CHAPTER TWO: AMONG THE WITCHES-2
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They say that the Magisterium is assembling the greatest army ever known, and this is an advance party. And there are unpleasant rumors about some of the soldiers, Serafina Pekkala. Ive heard about Bolvangar, and what they were doing there—cutting childrens daemons away, the most evil work Ive ever heard of. Well, it seems there is a regiment of warriors who have beeed in the same way. Do you know the word zombi? They fear nothing, because theyre mindless. There are some in this town now. The authorities keep them hidden, but wets out, and the townspeople are terrified of them.""What of the other witch s?" said Serafina Pekkala. "What news do you have of them?"
"Most have gone back to their homelands. All the witches are waiting, Serafina Pekkala, with fear in their hearts, for what will happe."
"And what do you hear of the Church?"
"Theyre in plete fusion. You see, they dont know what Lord Asriel intends to do."
"Nor do I," she said, "and I t imagine what it might be. What do you think hes intending, Dr.
Lanselius?"
He gently rubbed the head of his serpent daemon with his thumb.
"He is a scholar," he said after a moment, "but scholarship is not his ruling passion. Nor is statesmanship. I met him once, and I thought he had an ardent and powerful nature, but not a despotie. I dont think he wants to rule.... I dont know, Serafina Pekkala. I suppose his servant might be able to tell you. He is a man called Thorold, and he was imprisoned with Lord Asriel in the house on Svalbard. It might be worth a visit there to see if he tell you anything; but, of course, he might have goo the other world with his master."
"Thank you. Thats a good idea.... Ill do it. And Ill go at once."
She said farewell to the sul and flew up through the gathering dark to join Kaisa in the clouds.
Serafinas jouro the north was made harder by the fusion in the world around her. All the Arctic peoples had been thrown into panid so had the animals, not only by the fog and the magic variations but by unseasonal crags of id stirrings in the soil. It was as if the earth itself, the permafrost, were slowly awakening from a long dream of being frozen.
In all this turmoil, where sudden shafts of uny brilliance lanced down through rents in towers of fog and then vanished as quickly, where herds of muskox were seized by the urge to gallop south and t<s></s>hen wheeled immediately to the west or the north again, where tight-knit skeins of geese disied into a honking chaos as the magic fields they flew by wavered and shis way and that, Serafina Pekkala sat on her cloud-pine and flew north, to the house on the headland in the wastes of Svalbard.
There she found Lord Asriels servant, Thorold, fighting off a group of cliff-ghasts.
She saw the movement before she came close enough to see what was happening. There was a swirl of lungihery wings, and a malevolent yowk-yowk-yowk resounding in the snowy courtyard. A single figure swathed in furs fired a rifle into the midst of them with a gaunt dog daemon snarling and snapping beside him whenever one of the filthy things flew low enough.
She didnt know the man, but a cliff-ghast was an enemy always. She swung around above and loosed a dozen arrows into the melee. With shrieks and gibberings, the gang—too loosely ao be called a troop—circled, saw their new oppo, and fled in fusion. A mier the skies were bare again, and their dismayed yowk-yowk-yowk echoed distantly off the mountains before dwindling into silence.
Serafina flew down to the courtyard and alighted otｐ://.９９lｉｂ.rampled, blood-sprinkled snow. The man pushed back his hood, still holding his rifle warily, because a witch was an enemy sometimes, and she saw an elderly man, long-jawed and grizzled and steady-eyed.
"I am a friend of Lyras," she said. "I hope we talk. Look: I lay my bow down."
"Where is the child?" he said.
"In another world. Im ed for her safety. And I o know what Lord Asriel is doing."
He lowered the rifle and said, "Step ihen. Look: I lay my rifle down."
The formalities exged, they went indoors. Kaisa glided through the skies above, keeping watch, while Thorold brewed some coffee and Serafina told him of her involvement with Lyra.
"She was always a willful child," he said when they were seated at the oaken table in the glow of a naphtha lamp. "Id see her every year or so when his lordship visited his college. I was fond of her, mind—you couldnt help it. But what her place was in the wider scheme of things, I dont know."
"What was Lord Asriel planning to do?"
"You dont thiold me, do you, Serafina Pekkala? Im his manservant, thats all. I his clothes and cook his meals and keep his house tidy. I may have learned a thing or two in the years I been with his lordship, but only by pig em up actal. He wouldnt fide in me any more than in his shaving mug."
"Then tell me the thing or two youve learned by act," she insisted.
