The Amber Spyglass: His Dark Materials Read online

  Iorek Byrnison said, “Who is this?”

  “Spies,” said Will. “Sent by Lord Asriel. They helped us escape yesterday, but if they’re on our side, they shouldn’t hide and eavesdrop on us. And if they do, they’re the last people who should talk about dishonor.”

  The spy’s glare was so ferocious that he looked ready to take on Iorek himself, never mind the unarmed Will; but Tialys was in the wrong, and he knew it. All he could do was bow and apologize.

  “Your Majesty,” he said to Iorek, who growled at once.

  The Chevalier’s eyes flashed hatred at Will, and defiance and warning at Lyra, and a cold and wary respect at Iorek. The clarity of his features made all these expressions vivid and bright, as if a light shone on him. Beside him the Lady Salmakia was emerging from the shadow, and, ignoring the children completely, she made a curtsy to the bear.

  “Forgive us,” she said to Iorek. “The habit of concealment is hard to break, and my companion, the Chevalier Tialys, and I, the Lady Salmakia, have been among our enemies for so long that out of pure habit we neglected to pay you the proper courtesy. We’re accompanying this boy and girl to make sure they arrive safely in the care of Lord Asriel. We have no other aim, and certainly no harmful intention toward you, King Iorek Byrnison.”

  If Iorek wondered how any such tiny beings could cause him harm, he didn’t show it; not only was his expression naturally hard to read, but he had his courtesy, too, and the Lady had spoken graciously enough.

  “Come down by the fire,” he said. “There is food enough and plenty if you are hungry. Will, you began to speak about the knife.”

  “Yes,” said Will, “and I thought it could never happen, but it’s broken. And the alethiometer told Lyra that you’d be able to mend it. I was going to ask more politely, but there it is: can you mend it, Iorek?”

  “Show me.”

  Will shook all the pieces out of the sheath and laid them on the rocky floor, pushing them about carefully until they were in their right places and he could see that they were all there. Lyra held a burning branch up, and in its light Iorek bent low to look closely at each piece, touching it delicately with his massive claws and lifting it up to turn it this way and that and examine the break. Will marveled at the deftness in those huge black hooks.

  Then Iorek sat up again, his head rearing high into the shadow.

  “Yes,” he said, answering exactly the question and no more.

  Lyra said, knowing what he meant, “Ah, but will you, Iorek? You couldn’t believe how important this is—if we can’t get it mended then we’re in desperate trouble, and not only us—”

  “I don’t like that knife,” Iorek said. “I fear what it can do. I have never known anything so dangerous. The most deadly fighting machines are little toys compared to that knife; the harm it can do is unlimited. It would have been infinitely better if it had never been made.”

  “But with it—” began Will.

  Iorek didn’t let him finish, but went on, “With it you can do strange things. What you don’t know is what the knife does on its own. Your intentions may be good. The knife has intentions, too.”

  “How can that be?” said Will.

  “The intentions of a tool are what it does. A hammer intends to strike, a vise intends to hold fast, a lever intends to lift. They are what it is made for. But sometimes a tool may have other uses that you don’t know. Sometimes in doing what you intend, you also do what the knife intends, without knowing. Can you see the sharpest edge of that knife?”

  “No,” said Will, for it was true: the edge diminished to a thinness so fine that the eye could not reach it.

  “Then how can you know everything it does?”

  “I can’t. But I must still use it, and do what I can to help good things come about. If I did nothing, I’d be worse than useless. I’d be guilty.”

  Lyra was following this closely, and seeing Iorek still unwilling, she said:

  “Iorek, you know how wicked those Bolvangar people were. If we can’t win, then they’re going to be able to carry on doing those kind of things forever. And besides, if we don’t have the knife, then they might get hold of it themselves. We never knew about it when I first met you, Iorek, and nor did anyone, but now that we do, we got to use it ourselves—we can’t just not. That’d be feeble, and it’d be wrong, too, it’d be just like handing it over to ’em and saying, ‘Go on, use it, we won’t stop you.’ All right, we don’t know what it does, but I can ask the alethiometer, can’t I? Then we’d know. And we could think about it properly, instead of just guessing and being afraid.”

