The Amber Spyglass hdm-3 Page 35

  "I can’t bear the thought of oblivion, Asriel," she continued. "Sooner anything than that. I used to think pain would be worse—to be tortured forever—I thought that must be worse… But as long as you were conscious, it would be better, wouldn’t it? Better than feeling nothing, just going into the dark, everything going out forever and ever?"

  His part was simply to listen. His eyes were locked on hers, and he was paying profound attention; there was no need to respond. She said:

  "The other day, when you spoke about her so bitterly, and about me… I thought you hated her. I could understand your hating me. I’ve never hated you, but I could understand… I could see why you might hate me. But I couldn’t see why you hated Lyra."

  He turned his head away slowly, and then looked back.

  "I remember you said something strange, on Svalbard, on the mountaintop, just before you left our world," she went on. "You said: Come with me, and we’ll destroy Dust forever. You remember saying that? But you didn’t mean it. You meant the very opposite, didn’t you? I see now. Why didn’t you tell me what you were really doing? Why didn’t you tell me you were really trying to preserve Dust? You could have told me the truth."

  "I wanted you to come and join me," he said, his voice hoarse and quiet, "and I thought you would prefer a lie."

  "Yes," she whispered, "that’s what I thought."

  She couldn’t sit still, but she didn’t really have the strength to stand up. For a moment she felt faint, her head swam, sounds receded, the room darkened, but almost at once her senses came back even more pitilessly than before, and nothing in the situation had changed.

  "Asriel…" she murmured.

  The golden monkey put a tentative hand out to touch the paw of the snow leopard. The man watched without a word, and Stelmaria didn’t move; her eyes were fixed on Mrs. Coulter.

  "Oh, Asriel, what will happen to us?" Mrs. Coulter said again. "Is this the end of everything?"

  He said nothing.

  Moving like someone in a dream, she got to her feet, picked up the rucksack that lay in the corner of the room, and reached inside it for her pistol; and what she would have done next, no one knew, because at that moment there came the sound of footsteps running up the stairs.

  Both man and woman, and both daemons, turned to look at the orderly who came in and said breathlessly:

  "Excuse me, my lord—the two daemons—they’ve been seen, not far from the eastern gate—in the form of cats—the sentry tried to talk to them, bring them inside, but they wouldn’t come near. It was only a minute or so ago…"

  Lord Asriel sat up, transfigured. All the fatigue had been wiped off his face in a moment. He sprang to his feet and seized his greatcoat.

  Ignoring Mrs. Coulter, he flung the coat around his shoulders and said to the orderly:

  "Tell Madame Oxentiel at once. Put this order out: the daemons are not to be threatened, or frightened, or coerced in any way. Anyone seeing them should first…"

  Mrs. Coulter heard no more of what he was saying, because he was already halfway down the stairs. When his running footsteps had faded, too, the only sounds were the gentle hiss of the naphtha lamp and the moan of the wild wind outside.

  Her eyes found the eyes of her daemon. The golden monkey’s expression was as subtle and complex as it had ever been in all their thirty-five years of life.

  "Very well," she said. "I can’t see any other way. I think… I think we’ll…"

  He knew at once what she meant. He leapt to her breast, and they embraced. Then she found her fur-lined coat, and they very quietly left the chamber and made their way down the dark stairs.

  Chapter 29. The Battle On The Plain

  It was desperately hard for Lyra and Will to leave that sweet world where they had slept the night before, but if they were ever going to find their daemons, they knew they had to go into the dark once more. And now, after hours of weary crawling through the dim tunnel, Lyra bent over the alethiometer for the twentieth time, making little unconscious sounds of distress—whimpers and catches of breath that would have been sobs if they were any stronger. Will, too, felt the pain where his daemon had been, a scalded place of acute tenderness that every breath tore at with cold hooks.