Thorold was an elderly man, but he was healthy and vigorous, and he felt flattered by the attention of this young witd her beauty, as any man would. He was shrewd, though, too, and he khe attention was not really on him <bdi></bdi>but on what he knew; and he was ho, so he did not draw out his telling for much lohan he needed.
"I t tell you precisely what hes doing," he said, "because all the philosophical details are beyond my grasp. But I tell you what drives his lordship, though he doesnt know I know. Ive seen this in a hundred little signs. Correct me if Im wrong, but the witch people have different gods from ours, ent that right?"
"Yes, thats true."
"But you know about od? The God of the Church, the ohey call the Authority?"
"Yes, I do."
"Well, Lord Asriel has never found hisself at ease with the does of the Church, so to speak.
Ive seen a spasm of disgust cross his face whealk of the sacraments, and ato, and redemption, and suchlike. Its death among our people, Serafina Pekkala, to challehe Church, but Lord Asriels been nursing a rebellion in his heart for as long as Ive served him, thats ohing I do know."
"A rebellion against the Church?"
"Partly, aye. There was a time whehought of making it an issue of force, but he turned away from that."
"Why? Was the Church to?"
"No," said the old servant, "that wouldnt stop my master. Now this might sound strao you, Serafina Pekkala, but I know the maer than any wife could know him, better than a mother.
Hes been my master and my study fh on forty years. I t follow him to the height of his thought any more than I fly, but I see where hes a-heading even if I t go after him.
No, its my belief he turned away from a rebellion against the Churot because the Church was to, but because it was too weak to be worth the fighting."
"So... what is he doing?"
"I think hes a-waging a higher war than that. I think hes aiming a rebellion against the highest power of all. Hes gone a-searg for the dwelling place of the Authority Himself, and hes agoing to destroy Him. Thats what I think. It shakes my heart to voice it, maam. I hardly dare think of it. But I t put together any other story that makes sense of what hes doing."
Serafina sat quiet for a few moments, abs what Thorold had said.
Before she could speak, he went on:
"Course, ating out to do a grand thing like that would be the target of the Churchs anger. Goes without saying. Itd be the most gigantic blasphemy, thats what theyd say. Theyd have him before the sistorial Court aeo death before you could blink. Ive never spoke of it before and I shant again; Id be afraid to speak it aloud to you if you werent a witd beyond the power of the Church; but that makes sense, and nothing else does. Hes a-going to find the Authority and kill Him."
"Is that possible?" said Serafina.
"Lord Asriels life has been filled with things that were impossible. I wouldnt like to say there was anything he couldnt do. But on the face of it, Serafina Pekkala, yes, hes stark mad. If angels couldnt do it, how a man dare to think about it?"
"Angels? What are angels?"
"Beings of pure spirit, the Church says. The Church teaches that some of the angels rebelled before the world was created, and got flung out of heaven and into hell. They failed, you see, thats the point. They couldnt do it. And they had the power of angels. Lord Asriel is just a man, with human power, no more than that. But his ambition is limitless. He dares to do what men and women dont even dare to think. And look what hes done already: hes torhe sky, hes opehe way to another world. Who else has ever dohat? Who else could think of it? So with one part of me, Serafina Pekkala, I say hes mad, wicked, deranged. Yet with another part I think, hes Lord Asriel, hes not like other men. Maybe ... if it was ever going to be possible, itd be done by him and by no one else."
"And what will you do, Thorold?"
"Ill stay here and wait. Ill guard this house till he es bad tells me different, or till I die.
And now I might ask you the same question, maam."
"Im going to make sure the child is safe," she said. "It might be that I have to pass this way again, Thorold. Im glad to know that you will still be here."
"I wont budge," he told her.
She refused Thorolds offer of food, and said good-bye.
A minute or so later she joined her goose daemon again, and the daemo sileh her as they soared and wheeled above the foggy mountains. She was deeply troubled, and there was o explain: every strand of moss, every icy puddle, every midge in her homeland thrilled against her nerves and called her back. She felt fear for them, but fear of herself, too, for she was having to ge. These were human affairs she was inquiring into, this was a human matter; Lord Asriels god was not hers. Was she being human? Was she losing her witchhood?
If she were, she could not do it alone.
"Home now," she said. "We must talk to our sisters, Kaisa. These events are too big for us alone."
And they sped through the roiling banks of fog toward Lake Enara and home.
* * * In the forested caves beside the lake they found the others of their , and Lee Scoresby, too.
