the airship plunged and tilted.
Finally, sensing from the movement that the craft was nearly anchored, he made his way back through the skin of the to the seats oarboard side.
There were men passing through in both dires: crew members, teis, priests. Many of their daemons were dogs, brimming with curiosity. Oher side of the aisle, Mrs. Coulter sat awake and silent, her golden daemon watg everything from her lap and exuding malice.
Lord Roke waited for the d then darted across to Mrs. Coulters seat, and in the shadow of her shoulder in a moment.
"What are they doing?" she murmured.
"Landing. Were he geing station."
"Are you going to stay with me, or work on your own?" she whispered.
"Ill stay with you. Ill have to hide under your coat."
She was wearing a heavy sheepskin coat, unfortably hot in the heated , but with her hands manacled she couldnt take it off.
"Go on, now," she said, looking around, and he darted ihe breast, finding a fur-lined pocket where he could sit securely. The golden moucked Mrs. Coulters silk collar inside solicitously, for all the world like a fastidious couturier attending to his favorite model, while all the time making sure that Lord Roke was pletely hidden in the folds of the coat.
He was just in time. Not a mier a soldier armed with a rifle came to order Mrs. Coulter out of the airship.
"Must I have these handcuffs on?" she said.
"I haveold to remove them," he replied. "On your feet, please."
"But its hard to move if I t hold on to things. Im stiff, Ive been sitting here for the best part of a day without moving, and you know I havent got any ons, because you searched me. Go and ask the President if its really necessary to manacle me. Am I going to try and run away in this wilderness?"
Lord Roke was impervious to her charm, but ied in its effe others. The guard was a young man; they should have sent a grizzled old warrior.
"Well," said the guard, "Im sure you wont, maam, but I t do what I ent been ordered to do. You see that, Im sure. Please stand up, maam, and if you stumble, Ill catch hold of your arm."
She stood up, and Lord Roke felt her move clumsily forward. She was the most graceful human the Gallivespian had ever seen; this clumsiness was feigned. As they reached the head of the gangway, Lord Roke felt her stumble and cry out in alarm, ahe jar as the guards arm caught her. He heard the ge in the sounds around them, too; the howl of the wind, the eurning over steadily to gee power for the lights, voices from somewhere nearby giving orders.
They moved down the gangway, Mrs. Coulter leaning heavily on the guard. She ea.９9ｌiｂ.erself through the familiar boughs at their unfamiliar angles, and balanced herself as high up as she could get.
She braced herself against a brand took out the spyglass. Through it she saw two quite different movements in the sky.
One was that of the clouds, driven across the moon in one dire, and the other was that of the stream of Dust, seeming to cross it in quite another.
And of the two, the Dust was flowing more quickly and at much greater volume. In fact, the whole sky seemed to be flowing with it, a great inexorable flood p out of the world, out of all the worlds, into some ultimate emptiness.
Slowly, as if they were moving themselves in her mind, things joined up.
Will and Lyra had said that the subtle knife was three hundred years old at least. So the old man iower had told them.
The mulefa had told her that the sraf, which had nurtured their lives and their world for thirty-three thousand years, had begun to fail just over three hundred years ago.
Acc to Will, the Guild of the Torre degli Angeli, the owners of the subtle knife, had been careless; they hadnt always closed the windows they opened. Well, Mary had found one, after all, and there must be many others.
Suppose that all this time, little by little, Dust had been leaking out of the wounds the subtle knife had made in nature...
She felt dizzy, and it wasnt only the swaying and rising and falling of the branches she was wedged among. She put the spyglass carefully in her pocket and hooked her arms over the bran front, gazing at the sky, the moon, the scudding clouds.
The subtle knife was responsible for the small-scale, low-level leakage. It was damaging, and the universe was suffering because of it, and she must talk to Will and Lyra and find a way to stop it.
