CHAPTER ELEVEN: THE BELVEDERE-2
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She tugged at his good arm, helping him, lifting him. He tried to respond, but he didnt have thestrength. He could only walk.
"All right," he said, "we t get to the trees. Too far away. So well go to that temp<s>.99liｂ.</s>le place. If we shut the door, maybe we hold them out for long enough to cut through after all."
Pantalaimon darted ahead, and Lyra gasped and called to him breathlessly, making him pause.
Will could almost see the boweehe daemon tugging and the girl responding. He stumbled through the thick grass with Lyra running ahead to see, and then back to help, and then ahead again, until they reached the stone pavement around the temple.
The door uhe little portico was unlocked, and they ran io find themselves in a bare circular room with several statues of goddesses in niches around the wall. In the very ter a spiral staircase ht iron led up through an opening to the floor above. There was o lock the door, so they clambered up the staircase and onto the floorboards of an upper level that was really a viewing place, where people could e to take the air and look out over the city; for there were no windows or walls, simply a series of open arches all the way around supp the roof. In each archway a windowsill at waist height was broad enough to lean on, and below them the pantiled roof ran down in a gentle slope all around to the gutter.
As they looked out, they could see the forest behind, tanta-lizingly close; and the villa below them, and beyond that the open park, and then the red-brown roofs of the city, with the tower rising to the left. There were carrion crows wheeling in the air above the gray battlements, and Will felt a jolt of siess as he realized what had drawhere.
But the<dfn>.９９lib?</dfn>re was no time to take in the view; first they had to deal with the children, who were rag up toward the temple, screaming with rage aement. The leading boy slowed down and held up his pistol and fired two or three wild shots toward the temple. Then they came on again, yelling:
"Thiefs!"
"Murderers!"
"We gonna kill you!"
"You got our knife!"
"You don e from here!"
"You gonna die!"
Will took no notice. He had the k already, and swiftly cut a small window to see where they were—only to recoil at once. Lyra looked too, and fell ba disappoi. They were fifty feet or so in the air, high above a main road busy with traffic.
"Of course," Will said bitterly, "we came up a slope.... Well, were stuck. Well have to hold them off, thats all."
Another few seds and the first children were crowding in through the door. The sound of their yelling echoed iemple and reinforced their wildness; and then came a gunshot, enormously loud, and another, and the screaming took aone, and theairs began to shake as the first ones climbed up.
Lyra was croug paralyzed against the wall, but Will still had the knife in his hand. He scrambled over to the opening in the floor and reached down and sliced through the iron of the top step as if it were paper. With nothing to hold it up, the staircase began to bend uhe weight of the children crowding on it, and then it swung down and fell with a huge crash. More screams, more fusion; and again the gu off, but this time by act, it seemed.
Someone had been hit, and the scream was of pain this time, and Will looked down to see a tangle of writhing bodies covered in plaster and dust and blood.
They werent individual children: they were a single mass, like a tide. They surged below him and
leaped up in fury, snatg, threatening, screaming, spitting, but they couldnt reach.
Then someone called, and they looked to the door, and those who could move surged toward it, leaving several pinned beh the iron stairs or dazed and struggling to get up from the rubblestrewn floor.
Will soon realized why theyd run out. There was a scrabbling sound from the roof outside the arches, and he ran to the windowsill to see the first pair of hands grasping the edge of the pantiles and pulling up. Someone ushing from behind, and then came another head and another pair of hands, as they clambered over the shoulders and backs of those below and swarmed up onto the roof like ants.
But the pantiled ridges were hard to walk on, and the first ones scrambled up on hands and kheir wild eyes never leaving Wills face. Lyra had joined him, and Pantalaimon was snarling as a leopard, paws on the sill, making the first childreate. But still they came on, more and more of them.
Someone was shouting "Kill! Kill! Kill!" and then others joined in, louder and louder, and those on the roof began to stamp and thump the tiles in rhythm, but they didnt quite dare e closer, faced by the snarling daemon. Then a tile broke, and the boy standing on it slipped and fell, but the one beside him picked up the broken pied hurled it at Lyra.
She ducked, and it shattered on the n beside her, sh her with broken pieces. Will had noticed the rail around the edge of the opening in the floor, and cut two sword-length pieces of it, and he handed oo Lyra now; and she swung it around as hard as she could and into the side of the first boys head. He fell at once, but then came another, and it was Angelica, redhaired, white-faced, crazy-eyed. She scrambled up onto the sill, but Lyra jabbed the length of rail at her fiercely, and she fell back again.
Will was doing the same. The knife was in its sheath at his waist, arud swung and jabbed with the iron rail, and while several children fell back, others kept replag them, and more and more were clambering up onto the roof from below.
Then the boy iriped T-shirt appeared, but hed lost the pistol, or perhaps it was empty.
However, his eyes and Wills locked together, and each of them knew what was going to happen:
they were going to fight, and it was going to be brutal and deadly.
"e on," said Will, passionate for the battle. "e on, then..."
Another sed, and they would have fought.
But therahing appeared: a great white snow goose swooping low, his wings spread wide, calling and calling so loudly that even the children on the roof heard through their savagery and turo see.
"Kaisa!" cried Lyra joyfully, for it was Serafina Pekkalas daemon.
The snow goose called again, a pierg whoop that filled the sky, and then wheeled and turned an inch away from the boy iriped T-shirt. The boy fell ba fear and slid down and over the edge, and then others began to cry in alarm too, because there was something else in the sky.