The aeronaut had struggled to keep his balloon aloft after the crash at Svalbard, and the witches had guided him to their homeland, where he had begun to repair the damage to his basket and the gasbag.
"Maam, Im very glad to see you," he said. "Any news of the little girl?"
"None, Mr. Scoresby. Will you join our cil tonight and help us discuss what to do?"
The Texan blinked with surprise, for no man had ever been known to join a witch cil.
"Id be greatly honored," he said. "I may have a suggestion or two of my own."
All through that day the witches came, like flakes of blaow on the wings of a storm, filling the skies with the darting flutter of their silk and the swish of air through the needles of their cloud-pine branches. Men who hunted in the dripping forests or fished amoing ice floes heard the skywide whisper through the fog, and if the sky was clear, they would look up to see the witches flying, like scraps of darkness drifting on a secret tide.
By evening the pines around the lake were lit from below by a hundred fires, and the greatest fire of all was built in front of the gathering cave. There, ohey had eaten, the witches assembled. Serafina Pekkala sat in the ter, the of little scarlet flowers ling among her fair hair. On her left sat Lee Scoresby, and on her right, a visitor: the queen of the Latvian witches, whose name was Ruta Skadi.
She had arrived only an hour before, to Serafinas surprise. Serafina had thought Mrs. Coulter beautiful, for a short-life; but Ruta Skadi was as lovely as Mrs. Coulter, with ara dimension of the mysterious, the uny. She had trafficked with spirits, and it snowed. She was vivid and passionate, with large black eyes; it was said that Lord Asriel himself had been her lover. She wore heavy gold earrings and a on her black curly hair ringed with the fangs of snow tigers.
Serafinas daemon, Kaisa, had learned from Ruta Skadis daemon that she had killed the tigers herself in order to punish the Tartar tribe who worshiped them, because the tribesmen had failed to do her honor when she had visited their territory. Without their tiger gods, the tribe deed into fear and melancholy and begged her to allow them to worship her instead, only to be rejected with pt; for what good would their worship do her? she asked. It had dohing for the tigers. Such was Ruta Skadi: beautiful, proud, and pitiless.
Serafina was not sure why she had e, but made the queen wele, aiquette demahat Ruta Skadi should sit on Serafinas right. When they were all assembled, Serafina began to speak.
"Sisters! You knoe have e together: we must decide what to do about these s. The universe is broken wide, and Lord Asriel has opehe way from this world to another. Should we ourselves with it, or live our lives as we have doil now, looking after our own affairs? Then there is the matter of the child Lyra Belacqua, now called Lyra Silvertongue by King lorek Byrnison. She chose the right cloud-pine spray at the house of Dr.
Lanselius: she is the child we have always expected, and now she has vanished.
"We have two guests, who will tell us their thoughts. First we shall hear Queen Ruta Skadi."
Ruta Skadi stood. Her white arms gleamed in the firelight; her eyes glittered shtly that even the farthest witch could see the play of expression on her vivid face.
"Sisters," she began, "let me tell you what is happening, and who it is that we must fight. For there is a war ing. I dont knoill join with us, but I know whom we must fight. It is the Magisterium, the Church. For all its history— and thats not long by our lives, but its many, many of theirs—its tried to suppress and trol every natural impulse. And when it t trol them, it cuts them out. Some of you have seen what they did at Bolvangar. And that was horrible, but it is not the only such plaot the only such practice. Sisters, you know only the north; I have traveled in the south lands. There are churches there, believe me, that cut their children too, as the people of Bolvangar did—not in the same way, but just as horribly. They cut their sexual ans, yes, both boys and girls; they cut them with knives so that they shant feel. That is what the Church does, and every church is the same: trol, destroy, obliterate every good feeling. So if a war es, and the Church is on one side of it, we must be oher, no matter what strange allies we find ourselves bound to.
"What I propose is that our s join together and go north to explore this new world, and see what we discover there. If the child is not to be found in our world, its because she will have goer Lord Asriel already. And Lord Asriel is the key to this, believe me. He was my lover once, and I would willingly join forces with him, because he hates the Churd all it does.
"That is what I have to say."
Ruta Skadi spoke passionately, and Serafina admired her power and her beauty. Whevian queen sat down, Serafina turo Lee Scoresby.
"Mr. Scoresby is a friend of the childs, and thus a friend of ours," she said. "Would you tell us your thoughts, sir?"
The Texan got to his feet, whiplash-lean and courteous. He looked as if he were not scious of the strangeness of the occasion, but he was. His hare daemoer, crouched beside him, her ears flat along <mark></mark>her back, her golden eyes half closed.