But the vast flood in the sky was another matter entirely. That was new, and it was catastrophid if it wasnt stopped, all scious life would e to an end. As the mulefa had shown her, Dust came into being when living things became scious of themselves; but it needed some feedback system to reinforce it and make it safe, as the mulefa had their wheels and the oil from the trees. Without something like that, it would all vanish. Thought, imagination, feeling, would all wither and blow away, leaving nothing but a brutish automatism; and that brief period when life was scious of itself would flicker out like a dle in every one of the billions of worlds where it had burned brightly.
Mary felt the burden of it keenly. It felt like age. She felt eighty years old, worn out and weary and longing to die.
She climbed heavily out of the branches of the great fallen tree, and with the wind still wild in the leaves and the grass and her hair, set off hack to the village.
At the summit of the slope she looked for the last time at the Dust stream, with the clouds and the wind blowing across it and the moon standing firm in the middle.
And then she saw what they were doing, at last: she saw what that great urgent purpose was.
They were trying to hold back the Dust flood. They were striving to put some barriers up against the terrible stream: wind, moon, clouds, leaves, grass, all those lovely things were g out and hurling
themselves into the struggle to keep the shadow particles in this universe, which they so enriched.
Matter loved Dust. It didnt want to see it go. That was the meaning of this night, and it was Marys meaning, too.
Had she thought there was no meaning in life, no purpose, when God had gone? Yes, she had thought that.
"Well, there is now," she said aloud, and again, louder: "There is now!"
As she looked again at the clouds and the moon in the Dust flow, they looked as frail and doomed as a dam of little twigs and tiny pebbles trying to hold back the Mississippi. But they were trying, all the same. Theyd go till the end of everything.
How long she stayed out, Mary didnt know. Wheensity of her feeling began to subside, and exhaustion took its place, she made her way slowly down the hill toward the village.
And when she was halfway down, near a little grove of knot-wood bushes, she saw something stra on the mudflats. There was a glow of white, a steady movement: something ing up with the tide.
She stood still, gazing ily. It couldhe tualapi, because they always moved in a flock, and this was on its own.
But everything about it was the same, the sail-like wings, the long neck, it was one of the birds, no doubt about it. She had never heard of their moving about alone, and she hesitated before running down to warn the villagers, because the thing had stopped, in any case. It was floating oer close to the path.
And it was ing apart... No, something was getting off its back.
The something was a man.
She could see him quite clearly, even at that distahe moonlight was brilliant, and her eyes were adjusted to it. She looked through the spyglass, and put the matter beyond doubt: it was a human figure, radiating Dust.
He was carrying something: a long stick of some kind. He came along the path quickly and easily, not running, but moving like an athlete or a hunter. He was dressed in simple dark clothes that would normally ceal him well; but through the spyglass he showed up as if he were under a spotlight.
And as he came closer to the village, she realized what that stick was. He was carrying a rifle.
She felt as if someone had poured icy water over her heart. Every separate hair on her flesh stirred.
She was too far away to do anything: even if shed shouted, he wouldnt have heard. She had to watch as he stepped into the village, looking to the left and right, stopping every so often to listen, moving from house to house.
Marys mi like the moon and the clouds trying to hold back the Dust as she cried out silently: Dont look uhe tree, go away from the tree ...
But he moved closer and closer to it, finally stopping outside her own house. She couldnt bear it; she put the spyglass in her pocket and began to run down the slope. She was about to call out, anything, a wild cry, but just in time she realized that it might wake Will or Lyra and make them reveal themselves, and she choked it back.
Then, because she couldnt bear not knowing what the man was doing, she stopped and fumbled for the spyglass again, and had to stand still while she looked through it.
He ening the door of her house. He was going i. He vanished from sight, although there was a stir in the Dust he left behind, like smoke when a hand is passed through it. Mary waited for an endless minute９９ｌib?, and then he appeared again.
He stood in her doorway, looking around slowly from left tht, and his gaze swept past the tree.
Theepped off the threshold and stood still, almost at a loss. Mary was suddenly scious of how exposed she was on the bare hillside, an easy rifle shot away, but he was only ied in the village; and
when another minute or so had gone by, he turned and walked quietly away.
