They must be good at listening and hiding. So maybe we better not mention it at all. We know where we're going. So we'll just go and not talk about it, and they'll have to put up with it and come along." The daemons flew back down now, and changed again, and came toward them over the soft sand. Lyra sat up to greet them, and Will marveled at the way he could instantly tell which daemon was which, never mind what form they had. Pantalaimon was now an animal whose name he couldn't quite find: like a large and powerful ferret, red-gold in color, lithe and sinuous and full of grace. Kirjava was a cat again. But she was a cat of no ordinary size, and her fur was lustrous and rich, with a thousand different glints and shades of ink black, shadow gray, the blue of a deep lake under a noon sky, mist-lavender-moonlight-fog... To see the meaning of the word subtlety, you had only to look at her fur. Iorek was watching closely, his paw held ready to snatch the pieces out. After a few moments the metal changed again, and the surface became shiny and glistening, and sparks just like those from a firework sprayed up from it. "The knife was a human invention." Father Gomez nodded. His daemon, a large and iridescent green-backed beetle, clicked her wing cases. "It said some things I didn't understand then and I still don't understand now. It said the knife would be the death of Dust, but then it said it was the only way to keep Dust alive. I didn't understand it, Will. But it said again it was dangerous, it kept saying that. It said if we, you know, what I thought...” "Mr. Scoresby?" said Lyra. "We can't see anything... What happened?" "Why ever not?" "Yes, sir," she said humbly. And she picked him up carefully, avoiding his spurs, and took him outside into the dark, where a loose piece of corrugated iron roofing was banging in the cold wind with a melancholy sound. The ghost girl spoke, but in her thin, pale voice, it was only a whisper. "I think that's what they do. I just don't know. I'll hate it." The something was a man. "I wish we could look behind," Lyra said when they were a few hundred yards away. "Here is all we know about the woman," he said, "and the world she comes from, and the place she was last seen. Read it well, my dear Luis, and go with my blessing." The people watching looked at one another in bewilderment, and those who could understand translated for the others. There came a cry. A soldier dropped his rifle and stumbled forward, falling to the ground, kicking and thrashing and groaning with pain. In response the President looked up to the sky, put his hands to his mouth, and uttered a piercing yell. "She's growed up, John," he said. "Remember that little girl we took to the north lands? Look at her now, eh! Lyra, my dear, if I had the tongue of an angel, I couldn't tell you how glad I am to set eyes on you again." At the western end of a range of saw-toothed mountains, on a peak that commanded wide views of the plain below and the valleys behind, a fortress of basalt seemed to grow out of the mountain as if some volcano had thrust it up a million years ago. "I swear, Metatron, her daemon is in my power. Please, great Regent, hide yourself a little, my eyes are dazzled..." Will and Lyra exchanged a glance to confirm it.