"Maam," he said, "I have to thank you all first for the kindness youve shown to me, and the help you exteo an aeronaut battered by winds that came from another world. I wont trespass long on your patience.
"When I was traveling north to Bolvangar with the gyptians, the child Lyra told me about something that happened in the college she used to live in, ba Oxford. Lord Asriel had showher scholars the severed head of a man called Stanislaus Grumman, and that kinda persuaded them to give him some moo e north and find out what had happened.
"Now, the child was so sure of what shed seen that I didnt like to questiooo much. But what she<tt>９９lｉｂ?t> said made a kind of memory e to my mind, except that I couldnt reach it clearly. I knew something about this Dr. Grumman. And it was only on the flight here from Svalbard that I remembered what it was. It was an old hunter from Tungusk who told me. It seems that Grummahe whereabouts of some kind of object that gives prote to whoever holds it. I dont want to belittle the magic that you witches and, but this thing, whatever it is, has a kind of power that outclasses anything Ive ever heard of.
"And I thought I might postpone my retirement to Texas because of my for that child, and search frumman. You see, I dont think hes dead. I think Lord Asriel was fooling those scholars.
"So Im going to Nova Zembla, where I last heard of him alive, and Im going to search for him. I t see the future, but I see the present clear enough. And Im with you in this war, for what my bullets are worth. But thats the task Im going to take on, maam," he cluded, turning back to Serafina Pekkala. "Im going to seek out Stanislaus Grumman and find out what he knows, and if I find that object he knows of, Ill take it to Lyra."
Serafina said, "Have you been married, Mr. Scoresby? Have you any children?"
"No, maam, I have no child, though I would have liked to be a father. But I uand your question, and youre right: that little girl has had bad luck with her true parents, and maybe I f make it up to her. Someone has to do it, and Im willing."
"Thank you, Mr. Scoresby," she said.
And she took off her , and plucked from it one of the little scarlet flowers that, while she wore them, remained as fresh as if they had just been picked.
Take this with you," she said, "and whenever you need my help, hold it in your hand and call to me. I shall hear you, wherever you are."
"Why, thank you, maam," he said, surprised. He took the little flower and tucked it carefully into his breast pocket.
"And we shall call up a wind to help you to Nova Zembla," Serafina Pekkala told him. "Now, sisters, who would like to speak?"
The cil pran. The witches were democratic, up to a point; every witch, even the you, had the right to speak, but only their queen had the power to decide. The talk lasted all night, with many passionate voices for open war at once, and some others urging caution, and a few, though those were the wisest, suggesting a mission to all the other witch s te them to join together for the first time.
Ruta Skadi agreed with that, and Serafi out messengers at once. As for what they should do immediately, Serafina picked out twenty of her fi fighters and ordered them to prepare to fly north with her, into the new world that Lord Asriel had opened, and search for Lyra.
"What of you, Queen Ruta Skadi?" Serafina said finally. "What are your plans?"
"I shall search for Lord Asriel, and learn what hes doing from his own lips. And it seems that the way hes gone is northward too. May I e the first part of the journey with you, sister?"
"You may, and wele," said Serafina, who was glad to have her pany. So they agreed.
But soon after the cil had broken up, an elderly witch came to Serafina Pekkala and said, "You had better listen to what Juta Kamainen has to say, Queen. Shes headstrong, but it might be important."
The young witch Juta Kamainen—young by witch standards, that is; she was only just over a hundred years old—was stubborn and embarrassed, and her robin daemon was agitated, flying from her shoulder to her hand and cirg high above her before settling again briefly on her shoulder. The witchs cheeks were plump and red; she had a vivid and passioure. Serafina didnt know her well.
"Queen," said the young witch, uo stay silent under Serafinas gaze, "I know the man Stanislaus Grumman. I used to love him. But I hate him now with such a fervor that if I see him, I shall kill him. I would have said nothing, but my sister made me tell you."
She glanced with hatred at the elder witch, who returned her look with passion: she knew about love.
"Well," said Serafina, "if he is still alive, hell have to stay alive until Mr. Scoresby finds him. You had better e with us into the new world, and then therell be no danger of your killing him first. Fet him, Juta Kamainen. Love makes us suffer. But this task of ours is greater than revenge. Remember that."
"Yes, Queen," said the young witch humbly.
And Serafina Pekkala awenty-one panions and Queen Ruta Skadi of Latvia prepared to fly into the new world, where no witch had ever flown before.
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