  How wearily Lyra turned the wheels; on what leaden feet her thoughts moved. The ladders of meaning that led from every one of the alethiometer’s thirty-six symbols, down which she used to move so lightly and confidently, felt loose and shaky. And holding the connections between them in her mind… It had once been like running, or singing, or telling a story: something natural. Now she had to do it laboriously, and her grip was failing, and she mustn’t fail because otherwise everything would fail…

  "It’s not far," she said at last. "And there’s all kinds of danger—there’s a battle, there’s… But we’re nearly in the right place now. Just at the end of this tunnel there’s a big smooth rock running with water. You cut through there."

  The ghosts who were going to fight pressed forward eagerly, and she felt Lee Scoresby close at her side.

  He said, "Lyra, gal, it won’t be long now. When you see that old bear, you tell him Lee went out fighting. And when the battle’s over, there’ll be all the time in the world to drift along the wind and find the atoms that used to be Hester, and my mother in the sagelands, and my sweethearts—all my sweethearts… Lyra, child, you rest when this is done, you hear? Life is good, and death is over…"

  His voice faded. She wanted to put her arms around him, but of course that was impossible. So she just looked at his pale form instead, and the ghost saw the passion and brilliance in her eyes, and took strength from it.

  And on Lyra’s shoulder, and on Will’s, rode the two Gallivespians. Their short lives were nearly over; each of them felt a stiffness in their limbs, a coldness around the heart. They would both return soon to the world of the dead, this time as ghosts, but they caught each other’s eye, and vowed that they would stay with Will and Lyra for as long as they could, and not say a word about their dying.

  Up and up the children clambered. They didn’t speak. They heard each other’s harsh breathing, they heard their footfalls, they heard the little stones their steps dislodged. Ahead of them all the way, the harpy scrambled heavily, her wings dragging, her claws scratching, silent and grim.

  Then came a new sound: a regular drip-drip, echoing in the tunnel. And then a faster dripping, a trickle, a running of water.

  "Here!" said Lyra, reaching forward to touch a sheet of rock that blocked the way, smooth and wet and cold. "Here it is."

  She turned to the harpy.

  "I been thinking," she said, "how you saved me, and how you promised to guide all the other ghosts that’ll come through the world of the dead to that land we slept in last night. And I thought, if you en’t got a name, that can’t be right, not for the future. So I thought I’d give you a name, like King Iorek Byrnison gave me my name Silvertongue. I’m going to call you Gracious Wings. So that’s your name now, and that’s what you’ll be for evermore: Gracious Wings."

  "One day," said the harpy, "I will see you again, Lyra Silvertongue."

  "And if I know you’re here, I shan’t be afraid," Lyra said. "Good-bye, Gracious Wings, till I die."

  She embraced the harpy, hugging her tightly and kissing her on both cheeks.

  Then the Chevalier Tialys said: "This is the world of Lord Asriel’s Republic?"

  "Yes," she said, "that’s what the alethiometer says. It’s close to his fortress."

  "Then let me speak to the ghosts."

  She held him high, and he called, "Listen, because the Lady Salmakia and I are the only ones among us who have seen this world before. There is a fortress on a mountaintop: that is what Lord Asriel is defending. Who the enemy is I do not know. Lyra and Will have only one task now, which is to search for their daemons. Our task is to help them. Let’s be of good courage and fight well."

  Lyra turned to Will.

  "All right," he said, "I’m ready."

&nb
sp; He took out the knife and looked into the eyes of his father’s ghost, who stood close by. They wouldn’t know each other for much longer, and Will thought how glad he would have been to see his mother beside them as well, all three together—

  "Will," said Lyra, alarmed.

  He stopped. The knife was stuck in the air. He took his hand away, and there it hung, fastened in the substance of an invisible world. He let out a deep breath.

  "I nearly…"

  "I could see," she said. "Look at me, Will."

  In the ghost light he saw her bright hair, her firm-set mouth, her candid eyes; he felt the warmth of her breath; he caught the friendly scent of her flesh.

  The knife came loose.

  "I’ll try again," he said.

  He turned away. Focusing hard, he let his mind flow down to the knife tip, touching, withdrawing, searching, and then he found it. In, along, down, and back. The ghosts crowded so close that Will’s body and Lyra’s felt little jolts of cold along every nerve.

