His Dark Materials Omnibus (111 page)

Will rubbed his aching head with both hands.

“The woman looked at me and I thought she had the face of my mother,” he said, trying to recollect the experience with all the honesty he had. “And the knife came up against something it couldn’t cut, and because my mind was pushing it through and forcing it back both at the same time, it snapped. That’s what I think. The woman knew what she was doing, I’m sure. She’s very clever.”

“When you talk of the knife, you talk of your mother and father.”

“Do I? Yes … I suppose I do.”

“What are you going to do with it?”

“I don’t know.”

Suddenly Iorek lunged at Will and cuffed him hard with his left paw: so hard that Will fell half-stunned into the snow and tumbled over and over until he ended some way down the slope with his head ringing.

Iorek came down slowly to where Will was struggling up, and said, “Answer me truthfully.”

Will was tempted to say, “You wouldn’t have done that if I’d had the knife
in my hand.” But he knew that Iorek knew that, and knew that he knew it, and that it would be discourteous and stupid to say it; but he was tempted, all the same.

He held his tongue until he was standing upright, facing Iorek directly.

“I said I don’t know,” he said, trying hard to keep his voice calm, “because I haven’t looked clearly at what it is that I’m going to do. At what it means. It frightens me. And it frightens Lyra, too. Anyway, I agreed as soon as I heard what she said.”

“And what was that?”

“We want to go down to the land of the dead and talk to the ghost of Lyra’s friend Roger, the one who got killed on Svalbard. And if there really is a world of the dead, then my father will be there, too, and if we can talk to ghosts, I want to talk to him.

“But I’m divided, I’m pulled apart, because also I want to go back and look after my mother, because I
could
, and also the angel Balthamos told me I should go to Lord Asriel and offer the knife to him, and I think maybe he was right as well …”

“He fled,” said the bear.

“He wasn’t a warrior. He did as much as he could, and then he couldn’t do any more. He wasn’t the only one to be afraid; I’m afraid, too. So I have to think it through. Maybe sometimes we don’t do the right thing because the wrong thing looks more dangerous, and we don’t want to look scared, so we go and do the wrong thing just because it’s dangerous. We’re more concerned with not looking scared than with judging right. It’s very hard. That’s why I didn’t answer you.”

“I see,” said the bear.

They stood in silence for what felt like a long time, especially to Will, who had little protection from the bitter cold. But Iorek hadn’t finished yet, and Will was still weak and dizzy from the blow, and didn’t quite trust his feet, so they stayed where they were.

“Well, I have compromised myself in many ways,” said the bear-king. “It may be that in helping you I have brought final destruction on my kingdom. And it may be that I have not, and that destruction was coming anyway; maybe I have held it off. So I am troubled, having to do un-bearlike deeds and speculate and doubt like a human.

“And I shall tell you one thing. You know it already, but you don’t want to, which is why I tell you openly, so that you don’t mistake it. If you want to succeed
in this task, you must no longer think about your mother. You must put her aside. If your mind is divided, the knife will break.

“Now I’m going to say farewell to Lyra. You must wait in the cave; those two spies will not let you out of their sight, and I do not want them listening when I speak to her.”

Will had no words, though his breast and his throat were full. He managed to say, “Thank you, Iorek Byrnison,” but that was all he could say.

He walked with Iorek up the slope toward the cave, where the fire glow still shone warmly in the vast surrounding dark.

There Iorek carried out the last process in the mending of the subtle knife. He laid it among the brighter cinders until the blade was glowing, and Will and Lyra saw a hundred colors swirling in the smoky depths of the metal, and when he judged the moment was right, Iorek told Will to take it and plunge it directly into the snow that had drifted outside.

The rosewood handle was charred and scorched, but Will wrapped his hand in several folds of a shirt and did as Iorek told him. In the hiss and flare of steam, he felt the atoms finally settle together, and he knew that the knife was as keen as before, the point as infinitely rare.

But it did look different. It was shorter, and much less elegant, and there was a dull silver surface over each of the joins. It looked ugly now; it looked like what it was, wounded.

