The Golden Compass hdm-1 Read online

  «Lyra,» she told him again. «Could you teach me about the bears?»

  «The bears…» he said doubtfully.

  «I'd really like to know about cosmology and Dust and all, but I'm not clever enough for that. You need really clever students for that. But I could learn about the bears. You could teach me about them all right. And we could sort of practice on that and work up to Dust, maybe.»

  He nodded again.

  «Yes,» he said, «yes, I believe you're right. There is a correspondence between the microcosm and the macrocosm! The stars are alive, child. Did you know that? Everything out there is alive, and there are grand purposes abroad! The universe is full of intentions, you know. Everything happens for a purpose. Your purpose is to remind me of that. Good, good—in my despair I had forgotten. Good! Excellent, my child!»

  «So, have you seen the king? lofur Raknison?»

  «Yes. Oh, yes. I came here at his invitation, you know. He intended to set up a university. He was going to make me Vice-Chancellor. That would be one in the eye for the Royal Arctic Institute, eh! Eh? And that scoundrel Trelawney! Ha!»

  «What happened?»

  «I was betrayed by lesser men. Trelawney among them, of course. He was here, you know. On Svalbard. Spread lies and calumny about my qualifications. Calumny! Slander! Who was it discovered the final proof of the Barnard-Stokes hypothesis, eh? Eh? Yes, Santelia, that's who. Trelawney couldn't take it. Lied through his teeth. lofur Raknison had me thrown in here. I'll be out one day, you'll see. I'll be Vice-Chancellor, oh yes. Let Trelawney come to me then begging for mercy! Let the Publications Committee of the Royal Arctic Institute spurn my contributions then! Ha! I'll expose them all! «

  «I expect lorek Byrnison will believe you, when he comes back,» Lyra said.

  «lorek Byrnison? No good waiting for that. He'll never come back.»

  «He's on his way now.»

  «Then they'll kill him. He's not a bear, you see. He's an outcast. Like me. Degraded, you see. Not entitled to any of the privileges of a bear.»

  «Supposing lorek Byrnison did come back, though,» Lyra said. «Supposing he challenged lofur Raknison to a fight…»

  «Oh, they wouldn't allow it,» said the Professor decisively, «lofur would never lower himself to acknowledge lorek Byrnison's right to fight him. Hasn't got a right. lorek might as well be a seal now, or a walrus, not a bear. Or worse: Tartar or Skraeling. They wouldn't fight him honorably like a bear; they'd kill him with fire hurlers before he got near. Not a hope. No mercy.»

  «Oh,» said Lyra, with a heavy despair in her breast. «And what about the bears' other prisoners? Do you know where they keep them?»

  «Other prisoners?»

  «Like.-.Lord Asriel.»

  Suddenly the Professor's manner changed altogether. He cringed and shrank back against the wall, and shook his head warningly.

  «Shh! Quiet! They'll hear you!» he whispered.

  «Why mustn't we mention Lord Asriel?»

  «Forbidden! Very dangerous! lofur Raknison will not allow him to be mentioned!»

  «Why?» Lyra said, coming closer and whispering herself so as not to alarm him.

  «Keeping Lord Asriel prisoner is a special charge laid on lofur by the Oblation Board,» the old man whispered back. «Mrs. Coulter herself came here to see lofur and offered him all kinds of rewards to keep Lord Asriel out of the way. I know about it, you see, because at the time I was in lofur's favor myself. I met Mrs. Coulter! Yes. Had a long conversation with her. lofur was besotted with her. Couldn't stop talking about her. Would do anything for her. If she wants Lord Asriel kept a hundred miles away, that's what will happen. Anything for Mrs. Coulter, anything. He's going to name his capital city after her, did you know that?»

  «So he wouldn't let anyone go and see Lord Asriel?»

  «No! Never! But he's afraid of Lord Asriel too, you know, lofur's playing a difficult game. But he's clever. He's done what they both want. He's kept Lord Asriel isolated, to please Mrs. Coulter; and he's let Lord Asriel have all the equipment he wants, to please him. Can't last, this equilibrium. Unstable. Pleasing both sides. Eh? The wave function of this situation is going to collapse quite soon. I have it on good authority.»

  «Really?» said Lyra, her mind elsewhere, furiously thinking about what he'd just said.

  «Yes. My daemon's tongue can taste probability, you know.»

  «Yeah. Mine too. When do they feed us, Professor?»

  «Feed us?»

  «They must put some food in sometime, else we'd starve. And there's bones on the floor. I expect they're seal bones, aren't they?»

  «Seal…I don't know. It might be.»

  Lyra got up and felt her way to the door. There was no handle, naturally, and no keyhole, and it fitted so closely at top and bottom that no light showed. She pressed her ear to it, but heard nothing. Behind her the old man was muttering to himself. She heard his chain rattle as he turned over wearily and lay the other way, and presently he began to snore.

  She felt her way back to the bench. Pantalaimon, tired of putting out light, had become a bat, which was all very well for him; he fluttered around squeaking quietly while Lyra sat and chewed a fingernail.

  Quite suddenly, with no warning at all, she remembered what it was that she'd heard the Palmerian Professor saying in the Retiring Room all that time ago. Something had been nagging at her ever since lorek Byrnison had first mentioned lofur's name, and now it came back: what lofur Raknison wanted more than anything else, Professor Trelawney had said, was a daemon.

  Of course, she hadn't understood what he meant; he'd spoken of panserbj0rne instead of using the English word, so she didn't know he was talking about bears, and she had no idea that lofur Raknison wasn't a man. And a man would have had a daemon anyway, so it hadn't made sense.

  But now it was plain. Everything she'd 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 restoring 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.

