天涯在线书库《www.tianyabook.com》
《THE GOLDEN COMPASS》
PART ONE OXFORD ONE-THE DECANTER OF TOKAY-1
Lyra and her daemon moved through the darkening hall, taking care to keep to one side, out of sight of the kit. The three great tables that ran the length of the hall were laid already, the silver and the glass catg what little light there was, and the long benches were pulled out ready for the guests. Portraits of former Masters hung high up in the gloom along the walls. Lyra reached the dais and looked back at the open kit door, and, seeing no oepped up beside the high table. The places here were laid with gold, not silver, and the fourtees were not oak benches but mahogany chairs with velvet cushions.
Lyra stopped beside the Masters chair and flicked the biggest glass gently with a fingernail. The sound rang clearly through the hall.
“Youre not taking this seriously,” whispered her daemon. “Behave yourself.”
Her daemons name antalaimon, and he was currently in the form of a moth, a dark brown one so as not to show up in the darkness of the hall.
“Theyre making too muoise to hear from the kit,” Lyra藏书网 whispered back.
“And the Steward doesnt e in till the first bell. Stop fussing.”
But she put her palm over the ringing crystal anyway, and Pantalaimon fluttered ahead and through the slightly open door of the Retiring Room at the other end of the dais. After a moment he appeared again.
“Theres no ohere,” he whispered. “But we must be quick.”
Croug behind the high table, Lyra darted along and through the door into the Retiring Room, where she stood up and looked around. The only light in here came from the fireplace, where a bright blaze of logs settled slightly as she looked, sending a fountain of sparks up into the ey. She had lived most of her life in the College, but had never seeiring Room before: only Scholars and their guests were allowed in here, and never females. Even the maidservants didnt in here. That was the Butlers job alone.
Pantalaimoled on her shoulder.
“Happy now? we go?” he whispered.
“Dont be silly! I want to look around!”
It was a large room, with an oval table of polished rosewood on which stood various deters and glasses, and a silver smoking stand with a rack of pipes.
On a sideboard nearby there was a little chafing dish and a basket of poppy heads.
“They do themselves well, dont they, Pan?” she said under her breath.
She sat in one of the greeher armchairs. It was so deep she found herself nearly lying down, but she sat up again and tucked her legs under her to look at the portraits on the walls. More old Scholars, probably; robed, bearded, and gloomy, they stared out of their frames in solemn disapproval.
“What dyou think they talk about?” Lyra said, an to say, because before shed fihe question she heard voices outside the door.
“Behind the chair—quick!” whispered Pantalaimon, and in a flash Lyra was out of the armchair and croug behind it. It wasnt the best one for hiding behind:
shed chosen one in the very ter of the room, and unless she kept very quiet...
The door opened, and the light ged in the room; one of the iners was carrying a lamp, which he put down on the sideboard. Lyra could see his legs, in their dark green trousers and shiny black shoes. It was a servant.
Then a deep voice said, “Has Lord Asriel arrived yet?”
It was the Master. As Lyra held her breath, she saw the servants daemon (a dog, like all servants daemons) trot in and sit quietly at his feet, and then the Masters feet became visible too, in the shabby black shoes he always wore.
“No, Master,” said the Butler. “No word from the aerodock, either.”
“I expect hell be hungry when he arrives. Show him straight into Hall, will you?”
“Very good, Master.”
“And youve deted some of the special Tokay for him?”
“Yes, Master. The 1898, as you ordered. His Lordship is very partial to that, I remember.”
“Good. Now leave me, please.”
“Do you he lamp, Master?”
“Yes, leave that too. Look in during dio trim it, will you?”
The Butler bowed slightly and turo leave, his daemon trotting obediently after him. From her not-much-of-a-hiding place Lyra watched as the Master went to a large oak wardrobe in the er of the room, took his gown from a hanger, and pulled it laboriously on. The Master had been a powerful man, but he was well over seventy now, and his movements were stiff and slow. The Masters daemon had the form of a raven, and as soon as his robe was on, she jumped down from the wardrobe aled in her aced pla his right shoulder.
Lyra could feel Pantalaimon bristling with ay, though he made no sound. For herself, she leasantly excited.
The visitor mentioned by the Master, Lord Asriel, was her uncle, a man whom she admired and feared greatly. He was said to be involved in high politics, i exploration, in distant warfare, and she never knew when he was going to appear. He was fierce: if he caught her in here shed be severely punished, but she could put up with that.
What she saw , however, ged things pletely.
The Master took from his pocket a folded paper and laid it oable beside the wine. He took the stopper out of the mouth of a deter taining a rich golden wine, unfolded the paper, and poured a thin stream of white powder into the deter before crumpling the paper and throwing it into the fire. Theook a pencil from his pocket, stirred the wiil the powder had dissolved, and replaced the stopper.
His daemon gave a soft brief squawk. The Master replied in an uone, and looked around with his hooded, clouded eyes before leaving through the door hed e in by.
Lyra whispered, “Did you see that, Pan?”
“Of course I did! Now hurry out, before the Steward es!”
But as he spoke, there came the sound of a bell ringing once from the far end of the hall.
“Thats the Stewards bell!” said Lyra. “I thought we had more time than that.”
Pantalaimon fluttered swiftly to the hall door, and swiftly back.
“The Stewards there already,” he said. “And you t get out of the other door...”
The other door, the ohe Master had entered a by, opened onto the busy corridor between the library and the Scholars on room. At this time of day it was thronged with men pulling on their gowns for dinner, or hurrying to leave papers or briefcases in the on room before moving nto the hall. Lyra had plao leave the way shed e, banking on another few minutes before the Stewards bell rang.
And if she hadhe Master tipping that powder into the wine, she might have risked the Stewards anger, or hoped to avoid being noticed in the busy corridor. But she was fused, and that made her hesitate.
Then she heard heavy footsteps on the dais. The Steward was ing to make sure the Retiring Room was ready for the Scholars poppy and wier dinner. Lyra darted to the oak wardrobe, ope, and hid inside, pulling the door shut just as the Steward entered. She had no fear for Pantalaimon: the room was somber colored, and he could always creep under a chair.
She heard the Stewards heavy wheezing, and through the crack where the door hadnt quite shut she saw him adjust the pipes in the rack by the smoking stand and cast a glance over the deters and glasses. Then he smoothed the hair over his ears with both palms and said something to his daemon. He was a servant, so she was a dog; but a superior servant, so a superi. In fact, she had the form of a red setter. The daemon seemed suspicious, and cast around as if shed sensed an intruder, but didnt make for the wardrobe, to Lyras intense relief.
Lyra was afraid of the Steward, who had twice beaten her.
Lyra heard a tiny whisper; obviously Pantalaimon had squeezed in beside her.
“Were going to have to stay here now. Why dont you listen to me?”
She didnt reply until the Steward had left. It was his job to supervise the waiting at the high table; she could hear the Scholars ing into the hall, the murmur of voices, the shuffle of feet.
“Its a good thing I didnt,” she whispered back. “We wouldnt have seen the Master put poison in the wiherwise. Pan, that was the Tokay he asked the Butler about! Theyre going to kill Lord Asriel!”
“You dont know its poison.”
“Oh, of course it is. Dont you remember, he made the Butler leave the room before he did it? If it was i, it wouldnt have mattered the Butler seeing. And I know theres something going on—something political. The servants have been talking about it for days. Pan, we could prevent a murder!”
“Ive never heard suonsense,” he said shortly. “How do you think yoing to keep still for four hours in this poky wardrobe? Let me go and look in the corridor. Ill tell you when its clear.”
He fluttered from her shoulder, and she saw his little shadoear in the crack of light.
“Its no good, Pan, Im staying,” she said. “Theres another robe or something here. Ill put that on the floor and make myself fortable. Ive just got to see what they do.”
She had been croug. She carefully stood up, feeling around for the clothes hangers in order not to make a noise, and found that the wardrobe was bigger thahought. There were several academic robes and hoods, some with fur around them, most faced with silk.
“I wonder if these are all the Masters?” she whispered. “Whes honorary degrees from other places, perhaps they give him fancy robes and he keeps them here for dressing-up....Pan, do you really think its not poison in that wine?”
“No,” he said. “I think it is, like you do. And I think its none of our business. And I think it would be the silliest thing youve ever done in a lifetime of silly things to interfere. Its nothing to do with us.”
“Doupid,” Lyra said. “I t sit in here and watch them give him poison!”
“e somewhere else, then.”
“Youre a coward, Pan.”
“Certainly I am. May I ask what you io do? Are you going to leap out and snatch the glass from his trembling fingers? What did you have in mind?”
“I didnt have anything in mind, and well you know it,” she snapped quietly.
“But now99ｌib? Ive seen what the Master did, I havent got any choice. Youre supposed to know about sce, arent you? How I just go and sit in the library or somewhere and twiddle my thumbs, knowing whats going to happen? I dont io do that, I promise you.”
“This is what you wanted all the time,” he said after a moment. “You wao hide in here and watch. Why didnt I realize that before?”
“All right, I do,” she said. “Everyone knows they get up to somethi.
They have a ritual or something. And I just wao know what it was.”
.99lib.“Its none of your business! If they want to enjoy their little secrets you should just feel superior ahem get on with it. Hiding and spying is for silly children.”
“Exactly what I knew youd say. Now stop nagging.”
The two of them sat in silence for a while, Lyra unfortable on the hard floor of the wardrobe and Pantalaimon self-righteously twitg his temporary antennae on one of the robes. Lyra felt a mixture of thoughts tending in her head, and she would have liked nothier than to share them with her daemon, but she roud too. Perhaps she should try to clear them up without his help.
Her main thought was ay, and it wasnt for herself. Shed been in trouble often enough to be used to it. This time she was anxious about Lord Asriel, and about what this all meant. It wasnt often that he visited the college, and the fact that this was a time of high political tensio that he hadnt e simply to eat and drink and smoke with a few old friends. She khat both Lord Asriel and the Master were members of the et cil, the Prime Ministers special advisory body, so it might have been something to do with that; but meetings of the et cil were held in the palaot iiring Room of Jordan College. Then there was the rumor that had been keeping the College servants whispering for days. It was said that the Tartars had invaded Muscovy, and were surging north to St. Petersburg, from where they would be able to domihe Baltic Sea aually overe the entire west of Europe. And Lord Asriel had been in the far North: when shed seen him last, he reparing an expedition to Lapland…
“Pan,” she whispered.
“Yes?”
“Do you think therell be a war?”
PART ONE OXFORD ONE-THE DECANTER OF TOKAY-2
“Not yet. Lord Asriel wouldnt be dining here if it was going to break out in the week or so.” “Thats what I thought. But later?” “Shh! Someones ing.”
She sat up and put her eye to the crack of the door. It was the Butler, ing to trim the lamp as the Master had ordered him to. The on room and the library were lit by anbar-ic power, but the Scholars preferred the older, softer naphtha lamps iiring Room. They wouldnt ge that in the Masters lifetime.
The Butler trimmed the wick, and put an on the fire as well, and then listened carefully at the hall door before helping hims9９liｂ?elf to a handful of leaf from the smoking stand. He had hardly replaced the lid when the handle of the other door turned, making him jump nervously. Lyra tried not to laugh. The Butler hastily stuffed the leaf into his pocket and turo face the iner.
“Lord Asriel!” he said, and a shiver of cold surprise ran down Lyras back. She couldnt see him from where she was, and she tried to smother the urge to move and look.
“Good evening, Wren,” said Lord Asriel. Lyra always heard that harsh voice with a mixture of pleasure and apprehension. “I arrived too late to dine. Ill wait in here.”
The Butler looked unfortable. Guests ehe Retiring Room at the Masters invitation only, and Lord Asriel khat; but the Butler also saw Lord Asriel looking pointedly at the bulge in his pocket, and decided not to protest.
“Shall I let the Master know youve arrived, my lord?”
“No harm in that. You might bring me some coffee.”
“Very good, my lord.”
The Butler bowed and hastened out, his daemon trotting submissively at his heels. Lyras uncle moved across to the fire and stretched his arms high above his head, yawning like a lion. He was wearing traveling clothes. Lyra was reminded, as she always was when she saw him again, of how much he frightened her. There was no question now of creeping out unnoticed: shed have to sit tight and hope.
Lord Asriels daemon, a snow leopard, stood behind him.
“Are you going to show the projes in here?” she said quietly.
“Yes. Itll create less fuss than moving to the lecture theater. Theyll want to see the spes too; Ill send for the Porter in a mihis is a bad time, Stelmaria.”
“You should rest.”
He stretched out in one of the armchairs, so that Lyra could no longer see his face.
“Yes, yes. I should also ge my clothes. Theres probably some a etiquette that allows them to fine me a dozen bottles for ing in here dressed improperly. I should sleep for three days. The fact remains that—”
There was a knock, and the Butler came in with a silver tray bearing a coffeepot and a cup.
“Thank you, Wren,” said Lord Asriel. “Is that the Tokay I see oable?”
“The Master ordered it deted especially for you, my I lord,” said the Butler.
“There are only three dozen bottles left I of the98.”
“All good things pass away. Leave the tray here beside me. Oh, ask the Porter to send up the two cases I left in the Lodge, would you?”
“Here, my lord?”
“Yes, here, man. And I shall need a s and a projeg lantern, also here, also now.”
The Butler could hardly prevent himself from opening his mouth in surprise, but mao suppress the question, or the protest.
“Wren, youre fetting your place,” said Lord Asriel. “Dont question me; just do as I tell you.”
“Very good, my lord,” said the Butler. “If I may suggest it, I should perhaps let Mr. Cawson know what youre planning, my lord, or else hell be somewhat taken aback, if you see what I mean.”
“Yes. Tell him, then.”
Mr. Cawson was the Steward. There was an old and well-established rivalry between him and the Butler. The Steward was the superior, but the Butler had more opportuo ingratiate himself with the Scholars, and made full use of them. He would be delighted to have this ce of showing the Steward that he knew more about what was going on iiring Room.
He bowed a. Lyra watched as her uncle poured a cup of coffee, drai at once, and poured another before sipping more slowly. She was agog: cases of spes? A projeg lantern? What did he have to show the Scholars that was sent and important?
Then Lord Asriel stood up and turned away from the fire. She saw him fully, and marveled at the trast he made with the plump Butler, the stooped and languid Scholars. Lord Asriel was a tall man with powerful shoulders, a fierce dark face, and eyes that seemed to flash and glitter with savage laughter. It was a face to be dominated by, or to fight: never a face to patronize or pity. All his movements were large and perfectly balanced, like those of a wild animal, and when he appeared in a room like this, he seemed a wild animal held in a cage too small for it.
At the moment his expression was distant and preoccupied. His daemon came close and leaned her head on his waist, and he looked down at her unfathomably before turning away and walking to the table. Lyra suddenly felt her stomach lurch, for Lord Asriel had takeopper from the deter of Tokay, and a glass.
“No!”
The quiet cry came before she could hold it back. Lord Asriel heard and tur once.
“Whos there?”
She couldnt help herself. She tumbled out of the wardrobe and scrambled up to snatch the glass from his hand. The wine flew out, splashing on the edge of the table and the carpet, and then the glass fell and smashed. He seized her wrist and twisted hard.
“Lyra! What the hell are you doing?”
“Let go of me and Ill tell you!”
“Ill break your arm first. How dare you e in here?”
“Ive just saved your life!”
They were still for a moment, the girl twisted in pain but grimag to prevent herself fr out louder, the ma over her frowning like thunder.
“What did you say?” he said more quietly.
“That wine is poisoned,” she muttered between ched teeth. “I saw the Master put some powder in it.”
He let go. She sank to the floor, and Pantalaimon fluttered anxiously to her shoulder. Her uncle looked down with a restrained fury, and she didnt dare meet his eyes.
“I came in just to see what the room was like,” she said. “I know I shouldnt have. But I was going to go out before anyone came in, except that I heard the Master ing and got ^ trapped. The wardrobe was the only place to hide. And I saw him put the powder in the wine. If I hadnt…”
There was a kno the door.
“Thatll be the Porter,” said Lord Asriel. “Ba the wardrobe. If I hear the slightest noise, Ill make you wish you were dead.”
She darted back there at once, and no sooner had she pulled the door shut than Lord Asriel called, “e in.”
As hed said, it was the Porter.
“In here, my lord?”
Lyra saw the old man standing doubtfully in the doorway, and behind him, the er of a large wooden box.
“Thats right, Shuter,” said Lord Asriel. “Bring them both in and put them down by the table.”
Lyra relaxed a little, and allowed herself to feel the pain in her shoulder and wrist. It might have been enough to make her cry, if she was the sort of girl who cried. Instead she gritted her teeth and moved the arm gently until it felt looser.
Then came a crash of glass and the glug of spilled liquid.
“Damn you, Shuter, you careless old fool! Look what youve done!”
Lyra could see, just. Her uncle had mao knock the deter of Tokay off the table, and made it look as if the Porter had do.
The old man put the box down carefully and began to apologize.
“Im truly sorry, my lord—I must have been closer than I thought—”
“Get something to clear this mess up. Go on, before it soaks into the carpet!”
The Porter hurried out. Lord Asriel moved closer to the wardrobe and spoke in an uone.
“Since youre in there, you make yourself useful. Watch the Master closely when he es in. If you tell me something iing about him, Ill keep yetting further into the trouble youre already in. Uand?”
“Yes, Uncle.”
“Make a noise in there and I wont help you. Youre on your own.”
He moved away and stood with his back to the fire again as the Porter came back with a brush and dustpan for the glass and a bowl and cloth.
“I only say once again, my lord, I do most early beg your pardon; I dont know what—”
“Just clear up the mess.”
As the Pan to mop the wine from the carpet, the Butler knocked and came in with Lord Asriels manservant, a man called Thorold. They were carryiween them a heavy case of polished wood with brass hahey saw what the Porter was doing and stopped dead.
“Yes, it was the Tokay,” said Lord Asriel. “Too bad. Is that the lanter up by the wardrobe, Thorold, if you would. Ill have the s up at the other end.”
Lyra realized that she would be able to see the s and whatever was on it through the cra the door, and wondered whether her uncle had arra like that for the purpose. Uhe he manservant made unrolling the stiff linen aing it up on its frame, she whispered:
“See? It was worth ing, wasnt it?”
“It might be,” Pantalaimon said austerely, in his tiny moth voice. “And it might not.”
Lord Asriel stood by the fire sipping the last of the coffee and watg darkly as Thorold opehe case of the projeg lantern and uncapped the lens before cheg the oil tank.
“Theres plenty of oil, my lord,” he said. “Shall I send for a tei to operate it?”
“No. Ill do it myself. Thank you, Thorold. Have they finished dinner yet, Wren?”
“Very nearly, I think, my lord,” replied the Butler. “If I uand Mr. Cawsht, the Master and his guests wont be disposed to linger ohey know youre here. Shall I take the coffee tray?”
“Take it and go.”
“Very good, my lord.”
With a slight bow, the Butler took the tray a, and Thorold went with him.
As soon as the door closed, Lord Asriel looked across the room directly at the wardrobe, and Lyra felt the force of his glance almost as if it had physical form, as if it were an arrow or a spear. Then he looked away and spoke softly to his dasmon.
She came to sit calmly at his side, alert and elegant and dangerous, her tawny eyes surveying the room before turning, like his blaes, to the door from the hall as the haurned. Lyra couldhe door, but she heard an intake of breath as the first man came in.
TWO- THE IDEA OF NORTH-1
“Master,” said Lord Asriel. “Yes, Im back. D in yuests; Ive got something very iing to show you.”
“Lord Asriel,” said the Master heavily, and came forward to shake his hand. From her hiding place Lyra watched the Masters eyes, and ihey flicked toward the table for a sed, where the Tokay had been.
“Master,” said Lord Asriel. “I came too late to disturb your dinner, so I made myself at home in here. Hello, Sub-Rectlad to see you looking so well.
Excuse my rough appearance; Ive only just landed. Yes, Master, the Tokays gone. I think youre standing in it. The Porter k off the table, but it was my fault. Hello, Chaplain. I read your latest paper with great i.”
He moved away with the Chaplain, leaving Lyra with a clear view of the Masters face. It was impassive, but the daemon on his shoulder was shuffling her feathers and movilessly from foot to foot. Lord Asriel was already dominating the room, and although he was careful to be courteous to the Master in the Masters owory, it was clear where the power la藏书网y.
The Schreeted the visitor and moved into the room, some sitting around the table, some in the armchairs, and soon a buzz of versation filled the air. Lyra could see that they were powerfully intrigued by the wooden case, the s, and the lantern. She khe Scholars well: the Librarian, the Sub-Rector, the Enquirer, and the rest; they were men who had been around her all her life, taught her, chastised her, soled her, given her little presents, chased her away from the fruit trees in the garden; they were all she had for a family. They might even have felt like a family if she knew what a family was, though if she did, shed have been more likely to feel that about the College servants. The Scholars had more important things to do than attend to the affes of a half-wild, half-civilized girl, left among them by ce.
The Master lit the spirit lamp uhe little silver chafing dish aed some butter before cutting half a dozen poppy heads open and tossing them in.
Poppy was always served after a feast: it clarified the mind and stimulated the tongue, and made for rich versation. It was traditional for the Master to cook it himself.
Uhe sizzle of the frying butter and the hum of talk, Lyra shifted around to find a more fortable position for herself. With enormous care she took one of the robes—a full-length fur—off its hanger and laid it on the floor of the wardrobe.
“You should have used a scratchy old one,” whispered Pantalaimon. “If you get too fortable, youll go to sleep.”
“If I do, its your job to wake me up,” she replied.
She sat and listeo the talk. Mighty dull talk it was, too; almost all of it politics, and London politics at that, nothiing about Tartars. The smells poppy and smoke-leaf drifted pleasantly in through the wardrobe door, and more than once Lyra found herself nodding. But finally she heard someone rap oable. The voices fell silent, and then the Master spoke.
“Gentlemen,” he said. “I feel sure I speak for all of us when I bid Lord Asriel wele. His visits are rare but always immensely valuable, and I uand he has something of particular io show us tonight. This is a time of high political tension, as we are all aware; Lord Asriels presence is required early tomorrow m in White Hall, and a train is waiting with steam up ready to carry him to London as soon as we have finished our versation here; so we must use our time wisely. When he has finished speaking to us, I imagihere will be some questions. Please keep them brief and to the point. Lord Asriel, would you like to begin?”
“Thank you, Master,” said Lord Asriel. “To start with, I have a few slides to show you. Sub-Rector, you see best from here, I think. Perhaps the Master would like to take the chair he wardrobe?”
Lyra marveled at her uncles skill. The old Sub-Rector was nearly blind, so it was courteous to make room for him he s, and his moving forward meant that the Master would be sittio the Librarian, only a matter of a yard or so from where Lyra was crouched in the wardrobe. As the Master settled in the armchair, Lyra heard him murmur:
“The devil! He knew about the wine, Im sure of it.”
The Librarian murmured back, “Hes going to ask for funds. If he forces a vote—”
“If he does that, we must just argue against, with all the eloquence we have.”
The lantern began to hiss as Lord Asriel pumped it hard. Lyra moved slightly so that she could see the s, where a brilliant white circle had begun to glow.
Lord Asriel called, “Could someourn the lamp down?”
One of the Schot up to do that, and the room darkened.
Lord Asriel began:
“As some of you know, I set out for the North twelve months ago on a diplomatic mission to the King of Lapland. At least, thats what I preteo be doing.
In fact, my real aim was to go further north still, right on to the ice, in fact, to try and discover what had happeo the Grumman expedition. One of Grummans last messages to the academy in Berlin spoke of a certain natural phenomenon only seen in the lands of the North. I was determio iigate that as well as find out what I could about Grumman. But the first picture Im going to show you isnt directly about either of those things.”
A the first slide into the frame and slid it behind the lens. A circular photogram in sharp blad white appeared on the s. It had been taken at night under a full moon, and it showed a wooden hut in the middle distas walls dark against the snow that surrou and lay thickly on the roof. Beside the hut stood an array of philosophical instruments, which looked to Lyras eye like something from the Anbaric Park on the road to Yarnton: aerials, wires, porcelain insulators, all glittering in the moonlight and thickly covered in frost. A man in furs, his face hardly visible in the deep hood of his garment, stood in the fround, with his hand raised as if iing. To one side of him stood a smaller figure. The moonlight bathed everything in the same pallid gleam.
“That photogram was taken with a standard silver nitrate emulsion,” Lord Asriel said. “Id like you to look at another oaken from the same spot only a mier, with a new specially prepared emulsion.”
He lifted out the first slide and dropped another into the frame. This was much darker; it was as if the moonlight had been filtered out. The horizon was still visible, with the dark shape of the hut and its light snow-covered roof standing out, but the plexity of the instruments was hidden in darkness. But the man had altogether ged: he was bathed in light, and a fountain of glowing particles seemed to be streaming from his upraised hand.
“That light,” said the Chaplain, “is it going up or ing down?”
“Its ing down,” said Lord Asriel, “but it isnt light. Its Dust.”
Something in the way he said it made Lyra imagine dust with a capital letter, as if this wasnt ordinary dust. The rea of the Scholars firmed her feeling, because Lord Asriels words caused a sudden collective silence, followed by gasps of incredulity.
“But how—”
“Surely—”
“It t—”
“Gentlemen!” came the voice of the Chaplain. “Let Lord Asriel explain.”
“Its Dust,” Lord Asriel repeated. “It registered as light on the plate because particles of Dust affect this emulsion as photons affect silver nitrate emulsion. It artly to test it that my expeditio north in the first place. As you see, the figure of the man is perfectly visible. Now Id like you to look at the shape to his left.”
He indicated the blurred shape of the smaller figure.
“I thought that was the mans daemon,” said the Enquirer.
“No. His daemon was at the time coiled around his ne the form of a snake.
That shape you dimly see is a child.”
“A severed child—?” said someone, and the way he stopped showed that he khis was something that shouldnt have been voiced.
There was an intense silence.
Then Lord Asriel said calmly, “Aire child. Which, giveure of Dust, is precisely the point, is it not?”
No one spoke for several seds. Then came the voice of the Chaplain.
“Ah,” he said, like a thirsty man who, having just drunk deeply, puts down the glass to let out the breath he has held while drinking. “And the streams of Dust...”
“—e from the sky, and bathe him in what looks like light. You may examihis picture as closely as you wish: Ill leave it behind when I go. Im showing it to you now to demonstrate the effect of this new emulsion. Now Id like to show you another picture.”
He ged the slide. The picture was also taken at night, but this time without moonlight. It showed a small group of tents in the fround, dimly outlined against the low horizon, and beside them an untidy heap of wooden boxes and a sledge. But the main i of the picture lay in the sky. Streams and veils of light hung like curtains, looped aooned on invisible hooks hundreds of miles high or blowing out sideways in the stream of some unimaginable wind.
“What is that?” said the voice of the Sub-Rector.
“Its a picture of the Aurora.”
“Its a very fine photogram,” said the Palmerian Professor. “One of the best Ive seen.”
“Five my ignorance,” said the shaky voice of the old Pretor, “but if I ever knew what the Aurora was, I have fotten. Is it what they call the Northern Lights?”
“Yes. It has many names. Its posed of storms of charged particles and solar rays of intense araordinary strength—invisible in themselves, but causing this luminous radiatiohey i with the atmosphere. If thered been time, I would have had this slide tio show you the colors; pale green and rose, for the most part, with a tinge of crimson along the le of that curtain-like formation. This is taken with ordinary emulsion. Now Id like you to look at a picture taken with the special emulsion.”
He took out the slide. Lyra heard the Master say quietly, “If he forces a vote, we could try to ihe residence clause. He hasnt been resident in the College for thirty weeks out of the last fifty-two.”
“Hes already got the Chaplain on his side...” the Librarian murmured in reply.
Lord Asriel put a new slide in the lantern frame. It showed the same se. As with the previous pair of pictures, many of the features visible by ordinary light were much dimmer in this one, and so were the curtains of radian the sky.
But in the middle of the Aurora, high above the bleak landscape, Lyra could see something solid. She pressed her face to the crack to see more clearly, and she could see the Scholars he s leaning forward too. As she gazed, her wrew, because there in the sky was the unmistakable outline of a city:
towers, domes, walls...Buildings and streets, suspended in the air! She nearly gasped with wohe Cassington Scholar said, “That looks like...a city.”
“Exactly so,” said Lord Asriel.
“A city in another world, no doubt?” said the Dean, with pt in his voice.
Lord Asriel ignored him. There was a stir of excitement among some of the Scholars, as if, having writteises on the existence of the uni without ever having seeheyd beeed with a living example newly captured. “Is this the Barnard-Stokes business?” said the Palmerian Professor.
“It is, isnt it?”
“Thats what I want to find out,” said Lord Asriel. He stood to one side of the illuminated s. Lyra could see his dark eyes searg among the Scholars as they peered up at the slide of the Aurora, and the green glow of his demons eyes beside him. All the venerable heads were ing forward, their spectacles glinting; only the Master and the Librarian leaned ba their chairs, with their heads close together.
The Chaplain was saying, “You said you were searg for news of the Grumman expedition, Lord Asriel.
Was Dr. Grumman iigating this phenomenon too?”
“I believe he was, and I believe he had a good deal of information about it. But he wont be able to tell us what it was, because hes dead.”
“No!” said the Chaplain.
“Im afraid so, and I have the proof here.”
A ripple of excited apprehension ran round the Retiring Room as, under Lord Asriels dire, two or three of the younger Scholars carried the wooden box to the front of the room. Lord Asriel took out the last slide but left the lantern on, and in the dramatic glare of the circle of light he bent to lever open the box. Lyra heard the screech of nails ing out of damp wood. The Master stood up to look, blog Lyras view. Her uncle spoke again:
“If you remember, Grummans expedition vanished eighteen months ago. 藏书网The German Academy sent him up there to go as far north as the magic pole and make various celestial observations. It was in the course of that jourhat he observed the curious phenomenon weve already seen. Shortly after that, he vanished. Its been assumed that he had an act and that his bodys been lying in a crevasse all this time. In fact, there was no act.”
“What have you got there?” said the Dean. “Is that a vacuum tainer?”
TWO- THE IDEA OF NORTH-2
Lord Asriel didnt a first. Lyra heard the snap of metal clips and a hiss as air rushed into a vessel, and then there was a silence. But the silence didnt last long. After a moment or two Lyra heard a fused babble break out:
cries of horror, loud protests, voices raised in anger and fear.
“But what—”
“—hardly human—”
“—its been—”
“—whats happeo it?”
The Masters voice cut through them all.
“Lord Asriel, what in Gods name have you got there?”
“This is the head of Stanislaus Grumman,” said Lord Asriels voice.
Over the jumble of voices Lyra heard someoumble to the door and out, making i sounds of distress. She wished she could see what they were seeing.
Lord Asriel said, “I found his body preserved in the ice off Svalbard. The head was treated in this way by his killers. Youll notice the characteristic scalping pattern. I think you might be familiar with it, Sub-Rector.”
The old mans voice was steady as he said, “I have seeartars do this.
Its a teique you find among the abinals of Siberia and the Tungusk. From there, of course, it spread into the lands of the Skraelings, though I uand that it is now banned in New Denmark. May I exami more closely, Lord Asriel?”
After a short silence he spoke again.
“My eyes are not very clear, and the ice is dirty, but it seems to me that there is a hole iop of the skull. Am I right?”
“You are.”
“Trepanning?”
“Exactly.”
That caused a murmur of excitement. The Master moved out of the way and Lyra could see again. The old Sub-Rector, in the circle of light thrown by the lantern, was holding a heavy block of ice up close to his eyes, and Lyra could see the objeside it: a bloody lump barely reizable as a human head.
Pantalaimon fluttered around Lyra, his distress affeg her.
“Hush,” she whispered. “Listen.”
“Dr. Grumman was once a Scholar of this College,” said the Dean hotly.
"To fall into the hands of the Tartars—" "But that far north?" "They must have peed further than anyone imagined!" "Did I hear you say you found it near Svalbard?" said the Dean.
"Thats right." "Are we to uand that the panserbj0rne had anything to do with this?" Lyra didnt reize that word, but clearly the Scholars did.
"Impossible," said the Cassington Scholar firmly. "Theyd never behave in that manner." "Then you dont know lofur Raknison," said the Palmerian Professor, who had made several expeditions himself to the arctic regions. "It wouldnt surprise me at all to learn that he had taken to scalping people iartar fashion." Lyra looked again at her uncle, atg the Scholars with a glitter of sardonic amusement, and saying nothing.
"Who is lofur Raknison?" said someone. "The king of Svalbard," said the Palmerian Professor. "Yes, thats right, one of the panserb)0me. Hes a usurper, of sorts; tricked his way onto the throne, or so I uand; but a powerful figure, by no means a fool, in spite of his ludicrous affectations—having a palace built of imported marble—setting up what he calls a uy—" "For whom? For the bears?" said someone else, and every-one laughed.
But the Palmerian Professor went on: "For all that, I tell you that lofur Raknison would be capable of doing this to Grumman. At the same time, he could be flattered into behaving quite differently, if the need arose." "And you know how, do you, Trelawney?" said the Dean sneeringly.
"Indeed I do. Do you know what he wants above all else? Even more than an honorary degre>.99liｂ?e? He wants a daemon! Find a way to give him a daemon, and hed do anything for you." The Scholars laughed heartily.
Lyra was following this with puzzlement; what the Palmerian Professor said made no se all. Besides, she was impatient to hear more about scalping and the Northern Lights and that mysterious Dust. But she was disappointed, for Lord Asriel had finished showing his relid pictures, and the talk soon turned into a College wrangle about whether or not they should give him some moo fit out another expedition. Bad forth the arguments ranged, and Lyra felt her eyes closing. Soon she was fast asleep, with Pantalaimon curled around her ne his favorite sleeping form as an ermine.
She woke up with a start when someone shook her shoulder.
"Quiet," said her uhe wardrobe door en, and he was crouched there against the light. "Theyve all gone, but there are still some servants around.
Go to your bedroom now, and take care that you say nothing about this." "Did they vote to give you the money?" she said sleepily.
"Yes." "Wh９９lｉb?ats Dust?" she said, struggling to stand up after having been cramped for so long.
"Nothing to do with you." "It is to do with me," she said. "If you wanted me to be a spy in the wardrobe, you ought to tell me what Im spying about. I see the mans head?" Pantalaimons white ermine fur bristled: she felt it tig her neck. Lord Asriel laughed shortly.
“Dont be disgusting,” he said, and began to pack his slides and spe box.
“Did you watch the Master?”
“Yes, and he looked for the wine before he did anything else.”
“Good. But Ive scotched him for now. Do as youre told and go to bed.”
“But where are you going?”
“Back to the North. Im leaving in ten minutes.”
“ I e?”
He stopped what he was doing, and looked at her as if for the first time. His daemon turned her great tawny leopard eyes ooo, and uhe trated gaze of both of them, Lyra blushed. But she gazed back fiercely.
“Your place is here,” said her uncle finally.
“But why? Why is my place here? Why t I e to the North with you? I want to see the Northern Lights and bears and icebergs and everything. I want to know about Dust. And that city in the air. Is it another world?”
“Youre not ing, child. Put it out of your head; the times are too dangerous.
Do as youre told and go to bed, and if youre a good girl, Ill bring you back a walrus tusk with some Eskim on it. Dont argue anymore or I shall be angry.”
And his daemon growled with a deep savage rumble that made Lyra suddenly aware of what it would be like to have teeth meeting ihroat.
She pressed her lips and frowned hard at her uncle. He umping the air from the vacuum flask, and took no notice; it was as if hed already fotten her. Without a word, but with lips tight and eyes narrowed, the girl and her daemo ao bed.
* * * The Master and the Librarian were old friends and allies, and it was their habit, after a difficult episode, to take a glass of brantwijn and sole each other. So after theyd seen Lord Asriel away, they strolled to the Masters lodging aled in his study with the curtains drawn and the fire refreshed, their daemons in their familiar places on knee or shoulder, and prepared to think through what had just happened.
“Do you really believe he knew about the wine?” said the Librarian.
“Of course he did. I have no idea how, but he knew, and he spilled the deter himself. Of course he did.”
“Five me, Master, but I t help being relieved. I was never happy about the idea of...”
“Of poisoning him?”
“Yes. Of murder.”
“Hardly anyone would be happy at that idea, Charles. The question was whether doing that would be worse than the sequences of not doing it. Well, some providence has intervened, and it hasnt happened. Im only sorry9９ｌｉｂ? I burdened you with the knowledge of it.”
“No, no,” protested the Librarian. “But I wish you had told me more.
The Master was silent for a while before saying, “Yes, perhaps I should have dohe alethiometer warns of appalling sequences if Lord Asriel pursues this research. Apart from anything else, the child will be drawn in, and I want to keep her safe as long as possible.”
“Is Lord Asriels business anything to do with this new initiative of the sistorial Court of Disciplihe what-do-they-call-it: the Oblation Board?”
“Lord Asriel—no, no. Quite the reverse. The Oblation Board isirely answerable to the sistorial Court, either. Its a semiprivate initiative; its being run by someone who has no love of Lord Asriel. Between them both, Charles, I tremble.”
The Librarian was silent in his turn. Ever since Pope John Calvin had moved the seat of the Papacy to Geneva a up the sistorial Court of Disciplihe Churchs power over every aspect of life had been absolute. The Papacy itself had been abolished after Calvih, and a tangle of courts, colleges, and cils, collectively known as the Magisterium, had grown up in its place. These agencies were not always united; sometimes a bitter rivalry grew up between them. For a large part of the previous tury, the most powerful had been the College of Bishops, but i years the sistorial Court of Discipline had taken its place as the most active and the most feared of all the Churchs bodies.
But it was alossible for indepe ageo grow up uhe prote of another part of the Magisterium, and the Oblation Board, which the Librarian had referred to, was one of these. The Librarian didnt know much about it, but he disliked and feared what hed heard, and he pletely uood the Masters ay.
“The Palmerian Professor mentioned a name,” he said after a minute or so.
“Barnard-Stokes? What is the Barnard-Stokes business?”
“Ah, its not our field, Charles. As I uand it, the Holy Church teaches that there are two worlds: the world of everything we see and hear and touch, and another world, the spiritual world of heaven and hell. Barnard and Stokes were two—how shall I put it—renegade theologians who postulated the existence of numerous other worlds like this one, her heaven nor hell, but material and sinful. They are there, close by, but invisible and unreachable.
The Holy Churaturally disapproved of this abominable heresy, and Barnard and Stokes were silenced.
“But unfortunately for the Magisterium there seem to be sound mathematical arguments for this other-world theory. I have never followed them myself, but the Cassington Scholar tells me that they are sound.”
“And now Lord Asriel has taken a picture of one of these other worlds,” the Librarian said. “And we have funded him to go and look for it. I see.”
“Quite. Itll seem to the Oblation Board, and to its powerful protectors, that Jordan College is a hotbed of support for heresy. Aween the sistorial Court and the Oblation Board, Charles, I have to keep a balance; and meanwhile the child is growing. They wont have fotten her. Sooner or later she would have bee involved, but shell be drawn in now whether I want to protect her or not.”
“But how do you know that, fods sake? The alethiometer again?”
“Yes. Lyra has a part to play in all this, and a major ohe irony is that she must do it all without realizing what shes doing. She be helped, though, and if my plan with the Tokay had succeeded, she would have been safe for a little longer. I would have liked to spare her a jouro the North. I wish above all things that I were able to explain it to her...”
“She wouldnt listen,” the Librarian said. “I know her ways only too well. Try to tell her anything serious and shell half-listen for five minutes and then start fidgeting. Quiz her about it ime and shell have pletely fotten.”
“If I talked to her about Dust? You dont think shed listen to that?”
The Librarian made a o indicate how unlikely he thought that was.
“Why oh should she?” he said. “Why should a distant theological riddle i a healthy, thoughtless child?”
“Because of what she must experience. Part of that includes a great betrayal....”
“Whos going to betray her?”
“No, no, thats the saddest thing: she will be the betrayer, and the experience will be terrible. She mustnt know that, of course, but theres no reason for her not to know about the problem of Dust. And you might be wrong, Charles; she might well take an i in it, if it were explained in a simple way. And it might help her later on. It would certainly help me to be less anxious about her.”
“Thats the duty of the old,” said the Librarian, “to be anxious on behalf of the young. And the duty of the young is to s the ay of the old.”
They sat for a while longer, and then parted, for it was late, and they were old and anxious.
THREE- LYRA’S JORDAN-1
Jordan College was the gra and richest of all the colleges in Oxford. It robably the largest, too, though no one knew for certain. The buildings, which were grouped around three irregular quadrangles, dated from every period from the early Middle Ages to the mid-eighteenth tury. It had never been planned; it had grown piecemeal, with past and present overlapping at every spot, and the final effect was one of jumbled and squalid grandeur. Some part was always about to fall down, and for five geions the same family, the Parslows, had been employed full time by the College as masons and scaffolders.
The present Mr. Parslow was teag his son the craft; the two of them and their three workmen would scramble like industrious termites over the scaffolding theyd erected at the er of the library, or over the roof of the chapel, and haul up bright new blocks of stone or rolls of shiny lead or balks of timber.
The College owned farms aes all land. It was said that you could walk from Oxford to Bristol in one dire and London iher, and never leave Jordan land. In every part of the kingdom there were dye works and brick kilns, forests and atomcraft works that paid rent to Jordan, and every quarter-day the bursar and his clerks would tot it all up, annouhe total to cilium, and order a pair of swans for the feast. Some of the money ut by for reiment—cilium had just approved the purchase of an office blo Maer—and the rest was used to pay the Scholars modest stipends and the wages of the servants (and the Parslows, and the other dozen or so families of craftsmen and traders who served the College), to keep the wine cellar richly filled, to buy books and anbarographs for the immense library that filled one side of the Melrose Quadrangle aended, burrow-like, for several floors beh the ground, and, not least, to buy the latest philosophical apparatus to equip the chapel.
It was important to keep the chapel up to date, because Jordan College had no rival, either in Europe or in New France, as a ter of experimental theology.
Lyra khat much, at least. She roud of her Colleges eminence, and liked to boast of it to the various urs and ragamuffins she played with by the al or the claybeds; and she regarded visiting Scholars and emi professors from elsewhere with pitying s, because they didnt belong to Jordan and so must know less, poor things, than the humblest of Jordans under-Scholars.
As for what experimental theology was, Lyra had no more idea than the urs.
She had formed the notion that it was ed with magic, with the movements of the stars and plas藏书网, with tiny particles of matter, but that was guesswork, really. Probably the stars had daemons just as humans did, and experimental theology involved talking to them. Lyra imagihe Chaplain speaking loftily, listening to the star daemons remarks, and then nodding judiciously or shaking his head i. But what might be passiween them, she couldnt ceive.
Nor was she particularly ied. In many ways Lyra was a barbarian. What she liked best was clambering over the College roofs with Roger, the kit boy who was her particular friend, t藏书网o spit plum stones on the heads of passing Scholars or to hoot like owls outside a window where a tutorial was going on, or rag through the narrow streets, or stealing apples from the market, ing war.
Just as she was unaware of the hidden currents of politics running below the surface of College affairs, so the Scholars, for their part, would have been uo see the rich seething stew of alliances aies and feuds and treaties which was a childs life in Oxford. Children playing together: how pleasant to see! What could be more i and charming?
In fact, of course, Lyra and her peers were engaged in deadly warfare. There were several wars running at ohe children (young servants, and the children of servants, and Lyra) of one college waged war on those of another.
Lyra had once been captured by the children of Gabriel College, and Roger and their friends Hugh Lovat and Simon Parslow had raided the place to rescue her, creeping through the Pretarden and gathering armfuls of small stone-hard plums to throw at the kidnappers. There were twenty-four colleges, which allowed for endless permutations of alliand betrayal. But the enmity between the colleges was fotten in a moment wheown children attacked a colleger: then all the collegers baogether a into battle against the towhis rivalry was hundreds of years old, and very deep and satisfying.
But even this was fottehe other ehreatened. One enemy erennial: the brickburners children, who lived by the claybeds and were despised by collegers and townies alike. Last year Lyra and some townies had made a temporary trud raided the claybeds, pelting the brick-burners children with lumps of heavy clay and tipping over the soggy castle.. theyd built, before rolling them over and over in the ging substahey lived by until victors and vanquished alike resembled a flock of shrieking golems.
The ular enemy was seasonal. The gyptian families, who lived in al boats, came a with the spring and autumn fairs, and were always good for a fight. There was one family of gyptians in particular, whularly returo their m in that part of the city known as Jericho, with whom Lyrad been feuding ever since she could first throw a stone. When they were last in Oxford, she and Roger and some of the other kit boys from Jordan and St.
Michaels College had laid an ambush for them, throwing mud at their brightly painted narrowboat until the whole family came out to chase them away—at which point the reserve squad under Lyra raided the boat and cast it off from the bank, to float down the al, getting in the way of all the other water traffic while Lyras raiders searched the boat from end to end, looking for the bung.
Lyra firmly believed in this bung. If they pulled it out, she assured her troop, the boat would sink at once; but they didnt find it, and had to abandon ship when the gyptians caught them up, to flee dripping and crowing with triumph through the narrow lanes of Jericho.
That was Lyras world and her delight. She was a coarse and greedy little savage, for the most part. But she always had a dim sehat it wasnt her whole world; that part of her also belonged in the grandeur and ritual of Jordan College; and that somewhere in her life there was a e with the high world of politics represented by Lord Asriel. All she did with that knowledge was to give herself airs and lord it over the other urs. It had never occurred to her to find out more.
So she had passed her childhood, like a half-wild cat. The only variation in her days came on those irregular occasions when Lord Asriel visited the College. A rid powerful uncle was all very well to boast about, but the price of boasting was having to be caught by the most agile Scholar and brought to the Housekeeper to be washed and dressed in a frock, following which she was escorted (with many threats) to the Senior on Room to have tea with Lord Asriel and an invited group of senior Scholars. She dreaded being seen by Roger.
Hed caught sight of her on one of these occasions and hooted with laughter at this beribboned and pink-frilled vision. She had responded with a volley of shrieking curses that shocked the poor Scholar who was esc her, and in the Senior on Room shed slumped mutinously in an armchair until the Master told her sharply to sit up, and then shed glowered at them all till even the Chaplain had to laugh.
What happened on those awkward, formal visits never varied. After the tea, the Master and the other few Scholars whod been invited left Lyra and her uogether, and he called her to stand in front of him and tell him what shed learned since his last visit. And she would mutter whatever she could dredge up about geometry or Arabic or history or anbarology, and he would sit back with one ankle resting oher knee and watch her inscrutably until her words failed.
Last year, before his expedition to the North, hed gone on to say, “And how do you spend your time when youre not diligently studying?”
And she mumbled, “I just play. Sort of around the College. Just...play, really.”
And he said, “Let me see your hands, child.”
She held out her hands for iion, aook them and turhem over to look at her fingernails. Beside him, his daemon lay sphinxlike on the carpet, swishiail occasionally and gazing unblinkingly at Lyra.
“Dirty,” said Lord Asriel, pushing her hands away. “Dont they make you wash in this place?”
“Yes,” she said. “But the Chaplains fingernails are always dirty. Theyre even dirtier than mine.”
“Hes a learned man. Whats your excuse?”
“I mustve got them dirty after I washed.”
“Where do you play to get so dirty?”
She looked at him suspiciously. She had the feeling that being on the roof was forbidden, though no one had actually said so. “In some of the old rooms,” she said finally.
“And where else?”
“In the claybeds, sometimes.”
“And?”
“Jericho and Port Meadow.”
“Nowhere else?”
“No.”
“Youre a liar. I saw you on the roof only yesterday.”
She bit her lip and said nothing. He was watg her sardonically.
“So, you play on the roof as well,” he went on. “Do you ever go into the library?”
“No. I found a rook on the library roof, though,” she went on.
“Did you? Did you catch it?”
“It had a hurt foot. I was going to kill it and roast it but Roger said we should help it get better. So we gave it scraps of food and some wine and then it got better and flew away.”
“Wher?”
“My friend. The kit boy.”
“I see. So youve been all over the roof—”
“Not all over. You t get onto the Sheldon Building because you have to jump up from Pilgrims Tower across a gap. Theres a skylight that opens onto it, but Im not tall enough to reach it.”
“Youve been all over the roof except the Sheldon Building. What about underground?”
“Underground?”
“Theres as much College below ground as there is above it. Im surprised you havent found that out. Well, Im going in a minute. You look healthy enough.
Here.”
He fished in his pocket and drew out a handful of s, from which he gave her five gold dollars.
“Havent they taught you to say thank you?” he said.
“Thank you,” she mumbled.
“Do you obey the Master?”
“Oh, yes.”
“And respect the Scholars?”
“Yes.”
Lord Asriels daemon laughed softly. It was the first sound shed made, and Lyra blushed.
“Go and play, then,” said Lord Asriel.