  And he made the final cut.

  The first thing they sensed was noise. The light that struck in was dazzling, and they had to cover their eyes, ghosts and living alike, so they could see nothing for several seconds; but the pounding, the explosions, the rattle of gunfire, the shouts and screams were all instantly clear, and horribly frightening.

  John Parry’s ghost and the ghost of Lee Scoresby recovered their senses first. Because both had been soldiers, experienced in battle, they weren’t so disoriented by the noise. Will and Lyra simply watched in fear and amazement.

  Explosive rockets were bursting in the air above, showering fragments of rock and metal over the slopes of the mountain, which they saw a little way off; and in the skies angels were fighting angels, and witches, too, swooped and soared screaming their clan cries as they shot arrows at their enemies. They saw a Gallivespian, mounted on a dragonfly, diving to attack a flying machine whose human pilot tried to fight him off hand to hand. While the dragonfly darted and skimmed above, its rider leapt off to clamp his spurs deep in the pilot’s neck; and then the insect returned, swooping low to let its rider leap on the brilliant green back as the flying machine droned straight into the rocks at the foot of the fortress.

  "Open it wider," said Lee Scoresby. "Let us out!"

  "Wait, Lee," said John Parry. "Something’s happening—look over there."

  Will cut another small window in the direction he indicated, and as they looked out, they could all see a change in the pattern of the fighting. The attacking force began to withdraw. A group of armed vehicles stopped moving forward, and under covering fire, turned laboriously and moved back. A squadron of flying machines, which had been getting the better of a ragged battle with Lord Asriel’s gyropters, wheeled in the sky and made off to the west. The Kingdom’s forces on the ground—columns of riflemen, troops equipped with flamethrowers, with poison-spraying cannons, with weapons such as none of the watchers had ever seen—began to disengage and pull back.

  "What’s going on?" said Lee. "They’re leaving the field, but why?"

  There seemed to be no reason for it: Lord Asriel’s allies were outnumbered, their weapons were less potent, and many more of them were lying wounded.

  Then Will felt a sudden movement among the ghosts. They were pointing out at something drifting in the air.

  "Specters!" said John Parry. "That’s the reason."

  And for the first time, Will and Lyra thought they could see those things, like veils of shimmering gauze, falling from the sky like thistledown. But they were very faint, and when they reached the ground, they were much harder to see.

  "What are they doing?" said Lyra.

  "They’re making for that platoon of Asriel’s riflemen—"

  And Will and Lyra knew what would happen, and they both called out in fear: "Run! Get away!"

  Some of the soldiers, hearing children’s voices crying out from close by, looked around startled. Others, seeing a Specter making for them, so strange and blank and greedy, raised their guns and fired, but of course with no effect. And then it struck the first man it came to.

  He was a soldier from Lyra’s own world, an African. His daemon was a long-legged tawny cat spotted with black, and she drew back her teeth and prepared to spring.

  They all saw the man aiming his rifle, fearless, not giving an inch—and then they saw the daemon in the toils of an invisible net, snarling, howling, helpless, and the man trying to reach to her, dropping his rifle, crying her name, and sinking and fainting himself with pain and brutal nausea.

  "Right, Will," said John Parry. "Let us out now; we can fight those things."

  So Will opened the window wide and ran out at the head of the army of ghosts; and then began the strangest battle he could imagine.

  The ghosts clambered out of the earth, pale forms paler still in the midday light. They had nothing to fear anymore, and they threw themselves against the invisible Specters, grappling and wrestling and tearing at things Will and Lyra couldn’t see at all.

  The riflemen and the other living allies were bemused: they could make nothing of this ghostly, spectral combat. Will made his way through the middle of it, brandishing the knife, remembering how the Specters had fled from it before.

  Wherever he went, Lyra went, too, wishing she had something to fight with as Will was doing, but looking around, watching more widely. She thought she could see the Specters from time to time, in an oily glistening of the air; and it was Lyra who felt the first shiver of danger.

  With Salmakia on her shoulder, she found herself on a slight rise, just a bank of earth surmounted by hawthorn bushes, from which she could see the great sweep of country the invaders were laying waste.

