Thank you, yes," said the Lady. "Balthamos, please stay with me. Stay close and warn me of any danger. I need you." Lord Asriel seized a great atlas from the map chest and flung it open, looking for the pages that showed the Himalaya. "Balthamos," he whispered, and the angel daemon flew to his shoulder as a bright-eyed small bird with red wings. "Keep close to me, and watch that monkey." Behind the little boy she could see more ghosts, dozens, hundreds, their heads crowded together, peering close and listening to every word. I help, Mary said. We make again. Cautiously she began to climb, peering forward, ignoring the instruments and flying by sight and by instinct. Her daemon leapt from one side of the little glass cabin to the other, looking ahead, above, to the left and right, and calling to her constantly. The lightning, great sheets and lances of brilliance, flared and cracked above and around the machine. Through it all she flew in the little aircraft, gaining height little by little, and always moving on toward the cloud-hung palace. "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." Ama was doing the same, and her owl-eyed daemon was peering this way and that; but Lyra was not at this end of the cave. There was no doubt about it. "Will, please...” said Lyra, gasping. "I know it'll work." Lyra felt herself strengthened by hearing this, and that was really the Lady's intention. And so they toiled on, with painful effort. They moved off the wharf, keeping close together, and made their way to the wall. Gigantic stone blocks, green with ancient slime, rose higher into the mist than they could see. And now that they were closer, they could hear the sound of cries behind it, though whether they were human voices crying was impossible to tell: high, mournful shrieks and wails that hung in the air like the drifting filaments of a jellyfish, causing pain wherever they touched. "I did as you told me," she said. "I made a program, that's a set of instructions, to let the Shadows talk to me through the computer. They told me what to do. They said they were angels, and, well..." And Tialys and Salmakia, cruising above on their tireless dragonflies, and looking all around as they flew, eventually noticed a new kind of movement. Some way off there was a little gyration of activity. Skimming down closer, they found themselves ignored, for the first time, because something more interesting was gripping the minds of all the ghosts. They were talking excitedly in their near-silent whispers, they were pointing, they were urging someone forward. "But then we wouldn't have been able to build it. No one could if they put themselves first. We have to be all those difficult things like cheerful and kind and curious and patient, and we've got to study and think and work hard, all of us, in all our different worlds, and then we'll build..." So he tried it now, summoning an image of his mother's face as he'd last seen her, fearful and distracted in Mrs. Cooper's little hallway. It took her most of a day to find the bear-king. She saw him among the rocks off the northern edge of the island, swimming fast after a walrus. It was harder for bears to kill in the water: when the land was covered in ice and the great sea-mammals had to come up to breathe, the bears had the advantage of camouflage and their prey was out of its element. That was how things should be. "Would you like some food?" And then her absorption truly began. Watching the bear with superstitious awe, Ama scrambled up beside the little waterfall and stood shyly on the rocks. Kulang became a butterfly and settled for a moment on her cheek, but left it to flutter around the other daemon, who sat still on the boy's hand. "And how long do you think this expedition will take?" said the Chevalier. Will had been looking at him, eager to see this old companion of Lyra's; but now his eyes went right past Lee to look at the ghost beside him. Lyra saw at once who it was, and marveled at this grown-up vision of Will, the same jutting jaw, the same way of holding his head. 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. "Your death tells you?" said Lyra.