Lyra turned and darted to the door with relief, remembering to turn and blurt out a “Goodbye.”
So Lyras life had been, before the day when she decided to hide iiring Room, and first heard about Dust.
And of course the Librarian was wrong in saying to the Master that she wouldnt have been ied. She would have listened eagerly now to anyone who could tell her about Dust. She was to hear a great deal more about it in the months to e, aually she would know more about Dust than anyone in the world; but in the meahere was all the rich life of Jordan still being lived around her.
And in any case there was something else to think about. A rumor had been filtering through the streets for some weeks: a rumor that made some people laugh and row silent, as some people scoff at ghosts and others fear them. For no reason that anyone could imagine, children were beginning to disappear.
* * * It would happen like this.
East along the great highway of the River Isis, thronged with slow-moving brick barges and asphalt boats and tankers, way down past Henley and Maideo Teddington, where the tide from the German O reaches, and further down still: to Mortlake, past the house of the great magi Dr. Dee; past Falkeshall, where the pleasure gardens spread out bright with fountains and banners by day, with tree lamps and fireworks by night; past White Hall Palace, where the king holds his weekly cil of state; past the Shot Tower, dropping its endless drizzle of molten lead into vats of murky water; further down still, to where the river, wide and filthy now, swings in a great curve to the south.
This is Limehouse, and here is the child who is going to disappear.
He is called Tony Makarios. His mother thinks hes nine years old, but she has a poor memory that the drink has rotted; he might be eight, or ten. His surname is Greek, but like his age, that is a guess on his mothers part, because he looks more ese than Greek, and theres Irish and Skraeling and Lascar in him from his mothers side too. Tonys not very bright, but he has a sort of clumsy tenderhat sometimes prompts him to give his mother a rough hug and plant a sticky kiss on her cheeks. The poor woman is usually too fuddled to start such a procedure herself; but she responds warmly enough, once she realizes whats happening.
At the moment Tony is hanging about the market ireet. Hes hungry. Its early evening, and he wo fed at home. Hes got a shilling in his pocket that a soldier gave him for taking a message to his best girl, but Tonys not going to waste that on food, when you pick up so much for nothing.
So he wahrough the market, between the old-clothes stalls and the fortune-paper stalls, the fruitmongers and the fried-fish seller, with his little daemon on his shoulder, a sparrow, watg this way and that; and when a stall holder and her daemoh looking elsewhere, a brisk chirp sounds, and Tonys hand shoots out aurns to his loose shirt with an apple or a couple of nuts, and finally with a hot pie.
The stall holder sees that, and shouts, and her cat daemon leaps, but Tonys sparrow is aloft and Tony himself halfway dowreet already. Curses and abuse go with him, but not far. He stops running at the steps of St. Catherines Oratory, where he sits down and takes out his steaming, battered prize, leaving a trail of gravy on his shirt.
And hes being watched. A lady in a long yellow-red fox-fur coat, a beautiful young lady whose dark hair falls, shining delicately, uhe shadow of her fur-lined hood, is standing in the doorway of the oratory, half a dozen steps above him. It might be that a service is finishing, fht es from the doorway behind her, an an is playing inside, and the lady is holding a jeweled breviary.
Tony knows nothing of this. His face tentedly deep in the pie, his toes curled inward and his bare soles together, he sits and chews and swallows while his daemon bees a mouse and grooms her whiskers.
The young ladys daemon is moving out from beside the fox-fur coat. He is in the form of a monkey, but no ordinary monkey: his fur is long and silky and of the most deep and lustrous gold. With sinuous movements he inches doweps toward the boy, and sits a step above him.
Then the mouse senses something, and bees a sparrow again, cog her head a fra sideways, and hops along the stone a step or two.
The monkey watches the sparrow; the sparrow watches the monkey.
The monkey reaches out slowly. His little hand is black, his nails perfect horny claws, his movements gentle and inviting. The sparrow t resist. She hops further, and further, and then, with a little flutter, up on to the monkeys hand.
The monkey lifts her up, and gazes closely at her before standing and swinging back to his human, taking the sparrow daemon with him. The lady bends her sted head to whisper.
And then Tony turns. He t help it.
“Ratter!” he says, half in alarm, his mouth full.
The sparrow chirps. It must be safe. Tony swallows his mouthful and stares.
“Hello,” says the beautiful lady. “Whats your name?”
“Tony.”
“Where do you live, Tony?”
“Clarice Walk.”
“Whats in that pie?”
“Beefsteak.”
“Do you like chocolatl?”
“Yeah!”
“As it happens, Ive got more chocolatl than I drink myself. Will you e and help me drink it?”
Hes lost already. He was lost the moment his slow-witted daemon hopped onto the monkeys hand. He follows the beautiful young lady and the golden monkey down Denmark Street and along to Hangmans Wharf, and down King Gees Steps to a little green door in the side of a tall warehouse. She knocks, the door is opehey go in, the door is closed. Tony will never e out—at least, by that entrance; and hell never see his main. She, poor druhing, will think hes run away, and when she remembers him, shell think it was her fault, and sob her sorry heart out.
* * * Little Tony Makarios wasnt the only child to be caught by the lady with the golden monkey. He found a dozen others in the cellar of the warehouse, boys and girls, none older than twelve or so; though since all of them had histories like his, none could be sure of their age. What Tony didnt notice, of course, was the factor that they all had in on. None of the children in that warm and steamy cellar had reached the age of puberty.
The kind lady saw him settled on a bench against the wall, and provided by a silent serving woman with a mug of chocolatl from the sau on the iron stove. Tony ate the rest of his pie and drank the sweet hot liquor without taking muotice of his surroundings, and the surroundings took little notice of him: he was too small to be a threat, and too stolid to promise much satisfa as a victim.
It was another boy who asked the obvious question.
“Hey, lady! What you got us all here for?”
He was a tough-looking wretch with dark chocolatl on his top lip and a gaunt black rat for a daemon. The lady was standihe door, talking to a stout man with the air of a sea captain, and as she turo answer, she looked so angeli the hissing naphtha light that all the children fell silent.
“We want your help,” she said. “You dont mind helping us, do you?”
No one could say a word. They all gazed, suddenly shy. They had never seen a lady like this; she was so gracious and sweet and kind that they felt they hardly deserved their good luck, and whatever she asked, theyd give it gladly so as to stay in her presence a little longer.
She told them that they were going on a voyage. They would be well fed and warmly clothed, and those who wao could send messages back to their families to let them know they were safe. Captain Magnusson would take them on board his ship very soon, and thehe tide was right, theyd sail out to sea a a course for the North.
Soon those few who did want to send a message to what-ever home they had were sitting around the beautiful lady as she wrote a few li their dictation and, havihem scratch a clumsy X at the foot of the page, folded it into a sted envelope and wrote the address they told her. Tony would have liked to send something to his mother, but he had a realistic idea of her ability to read it. He plucked at the ladys fox-fur sleeve and whispered that hed like her to tell his mum where he was going, and all, and she bent her gracious head close enough to his malodorous little body to hear, and stroked his head and promised to pass the message on.
Then the children clustered around to say goodbye. The golden moroked all their daemons, and they all touched the fox fur for luck, or as if they were drawing some strength or hope oodness out of the lady, and she bade them all farewell and saw them in the care of the bold captain on board a steam launch at the jetty. The sky was dark now, the river a mass of bobbing lights. The lady stood oty and waved till she could see their fao more.
Theurned baside, with the golden monkey led in her breast, and threw the little bund.９9ｌib?le of letters into the furnace before leaving the way she had e.
Children from the slums were easy enough to entice away, but eventually people noticed, and the police were stirred into relut a. For a while there were no more bewitgs. But a rumor had been born, and little by little it ged and grew and spread, and when after a while a few children disappeared in Norwich, and then Sheffield, and then Maer, the people in those places whod heard of the disappearances elsewhere added the new vanishings to the story and gave it rength.
And so the legend grew of a mysterious group of enters who spirited children away. Some said their leader was a beautiful lady, others said a tall man with red eyes, while a third story told of a youth who laughed and sang to his victims so that they followed him like sheep.
As for where they took these lost children, no two stories agreed. Some said it was to Hell, uhe ground, to Fairyland. Others said to a farm where the children were kept and fattened for the table. Others said that the children were kept and sold as slaves to rich Tartars....And so on.
But ohing on which everyone agreed was the name of these invisible kidnappers. They had to have a name, or not be referred to at all, and talking about them—especially if you were safe and snug at home, or in Jordan College—was delicious. And the hat seemed to settle on them, without anyones knowing why, was the Gobblers.
“Dont stay out late, or the Gobblers11 get you!”
“My cousin in Northampton, she knows a woman whose little boy was took by the Gobblers....”
“The Gobblersve been in Stratford. They say theyre ing south!”
And, iably:
“Lets play kids and Gobblers!”
So said Lyra ter, one rainy afternoohey were alone in the dusty attics. He was her devoted slave by this time; he would have followed her to the ends of the earth.
“How dyou play that?”
“You hide and I find you and slice you open, right, like the Gobblers do.”
“You dont know what they do. They might not do that at all.”
“Youre afraid of em,” she said. “I tell.”
“I ent. I dont believe in em anyway.”
“I do,” she said decisively. “But I ent afraid either. Id just do what my uncle done last time he came to Jordan. I seen him. He was iiring Room and there was this guest who werent polite, and my uncle just give him a hard look and the man fell dead on the spot, with all foam and froth round his mouth.”
“He never,” said Roger doubtfully. “They never said anything about that i. Anyway, you ent allowed iiring Room.”
“Course not. They wouldnt tell servants about a thing like that. And I have been iiring Room, so there. Anyway, my uncles always doing that. He do to some Tartars when they caught him ohey tied him up and they was going to cut his guts out, but when the first man e up with the knife, my uncle just looked at him, and he fell dead, so another one e up and he dohe same to him, and finally there was only o. My uncle said hed leave him alive if he untied him, so he did, and then my uncle killed him anyway just to teach him a lesson.”
Roger was less sure about that than about Gobblers, but the story was too good to waste, so they took it in turns to be Lord Asriel and the expiring Tartars, using sherbet dip for the foam.
However, that was a distra; Lyra was still i on playing Gobblers, and she inveigled Roger down into the wine cellars, which they entered by means of the Butlers spare set of keys. Together they crept through the great vaults where the Colleges Tokay and ary, its Burgundy, its brantwijn were lying uhe cobwebs of ages. A stone arches rose above them supported by pillars as thick as ten trees, irregular flagstones lay underfoot, and on all sides were ranged rack upon rack, tier upon tier, of bottles and barrels. It was fasating. With Gobblers fotten again, the two children tiptoed from end to end holding a dle in trembling fingers, peering into every dark er, with a single question growing more urgent in Lyras mind every moment: what did the wiaste like?
There was an easy way of answering that. Lyra—ers fervent protests—picked out the oldest, twistiest, gree bottle she could find, and, not having anything to extract the cork with, broke it off at the neck. Huddled in the furthest er, they sipped at the heady crimson liquor, w when theyd bee drunk, and how theyd tell when they were. Lyra didnt like the taste much, but she had to admit how grand and plicated it was. The fuhing was watg their two daemons, who seemed to be getting more and more muddled: falling iggling senselessly, and ging shape to look like gargoyles, each trying to be uglier thaher.
Finally, and almost simultaneously, the children discovered what it was like to be drunk.
“Do they like doing this?” gasped Roger, after vomiting copiously.
“Yes,” said Lyra, in the same dition. “And so do I,” she added stubbornly.
Lyra learned nothing from that episode except that playing Gobblers led to iing places. She remembered her uncles words in their last interview, and began to explore underground, for what was above ground was only a small fra of the whole. Like some enormous fungus whose root system extended over acres, Jordan (finding itself jostling for space above ground with St. Michaels College on one side, Gabriel College oher, and the Uy Library behind) had begun, sometime in the Middle Ages, to spread below the surface.
Tunnels, shafts, vaults, cellars, staircases had so hollowed out the earth below Jordan and for several hundred yards around it that there was almost as much air below ground as above; Jordan College stood on a sort of froth of stone.
And now that Lyra had the taste for expl it, she abandoned her usual haunt, the irregular alps of the College roofs, and plunged with Roger into this herworld. From playing at Gobblers she had turo hunting them, for what could be more likely than that they were lurking out of sight below the ground?
So one day she and Roger made their way into the crypt below the oratory. This was where geions of Masters had been buried, ea his lead-lined oak coffin in niches along the stone walls. A stoablet below each space gave their names:
SIMON LE CLERC, MASTER 1765-1789 CEREBATON REQUIEST IN PACE “Whats that mean?” said Roger.
“The first parts his name, and the last bits Roman. And theres the dates in the middle when he was Master. And the other name must be his daemon.”
They moved along the silent vault, trag the letters of more inscriptions:
FRANCIS LYALL, MASTER 1748-1765 ZOHARIEL REQUIEST IN PACE IATIUS COLE, MASTER 1745-1748 MUSCA REQUIEST IN PA each coffin, Lyra was ied to see, a brass plaque bore a picture of a different being: this one a basilisk, this a serpent, this a monkey. She realized that they were images of the dead mens daemons. As people became adult, their daemons lost the power to ge and assumed one shape, keeping it permaly.
“These coffi skeletons in “em!” whispered Roger.
“M flesh,” whispered Lyra. “And worms and maggots all twisting about in their eye sockets.”
“Must be ghosts down here,” said Roger, shivering pleasantly.
Beyond the first crypt they found a passage lined with stone shelves. Each shelf artitioned off into square ses, and in each se rested a skull.
Rogers daemon, tail tucked firmly between her legs, shivered against him and gave a little quiet howl.
“Hush,” he said.
Lyra couldnt see Pantalaimon, but she knew his moth form was resting on her shoulder and probably shivering too.
She reached up and lifted the skull gently out of its resting place.
“What you doing?” said Roger. “You ent supposed to touch em.”
She tur over and over, taking no notice. Something suddenly fell out of the hole at the base of the skull — fell through her fingers and rang as it hit the floor, and she nearly dropped the skull in alarm.
“Its a !” said Roger, feeling for it. “Might be treasure!”
He held it up to the dle and they both gazed wide-eyed. It was not a , but a little disc of broh a crudely engraved inscription showing a cat.
“Its like the ones on the coffins,” said Lyra. “Its his daemon. Must be.”
THREE- LYRA’S JORDAN-2
“Better put it back,” said Roger uneasily, and Lyra upturhe skull and dropped the disk bato its immemorial resting place before returning the skull to the shelf. Each of the other skulls, they found, had its own daemon-, showing its owners lifetime panion still close to him ih.
“Who dyou think these were when they were alive?” said Lyra. “Probably Scholars, I re. Only the Masters get coffins. Theres probably been so many Scholars all down the turies that there wouldnt be room to bury the whole of em, so they just cut ..heir heads off ahem. Thats the most important part of em anyway.”
They found no Gobblers, but the catabs uhe oratory kept Lyra and Roger busy for days. Once she tried to play a tri some of the dead Scholars, by switg around the s in their skulls so they were with the wrong daemons.
Pantalaimon became so agitated at this that he ged into a bat and flew up and down uttering shrill cries and flapping his wings in her face, but she took no notice: it was too good a joke to waste. She paid for it later, though. In bed in her narrow room at the top of Staircase Twelve she was visited by a night-ghast, and woke up screaming at the three robed figures who stood at the bedside pointing their bony fingers before throwing back their cowls to show bleeding stumps where their heads should have been. Only when Pantalaimon became a lion and roared at them did they retreat, bag away into the substance of the wall until all that was visible was their arms, then their horny yellow-gray hands, thewitg fingers, then nothing. First thing in the m she hastened down to the catabs aored the daemon-s to their rightful places, and whispered “Sorry! Sorry!” to the skulls.
The catabs were much larger than the wine cellars, but they too had a limit.
When Lyra and Roger had explored every er of them and were sure there were no Gobblers to be found there, they turheir attention elsewhere—but not before they were spotted leaving the crypt by the Intercessor, who called them bato the oratory.
The Intercessor lump, elderly man known as Father Heyst. It was his job to lead all the College services, to pread pray and hear fessions. When Lyra was younger, he had taken an i in her spiritual welfare, only to be founded by her sly indifferend insincere repentances. She was not spiritually promising, he had decided.
When they heard him call, Lyra and Roger turned relutly and walked, dragging their feet, into the great musty-smelling dimness of the oratory. dles flickered here and there in front of images of the saints; a faint and distant clatter came from the an loft, where some repairs were going on; a servant olishing the brass le. Father Heyst beed from the vestry door.
“Where have you been?” he said to them. “Ive seen you e iwo or three times now. What are you up to?”
His tone was not accusatory. He sounded as if he were genuinely ied. His daemon flicked a lizard to them from her per his shoulder.
Lyra said, “We wao look down in the crypt.”
“Whatever for?”
“The...the coffins. We wao see all the coffins,” she said.
“But why?”
She shrugged. It was her stant response when she ressed.
“And you,” he went on, turning ter. Rogers daemon anxiously wagged her terrier tail to propitiate him. “Whats your name?”
“Roger, Father.”
“If youre a servant, where do you work?” “I, Father.” “Should you be there now?” “Yes, Father.” “Then be off with you.”
Roger turned and ran. Lyra dragged her foot from side to side on the floor.
“As for you, Lyra,” said Father Heyst, “Im pleased to see you taking an i in what lies in the oratory. You are a lucky child, to have all this history around you.” “Mm,” said Lyra.
“But I wonder about your choice of panions. Are you a lonely child?” “No,”
she said.
“Do you...do you miss the society of other children?” “No.”
“I dont mean Roger the kit boy. I mean children such as yourself. Nobly born children. Would you like to have some panions of that sort?” “No.”
“But irls, perhaps...” “No.”
“You see, none of us would want you to miss all the usual childhood pleasures and pastimes. I sometimes think it must be a lonely life for you here among a pany of elderly Scholars, Lyra. Do you feel that?” “No.”
He tapped his thumbs together over his interlaced fingers, uo think of anything else to ask this stubborn child.
“If there is anything troubling you,” he said finally, “you know you e and tell me about it. I hope you feel you always do that.” “Yes,” she said.
“Do you say your prayers?”
“Yes.”
“Good girl. Well, run along.”
With a barely cealed sigh of relief, she turned a. Having failed to find Gobblers below ground, Lyra took to the streets again. She was at home there.
Then, almost when shed lost i ihe Gobblers appeared in Oxford.
The first Lyra heard of it was when a young boy went missing from a gyptian family she knew.
It was about the time of the horse fair, and the al basin was crowded with narrowboats and butty boats, with traders and travelers, and the wharves along the waterfront in Jericho were bright with gleaming harness and loud with the clop of hooves and the clamor of bargaining. Lyra always ehe horse fair; as well as the ce of stealing a ride on a less-than-well-attended horse, there were endless opportunities for provoking warfare.
And this year she had a grand plan. Inspired by the capture of the narrowboat the year before, she intehis time to make a proper voyage before being turned out. If she and her ies from the College kits could get as far as Abingdon, they could play havoc with the weir....
But this year there was to be no war. Something else happened. Lyra was sauntering along the edge of the Port Meadow boatyard in the m sun, wither for once (he had beeailed to wash the buttery floor) but with Hugh Lovat and Simon Parslow, passing a stolen cigarette from oo another and blowing out the smoke ostentatiously, when she heard a cry in a voice she reized.
“Well, what have you doh him, you half-arsed pillock?”
It was a mighty voice, a womans voice, but a woman with lungs of brass aher. Lyra looked around for her at once, because this was Ma Costa, who had clouted Lyra dizzy on two occasions but given her hot gingerbread on three, and whose family was noted for the grandeur and sumptu-ousness of their boat. They were princes among gyptians, and Lyra admired Ma Costa greatly, but she inteo be wary of her for some time yet, for theirs was the boat she had hijacked.
One of Lyras brat panions picked up a stoomatically when he heard the otion, but Lyra said, “Put it down. Shes in a temper. She could snap your bae like a twig.”
In fact, Ma Costa looked more anxious than angry. The man she was addressing, a horse trader, was shrugging and spreading his hands.
“Well, I dunno,” he was saying. “He was here one minute and gohe . I never saw where he went....”
“He was helping you! He was holding your bloody horses for you!”
“Well, he shouldve stayed there, shouldnt he? Runs off in the middle of a job—”
He got no further, because Ma Costa suddenly dealt him a mighty blow on the side.. of the head, and followed it up with such a volley of curses and slaps that he yelled and turo flee. The other horse traders nearby jeered, and a flighty colt reared up in alarm.
“Whats going on?” said Lyra to a gyptian child whod been watg open-mouthed. “Whats she angry about?”
“Its her kid,” said the child. “Its Billy. She probly res the Gobblers got him. They mightve dooo. I aint seen him meself since—”
“The Gobblers? Has they e to Oxford, then?”
The gyptian boy turned away to call to his friends, who were all watg Ma Costa.
“She dont know whats going on! She dont know the Gobblers is here!”
Half a dozen brats turned with expressions of derision, and Lyra threw her cigarette down, reizing the cue for a fight. Everyones daemon instantly became warlike: each child was apanied by fangs, or claws, or bristling fur, and Pantalaimon, ptuous of the limited imaginations of these gyptian daemons, became a dragon the size of a deer hound.
But before they could all join battle, Ma Costa herself waded in, smag two of the gyptians aside and fronting Lyra like a prizefighter.
“You seen him?” she demanded of Lyra. “You seen Billy?”
“No,” Lyra said. “We just got here. I ent seen Billy for months.”
Ma Costas daemon was wheeling in the bright air above her head, a hawk, fierce yellow eyes snapping this way and that, unblinking. Lyra was frightened. No one worried about a child gone missing for a few hours, certainly not a gyptian: iight-knit gyptian boat world, all children were precious aravagantly loved, and a mother khat if a child was out of sight, it wouldnt be far from someone elses who would protect it instinctively.
But here was Ma Costa, a queen among the gyptians, in a terror for a missing child. What was going on?
Ma Costa looked half-blindly over the little group of children and turned away to stumble through the crowd on the wharf, bellowing for her child. At ohe children turned back to one aheir feud abandoned in the face of her grief.
“What is them Gobblers?” said Simon Parslow, one of Lyras panions.
The first gyptian boy said, “You know. They been stealing kids all over the try. Theyre pirates—”
“They ent pirates,” corrected anyptian. “Theyre aboles. Thats why they call em Gobblers.”
“They eat kids?” said Lyras other y, Hugh Lovat, a kit boy from St.
Michaels.
“No one knows,” said the first gyptian. “They take em away and they ent never seen again.”
“We all know that,” said Lyra. “We been playing kids and Gobblers for months, before you were, I bet. But 1 bet no ones seen em.”
“They have,” said one boy.
“Who, then?” persisted Lyra. “Have you seen em? How dyou know it ent just one person?”
“Charlie seen em in Banbury,” said a gyptian girl. “They e and talked to this lady while another man took her little boy out the garden.”
“Yeah,” piped up Charlie, a gyptian boy. “I seen em do it!”
“What did they look like?” said Lyra.
“Well...l never properly saw em,” Charlie said. “I saw their truck, though,” he added. “They e in a white truck. They put the little boy irud drove off quick.”
“But why do they call em Gobblers?” Lyra asked.
“Cause they eat em,” said the first gyptian boy. “Someoold us in Northampton. They been up there and all. This girl in Northampton, her brother was took, and she said the men as took him told her they was going to eat him.
Everyone knows that. They gobble em up.”
A gyptian girl standing nearby began to cry loudly.
“Thats Billys cousin,” said Charlie.
Lyra said, “Who saw Billy last?”
“Me,” said half a dozen voices. “I seen him holding Johnny Fiorellis old horse—I seen him by the toffee-apple seller—I seen him swinging on the e—”
When Lyra had sorted it out, she gathered that Billy had been seen for certain not less than two hours previously.
“So,” she said, “sometime in the last two hours there mustve been Gobblers here....”
They all looked around, shivering in spite of the warm sun, the crowded wharf, the familiar smells of tar and horses and smokeleaf. The trouble was that because no one knew what these Gobblers looked like, anyone might be a Gobbler, as Lyra pointed out to the appalled gang, who were now all under her sway, collegers and gyptians alike.
“Theyre bound to look like ordinary people, else theyd be seen at once,” she explained. “If they only came at night, they could look like anything. But if they e in the daylight, they got to look ordinary. So any of these people might be Gobblers....”
“They ent,” said a gyptian uainly. “I know em all.”
“All right, not these, but anyone else,” said Lyra. “Lets go and look for em! And their white truck!”
And that precipitated a swarm. Other searchers soon joihe first ones, and before long, thirty or myptian children were rag from end to end of the wharves, running in and out of stables, scrambling over the es and derricks in the boatyard, leaping over the feo the wide meadow, swinging fifteen at a time on the old swing bridge over the green water, and running full pelt through the narrow streets of Jericho, betweetle brick terraced houses and into the great square-towered oratory of St. Barnabas the Chymist. Half of them didnt know what they were looking for, and thought it was just a lark, but those closest to Lyra felt a real fear and apprehensioime they glimpsed a solitary figure down an alley or in the dimness of the oratory: was it a Gobbler?
But of course it wasually, with no success, and with the shadow of Billys real disappearance hanging over them all, the fun faded away. As Lyra and the two College boys left Jericho when suppertime hey saw the gyptians gathering on the wharf o where the Costas boat was moored. Some of the women were g loudly, and the men were standing in angry groups, with all their daemons agitated and rising in nervous flight or snarling at shadows.
“I bet them Gobblers wouldnt dare e in here,” said Lyra to Simon Parslow, as the two of them stepped over the threshold into the great lodge of Jordan.
“No,” he said uainly. “But I know theres a kid missing from the market.”
“Who?” Lyra said. She knew most of the market children, but she hadnt heard of this.
“Jessie Reynolds, out the saddlers. She werent there at shutting-up time yesterday, and shed only gone for a bit of fish for her dads tea. She never e bad no oned seehey searched all through the market and everywhere.”
“I never heard about that!” said Lyra, indignant. She sidered it a deplorable lapse on the part of her subjeot to tell her everything and at once.
“Well, it was only yesterday. She mightve turned up now.”
“Im going to ask,” said Lyra, and turo leave the lodge.
But she hadnt got out of the gate before the Porter called her.
“Here, Lyra! Youre not to go out again this evening. Masters orders.”
“Why not?”
“I told you, Masters orders. He says if you e in, you stay in.”
“You catch me,” she said, and darted out before the old man could leave his doorway.
She ran across the narrow street and down into the alley where the vans unloaded goods for the covered market. This being shutting-up time, there were few vans there now, but a knot of youths stood smoking and talking by the tral gate opposite the high stone wall of St. Michaels College. Lyra knew one of them, a sixteen-year-old she admired because he could spit further than anyone else shed ever heard of, and she went and waited humbly for him to notice her.
“Yeah? What do you want?” he said finally.
“Is Jessie Reynolds disappeared?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“Cause a gyptian kid disappeared today and all.”
“Theyre always disappearing, gyptians. After every horse fair they disappear.”
“So do horses,” said one of his friends.
“This is different,” said Lyra. “This is a kid. We was looking for him all afternoon and the other kids said the Gobblers got him.”
“The what?”
“The Gobblers,” she said. “Ent you heard of the Gobblers?”
It was o the other boys as well, and apart from a few coarse ents they listened closely to what she told them.
“Gobblers,” said Lyras acquaintance, whose name was Dick. “Its stupid. These gyptians, they pick up all kinds of stupid ideas.”
“They said there was Gobblers in Banbury a couple of weeks ago,” Lyra insisted, “and there was five kids taken. They probably e to Oxford now to get kids from us. It mustve been them what got Jessie.”
“There was a kid lost over Cowley way,” said one of the other boys. “I remember now. My auntie, she was there yesterday, cause she sells fish and chips out a van, and she heard about it....Some little boy, thats it...I dunno about the Gobblers, though. They ent real, Gobblers. Just a story.”
“They are!” Lyra said. “The gyptians seehey re they eat the kids they catch, and...”
She stopped in midsentence, because something had suddenly e into her mind.
During that strange evening shed ..spent hidden iiring Room, Lord Asriel had shown a lantern slide of a man with streams of light p from his hand; and thered been a small figure beside him, with less light around it; and hed said it was a child; and someone had asked if it was a severed child, and her uncle had said no, that was the point. Lyra remembered that severed meant “cut.”
And then something else hit her heart: where was Roger?
She hadnt seen him sihe m....
Suddenly she felt afraid. Pantalaimon, as a miniature lion, sprang into her arms and growled. She said goodbye to the youths by the gate and walked quietly bato Turl Street, and then ran full pelt for Jordan lodge, tumbling in through the door a sed before the now cheetah-shaped daemon.
The Porter was sanctimonious.
“I had t the Master and tell him,” he said. “He ent pleased at all. I wouldnt be in your shoes, not for money I wouldnt.”
“Wheres Roger?” she demanded.
“I ent seen him. Hell be for it, too. Ooh, when Mr. Cawson catches him—”
Lyra ran to the kit and thrust her way into the hot, gorous, steaming bustle.
“Wheres Roger?” she shouted.
“Clear off, Lyra! Were busy here!”
“But where is he? Has he turned up or not?”
No one seemed ied.
“But where is he? You mustve heard!” Lyra shouted at the chef, who boxed her ears a her st away.
Berhe pastry cook tried to calm her down, but she wouldnt be soled.
“They got him! Them bloody Gobblers, they oughter catch em and bloody kill em! I hate em! You dont care aber—”
“Lyra, we all care aber—”
“You dont, else youd all stop work and go and look for him right now! I hate you!”
“There could be a dozen reasons why Roger ent turned up. Listen to sense. We got dio prepare and serve ihan an hour; the Masters got guests in the lodging, and hell be eating over there, and that means Chef11 have to attend to getting the food there quick so it dont go cold; and what with ohing and another, Lyra, lifes got to go on. Im sure Roger11 turn up....”
Lyra turned and ran out of the kit, knog over a stack of silver dish covers and ign the roar of ahat arose. She sped doweps and across the quadrangle, between the chapel and Palmers Tower and into the Yaxley Quad, where the oldest buildings of the College stood.
Pantalaimon scampered before her, flowing up the stairs to the very top, where Lyras bedroom was. Lyra barged open the door, dragged her rickety chair to the window, flung wide the casement, and scrambled out. There was a lead-lioter a foot wide just below the window, and once she was standing in that, she turned and clambered up over the rough tiles until she stood oopme of the roof. There she opened her mouth and screamed. Pantalaimon, who always became a bird on the roof, flew round and round shrieking rook shrieks with her.
The evening sky was awash with peach, apricot, cream: tender little ice-cream clouds in a wide e sky. The spires and towers of Oxford stood around them, level but no higher; the green woods of Chateau-Vert and White Ham rose oher side to the east and the west. Rooks were g somewhere, and bells were ringing, and from the oxpens the steady beat of a gas engine annouhe ast of the evening Roya..l Mail zeppelin for London. Lyra watched it climb away beyond the spire of St. Michaels Chapel, as big at first as the tip of her little finger when she held it at arms length, and then steadily smaller until it was a dot in the pearly sky.
She turned and looked down into the shadowed quadrangle, where the black-gowned figures of the Scholars were already beginning to drift in ones and twos toward the buttery, their daemons strutting or fluttering alongside or perg calmly on their shoulders. The lights were going on in the Hall; she could see the stained-glass windows gradually beginning to glow as a servant moved up the tables lighting the naphtha lamps. The Stewards bell began to toll, announg half an hour before dinner.
This was her world. She wa to stay the same forever and ever, but it was ging around her, for someo there was stealing children. She sat on the re, in hands.
“We better rescue him, Pantalaimon,” she said. He answered in his rook voice from the ey. “Itll be dangerous,” he said. “Course! I know that.”
“Remember what they said iiring Room.” “What?”
“Something about a child up in the Arctic. The ohat wasnt attrag the Dust.”
“They said it was aire child....What about it?”
“That might be what theyre going to do ter and the gyptians and the other kids.”
“What?”
“Well, what does entire mean?”
“Dunno. They cut em in half, probably. I re they make slaves out of em.
Thatd be more use. They probably got mines up there. Uranium mines for atomcraft. I bet thats what it is. And if they sent grownups down the miheyd be dead, so they use kids instead because they cost less. Thats what theyve doh him.”
“I think—”
But antalaimon thought had to wait, because someone began to shout from below.
“Lyra! Lyra! You e in this instant!”
There was a banging on the window frame. Lyra khe void the impatience:
it was Mrs. Lonsdale, the Housekeeper. There was no hiding from her.
Tight-faced, Lyra slid down the roof and into the gutter, and then climbed in through the window again. Mrs. Lonsdale was running some water into the little chipped basin, to the apa of a great groaning and hammering from the pipes.
“The number of times you been told about going out there—Look at you! Just look at your skirt—its filthy! Take it off at ond wash yourself while I look for somethi that ent torn. Why you t keep yourself and tidy...”
Lyra was too sulky even to ask why she was having to wash and dress, and no grownup ever gave reasons of their own accord. She dragged the dress over her head and dropped it on the narrow bed, and began to wash desultorily while Pantalaimon, a ary now, hopped closer and closer to Mrs. Lonsdales daemon, a stolid retriever, trying in vain to annoy him.
“Look at the state of this wardrobe! You ent hung nothing up for weeks! Look at the creases in this—”
Look at this, look at that...Lyra didnt want to look. She shut her eyes as she rubbed at her face with the thin towel.
“Youll just have to wear it as it is. There ent time to take an iron to it.
God bless me, girl, your knees—look at the state of them....”
“Dont want to look at nothing,” Lyra muttered.
Mrs. Lonsdale smacked her leg. “Wash,” she said ferociously. “You get all that dirt off.”
“Why?” Lyra said at last. “I never wash my knees usually. No ones going to look at my knees. Whatve I got to do all this for? You dont care aber her, any more than Chef does. Im the only ohat—” Another smack, oher leg.
“None of that nonsense. Im a Parslow, same as Rogers father. Hes my sed cousin. I bet you didnt know that, cause I bet you never asked, Miss Lyra. I bet it never occurred to you. Dont you chide me with not g about the boy.
God knows, I even care about you, and you give me little enough reason and no thanks.”
She seized the flannel and rubbed Lyras knees so hard she left the skin bright pink and sore, but .
“The reason for this is yoing to have dinner with the Master and his guests. I hope to God you behave. Speak when youre spoken to, be quiet and polite, smile nicely and dont you ever say Dunno when someone asks you a question.”
She dragged the best dress onto Lyras skinny frame, tugged it straight, fished a bit of red ribbon out of the tangle in a drawer, and brushed Lyras hair with a coarse brush.
“If theyd let me know earlier, I couldve given your hair a proper wash. Well, thats too bad. As long as they dont look too close...There. Now stand up straight. Wheres those best pateher shoes?”
Five minutes later Lyra was knog on the door of the Masters lodging, the grand and slightly gloomy house that opened into the Yaxley Quadrangle and backed onto the Library Garden. Pantalaimon, an ermine now for politeness, rubbed himself against her leg. The door ened by the Masters manservant Cousins, an old enemy of Lyras; but both khat this was a state of truce.
“Mrs. Lonsdale said I was to e,” said Lyra.
“Yes,” said Cousins, stepping aside. “The Masters in the drawing room.”
He showed her into the large room that overlooked the Library Garden. The last of the sun shoo it, through the gap between the library and Palmers Tower, and lit up the heavy pictures and the glum silver the Master collected.
It also lit up the guests, and Lyra realized why they werent going to dine in Hall: three of the guests were women.
“Ah, Lyra,” said the Master. “Im so glad you could e. Cousins, could you find some sort of soft drink? Dame Hannah, I dont think youve met Lyra...Lord Asriels niece, you know.”
Dame Hannah Relf was the head of one of the womens colleges, an elderly gray-haired lady whose daemon was a marmoset. Lyra shook hands as politely as she could, and was then introduced to the uests, who were, like Dame Hannah, Scholars from other colleges and quite uing. Then the Master came to the final guest.
“Mrs. Coulter,” he said, “this is our Lyra. Lyra, e and say hello to Mrs.
Coulter.”
“Hello, Lyra,” said Mrs. Coulter.
She was beautiful and young. Her sleek black hair framed her cheeks, and her daemon was a golden monkey.
FOUR - THE ALETHIOMETER-1
“I hope youll sit o me at dinner,” said Mrs. Coulter, making room for Lyra on the sofa. “Im not used to the grandeur of a Masters lodging. Youll have to show me whiife and fork to use.”
“Are you a female Scholar?” said Lyra. She regarded female Scholars with a proper Jordan disdain: there were such people, but, poor things, they could never be taken more seriously than animals dressed up and ag a play. Mrs.
Coulter, oher hand, was not like any female Scholar Lyra had seen, aainly not like the two serious elderly ladies who were the other female guests. Lyra had asked the question expeg the answer No, in fact, for Mrs.
Coulter had su air of glamour that Lyra was entranced. She could hardly take her eyes off her.
“Not really,” Mrs. Coulter said. “Im a member of Dame Hannahs college, but most of my work takes place outside Oxford....Tell me about yourself, Lyra. Have you always lived at Jordan College?”
Within five minutes Lyra had told her everything about her half-wild life: her favorite routes over the rooftops, the battle of the claybeds, the time she and Roger had caught and roasted a rook, her iion to capture a narrowboat from the gyptians and sail it to Abingdon, and so on. She even (looking around and l her voice) told her about the trick she and Roger had played on the skulls in the crypt.
“And these ghosts came, right, they came to my bedroom without their heads! They couldnt talk except for making sort of gurgling noises, but I knew what they wanted all right. So I went dow day and put their s back. Theyd probably have killed me else.”
“Youre not afraid of dahen?” said Mrs. Coulter admiringly. They were at dinner by this time, and as Lyra had hoped, sittio each other. Lyra ignored pletely the Librarian oher side and spent the whole meal talking to Mrs. Coulter.
When the ladies withdrew for coffee, Dame Hannah said, “Tell me, Lyra—are they going to send you to school?”
Lyra looked blank. “I dun—I dont know,” she said. “Probably not,” she add藏书网ers and qualities such as elegance, charm, and grace. Lyra would be dressed up prettily for these occasions, and the ladies would pamper her and include her in their graceful delicate talk, which was all about people: this artist, or that politi, or those lovers.
And when the evening came, Mrs. Coulter might take Lyra to the theater, and again there would be lots of glamorous people to talk to and be admired by, for it seemed that Mrs. Coulter knew everyone important in London.
Iervals between all these other activities Mrs. Coulter would teach her the rudiments of geography and mathematics. Lyras knowledge had great gaps in it, like a map of the world largely eaten by mice, for at Jordan they had taught her in a piecemeal and disected way: a junior Scholar would be detailed to catch her and instruct her in sud-such, and the lessons would tinue for a sullen week or so until she “fot” to turn up, to the Scholars relief. Or else a Scholar would fet what he was supposed to teach her, and drill her at great length about the subject of his current research, whatever that happeo be. It was no wonder her knowledge atchy. She knew about atoms and elementary particles, and anbaromagic charges and the four fual forces and other bits and pieces of experimental theology, but nothing about the solar system. In fact, when Mrs. Coulter realized this and explained how the earth and the other five plas revolved around the sun, Lyra laughed loudly at the joke.
However, she was keen to show that she did know some things, and when Mrs.
Coulter was telling her about eles, she said expertly, “Yes, theyre ively charged particles. Sort of like Dust, except that Dust isnt charged.”
As soon as she said that, Mrs. Coulters daemon snapped his head up to look at her, and all the golden fur on his little body stood up, bristling, as if it were charged itself. Mrs. Coulter laid a hand on his back.
“Dust?” she said.
“Yeah. You know, from space, that Dust.”
“What do you know about Dust, Lyra?”
“Oh, that it es out of space, and it lights people up, if you have a special sort of camera to see it by. Except not children. It doesnt affect children.”
“Where did you learn that from?”
By now Lyra was aware that there owerful tension in the room, because Pantalaimon had crept ermine-like onto her lap and was trembling violently.
“Just someone in Jordan,” Lyra said vaguely. “I fet who. I think it was one of the Scholars.”
“Was it in one of your lessons?”
“Yes, it might have been. Or else it mightve been just in passing. Yes. I think that was it. This Scholar, I think he was from New Denmark, he was talking to the Chaplain about Dust and I was just passing and it sounded iing so I couldnt help stopping to listen. Thats what it was.”
“I see,” said Mrs. Coulter.
“Is it right, what he told me? Did I get it wrong?”
?
“Well, I dont know. Im sure you know much more than I do. Lets get back to those eles....”
Later, Pantalaimon said, “You know when all the fur stood up on her daemon?
Well, I was behind him, and she grabbed his fur so tight her knuckles went white. You couldnt see. It was a long time till his fur went down. I thought he was going to leap at you.”
That was strange, no doubt; but her of them knew what to make of it.
And finally, there were other kinds of lessons so gently and subtly given that they didnt feel like lessons at all. How to wash ones own hair; how to judge which colors suited one; how to say no in such a charming way that no offense was given; how to put on lipstick, powder, st. To be sure, Mrs. Coulter didnt teach Lyra the latter arts directly, but she knew Lyra was watg when she made herself up, and she took care to let Lyra see where she kept the etics, and to allow her time on her own to explore and try them out for herself.
* * * Time passed, and autumn began to ge into winter. From time to time Lyra thought of Jordan College, but it seemed small and quiet pared to the busy life she led now. Every so oftehought er, too, a uneasy, but there era to go to, or a new dress to wear, or the Royal Arctistitute to visit, and then she fot him again.
When Lyra had been living there for six weeks or so, Mrs. Coulter decided to hold a cocktail party. Lyra had the impression that there was something to celebrate, though Mrs. Coulter never said what it was. She ordered flowers, she discussed apes and drinks with the caterer, and she spent a whole evening with Lyra deg whom to invite.
“We must have the archbishop. I couldnt afford to leave him out, though hes the most hateful old snob. Lord Boreal is in town: hell be fun. And the Princess Postnikova. Do you think it would be right to invite Erik Andersson? I wonder if its about time to take him up....”
Erik Andersson was the latest fashionable dancer. Lyra had no idea what “take him up” meant, but she enjoyed giving her opinion heless. She dutifully wrote down all the names Mrs. Coulter suggested, spelling them atrociously and then crossing them out when Mrs. Coulter decided against them after all.
When Lyra went to bed, Pantalaimon whispered from the pillow:
“Shes never going to the North! Shes going to keep us here forever. When are we going to run away?”
“She is,” Lyra whispered back. “You just dont like her. Well, thats hard luck.
I like her. And why would she be teag us navigation and all that if she wasnt going to take us north?”
“To stop you getting impatient, thats why. You dont really want to stand around at the cocktail party being all sweet and pretty. Shes just making a pet out of you.”
Lyra turned her bad closed her eyes. But antalaimon said was true.
She had been feeling fined and cramped by this polite life, however luxurious it was. She would have given anything for a day with Roger and her Oxfamuffin friends, with a battle in the claybeds and a race along the al.
The ohing that kept her polite and atteo Mrs. Coulter was that tantalizing hope of going north. Perhaps they would meet Lord Asriel. Perhaps he and Mrs. Coulter would fall in love, and they would get married and adopt Lyra, and go and rescue Roger from the Gobblers.
Oernoon of the cocktail party, Mrs. Coulter took Lyra to a fashionable hairdressers, where her stiff dark blond hair was softened and waved, and her nails were filed and polished, and where they even applied a little makeup to her eyes and lips to show her how to do it. Then they went to collect the new dress Mrs. Coulter had ordered for her, and to buy some pateher shoes, and then it was time to go back to the flat and check the flowers a dressed.
“Not the shoulder bag, dear,” said Mrs. Coulter as Lyra came out of her bedroom, glowing with a sense of her owiness.
Lyra had taken to wearing a little white leather shoulder bag everywhere, so as to keep the alethiometer close at hand. Mrs. Coulter, loosening the cramped way some roses had been bunched into a vase, saw that Lyra wasnt moving and glanced pointedly at the door.
“Oh, please, Mrs. Coulter, I do love this bag!”
“Not indoors, Lyra. It looks absurd to be carrying a shoulder bag in your own home. Take it off at once, and e and help check these glasses....”
It wasnt so much her snappish tone as the words “in your own home” that made Lyra resist stubbornly. Pantalaimoo the floor and instantly became a polecat, arg his back ..against her little white ankle socks. Enced by this, Lyra said:
“But it wont be in the way. And its the only thing I really like wearing. I think it really suits—”
She didnt finish the sentence, because Mrs. Coulters daemon sprang off the sofa in a blur of golden fur and pinned Pantalaimon to the carpet before he could move. Lyra cried out in alarm, and then in fear and pain, as Pantalaimon twisted this way and that, shrieking and snarling, uo loosen the golden monkeys grip. Only a few seds, and the monkey had overmastered him: with one fierce black paw around his throat and his black paws gripping the polecats lower limbs, he took one of Pantalaimons ears in his other paulled as if he inteo tear it off. Not angrily, either, but with a cold curious force that was horrifying to see and even worse to feel.
Lyra sobbed in terror.
“Dont! Please! Stop hurting us!”
Mrs. Coulter looked up from her flowers.
“Do as I tell you, then,” she said.
“I promise!”
The golden moepped away from Pantalaimon as if he were suddenly bored.
Pantalaimoo Lyra at once, and she scooped him up to her face to kiss ale.
“Now, Lyra,” said Mrs. Coulter.
Lyra turned her back abruptly and slammed into her bedroom, but no sooner had she bahe door shut behihan it opened again. Mrs. Coulter was standing there only a foot or two away.
“Lyra, if you behave in this coarse and vulgar way, we shall have a frontation, which I will win. Take off that bag this instant. trol that unpleasant frown. Never slam a dain in my hearing or out of it. Now, the first guests will be arriving in a few minutes, and they are going to find you perfectly behaved, sweet, charming, i, attentive, delightful in every way. I particularly wish for that, Lyra, do you uand me?”
“Yes, Mrs. Coulter.”
“Then kiss me.”
She bent a little and offered her cheek. Lyra had to stand on tiptoe to kiss it.
She noticed how smooth it was, and the slight perplexing smell of Mrs. Coulters flesh: sted, but somehow metallic. She drew away and laid the shoulder bag on her dressing table before following Mrs. Coulter back to the drawing room.
“What do you think of the flowers, dear?” said Mrs. Coulter as sweetly as if nothing had happened. “I suppose one t g with roses, but you have too much of a good thing....Have the caterers brought enough ice? Be a dear and go and ask. Warm drinks are horrid...”
Lyra found it was quite easy to pretend to be lighthearted and charming, though she was scious every sed of Pantalaimons disgust, and of his hatred for the golden monkey. Presently the doorbell rang, and soon the room was filling up with fashionably dressed ladies and handsome or distinguished men. Lyra moved among them apes or smiling sweetly and making pretty answers when they spoke to her. She felt like a universal pet, and the sed she voiced that thought to herself, Pantalaimon stretched his goldfinch wings and chirruped loudly.
She sensed his glee at having proved her right, and became a little more retiring.
“And where do you go to sy dear?” said an elderly lady, iing Lyra through a le.
“I dont go to school,” Lyra told her.
“Really? I thought your mother would have sent you to her old school. A very good place...”
Lyra was mystified until she realized the old ladys mistake.
“Oh! Shes not my mother! Im just here helping her. Im her personal assistant,” she said importantly.
“I see. And who are your people?”
Again Lyra had to wonder what she meant before replying.
“They were a t and tess,” she said. “They both died in an aeronautical act in the North.”
“Which t?”
“t Belacqua. He was Lord Asriels brother.”
The old ladys daemon, a scarlet macaw, shifted as if in irritation from one foot to ahe old lady was beginning to frown with curiosity, so Lyra smiled sweetly and moved on.
She was going past a group of men and one young womahe large sofa when she heard the word Dust. She had seen enough of society now to uand when men and women were flirting, and she watched the process with fasation, though she was more fasated by the mention of Dust, and she hung back to listen. The men seemed to be Scholars; from the way the young woman was questioning them, Lyra took her to be a student of some kind.
“It was discovered by a Muscovite—stop me if you know this already—” a middle-aged man was saying, as the young woman gazed at him in admiration, “a man called Rusakov, and theyre usually called Rusakov Particles after him.
Elementary particles that dont i in any way with others—very hard to detect, but the extraordinary thing is that they seem to be attracted to human beings.”
“Really?” said the young woman, wide-eyed.
“And even more extraordinary,” he went on, “some human beings more than others.
Adults attract it, but not children. At least, not much, and not until adolesce. In fact, thats the very reason—” His voice dropped, and he moved closer to the young utting his hand fidentially on her shoulder.
“—thats the very reason the Oblation Board was set up. As ood hostess here could tell you.”
“Really? Is she involved with the Oblation Board?”