  Will didn’t want to mention his own most pressing reason: if the knife was not repaired, he might never get home, never see his mother again; she would never know what had happened; she’d think he’d abandoned her as his father had done. The knife would have been directly responsible for both their desertions. He must use it to return to her, or never forgive himself.

  Iorek Byrnison said nothing for a long time, but turned his head to look out at the darkness. Then he slowly got to his feet and stalked to the cave mouth, and looked up at the stars: some the same as those he knew, from the north, and some that were strange to him.

  Behind him, Lyra turned the meat over on the fire, and Will looked at his wounds, to see how they were healing. Tialys and Salmakia sat silent on their ledge.

  Then Iorek turned around.

  “Very well, I shall do it on one condition,” he said. “Though I feel it is a mistake. My people have no gods, no ghosts or dæmons. We live and die and that is that. Human affairs bring us nothing but sorrow and trouble, but we have language and we make war and we use tools; maybe we should take sides. But full knowledge is better than half-knowledge. Lyra, read your instrument. Know what it is that you’re asking. If you still want it then, I shall mend the knife.”

  At once Lyra took out the alethiometer and edged nearer to the fire so that she could see the face. The reading took her longer than usual, and when she blinked and sighed and came out of the trance, her face was troubled.

  “I never known it so confused,” she said. “There was lots of things it said. I think I got it clear. I think so. It said about balance first. It said the knife could be harmful or it could do good, but it was so slight, such a delicate kind of a balance, that the faintest thought or wish could tip it one way or the other . . . And it meant you, Will, it meant what you wished or thought, only it didn’t say what would be a good thought or a bad one.

  “Then . . . it said yes,” she said, her eyes flashing at the spies. “It said yes, do it, repair the knife.”

  Iorek looked at her steadily and then nodded once.

  Tialys and Salmakia climbed down to watch more closely, and Lyra said, “D’you need more fuel, Iorek? Me and Will could go and fetch some, I’m sure.”

  Will understood what she meant: away from the spies they could talk.

  Iorek said, “Below the first spur on the track, there is a bush with resinous wood. Bring as much of that as you can.”

  She jumped up at once, and Will went with her.

  The moon was brilliant, the path a track of scumbled footprints in the snow, the air cutting and cold. Both of them felt brisk and hopeful and alive. They didn’t talk till they were well away from the cave.

  “What else did it say?” Will said.

  “It said some things I didn’t understand then and I still don’t understand now. It said the knife would be the death of Dust, but then it said it was the only way to keep Dust alive. I didn’t understand it, Will. But it said again it was dangerous, it kept saying that. It said if we—you know—what I thought—”

  “If we go to the world of the dead—”

  “Yeah—if we do that—it said that we might never come back, Will. We might not survive.”

  He said nothing, and they walked along more soberly now, watching out for the bush that Iorek had mentioned, and silenced by the thought of what they might be taking on.

  “We’ve got
to, though,” he said, “haven’t we?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Now we know, I mean. You have to speak to Roger, and I want to speak to my father. We have to, now.”

  “I’m frightened,” she said.

  And he knew she’d never admit that to anyone else.

  “Did it say what would happen if we didn’t?” he asked.

  “Just emptiness. Just blankness. I really didn’t understand it, Will. But I think it meant that even if it is that dangerous, we should still try and rescue Roger. But it won’t be like when I rescued him from Bolvangar; I didn’t know what I was doing then, really, I just set off, and I was lucky. I mean there was all kinds of other people to help, like the gyptians and the witches. There won’t be any help where we’d have to go. And I can see . . . In my dream I saw . . . The place was . . . It was worse than Bolvangar. That’s why I’m afraid.”