She watched every step he took dow藏书网n the river path, and saw quite clearly how he stepped onto the birds bad sat cross-legged as it turo glide away. Five minutes later they were lost to sight.
THIRTY-FIVE - OVER THE HILLS AND FAR AWAY
"Dr. Malone," said Lyra in the m, "Will and me have got to look for our daemons. When weve found them, well know what to do. But we t be without them for much longer. So we just want to go and look."
"Where will you go?" said Mary, heavy-eyed and headachy after her disturbed night. She and Lyra were on the riverbank, Lyra to wash, and Mary to look, surreptitiously, for the mans footprints. So far she hadnt found any.
"Dont know," said Lyra. "But theyre out there somewhere. As soon as we came through from the battle, they ran away as if they didnt trust us anymore. t say I blame them, either. But we know theyre in this world, ahought we saw them a couple of times, so maybe we find them."
"Listen," Mary said relutly, and told Lyra about the man shed seen the night before.
As she spoke, Will came to join them, and both he and Lyra listened, wide-eyed and serious.
"Hes probably just a traveler and he found a window and wahrough from somewhere else," Lyra said when Mary had finished. "Like Wills father did. Theres bound to be all kinds of openings now. Anyway, if he just turned around a, he t have meant to do anything bad, he?"
"I dont know. I didnt like it. And Im worried about you going off on your own, or I would be if I didnt know youd already done far more dangerous things than that. Oh, I dont know. But please be careful. Please look all around. At least out on the prairie you see someone ing from a long way off..."
"If we do, we escape straight away into another world, so he wont he able to hurt us," Will said.
They were determio go, and Mary was relut tue.
"At least," she said, "promise that you wont go in among the trees. If that man is still around, he might be hiding in a worove and you wouldnt see him in time to escape."
"We promise," said Lyra.
"Well, Ill pack you some food in case youre out all day."
Mary took some flat bread and cheese and some sweet, thirst-queng red fruits, ed them in a cloth, and tied a cord around it for one of them to carry over a shoulder.
"Good hunting," she said as they left. "Please take care."
She was still anxious. She stood watg them all the way to the foot of the slope.
"I wonder why shes so sad," Will said as he and Lyra climbed the road up to the ridge.
"Shes probably w if shell ever go home again," said Lyra. "And if her laboratoryll still be hers when she does. And maybe shes sad about the man she was in love with."
"Mmm," said Will. "Dyou think well ever go home?"
"Dunno. I dont suppose Ive got a home anyway. They probably couldnt have me back at Jordan College, and I t live with the bears or the witches. Maybe I could live with the gyptians. I wouldnt mind that, if theyd have me."
"What about Lord Asriels world? Wouldnt you want to live there?"
"Its going to fail, remember," she said.
"Why?"
"Because of what your fathers ghost said, just before we came out. About daemons, and how they only live for a long time if they stay in their own world. But probably Lord Asriel, I mean my father,
couldnt have thought about that, because no one knew enough about other worlds whearted... All that," she said wly, "all that bravery and skill... All that, all wasted! All for nothing!"
They climbed on, finding the going easy on the rock road, and when they reached the top of the ridge, they stopped and looked back.
"Will," she said, "supposing we dont find them?"
"Im sure we will. What Im w is what my daemon will be like."
"You saw her. And I picked her up," Lyra said, blushing, because of course it was a gross violation of mao touething so private as someone elses daemon. It was forbidden not only by politeness, but by something deeper than that, something like shame. A quick gla Wills warm cheeks showed that he khat just as well as she did.
They walked on side by side, suddenly shy with each other. But Will, not put off by being shy, said, "When does your daemon stop ging shape?"
"About... I suppose about e, or a bit older. Maybe more sometimes. We used to talk about Paling, him and me. We used to wonder what hed be...”
"Dont people have any idea?"