“My dear, she is the Oblation Board. Its entirely her own project—”
The man was about to tell her more when he caught sight of Lyra. She stared back at him unblinkingly, and perhaps he had had a little too much to drink, or perhaps he was keen to impress the young woman, for he said:
“This little lady knows all about it, Ill be bound. Youre safe from the Oblation Board, arent you, my dear?”
FIVE - THE COCKTAIL PARTY-2
“Oh, yes,” said Lyra. “Im safe from everyone here. Where I used to live, in Oxford, there was all kinds of dangerous things. There was gyptians—they take kids and sell em to the Turks for slaves. And on Port Meadow at the full moon theres a werewolf that es out from the old nunnery at Godstow. I heard him howling once. And theres the Gobblers....”
“Thats what I mean,” the man said. “Thats what they call the Oblation Board, dont they?”
Lyra felt Pantalaimon tremble suddenly, but he was on his best behavior. The daemons of the two grownups, a cat and a butterfly, dido notice.
“Gobblers?” said the young woman. “What a peculiar name! Why do they call them Gobblers?”
Lyra was about to tell her one of the bloodcurdling stories shed made up thten the Oxford kids with, but the man was already speaking.
“From the initials, dyou see? General Oblation Board. Very old idea, as a matter of fact. In the Middle Age?9９ｌｉb?s, parents would give their children to the church to be monks or nuns. And the unfortunate brats were known as oblates.
Means a sacrifice, an , something of that sort. So the same idea was taken up when they were looking into the Dust business....As our little friend probably knows. Why dont you go and talk to Lord Boreal?” he added to Lyra directly. “Im sure hed like to meet Mrs. Coulters protegee....Thats him, the man with gray hair and the serpent daemon.”
He wao get rid of Lyra so that he could talk more privately with the young woman; Lyra could tell that easily. But the young woman, it seemed, was still ied in Lyra, and slipped away from the man to talk to her.
“Stop a minute....Whats your name?”
“Lyra.”
“Im Adele Starminster. Im a journalist. Could I have a quiet word?”
Thinking it only natural that people should wish to talk to her, Lyra said simply, “Yes.”
The womans butterfly daemon rose into the air, casting about to left and right, and fluttered down to whisper something, at which Adele Starminster said, “e to the window seat.”
This was a favorite spot of Lyras; it overlooked the river, and at this time of night, the lights across on the south bank were glittering brilliantly over their refles in the black water of the high tide. A line of barges hauled by a tug moved upriver. Adele Starminster sat down and moved along the cushioned seat to make room.
“Did Professor Docker say that you had some e with Mrs. Coulter?”
“Yes.”
“What is it? Youre not her daughter, by any ce? I suppose I should know—”
“No!” said Lyra. “Course not. Im her personabbr>藏书网l assistant.”
“Her personal assistant? Youre a bit young, arent you? I thought you were related to her or something. Whats she like?”
“Shes very clever,” said Lyra. Before this evening she would have said much more, but things were ging.
“Yes, but personally,” Adele Starminster insisted. “I mean, is she friendly or impatient or what? Do you live here with her? Whats she like in private?”
“Shes very nice,” said Lyra stolidly.
“What sort of things do you do? How do you help her?”
“I do calculations and all that. Like for navigation.”
“Ah, I see....And where do you e from? What was your name again?”
“Lyra. I e from Oxford.”
“Why did Mrs. Coulter pick you to—”
She stopped very suddenly, because Mrs. Coulter herself had appeared close by.
From the way Adele Starminster looked up at her, and the agitated way her daemon was fluttering around her head, Lyra could tell that the young woman wasnt supposed to be at the party at all.
“I dont know your name,” said Mrs. Coulter very quietly, “but I shall find it out within five minutes, and then you will never work as a journalist again. Now get up very quietly, without making a fuss, and leave. I might add that whoever brought you here will also suffer.”
Mrs. Coulter seemed to be charged with some kind of anbaric force. She even smelled different: a hot smell, like heated metal, came off her body. Lyra had felt something of it earlier, but now she was seeing it directed at someone else, and poor Adele Starminster had no force to resist. Her daemon fell limp on her shoulder and flapped his geous wings once or twice before fainting, and the woman herself seemed to be uo stand fully upright. Moving in a slight awkward crouch, she made her way through the press of loudly talking guests and out of the drawing room door. She had one hand clutched to her shoulder, holding the swooning daemon in place.
“Well?” said Mrs. Coulter to Lyra.
“I old her anything important,” Lyra said.
“What was she asking?”
“Just about what I was doing and who I was, and stuff like that.”
As she said that, Lyra noticed that Mrs. Coulter was alone, without her daemon.
How could that be? But a moment later the golden monkey appeared at her side, and, reag down, she took his hand and swung him up lightly to her shoulder.
At once she seemed at ease again.
“If you e across anyone else who obviously hasnt been invited, dear, do e and find me, wont you?”
The hot metallic smell was vanishing. Perhaps Lyra had only imagi. She could smell Mrs. Coulters st again, and the roses, and the cigarillo smoke, and the st of other women. Mrs. Coulter smiled at Lyra in a way that seemed to say, “You and I uand these things, dont we?” and moved on to greet some uests.
Pantalaimon was whispering in Lyras ear.
“While she was here, her daemon was ing out of our bedroom. Hes been spying.
He knows about the alethiometer!”
Lyra felt that that robably true, but there was nothing she could do about it. What had that professor been saying about the Gobblers? She looked around to find him again, but no sooner had she seen him than the issionaire (in servants dress for the evening) and another man tapped the professor on the shoulder and spoke quietly to him, . which he turned pale and followed them out. That took no more than a couple of seds, and it was so discreetly dohat hardly aiced. But it left Lyra feeling anxious and exposed.
She wahrough the two big rooms where the party was taking place, half-listening to the versations around her, half-ied iaste of the cocktails she wasnt allowed to try, and increasingly fretful. She wasnt aware that anyone was watg her until the issionaire appeared at her side ao say:
“Miss Lyra, the gentleman by the fireplace would like to speak to you. Hes Lord Boreal, if you didnt know.”
Lyra looked up across the room. The powerful-looking gray-haired man was looking directly at her, and as their eyes met, he nodded and beed.
Unwilling, but more ied now, she went across.
“Good evening, child,” he said. His voice was smooth and anding. His serpent daemons mailed head and emerald eyes glittered in the light from the cut-glass lamp on the wall nearby.
“Good evening,” said Lyra.
“How is my old friend the Master of Jordan?”
“Very well, thank you.”
“I expect they were all sorry to say goodbye to you.”
“Yes, they were.”
“And is Mrs. Coulter keeping you busy? What is she teag you?”
Because Lyra was feeling rebellious and uneasy, she didnt ahis patronizing question with the truth, or with one of her usual flights of fancy.
Instead she said, “Im learning about Rusakov Particles, and about the Oblation Board.”
He seemed to bee focused at once, in the same way that you could focus the beam of an anbaritern. All his attention streamed at her fiercely.
“Suppose you tell me what you know,” he said.
“Theyre doing experiments in the North,” Lyra said. She was feeling reckless now. “Like Dr. Grumman.”
“Go on.”
“Theyve got this special kind of photogram where you see Dust, and when you see a man, theres like all light ing to him, and theres none on a child. At least, not so much.”
“Did Mrs. Coulter show you a picture like that?”
Lyra hesitated, for this was not lying but something else, and she wasnt practiced at it.
“No,” she said after a moment. “I saw that o Jordan College.”
“Who showed it to you?”
“He wasnt really showing it to me,” Lyra admitted. “I was just passing and I saw it. And then my friend Roger was taken by the Oblation Board. But—”
“Who showed you that picture?”
“My Uncle Asriel.”
“When?”
“When he was in Jordan College last time.”
“I see. And what else have you been learning about? Did I hear you mention the Oblation Board?”
“Yes. But I didnt hear about that from him, I heard it here.”
Which was exactly true, she thought.
He was looking at her narrowly. She gazed back with all the innoce she had.
Finally he nodded.
“Then Mrs. Coulter must have decided you were ready to help her in that work.
Iing. Have you taken part yet?”
“No,” said Lyra. What was he talking about? Pantalaimon was cleverly in his most inexpressive shape, a moth, and couldray her feelings; and she was sure she could keep her own fa.
“And has she told you what happens to the children?”
“No, she hasnt told me that. I only just know that its about Dust, and theyre like a kind of sacrifice.”
Again, that wasly a lie, she thought; she had never said that Mrs.
Coulter herself had told her.
“Sacrifice is rather a dramatic way of putting it. Whats done is for their good as well as ours. And of course they all e to Mrs. Coulter willingly. Thats why shes so valuable. They must want to take part, and what child could resist her? And if shes going to use you as well t them in, so much the better.
Im very pleased.”
He smiled at her in the way Mrs. Coulter had: as if they were both in on a secret. She smiled politely bad he turned away to talk to someone else.
She and Pantalaimon could sense each others horror. She wao go away by herself and talk to him; she wao leave the flat; she wao go back to Jordan College and her little shabby bedroom on Staircase Twelve; she wao find Lord Asriel—
And as if in ao that last wish, she heard his name mentioned, and wandered closer to the group talking nearby with the pretext of helping herself to a ape from the plate oable. A man in a bishops purple was saying:
“...No, I dont think Lord Asriel will be troubling us for quite some time.”
“And where did you say he was being held?”
“In the fortress of Svalbard, Im told. Guarded by panser-bj0rne—you know, armored bears. Formidable creatures! He wont escape from them if he lives to be a thousand. The fact is that I really think the way is clear, very nearly clear—”
“The last experiments have firmed what I always believed—that Dust is an emanation from the dark principle itself, and—”
“Do I detect the Zoroastrian heresy?”
“What used to be a heresy—”
“And if we could isolate the dark principle—”
“Svalbard, did you say?”
“Armored bears—”
“The Oblation Board—”
“The children dont suffer, Im sure of it—”
“Lord Asriel imprisoned—”
Lyra had heard enough. She turned away, and moving as quietly as the moth Pantalaimon, she went into her bedroom and closed the door. The noise of the party was muffled at once.
“Well?” she whispered, and he became a goldfin her shoulder.
“Are we going to run away?” he whispered back.
“Course. If we do it now with all these people about, she might not notice for a while.”
“He will.”
Pantalaimo Mrs. Coulters daemon. When Lyra thought of his lithe golden shape, she felt ill with fear.
“Ill fight him this time,” Pantalaimon said boldly. “I ge and he t.
Ill ge so quickly he wont be able to keep hold. This time Ill win, youll see.”
Lyra nodded distractedly. What should she wear? How could she get out without being seen?
“Youll have to go and spy,” she whispered. “As soon as its clear, well have to run. Be a moth,” she added. “Remember, the sed theres no one looking...”
She opehe door a crad he crawled out, dark against the ink light in the corridor.
Mean藏书网while, she hastily flung on the warmest clothes she had and stuffed some more into one of the coal-silk bags from the fashionable shop theyd visited that very afternoon. Mrs. Coulter had given her money like sweets, and although she had spent it lavishly, there were still several s, which she put in the pocket of the dark wolfskin coat before tiptoeing to the door.
Last of all she packed the alethiometer in its black velvet cloth. Had that abominable monkey found it? He must have done; he must have told her; oh, if shed only hidden it better! She tiptoed to the door. Her room opened into the end of the corridor he hall, luckily, and most of the guests were iwo big rooms further along. There was the sound of voices talking loudly, laughter, the quiet flushing of a lavatory, the tinkle of glasses; and then a tiny moth voice at her ear said:
“Now! Quick!”
She slipped through the door and into the hall, and ihan three seds she ening the front door of the flat. A moment after that she was through and pulling it quietly shut, and with Pantalaimon a goldfinch again, she ran for the stairs and fled.
SIX - THE THROWING NETS-1
She walked quickly away from the river, because the emba was wide and well lit. There was a tangle of narrow streets between there and the Royal Arctistitute, which was the only place Lyra was sure of being able to find, and into that dark maze she hurried now.
If only she knew London as well as she knew Oxford! Then she would have known which streets to avoid; or where she could sge some food; or, best of all, which doors to kno and find shelter. In that cold night, the dark alleys all around were alive with movement a life, and she knew none of it.
Pantalaimon became a wildcat and sed the dark all around with his night-pierg eyes. Every so ofteop, bristling, and she would turn aside from the entrance shed been about to go down. The night was full of noises: bursts of drunken laughter, two raucous voices raised in song, the clatter and whine of some badly oiled mae in a basement. Lyra walked delicately through it all, her senses magnified and mingled with Pantalaimons, keeping to the shadows and the narrow alleys.
From time to time she had to cross a wider, well-lit street, where the tramcars hummed and sparked uheir anbaric wires. There were rules for crossing London streets, but she took no notice, and when anyone shouted, she fled.
It was a fihing to be free again. She khat Pantalaimon, padding on wildcat paws beside her, felt the same joy as she did to be in the open air, even if it was murky London air laden with fumes and soot and gorous with noise. Sometime soon theyd have to think over the meaning of what theyd heard in Mrs. Coulters flat, but not yet. And sometime eventually theyd have to find a place to sleep.
At a crossroads he er of a big department store whose windows shone brilliantly over the wet pavement, there was a coffee stall: a little hut on wheels with a ter uhe wooden flap that swung up like an awning. Yellow light glowed inside, and the fragrance of coffee drifted out. The white-coated owner was leaning on the ter talking to the two or three ers.
It was tempting. Lyra had been walking for an hour now, and it was cold and damp. With Pantalaimon a sparrow, she went up to the ter and reached up to gain the owners attention.
“Cup of coffee and a ham sandwich, please,” she said.
“Youre out late, my dear,” said a gentleman in a top hat and white silk muffler.
“Yeah,” she said, turning away from him to s the busy interse. A theater nearby was just emptying, and crowds milled around the lighted foyer, calling for cabs, ing coats around their shoulders. Iher dire was the entrance of a Chthonic Railway station, with more crowds p up and doweps.
“Here you are, love,” said the coffee stall man. “Two shillings.”
“Let me pay for this,” said the man iop hat.
Lyra thought, why not? I run faster than him, and I might need all my money later. The top-hatted man dropped a on the ter and smiled down at her.
His daemon was a lemur. It g to his lapel, staring round-eyed at Lyra.
She bit into her sandwid kept her eyes on the busy street. She had no idea where she was, because she had never seen a map of London, and she didnt even know how big it was or how far shed have to walk to find the try.
“Whats your name?” said the man.
“Alice.”
“Thats a pretty name. Let me put a drop of this into your coffee...warm you up...”
He was unscrewing the top of a silver flask.
“I dont like that,” said Lyra. “I just like coffee.”
“I bet youve never had brandy like this before.”
“I have. I was sick all over the place. I had a whole bottle, or nearly.”
“Just as you like,” said the man, tilting the flask into his own cup. “Where are you going, all alone like this?”
“Going to meet my father.”
“And whos he?”
“Hes a murderer.bbr>”
“Hes what?”
“I told you, hes a murderer. Its his profession. Hes doing a job tonight. I got his clothes in here, cause hes usually all covered in blood when hes finished a job.”
“Ah! Youre joking.”
“I ent.”
The lemur uttered a soft mewing sound and clambered slowly up behind the mans head, to peer out at her. She drank her coffee stolidly and ate the last of her sandwich.
“Goodnight,” she said. “I see my father ing now. He looks a bit angry.”
The top-hat man glanced around, and Lyra set off toward the theater crowd. Much as she would have liked to see the Chthonic Railway (Mrs. Coulter had said it was not really intended for people of their class), she was wary of being trapped underground; better to be out in the open, where she could run, if she had to.
On and on she walked, and the streets became darker aier. It was drizzling, but even if thered been no clouds the city sky was too tainted with light to show the stars. Pantalaimon thought they were going north, but who could tell?
Endless streets of little identical brick houses, with gardens only big enough for a dustbin; great gaunt factories behind wire fences, with one anbaric light glowing bleakly high up on a wall and a night wat snoozing by his brazier; occasionally a dismal oratory, only distinguished from a warehouse by the crucifix outside. Once she tried the door of one of these places, only to hear a groan from the bench a foot away in the darkness. She realized that the porch was full of sleeping figures, and fled.
“Where we going to sleep, Pan?” she said as they trudged down a street of closed and shuttered shops.
“A doorway somewhere.”
“Dont want to be seen though. Theyre all so open.”
“Theres a al down there....”
He was looking down a side road to the left. Sure enough, a patch of dark glimmer showed open water, and when they cautiously went to look, they found a al basin where a dozen or ses were tied up at the wharves, some high ier, some low and laden uhe gallows-like es. A dim light shone in one window of a wooden hut, and a thread of smoke rose from the metal ey; otherwise the only lights were high up on the wall of the warehouse or the gantry of a e, leaving the ground in gloom. The wharves were piled with barrels of coal spirit, with stacks of great round logs, with rolls of cauchuc-covered cable.
Lyra tiptoed up to the hut and peeped in at the window. An old man was laboriously reading a pictureStory paper and smoking a pipe, with his spaniel daemon curled up asleep o９9lib?able. As she looked, the man got up and brought a blaed kettle from the iron stove and poured some hot water into a cracked mug before settling back with his paper.
“Should we ask him to let us in, Pan?” she whispered, but he was distracted; he was a bat, an owl, a wildcat again; she looked all round, catg his panid then saw them at the same time as he did: two men running at her, one from each side, the nearer holding a throwi.
Pantalaimon uttered a harsh scream and launched himself as a leopard at the closer mans daemon, a savage-looking fox, bowling her backward and tangling with the mans legs. The man cursed and dodged aside, and Lyra darted past him toward the open spaces of the wharf. What she mustnt do was get boxed in a er.
Pantalaimon, an eagle now, swooped at her and cried, “Left! Left!”
She swerved that way and sa between the coal-spirit barrels and the end of a cated iron shed, and darted for it like a bullet.
But those throwis! She heard a hiss in the air, and past her cheek something lashed and sharply stung, and loathsome tarred strings whipped across her face, her arms, her hands, and tangled and held her, and she fell, snarling and tearing and struggling in vain.
“Pan! Pan!”
But the fox daemon tore at the cat Pantalaimon, and Lyra felt the pain in her own flesh, and sobbed a great cry as he fell. One man was swiftly lashing cords around her, arou>藏书网nd her limbs, her throat, body, head, bundling her over and over o ground. She was helpless, exactly like a fly being trussed by a spider. Poor hurt Pan was dragging himself toward her, with the fox daemon w his back, and he had nth left to ge, even; and the other man was lying in a puddle, with an arrow through his neck—
The whole wrew still as the man tying the saw it too.
Pantalaimon sat up and blinked, and then there was a soft thud, and the man fell choking and gasping right across Lyra, who cried out in horror: that was blood gushing out of him! Runni, and someone hauled the man away a over him; then other hands lifted Lyra, a knife snicked and pulled and the rings fell away one by one, and she tore them off, spitting, and hurled herself down to cuddle Pantalaimon.
Kneeling, she twisted to look up at the newers. Three dark men, one armed with a bow, the others with knives; and as she turhe bowman caught his breath.
“That ent Lyra?”
A familiar voice, but she couldnt place it till he stepped forward and the light fell on his fad the hawk daemon on his shoulder. Then she had it. A gyptian! A real yptian! “Tony Costa,” he said. “Remember? You used to play with my little brother Billy off the boats in Jericho, afore the Gobblers got him.”
SIX - THE THROWING NETS-2
“Oh, God, Pan, were safe!” she sobbed, but then a thought rushed into her mind:
it was the Costas boat shed hijacked that day. Suppose he remembered?
“Better e along with us,” he said. “You alone?”
“Yeah. I was running away....”
“All right, dont talk now. Just keep quiet. Jaxer, move them bodies into the shadow. Kerim, look around.”
Lyra stood up shakily, holding the wildcat Pantalaimon to her breast. He was twisting to look at something, and she followed his gaze, uanding and suddenly curious too: what had happeo the dead mens daemons? They were fading, that was the answer; fading and drifting away like atoms of smoke, for all that they tried to g to their men. Pantalaimon hid his eyes, and Lyra hurried blindly after Tony Costa.
“What are you doing here?” she said.
“Quiet, gal. Theres enough trouble awake without stirring more. Well talk on the boat.”
He led her over a little wooden bridge into the heart of the al basin. The other two men were padding silently after them. Tony turned along the waterfront and out onto a woodey, from which he stepped on board a narrowboat and swung open the door to the .
“Get in,” he said. “Quiow.”
Lyra did so, patting her bag (which she had never let go of, even i) to make sure the alethiometer was still there. In the long narrow , by the light of a lantern on a hook, she saw a stout powerful woman with gray hair, sitting at a table with a paper. Lyra reized her as Billys mother.
“Whos this?” the woman said. “Thats never Lyra?”
“Thats right. Ma, we got to move. We killed two men out in the basihought they was Gobblers, but I re they were Turk traders. Theyd caught Lyra. Never mind talk—well do that on the move.”
“e here, child,” said Ma Costa.
Lyra obeyed, half happy, half apprehensive, for Ma Costa had hands like bludgeons, and now she was sure: it was their boat she had captured with Roger and the other collegers. But the boat mother set her hands oher side of Lyras face, and her daemon, a hawk, bely to lick Pantalaimons wildcat head. Then Ma Costa folded her great arms around Lyra and pressed her to her breast.
“I?99ｌｉb.
were a going to send out a rescue party, when we heard what all the yptians know, whe our knowledge together. Thats what Id do, if I was John Faa.”
“Whos John Faa?”
“The king of the gyptians.”
“And youre really going to rescue the kids? What aber?”
“Wher?”
“The Jordan College kit boy. He was took same as Billy the day before I e away with Mrs. Coulter. I bet if I was took, hed e and rescue me. If yoing to rescue Billy, I want to e too and rescue Roger.”
And Uncle Asriel, she thought; but she didion that.
SEVEN - JOHN FAA-1
Now that Lyra had a task in mind, she felt much better. Helping Mrs. Coulter had been all very well, but Pantalaimon was right: she wasnt really doing any work there, she was just a pretty pet. On the gyptian boat, there was real work to do, and Ma Costa made sure she did it. She ed and swept, she peeled potatoes and made tea, she greased the propeller shaft bearings, she kept the weed trap clear over the propeller, she washed dishes, she opened lock gates, she tied the boat up at m posts, and within a couple of days she was as much at home with this new life as if shed been byptian.
What she didnt notice was that the Costas were alert every sed for unusual signs of i in Lyra from the waterside people. If she hadnt realized it, she was important, and Mrs. Coulter and the Oblation Board were bound to be searg everywhere for her. Iony heard from gos-sip in pubs along the way that the police were making raids on houses and farms and building yards and factories without any explanation, though there was a rumor that they were searg for a missing girl. And that in itself was odd, sidering all the kids that had gone missing without being looked fyptians and land folk alike were getting jumpy and nervous.
And there was another reason for the Costas i in Lyra; but she wasnt to learn that for a few days yet.
So they took to keeping her below decks when they passed a lockkeepers cottage or a al basin, or ahere were likely to be idlers hanging about. Ohey passed through a towhe police were searg all the boats that came along the waterway, and holding up the traffi both dires. The Costas were equal to that, though. There was a secret partmeh Mas bunk, where Lyra lay cramped for two hours while the police banged up and down the length of the boat unsuccessfully.
“Why didnt their daemons fihough?” she asked afterward, and Ma showed her the lining of the secret space: cedarwood, which had a soporific effe daemons; and it was true that Pantalaimon had spent the whole time happily asleep by Lyras head.
Slowly, with many halts aours, the Costas boat drew he fens, that wide and never fully mapped wilde..rness of huge skies and endless marshland iern Anglia. The furthest fringe of it mingled indistinguishably with the creeks and tidal is of the shallow sea, and the other side of the sea mingled indistinguishably with Holland; and parts of the fens had been drained and dyked by Hollanders, some of whom had settled there; so the language of the fens was thick with Dutch. But parts had never been drained or planted or settled at all, and in the wildest tral regions, where eels slithered and waterbirds flocked, where eerie marsh fires flick-ered and waylurkers tempted careless travelers to their doom in the ss and bogs, the gyptian people had always found it safe to muster.
And now by a thousand winding els and creeks and watercourses, gyptian boats were moving in toward the byanplats, the only patch of slightly higher ground in the hundreds of square miles of marsh and bog. There was an a woodeing hall there with a huddle of perma dwellings around it, and wharves aies and an eelmarket.
When the gyptians called a byanroping—a summons or muster of families—so many boats filled the waterways that you could walk for a mile in any dire over their decks; or so it was said. The gyptians ruled in the fens. No one else dared enter, and while the gyptiahe pead traded fairly, the landlopers turned a blio the incessant smuggling and the occasional feuds. If a gyptian body floated ashore down the coast, ot snagged in a fish, well—it was only a gyptian.
Lyra listehralled to tales of the fen dwellers, of the great ghost dog Black Shuck, of the marsh fires arising from bubbles of witch oil, and began to think of herself as gyptian even before they reached the fens. She had soon slipped bato her Oxford voice, and now she was acquiring a gyptian one, plete with Fen-Dutch words. Ma Costa had to remind her of a few things.
“You ent gyptian, Lyra. You might pass fyptian with practice, but theres more to us than gyptian language. Theres deeps in us and strong currents. Were water people all through, and you ent, youre a fire person. What youre most like is marsh fire, thats the place you have in the gyptian scheme; you got witch oil in your soul. Deceptive, thats what you are, child.” Lyra was hurt.
“I ent never deceived anyone! You ask...” There was no oo ask, of course, and Ma Costa laughed, but kindly.
“t you see Im a paying you a pliment, you gosling?” she said, and Lyra acified, though she didnt uand.
When they reached the byanplats it was evening, and the sun was about to set in a splash of bloody sky. The low island and the Zaal were humped blackly against the light, like the clustered buildings around; threads of smoke rose into the still air, and from the press of boats all around came the smells fish, of smokeleaf, of jenniver spirit.
They tied up close to the Zaal itself, at a m Tony said had been used by their family feions. Presently Ma Costa had the frying pan going, with a couple of fat eels hissing and sputtering and the kettle on for potato powder.
Tony and Kerim oiled their hair, put on their fi leather jackets and blue spotted neckerchiefs, loaded their fingers with silver rings, ao greet some old friends in the neighb boats and drink a glass or two in the bar. They came back with important news.
“We got here just in time. The Ropings this very night. And theyre a saying iown—what dyou think of this?— theyre saying that the missing childs on a gyptian boat, and shes a going to appear tonight at the Roping!”
He laughed loudly and ruffled Lyras hair. Ever siheyd ehe fens he had been more and mood tempered, as if the savage gloom his face showed outside were only a disguise. And Lyra felt aement growing in her breast as she ate quickly and washed the dishes before bing her hair, tug the alethiometer into the wolfskin coat pocket, and jumping ashore with all the other families making their the slope to the Zaal.
She had thought Tony was joking. She soon found that he wasnt, or else that she looked less like a gyptian thahought, for many people stared, and children pointed, and by the time they reached the great doors of the Zaal they were walking aloween a crowd oher side, who had fallen back to stare and give them room.
And then Lyra began to feel truly nervous. She kept close to Ma Costa, and Pantalaimon became as big as he could and took his panther shape to reassure her. Ma Costa trudged up the steps as if nothing in the world could possibly either stop her or make her go more quickly, and Tony and Kerim walked proudly oher side like princes.
The hall was lit by naphtha lamps, which shone brightly enough on the faces and bodies of the audience, but left the lofty rafters hidden in darkness. The people ing in had tle to find room on the floor, where the benches were already crowded; but families squeezed up to make space, children occupying laps and daemons curling up underfoot or perg out of the way on the rough wooden walls.
At the front of the Zaal there latform with eight carved wooden chairs set out. As Lyra and the Costas found space to stand along the edge of the hall, eight men appeared from the shadows at the rear of the platform and stood in front of the chairs. A ripple of excitement swept over the audience as they hushed one another and shoved themselves into spaces on the nearest bench.
Finally there was silend seven of the men on the platform sat down.
The one who remained was in his seventies, but tall and bull necked and powerful. He wore a plain vas jacket and a checked shirt, like many gyptiahere was nothing to mark him out but the air of strength and authority he had. Lyra reized it: Uncle Asriel had it, and so did the Master of Jordan.
This mans daemon was a crow, very like the Masters raven.
“Thats John Faa, the lord of the western gyptians,” Tony whispered.
John Faa began to speak, in a deep slow voice. “Gyptians! Wele to the Roping.
Weve e to listen and e to decide. You all know why. There are many families here whove lost a child. Some have lost two. Someone is taking them.
To be sure, landlopers are losing children too. We have no quarrel with landlopers over this.
“Now theres been talk about a child and a reward. Heres the truth to stop all gossip. The childs name is Lyra Belacqua, and shes being sought by the landloper police. There is a reward of ohousand sns fiving her up to them. Shes a landloper child, and shes in our care, and there shes going to stay. Aempted by those thousand sns had better find a plaeither on land nor on water. We ent giving her up.”
Lyra felt a blush from the roots of her hair to the soles of her feet; Pantalaimon became a brown moth to hide. Eyes all arouurning to them, and she could only look up at Ma Costa for reassurance.
But John Faa eaking again:
“Talk all we may, we wont ge owt. We must act if we want to ge things.
Heres another fact for you: the Gobblers, these child thieves, are a taking their prisoo a town in the far North, in the land of dark. I dont know what they do with em there. Some folk say they kill em, other folk say different. We dont know.
“What we do know is that they do it with the help of the landloper polid the clergy. Every power on land is helping em. Remember that. They know whats going on and theyll help it whehey .
“So what Im proposi easy. And I need yreement. Im proposing that we send a band of fighters up north to rescue them kids and bring em back alive. Im proposing that we put old into this, and all the craft and ce we muster. Yes, Raymond va?”
A man in the audience had raised his hand, and John Faa sat down to let him speak.
“Beg pardon, Lord Faa. Theres landloper kids as well as gyptiaaken captive. Are you saying we should rescue them as well?”
John Faa stood up to answer.
“Raymond, are you saying we should fight our way through every kind of dao a little group htened children, and then say to some of them that they e home, and to the rest that they have to stay? No, youre a better man than that. Well, do I have your approval, my friends?”
The question caught them by surprise, for there was a moments hesitation; but then a full-throated roar filled the hall, and hands were clapped in the air, fists shaken, voices raised ied clamor. The rafters of the Zaal shook, and from their perches up in the dark a score of sleeping birds woke up in fear and flapped their wings, and little showers of dust drifted down.
John Faa let the noise tinue for a minute, and then raised his hand for silence again.
“Thisll take a while tanize. I want the heads of the families to raise a tax and muster a levy. Well meet again here in three days time. Iween now and then Im a going to talk with the child I mentioned before, and with Farder , and form a plan to put before you when we meet. Goodnight to ye all.”
His massive, plain, blunt presence was enough to calm them. As the audience began to move out of the great doors into the chilly evening, to go to their boats or to the crowded bars of the little settlement, Lyra said to Ma Costa:
“Who are the other men on the platform?”
“The heads of the six families, and the other man is Farder .”
It was easy to see who she meant by the other man, because he was the oldest ohere. He walked with a stick, and all the time hed been sitting behind John Faa hed been trembling as if with an ague.
“e on,” said Tony. “Id best take you up to pay your respects to John Faa.
You call him Lord Faa. I dont know what youll be asked, but mind you tell the truth.”
Pantalaimon arrow now, and sat curiously on Lyras shoulder, his claws deep in the wolfskin coat, as she followed Tony through the crowd up to the platform.
He lifted her up. Knowing that everyoill in the hall was staring at her, and scious of those thousand sns she was suddenly worth, she blushed aated. Pantalaimon darted to her breast and became a wildcat, sitting up in her arms and hissing softly as he looked around.
Lyra felt a push, and stepped forward to John Faa. He was stern and massive and expressionless, more like a pillar of rock than a man, but he stooped and held out his hand to shake. Whe hers in, it nearly vanished.
“Wele, Lyra,” he said.
Close to, she felt his voice rumbling like the earth藏书网 itself. She would have been nervous but for Pantalaimon, and the fact that John Faas stony expression had warmed a little. He was treating her very gently.
“Thank you, Lord Faa,” she said.
“Now you e in the parley room and well have a talk,” said John Faa. “Have they been feeding you proper, the Costas?”
“Oh, yes. We had eels for supper.”
“Proper fen eels, I expect.”
The parley room was a fortable place with a big fire, sideboards laden with silver and porcelain, and a heavy table darkly polished by the years, at which twelve chairs were drawn up.
The other men from the platform had gone elsewhere, but the old shaking man was still with them. John Faa helped him to a seat at the table.
“Now, you sit here on my right,” John Faa said to Lyra, and took the chair at the head of the table himself. Lyra found herself opposite Farder . She was a little frightened by his skull-like fad his tinual trembling. His daemon was a beautiful autumn-colored cat, massive in size, who stalked along the table with upraised tail and elegantly ied Pantalaimon, toug noses briefly before settling on Farder s lap, half-closing her eyes and purring softly.
A woman whom Lyra hadnt noticed came out of the shadows with a tray of glasses, set it down by John Faa, curtsied, a. John Faa poured little glasses of jenniver from a stone crock for himself and Farder , and wine for Lyra.
“So,” John Faa said. “You run away, Lyra.”
“Yes.”
“And who was the lady you run away from?”
“She was called Mrs. Coulter. And I thought she was nice, but I found out she was one of the Gobblers. I heard someone say what the Gobblers were, they were called the General Oblation Board, and she was in charge of it, it was all her idea. And they was all w on some plan, I dunno what it was, only they was going to make me help her get kids for em. But they never knew...”
“They never knew what?”
“Well, first they never khat I knew some kids what had been took. My friend Roger the kit boy from Jordan College, and Billy Costa, and a girl out the covered market in Oxford. And ahing...My uncle, right, Lord Asriel. 1 heard them talking about his jouro the North, and I dont re hes got anything to do with the Gobblers. Because I spied on the Master and the Scholars of Jordan, right, I hid iiring Room where no ones supposed to go except them, and I heard him tell them all about his expedition up north, and the Dust he saw, and he brought back the head of Stanislaus Grumman, what the Tartars had made a hole in. And now the Gobblersve got him locked up somewhere.
The armored bears are guarding him. And I want to rescue him.”
She looked fierd stubborn as she sat there, small against the high carved back of the chair. The two old men couldnt help smiling, but whereas Farder s smile was a hesitant, rich, plicated expression that trembled across his face like sunlight chasing shadows on a windy March day, John Faas smile was slow, warm, plain, and kindly.
“You better tell us what you did hear your uncle say that evening,” said John Faa. “Dont leave anything out, mind. Tell us everything.”
Lyra did, more slowly thaold the Costas but more holy, too. She was afraid of John Faa, and what she was most afraid of was his kindness. When shed finished, Farder spoke for the first time. His voice was rid musical, with as many tones in it as there were colors in his daemons fur.
“This Dust,” he said. “Did they ever call it anything else, Lyra?”
“No. Just Dust. Mrs. Coulter told me what it was, elementary particles, but thats all she called it.”
“And they think that by doing something to children, they find out more about it?”
“Yes. But I dont know what. Except my uheres something I fot to tell you. When he was showing them lantern slides, there was another one he had.
It was the Roarer—”
“The what?” said John Faa.
SEVEN - JOHN FAA-2
“The Aurora,” said Farder . “Is that right, Lyra?”
“Yeah, thats it. And in the lights of the Roarer there was like a city. All towers and churches and domes and that. It was a bit like Oxford, thats what I thought, anyway. And Uncle Asriel, he was more ied in that, I think, but the Master and the other Scholars were more ied in Dust, like Mrs.
Coulter and Lord Boreal and them.”
“I see,” said Farder . “Thats very iing.”
“Now, Lyra,” said John Faa, “Im a going to tell you something. Farder here, hes a wise man. Hes a seer. Hes been a f all whats been going on with Dust and the Gobblers and Lord Asriel and everything else, and hes been a f you. Every time the Costas went to Oxford, or half a dozen other families, e to that, they brought back a bit of news. About you, child. Did you know that?”
Lyra shook her head. She was beginning to be frightened. Pantalaimon was growling too deep for ao hear, but she could feel it in her fiips down inside his fur.
“Oh, yes,” said John Faa, “all your doings, they all get back to Farder here.”
Lyra couldnt hold it in.
“We didnt damage it! Ho! It was only a bit of mud! And we never got very far—”
“What are you talking about, child?” said John Faa.
Farder laughed. When he did that, his shaking stopped and his face became bright and young.
But Lyra wasnt laughing. With trembling lips she said, “And even if we had found the bung, wed neverve took it out! It was just a joke. We wouldntve sunk it, never!”
Then John Faa began to laugh too. He slapped a broad hand oable so hard the glasses rang, and his massive shoulders shook, and he had to wipe away the tears from his eyes. Lyra had never seen such a sight, never heard such a bellow; it was like a mountain laughing.
“Oh, yes,” he said when he could speak again, “we heard about that too, little girl! I dont suppose the Costas have set foot anywhere sihen without being reminded of it. You better leave a guard on your boat, Tony, people say. Fierce little girls round here! Oh, that story went all over the fens, child. But we ent going to punish you for it. No, no! Ease your mind.”
He looked at Farder , and the two old men laughed again, . mently.
And Lyra felt tented, and safe.
Finally John Faa shook his head and became serious again.
“I were saying, Lyra, as we knew about you from a child. From a baby. You oughter know what we know. I t guess what they told you at Jordan College about where you came from, but they dont know the whole truth of it. Did they ever tell you who your parents were?”
Now Lyra was pletely dazed.
“Yes,” she said. “They said I was—they said they—they said Lord Asriel put me there because my mother and father died in an airship act. Thats what they told me.”
“Ah, did they. Well now, child, Im a going to tell you a story, a true story. I know its true, because a gyptian woman told me, and they all tell the truth to John Faa and Farder . So this is the truth about yourself, Lyra. Your father never perished in no airship act, because your father is Lord Asriel.”
Lyra could only sit in wonder.
“Heres how it came about,” John Faa went on. “When he was a young man, Lord Asriel went expl all over the North, and came back with a great fortune.
And he was a high-spirited man, quick to anger, a passionate man.
“And your mother, she assiooo. Not so well born as him, but a clever woman. A Scholar, even, and those who saw her said she was very beautiful. She and your father, they fell in love as soons they met.
“The trouble was, your mother was already married. Shed married a politi.
He was a member of the kings party, one of his p>?.sest advisers. A rising man.
“Now when your mother found herself with child, she feared to tell her husband the child wasnt his.藏书网 And when the baby was born—thats you, girl—it was clear from the look of you that you didnt favor her husband, but your true father, and she thought it best to hide you away and give out that youd died.
“So you was took to Oxfordshire, where your father had estates, and put in the care of a gyptian woman to nurse. But someone whispered to your mothers husband what had happened, and he came a flying down and ransacked the cottage where the gyptian woman had been, only shed fled to the great house; and the husband followed after, in a murderous passion.
“Lord Asriel was out a hunting, but they got word to him and he came riding ba time to find your mothers husband at the foot of the great staircase.
Another moment and hed have forced open the closet where the gyptian woman was hiding with you, but Lord Asriel challenged him, and they fought there and then, and Lord Asriel killed him.
“The gyptian woman heard and saw it all, Lyra, and thats how we know.
“The sequence was a great lawsuit. Your father ent the kind of man to deny or ceal the truth, and it left the judges with a problem. Hed killed all right, hed shed blood, but he was defending his home and his child against an intruder. On tother hand, the law allows any man to avehe violation of his wife, and the dead mans lawyers argued that he were doing just that.
“The case lasted for weeks, with volumes ument bad forth. In the end the judges punished Lord Asriel by fisg all his property and all his land, a him a poor man; and he had been richer than a king.
“As for your mother, she wanted nothing to do with it, nor with you. She turned her back. The gyptian old me shed often been afeared of how your mother would treat you, because she roud and sful woman. So much for her.
“Then there was you. If things had fallen out different, Lyra, you might have been brought up a gyptian, because the nurse begged the court to let her have you; but we gyptians got little standing in the law. The court decided you was to be placed in a priory, and so you were, with the Sisters of Obedie Watlington. You wont remember.
“But Lord Asriel wouldnt stand for that. He had a hatred of priors and monks and nuns, and being a high-handed man he just rode in one day and carried you off. Not to look after himself, nor to give to the gyptians; he took you to Jordan College, and dared the law to undo it.
“Well, the law let things be. Lord Asriel went back to his explorations, and you grew up at Jordan College. The ohing he said, your father, the one dition he made, was that your mother should see you. If she ever tried to do that, she was to be prevented, and he was to be told, because all the anger in his nature had turned against her now. The Master promised faithfully to do that; and so time passed.
“Then e all this ay about Dust. And all over the try, all over the world, wise men and women too began a w about it. It werent of any at to us gyptians, until they started taking our kids. Thats whe ied. A es in all sorts of places you wouldnt imagine, including Jordan College. You wouldnt know, but theres been someone a watg over you aing to us ever since you been there. Cause we got an i in you, and that gyptian woman who nursed you, she opped being anxious on your behalf.”
“Who was it watg over me?” said Lyra. She felt immensely important and strahat all her doings should be an object of so far away.
“It was a kit servant. It was Bernie Johahe pastry cook. Hes half-gyptian; you never khat, Ill be bound.”
Bernie was a kindly, solitary man, one of those rare people whose daemon was the same sex as himself. It was Bernie shed shouted at in her despair when Roger was taken. And Bernie had been telling the gyptians everything! She marveled.
“So anyway,” John Faa went on, “we heard about you going away from Jordan College, and how it came about at a time when Lord Asriel was imprisoned and couldnt prevent it. And we remembered what hed said to the Master that he must never do, and we remembered that the man your mother had married, the politi Lord Asriel killed, was called Edward Coulter.”
“Mrs. Coulter?” said Lyra, quite stupefied. “She ent my mother?”
“She is. And if your father had been free, she wouldnt never have dared to defy him, and youd still be at Jordan, not knowing a thing. But what the Master was a doiing you go is a mystery I t explain. He was charged with your care. All I guess is that she had some power over him.”
Lyra suddenly uood the Masters curious behavior on the m shed left.
“But he didnt want to...” she said, trying to remember it exactly. “He...I had to go and see him first thing that m, and I mustnt tell Mrs.
Coulter....It was like he wao protect me from her...” She stopped, and looked at the two men carefully, and then decided to tell them the whole truth about the Retiring Room. “See, there was something else.
That evening I hid iiring Room, I saw the Master try to poison Lord Asriel. I saw him put some powder in the wine and I told my uncle and he khe deter off the table and spilled it. So I saved his life. I could never uand why the Master would want to poison him, because he was always so kind. Then on the m I left he called me in early to his study, and I had to go secretly so no one would know, and he said...” Lyra racked her brains to try and remember exactly what it was the Master had said. No good; she shook her head. “The only thing I could uand was that he gave me something and I had to keep it secret from her, from Mrs. Coulter. I suppose its all right if I tell you....”
She felt in the pocket of the wolfskin coat and took out the velvet package. She laid it oable, and she sensed John Faas massive simple curiosity and Farder s bright flickering intelligeh trained on it like searchlights.
When she laid the alethiometer bare, it was Farder who spoke first.
“I hought Id ever set eyes on one of them again. Thats a symbol reader.
Did he tell you anything about it, child?”
“No. Only that Id have to work out how to read it by myself. And he called it ahiometer.”
“Whats that mean?” said John Faa, turning to his panion.
“Thats a Greek word. I re its from aktheia, which means truth. Its a truth measure. And have you worked out how to use it?” he said to her.
“No. Least, I make the three short hands point to different pictures, but I t do anything with the long o goes all over. Except sometimes, right, sometimes when Im sort of trating, I make the long needle go this way or that just by thinking it.”
“Whats it do, Farder ?” said John Faa. “And how do you read it?”
“All these pictures round the rim,” said Farder , holding it delicately toward John Faas blunt strong gaze, “theyre symbols, and eae stands for a whole series of things. Take the anchor, there. The first meaning of that is hope, because hope holds you fast like an anchor so you dont give way. The seeaning is steadfastness. The third meaning is snag, or prevention. The fourth meaning is the sea. And so on, down to ten, twelve, maybe a never-ending series of meanings.”
“And do you know them all?”
“I know some, but to read it fully Id he book. I seen the book and I know where it is, but I ent got it.”
“Well e back to that,” said John Faa. “Go on with how you read it.”
“You got three hands you trol,” Farder explained, “and you use them to ask a question. By pointing to three symbols you ask any question you imagine, because youve got so many levels of eae. Once you got your question framed, the other needle swings round and points to more symbols that give you the answer.”
“But how does it know what level youre a thinking of when you set the question?” said John Faa.
“Ah, by itself it dont. It only works if the questioner holds the levels in their mind. You got to know all the meanings, first, and there must be a thousand or more. Then you got to be able to hold em in your mind without fretting at it or pushing for an answer, and just watch while the needle wanders. When its gone round its full range, youll know what the answer is. I know how it works because I seen it done once by a wise man in Uppsala, and thats the only time I ever saw one before. Do you know how rare these are?”
“The Master told me there was only six made,” Lyra said.
“Whatever the number, it ent large.”
“And you kept this secret from Mrs. Coulter, like the Master told you?” said John Faa.
“Yes. But her daemht, he used to go in my room. And Im sure he found it.”
“I see. Well, Lyra, I dont know if well ever uand the full truth, but this is my guess, as good as I make it. The Master was given a charge by Lord Asriel to look after you and keep you safe from your mother. And that was what he did, for ten years or more. Then Mrs. Coulters friends in the Church helped her set up this Oblation Board, for urpose we dont know, and there she was, as powerful in her way as Lord Asriel was in his. Your parents, both strong in the world, both ambitious, and the Master of Jordan holding you in the balaween them.
“Now the Masters got a huhings to look after. His first is his College and the scholarship there. So if he sees a threat to that, he has to move agin it. And the Chur ret times, Lyra, its been a getting more anding. Theres cils for this and cils for that; theres talk of reviving the Office of Inquisition, God forbid. And the Master has to tread warily between all these powers. He has to keep Jordan College on the right side of the Church, or it wont survive.
“And another of the Master is you, child. Bernie Johansen was always clear about that. The Master of Jordan and the other Scholars, they loved you like their own child. Theyd do anything to keep you safe, not just because theyd promised to Lord Asriel that they would, but for your own sake. So if the Master gave you up to Mrs. Coulter when hed promised Lord Asriel he wouldnt, he must have thought youd be safer with her than in Jordan College, in spite of all appearances. And whe out to poison Lord Asriel, he must have thought that what Lord Asriel was a doing would place all of them in danger, and maybe all of us, too; maybe all the world. I see the Master as a man having terrible choices to make; whatever he chooses will do harm, but maybe if he does the right thing, a little less harm will e about than if he chooses wrong. God preserve me from having to make that sort of choice.
“And when it e to the point where he had to let you go, he gave you the symbol reader and bade you keep it safe. I wonder what he had in mind for you to do with it; as you couldnt read it, Im foxed as to what he was a thinking.”
“He said Uncle Asriel presehe alethiometer to Jordan College years before,” Lyra said, struggling to remember. “He was going to say something else, and then someone k the door and he had to stop. What I thought was, he might have wanted me to keep it away from Lord Asriel too.”
“Or even the opposite,” said John Faa.
“What dyou mean, John?” said Farder .
“He might have had it in mind to ask Lyra to return it to Lord Asriel, as a kind of repense f to poison him. He might have thought the danger from Lord Asriel had passed. Or that Lord Asriel could read some wisdom from this instrument and hold back from his purpose. If Lord Asriels held captive now, it might help set him free. Well, Lyra, you better take this symbol reader and keep it safe. If you kept it safe so far, I ent worried about leaving it with you.
But there might e a time when we o sult it, and I re well ask for it then.”
He folded the velvet over it and slid it back across the table. Lyra wao ask all kinds of questions, but suddenly she felt shy of this massive man, with his little eyes so sharp and kindly among their folds and wrinkles.
Ohing she had to ask, though.
“Who was the gyptian woman who nursed me ?”
“Why, it was Billy Costas mother, of course. She wont have told you, because I e her, but she knows what were a talking of here, so its all out in the open.
“Now you best be getting back to her. You got plenty to be a thinking of, child.
When three days is gone past, well have another roping and discuss all there is to do. You be a good girl. Goodnight, Lyra.”
“Goodnight, Lord Faa. Goodnight, Farder ,” she said politely, clutg the alethiometer to her breast with one hand and scooping up Pantalaimon with the other.
Both old men smiled kindly at her. Outside the door of the parley room Ma Costa was waiting, and as if nothing had happened since Lyra was born, the boat mathered her intreat arms and kissed her before bearing her off to bed.
EIGHT - FRUSTRATION-1
Lyra had to adjust to her new sense of her own story, and that couldnt be done in a day. To see Lord Asriel as her father was ohing, but to accept Mrs.