  “What I’m afraid of,” said Will after a minute, not looking at her at all, “is getting stuck somewhere and never seeing my mother again.”

  From nowhere a memory came to him: he was very young, and it was before her troubles began, and he was ill. All night long, it seemed, his mother had sat on his bed in the dark, singing nursery rhymes, telling him stories, and as long as her dear voice was there, he knew he was safe. He couldn’t abandon her now. He couldn’t! He’d look after her all his life long if she needed it.

  And as if Lyra had known what he was thinking, she said warmly:

  “Yeah, that’s true, that would be awful . . . You know, with my mother, I never realized . . . I just grew up on my own, really; I don’t remember anyone ever holding me or cuddling me, it was just me and Pan as far back as I can go . . . I can’t remember Mrs. Lonsdale being like that to me; she was the housekeeper at Jordan College, all she did was make sure I was clean, that’s all she thought about . . . oh, and manners . . . But in the cave, Will, I really felt—oh, it’s strange, I know she’s done terrible things, but I really felt she was loving me and looking after me . . . She must have thought I was going to die, being asleep all that time—I suppose I must’ve caught some disease—but she never stopped looking after me. And I remember waking up once or twice and she was holding me in her arms . . . I do remember that, I’m sure . . . That’s what I’d do in her place, if I had a child.”

  So she didn’t know why she’d been asleep all that time. Should he tell her, and betray that memory, even if it was false? No, of course he shouldn’t.

  “Is that the bush?” Lyra said.

  The moonlight was brilliant enough to show every leaf. Will snapped off a twig, and the piney resinous smell stayed strongly on his fingers.

  “And we en’t going to say anything to those little spies,” she added.

  They gathered armfuls of the bush and carried them back up toward the cave.

  FIFTEEN

  THE FORGE

  As I was walking among the fires of hell, delighted with the

  enjoyments of Genius …

  • WILLIAM BLAKE •

  At that moment the Gallivespians, too, were talking about the knife. Having made a suspicious peace with Iorek Byrnison, they climbed back to their ledge to be out of the way, and as the crackle of flames rose and the snapping and roaring of the fire filled the air, Tialys said, “We must never leave his side. As soon as the knife is mended, we must keep closer than a shadow.”

  “He is too alert. He watches everywhere for us,” said Salmakia. “The girl is more trusting. I think we could win her around. She’s innocent, and she loves easily. We could work on her. I think we should do that, Tialys.”

  “But he has the knife. He is the one who can use it.”

  “He won’t go anywhere without her.”

  “But she has to follow him, if he has the knife. And I think that as soon as the knife’s intact again, they’ll use it to slip into another world, so as to get away from us. Did you see how he stopped her from speaking when she was going to say something more? They have some secret purpose, and it’s very different from what we want them to do.”

  “We’ll see. But you’re right, Tialys, I think. We must stay close to the boy at all costs.”

  They both watched with some skepticism as Iorek Byrnison laid out the tools in his improvised workshop. The mighty workers in the ordnance factories under Lord Asriel’s fortress, with their blast furnaces and rolling mills, their anbaric forges and hydraulic presses, would have laughed at the open fire, the stone hammer, the anvil consisting of a piece of Iorek’s armor. Nevertheless, the bear had taken the measure of the task, and in the certainty of his movements the little spies began to see some quality that muffled their scorn.

  When Lyra and Will came in with the bushes, Iorek directed them in placing branches carefully on the fire. He looked at each branch, turning it from side to side, and then told Will or Lyra to place it at such-and-such an angle, or to break off part and place it separately at the edge. The result was a fire of extraordinary ferocity, with all its energy concentrated at one side.

  By this time the heat in the cave was intense. Iorek continued to build the fire, and made the children take two more trips down the path to ensure that there was enough fuel for the whole operation.

