The attacker was still shouting in that ear-splitting voice: "Lord Regent! To me, to me!" So they drew up to the edge of the valley, where an outcrop of rock formed a sort of jetty, and disembarked. "You must be the witch," Mary whispered. "Tell her to return there. Move now, before the Swiss come." "Where d'you think she'll go? In search of the child?" Over the next few days Will learned why the bears were making this voyage into Central Asia, so far from their homeland. And no matter how she struggled, she could make no headway. The force that carried her out was as smooth and powerful as water pouring over a weir; the particles of Dust were streaming along as if they, too, were pouring over some invisible edge. "Tell us," he said. "Don't be afraid." She was shameless. She spoke quietly; she didn't declaim or raise her voice; and when a sob shook her, it was muffled almost into a hiccup, as if she were stifling her emotions for the sake of courtesy. Which made her barefaced lies all the more effective, Lord Asriel thought with disgust; she lied in the very marrow of her bones. "No, of course not," he said. "Why are you keeping Lyra here?" "Now I am going to offer you a little drink, Will Ivanovitch," he said. "You are young, so not very many glasses. But you are growing, and so you need to know some things, like the taste of vodka. Lydia Alexandrovna collected the berries last year, and I distilled the liquor, and here in the bottle is the result, the only place where Otyets Semyon Borisovitch and Lydia Alexandrovna lie together!" A blustery dawn was breaking over the basalt fortress as the intention craft flew in from the south. Mrs. Coulter, sore and heartsick, opened her eyes; she had not been asleep. She could see the angel Xaphania gliding above the landing ground, and then rising and wheeling up to the tower as the craft made for the ramparts. "That poison," Lyra said, turning back to the Gallivespians, "in your spurs, I mean, is it deadly? Because you stung my mother, Mrs. Coulter, didn't you? Will she die?" By this time Mrs. Coulter had emerged, much tidied, and all three commanders bowed to her; and if she was surprised at their appearance, she gave no sign, but inclined her head and sat down peaceably, holding the pinioned monkey in her arms. "Quiet," said Tialys. "Don't despair. Call the harpies back and make them listen to us." "That was for my ears, not yours." "Yes, you must listen," said Pantalaimon. "This is hard to explain." Lord Roke hauled the envelope out of the man's twitching hand with some difficulty, for it was half as big as he was, and set off in the shadows toward the room where Mrs. Coulter was asleep. "I'm going to ask the alethiometer," Lyra said. "That'll know! I don't know why I didn't think of it before." So they had language, and they had fire, and they had society. And about then she found an adjustment being made in her mind, as the word creatures became the word people. These beings weren't human, but they were people, she told herself; it's not them, they're us. Mrs. Coulter, watching and biting her lip, heard a rush of air and felt a heavy knock, not to her body, but to the tree. An arrow stuck there quivering less than a hand's breadth from her left arm. At once she rolled away, before the witch could shoot another, and tumbled down the slope toward the monkey. The ghosts who had come with them were hurrying toward the town, and from every direction came more of them, so many that they looked like the grains of sand that trickle toward the hole of an hourglass. The ghosts walked straight into the squalid confusion of the town, as if they knew exactly where they were going, and Lyra and Will were about to follow them; but then they were stopped. But she thought he looked so ill, with his face drawn in pain and with dark rings around his eyes, and his hand was shaking, and his fingers were bleeding again; he looked as sick as she felt. They couldn't go on much longer without their daemons. She felt her own ghost quail in her body, and hugged her arms tightly, aching for Pan. "King Iorek," he began, "my knife is broken...” Then he looked past the bear and said, "No, wait." He was pointing at the wall. "If you're listening," he went on more loudly, "come out and do it honestly. Don't spy on us." "No," said Kirjava forcefully. She smiled. Will very nearly smiled in response, because he was so unused to the sweetness and gentleness a woman could put into a smile, and it unsettled him. Moved by compassion for the state they were in, Mary first meant to embrace him as well as Lyra. But Mary was grown up, and Will was nearly grown, and she could see that that kind of response would have made a child of him, because while she might have embraced a child, she would never have done that to a man she didn't know; so she drew back mentally, wanting above all to honor this friend of Lyra's and not cause him to lose face. Behind him there were other figures, even more shadowy than he was, even more silent. They seemed to be of the same company and of the same kind, but they had no faces that were visible and no voices that spoke; and his voice never rose above a whisper, and his face was shaded and blurred like something half-forgotten. "Well," she said. "Well, we could do that!" She stopped. She was genuinely shocked. The African king halted beside her, thinking she was unwell, and indeed the light of the flaring sconce above her did throw ghastly shadows over her face. "Alone, yes. In hiding." The window looked strange in the dazzling air of the desert, giving onto the deep-shaded bush, a square of thick green vegetation hanging in the air like a painting. The Gallivespians wanted to look at it, and were astounded to see how it was just not there from the back, and how it only sprang into being when you came round from the side. And he knew that Lyra was doing the same, and that the tightness and strain in her smile were the signs of it. And then a voice above him said, "You all right, Sergeant?" "About ten of my paces away. To the right. A big man. I can see the keys in a bunch at his waist." "John Parry.