Coulter as her mother was nowhere near so easy. A couple of months ago she would have rejoiced, of course, and she khat too, a fus.9９lｉｂ.ed.
But, being Lyra, she didnt fret about it for long, for there was the fen town to explore and many gyptian children to amaze. Before the three days were up she was an expert with a punt (in her eyes, at least) and shed gathered a gang of urs about her with tales of her mighty father, so unjustly made captive.
“And then one evening the Turkish Ambassador was a guest at Jordan for dinner.
And he was under orders from the Sultan hisself to kill my father, right, and he had a ring on his finger with a hollow stone full of poison. And when the wine e round he made as if to reach ay fathers glass, and he sprihe poison in. It was done so quick that no one else saw him, but—”
“What sort of poison?” demanded a thin-faced girl.
“Poison out of a special Turkish serpent,” Lyra ied, “what they catch by playing a pipe to lure out and thehrow it a sponge soaked in honey and the serpent bites it and t get his fangs free, and they catch it and milk the venom out of it. Anyway, my father seen what the Turk done, and he says, Gentlemen, I want to propose a toast of friendship between Jordan College and the College of Izmir, which was the college the Turkish Ambassador beloo.
And to show our willio be friends, he says, well s glasses and drink each others wine.
“And the Ambassador was in a fix then, cause he couldnt refuse to drink without giving deadly insult, and he couldnt drink it because he k oisoned. He went pale and he fainted right away at the table. And when he e round they was all still sitting there, waiting and looking at him. And then he had to either drink the poison or own up.”
“So what did he do?”
“He drunk it. It took him five whole mio die, and he was in torment all the time.”
“Did you see it happen?”
“No, cause girls ent allowed at the High Table. But I seen his body afterwards when they laid him out. His skin was all withered like an old apple, and his eyes were starting from his head. In fact, they had to push em ba the sockets....”
And so on.
Meanwhile, around the edges of the fen try, the police were knog at doors, searg attid outhouses, iing papers and interrogating everyone who claimed to have seen a blond little girl; and in Oxford the search was even fiercer. Jordan College was scoured from the dustiest boxroom to the darkest cellar, and sabriel and St. Michaels, till the heads of all the colleges issued a joint protest asserting their a rights. The only notion Lyra had of the search for her was the incessant drone of the gas engines of airships crisscrossing the skies. They werent visible, because the clouds were low and by statute airships had to keep a certai above fen try, but who knew what ing spy devices they might carry? Best to keep under cover when she heard them, or wear the oilskin souwester over her bright distinctive hair.
And she questioned Ma Costa about every detail of the story of her birth. She wove the details into a mental tapestry even clearer and sharper thaories she made up, and lived over and ain the flight from the cottage, the cealment in the closet, the harsh-voiced challehe clash of swords—
“Swords? Great God, girl, you dreaming?” Ma Costa said. “Mr. Coulter had a gun, and Lord Asriel k out his hand and struck him down with one blow. Then there was two shots. I wonder you dont remember; you ought to, little as you were. The first shot was Edward Coulter, who reached his gun and fired, and the sed was Lord Asriel, who tore it out his grasp a sed time and tur on him. Shot him right between the eyes and dashed his brains out. Then he says cool as paint, e out, Mrs. Costa, and bring the baby, because you were setting up such a howl, you and that daemon both; aook you up and dandled you and sat you on his shoulders, walking up and down in high good humor with the dead man at his feet, and called for wine and bade me swab the floor.”
By the end of the fourth repetition of the story Lyra erfectly vinced she did remember it, and even volunteered details of the color of Mr. Coulters coat and the cloaks and furs hanging in the closet. Ma Costa laughed.
And whenever she was alone, Lyra took out the alethiome-ter and pored over it like a lover with a picture of the beloved. So each image had several meanings, did it? Why shouldnt she work them out? Wasnt she Lord Asriels daughter?
Rem??embering what Farder had said, she tried to focus her mind on three symbols taken at random, and clicked the hands round to point at them, and found that if she held the alethiometer just so in her palms and gazed at it in a particular lazy way, as she thought of it, the long needle would begin to move more purposefully. Instead of its wayward divagations around the dial it swung smoothly from one picture to another. Sometimes it would pause at three, sometimes two, sometimes five or more, and although she uood nothing of it, she gained a deep calm enjoyment from it, unlike anything shed known. Pantalaimon would crouch over the dial, sometimes as a cat, sometimes as a mouse, swinging his head round after the needle; and once or twice the two of them shared a glimpse of meaning that felt as if a shaft of sunlight had struck through clouds to light up a majestie of great hills in the distanething far beyond, and never suspected. And Lyra thrilled at those times with the same deep thrill shed felt all her life on hearing the word North.
So the three days passed, with muing and goiween the multitude of boats and the Zaal. And then came the evening of the sed roping. The hall was more crowded than before, if that ossible. Lyra and the Costas got there in time to sit at the front, and as soon as the flickering lights showed that the place was crammed, John Faa and Farder came out on the platform and sat behind the table. John Faa didnt have to make a sign for silence; he just put his great hands flat oable and looked at the people below, and the hubbub died.
“Well,” he said, “you done what I asked. Aer than I hoped. Im a going to call on the heads of the six families now to e up here and give over their gold and ret their promises. Nicholas Rokeby, you e first.”
A stout black-bearded ma??n climbed onto the platform and laid a heavy leather bag oable.
“Thats old,” he said. “And we offer thirty-eight men.”
“Thank you, Nicholas,” said John Faa. Farder was making a he first man stood at the back of the platform as John Faa called for the , and the >xt, and each came up, laid a bag oable, and annouhe number of men he could muster. The Costas were part of the Stefanski family, and naturally Tony had been one of the first to volunteer. Lyra noticed his hawk daemon shifting from foot to foot and spreading her wings as the Stefanski money and the promise of twenty-three men were laid before John Faa.
When the six family heads had all e up, Farder showed his piece of paper to John Faa, who stood up to address the audience again.
“Friends, thats a muster of one hundred ay men. I thank you proudly.
As for the gold, I make no doubt from the weight of it that youve all dug deep in your coffers, and my warm thanks go out for that as well.
“What were a going to do is this. Were a going to charter a ship and sail north, and find them kids a em free. From what we know, there might be some fighting to do. It wohe first time, nor it wohe last, but we never had to fight yet with people who kidnap children, and we shall have to be unon ing. But we ent going to e back without our kids. Yes, Dirk Vries?”
A man stood up and said, “Lord Faa, do you know why they captured them kids?”
“We heard its a theological matter. Theyre making an experiment, but what nature it is we dont know. To tell you all the truth, we dont even know whether any harm is a ing to em. But whatever it is, good or bad, they got nht to reach out by night and pluck little children out the hearts of their families. Yes, Raymond va?”
The man whod spoken at the first meeting stood up and said, “That child, Lord Faa, the one you spoke of as being sought, the one as is sitting in the front row now. I heard as all the folk living around the edge of the fens is having their houses turned upside down on her at. I heard theres a move in Parliament this very day to resd our a privileges on at of this child. Yes, friends,” he said, over the babble of shocked whispers, “theyre a going to pass a law doing away with ht to free movement in and out the fens. Now, Lord Faa, what we want to know is this: who is this child on at of which we might e to such a pass? She ent a gyptian child, not as I heard. How es it that a landloper child put us all in danger?”
EIGHT - FRUSTRATION-2
Lyra looked up at John Faas massive frame. Her heart was thumping so much she could hardly hear the first words of his reply.
“Now spell it out, Raymond, dont be shy,” he said. “You want us to give this child up to them shes a fleeing from, is that right?”
The man stood obstinately frowning, but said nothing.
“Well, perhaps you would, and perhaps you wouldnt,” John Faa tinued. “But if any man or woman needs a reason for doing good, ponder on this. That little girl is the daughter of Lord Asriel, no less. For them as has fotten, it were Lord Asriel who interceded with the Turk for the life of Sam Broekman. It were Lord Asriel who allowed gyptian boats free passage on the als through his property. It were Lord Asriel who defeated the Watercourse Bill in Parliament, treat and lasting be. And it were Lord Asriel who fought day and night in the floods of 53, and plunged headlong ier twice to pull out young Ruud and Nellie Koopman. You fotten that? Shame, shame on you, shame.
“And now that same Lord Asriel is held in the farthest coldest darkest regions of the wild, captive, in the fortress of Svalbard. Do I o tell you the kind of creatures a guarding him there? And this is his little daughter in our care, and Raymond va would hand her over to the authorities for a bit of pead quiet. Is that right, Raymond? Stand up and answer, man.”
But Raymond va had sunk to his seat, and nothing would make him stand. A low hiss of disapproval souhrough the great hall, and Lyra felt the shame he must be feeling, as well as a deep glow of pride in her brave father.
John Faa turned away, and looked at the other men on the platform.
“Nicholas Rokeby, Im a putting you in charge of finding a vessel, and anding her once we sail. Adam Stefanski, I want you to take charge of the arms and munitions, and and the fighting. Roger van Poppel, you look to all the other stores, from food to cold-weather clothing. Simon Hartmann, you be treasurer, and at to us all for a proper apportio of old.
Benjamin de Ruyter, I want you to take charge of spying. Theres a great deal we ought to find out, and Im a giving you the charge of that, and youll report to Farder . Michael zona, yoing to be responsible for coordinating the first four leaders wobbr>..rk, and youll report to me, and if I die, youre my sed in and and youll take over.
“Now Ive made my dispositions acc to , and if any man or womao disagree, they may do so freely.”
After a moment a woman stood up.
“Lord Faa, ent you a taking any women on this expedition to look after them kids once you found em?”
“No, Nell. We shall have little space as it is. Any kids we free will be better off in our care thaheyve been.”
“But supposing you find out that you t rescue em without some women in disguise as guards or nurses or whatever?”
“Well, I hadnt thought of that,” John Faa admitted. “Well sider that most carefully wheire into the parley room, you have my promise.”
She sat down and a man stood up.
“Lord Faa, I heard you say that Lord Asriel is in captivity. Is it part of your plan to rescue him? Because if it is, and if hes in the power of them bears as I think you said, thats going to need more than a hundred ay men. And good friend as Lord Asriel is to us, I dont know as theres any call on us to go as far as that.”
“Adriaan Braks, youre n. What I had it in my mind to do was to keep our eyes and ears open and see what knowledge we glean while were in the North.
It may be that we do something to help him, and it may not, but you trust me not to use what youve provided, man and gold, for any purpose outside the stated one of finding our children and bringing em home.”
Another woman stood up.
“Lord Faa, we dont know what them Gobblers mightve been doing to our children.
We all heard rumors and stories of fearful things. We hear about children with no heads, or about children cut in half aogether, or about things too awful to mention. Im truly sorry to distress anyone, but we all heard this kind of thing, and I want to get it out in the open. Now in case you find anything of that awful kind, Lord Faa, I hope youre a going to take powerful revenge. I hope you ent going to let thoughts of merd gentleness hold your hand back from striking and striking hard, and delivering a mighty blow to the heart of that infernal wiess. And Im sure I speak for any mother as has lost a child to the Gobblers.”
There was a loud murmur of agreement as she sat down. Heads were nodding all over the Zaal.
John Faa waited for silence, and said:
“Nothing will hold my hand, Margaret, save only judgment. If I stay my hand in the North, it will only be to strike the harder in the South. To strike a day too soon is as bad as striking a hundred miles off. To be sure, theres a assion behind what you say. But if you give in to that passion, friends, youre a doing what I always warned you agin: youre a plag the satisfa of your own feelings above the work you have to do. Our work here is first rescue, then punishment. It ent gratification for upset feelings. Our feelings dont matter.
If we rescue the kids but unish the Gobblers, weve dohe main task. But if we aim to punish the Gobblers first and by doing so lose the ce of resg the kids, weve failed.
“But be assured of this, Margaret. Wheime es to punish, we shall strike ９９lｉｂ?such a blow asll make their hearts faint and fearful. We shall strike the strength out of em. We shall leave them ruined and wasted, broken and shattered, torn in a thousand pieces and scattered to the four winds. Dont you worry that John Faas heart is too soft to strike a blow wheime es.
And the time will e under judgment. Not under passion.
“Is there anyone else who wants to speak? Speak if you will.”
But no one did, and presently John Faa reached for the closing bell and rang it hard and loud, swinging it high and shaking the peals out of it so that they filled the hall and rang the rafters.
John Faa and the other mehe platform for the parley room. Lyra was a little disappointed. Didnt they wahere too? But Tony laughed.
“They got plans to make,” he said. “You done your part, Lyra. Now its for John Faa and the cil.”
“But I ent dohi!” Lyra protested, as she followed the others relutly out of the hall and down the cobbled road toward the jetty. “All I done was run away from Mrs. Coulter! Thats just a beginning. I want to go north!”
“Tell you what,” said Tony, “Ill bring you back a walrus tooth, thats what Ill do.”
Lyra scowled. For his part, Pantalaimon occupied himself by making monkey faces at Tonys daemon, who closed her tawny eyes in disdain. Lyra drifted to the jetty and hung about with her new panions, dangling lanterns on strings over the black water to attract the goggle-eyed fishes who swam slowly up to be lu with sharp sticks and missed.
But her mind was on John Faa and the parley room, and before long she slipped a the cobbles again to the Zaal. There was a light in the parley room window. It was too high to look through, but she could hear a low rumble of voices inside.
So she walked up to the door and knocked on it firmly five times. The voices stopped, a chair scraped across the floor, and the door opened, spilling warm naphtha light out on the damp step.
“Yes?” said the man whod ope.
Beyond him Lyra could see the other men around the table, with bags of gold stacked ly, and papers and pens, and glasses and a crock of jenniver.
“I want to e north,” Lyra said so they could all hear it. “I want to e and help rescue the kids. Thats what I set out to do when I run away from Mrs.
Coulter. And before that, even, I meant to rescue my friend Roger the kit boy from Jordan who was took. I want to e and help. I do navigation and I take anbaromagic readings off the Aurora, and I knoarts of a bear you eat, and all kind of useful things. Youd be sorry if you got up there and then found you needed me and found youd left me behind. And like that woman said, you might need women to play a part—well, you might need kids too. You dont know. So you oughter take me, Lord Faa, excuse me for interrupting your talk.”
She was ihe room now, and all the men and their daemons were watg her, some with amusement and some with irritation, but she had eyes only for John Faa. Pantalaimon sat up in her arms, his wildcat eyes blazing green.
John Faa said, “Lyra, there ent no question of taking you into danger, so dont delude yourself, child. Stay here and help Ma Costa and keep safe. Thats what you got to do.”
“But Im learning how to read the alethiometer, too. Its ing clearer every day! Youre bound to hat—bound to!”
He shook his head.
“No,” he said. “I know your heart was set on going north, but its my belief not even Mrs. Coulter was going to take you. If you want to see the North, youll have to wait till all this troubles over. Now off you go.”
Pantalaimon hissed quietly, but John Faas daemon took off from the back of his chair and flew at them with black wings, not threateningly, but like a reminder of good manners; and Lyra turned on her heel as the crow glided over her head and wheeled back to John Faa. The door shut behind her with a decisive click.
“We will go,” she said to Pantalaimon. “Let em try to stop us. We will!”
NINE - THE SPIES-1
Over the few days, Lyra cocted a dozen plans and dismissed them impatiently; for they all boiled down to stowing away, and how could you stow away on a narrowboat? To be sure, the real voyage would involve a proper ship, and she knew enough stories to expect all kinds of hiding places on a full-sized vessel: the lifeboats, the hold, the bilges, whatever they were; but shed have to get to the ship first, and leaving the fe traveling the gyptian way.
And even if she got to the coast on her own, she might stow away on the wrong ship. It would be a fihing to hide in a lifeboat and wake up on the way to High Brazil.
Meanwhile, all arouhe tantalizing work of assembling the expedition was going on day and night. She hung around Adam Stefanski, watg as he made his choice of the volunteers for the fighting force. She pestered Roger van Poppel with suggestions about the stores they o take: Had he remembered snow goggles? Did he know the best place to get arctic maps?
The man she most wao help was Benjamin de Ruyter, the spy. But he had slipped away in the early hours of the m after the sed roping, and naturally no one could say where hed gone or when hed return. So in default, Lyra attached herself to Farder .
“I think itd be best if I helped you, Farder ,” she said, “because I probably know more about the Gobblers than anyone else, being as I was nearly one of them. Probably youll need me to help you uand Mr. de Ruyters messages.”
He took pity on the fierce, desperate little girl and didnt send her away.
Instead he talked to her, and listeo her memories of Oxford and of Mrs.
Coulter, and watched as she read the alethiometer.
“Wheres that book with all the symbols in?” she asked him one day.
“In Heidelberg,” he said.
“And bbr>９９ｌｉｂ?is there just the one?”
“There may be others, but thats the one Ive seen.”
“I bet theres one in Bodleys Library in Oxford,” she said.
She could hardly take her eyes off Farder s daemon, who was the most beautiful daemon shed ever seen. When Pantalaimon was a cat, he was lean and ragged and harsh, but Sophonax, for that was her name, was golden-eyed and elegant beyond measure, fully twice as large as a real cat and richly furred.
When the sunlight touched her, it lit up more shades of tawny-brown-leaf-hazel--gold-autumn-mahogany than Lyra could name. She loo touch that fur, to rub her cheeks against it, but of course she never did; for it was the grossest breach of etiquette imagio touother persons daemon. Daemons might touch each other, of course, ht; but the prohibition against human-daemon tact went so deep that even in battle no warrior would tou enemys daemon. It was utterly forbidden. Lyra couldnt remember having to be told that: she just k, as instinctively as she felt that nausea was bad and food. So although she admired the fur of Sophonax and even speculated on what it might feel like, she never made the slightest move to touch her, and never would.
Sophonax was as sleek ahy aiful as Farder was ravaged and weak. He might have been ill, or he might have suffered a crippling blow, but the result was that he could not walk without leaning on two sticks, arembled stantly like an aspen leaf. His mind was sharp and clear and powerful, though, and soon Lyra came to love him for his knowledge and for the firm way he directed her.
“Whats that hlass mean, Farder ?” she asked, over the alethiometer, one sunny m in his boat. “It keeps ing back to that.”
“Theres often a clue there if you look more close. Whats that little old thing on top of it?”
She screwed up her eyes and peered.
“Thats a skull!”
“So what dyou think that might mean?”
“Death...Is that death?”
“Thats right. So in the hlass range of meanings you get death. In fact, after time, which is the first one, death is the sed one.”
“Dyou know what I noticed, Farder ? The needle stops there on the sed go-round! On the first round it kind of twitches, and on the sed it stops. Is that saying its the seeaning, then?”
“Probably. What are you asking it, Lyra?”
“Im a thinking—” she stopped, surprised to find that shed actually been asking a question without realizing it. “I just put three pictures together because...! was thinking about Mr. de Ruyter, see....And I put together the serpent and the crucible and the beehive, to ask how hes a getting on with his spying, and—”
“Why them three symbols?”
“Because I thought the serpent was ing, like a spy ought to be, and the crucible could mean like knowledge, what you kind of distill, and the beehive was hard work, like bees are always w hard; so out of the hard work and the ing es the knowledge, see, and thats the spys job; and I poio them and I thought the question in my mind, and the needle stopped at death....Dyou think that could be really w, Farder ?”
“Its w all right, Lyra. What we dont know is whether were reading it right. Thats a subtle art. I wonder if—”
Before he could finish his sentehere藏书网d what was the nature of the sacrifice the children were having to make.
The little boy was huddled against the wo rack where hung row upon row of gutted fish, all as stiff as boards. He was clutg a piece of fish to him as Lyra was clutg Pantalaimon, with her left hand, hard, against her heart; but that was all he had, a piece of dried fish; because he had no da;mon at all.
The Gobblers had cut it away. That was intercision, and this was a severed child.
THIRTEEN - FENCING-1
Her first impulse was to turn and run, or to be sick. A human being with no daemon was like someohout a face, or with their ribs laid open and their heart torn out: something unnatural and uny that beloo the world of night-ghasts, not the waking world of sense.
So Lyra g to Pantalaimon and her head swam and her ge rose, and cold as the night was, a sickly sweat moistened her flesh with something colder still.
“Ratter,” said the boy. “You got my Ratter?”
Lyra was in no doubt what he meant.
“No,” she said in a voice as frail and frightened as she felt. Then, “Whats your name?”
“Tony Makarios,” he said. “Wheres Ratter?”
“I dont know...” she began, and swallowed hard to govern her nausea. “The Gobblers...” But she couldnt finish. She had to go out of the shed and sit down by herself in the snow, except that of course she wasnt by herself, she was never by herself, because Pantalaimon was always there. Oh, to be cut from him as this little boy had been parted from his Ratter! The worst thing in the world! She found herself sobbing, and Pantalaimon was whimpering too, and in both of them there assioy and sorrow for the half-boy.
The to her feet again.
“e on,” she called in a trembling voice. “Tony, e out. Were going to take you somewhere safe.”
There was a stir of movement in the fish house, and he appeared at the door, still clutg his dried fish. He was dressed in warm enough garments, a thickly padded and quilted coal-silk anorak and fur boots, but they had a sedhand look and didnt fit well. In the wider light outside that came from the faint trails of the Aurora and the snow-cround he looked more lost and piteous even than he had at first, croug in the lantern light by the fish racks.
The villager whht the lantern had retreated a few yards, and called down to them.
lorek Byrnison interpreted: “He says you must pay for that fish.”
Lyra felt like telling the bear to kill him, but she said, “Were taking the child away for them. They afford to give one fish to pay for that.”
The bear spoke. The man muttered, but didnt argue. Lyra set his lantern down in the snow and took the half-boys hand to guide him to the bear. He came helplessly, showing no surprise and no fear at the great white beast standing so close, and when Lyra helped him to sit on loreks back, all he said was:
“I dunno where my Ratter is.”
“No, nor do we, Tony,” she said. “But well...well punish the Gobblers. Well do that, I promise. lorek, is it all right if I sit up there too?”
“My armor weighs far more than children,” he said.
So she scrambled up behind Tony and made. him g to the long stiff fur, and Pantalaimon sat inside her hood, warm and close and full of pity. Lyra khat Pantalaimons impulse was to reach out and cuddle the little half-child, to lick him ale him and warm him as his own daemon would have done; but the great taboo prevehat, of course.
They rose through the village and up toward the ridge, and the villagers faces were open with horror and a kind of fearful relief at seeing that hideously mutilated creature taken away by a girl and a great white bear.
In Lyras heart, revulsion struggled with passion, and passion won. She put her arms around the skinny little form to hold him safe. The journey back to the main party was colder, and harder, and darker, but it seemed to pass more quickly for all that. lorek Byrnison was tireless, and Lyras riding became automatic, so that she was never in danger of falling off. The cold body in her arms was so light that in one way he was easy to manage, but he was i; he sat stiffly without moving as the bear moved, so in another way he was difficult too.
From time to time the half-boy spoke.
“Whats that you said?” asked Lyra.
“I says is she gonna know where I am?”
“Yeah, shell know, shell find you and well find her. Hold on tight now, Tony.
It ent far from here....”
The bear loped onward. Lyra had no idea how tired she was until they caught up with the gyptians. The sledges had stopped to rest the dogs, and suddenly there they all were, Farder , Lord Faa, Lee Scoresby, all lunging forward to help and then falling back silent as they saw the ure with Lyra. She was so stiff that she couldnt even loosen her arms around his body, and John Faa himself had to pull them gently open and lift her off.
“Gracious God, what is this?” he said. “Lyra, child, what have you found?”
“Hes called Tony,” she mumbled through frozen lips. “And they cut his daemon away. Thats what the Gobblers do.”
The men held back, fearful; but the bear spoke, to Lyras weary amazement, chiding them.
“Shame on you! Think what this child has done! You might not have more ce, but you should be ashamed to show less.”
“Youre right, lorek Byrnison,” said John Faa, and turo give orders. “Build that fire up a some soup for the child. For both children. Farder , is your shelter rigged?”
“It is, John. Bring her over and well get her warm....”
“And the little boy,” said someone else. “He eat a warm, even if...”
Lyra was trying to tell John Faa about the witches, but they were all so busy, and she was so tired. After a fusing few minutes full of lantern light, woodsmoke, figures hurrying to and fro, she felt a gentle nip on her ear from Pantalaimons ermih, and woke to find the bears face a few inches from hers.
“The witches,” Pantalaimon whispered. “I called lorek.”
“Oh yeah,” she mumbled. “lorek, thank you for takihere and back. I might not remember to tell Lord Faa about the witches, so you better do that instead of me.”
She heard the bear agree, and then she fell asleep properly.
When she woke up, it was as close to daylight as it was ever going to get. The sky ale in the southeast, and the air was suffused with a gray mist, through which the gyptians moved like bulky ghosts, loading sledges and harnessing dogs to the traces.
She saw it all from the shelter on Farder s sledge, inside which she lay under a heap of furs. Pantalaimon was fully awake before she was, trying the shape of an arctic fox before reverting to his favorite ermine.
lorek Byrnison was asleep in the snow nearby, his head on his great paws; but Farder and busy, and as soon as he saw Pantalaimon emerge, he limped across to wake Lyra properly.
She saw him ing, and sat up to speak.
“Farder , I know what it was that I couldnt uand! The alethiometer kept saying bird and not, and that didnt make sense, because it meant no daemon and I didnt see how it could be....What is it?”
“Lyra, Im afraid to tell you this after what you done, but that little boy died an9９lib? ho. He couldle, he couldnt stay in one place; he kept asking after his daemon, where she was, was she a ing soon, and all; and he kept such a tight hold on that bare old piece of fish as if...Oh, I t speak of it, child; but he closed his eyes finally and fell still, and that was the first time he looked peaceful, for he was like any other dead person then, with their daemon gone in the course of nature. Theyve been a trying to dig a grave for him, but the earths bound like iron. So John Faa ordered a fire built, and theyre a going to cremate him, so as not to have him despoiled by carrioers.
“Child, you did a brave thing and a good thing, and Im proud of you. Now we know what terrible wiess those people are capable of, we see our duty plaihan ever. What you must do is rest a, because you fell asleep too soon to restore yourself last night, and you have to eat iemperatures to stop yourself getting weak....”
He was fussing around, tug the furs into place, tightening the tension rope across the body of the sledge, running the traces through his hands to untahem.
“Farder , where is the little boy now? Have they burned him yet?”
“No, Lyra, hes a lying back there.”
“I want to go and see him.”
He couldnt refuse her that, for shed seen worse than a dead body, and it might calm her. So with Pantalaimon as a white hare bounding delicately at her side, she trudged along the line of sledges to where some men were piling brushwood.
The boys body lay under a checkered bla beside the path. She k and lifted the bla in her mittened hands. One man was about to stop her, but the others shook their heads.
Pantalaimo close as Lyra looked down on the poor wasted face. She slipped her hand out of the mitten and touched his eyes. They were marble-cold, and Farder had been right; poor little Tony Makarios was no different from any other human whose daemon had departed ih. Oh, if they took Pantalaimon from her! She swept him up and hugged him as if she meant to press him right into her heart. And all little Tony had was his pitiful piece offish....
Where was it?
She pulled the bla down. It was gone.
She was on her feet in a moment, and her eyes flashed fury at the men nearby.
“Wheres his fish?”
They stopped, puzzled, unsure what she meant; though some of their daemons knew, and looked at one another. One of the men began to grin uainly.
“Dont you dare laugh! Ill tear your lungs out if you laugh at him! Thats all he had to g onto, just an old dried fish, thats all he had for a daemon to love and be kind to! Whos took it from him? Wheres it gone?”
Pantalaimon was a snarling snow leopard, just like Lord Asriels daemon, but she didhat; all she saw was right and wrong.
“Easy, Lyra,” said one man. “Easy, child.”
“Whos took it?” she flared again, and the gyptian took a step back from her passionate fury.
“I didnt know,” said another man apologetically. “I thought it was just what hed beeing. I took it out his hand because I thought it was more respectful. Thats all, Lyra.”
“Then where is it?”
The man said uneasily, “Not thinking he had a need for it, I gave it to my dogs.
I do beg your pardon.”
“It ent my pardon you need, its his,” she said, and tur oo kneel again, and laid her hand on the dead childs icy cheek.
Then an idea came to her, and she fumbled inside her furs. The cold air struck through as she opened her anorak, but in a few seds she had what she wanted, and took a gold from her purse before ing herself close again.
“I want to borrow your knife,” she said to the man whod taken the fish, and when hed let her have it, she said to Pantalaimon: “What was her name?”
He uood, of course, and said, “Ratter.”
She held the ..ight in her left mittened hand and, holding the knife like a pencil, scratched the lost daemons name deeply into the gold.
“I hope thatll do, if I provide for you like a Jordan Scholar,” she whispered to the dead boy, and forced his teeth apart to slip the into his mouth. It was hard, but she ma, and mao close his jaw again.
Then she gave the man back his knife and turned in the m twilight to go back to Farder .
He gave her a mug of soup straight off the fire, and she sipped it greedily.
“What we going to do about them witches, Farder ?” she said. “I wonder if your witch was one of them.”
“My witch? I wouldnt presume that far, Lyra. They might be going anywhere.
Theres all kinds of s that play on the life of witches, things invisible to us: mysterious siesses they fall prey to, which wed shrug off; causes of war quite beyond our uanding; joys and sorrows bound up with the fl of tiny plants up oundra....But I wish Id seen them a flying, Lyra. I wish Id been able to see a sight like that. Now drink up all that soup. Dyou want some more? Theres some pan-bread a cooking too. Eat up, child, because were on our way soon.”
The food revived Lyra, and presently the chill at her soul began to melt. With the others, she went to watch the little half-child laid on his funeral pyre, and bowed her head and closed her eyes for John Faas prayers; and then the men sprinkled coal spirit a matches to it, and it was blazing in a moment.
Ohey were sure he was safely burhey set off to travel again. It was a ghostly journey. Snow began to fall early on, and soon the world was reduced to the gray shadows of the dogs ahead, the lurg and creaking of the sledge, the biting cold, and a swirling sea of big flakes only just darker than the sky and only just lighter than the ground.
Through it all the dogs tio run, tails high, breath puffing steam.
North and further north they ran, while the pallid noontide came a and the twilight ed itself again around the world. They stopped to eat and drink a in a fold of the hills, and to get their bearings, and while John Faa talked to Lee Scoresby about the way they might best use the balloon, Lyra thought of the spy-fly; and she asked Farder what had happeo the smokeleaf tirapped it in.
“Ive got it tucked away tight,” he said. “Its down itom of that kit bag, but theres nothing to see; I soldered it shut on board ship, like I said I would. I dont know what were a going to do with it, to tell you the truth; maybe we could drop it down a fire mine, maybe that would settle it. But you worry, Lyra. While Ive got it, youre safe.” The first ce she had, she plunged her arm down into the stiffly frosted vas of the kit bag and brought up the little tin. She could feel the buzz it was making before she touched it.
THIRTEEN - FENCING-2
While Farder was talking to the other leaders, she took the tin to lorek Byrnison and explained her idea. It had e to her when she remembered his slig so easily through the metal of the engine cover.
He listened, and then took the lid of a biscuit tin aly folded it into a small flat der. She marveled at the skill of his hands: unlike most bears, he and his kin had opposable thumb claws with which they could hold things still to work on them; and he had some innate sense of the strength and flexibility of metals which meant that he only had to lift it once or twice, flex it this way and that, and he could run a claw over it in a circle to score it for folding.
He did this now, folding the sides in and in until they stood in a raised rim and then making a lid to fit it. At Lyras bidding he made two: ohe same size as the inal smokeleaf tin, and another just big enough to taiin itself and a quantity of hairs and bits of moss and li all packed down tight to smother the noise. When it was closed, it was the same size and shape as the alethiometer.
When that was done, she sat o lorek Byrnison as he gnawed a haunch of reihat was frozen as hard as wood.
“lorek,” she said, “is it hard not having a daemon? Dont you get lonely?”
“Lonely?” he said. “I dont know. They tell me this is cold. I dont know what cold is, because I dont freeze. So I dont know what lonely meaher. Bears are made to be solitary.”
“What about the Svalbard bears?” she said. “Theres thousands of them, ent there? Thats what I heard.”
He said nothing, but ripped the joint in half with a sound like a splitting log.
“Beg pardon, lorek,” she said. “I hope I ent offended you. Its just that Im curious. See, Im extra curious about the Svalbard bears because of my father.”
“Who is your father?”
“Lord Asriel. And they got him captive on Svalbard, you see. I think the Gobblers betrayed him and paid the bears to keep him in prison.”
“I dont know. I am not a Svalbard bear.”
“I thought you was....”
“No. I was a Svalbard bear, but I am not now. I was sent away as a punishment because I killed another bear. So I was deprived of my rank and my wealth and my armor a out to live at the edge of the human world and fight when I could find employment at it, or work at brutal tasks and drown my memory in raw spirits.”
“Why did you kill the other bear?”
“Ahere are ways among bears of turning away er with each other, but I was out of my own trol. So I killed him and I was justly punished.”
“And you were wealthy and high-ranking,” said Lyra, marveling. “Just like my father, lorek! Thats just the same with him after I was born. He killed someooo and they took all his wealth away. That was long before he got made a prisoner on Svalbard, though. I dont know anything about Svalbard, except its in the farthest North....Is it all covered in ice? you get there over the frozen sea?”
“Not from this coast. The sea is sometimes frozen south of it, sometimes not.
You would need a boat.”
“Or a balloon, maybe.”
“Or a balloon, yes, but then you would he right wind.”
He ghe reindeer haunch, and a wild notion flew into Lyras mind as she remembered all those witches in the night sky; but she said nothing about that.
Instead she asked lorek Byrnison about Svalbard, and listened eagerly as he told her of the slow-crawling glaciers, of the rocks and ice floes where the bright-tusked walruses lay in groups of a hundred or more, of the seas teeming with seals, of narwhals clashing their long white tusks above the icy water, of the great grim iron-bound coast, the cliffs a thousa and more high where the foul cliff-ghasts perched and swooped, the coal pits and the fire mines where the bearsmiths hammered out mighty sheets of iron and riveted them into armor...
“If they took your armor away, lorek, where did you get this set from?”
“I made it myself in Nova Ze藏书网mbla from sky metal. Until I did that, I was inplete.”
“So bears make their own souls...” she said. There was a great deal in the world to know. “Who is the king of Svalbard?” she went on. “Do bears have a king?”
“He is called lofur Raknison.”
That name shook a little bell in Lyras mind. Shed heard it before, but where?
And not in a bears voice, either, nor in a gyptians. The voice that had spoken it was a Scholars, precise aid lazily arrogant, very much a Jordan College voice. She tried it again in her mind. Oh, she k so well! And then she had it: the Retiring Room. The Scholars listening to Lord Asriel.
It was the Palmerian Professor who had said something about lofur Raknison. Hed used the word panserbj0rne, which Lyra didnt know, and she hadnt known that lofur Raknison was a bear; but what was it hed said? The king of Svalbard was vain, and he could be flattered. There was something else, if only she could remember it, but so much had happened sihen....
“If your father is a prisoner of the Svalbard bears,” said lorek Byrnison, “he will not escape. There is no wood there to make a boat. Oher hand, if he is a nobleman, he will be treated fairly. They will give him a house to live in and a servant to wait on him, and food and fuel.”
“Could the bears ever be defeated, lorek?”
“No.”
“Or tricked, maybe?”
He stopped gnawing and looked at her directly. Then he said, “You will never defeat the armored bears. You have seen my armor; now look at my ons.”
He dropped the meat and held out his paws, palm upward, for her to look at. Each black pad was covered in horny skin an inore thick, and each of the claws was as long as Lyras hand at least, and as sharp as a knife. He let her run her hands over them wly.
“One blow will crush a seals skull,” he said. “Or break a mans back, or tear off a limb. And I bite. If you had not stopped me in Trollesund, I would have crushed that mans head like an egg. So much for strength; now for trickery. You ot trick a bear. You want to see proof? Take a stid feh me.”
Eager to try, she snapped a stick off a snow-laden bush, trimmed all the side shoots off, and swished it from side to side like a rapier. lorek Byrnison sat ba his haunches and waited, forepaws in his lap. When she was ready, she faced him, but she didnt like to stab at him because he looked so peaceable. So she flourished it, feinting tht a, not intending to hit him at all, and he didnt move. She did that several times, and not once did he move so much as an inch.
Finally she decided to thrust at him directly, not hard, but just to touch the stick to his stomach. Instantly his paw reached forward and flicked the stick aside.
Surprised, she tried again, with the same result. He moved far more quickly and sure..ly than she did. She tried to hit him in ear, wielding the stick like a fencers foil, and not once did it land on his body. He seemed to know what she intended before she did, and when she lu his head, the great paw swept the stick aside harmlessly, and when she feinted, he didnt move at all.
She became exasperated, and threw herself into a furious attack, jabbing and lashing and thrusting and stabbing, and never once did she get past those paws.
They moved everywhere, precisely in time to parry, precisely at the right spot to block.
Finally she was frightened, and stopped. She was sweating inside her furs, out of breath, exhausted, and the bear still sat impassive. If she had had a real sword with a murderous point, he would have been quite unharmed.
“I bet you could catch bullets,” she said, and threw the stick away. “How do you do that?”
“By not being human,” he said. “Thats why you could rick a bear. We see tricks a as plain as arms and legs. We see in a way humans have fotten. But you know about this; you uand the symbol reader.”
“That ent the same, is it?” she said. She was more nervous of the bear now than when she had seen his anger.
“It is the same,” he said. “Adults t read it, as I uand. As I am to human fighters, so you are to adults with the symbol reader.”
“Yes, I suppose,” she said, puzzled and unwilling. “Does that mean Ill fet how to do it when I grow up?”
“Who knows? I have never seen a symbol reader, nor anyone who could read them.
Perhaps you are different from others.” He dropped to all fain a on gnawing his meat. Lyra had unfastened her furs, but now the cold was striking in again a藏书网
nd she had to do them up. All in all, it was a disquieting episode.
She wao sult the alethiome-ter there and then, but it was too cold, and besides, they were calling for her because it was time to move on. She took the tin boxes that lorek Byrnison had made, put the empty one bato Farder s kit bag, and put the oh the spy-fly in it together with the alethiometer in the pouch at her waist. She was glad when they were moving again.
The leaders had agreed with Lee Scoresby that when they reached the stopping place, they would inflate his balloon and he would spy from the air.
Naturally Lyra was eager to fly with him, and naturally it was forbidden; but she rode with him on the way there aered him with questions. “Mr.
Scoresby, how would you fly to Svalbard?” “Youd need a dirigible with a gas engine, something like a zeppelin, or else a good south wind. But hell, I wouldnt dare. Have you ever seen it? The bleakest barest most inhospitable godforsaken dead end of nowhere.”
“I was just w, if lorek Bymison wao go back...” “Hed be killed.
loreks in exile. As soon as he set foot there, theyd tear him to pieces.”
“How do you inflate your balloon, Mr. Scoresby?” “Two ways. I make hydrogen by p sulfuric acid onto iron filings. You catch the gas it gives off and gradually fill the balloon like that. The other way is to find a ground-gas vent near a fire miheres a lot of gas uhe ground here, and rock oil besides. I make gas from rock oil, if I o, and from coal as well; its not hard to make gas. But the quickest way is to use ground gas. A good vent will fill the balloon in an hour.”
“Hoeople you carry?”
“Six, if I o.”
“Could you carry lorek Byrnison in his armor?”
“I have done. I rescued him oime from the Tartars, when he was cut off and they were starving him out—that was iunguska campaign; I flew in and took him off. Sounds easy, but hell, I had to calculate the weight of that old boy by guess-work. And then I had to bank on finding ground gas uhe ice fort hed made. But I could see what kind of ground it was from the air, and I reed wed be safe in digging. See, to go down I have to let gas out of the balloon, and I t get airborne again without.. more. Anyway, we made it, armor and all.”
“Mr. Scoresby, you know the Tartars make holes in peoples heads?”
“Oh, sure. Theyve been doing that for thousands of years. Iunguska campaign tured five Tartars alive, and three of them had holes in their skulls. One of them had two.”
“They do it to each other?”
“Thats right. First they cut partway around a circle of skin on the scalp, so they lift up a flap and expose the bohen they cut a little circle of bo of the skull, very carefully so they dorate the brain, and then they sew the scalp back over.”
“I thought they did it to their enemies!”
“Hell, no. Its a great privilege. They藏书网 do it so the gods talk to them.”
“Did you ever hear of an explorer called Stanislaus Grumman?”
“Grumman? Sure. I met one of his team when I flew over the Yenisei River two years back. He was going to live among the Tartar tribes up that way. Matter of fact, I think he had that hole in the skull do art of an initiation ceremony, but the man who told me didnt know much about it.”
“So...If he was like an honorary Tartar, they wouldnt have killed him?”
“Killed him? Is he dead then?”
“Yeah. I saw his head,” Lyra said proudly. “My father found it. I saw it when he showed it to the Scholars at Jordan College in Oxford. Theyd scalped it, and all.”
“Whod scalped it?”
“Well, the Tartars, thats what the Scholars thought....But maybe it wasnt.”
“It might not have been Grummans head,” said Lee Scoresby. “Your father might have been misleading the Scholars.”
“I suppose he might,” said Lyra thoughtfully. “He was asking them for money.”
“And when they saw the head, they gave him the money?”
“Yeah.”
“Good trick to play. People are shocked when they see a thing like that; they dont like to look too close.”
“Especially Scholars,” said Lyra.
“Well, youd know better than I would. But if that was Grummans head, Ill bet it wasnt the Tartars who scalped him. They scalp their enemies, not their own, and he was a Tartar by adoption.”
Lyra turhat over in her mind as they drove on. There were wide currents full of meaning flowing fast arouhe Gobblers and their cruelty, their fear of Dust, the city in the Aurora, her father in Svalbard, her mother....And where was she? The alethiometer, the witches flying northward. And poor little Tony Makarios; and the clockwork spy-fly; and lorek Byrnisons uny feng...
She fell asleep. And every hour they drew closer to Bolvangar.
FOURTEEN - BOLVANGAR LIGHTS-1
The fact that the gyptians had heard or seen nothing of Mrs. Coulter worried Farder and John Faa more than they let Lyra know; but they werent to know that she was worried too. Lyra feared Mrs. Coulter and thought about her often.
And whereas Lord Asriel was now “father,” Mrs. Coulter was never “mother.” The reason for that was Mrs. Coulters daemon, the golden monkey, who had filled Pantalaimon with a powerful loathing, and who, Lyra felt, had pried into her secrets, and particularly that of the alethiometer.
And they were bound to be chasing her; it was silly to think otherwise. The spy-fly proved that, if nothing else.
But when an enemy did strike, it wasnt Mrs. Coulter. The gyptians had plao stop aheir dogs, repair a couple of sledges, a all their ons into shape for the assault on Bolvangar. John Faa hoped that Lee Scoresby might find some ground gas to fill his smaller balloon (for he had tarently) and go up to spy out the land. However, the aeronaut atteo the dition of the weather as closely as a sailor, and he said there was going to be a fog; and sure enough, as soon as they stopped, a thick mist desded. Lee Scoresby knew hed see nothing from the sky, so he had to tent himself with cheg his equipment, though it was all iiculous order. Then, with n at all, a volley of arrows flew out of the dark.
Three gyptian me down at once, and died so silently that no one heard a thing. Only when they slumped clumsily across the dog traces or lay uedly still did the men notice what was happening, and then it was already too late, because more arrows were flying at them. Some men looked up, puzzled by the fast irregular knog sounds that came from up and down the line as arrows hurtled into wood or frozen vas.
The first to e to his wits was John Faa, who shouted orders from the ter of the line. Cold hands an９9liｂ?d stiff limbs moved to obey as yet more arrows flew down like rain, straight rods of rain tipped with death.
Lyra was in the open, and the arrows were passing over her head. Pantalaimon heard before she did, and became a leopard and knocked her over, making her less of a target. Brushing snow out of her eyes, she rolled over to try and see what was happening, for the semidarkness seemed to be overflowing with fusion and noise. She heard a mighty roar, and the g and scrape of lorek Byrnisons armor as he leaped fully clad over the sledges and into the fog, and that was followed by screams, snarling, g and tearing sounds, great smashing blows, cries of terror and roars of bearish fury as he laid them waste.
But who was them? Lyra had seen no enemy figures yet. The gyptians were swarming to defend the sledges, but that (as even Lyra could see) made them better targets; and their rifles were not easy to fire in gloves and mittens; she had only heard four or five shots, as against the ceaseless knog rain of arrows.
And more and more men fell every minute.
Oh, John Faa! she thought in anguish. You didnt foresee this, and I didnt help you! But she had no more than a sed to think that, for there was a mighty snarl from Pantalaimon, and something— another daemon—hurtled at him and knocked him down, crushing all the breath out of Lyra herself; and then hands were hauling at her, lifting her, stifling her cry with foul-smelling mittens, tossihrough the air into anothers arms, and then pushing her flat down into the snow again, so that she was dizzy and breathless and hurt all at once. Her arms were hauled behind till her shoulders cracked, and someone lashed her wrists together, and then a hood was crammed over her head to muffle her screams, for scream she did, and lustily:
“lorek! lorek Byrnison! Help me!”
But could he hear? She couldnt tell; she was hurled this way and that, crushed onto a hard surface which then began to lurd bump like a sledge. The sounds that reached her were wild and fused. She might have heard lorek Byrnisons roar, but it was a long way off, and then she was jolting over rough ground, arms twisted, mouth stifled, sobbing with rage and fear. And strange voices spoke around her.
“Pan...”
“Im here, shh, Ill help you breathe. Keep still...”
His mouse paws tugged at the hood until her mouth was freer, and she gulped at the frozen air.
“Who are they?” she whispered.
“They look like Tartars. I think they hit John Faa.”
“No—”
“I saw him fall. But he should have been ready for this sort of attack. We know that.”
“But we should have helped him! We should have been watg the alethiometer!”
“Hush. Pretend to be unscious.”
There was a whip crag, and the howl of rag dogs. From the way she was being jerked and bounced about, Lyra could tell how fast they were going, and though she straio hear the sounds of battle, all she made out was a forlorn volley of shots, muffled by the distance, and then the creak and rush and soft paw thuds in the snow were all there was to hear.
“Theyll take us to the Gobblers,” she whispered.
The word severed came to their mind. Horrible fear filled Lyras body, and Pantalaimoled close against her.
“Ill fight,” he said.
“So will I. Ill kill them.”
“So will lorek when he finds out. Hell crush them to death.”
“How far are we from Bolvangar?”
Pantalaimon didnt know, but he thought it was less than a days ride.
After they had been driving along for such a time that Lyras body was in torment from cramp, the pace slaed a little, and somehly pulled off the hood.
She looked up at a broad Asiatic face, under a wolverine hood, lit by flickering lamplight. His black eyes showed a glint of satisfa, especially when Pantalaimon slid out of Lyras anorak to bare his white ermih in a hiss.
The mans daemon, a big heavy wolverine, snarled back, but Pantalaimon didnt flinch.
The man hauled Lyra up to a sitting position and propped her against the side of the sledge. She kept falling sideways because her hands were still tied behind her, and so he tied her feet together instead and released her hands.
Through the snow that was falling and the thick fog she saerful this man was, and the sledge driver too, how balanced in the sledge, how much at home in this land in a way the gyptia.
The man spoke, but of course she uood nothing. He tried a different language with the same result. Theried English.
“You name?”
Pantalaimon bristled warningly, and she knew what he meant at once. So these men didnt know who she was! They hadnt kidnapped her because of her e with Mrs. Coulter; so perhaps they werent in the pay of the Gobblers after all.
“Lizzie Brooks,” she said.
“Lissie Broogs,” he said after her. “We take you nice plaice peoples.”
“Who are you?”
“Samoyed peoples. Hunters.”
“Where are you taking me?”
“Nice plaice peoples. You have panserbjorne?”
“For prote.”
“No good! Ha, ha, bear no good! We got you anyway!”
He laughed loudly. Lyra trolled herself and said nothing.
“Who those peoples?” the man asked , pointing back the way they had e.
“Traders.”
“Traders...What they trade?”
“Fur, spirits,” she said. “Smokeleaf.”
“They sell smokeleaf, buy furs?”
“Yes.”
He said something to his panion, who spoke back briefly. All the time the sledge eeding onward, and Lyra pulled herself up more fortably to try and see where they were heading; but the snow was falling thickly, and the sky was dark, and presently she became too cold to peer out any longer, and lay down. She and Pantalaimon could feel each others thoughts, and tried to keep calm, but the thought of John Faa dead...And what had happeo Farder ?
And would lorek mao kill the other Samoyeds? And would they ever mao track her down?
For the first time, she began to feel a little sorry for herself.