When it was cool enough, he packed it away in the rucksack and sat, ignoring the spies, to wait for Lyra to come back.

Iorek had taken her a little farther up the slope, to a point out of sight of the cave, and there he had let her sit cradled in the shelter of his great arms, with Pantalaimon nestling mouse-formed at her breast. Iorek bent his head over her and nuzzled at her scorched and smoky hands. Without a word he began to lick them clean; his tongue was soothing on the burns, and she felt as safe as she had ever felt in her life.

But when her hands were free of soot and dirt, Iorek spoke. She felt his voice vibrate against her back.

“Lyra Silvertongue, what is this plan to visit the dead?”

“It came to me in a dream, Iorek. I saw Roger’s ghost, and I knew he was calling to me … You remember Roger. Well, after we left you, he was killed, and it was my fault, at least I felt it was. And I think I should just finish what I began, that’s all: I should go and say sorry, and if I can, I should rescue him from there. If Will can open a way to the world of the dead, then we must do it.”

“Can is not the same as must.”

“But if you must and you can, then there’s no excuse.”

“While you are alive, your business is with life.”

“No, Iorek,” she said gently, “our business is to keep promises, no matter how difficult they are. You know, secretly, I’m deadly scared. And I wish I’d never had that dream, and I wish Will hadn’t thought of using the knife to go there. But we did, so we can’t get out of it.”

Lyra felt Pantalaimon trembling and stroked him with her sore hands.

“We don’t know how to get there, though,” she went on. “We won’t know anything till we try. What are
you
going to do, Iorek?”

“I’m going back north, with my people. We can’t live in the mountains. Even the snow is different. I thought we could live here, but we can live more easily in the sea, even if it is warm. That was worth learning. And besides, I think we will be needed. I can feel war, Lyra Silvertongue; I can smell it; I can hear it. I spoke to Serafina Pekkala before I came this way, and she told me she was going to Lord Faa and the gyptians. If there is war, we shall be needed.”

Lyra sat up, excited at hearing the names of her old friends. But Iorek hadn’t finished. He went on:

“If you do not find a way out of the world of the dead, we shall not meet again, because I have no ghost. My body will remain on the earth, and then become part of it. But if it turns out that you and I both survive, then you will always be a welcome and honored visitor to Svalbard; and the same is true of Will. Has he told you what happened when we met?”

“No,” said Lyra, “except that it was by a river.”

“He outfaced me. I thought no one could ever do that, but this half-grown boy was too daring for me, and too clever. I am not happy that you should do what you plan, but there is no one I would trust to go with you except that boy. You are worthy of each other. Go well, Lyra Silvertongue, my dear friend.”

She reached up and put her arms around his neck, and pressed her face into his fur, unable to speak.

After a minute he stood up gently and disengaged her arms, and then he turned and walked silently away into the dark. Lyra thought his outline was lost almost at once against the pallor of the snow-covered ground, but it might have been that her eyes were full of tears.

When Will heard her footsteps on the path, he looked at the spies and said, “Don’t you move. Look—here’s the knife—I’m not going to use it. Stay here.”

He went outside and found Lyra standing still, weeping, with Pantalaimon as a wolf raising his face to the black sky. She was quite silent. The only light came from the pale reflection in the snowbank of the remains of the fire, and that, in turn, was reflected from her wet cheeks, and her tears found their own reflection in Will’s eyes, and so those photons wove the two children together in a silent web.

“I love him so much, Will!” she managed to whisper shakily. “And he looked old! He looked hungry and old and sad … Is it all coming onto us now, Will? We can’t rely on anyone else now, can we … It’s just us. But we en’t old enough yet. We’re only young … We’re
too
young … If poor Mr. Scoresby’s dead and Iorek’s old … It’s all coming onto us, what’s got to be done.”

“We can do it,” he said. “I’m not going to look back anymore. We can do it. But we’ve got to sleep now, and if we stay in this world, those gyropter things might come, the ones the spies sent for … I’m going to cut through now and we’ll find another world to sleep in, and if the spies come with us, that’s too bad; we’ll have to get rid of them another time.”