  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. You'll be in trouble if you don't. It's very urgent.»

  He dropped the meat from his jaws and looked up. It wasn't easy to read bears' expressions, but he looked angry.

  «It's about lorek Byrnison,» she said quickly. «I know something about him, and the king needs to know.»

  «Tell me what it is, and I'll pass the message on,» said the bear.

  «That wouldn't be right, not for someone else to know before the king does,» she said. «I'm sorry, I don't mean to be rude, but you see, it's 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 come 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 conferred with another bear, who came to speak to her.

  «You cannot see lofur Raknison when you please,» he said. «You have to wait till he wants to see you.»

  «But this is urgent, what I've got to tell him,» she said. «It's about lorek Byrnison. I'm sure His Majesty would want to know it, but all the same I can't tell it to anyone else, don't you see? It
wouldn't be polite. He'd be ever so cross if he knew we hadn't been polite.»

  That seemed to carry some weight, or else to mystify the bear sufficiently to make him pause. Lyra was sure her interpretation of things was right: lofur Raknison was introducing so many new ways that none of the bears was certain yet how to behave, and she could exploit this uncertainty in order to get to lofur.

  So that bear retreated to consult the bear above him, and before long Lyra was ushered inside the palace again, but into the state quarters this time. It was no cleaner 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 back and 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 was opened from the inside. A blaze of light from half a dozen chandeliers, 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 cornice, and swooped low to snatch at bits of fish that had fallen out of one another's nests in the chandeliers.

  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 lofur's palace, it was decorated with overelaborate swags and festoons of gilt that looked like tinsel on a mountainside.

  Sitting on the throne was the biggest bear she had ever seen. lofur Raknison was even taller and bulkier than lorek, and his face was much more mobile and expressive, with a kind of humanness in it which she had never seen in lorek's. 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. Coulter's, a subtle politician used to power. He was wearing a heavy gold chain 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 didn't look preposterous, it looked barbaric and magnificent.

  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 vacant stupid human face. It was dressed as Mrs. Coulter would dress, and it had a sort of rough resemblance to her. He was pretending 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.

  «Our greetings 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 Byrnison's, Your Majesty,» she said. «I've got something very important and secret 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 changed. She couldn't read what it was saying, but there was no doubt that he was powerfully interested. 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 nests.

  When the throne room was empty but for lofur Raknison and Lyra, he turned to her eagerly.

  «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 Byrnison's,» was her answer.

  It was the most dangerous thing she had ever said. She could see quite clearly that only his astonishment prevented him from killing her at once. She went on:

  «Please, Your Majesty, let me tell you all about it first before you harm me. I've come here at my own risk, as you can see, and there's nothing I've got that could hurt you. In fact, I want to help you, that's why I've come. 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, that's 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. «That's easy. I can go far from him because I'm like a witch's daemon. You know how they can go hundreds of miles from their humans? It's like that. And as for how he got me, it was at Bolvangar. You've heard of Bolvangar, because Mrs. Coulter must have told you about it, but she probably didn't tell you everything they were doing there.» «Cutting…» he said.

  «Yes, cutting, that's part of it, intercision. But they're 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, they're animal-formed, so when a bear has a daemon, it'll be human. And I'm his daemon. I can see into his mind and know exactly what he's doing and where he is and—» «Where is he now?»

  «On Svalbard. He's coming this way as fast as he can.» «Why? What does he want? He must be mad! We'll tear him to pieces!»

  «He wants me. He's coming to get me back. But I don't want to be his daemon, lofur Raknison, I want to be yours. Because once they saw how powerful 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. That's what he's come to Svalbard for.»

  The bear-king roared his anger. He roared so loudly that the crystal in the chandeliers tinkled, and every bird in the great room shrieked, and Lyra's ears rang.

  But she was equal to it.

  «That's why I love you best,» she said to lofur Raknison, «because you're passionate and strong as well as clever. And I just had to leave him and come and tell you, because I don't 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 wouldn't know what it was unless I told you, and you might do the usual thing about fighting bears like him that've been outcast; I mean, not fight him properly, but kill him with fire hurlers or something. And if you did that, I'd just go out like a light and die with him.»

  «But you—how can—»

  «I can become your daemon,» she said, «but only if you defeat lorek Byrnison in single combat. Then his strength will flow into you, and my mind will flow into yours, and we'll be like one person, thinking each other's thoughts; and you can send me miles away to spy for you, or keep me here by your side, whichever you like. And I'd help you lead the bears to capture Bolvangar, if you like, and make them create more daemons for your favorite bears; or if you'd rather be the only bear with a daemon, we could destroy Bolvangar forever. We could do anything, lofur Raknison, you and me together!»

  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.

  lof
ur Raknison was pacing up and down with an air of explosive excitement.

  «Single combat?» he was saying. «Me? I must fight lorek Byrnison? Impossible! He is outcast! How can that be? How can I fight him? Is that the only way?»

  «It's 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 couldn't 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 can do that, easy. I can 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.» «I'll have to go into a room by myself to do this,» she said. «When I'm your daemon, you'll be able to see how I do it, but until then it's got to be private.»

  «There is an anteroom behind this one. Go into that, and come out when you know the answer.»

  Lyra opened the door and found herself in a room lit by one torch, and empty but for a cabinet of mahogany containing some tarnished silver ornaments. She took out the alethiome-ter and asked: «Where is lorek now?»

  «Four hours away, and hurrying ever faster.» «How can I tell him what I've 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 wasn't 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: lofur's own father.

  She asked further, and learned that lofur had been alone on the ice as a young bear, on his first hunting expedition, and had come 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 concealed the truth of what he had done; no one knew about it but lofur himself, and now Lyra knew as well.