After a long time, the man shook her by the shoulder and handed her a strip of dried reindeer meat to chew. It was rank and tough, but she was hungry, and there was nourishment in it. After chewing it, she felt a little better. She slipped her hand slowly into her furs till she was sure the alethiometer was still there, and then carefully withdrew the spy-fly tin and slipped it down into her fur boot. Pantalaimo in as a mouse and pushed it as far down as he could, tug it uhe bottom of her reindeer-skin legging.
When that was done, she closed her eyes. Fear had made her exhausted, and soon she slipped uneasily into sleep.
She woke up wheion of the sledge ged. It was suddenly smoother, and when she opened her eyes there were passing lights dazzling above her, sht she had to pull the hood further over her head before peering out again. She was horribly stiff and cold, but she mao pull herself upright enough to see that the sledge was driving swiftly between a row of high poles, each carrying a glaring anbaric light. As she got her bearings, they passed through an opeal gate at the end of the avenue of lights and into a wide open space like ay marketplace or an arena for some game or sport. It erfectly flat and smooth and white, and about a hundred yards across. Around the edge ran a high metal fence.
At the far end of this arena the sledge halted. They were outside a low building, or a range of low buildings, over which the snow lay deeply. It was hard to tell, but she had the impression that tunnels ected one part of the buildings with aunnels humped uhe snow. At one side a stout metal mast had a familiar look, though she couldnt say what it reminded her of.
Before she could take much more in, the man in the sledge cut through the cord around her ankles, and hauled her hly while the driver shouted at the dogs to make them still. A door opened in the building a few yards away, and an anbaric light came on overhead, swiveling to find them, like a searchlight.
Lyras captor thrust her forward like a trophy, without letting go, and said something. The figure in the padded coal-silk anorak answered in the same language, and Lyra saw his features: he was not a Samoyed or a Tartar. He could have been a Jordan Scholar. He looked at her, and particularly at Pantalaimon.
The Samoyed spoke again, and the man from Bolvangar said to Lyra, “You speak English?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Does your daemon always take that form?”
Of all the ued questions! Lyra could only gape. But Pantalaimon answered it in his own fashion by being a fal, and laung himself from her shoulder at the mans daemon, a large marmot, which struck up at Pantalaimon with a swift movement and spat as he circled past on swift wings.
“I see,” said the man in a tone of satisfa, as Pantalaimouro Lyras shoulder.
The Samoyed men were looking expet, and the man from Bolvangar nodded and took off a mitten to reato a pocket. He took >out a drawstring purse and ted out a dozen heavy s into the hunters hand.
The two men checked the money, and then stowed it carefully, each man taking half. Without a backward glahey got in the sledge, and the driver cracked the whip and shouted to the dogs; and they sped away across the wide white arena and into the avenue of lights, gathering speed until they vanished into the dark beyond.
The man ening the dain.
“e in quickly,” he said. “Its warm and fortable. Dont stand out in the cold. What is your name ?”
His voice was an English one, without any at Lyra could name. He sounded like the sort of people she had met at Mrs. Coulters: smart and educated and important.
“Lizzie Brooks,” she said.
“e in, Lizzie. Well look after you here, dont worry.”
He was colder than she was, even though shed been outside for far longer; he was impatient to be in the warm again. She decided to play slow and dim-witted aant, and dragged her feet as she stepped over the high threshold into the building.
There were two doors, with a wide space between them so that not too much warm air escaped. Ohey were through the inner doorway, Lyra found herself sweltering in what seemed unbearable heat, and had to pull open her furs and push back her hood.
They were in a space about eight feet square, with corridors to the right a, and in front of her the sort of reception desk you might see in a hospital. Everything was brilliantly lit, with the glint of shiny white surfaces and stainless steel. There was the smell of food in the air, familiar food, ba and coffee, and u a faiual hospital-medical smell; and ing from the walls all around was a slight humming sound, almost too low to hear, the sort of sound you had to get used to mad.
Pantalaimon at her ear, a goldfinow, whispered, “Be stupid and dim. Be really slow and stupid.”
Adults were looking down at her: the man whht her in, another man wearing a white coat, a woman in a nurses uniform.
“English,” the first man was saying. “Traders, apparently.”
“Usual hunters? Usual story?”
“Same tribe, as far as I could tell. Sister Clara, could you take little, umm, ao her?”
“Certainly, Doctor. e with me, dear,” said the nurse, and Lyra obediently followed.
They went along a short corridor with doors on the right and a teen on the left, from which came a clatter of knives and forks, and voices, and more cooking smells. The nurse was about as old as Mrs. Coulter, Lyra guessed, with a brisk, blank, sensible air; she would be able to stitch a wound or ge a bandage, but o tell a story. Her daemon (and Lyra had a moment of strange chill wheiced) was a little white trotting dog (and after a moment she had no idea why it had chilled her).
“Whats your name, dear?” said the nurse, opening a heavy door. “Lizzie.” “Just Lizzie?” “Lizzie Brooks.” “And how old are you?” “Eleven.”
Lyra had been told that she was small for her age, whatever that meant. It had never affected her sense of her own importance, but she realized that she could use the faow to make Lizzie shy and nervous and insignifit, and shrank a little as she went into the room.
FOURTEEN - BOLVANGAR LIGHTS-2
She was half expeg questions about where she had e from and how she had arrived, and she reparing answers; but it wasnt only imagination the nurse lacked, it was curiosity as well. Bolvangar might have been oskirts of London, and children might have been arriving all the time, for all the i Sister Clara seemed to show. Her pert little daemon trotted along at her heels just as brisk and blank as she was.
In the room they ehere was a coud a table and two chairs and a filing et, and a glass cupboard with medies and bandages, and a wash basin. As soon as they were ihe ook Lyras outer coat off and dropped it on the shiny floor.
“Off with the rest, dear,” she said. “Well have a quick little look to see youre nid healthy, no frostbite or sniffles, and then well find some nice clothes. Well pop you in the shower, too,” she added, for Lyra had not ged or washed for days, and in the enveloping warmth, that was being more and more evident.
Pantalaimon fluttered in protest, but Lyra quelled him with a scowl. He settled on the couch as one by one all Lyras clothes came off, to her rese and shame; but she still had the presenind to ceal it and act dull-witted and pliant.
“And the money belt, Lizzie,” said the nurse, and u herself with strong fingers. She went to drop it on the pile with Lyras other clothes, but stopped, feeling the edge of the alethiometer.
“Whats this?” she said, and unbuttohe oilcloth.
“Just a sort of toy,” said Lyra. “Its mine.”
“Yes, we wont take it away from you, dear,” said Sister Clara, unfolding the black velvet. “Thats pretty, isnt it, like a pass. Into the shower with you,” she went on, putting the alethiometer down and whisking back a coal-silk curtain in the er.
Lyra relutly slipped uhe warm water and soaped herself while Pantalaimon perched on the curtain rail. They were both scious that he mustoo lively, for the daemons of dull people were dull themselves. When she was washed and dry, the ook her temperature and looked into her eyes and ears and throat, and then measured her height and put her on some scales before writing a note on a clipboard. Then she gave Lyra some pajamas and a dressing gown. They were , and of good quality, like Tony Makarioss anorak, but again there was a sedhand air about them. Lyra felt very uneasy.
“These ent mine,” she said.
“No, dear. Your clothes need a good wash.”
“Am I going to get my own ones back?”
“I expect so. Yes, of course.”
“What is this place?”
“Its called the Experimental Station.”
That wasnt an answer, and whereas Lyra would have poihat out and asked for more information, she didnt think Lizzie Brooks would; so she assented dumbly in the dressing and said no more.
“I want my toy back,” she said stubbornly when she was dressed.
“Take it, dear,” said the nurse. “Wouldnt you rather have a nice woolly bear, though? Or a pretty doll?”
She opened a drawer where some soft toys lay like dead things. Lyra made herself stand and pretend to sider for several seds before pig out a rag doll with big vat eyes. She had never had a doll, but she knew what to do, and pressed it absently to her chest.
“What about my money belt?” she said. “I like to keep my toy in there.”
“Go on, then, dear,” said Sister Clara, who was filling in a form on pink paper.
Lyra hitched up her unfamiliar skirt and tied the oilskin pouch around her waist.
“What about my coat and boots?” she said. “And my mittens and things?”
“Well have them ed for you,” said the omatically.
Then a telephone buzzed, and while the nurse answered it, Lyra stooped quickly to recover the other tin, the one taining the spy-fly, and put it in the pouch with the alethiometer.
“e along, Lizzie,” said the nurse, putting the receiver down. “Well go and find you something to eat. I expect youre hungry.”
She followed Sister Clara to the teen, where a dozen round white tables were covered in crumbs and the sticky rings where drinks had been carelessly put down. Dirty plates and cutlery were stacked on a steel trolley. There were no windows, so to give an illusion of light and spae wall was covered in a huge photogram showing a tropical beach, with bright blue sky and white sand and ut palms.
The man who had brought her in was colleg a tray from a serving hatch.
“Eat up,” he said.
There was o starve, so she ate the stew and mashed potatoes with relish. There was a bowl of tinned peaches and ice cream to follow. As she ate, the man and the alked quietly at aable, and when she had fihe nurse brought her a glass of warm milk and took the tray away.
The man came to sit down opposite. His daemon, the marmot, was not blank and incurious as the nurses dog had been, but sat politely on his shoulder watg and listening.
“Now, Lizzie,” he said. “Have you eaten enough?”
“Yes, thank you.”
“Id like you to tell me where you e from. you do that?”
“London,” she said.
“And what are you doing so far north?”
“With my father,” she mumbled. She kept her eyes down, avoiding the gaze of the marmot, and trying to look as if she was on the verge of tears.
“With your father? I see. And whats he doing in this part of the world?”
“Trading. We e with a load of New Danish smokeleaf and we was buying furs.”
“And was your father by himself?”
“No. There was my uncles and all, and some other men,” she said vaguely, not knowing what the Samoyed hunter had told him.
“Why did he bring you on a journey like this, Lizzie?”
“ Cause two years ago he brung my brother and he says hell bring me , only he never. So I kept asking him, and then he did.”
“And how old are you?”
“Eleven.”
“Good, good. Well, Lizzie, youre a lucky little girl. Those huntsmen who found yht you to the best place you could be.”
“They never found me,” she said doubtfully. “There was a fight. There was lots of em and they had arrows....”
“Oh, I dont think so. I think you must have wandered away from your fathers party and got lost. Those huntsmen found you on your own and brought you straight here. Thats what happened, Lizzie.”
“I saw a fight,” she said. “They was shooting arrows and that....I want my dad,”
she said more loudly, a herself beginning to cry.
“Well, youre quite safe here until he es,” said the doctor.
“But I saw them shooting arrows!”
“Ah, you thought you did. That often happens iense cold, Lizzie. You fall asleep and have bad dreams and you t remember whats true and what isnt. That wasnt a fight, dont worry. Your father is safe and sound and hell be looking for you now and soon hell e here because this is the only place for hundreds of miles, you know, and what a surprise hell have to find you safe and sound! Now Sister Clara will take you along to the dormitory where youll meet some other little girls and boys who got lost in the wilderness just like you. Off you go. Well have another little talk in the m.”
Lyra stood up, clutg her doll, and Pantalaimon hopped onto her shoulder as the nurse opehe door to lead them out.
More corridors, and Lyra was tired by now, so sleepy she kept yawning and could hardly lift her feet in the woolly slippers theyd given her. Pantalaimon was drooping, and he had to ge to a mouse ale inside her dressing-gown pocket. Lyra had the impression of a row of beds, childrens faces, a pillow, and then she was asleep.
Someone was shakihe first thing she did was to feel at her waist, and both tins were still there, still safe; so she tried to open her eyes, but oh, it was hard; she had never felt so sleepy.
“Wake up! Wake up!”
It was a whisper in more than one voice. With a huge effort, as if she were pushing a boulder up a slope, Lyra forced herself to wake up.
In the dim light from a very low-powered anbaric bulb over the doorway she saw three irls clustered around her. It wasnt easy to see, because her eyes were slow to focus, but they seemed about her own age, and they were speaking English.
“Shes awake.”
“They gave her sleeping pills. Mustve...”
“Whats your name?”
“Lizzie,” Lyra mumbled.
“Is there a load more new kids ing?” demanded one of the girls.
“Dunno. Just me.”
“Whered they get you then?”
Lyra struggled to sit up. She didnt remember taking a sleeping pill, but there might well have been something in the drink shed had. Her head felt full of eiderdown, and there was a faint pain throbbing behind her eyes.
“Where is this place?”
“Middle of nowhere. They dont tell us.”
“They usually bring moren one kid at a time....”
“What do they do?” Lyra mao ask, gathering her doped wits as Pantalaimon stirred into wakefulness with her.
“We dunno,” said the girl who was doing most of the talking. She was a tall, red-haired girl with quick twitchy movements and a strong London at. “They sort of measure us and do these tests and that—”
“They measure Dust,” said anirl, friendly and plump and dark-haired.
“You dont know,” said the first girl.
“They do,” said the third, a subdued-looking child cuddling her rabbit daemon.
“I heard em talking.”
“Theake us away one by one and thats all we know. No one es back,”
said the redhead.
“Theres this bht,” said the plump girl, “he res—”
“Dont tell her that!” said the redhead. “Not yet.”
“Is there boys here as well?” said Lyra.
“Yeah. Theres lots of us. Theres about thirty, I re.”
“Moren that,” said the plump girl. “More like forty.”
“Except they keep taking us away,” said the redhead. “They usually start off with bringing a whole bunch here, and then theres a lot of us, and one by ohey all disappear.”
“Theyre Gobblers,” said the plump girl. “You know Gobblers. We was all scared of em till we was caught....”
Lyra was gradually ing more and more awake. The irls daemons, apart from the rabbit, were close by listening at the door, and no one spoke above a whisper. Lyra asked their he red-haired girl was Ahe dark plump one Bella, the thin one Martha. They didnt know the names of the boys, because the two sexes were kept apart for most of the time. They werent treated badly.
“Its all right here,” said Bella. “Theres not much to do, except they give us tests and make us do exercises and then they measure us and ta?ke our temperature and stuff. Its just b really.”
“Except when Mrs. Coulter es,” said Annie.
Lyra had to stop herself g out, and Pantalaimon fluttered his wings so sharply that the irls noticed.
“Hes nervous,” said Lyra, soothing him. “They mustve gave us some sleeping pills, like you said, cause were all dozy. Whos Mrs. Coulter?”
“Shes the one who trapped us, most of us, anyway,” said Martha. “They all talk about her, the other kids. When she es, you know theres going to be kids disappearing.”
“She likes watg the kids, wheake us away, she likes seeing what they do to us. This boy Simon, he res they kill us, and Mrs. Coulter watches.”
“They kill us?” said Lyra, shuddering.
“Must do. Cause no one es back.”
“Theyre always going on about daemons too,” said Bella. “Weighing them and measuring them and all...”
“They touch your daemons?”
“No! God! They put scales there and your daemon has to get on them and ge, and they make notes and take pictures. And they put you in this et and measure Dust, all the time, they op measuring Dust.”
“What dust?” said Lyra.
“We dunno,” said Annie. “Just something from spaot real dust. If you ent got any Dust, thats good. But everyos Dust in the end.”
“You know what I heard Simon say?” said Bella. “He said that the Tartars make holes in their skulls to let the Dust in.”
“Yeah, hed know,” said Annie sfully. “I think Ill ask Mrs. Coulter when she es.”
“You wouldnt dare!” said Martha admiringly.
“I would.”
“Whens she ing?” said Lyra.
“The day after tomorrow,” said Annie.
A cold drench of terror went down Lyras spine, and Pantalaimo very close. She had one day in which to find Roger and discover whatever she could about this place, aher escape or be rescued; and if all the gyptians had been killed, who would help the children stay alive in the icy wilderness?
The irls went on talking, but Lyra and Pantalaimoled down deep in the bed and tried to get warm, knowing that for hundreds of miles all around her little bed there was nothing but fear.
FIFTEEN - THE DAEMON CAGES-1
It wasnt Lyras way to brood; she was a sanguine and practical child, and besides, she wasnt imaginative. No oh much imagination would have thought seriously that it ossible to e all this way and rescue her friend Roger; or, having thought it, an imaginative child would immediately have e up with several ways in which it was impossible. Being a practiced liar doesnt mean you have a powerful imagination. Many good liars have no imagination at all; its that which gives their lies such wide-eyed vi.
So now that she was in the hands of the Oblation Board, Lyra didnt fret herself into terror about what had happeo the gyptians. They were all good fighters, and even though Pantalaimon said hed seen John Faa shot, he might have been mistaken; or if he wasnt mistaken, John Faa might not have been seriously hurt. It had been bad luck that shed fallen into the hands of the Samoyeds, but the gyptians would be along soon to rescue her, and if they couldnt ma, nothing would stop lorek Byrnisetting her out; and then theyd fly to Svalbard in Lee Scoresbys balloon and rescue Lord Asriel.
In her mind, it was as easy as that.
So m, when she awoke in the dormitory, she was curious and ready to deal with whatever the day would bring. And eager to see Roger—in particular, eager to see him before he saw her.
She didnt have long to wait. The children in their different dormitories were woken at half-past seven by the nurses who looked after them. They washed and dressed a with th?9９ｌｉb?e others to the teen for breakfast.
And there was Roger.
He was sitting with five other boys at a table just ihe door. The line for the hatch went right past them, and she was able to pretend to drop a handkerchief and crouch to pick it up, bending low o his chair, so that Pantalaimon could speak ters daemon Salcilia.
She was a chaffinch, and she fluttered so wildly that Pantalaimon had to be a cat and leap at her, pinning her down to whisper. Such brisk fights or scuffles between childrens daemons were on, luckily, and no oook muotice, but Roger went pale at once. Lyra had never seen anyone so white. He looked up at the blank haughty stare she gave him, and the color flooded bato his cheeks as he brimmed over with hope, excitement, and joy; and only Pantalaimon, shaking Salcilia firmly, was able to keep Roger from shouting out and leaping up to greet his best friend, his rade in arms, his Lyra.
But he saw how she looked away disdainfully, and he followed her example faithfully, as hed done in a hundred Oxford battles and campaigns. No one must know, of course, because they were both in deadly danger. She rolled her eyes at her new friends, and they collected their trays of flakes and toast and sat together, an instant gang, excluding everyone else in order to gossip about them.
You t keep a large group of children in one place for long without giving them plenty to do, and in some ways Bolvangar was run like a school, with timetabled activities such as gymnastid “art.” Boys and girls were kept separate except for breaks aimes, so it wasnt until midm, after an hour and a half of sewing directed by one of the hat Lyra had the ce to talk ter. But it had to look natural; that was the difficulty.
All the children there were more or less at the same age, and it was the age when most boys talk to boys and girls to girls, each making a spicuous point of ign the opposite sex.
She found her the teen again, when the children came in for a drink and a biscuit. Lyra sent Pantalaimon, as a fly, to talk to Salcilia on the wall o their table while she and Roger kept quietly in their separate groups.
It was difficult to talk while your daemons attention was somewhere else, so Lyra preteo look glum and rebellious as she sipped her milk with the irls. Half her thoughts were with the tiny buzz of talk between the daemons, and she wasnt really listening, but at one point she heard anirl with bright blond hair say a hat made her sit up.
It was the name of Tony Makarios. As Lyras attention soward that, Pantalaimon had to slow down his whispered versation with Rogers daemon, and both children listeo what the girl was saying.
“No, I know why they took him,” she said, as heads clustered close nearby. “It was because his daemon didnt ge. They thought he was older than he looked, or summing, and he werent really a young kid. But really his daemon never ged very often because Tony hisself hought much about anything. I seen her ge. She was called Ratter...”
“Why are they so ied in daemons?” said Lyra.
“No one knows,” said the blond girl.
“I know,” said one boy whod been listening. “What they do is kill your daemon and then see if you die.”
“Well, how e they do it over and over with different kids?” said someone.
“Theyd only o do it once, wouldnt they?”
“I know what they do,” said the first girl.
She had everyotention now. But because they didnt want to let the staff know what they were talking about, they had to adopt a strange, half-careless, indifferent manner, while listening with passionate curiosity.
“How?” said someone.
“ Cause I was with him when they came for him. We was in the linen room,” she said.
She was blushing hotly. If she was expeg jeers and teasing, they didnt e. All the children were subdued, and no one even smiled.
The girl went on: “We was keeping quiet and then the nurse came in, the oh the soft voice. And she says, e on, Tony, I know youre there, e on, we wont hurt you....And he says, Whats going to happen? And she says, We just put you to sleep, and then we do a little operation, and then you wake up safe and sound. But Tony didnt believe her. He says—”
“The holes!” said someohey make a hole in your head like the Tartars! I bet!”
“Shut up! What else did the nurse say?” someone else put in. By this time, a dozen or more children were clustered arouable, their daemons as desperate to know as they were, all wide-eyed and tense.
The blond girl went on: “Tony wao know what they was gonna do with Ratter, see. And the nurse says, Well, shes going to sleep too, just like when you do.
And Tony says, Yonna kill her, ent yer? 1 know you are. We all know thats what happens. And the nurse says, No, of course not. Its just a little operation. Just a little cut. It wont even hurt, but we put you to sleep to make sure.
All the room had gone quiet now. The nurse whod been supervising had left for a moment, and the hatch to the kit was shut so no one could hear from there.
“What sort of cut?” said a boy, his voice quiet and frightened. “Did she say what sort of cut?”
“She just said, Its something to make you mrown up. She said everyone had to have it, thats why grownups daemons dont ge like ours do. So they have a cut to make them one shape forever, and thats how you get grown up.”
“But—”
“Does that mean—”
“What, all grownupsve had this cut?”
“What about—”
Suddenly all the voices stopped as if they themselves had been cut, and all eyes turo the door. Sister Clara stood there, bland and mild and matter-of-fact, and beside her was a man in a white coat whom Lyra hadnt seen before.
“Bridget M,” he said.
The blond girl stood up trembling. Her squirrel daemon clutched her breast.
“Yes, sir?” she said, her voice hardly audible.
“Finish your drink and e with Sister Clara,” he said. “The rest of you run along and go to your classes.”
Obediently the children stacked their mugs oainless-steel trolley before leaving in sileno one looked at Bridget M except Lyra, and she saw the blond girls face vivid with fear.
The rest of that m ent in exercise. There was a small gymnasium at the station, because it was hard to exercise outside during the long pht, and each group of children took turns to play in there, uhe supervision of a hey had to form teams and throw balls around, and at first Lyra, who had never in her life played at anything like this, was at a loss what to do. But she was quid athletid a natural leader, and soon found herself enjoying it. The shouts of the children, the shrieks and hoots of the daemons, filled the little gymnasium and soon banished fearful thoughts; which of course was exactly what the exercise was inteo do.
At lunchtime, when the children were lining up once again in the teen, Lyra felt Pantalaimon give a chirrup nition, and turo find Billy Costa standing just behind her.
“Roger told me you was here,” he muttered.
“Your brothers ing, and John Faa and a whole band of gyptians,” she said.
“Theyre going to take you home.”
He nearly cried aloud with joy, but subdued the cry into a cough.
“And you got to call me Lizzie,” Lyra said, “never Lyra. And you got to tell me everything you knht.”
They sat together, with Roger close by. It was easier to do this at lunchtime, when childre more time ing and goiweeables and the ter, where bland-looking adults served equally bland food. Uhe clatter of knives and forks and plates Billy and Roger both told her as much as they knew. Billy had heard from a hat children who had had the operation were often taken to hostels further south, which might explain how Tony Makarios came to be wandering in the wild. But Roger had something even more iing to tell her.
“I found a hiding place,” he said.
“What? Where?”
“See that picture...” He meant the big photogram of the tropical beach. “If you look iht er, you see that ceiling panel?”
The ceiling sisted of large regular panels set in a framework of metal strips, and the er of the panel above the picture had lifted slightly.
“I saw that,” Roger said, “and I thought the others might be like it, so I lifted em, and theyre all loose. They just lift up. Me and this boy tr藏书网ied it one night in our dormitory, before they took him away. Theres a space up there and you crawl inside....”
“How far you crawl in the ceiling?”
“I dunno. We just went in a little way. We reed when it was time we could hide up there, but theyd probably find us.”
Lyra saw it not as a hiding place but as a highway. It was the best thing shed heard since shed arrived. But before they could talk any more, a doctor banged on a table with a spoon and began to speak.
“Listen, children,” he said. “Listen carefully. Every so often we have to have a fire drill. Its very important that we all get dressed properly and make our way outside without any panic. Soing to have a practice fire drill this afternoon. When the bell, rings you must stop whatever youre doing and do what the grownup says. Remember where they take you. Thats the plaust go to if theres a real fire.”
Well, thought Lyra, theres an idea.
During the first part of the afternoon, Lyra and four irls were tested for Dust. The doctors didnt say that was what they were doing, but it was easy to guess. They were taken one by oo a laboratory, and of course this made them all very frightened; how cruel it would be, Lyra thought, if she perished without striking a blow at them! But they were not going to do that operation just yet, it seemed.
“We want to make some measurements,” the doctor explained. It was hard to tell the differeween these people: all the men looked similar in their white coats and with their clipboards and pencils, and the women resembled one aoo, the uniforms and their strange bland calm manner making them all look like sisters.
“I was measured yesterday,” Lyra said.
“Ah, were making different measurements today. Stand oal plate—oh, slip your shoes off first. Hold your daemon, if you like. Look forward, thats it, stare at the little green light. Good girl...”
Something flashed. The doade her face the other way and then to left and right, and each time something clicked and flashed.
“Thats fine. Now e over to this mae and put your hand into the tube.
Nothing to harm you, I promise. Straighten your fingers. Thats it.”
“What are you measuring?” she said. “Is it Dust?”
“Who told you about Dust?”
“One of the irls, I dont know her name. She said we was all over Dust. I ent dusty, at least I dont think I am. I had a shower yesterday.”
“Ah, its a different sort of dust. You t see it with your ordinary eyesight. Its a special dust. Now ch your fist— thats right. Good. Now if you feel around in there, youll find a sort of hahing—got that? Take hold of that, theres a good girl. Now you put your other hand over this way—
rest it on this brass globe. Good. Fine. Now youll fee藏书网l a slight tingling, nothing to worry about, its just a slight anbaric current....”
Pantalaimon, in his most tense and wary wildcat form, prowled with lightning-eyed suspi around the apparatus, tinually returning to rub himself against Lyra.
She was sure by now that they werent going to perform the operation on her yet, and sure too that her disguise as Lizzie Brooks was secure; so she risked a question.
FIFTEEN - THE DAEMON CAGES-2
“Why do you cut peoples daemons away?”
“What? Whos been talking to you about that?”
“This girl, I dunno her name. She said you cut peoples daemons away.”
“Nonsense...”
He was agitated, though. She went on:
“Cause you take people out one by one and they never e back. And some people re you just kill em, and other people say different, and this girl told me you cut—”
“Its not true at all. Wheake children out, its because its time for them to move on to another place. Theyre growing up. Im afraid your friend is alarming herself. Nothing of the sort! Dont even think about it. Who is your friend?”
“I only e here yesterday, I dont know anyones name.”
“What does she look like?”
“I fet. I think she had sort of brown hair...light brown, maybe...! dunno.”
The doctor went to speak quietly to the nurse. As the two of them ferred, Lyra watched their daemons. This nurses retty bird, just as and incurious as Sister Claras dog, and the doctors was a large heavy moth.
her moved. They were awake, for the birds eyes were bright and the moths feelers waved languidly, but they werent animated, as she would have expected them to be. Perhaps they werent really anxious or curious at all.
Presently the doctor came bad they went on with the examination, weighing her and Pantalaimon separately, looking at her from behind a special s, measuring her heartbeat, plag her under a little nozzle that hissed and gave off a smell like fresh air.
In the middle of one of the tests, a loud bell began t a ringing.
“The fire alarm,” said the doctor, sighing. “Very well. Lizzie, follow Sister Betty.”
“But all their outdoor clothes are down in the dormitory building, Doctor. She t go outside like this. Should we go there first, do you think?”
He was a having his experiments interrupted, and snapped his fingers in irritation.
“I suppose this is just the sort of thing the practice is meant to show up,” he said. “What a nuisance.”
“When I came yesterday,” Lyra said helpfully, “Sister Clara put my other clothes in a cupboard in that first room where she looked at me. The o door. I could wear them.”
“Good idea!” said the nurse. “Quick, then.”
With a secret glee, Lyra hurried there behind the nurse arieved her proper furs and leggings and boots, and pulled them on quickly while the nurse dressed herself in coal silk.
Then they hurried out. In the wide arena in front of the main group of buildings, a hundred or so people, adults and children, were milling about: some iement, some in irritation, many just bewildered.
“See?” one adult was saying. “Its worth doing this to find out what chaos wed be in with a real fire.”
Someone was blowing a whistle and waving his arms, but no one was taking muotice. Lyra saw Roger and beed. Rged Billy Costas arm and soon all three of them were together in a maelstrom of running children.
“No onell notice if we take a look around,” said Lyra. “Itll take em ages to t everyone, and we say we just followed someone else and got lost.”
They waited till most of the grownups were looking the other way, and then Lyra scooped up some snow and rammed it into a loose powdery snowball, and hurled it at random into the crowd. In a moment all the children were doing it, and the air was full of flying snow. Screams of laughter covered pletely the shouts of the adults trying tain trol, and thehree children were around the er and out of sight.
The snow was so thick that they couldnt move quickly, but it dido matter; no one was following. Lyra and the others scrambled over the curved roof of one of the tunnels, and found themselves in a strange moonscape ular hummocks and hollows, all swathed in white uhe black sky and lit by refles from the lights around the arena.
“What we looking for?” said Billy.
“Dunno. Just looking,” said Lyra, ahe way to a squat, square building a little apart from the rest, with a low-powered anbaric light at the er.
The hubbub from behind was as loud as ever, but more distant. Clearly the children were making the most of their freedom, and Lyra hoped theyd keep it up for as long as they could. She moved around the edge of the square building, looking for a window. The roof was only seve or so off the ground, and uhe other buildings, it had no roofed tuo ect it with the rest of the station.
There was no window, but there was a door. A notice above it said ENTRY STRICTLY FORBIDDEN in red letters.
Lyra set her hand on it to try, but before she could turn the handle, Roger said:
“Look! A bird! Or—”
His or was an exclamation of doubt, because the creature swooping down from the black sky was no bird at all: it was someone Lyra had seen before.
“The witchs daemon!”
The goose beat his great wings, raising a flurry of snow as he landed.
“Greetings, Lyra,” he said. “I followed you here, though you didnt see me. I have been waiting for you to e out into the open. What is happening?”
She told him quickly.
“Where are the gyptians?” she said. “Is John Faa safe? Did they fight off the Samoyeds?”
“Most of them are safe. John Faa is wouhough not severely. The men who took you were hunters and raiders who often prey on parties of travelers, and alohey travel more quickly than a large party. The gyptians are still a days journey away.”
The two boys were staring in fear at the goose daemon and at Lyras familiar manner with him, because of course theyd never seen a daemon without his human before, and they knew little about witches.
Lyra said to them, “Listen, you better go and keep watch, right. Billy, you go that way, and Roger, watch out the way we just e. We ent got long.”
They ran off to do as she said, and then Lyra turned back to the door.
“Why are y to get in there?” said the goose daemon.
“Because of what they do here. Th>ey cut—” she lowered her voice, “they cut peoples daemons away. Childrens. And I think maybe they do it in here. At least, theres something here, and I was going to look. But its locked....”
“I open it,” said the goose, a his wings once or twice, throwing snow up against the door; and as he did, Lyra heard something turn in the lock.
“Go in carefully,” said the daemon.
Lyra pulled open the dainst the snow and slipped ihe goose daemon came with her. Pantalaimon was agitated and fearful, but he didnt want the witchs daemon to see his fear, so he had flown to Lyras breast and taken sanctuary inside her furs.
As soon as her eyes had adjusted to the light, Lyra saw why.
In a series of glass cases on shelves around the walls were all the daemons of the severed children: ghostlike forms of cats, or birds, or rats, or other creatures, each bewildered and frightened and as pale as smoke.
The witchs daemon gave a cry of anger, and Lyra clutched Pantalaimon to her and said, “Dont look! Dont look!”
“Where are the children of these daemons?” said the goose daemon, shaking with rage.
Lyra explained fearfully about her enter with little Tony Makarios, and looked over her shoulder at the ped daemons, who were clustering forressing their pale faces to the glass. Lyra could hear faint cries of pain and misery. In the dim light from a low-powered anbaric bulb she could see a name on a card at the front of each case, ahere was ay oh Tony Makarios on it. There were four or five other empty ones with names ooo.
“I want to let these poor things go!” she said fiercely. “Im going to>藏书网 smash the glass a em out—”
And she looked around for something to do it with, but the place was bare. The goose daemon said, “Wait.”
He was a witchs daemon, and much older than she was, and stronger. She had to do as he said.
“We must make these people think someone fot to lock the plad shut the cages,” he explained. “If they see broken glass and footprints in the snow, how long do you think your disguise will last? And it must hold out till the gyptians e. Now do exactly as I say: take a handful of snow, and when I tell you, blow a little of it against each cage in turn.”
She ran outside. Roger and Billy were still on guard, and there was still a noise of shrieking and laughter from the arena, because only a minute or so had gone by.
She grabbed a big double handful of the light powdery snow, and then came back to do as the goose daemon said. As she blew a little snow on each cage, the goose made a clig sound in his throat, and the catch at the front of the cage came open.
When she had unlocked them all, she lifted the front of the first one, and the pale form of a sparrow fluttered out, but fell to the ground before she could fly. The goose tenderly bent and nudged her upright with his beak, and the sparrow became a mouse, staggering and fused. Pantalaimon leaped down to fort her.
Lyra worked quickly, and within a few minutes every daemon was free. Some were trying to speak, and they clustered around her feet and even tried to pluck at her leggings, though the taboo held them back. She could tell why, poor things; they missed the heavy solid warmth of their humans bodies; just as Pantalaimon would have dohey loo press themselves against a heartbeat.
“Now, quick,” said the goose. “Lyra, you must run bad mih the other children. Be brave, child. The gyptians are ing as fast as they . I must help these poor daemons to find their people....” He came closer and said quietly, “But theyll never be one again. Theyre sundered forever. This is the most wicked thing I have ever seen....Leave the footprints youve made; Ill cover them up. Hurry now....”
“Oh, please! Before you go! Witches...They do fly, dont they? I wasnt dreaming when I saw them flying the ht?”
“Yes, child; why?”
“Could they pull a balloon?”
“Undoubtedly, but—”
“Will Serafina Pekkala be ing?”
“There isnt time to explain the politics of witations. There are vast powers involved here, and Serafina Pekkala must guard the is of her .
But it may be that whats happening here is part of all thats happening elsewhere. Lyra, youre needed inside. Run, run!”
She ran, and Roger, atg wide-eyed as the pale daemons drifted out of the building, waded toward her through the thiow.
“Theyre—its like the crypt in Jordan—theyre daemons!”
“Yes, hush. Dont tell Billy, though. Dont tell a. e on back.”
Behind them, the goose was beating his wings powerfully, throwing snow over the tracks theyd made; and near him, the lost daemons were clustering or drifting away, g little bleak cries of loss and longing. When the footprints were covered, the goose turo herd the pale daemons together. He spoke, and one by ohey ged, though you could see the effort it cost them, until they were all birds; and like fledglings they followed the witchs daemon, fluttering and falling and running through the snow after him, and finally, with great difficulty, taking off. They rose in a ragged line, pale and spectral against the deep black sky, and slowly gained height, feeble aic though some of them were, and though others lost their will and fluttered downward; but the great gray goose wheeled round and hem back, herding them gently on until they were lost against the profound dark.
Roger was tugging at Lyras arm.
“Quick,” he said, “theyre nearly ready.”
They stumbled away to join Billy, who was being from the er of the main building. The childreired now, or else the adults had regained some authority, because people were lining up raggedly by the main door, with much jostling and pushing. Lyra and the other two slipped out from the er and mingled with them, but before they did, Lyra said:
“Pass the word around among all the kids—they got to be ready to escape. They got to know where the outdoor clothes are and be ready to get them and run out as soon as we give the signal. And they got to keep this a deadly secret, uand?”
Billy nodded, and Roger said, “Whats the signal?”
“The fire bell,” said Lyra. “Wheime es, Ill set it off.”
They waited to be ted off. If anyone in the Oblation Board had had anything to do with a school, they would have arrahis better; because they had nular group to go to, each child had to be ticked off against the plete list, and of course they werent in alphabetical order; and none of the adults was used to keeping trol. So there was a good deal of fusioe the fact that no one was running around anymore.
Lyra watched and noticed. They werent very good at this at all. They were sla a lot of ways, these people; they grumbled about fire drills, they didnt know where the outdoor clothes should be kept, they could children to stand in line properly; and their slaess might be to her advantage.
They had almost finished when there came another distra, though, and from Lyras point of view, it was the worst possible.
She heard the sound as everyone else did. Heads began to turn and s the dark sky for the zeppelin, whose gas engine was throbbing clearly iill air.
The one lucky thing was that it was ing from the dire opposite to the one in which the gray goose had flown. But that was the only fort. Very soon it was visible, and a murmur of exciteme around the crowd. Its fat sleek silver form drifted over the avenue of lights, and its own lights blazed downward from the nose and the sluh the body.
The pilot cut the speed and began the plex business of adjusting the height.
Lyra realized what the stout mast was for: of course, it was a m mast. As the adults ushered the children inside, with everyoaring bad pointing, the ground crew clambered up the ladders in the mast and prepared to attach the m cables. The engines were r, and snow was swirling up from the ground, and the faces of passengers showed in the windows.
Lyra looked, and there was no mistake. Pantalaimon clutched at her, became a wildcat, hissed in hatred, because looking out with curiosity was the beautiful dark-haired head of Mrs. Coulter, with her golden daemon in her lap.
SIXTEEN - THE SILVER GUILLOTINE-1
Lyra ducked her head at onder the shelter of her wolverine hood, and shuffled in through the double doors with the other children. Time enough later to worry about what shed say when they came face to face: she had another problem to deal with first, and that was how to hide her furs where she could get at them without asking permission.
But luckily, there was such disorder inside, with the adults trying to hurry the children through so as to clear the way for the passengers from the zeppelin, that no one was watg very carefully. Lyra slipped out of the anorak, the leggings, and the boots and buhem up as small as she could before shoving through the crowded corridors to her dormitory.
Quickly she dragged a locker to the er, stood on it, and pushed at the ceiling. The panel lifted, just as Roger had said, and into the space beyond she thrust the boots and leggings. As an afterthought, she took the alethiometer from her poud hid it in the inmost pocket of the anorak before shoving that through too.
She jumped down, pushed back the locker, and whispered to Pantalaimon, “We must just pretend to be stupid till she sees us, and then say we were kidnapped. And nothing about the gyptians or lorek Byrnison especially.”
Because Lyra now realized, if she hadnt done so before, that all the fear in her nature was drawn to Mrs. Coulter as a pass needle is drawn to the Pole.
All the other things shed seen, and even the hideous cruelty of the intercision, she could cope with; she was strong enough; but the thought of that sweet fad gentle voice, the image of that golden playful monkey, was enough to melt her stomad make her pale and ed.
But the gyptians were ing. Think of that. Think of lorek Byrnison. And dont give yourself away, she said, and drifted back toward the teen, from where a lot of noise was ing.
Children were lining up to get hot drinks, some of them still in their coal-silk anoraks. Their talk was all of the zep-pelin and its passenger.
“It was her—with the monkey daemon—”
“Did she get you, too?”
“She said shed write to my mum and dad and I bet she never....”
“She old us about kids getting killed. She never said nothing about that.”
“That monkey, hes the worst—he caught my Karossa and nearly killed her—I could feel all weak....”
They were as frightened as Lyra was. She found Annie and the others, and sat down.
“Listen,” she said, “ you keep a secret?”
“Yeah!”
The three faces turo her, vivid with expectation.
“Theres a plan to escape,” Lyra said quietly. “Theres some people ing to take us away, right, and theyll be here in about a day. Maybe sooner. What we all got to do is be ready as soon as the signal goes a our cold-weather clothes at ond run out. No waiting about. You just got to run. Only if you do your anoraks and boots and stuff, youll die of cold.”
“What signal?” Annie demanded.
“The fire bell, like this afternoon. Its all anized. All the kidsre going to know and none of the grownups. Especially not her.”
Their eyes were gleaming with hope aement. And all through the teen the message was being passed around. Lyra could tell that the atmosphere had ged. Outside, the children had beeid eager for play; thehey had seen Mrs. Coulter they were bubbling with a suppressed hysterical fear; but now there was a trol and purpose to their talkativeness. Lyra marveled at the effect hope could have.
She watched through the open doorway, but carefully, ready to duck her head, because there were adult voices ing, and then Mrs. Coulter herself was briefly visible, looking in and smiling at the happy children, with their hot drinks and their cake, so warm and well fed. A little shiver ran almost instantaneously through the whole teen, and every child was still and silent, staring at her.
Mrs. Coulter smiled and passed on without a word. Little by little the talk started again.
Lyra said, “Where do they go to talk?”
“Probably the feren,” said Ahey took us there once,” she added, meaning her and her dasmon. “There was about twenty grownups there and one of em was giving a lecture and I had to stand there and do what he told me, like seeing how far my Kyrillion could go away from me, and then he hypnotized me and did some other things....Its a big room with a lot of chairs and tables and a little platform. Its behind the front office. Hey, I bet theyre going to pretend the fire drill went off all right. I bet theyre scared of her, same as we are....”
For the rest of the day, Lyra stayed close to the irls, watg, saying little, remaining inspicuous. There was exercise, there was sewing, there was supper, there laytime in the lounge: a big shabby room with bames and a few tattered books and a table-tennis table. At some point Lyra and the others became aware that there was some kind of subdued emergency going on, because the adults were hurrying to and fro or standing in anxious groups talking urgently.
Lyra guessed theyd discovered the daemons escape, and were w how it had happened.
But she didnt see Mrs. Coulter, which was a relief. When it was time for bed, she knew she had to let the irls into her fidence.
“Listen,” she said, “do they ever e round and see if were asleep?”
“They just look in once,” said Bella. “They just flash a lantern round, they dont really look.”
“Good. Cause Im going to go and look round. Theres a way through the ceiling that this boy showed me....”
She explained, and before shed even finished, Annie said, “Ill e with you!”
“No, you better not, cause itll be easier if theres just one person missing.
You all say you fell asleep and you dont know where Ive gone.”
“But if I came with you—”
“More likely to get caught,” said Lyra.
Their two daemons were staring at each other, Pantalaimon as a wildcat, Annies Kyrillion as a fox. They were quivering. Pantalaimon uttered the lowest, softest hiss and bared his teeth, and Kyrillion turned aside and bega9９ｌiｂ?o groom himself unedly.
“All right then,” said Annie, resigned.
It was quite on for struggles between children to be settled by their daemons in this way, with one accepting the dominance of the other. Their humans accepted the oute without rese, on the whole, so Lyra khat Annie would do as she asked.
They all tributed items of clothing to bulk out Lyras bed and make it look as if she was still there, and swore to say they knew nothing about it. Then Lyra liste the door to make sure no one was ing, jumped up on the locker, pushed up the panel, and hauled herself through.
“Just dont say anything,” she whispered down to the three faces watg.
Then she dropped the panel gently bato plad looked around.
She was croug in a narrow metal el supported in a framework of girders and struts. The panels of the ceilings were slightly translut, so some light came up from below, and in the faint gleam Lyra could see this narrow space (only two feet or so i) extending in all dires around her. It was crowded with metal ducts and pipes, and it would be easy to get lost in, but provided she kept to the metal and avoided putting a on the panels, and as long as she made no noise, she should be able to go from one end of the station to the other.
“Its just like ba Jordan, Pan,” she whispered, “looking iiring Room.”
“If you hadnt dohat, none of this would have happened,” he whispered back.
“Then its up to me to undo it, isnt it?”
She got her bearings, w out approximately which dire the feren was in, and the off. It was a far from easy journey. She had to move on hands and knees, because the space was too low to crou, and every so often she had to squeeze under a big square duct or lift herself over some heating pipes. The metal els she crawled in followed the tops of internal walls, as far as she could tell, and as long as she stayed in them she felt a f solidity below her; but they were very narrow, and had sharp edges, so sharp that she cut her knuckles and her knees on them, and before long she was sore all over, and cramped, and dusty.
But she knew roughly where she was, and she could see the dark bulk of her furs crammed in above the dormitory to guide her back. She could tell where a room was empty because the panels were dark, and from time to time she heard voices from below, and stopped to listen, but it was only the cooks i, or the nurses in what Lyra, in her Jordan way, thought of as their on room.
They were saying nothing iing, so she moved on.
At last she came to the area where the feren should be, acc to her calculations; and sure enough, there was an area free of any pipework, where air ditioning aing ducts led down at one end, and where all the panels in a wide regular space were lit evenly. She placed her ear to the panel, and heard a murmur of male adult voices, so she knew she had found the right place.
She listened carefully, and then inched her way along till she was as close as she could get to the speakers. Then she lay full length ial el and leaned her head sideways to hear as well as she could.
There was the occasional k of cutlery, or the sound of glass on glass as drink oured, so they were having dinner as they talked. There were four voices, she thought, including Mrs. Coulters. The other three were men. They seemed to be discussing the escaped dasmons.
“But who is in charge of supervising that se?” said Mrs. Coulters gentle musical voice.
“A research student called McKay,” said one of the men. “But there are automatic meisms to prevent this sort of thing happening—”
“They didnt work,” she said.
“With respect, they did, Mrs. Coulter. McKay assures us that he locked all the cages when he left the building at eleven hundred hours today. The outer door of course would not have been open in any case, because he entered a by the inner door, as he normally did. Theres a code that has to be entered in the ordinator trolling the locks, and theres a record in its memory of his doing so. Uhats done, an alarm goes off.”
“But the alarm didnt go off,” she said.
“It did. Unfortunately, it rang when everyone was outside, taking part in the fire drill.”
“But when you went baside—”
“Unfortunately, both alarms are on the same circuit; thats a des..ign fault that will have to be rectified. What it meant was that when the fire bell was turned off after the practice, the laboratory alarm was turned off as well. Eve would still have been picked up, because of the normal checks that would have taken place after every disruption of routine; but by that time, Mrs. Coulter, you had arrived uedly, and if you recall, you asked specifically to meet the laboratory staff there and then, in your room. sequently, no ouro the laboratory until some time later.”
“I see,” said Mrs. Coulter coldly. “In that case, the daemons must have been released during the fire drill itself. And that widens the list of suspects to include every adult iation. Had you sidered that?”
“Had you sidered that it might have been done by a child?” said someone else.
She was silent, and the sea on:
“Every adult had a task to do, and every task would have taken their full attention, and every task was dohere is no possibility that any of the staff here could have opehe door. None. So either someone came from outside altogether with the iion of doing that, or one of the children mao find his way there, open the door and the cages, aurn to the front of the main building.”
“And what are you doing to iigate?” she said. “No; on sed thought, dont tell me. Please uand, Dr. Cooper, Im not critig out of malice. We have to be quite extraordinarily careful. It was an atrocious lapse to have allowed both alarms to be on the same circuit. That must be corrected at once.
SIXTEEN - THE SILVER GUILLOTINE-2
Possibly the Tartar officer in charge of the guard could help your iigation? I merely mention that as a possibility. Where were the Tartars during the fire drill, by the way? I suppose you have sidered that?”
“Yes, we have,” said the man wearily. “The guard was fully occupied on patrol, every man. They keep meticulous records.”
“Im sure youre doing your very best,” she said. “Well, there we are. A great pity. But enough of that for now. Tell me about the new separator.”
Lyra felt a thrill of fear. There was only ohing this could mean.
“Ah,” said the doctor, relieved to find the versation turning to another subject, “theres a real advance. With the first model we could never entirely overe the risk of ? the patient dying of shock, but weve improved that no end.”
“The Skraelings did it better by hand,” said a man who hadnt spoke.
“turies of practice,” said the other man.
“But simply tearing was the only option for some time,” said the main speaker, “however distressing that was to the adult operators. If you remember, we had to discharge quite a number for reasons of stress-related ay. But the first big breakthrough was the use of ahesia bined with the Maystadt anbaric scalpel. We were able to reduce death from operative shock to below five pert.”
“And the new instrument?” said Mrs. Coulter.
Lyra was trembling. The blood ounding in her ears, and Pantalaimon ressing his ermine fainst her side, and whispering, “Hush, Lyra, they wont do it—we wohem do it—”
“Yes, it was a curious discovery by Lord Asriel himself that gave us the key to the new method. He discovered that an alloy of manganese and titanium has the property of insulating body from daemon. By the way, what is happening with Lord Asriel?”