“Yes,” she said, and sniffed and wiped the back of her hand across her nose and rubbed her eyes with both palms. “Let’s do that. You sure the knife will work? You tested it?”

“I know it’ll work.”

With Pantalaimon tiger-formed to deter the spies, they hoped, Will and Lyra went back and picked up their rucksacks.

“What are you doing?” said Salmakia.

“Going into another world,” said Will, taking out the knife. It felt like being whole again; he hadn’t realized how much he loved it.

“But you must wait for Lord Asriel’s gyropters,” said Tialys, his voice hard.

“We’re not going to,” said Will. “If you come near the knife, I’ll kill you. Come through with us if you must, but you can’t make us stay here. We’re leaving.”

“You lied!”

“No,” said Lyra, “I lied. Will doesn’t lie. You didn’t think of that.”

“But where are you going?”

Will didn’t answer. He felt forward in the dim air and cut an opening.

Salmakia said, “This is a mistake. You should realize that, and listen to us. You haven’t thought—”

“Yes, we have,” said Will, “we’ve thought hard, and we’ll tell you what we’ve thought tomorrow. You can come where we’re going, or you can go back to Lord Asriel.”

The window opened onto the world into which he had escaped with Baruch and Balthamos, and where he’d slept safely: the warm endless beach with the fernlike trees behind the dunes. He said:

“Here—we’ll sleep here—this’ll do.”

He let them through and closed it behind them at once. While he and Lyra lay down where they were, exhausted, the Lady Salmakia kept watch, and the Chevalier opened his lodestone resonator and began to play a message into the dark.

“My
child!
My
daughter!
Where is she? What have you done? My Lyra—you’d do better to tear the fibers from my heart—she was safe with me,
safe
, and now where is she?”

Mrs. Coulter’s cry resounded through the little chamber at the top of the adamant tower. She was bound to a chair, her hair disheveled, her clothing torn, her eyes wild; and her monkey dæmon thrashed and struggled on the floor in the coils of a silver chain.

Lord Asriel sat nearby, scribbling on a piece of paper, taking no notice. An orderly stood beside him, glancing nervously at the woman. When Lord Asriel handed him the paper, he saluted and hurried out, his terrier dæmon close at his heels with her tail tucked low.

Lord Asriel turned to Mrs. Coulter.

“Lyra? Frankly, I don’t care,” he said, his voice quiet and hoarse. “The wretched child should have stayed where she was put, and done what she was told. I can’t waste any more time or resources on her; if she refuses to be helped, let her deal with the consequences.”

“You don’t mean that, Asriel, or you wouldn’t have—”

“I mean every word of it. The fuss she’s caused is out of all proportion to her merits. An ordinary English girl, not very clever—”

“She is!” said Mrs. Coulter.

“All right; bright but not intellectual; impulsive, dishonest, greedy—”

“Brave, generous, loving.”

“A perfectly ordinary child, distinguished by nothing—”

“Perfectly ordinary? Lyra? She’s unique. Think of what she’s done already. Dislike her if you will, Asriel, but don’t you dare patronize your daughter. And she was safe with me, until—”

“You’re right,” he said, getting up. “She
is
unique. To have tamed and softened you—that’s no everyday feat. She’s drawn your poison, Marisa. She’s
taken your teeth out. Your fire’s been quenched in a drizzle of sentimental piety. Who would have thought it? The pitiless agent of the Church, the fanatical persecutor of children, the inventor of hideous machines to slice them apart and look in their terrified little beings for any evidence of
sin
—and along comes a foulmouthed, ignorant little brat with dirty fingernails, and you cluck and settle your feathers over her like a hen. Well, I admit: the child must have some gift I’ve never seen myself. But if all it does is turn you into a doting mother, it’s a pretty thin, drab, puny little gift. And now you might as well be quiet. I’ve asked my chief commanders to come in for an urgent conference, and if you can’t control your noise, I’ll have you gagged.”