"Not when theyre young. As you grow up you start thinking, well, they might be this or they might be that... And usually they end up something that fits. I mean something like your real nature. Like if your daemons a dog, that means you like doing what youre told, and knowing whos boss, and following orders, and pleasing people who are in charge. A lot of servants are people whose daemons are dogs. So it helps to know what youre like and to find what youd be good at. How do people in your world know what theyre like?"
"I dont know. I dont know much about my world. All I know is keepi and quiet and hidden, so I dont know much about... grownups, and friends. Or lovers. I think itd be difficult having a daemon because everybody would know so much about you just by looking. I like to keep secret and stay out of sight."
"Then maybe your daemond be an animal thats good at hiding. Or one of those animals that looks like another, a butterfly that looks like a , for disguise. They must have creatures like that in your world, because we have, and were so much alike."
They walked on together in a friendly silence. All around them the wide, clear m lay limpid in the holloearly blue in the warm air above. As far as the eye could see, the great savanna rolled, brown, gold, buff-green, shimmering toward the horizon, ay. They might have been the only people in the world.
"But its y really," Lyra said.
"You mean that man?"
"No. You know what I mean."
"Yes, I do. I see shadows in the grass... maybe birds," Will said.
He was following the little darting movements here and there. He found it easier to see the shadows if he didnt look at them. They were more willing to show themselves to the ers of his eye, and when he said so to Lyra, she said, "Its ive capability."
"Whats that?"
"The poet Keats said it first. Dr. Malone knows. Its how I read the alethiometer. Its how you use the knife, isnt it?"
"Yes, I suppose it is. But I was just thinking that they might be the daemons."
"So was I, but..."
She put her fio her lips. He nodded.
"Look," he said, "theres one of those fallen trees."
It was Marys climbing tree. They went up to it carefully, keeping an eye on the grove in case another one should fall. In the calm m, with only a faint breeze stirring the leaves, it seemed impossible that a mighty thing like this should ever topple, but here it was.
The vast trunk, supported in the grove by its torn-up roots and out on the grass by the mass of branches, was high above their heads. Some of those branches, crushed and brokehemselves as big around as the biggest trees Will had ever seen; the of the tree, tight-packed with boughs that still looked sturdy, leaves that were still green, towered like a ruined palato the mild air.
Suddenly Lyra gripped Wills arm.
"Shh," she whispered. "Dont look. Im sure theyre up there. I saw something move and I swear it an..."
Her hand was warm. He was more aware of that than of the great mass of leaves and branches above them. Pretending to gaze vatly at the horizo his attention wander upward into the fused mass of green, brown, and blue, and there, she was right! , there was a something that was not the tree. And beside it, another.
"Walk away," Will said under his breath. "Well go somewhere else and see if they follow us."
"Suppose they dont... But yes, all right," Lyra whispered back.
They preteo look all around; they set their hands on one of the branches resting on the ground, as if they were intending to climb; they preteo ge their minds, by shaking their heads and walking away.
"I wish we could look behind," Lyra said when they were a few hundred yards away.
"Just go on walking. They see us, and they wo lost. Theyll e to us when they want to."
They stepped off the black road and into the knee-high grass, swishing their legs through the stems, watg the is h, darting, fluttering, skimming, hearing the million-voiced chorus chirrup and scrape.
"What are you going to do, Will?" Lyra said quietly after theyd walked some way in silence.
"Well, Ive got to go home," he said.
She thought he sounded uhough. She hoped he sounded unsure.
"But they might still be after you," she said. "Those men."
"Weve seen worse than them, after all."
"Yes, I suppose... But I wao show you Jordan College, and the Fens. I wanted us to..."
"Yeah," he said, "and I wanted... It would be good to go to Cittagazze again, even. It was a beautiful place, and if the Specters are all gone... But theres my mother. Ive got to go bad look after her. I just left her with Mrs. Cooper, and its not fair oher of them."
"But its not fair on you to have to do that."