“Perhaps you havent heard,” said Mrs. Coulter. “Lord Asriel is under suspended sentence of death. One of the ditions of his exile in Svalbard was that he give up his philosophical work entirely. Unfortunately, he mao obtain books and materials, and hes pushed his heretical iigations to the point where its positively dangerous to let him live. At any rate, it seems that the Vati cil has begun to debate the question.. of the sentence of death, and the probability is that itll be carried out. But your new instrument, Doctor.
How does it work?”
“Ah—yes—sentence of death, you say? Gracious God...Im sorry. The new instrument. Were iigating what happens wheercision is made with the patient in a scious state, and of course that couldnt be doh the Maystadt process. So weve developed a kind of guillotine, I suppose you could say. The blade is made of manganese and titanium alloy, and the child is placed in a partment—like a small — of alloy mesh, with the 藏书网daemon in a similar partment eg with it. While there is a e, of course, the link remains. Then the blade is brought dowween them, severing the link at once.
They are then separate entities.”
“I should like to see it,” she said. “Soon, I hope. But Im tired now. I think Ill go to bed. I want to see all the children tomorrow. We shall find out who opehat door.”
There was the sound of chairs being pushed back, polite expressions, a door closing. Then Lyra heard the others sit down again, and go on talking, but more quietly.
“What is Lord Asriel up to?”
“I think hes got airely different idea of the nature of Dust. Thats the point. Its profoundly heretical, you see, and the sistorial Court of Discipline t allow any other interpretation thahorized one. And besides, he wants to experiment—”
“To experiment? With Dust?”
“Hush! Not so loud...”
“Do you think shell make an unfavorable report?”
“No, no. I think you dealt with her very well.”
“Her attitude worries me....”
“Not philosophical, you mean?”
“Exactly. A personal i. I dont like to use the word, but its almost ghoulish.”
“Thats a bit strong.”
“But do you remember the first experiments, when she was so keen to see thefn pulled apart—”
Lyra,coutdnt help it: a little cry escaped her, and at the same time she tensed and shivered, and her foot knocked against a stan.
“What was that?”
“In the ceiling—”
“Quick!”
The sound of chairs being thrown aside, feet running, a table pulled across the floor. Lyra tried to scramble away, but there was so little space, and before she could move more than a few yards the ceiling panel beside her was thrust up suddenly, and she was looking into the startled face of a man. She was close enough to see every hair in his moustache. He was as startled as she was, but with more freedom to move, he was able to thrust a hand into the gap and seize her arm.
“A child!”
“Do her go—”
Lyra saeeth into his large freckled hand. He cried out, but did go, even when she drew blood. Pan-talaimon was snarling and spitting, but it was no good, the man was much strohan she was, and he pulled and pulled until her other hand, desperately ging to the stan, had to loosen, and she half-fell through into the room.
Still she didnt utter a sound. She hooked her legs over the sharp edge of the metal above, and struggled upside down, scratg, biting, pung, spitting in passionate fury. The men were gasping and grunting with pain or exertion, but they pulled and pulled.
And suddenly all the strength went out of her.
It was as if an alien hand had reached right inside where no hand had a right to be, and wre something deep and precious.
She felt faint, dizzy, sick, disgusted, limp with shock.
One of the men was holding Pantalaimon.
He had seized Lyras daemon in his human hands, and poor Pan was shaking, nearly out of his mind with horror and disgust. His wildcat shape, his fur now dull with weakness, now sparking glints of anbaric alarm...He curved toward his Lyra as she reached with both hands for him....
They fell still. They were captured.
She felt those hands....It wasnt allowed....Not supposed to touch... Wrong....
“Was she on her own?”
A man eering into the ceiling space.
“Seems to be on her own....”
“Who is she?”
“The new child.”
“The ohe Samoyed hunters...”
“Yes.”
“You dont suppose she...the daemons...”
“Could well be. But not on her own, surely?”
“Should we tell—”
“I think that would put the seal on things, dont you?”
“I agree. Better she doesnt hear at all.”
“But what we do about this?”
“She t go back with the other children.”
“Impossible!”
“Theres only ohing we do, it seems to me.”
“Now?”
“Have to. t leave it till the m. She wants to watch.”
“We could do it ourselves. o involve anyone else.”
The man who seemed to be in charge, the man who wasnt holdiher Lyra or Pantalaimon, tapped his teeth with a thumbnail. His eyes were ill; they flicked and slid and darted this way and that. Finally he nodded.
“Now. Do it now,” he said. “Otherwise shell talk. The shock will prevent that, at least. She wont remember who she is, what she saw, what she heard....e on.”
Lyra couldnt speak. She could hardly breathe. She had to let herself be carried through the station, along white empty corridors, past rooms humming with anbaric power, past the dormitories where childre with their dasmons on the pillow beside them, sharing their dreams; and every sed of the way she watched Pantalaimon, and he reached for her, and their eyes never left each other.
Then a door which opened by means of a large wheel; a hiss of air; and a brilliantly lit chamber with dazzling white tiles and stainless steel. The fear she felt was almost a physical pain; it hysical pain, as they pulled her and Pantalaimooward a large cage of pale silver mesh, above which a great pale silver blade hung poised to separate them forever and ever.
She found a voice at last, and screamed. The sound echoed loudly off the shiny surfaces, but the heavy door had hissed shut; she could scream and scream forever, and not a sound would escape.
But Pantalaimon, in answer, had twisted free of those hateful hands—he was a lion, an eagle; he tore at them with vicious talons, great wings beat wildly, and then he was a wolf, a bear, a polecat—darting, snarling, slashing, a succession of transformations too quic藏书网k tister, and all the time leaping, flying, dodging from one spot to another as their clumsy hands flailed and snatched at the empty air.
But they had daemons too, of course. It wasnt two against three, it was two against six. A badger, an owl, and a baboo were all just as io pin Pantalaimon down, and Lyra was g to them: “Why? Why are you doing this?
Help us! You shouldnt be helping them!”
And she kicked and bit more passiohan ever, until the man holding her gasped a go for a moment—and she was free, and Pantalaimon sprang toward her like a spark of lightning, and she clutched him to her fierce breast, and he dug his wildcat claws into her flesh, and every stab of pain was dear to her.
“Never! Never! Never!” she cried, and backed against the wall to defend him to their death.
But they fell on her again, three big brutal men, and she was only a child, shocked and terrified; and they tore Pantalaimon away, and threw her into one side of the cage of mesh and carried him, struggling still, around to the other.
There was a mesh barrier between them, but he was still part of her, they were still joined. For a sed or so more, he was still her own dear soul.
Above the panting of the men, above her own sobs, above the high wild howl of her daemon, Lyra heard a humming sound, and saw one man (bleeding from the nose) operate a bank of switches. The other two looked up, and her eyes followed theirs. The great pale silver blade was rising slowly, catg the brilliant light. The last moment in her plete life was go?ing to be the worst by far.
“What is going on here?”
A light, musical voice: her voice. Everything stopped.
“What are you doing? And who is this child—”
She didnt plete the word child, because in that instant she reized Lyra.
Through tear-blurred eyes Lyra saw her totter and clutch at a bench; her face, so beautiful and posed, grew in a moment haggard and horror-struck.
“Lyra—” she whispered.
The golden monkey darted from her side in a flash, and tugged Pantalaimon out from the mesh cage as Lyra fell out herself. Pantalaimon pulled free of the monkeys solicitous paws and stumbled to Lyras arms.
“Never, never,” she breathed into his fur, and he pressed his beati to hers.
They g together like survivors of a shipwreck, shivering on a desolate coast. Dimly she heard Mrs. Coulter speaking to the men, but she couldnt even interpret her tone of voice. And then they were leaving that hateful room, and Mrs. Coulter was half-carrying, half-supp her along a corridor, and then there was a door, a bedroom, st in the air, soft light.
Mrs. Coulter laid her gently on the bed. Lyras arm was so tight around Pantalaimon that she was trembling with the force of it. A tender hand stroked her head.
“My dear, dear child,” said that sweet voice. “However did you e to be here?”
SEVENTEEN - THE WITCHES-1
Lyra moaned and trembled untrollably, just as if she had been pulled out of water so cold that her heart had nearly frozen. Pantalaimon simply lay against her bare skin, inside her clothes, loving her back to herself, but aware all the time of Mrs. Coulter, busy preparing a drink of something, and most of all of the golden monkey, whose hard little fingers had run swiftly over Lyras body when藏书网 only Pantalaimon could have noticed; and who had felt, around her waist, the oilskin pouch with its tents.
“Sit up, dear, and drink this,” said Mrs. Coulter, and her gentle arm slipped around Lyras bad lifted her.
Lyra ched herself, but relaxed almost at once as Pantalaimon thought to her:
Were only safe as long as we pretend. She opened her eyes and found that theyd been taining tears, and to her surprise and shame she sobbed and sobbed.
Mrs. Coulter made sympathetic sounds and put the drink into the monkeys hands while she mopped Lyras eyes with a sted handkerchief.
“Cry as much as you o, darling,” said that soft voice, and Lyra determio stop as soon as she possibly could. She struggled to hold back the tears, she pressed her lips together, she choked down the sobs that still shook her chest.
Pantalaimon played the same game: fool them, fool them. He became a mouse and crept away from Lyras hand to sniff timidly at the drink in the monkeys clutch. It was innocuous: an infusion of ile, nothing more. He crept back to Lyras shoulder and whispered, “Drink it.”
She sat up and took the hot cup in both hands, alternately sipping and blowing to cool it. She kept her eyes down. She must pretend harder than shed ever done in her life.
“Lyra, darling,” Mrs. Coulter murmured, stroking her hair. “I thought wed lost you forever! What happened? Did you get lost? Did someoake you out of the flat?”
“Yeah,” Lyra whispered.
“Who was it, dear?”
“A man and a woman.”
“Guests at the party?”
“I think so. They said you needed something that was downstairs and I went to get it and they grabbed hold of me and took me in a car somewhere. But wheopped, I ran out quid dodged away and they never caught me. But I didnt know where I was....”
Another sob shook her briefly, but they were weaker now, and she could pretend this one was caused by her story.
“And I just wandered about trying to find my way back, only these Gobblers caught me....And they put me in a van with some other kids and took me somewhere, a big building, I dunno where it was.”
With every sed that went past, with every sentence she spoke, she felt a little strength flowing back. And now that she was doing something difficult and familiar and never quite predictable, namely lying, she felt a sort of mastery again, the same sense of plexity and trol that the alethiometer gave her.
She had to be careful not to say anything obviously impossible; she had to be vague in some places and i plausible details in others; she had to be an artist, in short.
“How long did they keep you in this building?” said Mrs. Coulter.
Lyras journey along the als aime with the gyp-tians had taken weeks:
shed have to at for that time. She ied a voyage with the Gobblers to Trollesund, and then an escape, lavish with details from her observation of the town; and a time as maid-of-all-work at Einarssons Bar, and then a spell w for a family of farmers inland, and then being caught by the Samoyeds and brought to Bolvangar.
“And they were going to—going to cut—”
“Hush, dear, hush. Im going to find out whats been going on.”
“But why were they going to do that? I never done anything wrong! All the kids are afraid of what happens in there, and no one knows. But its horrible. Its worse than anything....Why are they doing that, Mrs. Coulter? Why are they so cruel?”
“There, there...Youre safe, my dear. They wont ever do it to you. Now I know youre here, and youre safe, youll never be in danger again. No ones going to harm you, Lyra darling; no ones ever going to hurt you....”
“But they do it to other children! Why?”
“Ah, my love—”
“Its Dust, isnt it?”
“Did they tell you that? Did the doctors say that?”
“The kids know it. All the kids talk about it, but no one knows! And they nearly do to me—you got to tell me! You got nht to keep it secret, not anymore!”
“Lyra...Lyra, Lyra. Darling, these are big difficult ideas, Dust and so on. Its not something for children to worry about. But the doctors do it for the childrens own good, my love. Dust is something bad, something wrong, something evil and wicked.
Grownups and their daemons are ied with Dust so deeply that its too late for them. They t be helped....But a quick operation on children means theyre safe from it. Dust just wont stick to them ever again. Theyre safe and happy and—”
Lyra thought of little Tony Makarios. She leaned forward suddenly ached.
Mrs. Coulter moved bad let go.
“Are you all right, dear? Go to the bathroom—”
Lyra swallowed hard and brushed her eyes.
“You dont have to do that to us,” she said. “You could just leave us. I bet Lord Asriel would anyone do that if he knew what was going on. If hes got Dust and youve got Dust, and the Master of Jordan and every rownups got Dust, it must be all right. When I get out Im going to tell all the kids in the world about this. Anyway, if it was so good, whyd you stop them doing it to me? If it was good, you shouldve let them do it. You should have been glad.”
Mrs. Coulter was shaking her head and smiling a sad wise smile.
“Darling,” she said, “some of whats good has to hurt us a little, and naturally its upsetting for others if youre upset.... But it doesnt mean your daemon is taken away from you. Hes still there! Goodness me, a lot of the grownups here have had the operation. The nurses seem happy enough, dont they?”
Lyra blinked. Suddenly she uood their strange blank incuriosity, the way their little trotting daemons seemed to be sleepwalking.
Say nothing, she thought, and shut her mouth hard.
“Darling, no one would ever dream of perf aion on a child without testing it first. And no one in a thousand years would take a childs daemon away altogether! All that happens is a little cut, and thehings peaceful. Forever! You see, your daemons a wonderful friend and panion when youre young, but at the age uberty, the age youre ing to very soon, darling, daemons bring all sort of troublesome thoughts and feelings, and thats what lets Dust in. A quick little operation before that, and youre roubled again. And your daemon stays with you, only...just not ected. Like a...like a wonderful pet, if you like. The best pet in the world! Wouldnt you like that?”
Oh, the wicked liar, oh, the shameless untruths she was telling! And even if Lyra hadnt knowo be lies (Tony Makarios; those caged daemons) she would have hated it with a furious passion. Her dear soul, the daring panion of her heart, to be cut away and reduced to a little trotti? Lyra nearly blazed with hatred, and Pantalaimon in her arms became a polecat, the most ugly and vicious of all his forms, and snarled.
But they said nothing. Lyra held Pantalaimon tight a Mrs. Coulter stroke her hair.
“Drink up your ile,” said Mrs. Coulter softly. “Well have them make up a bed for you in here. Theres o go bad share a dormitory with irls, not now Ive got my little assistant back. My favorite! The best assistant in the world. Dyou know, we searched all over London for you, darling? We had the police searg every town in the land. Oh, I missed you so much! I t tell you hoy I am to find you again....”
All the time, the golden monkey rowling about restlessly, one minute perg oable swinging his tail, the ging to Mrs. Coulter and chittering softly in her ear, the pag the floor with tail erect. He was betraying Mrs. Coulters impatience, of course, and finally she couldnt hold it in.
“Lyra, dear,” she said, “I think that the Master of Jordan gave you something before you left. Isnt that right? He gave you ahiometer. The trouble is, it wasnt his to give. It was left in his care. Its really too valuable to be carried about—dyou know, its one of only two or three in the world! I think the Master gave it to you in the hope that it would fall into Lord Asriels hands. He told you not to tell me about it, didnt he?”
Lyra twisted her mouth.
“Yes, I see. Well, never mind, darling, because you didnt tell me, did you?
So you havent broken any promises. But listen, dear, it really ought to be properly looked after. Im afraid its so rare and delicate that we t let it be at risk any longer.”
“Why shouldnt Lord Asriel have it?” Lyra said, not moving.
“Because of what hes doing. You know hes bee away to exile, because hes got something dangerous and wicked in mind. He he alethiometer to finish his plan, but believe me, dear, the last thing anyone should do is let him have it. The Master of Jordan was sadly mistaken. But now that you know, it really would be better to let me have it, wouldnt it? It would save you the trouble of carrying it around, and all the worry of looking after it—and really it must have been such a puzzle, w what a silly old thing like that was any good for....”
Lyra wondered how she had ever, ever, ever found this woman to be so fasating and clever.
“So if youve got it now, dear, youd really better let me have it to look after. Its in that belt around your waist, isnt it? Yes, that was a clever thing to do, putting it away like this....”
Her hands were at Lyras skirt, and then she was unfastening the stiff oilcloth.
Lyra tensed herself. The golden monkey was croug at the end of the bed, trembling with anticipation, little black hands to his mouth. Mrs. Coulter pulled the belt away from Lyras waist and unbuttohe pouch. She was breathing fast. She took out the black velvet cloth and unfolded it, finding the tin box lorek Byrnison had made.
Pantalaimon was a cat again, te. Lyra drew her legs up away from Mrs. Coulter, and swung them down to the floor so that she too could ruhe time came.
“Whats this?” said Mrs. Coulter, as if amused. “What a funny old tin! Did you put it io keep it safe, dear? All this moss...You have been careful, havent you? Ain, ihe first one! And soldered! Who did this, dear?”
She was too i on opening it to wait for an answer. She had a knife in her handbag with a lot of different attats, and she pulled out a blade and dug it uhe lid.
At once a furious buzzing filled the room.
Lyra and Pantalaimohemselves still. Mrs. Coulter, puzzled, curious, pulled at the lid, and the golden monkey bent close to look.
Then in a dazzling moment the bla of the spy-fly hurtled out of the tin and crashed hard into the monkeys face.
He screamed and flung himself backward; and of course it was hurting Mrs.
Coulter too, and she cried out in pain and fright with the monkey, and thetle clockwork devil swarmed upward at her, up her breast and throat toward her face.
Lyra didate. Pantalaimon sprang for the door and she was after him at once, and she tore it open and raced away faster than she had ever run in her life.
“Fire alarm!” Pantalaimon shrieked, as he flew ahead of her.
She saw a button on the er, and smashed the glass with her desperate fist. She ran on, heading toward the dormitories, smashed another alarm and another, and then people began to e out into the corridor, looking up and down for the fire.
By this time she was he kit, and Pantalaimon flashed a thought into her mind, and she darted in. A moment later she had turned on all the gas taps and flung a match at the burhen she dragged a bag of flour from a shelf and hurled it at the edge of a table so it burst and filled the air with white, because she had heard that flour will explode if its treated like that near a flame.
Then she ran out and on as fast as she could toward her own dormitory. The corridors were full now: children running this way and that, vivid with excitement, for the word escape had got around. The oldest were making for the storerooms where the clothing was kept, and herding the younger ones with them.
Adults were trying to trol it all, and none of them knew what was happening.
Shouting, pushing, g, jostling people were everywhere.
Through it all Lyra and Pantalaimon darted like fish, making always for the dormitory, and just as they reached it, there was a dull explosion from behind that shook the building.
The irls had fled: the room was empty. Lyra dragged the locker to the er, jumped up, hauled the furs out of the ceiling, felt for the alethiometer. It was still there. She tugged the furs on quickly, pulling the hood forward, and then Pantalaimon, a sparrow at the door, called:
“Now!”
She ran out. By luck a group of children whod already found some cold-weather clothing were rag down the corridor toward the mairance, and she joihem, sweating, her heart thumping, knowing that she had to escape or die.
The way was blocked. The fire i had taken quickly, and whether it was the flour or the gas, something had brought down part of the roof. People were clambering over twisted struts and girders to get up to the bitter cold air. The smell of gas was strong. Then came another explosion, louder than the first and closer. The blast knocked several people over, and cries of fear and pain filled the air.
Lyra struggled up, and with Pantalaimon calling, “This way! This way!” among the other daemon-cries and flutter-ings, she hauled herself over the rubble. The air she was breathing was frozen, and she hoped that the children had mao find their outdoor clothing; it would be a fihing to escape from the station only to die of cold.
There reallybbr>.９9lｉb? was a blaze now. Whe out onto the roof uhe night sky, she could see flames lig at the edges of a great hole in the side of the building. There was a throng of children and adults by the mairance, but this time the adults were mitated and the children more fearful: much more fearful.
“Roger! Roger!” Lyra called, and Pantalaimon, keen-eyed as an owl, hooted that hed seen him.
A moment later they found each other.
“Tell em all to e with me!” Lyra shouted into his ear.
“They wont—theyre all panicky—”
“Tell em what they do to the kids that vanish! They cut their demons off with a big kell em what you saw this afternoon—all them daemo out! Tell em thats going to happen to them too uhey get away!”
Raped, horrified, but then collected his wits and ran to the group of hesitating children. Lyra did the same, and as the message passed along, some children cried out and clutched their daemons in fear.
“e with me!” Lyra shouted. “Theres a rescue a ing! We got to get out of the pound! e on, run!”
The children heard her and followed, streaming across the enclosure toward the avenue of lights, their boots pattering and creaking in the hard-packed snow.
Behind them, adults were shouting, and there was a rumble and crash as another part of the building fell in. Sparks gushed into the air, and flames billowed out with a sound like tearing cloth; but cutting through this came another sound, dreadfully close and violent. Lyra had never heard it before, but she k at o was the howl of the Tartar guards wolf daemons. She felt weak from head to foot, and many children turned in fear and stumbled to a stop, for there running at a low swift tireless lope came the first of the Tartar guards, rifle at the ready, with the mighty leaping grayness of his daemon beside him.
Then came another, and ahey were all in padded mail, and they had no eyes—or at least you couldnt see any eyes behind the snow slits of their helmets. The only eyes you could see were the round blads of the rifle barrels and the blazing yellow eyes of the wolf daemons above the slaver dripping from their jaws.
Lyra faltered. She hadnt dreamed of hhtening those wolves were. And now that she knew how casually people at Bolvangar broke the great taboo, she shrank from the thought of those drippih....
The Tartars ran to stand in a line across the entrao the avenue of lights, their daemons beside them as disciplined and drilled as they were. In another mihered be a sed line, because more were ing, and more behind them.
Lyra thought with despair: children t fight soldiers. It wasnt like the battles in the Oxford claybeds, hurling lumps of mud at the brickburners children.
Or perhaps it was! She remembered hurling a handful of clay in the broad face of a brickburner boy bearing down on her. Hed stopped to claw the stuff out of his eyes, and theownies leaped on him.
Shed been standing in the mud. She was standing in the snow.
Just as shed dohat afternoon, but in deadly ear now, she scooped a handful together and hurled it at the soldier.
“Get em in the eyes!” she yelled, and threw another.
Other children joined in, and then someones daemon had the notion of flying as a swift beside the snowball and nudging it directly at the eye slits of the target—and then they all joined in, and in a few moments the Tartars were stumbling about, spitting and cursing and trying to brush the packed snow out of the narro in front of their eyes.
“e on!” Lyra screamed, and flung herself at the gate into the avenue of lights.
The children streamed after her, every one, dodging the snapping jaws of the wolves and rag as hard as they could down the aveoward the being open dark beyond.
A harsh scream came from behind as an officer shouted an order, and then a score of rifle bolts worked at once, and then there was another scream and a tense silence, with only the fleeing childrens poundi and gasping breath to be heard.
They were taking aim. They wouldnt miss.
But before they could fire, a choking gasp came from one of the Tartars, and a cry of surprise from another.
Lyra stopped and turo see a man lying on the snow, with a gray-feathered arrow in his back. He was writhing and twitg and coughing out blood, and the other soldiers were looking around to left and right for whoever had fired it, but the archer was o be seen.
And then an arrow came flying straight down from the sky, and struother man behind the head. He fell at once. A shout from the officer, and everyone looked up at the dark sky.
“Witches!” said Pantalaimon.
And so they were: ragged elegant black shapes sweeping past high above, with a hiss and swish of air through the needles of the cloud-pine brahey flew on. As Lyra watched, one swooped low and loosed an arrow: another man fell.
And then all the Tartars turheir rifles up and blazed into the dark, firing at nothing, at shadows, at clouds, and more and more arrows rained down on them.
But the officer in charge, seeing the children almost away, ordered a squad to race after them. Some children screamed. And then more screamed, and they werent moving forward anymore, they were turning ba fusion, terrified by the monstrous shape hurtling toward them from the dark beyond the avenue of lights.
“lorek Byrnison!” cried Lyra, her chest nearly bursting with joy.
The armored bear at the charge seemed to be scious of except what gave him momentum. He bounded past Lyra almost in a blur and crashed into the Tartars, scattering soldiers, daemons, rifles to all sides. Theopped and whirled round, with a lithe athletic power, and struck two massive blows, oo each side, at the guards closest to him.
SEVENTEEN - THE WITCHES-2
A wolf daemon leaped at him: he slashed at her in midair, and bright fire spilled out of her as she fell to the snow, where she hissed and howled before vanishing. Her huma once.
The Tartar officer, faced with this double attack, didate. A long high scream of orders, and the force divided itself into two: oo keep off the witches, the bigger part to overe the bear. His troops were magnifitly brave. They dropped to one knee in groups of four and fired their rifles as if they were on the practice range, not budging an inch as loreks mighty bulk hurtled toward them. A moment later they were dead.
lorek struck again, twisting to one side, slashing, snarling, crushing, while bullets flew about him like s or flies, doing no harm at all. Lyra urged the children on and out into the darkness beyond the lights. They must get away, because dangerous as the Tartars were, far more dangerous were the adults of Bolvangar.
So she called and beed and pushed to get the children moving. As the lights behind them threw long shadows on the snow, Lyra found her heart moving out toward the deep dark of the arctiight and the ess, leaping forward to love it as Pantalaimon was doing, a hare now delighting in his own propulsion.
“Where we going?” someone said.
“Theres nothing out here but snow!”
“Theres a rescue party ing,” Lyra told them. “Theres fifty gyptians or more. I bet theres some relations of yours, too. All the gyptian families that lost a kid, they all sent someone.”
“I ent a gyptian,” a boy said.
“Dont matter. Theyll take you anyway.”
“Where?” someone said querulously.
“Home,” said Lyra. “Thats what I e here for, to rescue you, and I brung the gyptiao take you home again. We just got to go on a bit further and then well fihe bear was with em, so they t be far off.”
“Dyou see that bear!” one boy was saying. “When he slashed open that daemon—the man died as if someone whipped his heart out, just like that!”
“I never knew daemons could be killed,” someone else said.
They were all talking now; the excitement and relief had loosened everyoongue. As long as they kept moving, it didnt matter if they talked.
“Is that true,” said a girl, “about what they do back there?”
“Yeah,” Lyra said. “I hought Id ever see ahout their daemon.
But on the way here, we found this boy on his own without any daemon. He kept asking for her, where she was, would she ever find him. He was called Tony Makarios.”
“I know him!” said someone, and others joined in: “Yeah, they took him away about a week back....”
“Well, they cut his daemon away,” said Lyra, knowing how it would affect them.
“And a little bit after we found him, he died. And all the daemons they cut away, they kept them in cages in a square building back there.”
“Its true,” said Roger. “And Lyra let em out during the fire drill.”
“Yeah, I seen “em!” said Billy Costa. “I didnt know what they was at first, but I seen em fly away with that goose.”
“But why do they do it?” demanded one boy. “Why do they cut peoples daemons away? Thats torture! Why do they do it?”
“Dust,” suggested someone doubtfully.
But the boy laughed in s. “Dust!” he said. “There ent no such thing! They just made that up! I dont believe in it.”
“Here,” said someone else, “look whats happening to the zeppelin!”
They all looked back. Beyond the dazzle of lights, where the fight was still tinuing, the great length of the airship was not floating freely at the m mast any lohe free end was drooping downward, and beyond it was rising a globe of—
“Lee Scoresbys balloon!” Lyra cried, and clapped her mit-tened hands with delight.
The other children were baffled. Lyra herded them onward, w how the aeronaut had got his balloon that far. It was clear what he was doing, and what a good idea, to fill his balloon with the gas out of theirs, to escape by the same means that crippled their pursuit! “e on, keep moving, else youll freeze,” she said, for some of the children were shivering and moaning from the cold, and their daemons were g too in high thin voices. Pantalaimon found this irritating, and as a wolverine he s one girls squirrel daemon who was just lying across her shoulder whimpering faintly.
“Get in her coat! Make yourself big and warm her up!” he snarled, and the girls daemon, frightened, crept inside her coal-silk anorak at once.
The trouble was that coal silk wasnt as warm as proper fur, no matter how much it added out with hollow coal-silk fibers. Some of the children looked like walking puffballs, they were so bulky, but their gear had been made in factories and laboratories far away from the cold, and it couldnt really cope. Lyras furs looked ragged and they stank, but they kept the warmth in.
“If we dont find the gyptians soon, they ent going to last,” she whispered to Pantalaimon.
“Keep em moving then,” he whispered back. “If they lie down, theyre finished.
You know what Farder said....”
Farder had told her many tales of his own journeys in the North, and so had Mrs. Coulter—always supposing that hers were true. But they were both quite clear about one point, which was that you must keep going.
“How far we gotta go?” said a little boy.
“Shes just making us walk out here to kill us,” said a girl.
“Rather be out here than back there,” someone said.
“I wouldnt! Its warm ba the station. Theres food and hot drinks and everything.”
“But its all on fire!”
“What we going to do out here? I bet we starve to death....”
Lyras mind was full of dark questions that flew around like witches, swift and untouchable, and somewhere, just beyond where she could reach, there was a glory and a thrill which she didnt uand at all.
But it gave her a surge of strength, and she hauled one girl up out of a snowdrift, and shoved at a boy who was dawdling, and called to them all: “Keep going! Follow the bears tracks! He e up with the gyptians, so the tracksll lead us to where they are! J.ust keep walking!”
Big flakes of snow were beginning to fall. Soon it would have covered lorek Byrnisons tracks altogether. Now that they were out of sight of the lights of Bolvangar, and the blaze of the fire was only a faint glow, the only light came from the faint radiance of the snow-cround. Thick clouds obscured the sky, so there was her moon nor Northern Lights; but by peering closely, the children could make out the deep trail lorek Byrnison had plowed in the snow.
Lyra enced, bullied, hit, half-carried, swore at, pushed, dragged, lifted tenderly, wherever it was needed, and Pantalaimon (by the state of each childs daemon) told her what was needed in each case.
Ill get them there, she kept saying to herself. I e here to get em and Ill bloody get em.
Roger was following her example, and Billy Costa was leading the way, being sharper-eyed than most. Soon the snow was falling so thickly that they had to g on to one ao keep from getting lost, and Lyra thought, perhaps if we all lie close and keep warm like that...Dig holes in the snow...
She was hearing things. There was the snarl of an engine somewhere, not the heavy thump of a zeppelin but something higher like the drone of a hor. It drifted in and out of hearing.
And howling...Dogs? Sledge dogs? That too was distant and hard to be sure of, blaed by millions of snowflakes and blown this way and that by little puffing gusts of wind. It might have been the gyptians sledge dogs, or it might have been wild spirits of the tundra, or even those freed daemons g for their lost children.
She was seeing things....There werent any lights in the snow, were there? They must be ghosts as well....Uheyd e round in a circle, and were stumbling bato Bolvangar.
But these were little yellow lantern beams, not the white glare of anbaric lights. And they were moving, and the howling was nearer, and before she knew for certaiher shed fallen asleep, Lyra was wandering among familiar figures, and men in furs were holding her up: John Faas mighty arm lifted her clear of the ground, and Farder was laughing with pleasure; and as far through the blizzard as she could see, gyptians were lifting children into sledges, c them with furs, giving them seal meat to chew. And Tony Costa was there, hugging Billy and then pung him softly only to hug him again and shake him for joy. And Roger...
“Rogers ing with us,” she said to Farder . “It was him I meant to get in the first place. Well go back to Jordan in the end. Whats that noise—”
It was that snarl again, that engine, like a crazed spy-fly ten thousand times the size.
Suddenly there came a blow that sent her sprawling, and Pantalaimon couldnt defend her, because the golden monkey—
Mrs. Coulter—
The golden monkey was wrestling, biting, scratg at Pantalaimon, who was nickering through so many ges of form it was hard to see him, and fighting back: stinging, lashing, tearing. Mrs. Coulter, meanwhile, her fa its furs a frozen glare of intense feeling, was dragging Lyra to the back of a motorized sledge, and Lyra struggled as hard as her daemon. The snow was so thick that they seemed to be isolated in a little blizzard of their own, and the anbaric headlights of the sledge only showed up the thick swirling flakes a few inches ahead.
“Help!” Lyra cried, to the gyptians who were just there in the blinding snow and who could see nothing. “Help me! Farder ! Lord Faa! Oh, God, help!”
Mrs. Coulter shrieked a high and in the language of the northern Tartars.
The snow swirled open, and there they were, a squad of them, armed with rifles, and the wolf daemons snarled beside them. The chief saw Mrs. Coulter struggling, and picked up Lyra with one hand as if she were a doll and threw her into the sledge, where she lay stunned and dazed.
A rifle banged, and then another, as the gyptians realized what was happening.
But firing at targets you t see is dangerous when you t see your own side either. The Tartars, in a tight group now around the sledge, were able to blaze at will into the snow, but the gyptians dared not shoot back for fear of hitting Lyra.
Oh, the bitterness she felt! The tiredness! Still dazed, with her head ringing, she hauled herself up to find Pantalaimon desperately fighting the moill, with wolverine jaws fasteight on a golden arm, ging no more but grimly hanging on. And who was that?
Ner?
Yes, Roger, battering at Mrs. Coulter with fists a, hurtling his head against hers, only to be struck down by a Tartar who swiped at him like someone brushing away a fly. It was all a phantasmagoria now: white, black, a swift green flutter across her visied shadows, raci?t>ng light—
A great swirl lifted curtains of snow aside, and into the cleared area leaped lorek Byrnison, with a g and screech of iron on iron. A moment later and those great jaws snapped left, right, a paw ripped open a mailed chest, white teeth, black iron, red wet fur—
Then something ulling her up, powerfully up, and she seized Roger too, tearing him out of the hands of Mrs. Coulter and ging tight, each childs daemon a shrill bird fluttering in amazement as a greater fluttering swept all around them, and then Lyra saw in the air beside her a witch, one of those elegant ragged black shadows from the high air, but close enough to touch; and there was a bow ichs bare hands, and she exerted her bare pale arms (in this freezing air!) to pull the string and then loose an arrow into the eye slit of a mailed and l Tartar hood only three feet away—
And the arrow sped in and halfway out at the back, and the mans wolf daemon vanished in midleap even before he hit the ground.
Up! Into midair Lyra and Roger were caught and swept, and found themselves ging with weakening fio a cloud-pine branch, where a young witch was sitting teh balanced grace, and then she leaned down and to the left and something huge was looming and there was the ground.
They tumbled into the snow beside the basket of Lee Scoresbys balloon.
“Skip inside,” called the Texan, “and bring your friend, by all means. Have ye seen that bear?”
Lyra saw that three witches were holding a rope looped around a rock, anch the great buoyancy of the gas bag to the earth.
“Get in!” she cried ter, and scrambled over the leatherbound rim of the basket to fall in a snowy heap inside. A moment later Roger fell on top of her, and then a mighty noise halfway between a roar and a growl made the very ground shake.
“, lorek! On board, old feller!” yelled Lee Scoresby, and over the side came the bear in a hideous creak of wicker and bending wood.
At ohe aeronaut lowered his arm in a signal, and the witches let go of the rope.
The balloon lifted immediately and surged upward into the snow-thick air at a rate Lyra could scarcely believe. After a moment the ground disappeared in the mist, and up they went, faster and faster, so that she thought no rocket could have left the earth more swiftly. She lay holding on ter on the floor of the basket, pressed down by the acceleration.
Lee Scoresby was cheering and laughing and uttering wild Texan yells of delight; lorek Byrnison was calmly unfastening his armor, hooking a deft claw into all the linkages and undoing them with a twist before pag the separate pieces in a pile. Somewhere outside, the flap and swish of air through cloud-pine needles and witch garments told that the witches were keeping them pany into the upper airs.
Little by little Lyra recovered her breath, her balance, and her heartbeat. She sat up and looked around.
The basket was much bigger thahought. Ranged around the edges were racks of philosophical instruments, and there were piles of furs, and bottled air, and a variety of other things too small or fusing to make out ihick mist they were asding through. “Is this a cloud?” she said.
“Sure is. your friend in some furs before he turns into an icicle. Its cold here, but its gon colder.” “How did you find us?”
“Witches. Theres och lady who wants to talk to you. Whe clear of the cloud, well get our bearings and then we sit and have a yarn.”
“lorek,” said Lyra, “thank you for ing.” The bear grunted, aled down to lick the blood off his fur. His weight meant that the basket was tilted to one side, but that didnt matter. Roger was wary, but lorek Byrnison took no more notice of him than of a flake of snow. Lyra tented herself with ging to the rim of the basket, just under her when she was standing, and peering wide-eyed into the swirling cloud.
Only a few seds later the balloon passed out of the cloud altogether and, still rising rapidly, soared on into the heavens.
What a sight! Directly above them the balloon swelled out in a huge curve. Above and ahead of them the Aurora was blazing, with more brilliand grahan she had ever seen. It was all around, or nearly, and they were nearly part of it. Great swathes of indesce trembled and parted like angels wings beating; cascades of lumi glory tumbled down invisible crags to lie in swirling pools or hang like vast waterfalls.
Sasped at that, and then she looked below, and saw a sight almost more wondrous.
As far as the eye could see, to the very horizon in all dires, a tumbled sea of white extended without a break. Soft peaks and vaporous chasms rose or opened here and there, but mostly it looked like a solid mass of ice.
And rising through it in ones and twos and larger groups as well came small black shadows, thed figures of such elegance, witches on their branches of cloud-pine.
They flew swiftly, without any effort, up and toward the balloon, leaning to one side or ao steer. And one of them, the archer whod saved Lyra from Mrs.
Coulter, flew directly alongside the basket, and Lyra saw her clearly for the first time.
She was young—youhan Mrs. Coulter; and fair, with bright green eyes; and clad like all the witches in strips of black silk, but wearing no furs, no hood or mittens. She seemed to feel no cold at all. Around her brow was a simple of little red flowers. She sat on her cloud-pine branch as if it were a steed, and seemed to rein it in a yard from Lyras w gaze.
“Lyra?”
“Yes! And are you Serafina Pekkala?”
“I am.”
Lyra could see why Farder loved her, and why it was breaking his heart, though she had knowher of those things a moment before. He was growing old; he was an old broken man; and she would be young feions.
“Have you got the symbol reader?” said the witch, in a voice so like the high wild singing of the Aurora itself that Lyra could hardly hear the sense for the sweet sound of it.
“Yes. I got it in my pocket, safe.”
Great wis told of another arrival, and then he was gliding beside her: the gray goose daemon. He spoke briefly and then wheeled away to glide in a wide circle around the balloon as it tio rise.
“The gyptians have laid waste to Bolvangar,” said Serafina Pekkala. “They have killed twenty-two guards and nine of the staff, and theyve set light to every part of the buildings that still stood. They are going to destroy it pletely.”
“What about Mrs. Coulter?”
“No sign of her.”
“And the kids? They got all the kids safely?”
“Every ohey are all safe.”
Serafina Pekkala cried out in a wild yell, and other witches circled and flew in toward the balloon.
“Mr. Scoresby,” she said. “The rope, if you please.”
“Maam, Im very grateful. Were still rising. I guess well go on up awhile yet. How many of you will it take to pull us north?”
“We are strong” was all she said.
Lee Scoresby was attag a coil of stout rope to the leather-covered ir that gathered the ropes running over the gas bag, and from which the basket itself was suspended. When it was securely fixed, he threw the free end out, and at once six witches darted toward it, caught hold, and began to pull, urging the cloud-pine braoward the Polar Star.
As the balloon began to move in that dire, Pan-talaimon came to per the edge of the basket as a tern. Rogers daemon came out to look, but crept back again soon, fer was fast asleep, as was lorek Byrnison. Only Lee Scoresby was awake, calmly chewing a thin cigar and watg his instruments.
“So, Lyra,” said Serafina Pekkala. “Do you know why yoing to Lord Asriel?”
Lyra was astonished. “To take him the alethiometer, of course!” she said.
She had never sidered the question; it was obvious. Then she recalled her first motive, from so long ago that shed almost fotten it.
“Or... To help him escape. Thats it. Were going to help him get away.”
But as she said that, it sounded absurd. Escape from Svalbard? Impossible! “Try, anyway,” she added stoutly. “Why?”
“I think there are things I o tell you,” said Serafina Pekkala.
“About Dust?”
It was the first thing Lyra wao know.
“Yes, among other things. But you are tired now, and it will be a long flight.
Well talk when you wake up.”
Lyra yawned. It was a jaw-crag, lung-bursting yawn that lasted almost a minute, or felt like it, and for all that Lyra struggled, she could the onrush of sleep. Serafina Pekkala reached a hand over the rim of the basket and touched her eyes, and as Lyra sank to the floor, Pantalaimon fluttered down, ged to an ermine, and crawled to his sleeping place by her neck.
The witch settled her branto a steady speed beside the basket as they moved north toward Svalbard.
PART THREE SVALBARD EIGHTEEN - FOG AND ICE-1
Lee Scoresby arranged some furs over Lyra. She curled up close ter and they lay together asleep as the balloo on toward the Pole. The aeronaut checked his instruments from time to time, chewed on the cigar he would never light with the inflammable hydrogen so close, and huddled deeper into his own furs.
“This little girls pretty important, huh?” he said after several minutes.
“More than she will know,” Serafina Pekkala said.
“Does that mean theres gonna be mu the way of armed pursuit? You uand, Im speaking as a practical man with a living to earn. I t afford to get busted up or shot to pieces without some kind of pensation agreed to in advance. I aint trying to lower the tone of this expedition, believe me, maam. But John Faa and the gyptians paid me a fee thats enough to cover my time and skill and the normal wear and tear on the balloon, and thats all. It didnt include acts-of-war insurance. A me tell you, maam, when we land lorek Byrnison on Svalbard, that will t as an act of war.”
He spat a pieokeleaf delicately overboard.
“So Id like to know what we expe the way of mayhem and rus,” he finished.
“There may be fighting,” said Serafina Pekkala. “But you have fought before.”
“Sure, when Im paid. But the fact is, I thought this was a straightforward transportation tract, and I charged acc. And Im a w now, after that little dust-up down there, Im a w how far my transportation responsibility extends. Whether Im bound to risk my life and my equipment in a war among the bears, for example. Or whether this little child has enemies on Svalbard as hot-tempered as the ones back at Bolvangar. I merely mention all this by way of making versation.”
“Mr. Scoresby,” said the witch, “I wish I could answer your question. All I say is that all of us, humans, witches, bears, are engaged in a war already, although not all of us know it. Whether you find danger on Svalbard or whether you fly off unharmed, you are a recruit, under arms, a soldier.”
“Well, that seems kinda precipitate. Seems to me a man should have a choice whether to take up arms or not.”
“We have no more choi that than iher or not to be born.”
“Oh, I like choice, though,” he said. “I like choosing the jobs I take and the places I go and the food I eat and the panions I sit and yarn with. Dont you wish for a choi a while ?”
Serafina Pekkala sidered, and then said, “Perhaps we dohe same thing by choice, Mr. Scoresby. Witches own nothing, so were not ied in preserving value or making profits, and as for the choice betweehing and another, when you live for many hundreds of years, you know that every opportunity will e again. We have different needs. You have to repair your balloon and keep it in good dition, and that takes time and trouble, I see that; but for us to fly, all we have to do is tear off a branch of cloud-pine; any will do, and there are plenty more. We dont feel cold, so we need no warm clothes. We have no means of exge apart from mutual aid. If a witeeds something, another witch will give it to her. If there is a war to be fought, we dont sider cost one of the factors in deg whether or not it is right to fight. Nor do we have any notion of honor, as bears do, for instance. An insult to a bear is a deadly thing. To us... inceivable. How could you insult a witch? What would it matter if you did?”
“Well, Im kinda with you on that. Sticks and stones, Ill break yer bones, but names aint worth a quarrel. But maam, you see my dilemma, I hope. Im a simple aeronaut, and Id like to end my days in fort. Buy a little farm, a few head of cattle, some horses...Nothing grand, you notio palace or slaves or heaps of gold. Just the evening wind over the sage, and a ceegar, and a glass of bourbon whiskey. Now the trouble is, that costs money. So I do my flying in exge for cash, and after every job I send some gold back to the Wells Fargo Bank, and whe enough, maam, Im gonhis balloon and book me a passage on a steamer talveston, and Ill never leave the ground again.”
“Theres another differeween us, Mr. Scoresby. A witch would no sive up flying than give up breathing. To fly is to be perfectly ourselves.”
“I see that, maam, and I envy you; but I aint got your sources of satisfa. Flying is just a job to me, and Im just a tei. I might as well be adjusting valves in a gas engine or wiring up anbaric circuits. But I chose it, you see. It was my own free choice. Which is why I find this notion of a war I aiold nothing about kinda troubling.”
“lorek Byrnisons quarrel with his king is part of it too,” said the witch.
“This child is destio play a part in that.”
“You speak of destiny,” he said, “as if it was fixed. And I aint sure I like that any more than a war Im enlisted in without knowing about it. Wheres my free will, if you please? And this child seems to me to have more free will than anyone I ever met. Are you tellihat shes just some kind of clockwork toy wound up a going on a course she t ge?”
“We are all subject to the fates. But we must all act as if we are not,” said the witch, “or die of despair. There is a curious prophecy about this child: she is desti about the end of destiny. But she must do so without knowing what she is doing, as if it were her nature and not her destiny to do it. If shes told what she must do, it will all fail; death will sweep through all the worlds; it will be the triumph of despair, forever. The universes will all bee nothing more than interlog maes, blind ay of thought, feeling, life...”
They looked down at Lyra, whose sleeping face (what little of it they could see inside her hood) wore a stubborn little frown.
“I guess part of her knows that,” said the aeronaut. “Looks prepared for it, anyways. How about the little boy? You know she came all this way to save him from those fiends back there? They were playmates, ba Oxford or somewhere.
Did you know that?”
“Yes, I did know that. Lyra is carrying something of immense value, and it seems that the fates are using her as a messeo take it to her father. So she came all this way to find her friend, not knowing that her friend was brought to the North by the fates, in order that she might follow and bring something to her father.”
“Thats how you read it, huh?”
For the first time the witch seemed unsure.
“That is how it seems....But we t read the darkness, Mr. Scoresby. It is more than possible that I might be wrong.”
“And what brought you into all this, if I ask?”
“Whatever they were doing at Bolvangar, we felt it was wrong with all our hearts. Lyra is their enemy; so we are her friends. We dont see more clearly than that. But also there is my s friendship for the gyptian people, which goes back to the time when Farder saved my life. We are doing this at their bidding. And they have ties of obligation with Lord Asriel.”
“I see. So youre towing the balloon to Svalbard for the gyp-tians sake. And does that friendship extend to towing us back again? Or will I have to wait for a kindly wind, and depend on the indulgence of the bears in the meantime? Once again, maam, Im asking merely in a spirit of friendly enquiry.”
“If we help you back to Trollesund, Mr. Scoresby, we shall do so. But we dont know what we shall meet on Svalbard. The bears new king has made many ges; the old ways are out bbr>of favor; it might be a difficult landing. And I dont know how Lyra will find her way to her father. Nor do I know what lorek Byrnison has it in mind to do, except that his fate is involved with hers.”
“I dont kher, maam. I thitached himself to the little girl as a kind of protector. She helped him get his armor back, you see. Who knows what bears feel? But if a bear ever loved a human being, he loves her. As for landing on Svalbard, its never been easy. Still, if I call on you for a tug in the right dire, Ill feel kinda easier in my mind; and if theres anything I do for you iurn, you only have to say. But just so as I know, would you mind telling me whose side Im on in this invisible war?”
“We are both on Lyras side.”
“Oh, no doubt about that.”
They flew on. Because of the clouds below there was no way of telling how fast they were going. Normally, of course, a balloon remaiill with respect to the wind, floating at whatever speed the air itself was moving; but now, pulled by the witches, the balloon was moving through the air instead of with it, aing the movement, too, because the unwieldy gas bag had none of the streamlined smoothness of a zeppelin. As a result, the basket swung this way and that, rog and bumping much more than on a normal flight.
Lee Scoresby wasnt ed for his fort so much as for his instruments, and he spent some time making sure they were securely lashed to the main struts.
Acc to the altimeter, they were nearly ten thousa up. The temperature was minus 20 degrees. He had been colder than this, but not much, and he didnt want to get any colder now; so he unrolled the vas sheet he used as an emergency bivouad spread it in front of the sleeping children to keep off the wind, before lying down back to back with his old rade in arms, lorek Byrnison, and falling asleep.
When Lyra woke up, the moon was high in the sky, and everything in sight was silver-plated, from the roiling surface of the clouds below to the frost spears and icicles on the rigging of the balloon.
Roger was sleeping, and so were Lee Scoresby and the bear. Beside the basket, however, the witch queen was flying steadily.
“How far are we from Svalbard?” Lyra said.
“If we meet no winds, we shall be over Svalbard in twelve hours or so.”
“Where are we going to land?”
“It depends on the weather. Well try to avoid the cliffs, though. There are creatures living there who prey on anything that moves. If we , well set you down ierior, away from lofur Raknisons palace.”