  Then the bear turned over a small stone on the floor and told Lyra to find some more stones of the same kind. He said that those stones, when heated, gave off a gas that would surround the blade and keep the air from it, for if the hot metal came in contact with the air, it would absorb some and be weakened by it.

  Lyra set about searching, and with owl-eyed Pantalaimon’s help soon had a dozen or more stones to hand. Iorek told her how to place them, and where, and showed her exactly the kind of draft she should get moving, with a leafy branch, to make sure the gas flowed evenly over the work piece.

  Will was placed in charge of the fire, and Iorek spent several minutes directing him and making sure he understood the principles he was to use. So much depended on exact placement, and Iorek could not stop and correct each one; Will had to understand, and then he’d do it properly.

  Furthermore, he mustn’t expect the knife to look exactly the same when it was mended. It would be shorter, because each section of the blade would have to overlap the next by a little way so they could be forged together; and the surface would have oxidized a little, despite the stone-gas, so some of the play of color would be lost; and no doubt the handle would be charred. But the blade would be just as sharp, and it would work.

  So Will watched as the flames roared along the resinous twigs, and with streaming eyes and scorched hands he adjusted each fresh branch till the heat was focused as Iorek wanted it.

  Meanwhile, Iorek himself was grinding and hammering a fist-sized stone, having rejected several until he found one of the right weight. With massive blows he shaped it and smoothed it, the cordite smell of smashed rocks joining the smoke in the nostrils of the two spies, watching from high up. Even Pantalaimon was active, changing to a crow so he could flap his wings and make the fire burn faster.

  Eventually the hammer was formed to Iorek’s satisfaction, and he set the first two pieces of the blade of the subtle knife among the fierce-burning wood at the heart of the fire, and told Lyra to begin wafting the stone-gas over them. The bear watched, his long white face lurid in the glare, and Will saw the surface of the metal begin to glow red and then yellow and then white.

  Iorek was watching closely, his paw held ready to snatch the pieces out. After a few moments the metal changed again, and the surface became shiny and glistening, and sparks just like those from a firework sprayed up from it.

  Then Iorek moved. His right paw darted in and seized first one piece and then the other, holding them between the tips of his massive claws and placing them on the slab of iron that was the backplate of his armor. Will could smell the claws burning, but Iorek took no notice of that, and moving with extraordinary speed he adjusted the angle at which the pieces overlapped and then raised his left paw high and struck a blow with the
rock hammer.

  The knife tip leapt on the rock under the massive blow. Will was thinking that the whole of the rest of his life depended on what happened in that tiny triangle of metal, that point that searched out the gaps inside the atoms, and all his nerves trembled, sensing every flicker of every flame and the loosening of every atom in the lattice of the metal. Before this began, he had supposed that only a full-scale furnace, with the finest tools and equipment, could work on that blade; but now he saw that these were the finest tools, and that Iorek’s artistry had constructed the best furnace there could be.

  Iorek roared above the clangor, “Hold it still in your mind! You have to forge it, too! This is your task as much as mine!”

  Will felt his whole being quiver under the blows of the stone hammer in the bear’s fist. The second piece of the blade was heating, too, and Lyra’s leafy branch sent the hot gas along to bathe both pieces in its flow and keep out the iron-eating air. Will sensed it all and felt the atoms of the metal linking each to each across the fracture, forming new crystals again, strengthening and straightening themselves in the invisible lattice as the join came good.

  “The edge!” roared Iorek. “Hold the edge in line!”

  He meant with your mind, and Will did it instantly, sensing the minute snags and then the minute easement as the edges lined up perfectly. Then that join was made, and Iorek turned to the next piece.

  “A new stone,” he called to Lyra, who knocked the first one aside and placed a second on the spot to heat.

  Will checked the fuel and snapped a branch in two to direct the flames better, and Iorek began to work with the hammer once more. Will felt a new layer of complexity added to his task, because he had to hold the new piece in a precise relation with both the previous two, and he understood that only by doing that accurately could he help Iorek mend it.