"No," he said, "but thats a different sort of not fair. Thats just like ahquake or a rainstorm. It might not be fair, but no oo blame. But if I just leave my mother with an old lady who isnt very well herself, then thats a different kind of not fair. That would be wrong. Ive just got to go home. But probably its going to be difficult to go back as we were. Probably the secrets out now. I dont suppose Mrs. Cooper will have been able to look after her, not if my mothers in one of those times whes frightened of things. So shes probably had to get help, and when I go back, Ill be made to go into some kind of institution."
"No! Like an orphanage?"
"I think thats what they do. I just dont know. Ill hate it."
"You could escape with the knife, Will! You could e to my world!"
"I still belong there, where I be with her. When Im grown up Ill be able to look after her properly, in my own house. No one interfere then."
"Dyou think youll get married?"
He was quiet for a long time. She knew he was thinking, though.
"I t see that far ahead," he said. "It would have to be someone who uands about... I dont think theres any one like that in my world. Would you get married?"
"Me too," she said. "Not to anyone in my world, I shouldnt think."
They walked on steadily, wandering toward the horizon. They had all the time in the world: all the time the world had.
After a while Lyra said, "You will keep the knife, wont you? So you could visit my world?"
"Of course. I certainly wouldnt give it to anyone else, ever."
"Dont look...” she said, not altering her pace. "There they are again. On the left."
"They are following us," said Will, delighted.
"Shh!"
"I thought they would. Okay, well just pretend now, well just wander along as if were looking for them, and well look in all sorts of stupid places."
It became a game. They found a pond and searched among the reeds and in the mud, saying loudly that the daemons were bound to be shaped like frogs or water beetles or slugs; they peeled off the bark of a long-falle the edge of a string-wood grove, pretending to have seewo daemons creeping underh it in the form of earwigs; Lyra made a great fuss of an ant she claimed to have trodden on, sympathizing with its bruises, saying its face was just like Pans, asking in mock sorrow why it was refusing to speak to her.
But whehought they were genuinely out of earshot, she said early to Will, leaning close to speak quietly:
"We had to leave them, didnt we? We didnt have a choice really?"
"Yes, we had to. It was worse for you than for me, but we didnt have any choice at all. Because you made a promise ter, and you had to keep it."
"And you had to speak to your father again..."
"And we had to let them all out."
"Yes, we did. Im so glad we did. Pan will be glad one day, too, when I die. We wont be split up. It was a good thing we did."
As the sun rose higher in the sky and the air became warmer, they began to look for shade. Toward noon they found themselves on the slope rising toward the summit of a ridge, and when theyd reached it, Lyra flopped down on the grass and said, "Well! If we dont find somewhere shady soon..."
There was a valley leading down oher side, and it was thick with bushes, so they guessed there might be a stream as well. They traversed the slope of the ridge till it dipped into the head of the valley, and there, sure enough, among ferns and reeds, a spring bubbled out of the rock.
They dipped their hot faces ier and swallowed gratefully, and then they followed the stream downward, seeing it gather in miniature whirlpools and pour over tiny ledges of stone, and all the time get fuller and wider.
"How does it do that?" Lyra marveled. "Theres no more water ing into it from anywhere else, but theres so much more of it here than up there."
Will, watg the shadows out of the er of his eye, saw them slip ahead, leaping over the ferns to disappear into the bushes farther down. He pointed silently.
"It just goes slower," he said. "It doesnt flow as fast as the spring es out, so it gathers in these pools... Theyve gone in there," he whispered, indig a little group of trees at the foot of the slope.
They looked at each other, a curiously formal and serious look, before setting off to follow the stream. The undergrowth got thicker as they went down the valley; the stream went into tunnels of green and emerged in dappled clearings, only to tumble over a lip of stone and bury itself in the green again, and they had to follow it as much by hearing as by sight.
At the foot of the hill, it ran into the little wood of silver-barked trees.