“Whats going to happen when I find Lord Asriel? Will he want to e back to Oxford, or what? I dont know if I ought to tell him I know hes my father, her. He might want to preteill my uncle. I dont hardly know him at all.”
“He wont want to go back to Oxford, Lyra. It seems that there is something to be done in another world, and Lord Asriel is the only one who bridge the gulf between that world and this. But he needs something to help him.”
“The alethiometer!” Lyra said. “The Master of Jordan gave it to me and I thought there was something he wao say about Lord Asriel, except he never had the ce. I knew he didnt really want to poison him. Is he going to read it and see how to make the bridge? I bet I could help him. I probably read it as good as anyone now.”
“I dont know,” said Serafina Pekkala. “How hell do it, and what his task will be, we t tell. There are powers who speak to us, and there are powers above them; and there are secrets even from the most high.”
“The alethiometer would tell me! I could read it now....”
But it was too cold; she would never have mao hold it. She bundled herself up and pulled the hood tight against the chill of the wind, leaving only a slit to look through. Far ahead, and a little below, the long rope extended from the suspensi of the balloon, pulled by six or seven witches sitting on their cloud-pine brahe stars shone as bright and cold and hard as diamonds.
“Why ent you cold, Serafina Pekkala?”
“We feel cold, but we dont mind it, because we will not e to harm. And if we ed up against the cold, we wouldnt feel other things, like the bright tingle of the stars, or the music of the Aurora, or best of all the silky feeling of moonlight on our skin. Its worth being cold for that.” “Could I feel them?”
“No. You would die if you took your furs off. Stay ed up.”
“How long do witches live, Serafina Pekkala? Farder says hundreds of years. But you dont look old at all.”
“I am three hundred years or more. Our oldest witch mother is nearly a thousand.
One day, Yambe-Akka will e for her. One day shell e for me. She is the goddess of the dead. She es to you smiling and kindly, and you know it is time to die.”
“Are there men witches? Or only women?”
“There are men who serve us, like the sul at Trollesund. And there are meake for lovers or husbands. You are so young, Lyra, too young to uand this, but I shall tell you anyway and youll uand it later: men pass in front of our eyes l.ike butterflies, creatures of a brief season. We love them; they are brave, proud, beautiful, clever; and they die almost at ohey die so soon that our hearts are tinually racked with pain. We bear their children, who are witches if they are female, human if not; and then in the blink of ahey are gone, felled, slain, lost. Our sons, too. When a little boy is growing, he thinks he is immortal. His mother knows he isnt. Each time bees more painful, until finally your heart is broken. Perhaps that is when Yambe-Akka es for you. She is older thaundra. Perhaps, for her, witches lives are as brief as mens are to us.”
“Did you love Farder ?”
“Yes. Does he know that?”
“I dont know, but I know he loves you.”
“When he rescued me, he was young and strong and full of pride ay. I loved him at once. I would have ged my nature, I would have forsakear-tingle and the music of the Aurora; I would never have flown again—I would have given all that up in a moment, without a thought, to be a gyptian boat wife and cook for him and share his bed and bear his children. But you ot ge what you are, only what you do. I am a witch. He is a human. I stayed with him for long enough to bear him a child....”
“He never said! Was it a girl? A witch?”
“No. A boy, and he died in the great epidemic of forty years ago, the siess that came out of the East. Poor little child; he flickered into life and out of it like a mayfly. And it tore pieces out of my heart, as it always does. It broke s. And then the call came for me to return to my own people, because Yambe-Akka had taken my mother, and I was queen. So I left, as I had to.”
“Did you never see Farder again?”
“Never. I heard of his deeds; I heard how he was wounded by the Skraelings, with a poisoned arrow, and I sent herbs and spells to help him recover, but I wasnt strong enough to see him. I heard how broken he was after that, and how his wisdom grew, how much he studied and read, and I roud of him and his goodness. But I stayed away, for they were dangerous times for my , and witch wars were threatening, and besides, I thought he would fet me and find a human wife....”
“He never would,” said Lyra stoutly. “You oughter go and see him. He still loves you, I know he does.”
“But he would be ashamed of his own age, and I wouldnt want to make him feel that.”
“Perhaps he would. But you ought to send a message to him, at least. Thats what I think.”
Serafina Pekkala said nothing for a long time. Pantalaimon became a tern and flew to her branch for a sed, to aowledge that perhaps they had been i.
Then Lyra said, “Why do people have daemons, Serafina Pekkala?”
“Everyone asks that, and no one knows the answer. As long as there have been human beings, they have had daemons. Its what makes us different from animals.”
“Yeah! Were different from them all right....Like bears. Theyre strange, ent they, bears? You think theyre like a person, and then suddenly they do something se or ferocious you think youll never uand them....But you know what lorek said to me, he said that his armor for him was like what a daemon is for a person. Its his soul, he said. But thats where theyre different again, because he made this armor his-self. They took his first armor away when they sent him into exile, and he found some sky iron and made some new armor, like making a new soul. We t make our daemons. Then the people at Trollesund, they got him drunk on spirits and stole it away, and I found out where it was a it back....But what I wonder is, whys he ing to Svalbard? Theyll fight him. They might kill him....I love lorek. I love him so much I wish he wasnt ing.”
PART THREE SVALBARD EIGHTEEN - FOG AND ICE-2
“Has he told you who he is?”
“Only his name. And it was the sul at Trollesund who told us that.”
“He is highborn. He is a prince. In fact, if he had not itted a great crime, he would be the king of the bears by now.”
“He told me their king was called lofur Raknison.”
“lofur Raknison became king when lorek Byrnison was exiled. lofur is a prince, of course, or he wouldnt be allowed to rule; but he is clever in a human way; he makes alliances and treaties; he lives not as bears do, in ice forts, but in a new-built palace; he talks of exging ambassadors with human nations and developing the fire mines with the help of human engineers....He is very skillful and subtle. Some say that he provoked lorek into the deed for which he was exiled, and others say that even if he didnt, he ences them to think he did, because it adds to his reputation for craft and subtlety.”
“What did lorek do? See, one reason I love lorek, its because of my father doing what he did and being punished. Seems to me theyre like each other. lorek told me hed killed another bear, but he never said how it came about.”
“The fight was over a she-bear. The male whom lorek killed would not display the usual signals of surrender when it was clear that lorek was stronger. For all their pride, bears never fail tnize superior for another bear and surreo it, but for some reason this bear didnt do it. Some say that lofur Raknison worked on his mind, ave him fusing herbs to eat. At any rate, the young bear persisted, and lorek Byrnison allowed his temper to master him.
The case was not hard to judge; he should have wounded, not killed.”
“So otherwise hed be king,” Lyra said. “And I heard something about lofur Raknison from the Palmerian Professor at Jordan, cause hed been to the North a him. He said... I wish I could remember what it was....I thiricked his way on to the throne or something....But you know, lorek said to me ohat bears couldricked, and showed me that I couldnt trick him. It sounds as if they was both tricked, him and the other bear. Maybe only bears trick bears, maybe people t. Except...The people at Trollesund, they tricked him, didnt they? When they got him drunk and stole his armor?”
“When bears act like people, perhaps they be tricked,” said Serafina Pekkala. “When bears act like bears, perhaps they t. No bear would normally drink spirits. lorek Byrnison drank tet the shame of exile, and it was only that which let the Trollesund people trick him.”
“Ah, yes,” said Lyra, nodding. She was satisfied with that idea. She admired lorek almost without limit, and she was glad to find firmation of his nobility. “Thats clever of you,” she said. “I wouldnt have known that if you hadnt told me. I think youre probably cleverer than Mrs. Coulter.”
They flew on. Lyra chewed some of the seal meat she found in her pocket.
“Serafina Pekkala,” she said after some time, “whats Dust? Cause it seems to me that all this troubles about Dust, only no oold me what it is.”
“I dont know,” Serafina Pekkala told her. “Witches have never worried about Dust. All I tell you is that where there are priests, there is fear of Dust.
Mrs. Coulter is not a priest, of course, but she is a powerful agent of the Magisterium, and it was she who set up the Oblation Board and persuaded the Church to pay for Bolvangar, because of her i in Dust. We t uand her feelings about it. But there are many things we have never uood. We see the Tartars making holes in their skulls, and we only wo the strangeness of it. So Dust may be strange, and we wo it, but we dont fret ahings apart to exami. Leave that to the Church.”
“The Church?” said Lyra. Something had e back to her: she remembered talking with Pantalaimon, in the fens, about what it might be that was moving the needle of the alethiometer, and they had thought of the photomill on the high altar at Gabriel College, and how elementary particles pushed the little vanes around.
The Intercessor there was clear about the liweeary particles and religion. “Could be,” she said, nodding. “Most Church things, they keep secret, after all. But most Church things are old, and Dust ent old, as far as I know.
I wonder if Lord Asriel might tell me....”
She yawned.
“I better lie down,” she said to Serafina Pekkala, “else Ill probably freeze. I been cold down on the ground, but I never been this cold. I think I might die if I get any colder.”
“Then lie down and yourself in the furs.”
“Yeah, I will. If I was going to die, Id rather die up here than down there, any day. I thought when they put us uhat blade thing, I thought that was it....We both did. Oh, that was cruel. But well lie down now. Wake us up whe there,” she said, and got down on the pile of furs, clumsy and ag in every part of her with the profound iy of the cold, and lay as close as she could to the sleeping Roger.
And so the four travelers sailed on, sleeping in the icrusted balloon, toward the rocks and glaciers, the fire mines and the ice forts of Svalbard.
Serafina Pekkala called to the aeronaut, and he woke at once, groggy with cold, but aware from the movement of the basket that something was wrong. It was swinging wildly as strong winds buffeted the gas bag, and the witches pulling the rope were barely managing to hold it. If they let go, the balloon would be swept off course at once, and to judge by his gla the pass, would be swept toward Nova Zembla at nearly a hundred miles an hour.
“Where are we?” Lyra heard him call. She was half-waking herself, uneasy because of the motion, and so cold that every part of her body was numb.
She couldhe witchs reply, but through her half-closed hood she saw, in the light of an anbaritern, Lee Scoresby hold on to a strut and pull at a rope leading up into the gas bag itself. He gave a sharp tug as if against some obstru, and looked up into the buffeting dark before looping the rope around a cleat on the suspensi.
“Im letting out some gas!” he shouted to Serafina Pekkala. “Well go down.
We?s a daemon.
Of course, she hadnt uood what he meant; hed spoken of panserbj0rne instead of using the English word, so she didnt know he was talking about bears, and she had no idea that lofur Raknison wasnt a man. And a man would have had a daemon anyway, so it hadnt made sense.
But now it lain. Everything shed heard about the bear-king added up: the mighty lofur Raknison wanted nothing more than to be a human being, with a daemon of his own.
And as she thought that, a plan came to her: a way of making lofur Raknison do what he would normally never have done; a way of rest lorek Byrnison to his rightful throne; a way, finally, of getting to the place where they had put Lord Asriel, and taking him the alethiometer.
The idea hovered and shimmered delicately, like a soap bubble, and she dared not even look at it directly in case it burst. But she was familiar with the way of ideas, and she let it shimmer, looking away, thinking about something else.
NINETEEN - CAPTIVITY-2
She was nearly asleep when the bolts clattered and the door opened. Light spilled in, and she was on her feet at once, with Pantalaimon hidden swiftly in her pocket.
As soon as the bear guard? bent his head to lift the haunch of seal meat and throw it in, she was at his side, saying:
“Take me to lofur Raknison. Youll be in trouble if you dont. Its very urgent.”
He dropped the meat from his jaws and looked up. It wasnt easy to read bears expressions, but he looked angry.
“Its about lorek Byrnison,” she said quickly. “I know something about him, and the king o know.”
“Tell me what it is, and Ill pass the message on,” said the bear.
“That wouldnt be right, not for someone else to know before the king does,” she said. “Im sorry, I doo be rude, but you see, its the rule that the king has to know things first.”
Perhaps he was slow-witted. At any rate, he paused, and then threw the meat into the cell before saying, “Very well. You e with me.”
He led her out into the open air, for which she was grateful. The fog had lifted and there were stars glittering above the high-walled courtyard. The guard ferred with another bear, who came to speak to her.
“You ot see lofur Raknison when you please,” he said. “You have to wait till he wants to see you.”
“But this is urgent, what Ive got to tell him,” she said. “Its about lorek Byrnison. Im sure His Majesty would want to know it, but all the same I t tell it to anyone else, dont you see? It wouldnt be polite. Hed be ever so cross if he knew we hadnt been polite.”
That seemed to carry some weight, or else to mystify the bear suffitly to make him pause. Lyra was sure her interpretation of things was right: lofur Raknison was introdug so many new ways that none of the bears was certai how to behave, and she could exploit this uainty in order to get to lofur.
So that bear retreated to sult the bear above him, and before long Lyra was ushered ihe palace again, but into the state quarters this time. It was no er here, and in fact the air was even harder to breathe than in the cell, because all the natural stinks had been overlaid by a heavy layer of cloying perfume. She was made to wait in a corridor, then in an anteroom, then outside a large door, while bears discussed and argued and scurried bad forth, and she had time to look around at the preposterous decoration: the walls were rich with gilt plasterwork, some of which was already peeling off or crumbling with damp, and the florid carpets were trodden with filth.
Finally the large door ened from the inside. A blaze of light from half a dozen deliers, a crimson carpet, and more of that thick perfume hanging in the air; and the faces of a dozen or more bears, all gazing at her, none in armor but each with some kind of decoration: a golden necklace, a headdress of purple feathers, a crimson sash. Curiously, the room was also occupied by birds; terns and skuas perched on the plaster ice, and swooped low to snatch at bits of fish that had fallen out of one anothers s in the deliers.
And on a dais at the far end of the room, a mighty throne reared up high. It was made of granite for strength and mas-siveness, but like so many other things in lofurs palace, it was decorated with overelaborate swags aoons of gilt that looked like tinsel on a mountainside.
Sitting ohrone was the biggest bear she had ever seen. lofur Raknison was even taller and bulkier than lorek, and his face was muobile and expressive, with a kind of humanness in it which she had never seen in loreks.
When lofur looked at her, she seemed to see a man looking out of his eyes, the sort of man she had met at Mrs. Coulters, a subtle politi used to power. He was wearing a heavy gold around his neck, with a gaudy jewel hanging from it, and his claws—a good six inches long—were each covered in gold leaf. The effect was one of enormous strength and energy and craft; he was quite big enough to carry the absurd overdecoration; on him it didnt look preposterous, it looked barbarid magnifit.
She quailed. Suddenly her idea seemed too feeble for words.
But she moved a little closer, because she had to, and then she saw that lofur was holding something on his knee, as a human might let a cat sit there—or a daemon.
It was a big stuffed doll, a manikin with a vat stupid human face. It was dressed as Mrs. Coulter would dress, and it had a sort h resemblao her. He retending he had a daemon. Then she knew she was safe.
She moved up close to the throne and bowed very low, with Pantalaimon keeping quiet and still in her pocket.
“reetings to you, great King,” she said quietly. “Or I mean my greetings, not his.”
“Not whose?” he said, and his voice was lighter than she had thought it would be, but full of expressive tones and subtleties. When he spoke, he waved a paw in front of his mouth to dislodge the flies that clustered there.
“lorek Byrnisons, Your Majesty,” she said. “Ive got something very important a to tell you, and I think I ought to tell you in private, really.”
“Something about lorek Byrnison?”
She came close to him, stepping carefully over the bird-spattered floor, and brushed away the flies buzzing at her face.
“Something about daemons,” she said, so that only he could hear.
His expression ged. She couldnt read what it was saying, but there was no doubt that he owerfully ied. Suddenly he lumbered forward off the throne, making her skip aside, and roared an order to the other bears. They all bowed their heads and backed out toward the door. The birds, which had risen in a flurry at his roar, squawked and swooped around overhead before settling again on their s.
Whehrone room was empty but for lofur Raknison and Lyra, he turerly.
“Well?” he said. “Tell me who you are. What is this about daemons?”
“I am a daemon, Your Majesty,” she said.
He stopped still.
“Whose?” he said.
“lorek Byrnisons,” was藏书网 her answer.
It was the most dangerous thing she had ever said. She could see quite clearly that only his astonishment prevented him from killi once. She went on:
“Please, Your Majesty, let me tell you all about it first before you harm me.
Ive e here at my own risk, as you see, and theres nothing Ive got that could hurt you. In fact, I want to help you, thats why Ive e. lorek Byrnison was the first bear to get a daemon, but it should have been you. I would much rather be your daemon than his, thats why I came.”
“How?” he said, breathlessly. “How has a bear got a daemon? And why him? And how are you so far from him?” The flies left his mouth like tiny words. “Thats easy. I go far from him because Im like a witchs daemon. You know how they go hundreds of miles from their humans? Its like that. And as for how he got me, it was at Bolvangar. Youve heard of Bolvangar, because Mrs. Coulter must have told you about it, but she probably didnt tell you everything they were doing there.” “Cutting...” he said.
“Yes, cutting, thats part of it, intercision. But theyre doing all kinds of other things too, like making artificial daemons. And experimenting on animals.
When lorek Byrnison heard about it, he offered himself for an experiment to see if they could make a daemon for him, and they did. It was me. My name is Lyra.
Just like when people have daemons, theyre animal-formed, so when a bear has a daemon, itll be human. And Im his daemon. I see into his mind and kly what hes doing and where he is and—” “Where is he now?”
“On Svalbard. Hes ing this way as fast as he .” “Why? What does he want?
He must be mad! Well tear him to pieces!”
“He wants me. Hes ing to get me back. But I dont want to be his daemon, lofur Raknison, I want to be yours. Because ohey saerful a bear was with a daemon, the people at Bolvangar decided not to do that experiment ever again. lorek Byrnison was going to be the only bear who ever had a daemon.
And with me helping him, he could lead all the bears against you. Thats what hes e to Svalbard for.”
The bear-king roared his anger. He roared so loudly that the crystal in the deliers tinkled, and every bird in the great room shrieked, and Lyras ears rang.
But she was equal to it.
“Thats why I love you best,” she said to lofur Raknison, “because youre passionate and strong as well as clever. And I just had to leave him and e and tell you, because I dont want him ruling the bears. It ought to be you. And there is a way of taking me away from him and making me your daemon, but you wouldnt know what it was unless I told you, and you might do the usual thing about fighting bears like him thatve been outcast; I mean, not fight him properly, but kill him with fire hurlers or something. And if you did that, Id just go out like a light and die with him.”
“But you—how —”
“I bee your daemon,” she said, “but only if you defeat lorek Byrnison in single bat. Then his strength will flow into you, and my mind will flow into yours, and well be like one person, thinking each others thoughts; and you send me miles away to spy for you, or keep me here by your side, whichever you like. And Id help you lead the bears to capture Bolvangar, if you like, and make them create more daemons for your favorite bears; or if youd rather be the only bear with a daemon, we could destroy Bolvangar forever. We could do anything, lofur Raknison, you aogether!”
All the time she was holding Pantalaimon in her pocket with a trembling hand, and he was keeping as still as he could, in the smallest mouse form he had ever assumed.
lofur Raknison ag up and down with an air of explosive excitement.
“Single bat?” he was saying. “Me? I must fight lorek Byrnison? Impossible! He is outcast! How that be? How I fight him? Is that the only way?”
“Its the only way,” said Lyra, wishing it were not, because lofur Raknison seemed bigger and more fierce every minute. Dearly as she loved lorek, and strong as her faith was in him, she couldnt really believe that he would ever beat this giant among giant bears. But it was the only hope they had. Being mown down from a distance by fire hurlers was no hope at all. Suddenly lofur Raknison turned. “Prove it!” he said. “Prove that you are a daemon!” “All right,” she said. “I do that, easy. I find out anything that you know and no one else does, something that only a daemon would be able to find out.”
“Then tell me what was the first creature I killed.” “Ill have to go into a room by myself to do this,” she said. “When Im your daemon, youll be able to see how I do it, but until then its got to be private.”
“There is an anteroom behind this one. Go into that, and e out when you know the answer.”
Lyra opehe door and found herself in a room lit by oorch, ay but for a et of mahogany taining some tarnished silver ors. She took out the alethiome-ter and asked: “Where is lorek now?”
“Four hours away, and hurrying ever faster.” “How I tell him what Ive done?” “You must trust him.”
She thought anxiously of how tired he would be. But then she reflected that she was not doing what the alethiometer had just told her to do: she wasnt trusting him.
She put that thought aside and asked the question lofur Raknison wanted. What was the first creature he had killed? The answer came: lofurs own father.
She asked further, and learhat lofur had been alone on the ice as a young bear, on his first hunting expedition, and had e across a solitary bear. They had quarreled and fought, and lofur had killed him. This in itself would have been a crime, but it was worse than simple murder, for lofur learned later that the other bear was his own father. Bears were brought up by their mothers, and seldom saw their fathers. Naturally lofur cealed the truth of what he had done; no one knew about it but lofur himself, and now Lyra knew as well.
She put the alethiometer away, and wondered how to tell him about it.
“Flatter him!” whispered Pantalaimon. “Thats all he wants.”
So Lyra opehe door and found lofur Raknison waiting for her, with an expression of triumph, slyness, apprehension, and greed.
“Well?”
She k down in front of him and bowed her head to touch his left forepaw, the stronger, for bears were left-handed.
“I beg your pardon, lofur Raknison!” she said. “I didnt know you were s and great!”
“Whats this? Answer my question!”
“The first creature you killed was your own father. I think youre a new god, lofur Raknison. Thats what you must be. Only a god would have the strength to do that.”
“You know! You see!”
“Yes, because I am a daemon, like I said.”
“Tell me ohing more. What did the Lady Coulter promise me when she was here?”
Once again Lyra went into the empty room and sulted the alethiometer before returning with the answer.
“She promised you that shed get the Magisterium in Geo agree that you could be baptized as a Christian, even though you hadnt got a daemon then.
Well, Im afraid that she hasnt dohat, lofur Raknison, and quite holy I dont think theyd ever agree to that if you didnt have a daemon. I think she khat, and she wasnt telling you the truth. But in any case when youve got me as your daemon, you could be baptized if you wao, because no one could argue then. You could demand it and they wouldnt be able to turn you down.”
“Yes...True. Thats what she said. True, every word. And she has deceived me? I trusted her, and she deceived me?”
“Yes, she did. But she doesnt matter anymore. Excuse me, lofur Raknison, I hope you wont mielling you, but lorek Byrnisons only four hours away now, and maybe you better tell yuard bears not to attack him as they normally would. If yoing to fight him for me, hell have to be allowed to e to the palace.”
“Yes...”
“And maybe when he es I better pretend I still belong to him, and say I got lost or something. He wont know. Ill pretend. Are you going to tell the other bears about me being loreks daemon and then belonging to you when you beat him?”
“I dont know....What should I do?”
“I dont think you better mention it yet. Once were together, you and me, we think whats best to do and decide then. What you o do now is explain to all the other bears why yoing to let lorek fight you like a proper bear, even though hes an outcast. Because they wont uand, a to find a reason for that. I mean, theyll do what you tell them anyway, but if they see the reason for it, theyll admire you even more.”
“Yes. What should we tell them?”
“Tell them.. .tell them that to make your kingdom -pletely secure, youve called lorek Byrnison here yourself to fight him, and the winner will rule over the bears forever. See, if you make it look like your idea that hes ing, and not his, theyll be really impressed. Theyll think youre able to call him here from far away. Theyll think you do anything.”
“Yes...”
The great bear was helpless. Lyra found her power over him almost intoxig, and if Pantalaimon hadnt nipped her hand sharply to remind her of the dahey were all in, she might have lost all her sense of proportion.
But she came to herself and stepped modestly back to watd wait as the bears, under lofurs excited dire, prepared the bat ground for lorek Byrnison; and meanwhile lorek, knowing nothing about it, was hurrying ever closer toward what she wished she could tell him was a fight for his life.
TWENTY - MORTAL COMBAT-1
Fights between bears were on, and the subjeuch ritual. For a bear to kill another was rare, though, and when that happe was usually by act, or when one bear mistook the signals from another, as in the case of lorek Byrnison. Cases of straightforward murder, like lofurs killing of his own father, were rarer still.
But occasionally there came circumstances in which the only way of settling a dispute was a fight to the death. And for that, a whole ceremonial rescribed.
As soon as lofur annouhat lorek Byrnison was on his way, and a bat would take place, the bat ground was swept and smoothed, and armorers came up from the fire mio check lofurs armor. Every rivet was examined, every lied, and the plates were burnished with the fi sand. Just as much attention aid to his claws. The gold leaf was rubbed off, and each separate six-inch hook was sharpened and filed to a deadly point. Lyra watched with a growing siess i of her stomach, for lorek Byrnison wouldnt be having this attention; he had been marg over the ice for nearly twenty-four hours already without rest or food; he might have been injured in the crash. And she had let him in for this fight without his knowledge. At one point, after lofur Raknison had tested the sharpness of his claws on a fresh-killed walrus, slig its skin open like paper, and the power of his crashing blows on the walruss skull (two blows, and it was cracked like an egg), Lyra had to make an excuse to lofur and go away by herself to weep with fear.
Even Pantalaimon, who could normally cheer her up, had little to say that was hopeful. All she could do was sult the alethiometer: he is an hour away, it told her, and again, she must trust him; and (this was harder to read) she even thought it was rebuking her for asking the same question twice.
By this time, word had spread among the bears, and every part of the bat ground was crowded. Bears of high rank had the best places, and there ecial enclosure for the she-bears, including, of course, lofurs wives. Lyra rofoundly curious about she-bears, because she knew so little about them, but this was no time to wander about asking questions. Instead she stayed close to lofur Raknison and watched the courtiers around him assert their rank over the on bears from outside, and tried to guess the meaning of the various plumes and badges and tokens they all seemed to wear. Some of the highest-ranking, she saw, carried little manikins like lofurs rag-doll daemon, trying to curry favor, perhaps, by imitating the fashion hed begun. She was sardonically pleased to notice that when they saw that lofur had discarded his, they didnt know what to do with theirs. Should they throw them away? Were they out of favor now? How should they behave?
{ Because that was the prevailing mood in his court, she was beginning to see.
They werent sure what they were. They werent like lorek Byrnison, pure aain and absolute; there was a stant pall of uainty hanging over them, as they watched one another and watched lofur.
And they watched her, with open curiosity. She remained modestly close to lofur and said nothing, l her eyes whenever a bear looked at her.
The fog had lifted by this time, and the air was clear; and as ce would have it, the brief lifting of darkoward noon cided with the time Lyra thought lorek was going to arrive. As she stood shivering on a little rise of dense-packed snow at the edge of the bat ground, she looked up toward the faint lightness in the sky, and longed with all her heart to see a flight ed elegant black shapes desding to bear her away; or to see the Auroras hidden city, where she would be able to walk safely along those broad boulevards in the sunlight; or to see Ma Costas broad arms,藏书网 to smell the friendly smells of flesh and cooking that enfolded you in her presence....
She found herself g, with tears that froze almost as soon as they formed, and which she had to brush aainfully. She was shtened. Bears, who didnt cry, couldnt uand what was happening to her; it was some human process, meaningless. And of course Pantalaimon couldnt fort her as he normally would, though she kept her hand in her pocket firmly around his warm little mouse-form, and he nuzzled at her fingers.
Beside her, the smiths were making the final adjustments to lofur Raknisons armor. He reared like a great metal tower, shining in polished steel, the smooth plates inlaid with wires of gold; his helmet enclosed the upper part of his head in a glistening carapace of silver-gray, with deep eye slits; and the underside of his body rotected by a close-fitting sark of mail. It was when she saw this that Lyra realized that she had betrayed lorek Byrnison, for lorek had nothing like it. His armor protected only his bad sides. She looked at lofur Raknison, so sleek and powerful, a a deep siess in her, like guilt and fear bined.
She said “Excuse me, Your Majesty, if you remember what I said to you before...”
Her shaking voice felt thin and weak in the air. lofur Raknison turned his mighty head, distracted from the target three bears were holding up in front for him to slash at with his perfect claws.
“Yes? Yes?”
“Remember, I said Id better go and speak to lorek Byrnison first, and pretend—”
But before she could even finish her sentehere was a roar from the bears ochtower. The others all knew what it meant and took it 藏书网up with a triumphaement. They had seen lorek.
“Please?” Lyra said urgently. “Ill fool him, youll see.”
“Yes. Yes. Go now. Go and ence him!”
lofur Raknison was hardly able to speak fe aement.
Lyra left his side and walked across the bat ground, bare and clear as it was, leaving her little footprints in the snow, and the bears on the far side parted to let her through. As their great bodies lumbered aside, the horizon opened, gloomy in the pallor of the light. Where was lorek Byrnison? She could see nothing; but then, the watchtower was high, and they could see what was still hidden from her. All she could do was walk forward in the snow.
He saw her before she saw him. There was a bounding and a heavy k of metal, and in a flurry of snow lorek Byrnison stood beside her.
“Oh, lorek! Ive doerrible thing! My dear, yoing to have to fight lofur Raknison, and you ent ready— youre tired and hungry, and your armors—”
“What terrible thing?”
“I told him you was ing, because I read it on the symbol reader; and hes desperate to be like a person and have a daemon, just desperate. So I tricked him into thinking that I was your daemon, and I was going to desert you and be his instead, but he had to fight you to make it happen. Because otherwise, lorek, dear, theyd never let you fight, they were going to just burn you up before you got close—”
“You tricked lofur Raknison?”
“Yes. I made him agree that hed fight you instead of just killing you straight off like an outcast, and the winner would be king of the bears. I had to do that, because—”
“Belacqua? No. You are Lyra Silvertongue,” he said. “To fight him is all I want.
e, little daemon.”
She looked at lorek Byrnison in his battered armor, lean and ferocious, a as if her heart would burst with pride.
They walked together toward the massive hulk of lofurs palace, where the bat ground lay flat and open at the foot of the walls. Bears clustered at the battlements, white faces filled every window, and their heavy forms stood like a dense wall of misty white ahead, marked with the black dots of eyes and noses.
The ones moved aside, making two lines for lorek Byrnison and his daemon to walk.. between. Every bears eyes were fixed on them.
lorek halted across the bat ground from lofur Raknison. The king came down from the rise of trodden snow, and the two bears faced each other several yards apart.
Lyra was so close to lorek that she could feel a trembling in him like a great dynamo, geing mighty anbaric forces. She touched him briefly on the neck at the edge of his helmet and said, “Fight well, lorek my dear. Youre the real king, a. Hes nothing.”
Theood back.
“Bears!” lorek Byrnison roared. An ech back from the palace walls and startled birds out of their s. He went on: “The terms of this bat are these. If lofur Raknison kills me, then he will be king forever, safe from challenge or dispute. If I kill lofur Raknison, I shall be your king. My first order to you all will be to tear down that palace, that perfumed house of mockery and tinsel, and hurl the gold and marble into the sea. Iron is bear-metal. Gold is not.
lofur Raknison has polluted Svalbard. I have e to se it. lofur Raknison, I challenge you.”
Then lofur bounded forward a step or two, as if he could hardly hold himself back.
“Bears!” he roared in his turn. “lorek Byrnison has e back at my invitation.
I drew him here. It is for me to make the terms of this bat, and they are these: if I kill lorek Byrnison, his flesh shall be torn apart and scattered to the cliff-ghasts. His head shall be displayed above my palace. His memory shall be obliterated. It shall be a capital crime to speak his name....”
He tinued, and then each bear spoke again. It was a formula, a ritual faithfully followed. Lyra looked at the two of them, so utterly different: lofur so glossy and powerful, immense in his strength ah, splendidly armored, proud and kinglike; and lorek smaller, though she had hought he would look small, and poorly equipped, his armor rusty aed. But his armor was his soul. He had made it and it fitted him. They were one. lofur was not tent with his armor; he wanted another soul as well. He was restless while lorek was still.
And she was aware that all the other bears were making the parison too. But lorek and lofur were more than just two bears. There were two kinds of beardom opposed here, two futures, two destinies. lofur had begun to take them in one dire, and lorek would take them in another, and in the same moment, oure would close forever as the an to unfold.
As their ritual bat moved toward the sed phase, the two bears began to prowl restlessly on the snow, edging forward, swinging their heads. There was not a flicker of movement from the spectators: but all eyes followed them.
Finally the warriors were still and silent, watg each other face to face across the width of the bat ground.
Then with a roar and a blur of snow both bears moved at the same moment. Like two great masses of rock balanced on adjoining peaks and shaken loose by ahquake, which bound down the mountainsides gathering speed, leaping over crevasses and knog trees into splinters, until they crash into each other so hard that both are smashed to powder and flying chips of stohat was how the two bears came together. The crash as they met resounded iill air and echoed back from the palace wall. But they wereroyed, as rock would have been. They both fell aside, and the first to rise was lorek. He twisted up in a lithe spring and grappled with lofur, whose armor had been damaged by the collision and who couldnt easily raise his head. lorek made at once for the vulnerable gap at his neck. He raked the white fur, and then hooked his claws beh the edge of lofurs helmet and wre forward.
Sensing the danger, lofur snarled and shook himself as Lyra had seen lorek shake himself at the waters edge, sending sheets of water flying high into the air.
And lorek fell away, dislodged, and with a screech of twistial lofur stood up tall, straightening the steel of his back plates by sheer strength. Then like an avalanche he hurled himself down on lorek, who was still trying to rise.
Lyra felt her owh knocked out of her by the force of that crashing fall.
Certainly the very ground shook beh her. How could lorek survive that? He was struggling to twist himself and gain a purchase on the ground, but his feet were uppermost, and lofur had fixed his teeth somewhere near loreks throat.
Drops of hot blood were flying through the air: one landed on Lyras furs, and she pressed her hand to it li.ke a token of love.
Then loreks rear claws dug into the links of lofurs -mail sark and ripped downward. The whole front came away, and lofur lurched sideways to look at the damage, leaving lorek to scramble upright again.
For a moment the two bears stood apart, getting their breath back. lofur was hampered now by that mail, because from a prote it had ged all at oo a hindra was still faste the bottom, and trailed around his rear legs. However, lorek was worse off. He was bleeding freely from a wound at his neck, and panting heavily.
But he leaped at lofur before the king could disentangle himself from the ging mail, and knocked him head over heels, following up with a lu the bare part of lofurs neck, where the edge of the helmet was bent. lofur threw him off, and thewo bears were at each ain, throwing up fountains of snorayed in all dires and sometimes made it hard to see who had the advantage.
Lyra watched, hardly daring to breathe, and squeezing her hands together so tight it hurt. She thought she saw lofur tearing at a wound in loreks belly, but that couldnt be right, because a moment later, after another vulsive explosion of snow, both bears were standing upright like boxers, and lorek was slashing with mighty claws at lofurs face, with lofur hitting back just as savagely.
Lyra trembled at the weight of those blows. As if a giant were swinging a sledgehammer, and that hammer were armed with five steel spikes...
Iron ged on iroh crashed oh, breath roared harshly, feet thundered on the hard-packed ground. The snow around lashed with red and trodden down for yards into a crimson mud.
lofurs armor was in a pitiful state by this time, the plates torn and distorted, the gold inlay torn out or smeared thickly with blood, and his helmet googether. loreks was in much better dition, for all its ugliness:
dented, but intact, standing up far better to the great sledgehammer blows of the bear-king, and turning aside those brutal six-inch claws.
But against that, lofur was bigger and strohan lorek, and lorek was weary and hungry, and had lost more blood. He was wounded in the belly, on both arms, and at the neck, whereas lofur was bleeding only from his lower jaw. Lyra loo help her dear friend, but what could she do?
And it was going badly for lorek now. He was limping; every time he put his left forepaw on the ground, they could see that it hardly bore his weight. He never used it to strike with, and the blows from his right hand were feebler, too, almost little pats pared with the mighty crushing buffets hed delivered only a few minutes before.
TWENTY - MORTAL COMBAT-2
lofur had noticed. He began to taunt lorek, calling him broken-hand, whimpering cub, rust-eaten, soon-to-die, and other names, all the while swinging blows at him frht a which lorek could no longer parry. lorek had to move backward, a step at a time, and to crouch low uhe rain of blows from the jeering bear-king.
Lyra was in tears. Her dear, her brave one, her fearless defender, was going to die, and she would not do him the treachery of looking away, for if he looked at her he must see her shining eyes and their love and belief, not a face hidden in cowardice or a shoulder fearfully turned away.
So she looked, but her tears kept her from seeing what was really happening, and perhaps it would not have been visible to her anyway. It certainly was not seen by lofur.
Because lorek was moving backward only to find dry footing and a firm rock to leap up from, and the useless left arm was really fresh and strong. You could not trick a bear, but, as Lyra had shown him, lofur did not want to be a bear, he wao be a man; and lorek was trig him.
At last he found what he wanted: a firm rock deep-anchored in the permafrost. He backed against it, tensing his legs and choosing his moment.
It came when lofur reared high above, bellowing his triumph, and turning his head tauntingly toward loreks apparently weak left side.
That was when lorek moved. Like a wave that has been building its strength over a thousand miles of o, and which makes little stir in the deep water, but which when it reaches the shallows rears itself up high into the sky, ter.rifying the shore dwellers, before crashing down on the land with irresistible power—so lorek Byrnison rose up against lofur, exploding upward from his firm footing on the dry rod slashing with a ferocious left hand at the exposed jaw of lofur Raknison.
It was a horrifying blow. It tore the lower part of his jaw off, so that it flew through the air scattering blood drops in the snow many yards away.
lofurs red tongue lolled down, dripping over his open throat. The bear-king was suddenly voiceless, biteless, helpless, lorek needed nothing more. He lunged, and then his teeth were in lofurs throat, and he shook and shook this way, that way, lifting the huge body off the ground and battering it down as if lofur were no more than a seal at the waters edge.
Then he ripped upward, and lofur Raknisons life came away in his teeth.
There was oual yet to perform. lorek sliced open the dead kings unprotected chest, peeling the fur back to expose the narrow white and red ribs like the timbers of an upturned boat. Into the rib cage lorek reached, and he plucked out lofurs heart, red and steaming, and ate it there in front of lofurs subjects.
Then there was acclamation, pandemonium, a crush of bears surging forward to pay homage to lofurs queror.
lorek Byrnisons voice rose above the clamor.
“Bears! Who is your king?”
And the cry came back, in a roar like that of all the sea-smooth pebbles in the world in an o-battering storm:
“lorek Byrnison!”
The bears knew what they must do. Every single badge and sash and et was thrown off at ond trampled ptuously underfoot, to be fotten in a moment. They were loreks bears now, and true bears, not uain semi-humans scious only of a t inferiority. They swarmed to the palad began treat bloarble from the topmost towers, rog the battlemented walls with their mighty fists until the stones came loose, and then hurling them over the cliffs to crash oty hundreds of feet below.
lorek ighem and unhooked his armor to attend to his wounds, but before he could begin, Lyra was beside him, stamping her foot on the frozen scarlet snow and shouting to the bears to stop smashing the palace, because there were prisoners ihey didnt hear, but lorek did, and when he roared they stopped at once.
“Human prisoners?” lorek said.
“Yes—lofur Raknison put them in the dungeons—they ought to e out first a shelter somewhere, else theyll be killed with all the falling rocks—”
lave swift orders, and some bears hurried into the palace to release the prisoners. Lyra turo lorek.
“Let me help you—I want to make sure you ent too badly hurt, lorek dear—oh, I wish there was some bandages or something! Thats an awful cut on your belly—”
A bear laid a mouthful of some stiff green stuff, thickly frosted, on the ground at loreks feet.
“Bloodmoss,” said lorek. “Press it in the wounds for me, Lyra. Fold the flesh over it and then hold some snow there till it freezes.”
He would any bears attend to him, despite their eagerness. Besides, Lyras hands were deft, and she was desperate to help; so the small huma over the great bear-king, pag in the bloodmoss and freezing the raw flesh till ..it stopped bleeding. When she had finished, her mittens were sodden with loreks blood, but his wounds were stanched.
And by that time the prisoners—a dozen or so men, shivering and blinking and huddling together—had e out. There was no point in talking to the professor, Lyra decided, because the poor man was mad; and she would have liked to know who the other men were, but there were many ent things to do. And she didnt want to distract lorek, who was giving rapid orders and sending bears scurrying this way and that, but she was anxious aber, and about Lee Scoresby and the witches, and she was hungry and tired.... She thought the best thing she could do just then was to keep out of the way.
So she curled up in a quiet er of the bat ground with Pantalaimon as a wolverio keep her warm, and piled snow over herself as a bear would do, ao sleep.
Something nudged her foot, and a strange bear voice said, “Lyra Silvertohe king wants you.”
She woke up nearly dead with cold, and couldnt open her eyes, for they had frozen shut; but Pantalaimon licked them to melt the i her eyelashes, and soon she was able to see the young bear speaking to her in the moonlight.
She tried to stand, but fell over twice.
The bear said, “Ride on me,” and crouched to offer his broad back, and half-ging, half-falling, she mao stay on while he took her to a steep hollow, where many bears were assembled.
And among them was a small figure who ran toward her, and whose daemon leaped up to greet Pantalaimon.
“Roger!” she said.
“lorek Byrnison made me stay out there in the snow while he came to fetch you away—we fell out the balloon, Lyra! After you fell out, we got carried miles and miles, and then Mr. Scoresby let some mas out and we crashed into a mountain, and we fell down such a slope like you never seen! And I dont know where Mr. Scoresby is now, nor the witches. There was just me and lorek Byrnison. He e straight back this way to look for you. And they told me about his fight....”
Lyra looked around. Uhe dire of an older bear, the human prisoners were building a shelter out of driftwood and scraps of vas. They seemed pleased to have some work to do. One of them was striking a flint to light a fire.
“There is food,” said the young bear who had woken Lyra.
A fresh seal lay on the snow. The bear sliced it open with a claw and showed Lyra where to find the kidneys. She ate one raw: it was warm and soft and delicious beyond imagining.
“Eat the blubber too,” said the bear, and tore off a piece for her. It tasted of cream flavored with hazelnuts. Roger hesitated, but followed her example. They ate greedily, and within a very few minutes Lyra was fully awake and beginning to be warm.
Wiping her mouth, she looked around, but lorek was not in sight.
“lorek Byrnison is speaking with his selors,” said the young bear. “He wants to see you when you have eaten. Follow me.”
He led them over a rise in the snow to a spot where bears were beginning to build a wall of ice blocks. lorek sat at the ter of a group of older bears, and he rose to greet her.
“Lyra Silvertongue,” he said. “e and hear what I am being told.”
He didnt explain her preseo the other bears, or perhaps they had learned about her already; but they made room for her and treated her with immense courtesy, as if she were a queen. She felt proud beyond measure to sit beside her friend lorek Byrnison uhe Aurora as it flickered gracefully in the polar sky, and join the versation of the bears.
It turned out that lofur Raknisons dominance over them had been like a spell.
Some of them put it down?９９ｌｉｂ. to the influenrs. Coulter, who had visited him before loreks exile, though lorek had not known about it, and given lofur various presents.
“She gave him a drug,” said one bear, “which he fed secretly to Hjalmur Hjalmurson, and made him fet himself.”
Hjalmur Hjalmurson, Lyra gathered, was the bear whom lorek had killed, and whose death had brought about his exile. So Mrs. Coulter was behind that! And there was more.
“There are human laws that preveain things that she lanning to do, but human laws dont apply on Svalbard. She wao set up aation here like Bolvangar, only worse, and lofur was going to allow her to do it, against all the of the bears; because humans have visited, or been imprisoned, but never lived and worked here. Little by little she was going to increase her power over lofur Raknison, and his over us, until we were her creatures running bad forth at her bidding, and our only duty to guard the abomination she was going to create....”
That was an old bear speaking. His name was S0ren Eisarson, and he was a selor, one who had suffered under lofur Raknison.
“What is she doing now, Lyra?” said lorek Byrnison. “Once she hears of lofurs death, what will her plans be?”
Lyra took out the alethiometer. There was not much light to see it by, and lorek ahat a torch be brought.
“What happeo Mr. Scoresby?” Lyra said while they were waiting. “And the witches?”
“The witches were attacked by another witch . I dont know if the others were allied to the child cutters, but they were patrolling our skies in vast numbers, and they attacked iorm. I didnt see what happeo Serafina Pekkala. As for Lee Scoresby, the balloon soared up again after I fell out with the boy, taking him with it. But your symbol reader will tell you what their fate is.”
A bear pulled up a sledge on which a cauldron of charcoal was sm, and thrust a resinous branto the heart of it. The branch caught at once, and in its glare Lyra turhe hands of the alethiometer and asked about Lee Scoresby.
It turned out that he was still aloft, borne by the winds toward Nova Zembla, and that he had been unharmed by the cliff-ghasts and had fought off the other witch .
Lyra told lorek, and he nodded, satisfied.
“If he is in the air, he will be safe,” he said. “What of Mrs. Coulter?”
The answer was plicated, with the needle swinging from symbol to symbol in a sequehat made Lyra puzzle for a long time. The bears were curious, but restrained by their respect for lorek Byrnison, and his for Lyra, and she put them out of her mind and sank again into the alethiometric trance.
The play of symbols, once she had discovered the pattern of it, was dismaying.
“It says shes...Shes heard about us flying this way, and shes got a transport zeppelin thats armed with mae guns—I think thats it—and theyre a flying to Svalbard right now. She dont know yet about lofur Raknison beien, of course, but she will soon because...Oh yes, because some witches will tell her, and theyll learn it from the cliff-ghasts. So I re there are spies in the air all around, lorek. She was ing to...to pretend to help lofur Raknison, but really she was going to take over power from him, with a regiment of Tartars thats a ing by sea, and theyll be here in a couple of days.
“And as soon as she , shes going to where Lord Asriel is kept prisoner, and shes intending to have him killed. Because ...Its ing clear now: something I never uood before, lorek! Its why she wants to kill Lord Asriel: its because she knows what hes going to do, and she fears it, and she wants to do it herself and gain trol before he does....It must be the city in the sky, it must be! Shes trying to get to it first! And now its telling me something else....”
She bent over the instrument, trating furiously as the needle darted this way and that. It moved almost too fast to foller, looking over her shoulder, couldnt eve stop, and was scious only of a swift nickering dialogue between Lyras fiurning the hands and the needle answering, as bewilderingly unlike language as the Aurora was.
“Yes,” she said finally, putting the instrument down in her lap and blinking and sighing as she woke out of her profound tration. “Yes, I see what it says.
Shes after me again.
She wants something Ive got, because Lord Asriel wants it too. They for this...for this experiment, whatever it is...”
She stopped there, to take a deep breath. Something was troubling her, and she didnt know what it was. She was sure that this something that was so important was the alethiome-ter itself, because after all, Mrs. Coulter had wa, and what else could it be? A wasnt, because the alethiometer had a different way of referring to itself, and this wasnt it.
“I suppose its the alethiometer,” she said unhappily. “Its what I thought all along. Ive got to take it to Lord Asriel before she gets it. If she gets it, well all die.”
As she said that, she felt so tired, so bone-deep weary and sad, that to die would have been a relief. But the example of lorek kept her from admitting it.
She put the alethiometer away and sat up straight.
“How far away is she ?” said lorek.
“Just a few hours. I suppose I ought to take the alethiometer to Lord Asriel as soon as I .”
“I will go with you,” said lorek.
She didnt argue. While lave ands and anized an armed squad to apany them on the final part of their journey north, Lyra sat still, serving her energy. She felt that something had go of her during that last reading. She closed her eyes and slept, and presently they woke her a off.
TWENTY-ONE - LORD ASRIELS WELCOME-1
Lyra rode a strong young bear, and Roger rode another, while lorek paced tirelessly ahead and a squad armed with a fire hurler followed guarding the rear.
The way was long and hard. The interior of Svalbard was mountainous, with jumbled peaks and sharp ridges deeply cut by ravines and steep-sided valleys, and the cold was intense. Lyra thought back to the smooth-running sledges of the gyp-tians on the way to Bolvangar; how swift and fortable that progress now seemed to have been! The air here was more peingly chill than any she had experienced before; or it might have been that the bear she was riding wasnt as lightfooted as lorek; or it might have been that she was tired to her very soul.
At all events, it was desperately hard going.
She knew little of where they were bound, or how far it was. All she knehat the older bear S0ren Eisarson had told her while they were preparing the fire hurler. He had been involved iiating with Lord Asriel about the terms of his impriso, and he remembered it well.
At first, hed said, the Svalbard bears regarded Lord Asriel as being no different from any of the other politis, kings, or troublemakers who had been exiled to their bleak island. The prisoners were important, or they would have been killed ht by their own people; they might be valuable to the bears one day, if their political fortunes ged and they returo rule in their own tries; so it might pay the bears not to treat them with cruelty or disrespect.
So Lord Asriel had found ditions on Svalbard er and no worse than hundreds of other exiles had done. But certain things had made his jailers more wary of him than of other prisoheyd had. There was the air of mystery and spiritual peril surrounding anything that had to do with Dust; there was the clear pani the part of those whht him there; and there were Mrs.