As Lyra saw the little black shapes sweeping out of the blue, she cheered and shouted with glee.
"Serafina Pekkala! Here! Help us! Here we are! Iemple—"
And with a hiss and rush of air, a dozen arrows, and then another dozen swiftly after, and then another dozen—loosed so quickly that they were all in the air at once—shot at the temple roof above the gallery and landed with a thunder of hammer blows. Astonished and bewildered, the children on the roof felt all the aggression leave them in a moment, and horrible fear rushed in to take its place. What were these black-garbed women rushing at them in the air? How could it happehey ghosts? Were they a new kind of Specter?
And whimpering and g, they jumped off the roof, some of them falling clumsily and dragging themselves away limping and others rolling down the slope and dashing for safety, but a mob no longer—just a lot htened, shame-faced children. A mier the snow goose had appeared, the last of the childrehe temple, and the only sound was the rush of air in the branches of the cirg witches above.
Will looked up in wooo amazed to speak, but Lyra was leaping and calling with delight, "Serafina Pekkala! How did you find us? Thank you, thank you! They was going to kill us! e down and land."
But Serafina and the others shook their heads and flew up again, to circle high above. The snow goose daemon wheeled and flew down toward the roof, beating his great wings inward to help him slow down, and landed with a clatter on the pantiles below the sill.
"Greetings, Lyra," he said. "Serafina Pekkala t e to the ground, nor the others. The place is full of Specters—a hundred or more surrounding the building, and more drifting up over the grass. t you see them?"
"No! We t see em at all!"
"Already weve lost och. We t risk any more. you get down from this building?"
"If we jump off the roof like they done. But how did you find us? And where—"
"Enough now. Theres more trouble ing, and bigger. Get down as best you and then make for the trees."
They climbed over the sill and moved sideways down through the broken tiles to the gutter. It wasnt high, and below it was grass, with a gentle slope away from the building. First Lyra jumped and then Will followed, rolling over and trying to protect his hand, which was bleeding freely again and hurting badly. His sling had e loose and trailed behind him, and as he tried to roll it up, the snow goose landed on the grass at his side.
"Lyra, who is this?" Kaisa said.
"Its Will. Hes ing with us—"
"Why are the Specters avoiding you?" The goose daemon eaking directly to Will.
By this time Will was hardly surprised by anything, and he said, "I dont know. We t see them.
No, wait!" Aood up, struck by a thought. "Where are they now?" he said. "Wheres the one?"
Ten paces away, down the slope," said the daemon. "They dont want to e any closer, thats obvious."
Will took out the knife and looked in that dire, and he heard the daemon hiss with surprise.
But Will couldnt do what he intended, because at the same moment a witch landed her bran the grass beside him. He was taken abaot so much by her flying as by her astounding gracefulness, the fierce, cold, lovely clarity of her gaze, and by the pale bare limbs, so youthful, a so far from being young.
"Your name is Will?" she said.
"Yes, but—"
"Why are the Specters afraid of you?"
"Because of the knife. Wheres the oell me! I want to kill it!"
But Lyra came running before the witch could answer.
"Serafina Pekkala!" she cried, and she threw her arms around the witd hugged her so tightly that the witch laughed out loud, and kissed the top of her head. "Oh, Serafina, where did you e from like that? We were—those kids— they were kids, and they were going to kill us—did you see them? We thought we were going to die and—oh, Im so glad you came! I thought Id never see
you again!"
Serafina Pekkala looked over Lyras head to where the Specters were obviously clustering a little way off, and then looked at Will.
"Now listen," she said. "Theres a cave in these woods not far away. Head up the slope and then along the ridge to the left. The Specters wont follow—they dont see us while were in the air, and theyre afraid of you. Well meet you there. Its a half-hours walk."
And she leaped into the air again. Will shaded his eyes to watch her and the ged, elegant figures wheel in the air and dart up over the trees.
"Oh, Will, well be safe now! Itll be all right now that Serafina Pekkalas here!" said Lyra. "I hought Id see her again. She came just at the right time, didnt she? Just like before, at Bolvangar...."
Chattering happily, as if shed already fotten the fight, she led the the slope toward the forest. Will followed in silence. His hand was throbbing badly, and with each throb a little more blood was leaving him. He held it up across his chest and tried not to think about it.
It took not half an hour but an hour and three quarters, because Will had to stop a several times. When they reached the cave, they found a fire, a rabbit roasting, and Serafina Pekkala stirring something in a small iron pot.
"Let me see your wound" was the first thing she said to Will, and he dumbly held out his hand.
Pantalaimon, cat-formed, watched curiously, but Will looked away. He didnt like the sight of his mutilated fingers.
The witches spoke softly to each other, and then Serafina Pekkala said, "What on made this wound?"
Will reached for the knife and ha to her silently. Her panions looked at it with wonder and suspi, for they had never seen such a blade before, with su edge on it.
"This will need more than herbs to heal. It will need a spell," said Serafina Pekkala. "Very well, well prepare o will be ready when the moon rises. In the meantime, you shall sleep."
She gave him a little horn cup taining a hot potion whose bitterness was moderated by honey, and presently he lay bad fell deeply asleep. The witch covered him with leaves a９９ｌiｂ?nd turo Lyra, who was still gnawing the rabbit.
"Now, Lyra," she said. "Tell me who this boy is, and what you know about this world, and about this knife of his."
So Lyra took a deep breath and began.
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