Father Gomez watched from the top of the ridge. It hadnt been hard to follow them; despite Marys fiden the open savanna, there lenty of cealment in the grass and the occasional thickets of string-wood and sap-lacquer bushes. The two young people had spent a lot of time earlier looking all around as if they thought they were being followed. He had had to keep some distance away, but as the m passed, they became more and more absorbed in each other and paid less attention to the landscape.
The ohing he didnt want to do was hurt the boy. He had a horror of harming an i person. The only way to make sure of his target was to get close enough to see her clearly, which meant following them into the wood.
Quietly and cautiously he moved down the course of the stream. His daemon the green-backed beetle flew overhead, tasting the air; her eyesight was less good than his, but her sense of smell was acute, and she caught the st of the young peoples flesh very clearly. She would go a little ahead, per a stem of grass, and wait for him, then move on again; and as she caught the trail in the air that their bodies left behind, Father Gomez found himself praising God for his mission, because it was clearer thahat the boy and the girl were walking into mortal sin.
He watched them go in among the trees. They hadnt looked bace sining over the top of the ridge, but he still kept low, moving dowream at a crouch, holding the rifle in one hand, balang with the other.
He was so close to success now that for the first time he found himself speculating on what he would do afterward, and whether he would please the Kingdom of Heaven more by going back to Geneva or staying to evangelize this world. The first thing to do here would be to vihe fged creatures, who seemed to have the rudiments of reason, that their habit of riding on wheels was abominable and Satanid trary to the will of God. Break them of that, and salvation would follow.
He reached the foot of the slope, where the trees began, and laid the rifle down silently.
He gazed into the silver-green-gold shadows, and listened, with both hands behind his ears to catd focus any quiet voices through the i chirping and the trickle of the stream. Yes: there they were. Theyd stopped.
He bent to pick up the rifle…
And found himself uttering a hoarse and breathless gasp, as something clutched his daemon and pulled her away from him.
But there was nothing there! Where was she? The pain was atrocious. He heard her g, and cast about wildly to left and right, looking for her.
"Keep still," said a voice from the air, "and be quiet. I have your daemon in my hand."
"But, where are you? Who are you?"
"My name is Balthamos," said the voice.
Will and Lyra followed the stream into the wood, walking carefully, saying little, until they were in the very ter.
There was a little clearing in the middle of the grove, which was floored with soft grass and moss-covered rocks. The branches laced across overhead, almost shutting out the sky aing through little moving spangles and sequins of sunlight, so that everything was dappled with gold and silver.
And it was quiet. Only the trickle of the stream, and the occasional rustle of leaves high up in a little curl of breeze, broke the silence.
Will put down the package of food; Lyra put down her little rucksack. There was no sign of the daemon shadows anywhere. They were pletely alone.
They took off their shoes and socks and sat down on the mossy rocks at the edge of the stream, dipping their feet in the cold water and feeling the shock of it invigorate their blood.
"Im hungry," Will said.
"Me too," said Lyra, though she was also feeling more than that, something subdued and pressing and half-happy and half-painful, so that she wasnt quite sure what it was.
They unfolded the cloth and ate some bread and cheese. For some reason their hands were slow and clumsy, and they hardly tasted the food, although the bread was floury and crisp from the hot baking-stones, and the cheese was flaky and salty and very fresh.
Then Lyra took one of those little red fruits. With a fast-beati, she turo him and said, "Will..."
And she lifted the fruit gently to his mouth.
She could see from his eyes that he k once what she meant, and that he was too joyful to speak. Her fingers were still at his lips, and he felt them tremble, a his own hand up to hold hers there, and theher of them could look; they were fused; they were brimming with happiness.
Like two moths clumsily bumping together, with no more weight than that, their lips touched. Then before they knew how it happehey were ging together, blindly pressing their faces toward each other.
"Like Mary said," he whispered, "you know straight away when you like someone, when you were asleep, on the mountain, before she took you away, I told Pan...”
"I heard," she whispered, "I was awake and I wao tell you the same and now I know what I must have felt all the time: I love you, Will, I love you...”