Coulters private unications with lofur Raknison.
Besides, the bears had never met anything quite like Lord Asriels own haughty and imperious nature. He dominated even lofur Raknison, arguing forcefully and eloquently, and persuaded the bear-king to let him choose his own dwelling place.
The first one he was allotted was too low down, he said. He needed a high spot, above the smoke and stir of the fire mines and the smithies. He gave the bears a design of the aodation he wanted, and told them where it should be; and he bribed them with gold, and he flattered and bullied lofur Raknison, and with a bemused willihe bears set to work. Before long a house had arisen on a headland fag north: a wide and solid place with fireplaces that burned great blocks of ined and hauled by bears, and with large windows of real glass.
There he dwelt, a prisoner ag like a king.
And the about assembling the materials for a laboratory.
With furious tration he sent for books, instruments, chemicals, all manner of tools and equipment. And somehow it had e, from this source or that; some openly, some smuggled in by the visitors he insisted he was entitled to have. By land, sea, and air, Lord Asriel assembled his materials, and within six months of his ittal, he had all the equipment he wanted.
And so he worked, thinking and planning and calculating, waiting for the ohing he o plete the task that so terrified the Oblation Board. It was drawing closer every minute.
Lyras first glimpse of her fathers prison came when lorek Byrnison stopped at the foot of a ridge for the children to move and stretch themselves, because they had beeing dangerously cold and stiff.
“Look up there,” he said.
A wide broken slope of tumbled rocks and ice, where a track had been laboriously cleared, led up to a crag outlined against the sky. There was no Aurora, but the stars were brilliant. The crag stood blad gaunt, but at its summit acious building from which light spilled lavishly in all dires: not the smoky instant gleam of blubber lamps, nor the harsh white of anbaric spotlights, but the warm creamy glow of naphtha.
The windows from which the light emerged also showed Lord Asriels formidable plass was expensive, and large sheets of it were prodigal of heat in these fierce latitudes; so to see them here was evidence of wealth and influence far greater than lofur Raknisons vulgar palace.
Lyra and Roger mouheir bears for the last time, and lorek led the the slope toward the house. There was a courtyard that lay deep under snow, surrounded by a low wall, and as lorek pushed opee they heard a bell ring somewhere in the building.
Lyra got down. She could hardly stand. She helped Roger down too, and, supp each other, the children stumbled through the thigh-deep snow toward the steps up to the door.
Oh, the warmth there would be ihat house! Oh, the peaceful rest! She reached for the handle of the bell, but before she could reach it, the door opehere was a small dimly lit vestibule to keep the warm air in, and standing uhe lamp was a figure she reized: Lord Asriels manservant Thorold, with his pinscher daemon Anfang.
Lyra wearily pushed back her hood.
“Who...” Thorold began, and then saw who it was, a on: “Not Lyra? Little Lyra? Am I dreaming?”
He reached behind him to open the inner door.
A hall, with a coal fire blazing in a stone grate; warm naphtha light glowing on carpets, leather chairs, polished wood... It was like nothing Lyra had seen since leaving Jordan College, and it brought a choking gasp to her throat.
Lord Asriels snow-leopard daemon growled.
Lyras father stood there, his powerful dark-eyed face at first fierce, triumphant, and eager; and then the color faded from it; his eyes widened, in horror, as he reized his daughter.
“No! No!”
He staggered bad clutched at the mantelpiece. Lyra couldnt move.
“Get out!” Lord Asriel cried. “Turn around, get out, go! I did not send for you!”
She couldnt speak. She opened her mouth twice, three times, and then mao say:
“No, no, I came because—”
He seemed appalled; he kept shaking his head, he held up his hands as if to ward her off; she couldnt believe his distress.
She moved a step closer to reassure him, and Roger came to stand with her, anxious. Their daemons fluttered out into the warmth, and after a moment Lord Asriel passed a hand across his brow and recovered slightly. The can to return to his cheeks as he looked down at the two.
“Lyra,” he said. “That is Lyra?”
“Yes, Uncle Asriel,” she said, thinking that this wasnt the time to go into their true relationship. “I came t you the alethiometer from the Master of Jordan.”
“Yes, of course you did,” he said. “Who is this?”
“Its Roger Parslow,” she said. “Hes the kit boy from Jordan College. But—”
“How did you get here?”
“I was just going to say, theres lorek Byrnison outside, hes brought us here.
He came with me all the way from Trollesund, aricked lofur—”
“Whos lorek Byrnison?”
“An armored bear. He brought us here.”
“Thorold,” he called, “run a hot bath for these children, and prepare them some food. Then they will o sleep. Their clothes are filthy; find them something to wear. Do it now, while I talk to this bear.”
Lyra felt her head swim. Perhaps it was the heat, or perhaps it was relief. She watched the servant bow and leave the hall, and Lord Asriel go into the vestibule and close the door behind, and then she half-fell into the chair.
Only a moment later, it seemed, Thorold eaking to her.
“Follow me, miss,” he was saying, and she hauled herself up a with Roger to a warm bathroom, where soft towels hung on a heated rail, and where a tub of water steamed in the naphtha light.
“You go first,” said Lyra. “Ill sit outside aalk.”
Ser, wing and gasping at the heat, got in and washed. They had swum ogether often enough, frolig in the Isis or the Cherwell with other children, but this was different.
“Im afraid of your uncle,” said Roger through the open door. “I mean your father.”
“Better keep calling him my uncle. Im afraid of him too, sometimes.”
“When we first e in, he never saw me at all. He only saw you. And he was horrified, till he saw me. Then he calmed down all at once.”
“He was just shocked,” said Lyra. “Anyone would be, to see someohey didnt expect. He last saw me after that time iiring Room. Its bound to be a shock.”
“No,” said Roger, “its more than that. He was looking at me like a wolf, or summing.”
“Youre imagining it.”
“I ent. Im more scared of him than I was of Mrs. Coulter, and thats the truth.”
He splashed himself. Lyra took out the alethiometer.
“Dyou wao ask the symbol reader about it?” Lyra said.
“Well, I dunno. Theres things Id rather not know. Seems to me everything I heard of sihe Gobblers e to Oxford, everythings been bad. There ent been nothing good more than about five minutes ahead. Like I see now, this baths nice, and theres a nice warm towel there, about five minutes away. And once Im dry, maybe Ill think of summing o eat, but no further ahead than that. And wheen, maybe Ill look forward to a kip in a fortable bed. But after that, I dunno, Lyra. Theres been terrible things we seehere? And more a ing, moren likely. So I think Id rather not know whats iure. Ill stick to the present.”
“Yeah,” said Lyra wearily. “Theres times I feel like that too.”
So although she held the alethiometer in her hands for a little longer, it was only for fort; she didnt turn the wheels, and the swinging of the needle passed her by. Pantalaimon watched it in silence.
After theyd both washed, aen some bread and cheese and drunk some wine and hot water, the servant Thorold said, “The boy is to go to bed. Ill show him where to go. His Lordship asks if youd join him in the library, Miss Lyra.”
Lyra found Lord Asriel in a room whose wide windows overlooked the frozen sea far below. There was a coal fire under a wide eypiece, and a naphtha lamp turned down low, so there was little in the way of distrag reflectio９９ｌｉb?ween the octs of the room and the bleak starlit panorama outside. Lord Asriel, reing in a large armchair on one side of the fire, beed her to e and sit iher chair fag him.
“Your friend lorek Byrnison is resting outside,” he said. “He prefers the cold.”
“Did he tell you about his fight with lofur Raknison?”
“Not iail. But I uand that he is now the king of Svalbard. Is that true?”
“Of course its true. lorek never lies.”
“He seems to have appointed himself yuardian.”
“No. John Faa told him to look after me, and hes doing it because of that. Hes following John Faas orders.”
“How does John Faa e into this?”
“Ill tell you if you tell me something,” she said. “Youre my father, ent you?”
“Yes. So what?”
“So you should have told me before, thats what. You shouldnt hide things like that from people, because they feel stupid when they find out, and thats cruel.
What difference would it make if I knew I was your daughter? You could have said it years ago. You couldve told me a..t>nd asked me to keep it secret, and I would, no matter how young I was, Id have dohat if you asked me. Id have been so proud nothing wouldve torn it out of me, if you asked me to keep it secret. But you never. You let other people know, but you old me.”
“Who did tell you?”
“John Faa.”
“Did he tell you about your mother?”
“Yes.”
“Then theres not much left for me to tell. I dont think I want to be interrogated and ned by an i child. I want to hear what youve seen and done on the way here.”
“I brought you the bloody alethiometer, didnt I?” Lyra burst out. She was very o tears. “I looked after it all the way from Jordan, I hid it and I treasured it, all through whats happeo us, and I learned about using it, and I carried it all this bloody way when I couldve just given up and been safe, and you ent even said thank you, nor showed any sign that ylad to see me. I dont know why I ever do. But I did, and I kept on going, even in lofur Raknisons stinking palace with all them bears around me I kept on going, all on me own, and I tricked him into fighting with lorek sos I could e on here for your sake....And when you did see me, you like to fainted, as if I was some horrible thing you never wao see again. You ent human, Lord Asriel.
You ent my father. My father wouldnt treat me like that. Fathers are supposed to love their daughters, ent they? You dont love me, and I dont love you, and thats a fact. I love Farder , and I love lorek Byrnison; I love an armored bear moren I love my father. And I bet lorek Byrnison loves me moren you do.”
“You told me yourself hes only following John Faas orders.
If yoing to be seal, I shant waste time talking to you.”
“Take your bloody alethiometer, then, and Im going back with lorek.”
“Where?”
“Back to the palace. He fight with Mrs. Coulter and the Oblation Board, wheurn up. If he loses, then Ill die too, I dont care. If he wins, well send for Lee Scoresby and Ill sail away in his balloon and—”
“Whos Lee Scoresby?”
“An aeronaut. He brought us here and then we crashed. Here you are, heres the alethiometer. Its all in good order.”
He made no move to take it, and she laid it on the brass fender around the hearth.
“And I suppose I ought to tell you that Mrs. Coulters on her way to Svalbard, and as soon as she hears whats happeo lofur Raknison, shell be on her way here. In a zeppelin, with a whole lot of soldiers, and theyre going to kill us all, by order of the Magisterium.”
“Theyll never reach us,” he said calmly.
He was so quiet and relaxed that some of her ferocity dwindled.
“You dont know,” she said uainly.
“Yes I do.”
“Have you got another alethiometer, then?”
TWENTY-ONE - LORD ASRIELS WELCOME-2
“I dont need ahiometer for that. Now I want to hear about your journey here, Lyra. Start from the beginning. Tell me everything.”
So she did. She began with her hiding iiring Room, a on to the Gobblers taking Roger, aime with Mrs. Coulter, and everything else that had happened.
It was a long tale, and when she fi she said, “So theres ohing I want to know, and I re Ive got the right to know it, like I had the right to know who I really was. And if you didnt tell me that, youve got to tell me this, in repense. So: whats Dust? And whys everyone so afraid of it?”
He looked at her as if trying to guess whether she would uand what he was about to say. He had never looked at her seriously before, she thought; until now he had always been like an adult indulging a child in a pretty trick. But he seemed to think she was ready.
“Dust is what makes the alethiometer work,” he said. “Ah...I thought it might! But what else? How did they find out about it?”
“In one way, the Church has always been aware of it. Theyve been preag about Dust for turies, only they didnt call it by that name.
“But some years ago a Muscovite called Boris Mikhailovitch Rusakov discovered a new kind of elementary particle. Youve heard of eles, photons, rinos, and the rest? Theyre called elementary particles because you t break them down any further: theres nothing ihem but themselves. Well, this new kind of particle was elementary all right, but it was very hard to measure because it did in any of the usual ways. The hardest thing for Rusakov to uand was why the new particle seemed to cluster where human beings were, as if it were attracted to us. And especially to adults. Children too, but not nearly so mutil th９９ｌib?eir daemons have taken a fixed form. During the years of puberty they begin to attract Dust more strongly, and it settles on them as it settles on adults.
“Now all discoveries of this sort, because they have a bearing on the does of the Church, have to be annouhrough the Magisterium in Geneva. And this discovery of Rusakovs was so unlikely and strahat the ior from the sistorial Court of Discipline suspected Rusakov of diabolic possession. He performed an exorcism in the laboratory, he interrogated Rusakov uhe rules of the Inquisition, but finally they had to accept the fact that Rusakov wasnt lying or deceiving them: Dust really existed.
“That left them with the problem of deg what it was. And given the Churature, there was only ohing they could have chosen. The Magisterium decided that Dust was the physical evidence final sin. Do you know what inal sin is?”
She twisted her lips. It was like being back at Jordan, being quizzed on something shed been half-taught. “Sort of,” she said.
“No, you dont. Go to the shelf beside the desk and brihe Bible.”
Lyra did so, and hahe big black book to her father.
“You do remember the story of Adam and Eve?”
“Course,” she said. “She wasnt supposed to eat the fruit and the serpeed her, and she did.”
“And what happehen?”
“Umm...They were thrown out. God threw them out of the garden.”
“God had told them not to eat the fruit, because they would die. Remember, they were naked in the garden, they were like children, their daemons took on any form they desired. But this is what happened.”
He turo Chapter Three of Genesis, and read:
“And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden:
“But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall of it, her shall ye touch it, lest ye die.
“And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die:
“Fod doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and your daemons shall assume their true forms, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.
“And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it leasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to reveal the true form of ones daemon, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.
“And the eyes of them both were opened, and they saw the true form of their daemons, and spoke with them.
“But when the man and the womaheir own daemons, they khat a great ge had e upon them, for until that moment it had seemed that they were at oh all the creatures of the earth and the air, and there was no differeween them:
“And they saw the difference, and they knew good and evil; and they were ashamed, and they sewed fig leaves together to cover their nakedness....”
He closed the book.
“And that was how sin came into the world,” he said, “sin and shame ah.
It came the moment their daemons became fixed.”
“But...” Lyra struggled to find the words she wanted: “but it ent true, is it?
Not true like chemistry ineering, not that kind of true? There wasnt really an Adam and Eve? The Cassington Scholar told me it was just a kind of fairy tale.”
“The Cassington Scholarship is traditionally given to a freethinker; its his fun to challehe faith of the Scholars. Naturally hed say that. But think of Adam and Eve like an imaginary number, like the square root of minus one: you ever see any crete proof that it exists, but if you include it in your equations, you calculate all manner of things that couldnt be imagined without it.
“Anyway, its what the Church has taught for thousands of years. And when Rusakov discovered Dust, at last there hysical proof that something happened when innoce ged into experience.
“Ially, the Bible gave us the name Dust as well. At first they were called Rusakov Particles, but soon someone pointed out a curious verse toward the end of the Third Chapter of Genesis, where Gods cursing Adam for eating the fruit.”
He opehe Bible again and poi out to Lyra. She read:
“In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return....”
Lord Asriel said, “Church scholars have aluzzled over the translation of that verse. Some say it should read not unto dust shalt thou return but thou shalt be subject to dust, and others say the whole verse is a kind of pun on the wround and dust, and it really means that Gods admitting his own nature to be partly sinful. No one agrees. No one , because the text is corrupt. But it was too good a word to waste, and thats why the particles became known as Dust.”
“And what about the Gobblers?” Lyra said.
“The General Oblation Board...Your mang. Clever of her to spot the ce of setting up her own power base, but shes a clever woman, as I dare say youve noticed. It suits the Magisterium to allow all kinds of different ageo flourish. They play them off against one another; if one succeeds, they pretend to have been supp it all along, and if it fails, they pretend it was a renegade outfit which had never been properly lised.
“You see, your mothers always been ambitious for power. At first she tried to get it in the normal way, through marriage, but that didnt work, as I think youve heard. So she had to turn to the Churaturally she couldnt take the route a man could have taken—priesthood and so on—it had to be unorthodox; she had to set up her own order, her own els of influence, and work through that. It was a good move to specialize in Dust. Everyone was frightened of it; no one knew what to do; and when she offered to dire iigation, the Magisterium was so relieved that they backed her with money and resources of all kinds.”
“But they were cutting—” Lyra couldnt bring herself to say it; the words choked in her mouth. “You know what they were doing! Why did the Church let them do anything like that?”
“There ret. Something like it had happened before. Do you know what the word castration means? It means removing the sexual ans of a boy so that he never develops the characteristics of a man. A castrate keeps his high treble voice all his life, which is why the Church allowed it: so useful in Church musie castrati became great singers, wonderful artists. Many just became fat spoiled half-men. Some died from the effects of the operation. But the Church wouldnt flinch at the idea of a little cut, you see. There ret. And this would be so much more hygienic than the old methods, when they didnt have ahetics or sterile bandages or proper nursing care. It would be gentle by parison.”
“It isnt!” Lyra said fiercely. “It isnt!”
“No. Of course not. Thats why they had to hide away in the far North, in darkness and obscurity. And why the Church was glad to have someone like your mother in charge. Who could doubt someone so charming, so well-ected, so sweet and reasonable? But because it was an obscure and unofficial kind of operation, she was someohe Magisterium could deny if they o, as well.”
“But whose idea was it to do that cutting in the first place?”
“It was hers. She guessed that the two things that happen at adolesce might be ected: the ge in ones daemon and the fact that Dust began to settle.
Perhaps if the daemon were separated from the body, we might never be subject to Dust—tinal sin. The question was whether it ossible to separate daemon and body without killing the person. But shes traveled in many places, and seen all kinds of things. Shes traveled in Africa, for instahe Afris have a way of making a slave called a zombi. It has no will of its own; it will work day and night without ever running away or plaining. It looks like a corpse....”
“Its a person without their daemon!”
“Exactly. So she found out that it ossible to separate them.”
“And...Tony Costa told me about the horrible phantoms they have in the northern forests. I suppose they might be the same kind of thing.”
“Thats right. Anyway, the General Oblation Brew out of ideas like that, and out of the Churchs obsession with inal sin.”
Lord Asriels daemon twitched her ears, and he laid his hand on her beautiful head.
“There was something else that happened when they made the cut,” he went on.
“And they did. The energy that links body and daemon is immensely powerful. Whe is made, all that energy dissipates in a fra of a sed. They didnt notice, because they mistook it for shock, or disgust, or moral e, and they traihemselves to feel numb towards it. So they missed what it could do, and they hought of harnessing it....”
Lyra couldnt sit still. She got up and walked to the window, and stared over the wide bleak darkness with unseeing eyes. They were too cruel. No matter how important it was to find out about inal sin, it was too cruel to do what theyd doo Tony Makarios and all the others. Nothing justified that.
“And what were you doing?” she said. “Did you do any of that cutting?”
“Im ied in something quite different. I dont think the Oblation Boes far enough. I want to go to the source of Dust itself.”
“The source? Wheres it e from, then?”
“From the other universe we see through the Aurora.”
Lyra turned around again. Her father was lying ba his chair, lazy and powerful, his eyes as fierce as his daemons. She didnt love him, she couldnt trust him, but she had to admire him, and the extravagant luxury hed assembled in this desolate wasteland, and the power of his ambition.
“What is that other universe?” she said.
“One of untable billions of parallel worlds. The witches have known about them for turies, but the first theologians to prove their existehematically were exunicated fifty or more years ago. However, its true; theres no possible way of denying it.
“But no ohought it would ever be possible to cross from one universe to ahat would violate fual laws, we thought. Well, we were wrong; we learo see the world up there. If light cross, so we. And we had to learn to see it, Lyra, just as you learo use the alethiometer.
“Now that world, and every other universe, came about as a result of possibility. Take the example of tossing a : it e down heads or tails, and we dont know before it lands which way its going to fall. If it es down heads, that means that the possibility of its ing down tails has collapsed. Until that moment the two possibilities were equal.
“But on another world, it does e down tails. And when that happens, the two worlds split apart. Im using the example of tossing a to make it clearer.
In fact, these possibility collapses happen at the level of elementary particles, but they happen in just the same way: one moment several things are possible, the moment only one happens, and the rest do. Except that other worlds have sprung into being, on which they did happen.
“And Im going to that world beyond the Aurora,” he said, “because I think thats where all the Dust in this universe es from. You saw those slides I showed the Scholars iiring room. You saw Dust p into this world from the Aurora. Youve seen that city yourself. If light cross the barrier between the universes, if Dust , if we see that city, then we build a bridge and cross. It needs a phenomenal burst of energy. But I do it.
Somewhere out there is the in of all the Dust, all the death, the sin, the misery, the destructiveness in the world. Human beings t see anything without wanting to destroy it, L..yra. Thats inal sin. And Im going to destroy it. Death is going to die.”
“Is that why they put you here?”
“Yes. They are terrified. And with good reason.”
He stood up, and so did his daemon, proud aiful and deadly. Lyra sat still. She was afraid of her father, and she admired him profoundly, and she thought he was stark mad; but who was she to judge?
“Go to bed,” he said. “Thorold will show you where to sleep.”
He turo go.
“Youve left the alethiometer,” she said.
“Ah, yes; I dont actually hat now,” he said. “It would be no use to me without the books anyway. Dyou know, I think the Master of Jordan was giving it to you. Did he actually ask you t it to me?”
“Well, yes!” she said. But thehought again, and realized that in fact the Master never had asked her to do that; she had assumed it all the time, because why else would he have given it to her? “No,” she said. “I dont know. I thought—”
“Well, I dont want it. Its yours, Lyra.”
“But—”
“Goodnight, child.”
Speechless, too bewildered by this to voice any of the dozen urgent questions that pressed at her mind, she sat by the fire and watched him leave the room.
TWENTY-TWO - BETRAYAL-1
She woke to find a stranger shaking her arm, and then as Pantalaimon sprang awake and growled, she reized Thorold. He was holding a naphtha lamp, and his hand was trembling.
“Miss—miss—get up quickly. I dont know what to do. Hes left no orders. I think hes mad, miss.”
“What? Whats happening?”
“Lord Asriel, miss. Hes been almost in a delirium since you went to bed. Ive never seen him so wild. He packed a lot of instruments and batteries in a sledge and he harnessed up the dogs a. But hes got the boy, miss!”
“Roger? Hes taken Roger?”
“He told me to wake him and dress him, and I didnt think tue—I never have—the boy kept on asking for you, miss—but Lord Asriel wanted him alone—you know when you first came to the door, miss? And he saw you and couldnt believe his eyes, and wanted you gone?”
Lyras head was in such a whirl of weariness ahat she could hardly think, but “Yes? Yes?” she said.
“It was because he needed a child to finish his experiment, miss! And Lord Asriel has a ecial to himself ing about what he wants, he just has to call for something and—”
Now Lyras head was full of a roar, as if she were trying to stifle some knowledge from her own sciousness.
She had got out of bed, and was reag for her clothes, and then she suddenly collapsed, and a fierce cry of despair enveloped her. She was uttering it, but it was bigger than she was; it felt as if the despair were uttering her. For she remembered his words: the energy that links body and daemon is immensely powerful; and te the gap between worlds needed a phenomenal burst of energy....
She had just realized what shed done.
She had struggled all this way t something to Lord Asriel, thinking she knew what he wanted; and it wasnt the alethiometer at all. What he wanted was a child.
She had brought him Roger.
That was why hed cried out, “I did not send for you!” when he saw her; he had sent for a child, and the fates had brought him his own daughter. Or so hed thought, until shed stepped aside and shown him Roger.
Oh, the bitter anguish! She had thought she was saving Roger, and all the time shed been diligently w to betray him....
Lyra shook and sobbed in a frenzy of emotion. It couldrue.
Thorold tried to fort her, but he didnt know the reason for her extremity of grief, and could only pat her shoulder nervously.
“lorek—” she sobbed, pushing the servant aside. “Wheres lorek Byrnison? The bear? Is he still outside?”
The old man shrugged helplessly.
“Help me!” she said, trembling all over with weakness and fear. “Help me dress.
I got to go. Now.1 Do it quick!”
He put the lamp down and did as she told him. When she anded, in that imperious way, she was very like her9９ｌｉb? father, for all that her face ith tears and her lips trembling. While Pantalaimon paced the floor lashing his tail, his fur almost sparking, Thorold haste her stiff, reeking furs and help her into them. As soon as all the buttons were done up and all the flaps secured, she made for the door, ahe cold strike her throat like a sword and freeze the tears at on her cheeks.
“lorek!” she called. “lorek Byrnison! e, because I need you!”
There was a shake of snow, a k of metal, and the bear was there. He had been sleeping calmly uhe falling snow. In the light spilling from the lamp Thorold was holding at the window, Lyra saw the long faceless head, the narrow eye slits, the gleam of white fur below red-black metal, and wao embrace him and seek some fort from his iro, his ice-tipped fur.
“Well?” he said.
“We got to catch Lord Asriel. Hes taken Roger and hes a going to—I darent think—oh, lorek, I beg you, go quick, my dear!”
“e then,” he said, and she leaped on his back.
There was o ask which way to go: the tracks of the sledge led straight out from the courtyard and over the plain, and lorek leaped forward to follow them. His motion was now so much a part of Lyras being that to sit balanced was entirely automatic. He rahe thiowy mantle on the rocky ground faster than hed ever done, and the armor plates shifted under her in a regular swinging rhythm.
Behind them, the other bears paced easily, pulling the fire hurler with them.
The way was clear, for the moon was high and the light it cast over the snowbound world was as bright as it had been in the balloon: a world ht silver and profound black. The tracks of Lord Asriels sledge ran straight toward a range of jagged hills, straark pointed shapes jutting up into a sky as black as the alethiometers velvet cloth. There was no sign of the sledge itself—or was there a feather touovement on the flank of the highest peak? Lyra peered ahead, straining her eyes, and Pantalaimon flew as high as he could and looked with an owls clear vision.
“Yes,” he said, on her wrist a moment later; “its Lord Asriel, and hes lashing his dogs on furiously, and theres a boy in the back....”
Lyra felt9９ｌｉb? lorek Byrnison ge pace. Something had caught his attention. He was slowing and lifting his head to cast left and right.
“What is it?” Lyra said.
He didnt say. He was listening ily, but she could hear nothing. Then she did hear something: a mysterious, vastly distant rustling and crag. It was a sound she had heard before: the sound of the Aurora. Out of nowhere a veil of radiance had fallen to hang shimmering in the northern sky. All those unseen billions and trillions of charged particles, and possibly, she thought, of Dust, jured a radiating glow out of the upper atmosphere. This was going to be a display more brilliant araordinary than any Lyra had yet seen, as if the Aurora khe drama that was taking place below, and wao light it with the most awe-inspiring effects.
But none of the bears were looking up: their attention was all on the earth. It wasnt the Aurora, after all, that had caught loreks attention. He was standing stock-still now, and Lyra slipped off his back, knowing that his senses o cast around freely. Something was troubling him.
Lyra looked around, back across the vast open plain leading to Lord Asriels house, back toward the tumbled mountains theyd crossed earlier, and saw nothing. The Aurrew more intehe first veils trembled and raced to one side, and jagged curtains folded and unfolded above, increasing in size and brilliance every minute; ard loops swirled across from horizon to horizon, and touched the very zenith with bows of radiance. She could hear more clearly thahe immense singing hiss and swish of vast intangible forces.
“Witches!” came a cry in a bear voice, and Lyra turned in joy and relief.
But a heavy muzzle knocked her forward, and with no breath left to gasp she could only pant and shudder, for there in the place where she had been standing was the plume of a greehered arrow. The head and the shaft were buried in the snow.
Impossible.! she thought weakly, but it was true, for another arrow clattered off the armor of lorek, standing above her. These were not Serafina Pekkalas witches; they were from another . They circled above, a dozen of them or more, swooping down to shoot and s up again, and Lyra swore with every word she knew.
TWENTY-TWO - BETRAYAL-2
lorek Byrnison gave swift orders. It was clear that the bears were practiced at witch fighting, for they had moved at oo a defensive formation, and the witches moved just as smoothly into attack. They could only shoot accurately from cle, and in order not to waste arrows they would swoop down, fire at the lowest part of their dive, and turn upward at once. But when they reached the lowest point, and their hands were busy with bow and arrow, they were vulnerable, and the bears would explode upward with raking paws t them down. More than one fell, and was quickly dispatched.
Lyra crouched low beside a rock, watg for a witch dive. A few shot at her, but the arrows fell wide; and then Lyra, looking up at the sky, saw the greater part of the witch flight peel off and turn back.
If she was relieved by that, her relief didnt last more than a few moments.
Because from the dire in which theyd flown, she saw many others ing to join them; and in midair with them there was a group of gleaming lights; and across the broad expanse of the Svalbard plain, uhe radiance of the Aurora, she heard a sound she dreaded. It was the harsh throb of a gas engine.
The zeppeli..n, with Mrs. Coulter aroops on board, was catg up.
lrowled an order and the bears moved at oo another formation. In the lurid flicker from the sky Lyra watched as they swiftly unloaded their fire hurler. The advance guard of the witch flight had seeoo, and began to swoop downward and rain arrows on them, but for the most part the bears trusted to their armor and worked swiftly to erect the apparatus: a long arm extending upward at an angle, a cup or bowl a yard across, and a great iron tank wreathed in smoke and steam.
As she watched, a bright flame gushed out, and a team of bears swung into practiced a. Two of them hauled the long arm of the fire thrower down, another scooped shovelfuls of fire into the bowl, and at an order they released it, to hurl the flaming sulfur high into the dark sky.
The witches were swooping so thickly above them that three fell in flames at the first shot alone, but it was soohat the real target was the zeppelin.
The pilot either had never seen a fire hurler before, or was uimating its power, for he flew straight on toward the bears without climbing or turning a fra to either side.
Then it became clear that they had a powerful on in the zeppelin too: a mae rifle mounted on the nose of the gondola. Lyra saw sparks flying up from some of the bears armor, and saw them huddle over beh its prote, before she heard the rattle of the bullets. She cried out in fear.
“Theyre safe,” said lorek Byrnison. “t pierce armor with little bullets.”
The fire thrower worked again: this time a mass of blazing sulfur hurtled directly up>ard to strike the gondola and burst in a cascade of flaming fragments on all sides. The zeppelin bao the left, and roared away in a wide arc before making again for the group of bears w swiftly beside the apparatus. As it he arm of the fire thrower creaked downward; the mae rifle coughed and spat, and two bears fell, to a low growl from lorek Byrnison; and when the aircraft was nearly overhead, a bear shouted an order, and the spring-loaded arm shot upward again.
This time the sulfur hurtled against the envelope of the zeppelins gas bag. The rigid frame held a skin of oiled silk in place to tain the hydrogen, and although this was tough enough to withstand minor scratches, a hundredweight of blazing rock was too much for it. The silk ripped straight through, and sulfur and hydrogen leaped to meet each other in a catastrophe of flame.
At ohe silk became transparent; the entire skeleton of the zeppelin was visible, dark against an inferno e and red and yellow, hanging in the air for what seemed like an impossibly long time before drifting to the ground almost relutly. Little figures black against the snow and the fire came t or running from it, and witches flew down to help drag them away from the flames. Within a minute of the zeppelins hitting the ground it was .a mass of twisted metal, a pall of smoke, and a few scraps of fluttering fire.
But the soldiers on board, and the others too (though Lyra was too far away by now to spot Mrs. Coulter, she knew she was there), wasted no time. With the help of the witches they dragged the mae gun out a up, and began to fight in ear on the ground.
“On,” said lorek. “They will hold out for a long time.”
He roared, and a group of bears peeled away from the main group and attacked the Tartars right flank. Lyra could feel his desire to be there among them, but all the time her nerves were screaming: On! On! and her mind was filled with pictures er and Lord Asriel; and lorek Byrnison knew, and turned up the mountain and away from the fight, leaving his bears to hold back the Tartars.
On they climbed. Lyra strained her eyes to look ahead, but not even Pantalaimons owl eyes could see any movement on the flank of the mountain they were climbing. Lord Asriels sledge tracks were clear, however, and lorek followed them swiftly, loping through the snow and kig it high behind them as he ran. Whatever happened behind now was simply that: behind. Lyra had left it. She felt she was leaving the world altogether, so remote and i she was, so high they were climbing, se and uny was the light that bathed them.
“lorek,” she said, “will you find Lee Scoresby?”
“Alive or dead, I will find him.”
“And if you see Serafina Pekkala...”
“I will tell her what you did.”
“Thank you, lorek,” she said.
They spoke no more for some time. Lyra felt herself moving into a kind of trance beyond sleep and waking: a state of scious dreaming, almost, in which she was dreaming that she was being carried by bears to a city iars.
She was going to say something about it to lorek Byrnison, when he slowed down and came to a halt.
“The tracks go on,” said lorek Byrnison. “But I ot.”
Lyra jumped down and stood beside him to look. He was standing at the edge of a chasm. Whether it was a crevasse in the ice or a fissure in the rock was hard to say, and made little differen any case; all that mattered was that it plunged downward into unfathomable gloom.
And the tracks of Lord Asriels sledge ran to the brink... and on, across a bridge of pacted snow.
This bridge had clearly felt the strain of the sledges weight, for a crack ran across it close to the e of the chasm, and the surfa the near side of the crack had settled down a foot or so. It might support the weight of a child: it would certainly not stand uhe weight of an armored bear.
And Lord Asriels tracks ran on beyond the bridge and further up the mountain.
If she went on, it would have to be by herself.
Lyra turo lorek Byrnison.
“I got to go across,” she said. “Thank you for all you done. I dont know whats going to happen when I get to him. We might all die, whether I get to him or not. But if I e back, Ill e and see you to thank you properly, King lorek Byrnison.”
She laid a hand on his head. He let it lie there and nodded gently.
“Goodbye, Lyra Silvertongue,” he said.
Her heart thumping painfully with love, she turned away a her foot on the bridge. The snow creaked under her, and Pantalaimon flew up and over the bridge, to settle in the snow on the far side and ence her onward. Step after step she took, and wondered with every step whether it would be better to run swiftly and leap for the other side, o slowly as she was doing and tread as lightly as possible. Halfway across there came another loud creak from the snoiece fell off near her feet and tumbled into the abyss, and the bridge settled down another few inches against the crack.
She stood perfectly still. Pantalaimon was crouched, leopard-formed, ready to leap down and reach for her.
The bridge held. She took aep, then another, and then she felt somethiling down below her feet and leaped for the far side with all her strength. She landed belly-down in the snow as the entire length of the bridge fell into the crevasse with a soft whoosh behind her.
Pantalaimons claws were in her furs, holding tight.
After a minute she opened her eyes and crawled up away from the edge. There was no way back. She stood and raised her hand to the watg bear. lorek Byrnison stood on his hio aowledge her, and then turned and made off down the mountain in a swift run to help his subjects itle with Mrs. Coulter and the soldiers from the zeppelin.
Lyra was alone.
TWENTY-THREE - THE BRIDGE TO THE STARS-1
Once lorek Byrnison was out of sight, Lyra felt a great weakness ing over her, and she turned blindly a for Pantalaimon, “Oh, Pan, dear, I t go on! Im sht?.ened—and so tired—all this way, and Im scared to death! I wish it was someone else instead of me, I do holy!”
Her daemon nuzzled at her ne his cat form, warm and f.
“I just dont know what we got to do,” Lyra sobbed. “Its too much for us, Pan, we t...”
She g to him blindly, rog bad forth aing the sobs cry out wildly over the bare snow.
“And even if—if Mrs. Coulter got ter first, thered be no saving him, because shed take him back to Bolvangar, or worse, and theyd kill me out of vengeance....Why do they do these things to children, Pan? Do they all hate children so much, that they want to tear them apart like this? Why do they do it?”
But Pantalaimon had no answer; all he could do was hug her close. Little by little, as the storm of fear subsided, she came to a sense of herself again. She was Lyra, cold and frightened by all means, but herself.
“I wish...” she said, and stopped. There was nothing that could be gained by wishing for it. A final deep shaky breath, and she was ready to go on.
The moon had set by now, and the sky to the south rofoundly dark, though the billions of stars lay on it like diamonds o. They were outshohough, by the Aurora, outshone a huimes. Never had Lyra seen it so brilliant and dramatic; with every twitd shiver, new miracles of light danced across the sky. And behind the ever-ging gauze of light, that other world, that sunlit city, was clear and solid.
The higher they climbed, the more the bleak land spread out below them. To the north lay the frozen sea, pacted here and there intes where two sheets of ice had pressed together, but otherwise flat and white and endless, reag to the Pole itself and far beyond, featureless, lifeless, colorless, and blea?k beyond Lyras imagination. To the east a were more mountains, great jagged peaks thrusting sharply upward, their scarps piled high with snow and raked by the wind into bladelike edges as sharp as scimitars. To the south lay the way they had e, and Lyra looked most longingly back, to see if she could spy her dear friend lorek Byrnison and his troops; but nothing stirred on the wide plain. She was not even sure if she could see the burned wreckage of the zeppelin, or the crimson-stained snow around the corpses of the warriors.
Pantalaimon flew high, and swooped back to her wrist in his owl form.
“Theyre just beyond the peak!” he said. “Lord Asriels laid out all his instruments, and Roger t get away—”
And as he said that, the Aurora nickered and dimmed, like an anbaric bulb at the end of its life, and the out altogether. In the gloom, though, Lyra sehe presence of the Dust, for the air seemed to be full of dark iions, like the forms of thoughts not yet born.
In the enfolding dark she heard a cry:
“Lyra! Lyra!”
“Im ing!” she cried back, and stumbled upward, clambering, sprawling, struggling, at the end of her strength; but hauling herself on and further on through the ghostly-gleaming snow.
“Lyra! Lyra!”
“Im nearly there,” she gasped. “Nearly there, Roger!”
Pantalaimon was ging rapidly, in his agitation: lion, ermine, eagle, wildcat, hare, salamander, owl, leopard, every form hed ever taken, a kaleidoscope of forms among the Dust—
“Lyra!”
Then she reached the summit, and saw what was happening.
Fifty yards away iarlight Lord Asriel was twisting together two wires that led to his upturned sledge, on which stood a row of batteries and jars and pieces of apparatus, already frosted with crystals of cold. He was dressed in heavy furs, his face illuminated by the flame of a naphtha lamp. Croug like the Sphinx beside him was his daemon, her beautiful spotted coat glossy with power, her tail moving lazily in the snow.
In her mouth she held Rogers daemon.
The little creature was struggling, flapping, fighting, one moment a bird, the a dog, then a cat, a rat, a bird again, and calling every moment ter himself, who was a few yards off, straining, trying to pull away against the heart-deep tug, and g out with the pain and the cold. He was calling his daemons name, and calling Lyra; he ran to Lord Asriel and plucked his arm, and Lord Asriel brushed him aside. He tried again, g and pleading, begging, sobbing, and Lord Asriel took no notice except to knock him to the ground.
They were on the edge of a cliff. Beyond them was nothing but a huge illimitable dark. They were a thousa or more above the frozen sea.
All this Lyra saw by starlight alone; but then, as Lord Asriel ected his wires, the Aurora blazed all of a sudden into brilliant life. Like the long finger of blinding power that plays between two terminals, except that this was a thousand miles high ahousand miles long: dipping, s, undulating, glowing, a cataract of glory.
He was trolling it...
Or leading power down from it; for there was a wire running off a huge reel on the sledge, a wire that ran directly upward to the sky. Down from the dark swooped a raven, and Lyra k for a witch daemon. A witch was helping Lord Asriel, and she had flown that wire into the heights.
And the Aurora was blazing again.
He was nearly ready.
He turer and beed, and Roger helplessly came, shaking his head, begging, g, but helplessly going forward.
“No! Run!” Lyra cried, and hurled herself down the slope at him.
Pantalaimon leaped at the snow leopard and snatched Rogers daemon from her jaws. In a moment the snow leopard had leaped after him, and Pantalaimohe other daemon go, and both young daemons, ging flick-flick-flick, turned and battled with the great spotted beast.
She slashed left-right with needle-filled paws, and her snarling roar drowned even Lyras cries. Both children were fightiohting the forms iurbid air, those dark iions, that came thid crowding dowreams of Dust—
And the Aurora swayed above, its tinual surging flicker pig out now this building, now that lake, now that row of palm trees, so close youd think that you could step from this world to that.
Lyra leaped up and seized Rogers hand.
She pulled hard, and theore away from Lord Asriel and ran, hand in hand, but Roger cried and twisted, because his daemon was caught again, held fast in the snow leopards jaws, and Lord Asriel himself was reag down toward her with a wire; and Lyra khe heart-vulsing pain of separation, and tried to stop—
But they couldnt stop.
The cliff was sliding away beh them.
Aire shelf of snow, sliding inexorably down—
The frozen sea, a thousa below—
“LYRA!”
Her heartbeats, leaping in anguish with Rogers—
Tight-clutg hands—
His body, suddenly limp in hers; and high above, the greatest wonder.
At the moment he fell still, the vault of heaven, star-studded, profound, ierced as if by a spear.
A jet of light, a jet of pure energy released like an arrow from a great bow, shot upward from the spot where Lord Asriel had joihe wire ters daemon. The sheets of light and color that were the Aurora tore apart; a great rending, grinding, g, tearing sound reached from one end of the universe to the other; there was dry land in the sky—
Sunlight! Sunlight shining on the fur of a golden monkey....
For the fall of the snow shelf had halted; perhaps an unseen ledge had broken its fall; and Lyra could see, over the trampled snow of the summit, the golden monkey spring out of the air to the side of the leopard, and she saw the two daemons bristle, wary and powerful. The moail was erect, the snow leopards swept powerfully from side to side. Then the monkey reached out a tentative paw, the leopard lowered her head with a graceful sensual aowledgment, they touched—
And when Lyra looked up from them, Mrs. Coulter herself stood there, clasped in Lord Asriels arms. Light played around them like sparks and beams of intense anbaric power. Lyra, helpless, could only imagine what had happened: somehow Mrs. Coulter must have crossed that chasm, and followed her up here....
Her own parents, together! And embrag so passionately: an undreamed-of thing.
Her eyes were wide. Rogers body lay in her arms, still, quiet, at rest. She heard her parents talking:
Her mother said, “Theyll never allow it—”
Her father said, “Allow it? Weve gone beyond being allowed, as if we were children. Ive made it possible for ao cross, if they wish.”
TWENTY-THREE - THE BRIDGE TO THE STARS-2
“Theyll forbid it! Theyll seal it off and exunicate anyone who tries!”
“Too many people will want to. They wont be able to prevent them. This will mean the end of the Church, Marisa, the end of the Magisterium, the end of all those turies of darkness! Look at that light up there: thats the sun of another world! Feel the warmth of it on your skin, now!”
“They are strohan anyone, Asriel! You dont know—”
“I dont know? I? No one in the world knows better than I how strong the Church is! But it isnt strong enough for this. The Dust will ge everything, anyway. Theres no stopping it now.”
“Is that what you wao choke us and kill us all with sin and darkness?”
“I wao break out, Marisa! And I have. Look, look at the palm trees waving on the shore! you feel that wind? A wind from another world! Feel it on your hair, on your face....”
Lord Asriel pushed back Mrs. Coulters hood and turned her head to the sky, running his hands through her hair. Lyra watched breathless, not daring to move a muscle.
The woman g to Lord Asriel as if she were dizzy, and shook her head, distressed.
“No—no—theyre ing, Asriel—they know where Ive gone-”
“Then e with me, away and out of this world!”
“I darent—”
“You? Dare not? Your child would e. Your child would dare anything, and shame her mother.”
“Then take her and wele. Shes more yours than mine, Asriel.”
“Not so. You took her in; you tried to mold her. You wanted her then.”
“She was too coarse, too stubborn. Id left it too la9９lｉｂ.
te....But where is she now?
I followed her footsteps up....”
“You want her, still? Twice youve tried to hold her, and twice shes got away.
If I were her, Id run, and keep on running, soohan give you a third ce.”
His hands, still clasping her head, tensed suddenly and drew her toward him in a passionate kiss. Lyra thought it seemed more like cruelty than love, and looked at their daemons, to see a strange sight: the snow leopard tense, croug with her claws just pressing in the golden monkeys flesh, and the monkey relaxed, blissful, swooning on the snow.
Mrs. Coulter pulled fiercely back from the kiss and said, “No, Asriel—my place is in this world, not that—”
“e with me!” he said, urgent, powerful. “e and work with me!”
“We couldnt work together, you and I.”
“No? You and I could take the universe to pieces and put it together again, Marisa! We could find the source of Dust and stifle it forever! And youd like to be part of that great work; dont lie to me about it. Lie about everything else, lie about the Oblation Board, lie about your lovers—yes, I know about Boreal, and I care nothing—lie about the Church, lie about the child, even, but dont lie about what you truly want....”
And their mouths were fasteogether with a powerful greed. Their daemons were playing fiercely; the snow leopard rolled over on her back, and the monkey raked his claws in .９９lｉｂ.the soft fur of her neck, and she growled a deep rumble of pleasure.
“If I dont e, youll try aroy me,” said Mrs. Coulter, breaking away.
“Why should I want to destroy you?” he said, laughing, with the light of the other world shining around his head. “e with me, work with me, and Ill care whether you live or die. Stay here, and you lose my i at once. Dont flatter yourself that Id give you a seds thought. Now stay and work your mischief in this world, or >藏书网ome with me.”
Mrs. Coulter hesitated; her eyes closed, she seemed to sway as if she were fainting; but she kept her baland opened her eyes again, with an infinite beautiful sadness in them.
“No,” she said. “No.”
Their daemons were apart again. Lord Asriel reached down and curled his strong fingers into the snow leopards fur. Theurned his bad walked away without another word. The golden monkey leaped into Mrs. Coulters arms, making little sounds of distress, reag out to the snow leopard as she paced away, and Mrs. Coulters face was a mask of tears. Lyra could see them glinting; they were real.
Then her mother turned, shaking with silent sobs, and moved down the mountain and out of Lyras sight.
Lyra watched her coldly, and then looked up toward the sky.
Such a vault of wonders she had never seen.
The city hanging there so empty and silent looked new-made, waiting to be occupied; or asleep, waiting to be woken. The sun of that world was shining into this, making Lyras hands goldeing the i Rogers wolfskin hood, making his pale cheeks transparent, glistening in his open sightless eyes.
She felt wrenched apart with unhappiness. And with aoo; she could have killed her father; if she could have torn out his heart, she would have done so there and then, for what hed doer. And to her: trig her: how dare he?
She was still holding Rogers body. Pantalaimon was saying something, but her mind was ablaze, and she didnt hear until he pressed his wildcat claws into the back of her hand to make her. She blinked.
“What? What?”
“Dust!” he said.
“What are you talking about?”
“Dust. Hes going to find the source of Dust aroy it, isnt he?”
“Thats what he said.”
“And the Oblation Board and the Churd Bolvangar and Mrs. Coulter and all, they want to destroy it too, dont they?”
“Yeah...Or stop it affeg people...Why?”
“Because if they all think Dust is bad, it must be good.”
She didnt speak. A little hiccup of excitement leaped in her chest.
Pantalaimo on:
“Weve heard them all talk about Dust, and theyre so afraid of it, and you know what? We believed them, even though we could see that what they were doing was wicked and evil and wrong....We thought Dust must be bad too, because they were grown up and they said so. But what if it isnt? What if its—”
She said breathlessly, “Yeah! What if its really good...”
She looked at him and saw his green wildcat eyes ablaze with her owement.
She felt dizzy, as if the whole world were turnih her.
If Dust were a good thing...If it were to be sought and weled and cherished...
“We could look for it too, Pan!” she said.
That was what he wao hear.
“We could get to it before he does,” he went on, “and....”
The enormousness of the task silehem. Lyra looked up at the blazing sky.
She was aware of how small they were, she and her daemon, in parison with the majesty and vastness of the universe; and of how little they knew, in parison with the profound mysteries above them.
“We could,” Pantalaimon insisted. “We came all this way, didnt we? We could do it.”
“We got it wrong, though, Pa it all wrong aber. We thought we were helping him....” She choked, and kissed Rogers still face clumsily, several times. “We got it wrong,” she said.
“ime well check everything and ask all the questions we think of, then. Well do better ime.”
“And wed be alone. lorek Byrnison couldnt follow us and help. Nor could Farder or Serafina Pekkala, or Lee Scoresby or no one.”
“Just us, then. Dont matter. Were not alone, anyway; not like....”
She knew he meant not like Tony Makarios; not like those poor lost daemons at Bolvangar; were still one being; both of us are one.
“And weve got the alethiometer,” she said. “Yeah. I re weve got to do it, Pan. Well go up there and well search for Dust, and when weve found it well know what to do.”
Rogers body lay still in her arms. She let him dowly.
“And well do it,” she said.
She turned away. Behind them lay pain ah and fear; ahead of them lay doubt, and danger, and fathomless mysteries. But they werent alone.
So Lyra and her dsmon turned away from the world they were born in, and looked toward the sun, and walked into the sky.天涯在线书库《www.tianyabook.com》