  The sun was above her. Ahead, on the western horizon, clouds lay heaped and brilliant, riven with chasms of darkness, their tops drawn out in the high-altitude winds. That way, too, on the plain, the enemy’s ground forces waited: machines glinting brightly, flags astir with color, regiments drawn up, waiting.

  Behind, and to her left, was the ridge of jagged hills leading up to the fortress. They shone bright gray in the lurid pre-storm light, and on the distant ramparts of black basalt, she could even see little figures moving about, repairing the damaged battlements, bringing more weapons to bear, or simply watching.

  And it was about then that Lyra felt the first distant lurch of nausea, pain, and fear that was the unmistakable touch of the Specters.

  She knew what it was at once, though she’d never felt it before. And it told her two things: first, that she must have grown up enough now to become vulnerable to the Specters, and secondly, that Pan must be somewhere close by.

  "Will—Will—" she cried.

  He heard her and turned, knife in hand and eyes ablaze.

  But before he could speak, he gave a gasp, made a choking lurch, and clutched his breast, and she knew the same thing was happening to him.

  "Pan! Pan!" she cried, standing on tiptoe to look all around.

  Will was bending over, trying not to be sick. After a few moments the feeling passed away, as if their demons had escaped; but they were no nearer to finding them, and all around the air was full of gunshots, cries, voices crying in pain or terror, the distant yowk-yowk-yowk of cliff-ghasts circling overhead, the occasional whiz and thock of arrows, and then a new sound: the rising of the wind.

  Lyra felt it first on her cheeks, and then she saw the grass bending under it, and then she heard it in the hawthorns. The sky ahead was huge with storm: all the whiteness had gone from the thunderheads, and they rolled and swirled with sulphur yellow, sea green, smoke gray, oil black, a queasy churning miles high and as wide as the horizon.

  Behind her the sun was still shining, so that every grove and every single tree between her and the storm blazed ardent and vivid, little frail things defying the dark with leaf and twig and fruit and flower.

  And through it all went the two no-longer-quite-children, seeing the Specters almost clearly now. The wind was snapping at Will�
�s eyes and lashing Lyra’s hair across her face, and it should have been able to blow the Specters away; but the things drifted straight down through it toward the ground. Boy and girl, hand in hand, picked their way over the dead and the wounded, Lyra calling for her daemon, Will alert in every sense for his.

  And now the sky was laced with lightning, and then the first almighty crack of thunder hit their eardrums like an ax. Lyra put her hands to her head, and Will nearly stumbled, as if driven downward by the sound. They clung to each other and looked up, and saw a sight no one had ever seen before in any of the millions of worlds.

  Witches, Ruta Skadi’s clan, and Reina Miti’s, and half a dozen others, every single witch carrying a torch of flaring pitch pine dipped in bitumen, were streaming over the fortress from the east, from the last of the clear sky, and flying straight toward the storm.

  Those on the ground could hear the roar and crackle as the volatile hydrocarbons flamed high above. A few Specters still remained in the upper airs, and some witches flew into them unseeing, to cry out and tumble blazing to the ground; but most of the pallid things had reached the earth by this time, and the great flight of witches streamed like a river of fire into the heart of the storm.

  A flight of angels, armed with spears and swords, had emerged from the Clouded Mountain to meet the witches head-on. They had the wind behind them, and they sped forward faster than arrows; but the witches were equal to that, and the first ones soared up high and then dived into the ranks of the angels, lashing to left and right with their flaring torches. Angel after angel, outlined in fire, their wings ablaze, tumbled screaming from the air.

  And then the first great drops of rain came down. If the commander in the storm clouds meant to douse the witch fires, he was disappointed; the pitch pine and the bitumen blazed defiance at it, spitting and hissing more loudly as more rain splashed into them. The raindrops hit the ground as if they’d been hurled in malice, breaking and splashing up into the air. Within a minute Lyra and Will were both soaked to the skin and shaking with cold, and the rain stung their heads and arms like tiny stones.