The word love set his nerves ablaze. All his body thrilled with it, and he answered her in the same words, kissing her hot face over and ain, drinking in with adoration the st of her body and her warm, honey-fragrant hair and her sweet, moist mouth that tasted of the little red fruit.
Around them there was nothing but silence, as if all the world were holding its breath.
Balthamos was terrified.
He moved up the stream and away from the wood, holding the scratg, stinging, biting i daemon, and trying to ceal himself as much as he could from the man who was stumbling after them.
He must him catch up. He khat Father Gomez would kill him in a moment. An angel of his rank was no match for a man, even if that angel was strong ahy, and Balthamos was her of those; besides which, he was crippled by grief over Barud shame at havied Will before. He no longer even had the strength to fly.
"Stop, stop," said Father Gomez. "Please keep still. I t see you, lets talk, please, dont hurt my daemon, I beg you...”
In fact, the daemon was hurting Balthamos. The angel could see the little green thing dimly through the backs of his clasped hands, and she was sinking her powerful jaws again and again into his palms. If he opened his hands just for a moment, she would be gone. Balthamos kept them closed.
"This way," he said, "follow me. e away from the wood. I want to talk to you, and this is the wrong place."
"But who are you? I t see you. e closer, how I tell what you are till I see you? Keep still, dont move so quickly!"
But moving quickly was the only defense Balthamos had. Trying to ighe stinging daemon, he picked his the little gully where the stream ran, stepping from rock to rock.
Then he made a mistake: trying to look behind him, he slipped and put a foot into the water.
"Ah," came a whisper of satisfa as Father Gomez saw the splash.
Balthamos withdrew his foot at ond hurried on, but now a wet print appeared on the dry rocks each time he put his foot down. The priest saw it a forward, ahe brush of feathers on his hand.
He stopped in astonishment: the word angel reverberated in his mind. Balthamos seized the moment to stumble fain, and the priest felt himself dragged after him as another brutal pang wrenched his heart.
Balthamos said over his shoulder, "A little farther, just to the top of the ridge, and we shall talk, I promise."
"Talk here! Stop where you are, and I swear I shant touch you!"
The angel didnt reply: it was too hard to trate. He had to split his attention three ways: behind him to avoid the man, ahead to see where he was going, and on the furious daemon tormenting his hands.
As for the priest, his mind was w quickly. A truly dangerous oppo would have killed his daemon at once, and ehe matter there and then; this antagonist was afraid to strike.
With that in mi himself stumble, and uttered little moans of pain, and pleaded once or twice for the other to stop, all the time watg closely, moving nearer, estimating how big the other was, how quickly he could move, which way he was looking.
"Please," he said brokenly, "you dont know how much this hurts, I t do you any harm, please we stop and talk?"
He didnt want to move out of sight of the wood. They were now at the point where the stream began, and he could see the shape of Balthamoss feet very lightly pressing the grass. The priest had watched every inch of the way, and he was sure now where the angel was standing.
Balthamos turned around. The priest raised his eyes to the place where he thought the angels face would be, and saw him for the first time: just a shimmer in the air, but there was no mistaking it.
The angel wasnt quite close enough to rea one movement, though, and in truth the pull on his daemon had been painful and weakening. Maybe he should take aep or two...
"Sit down," said Balthamos. "Sit down where you are. Not a step closer."
"What do you want?" said Father Gomez, not moving.
"What do I want? I want to kill you, but I havent got the strength."
"But are you an angel?"
"What does it matter?"
"You might have made a mistake. We might be on the same side."
"No, were not. I have been following you. I know whose side youre on, no, no, dont move. Stay there."
"Its not too late to repent. Even angels are allowed to do that. Let me hear your fession."
"Oh, Baruch, help me!" cried Balthamos in despair, turning away.
And as he cried out, Father Gomez leapt for him. His shoulder hit the angels, and knocked Balthamos off balance; and in throwing out a hand to save himself, the angel let go of the i daemon. The beetle flew free at once, and Father Gomez felt a surge of relief and strength. In fact, it was that which killed him, to his