The effect on the harpy was immediate. Another scream shattered the silence, much louder than before, and she beat her dark wings so hard that Will and Lyra both felt the wind and staggered. But she clung to the stone with her claws, and her face was suffused with dark red anger, and her hair stood out from her head like a crest of serpents. "The ghost of the boy's father is protecting both of them." The thought of one of those things falling on her was enough to make her take her rucksack and run out of the grove altogether. What were they? Seedpods? "Is it easy, hunting up in these mountains, Iorek?" she said. But among them all there were some he felt more easily than others, and, already knowing the answer, he cut one through to be sure: his own world again. "Where are you?" he said to the angel. The sun was warm now, and she was soon dry. She dressed in ,c Mary's loose shirt again and, seeing some flat stones by the bank, went to fetch her own clothes to wash them. But she found that someone had already done that: hers and Will's, too, were laid over the springy twigs of a fragrant bush, nearly dry. "If you're trying to stop us," he said, "then you'd better be ready to fight as well as scream. Because we're going through that door." It was his custom to sit on the table, and his manner to repel anything but the greatest courtesy with a haughty and malevolent tongue. He and his kind, the Gallivespians, had few of the qualities of good spies except, of course, their exceptional smallness: they were so proud and touchy that they would never have remained inconspicuous if they had been of Lord Asriel's size. If Mrs. Coulter saw his reaction, she didn't show it. She went on: "Look, Will, I don't know how you came to meet my daughter, and I don't know what you know already, and I certainly don't know if I can trust you; but equally, I'm tired of having to lie. So here it is: the truth. "You mean that man?" Matter loved Dust. It didn't want to see it go. That was the meaning of this night, and it was Mary's meaning, too. The spy captain was called Lord Roke. He was striking to look at: he was no taller than Lord Asriel's hand span, and as slender as a dragonfly, but the rest of Lord Asriel's captains treated him with profound respect, for he was armed with a Poisonous sting in the spurs on his heels. Lord Asriel climbed in beside her, and the snow leopard leapt in, too, the half-stunned monkey in her mouth. Lord Asriel took the controls and the craft sprang at once into the air. Through pain-dazed eyes Mrs. Coulter looked down at the mountain slope. Men were running here and there like ants; some lay dead, while others crawled brokenly over the rocks; the great cable from the generating station snaked down through the chaos, the only purposeful thing in sight, making its way to the glittering bomb, where the President's body lay crumpled inside the cage. But you knew they were coming, said Atal. "Quick work," said the Chevalier. "A hundred to one he doesn't tell them about his assassin, though." And then she heard a low thunder-like rumble, which was hard to locate until she saw a cloud of dust moving along one of the roads, toward the stand of trees, and toward her. It was about a mile away, but it wasn't moving slowly, and all of a sudden she felt afraid. Well, this was what it was going to be like. It wasn't going to get any easier. So Will let his mind relax and become disengaged, and just sat there with the knife held loosely until he was ready again. Brother Louis made for the tower, and when the President opened his door, Lord Roke darted through and made for the priedieu in the corner of the room. There he found a shadowy ledge where he crouched and listened. —