He drew a veil of cloud in front of himself. Now it was like looking at the sun through smoked glass, and her eyes could see him more clearly, though she still pretended to be dazzled by his face. He was exactly like a man in early middle age, tall, powerful, and commanding. Did he have wings? She could look at nothing else. Within a minute all the mulefa were ready to flee. The word love set his nerves ablaze. All his body thrilled with it, and he answered her in the same words, kissing her hot face over and over again, drinking in with adoration the scent of her body and her warm, honeyfragrant hair and her sweet, moist mouth that tasted of the little red fruit. The man was looking past them, into the dark, and then he came out and looked around further, as if there were someone missing. She sat nearby and called him softly. At the same moment a dim light outlined the door. Coulter had thrown her clothes. Would you get married? Excuse me for asking. To see what would happen, he stood up. Her heavy wings beat clumsily, and she only just made the turn. He could have reached out and slashed off her head with the knife. She stirred it briskly, counting in her head till five minutes had gone by. Then she took the pan off the stove and sat down to wait for the liquid to cool. Begin with the child. She sat down, wiping her cheeks with the palm of one hand and reaching for the rucksack with the other. She tucked the hair behind her ears in the swift movement he loved and took out the black velvet bundle. Ahead of him he could see a little farmhouse sheltered among vines, where a goat bleated and a spring trickled down through the gray rocks. There was an old man attending to some task beside the house, and an old woman leading the goat toward a stool and a bucket. He had never seen such astonishment on any faces, let alone those of people whose good opinion he valued. I have been following you. But now, as they looked at that strange flying machine, another idea struck even more forcibly, and she hugged the golden monkey with glee. It was a place of brilliant sunlight, never undappled. Sometimes the wetness in the clouds condensed into tiny drops half mist and half rain, which floated downward rather than fell, making a soft rustling patter among the millions of needles. Salmakia, come to my hand! People drew back and then peered around again, and more cries rose into the smoky air. Lyra was watching the. The first ghost girl was saying something in that lost little whisper. She took one dark blond curl and put it in a little gold locket she had around her own neck. But the woman held it to her lips first. Oh, this was strange. Will they stop the sraf leaving? It was enough to strike their hearts ablaze with fear, for it lit up what lay to their left, the place into which it was all falling, or flowing, like a river over the edge of a waterfall.
[показать]They must be somewhere! He helped her up, and for the first time they looked around at the land where the ghosts were. Coulter arrived, and without waiting to let her rest, he moved on across the great hall, where occasionally a bright figure would sweep through the air or alight on the floor for a brief snatched word with him. The air was dense and warm. The bear grunted and closed his eyes. Will looked around for the angel and saw his shape outlined in droplets of mist in the late afternoon light. Coulter had told her. Sorcerers existed, beyond a doubt, and it was only too likely that they would cast sleeping spells, and that a mother would care for her daughter in that fierce and tender way. Ama conceived an admiration amounting almost to worship for the beautiful woman in the cave and her enchanted daughter. How can you see him? Coulter wondered what he intended to do, now that his victim had escaped. It was so fixed and intense that he looked more like a mask than a man. The bomb would work whether or not she was part of it. Angels wish they had bodies. It would be sort of ecstasy for them to have our flesh and our senses. In the world of the dead. She looked at the seedpod again. In the center there was a slight glistening, and as she touched it again, she felt it slide easily under her fingers. It was exuding a kind of oil. Something was groaning, a deep, somber note like an organ. And above that, the sound of cracking, snapping and breaking, and the squeal and scream of wood on wood. In the intense silence a drop of sweat fell from his chin to the concrete floor, and both men heard it distinctly. Will put his hand on hers. A new mood had taken hold of him, and he felt resolute and peaceful. All his senses seemed to be clarified, so that he was aware of the tiniest insects drifting in the sun shafts and the rustle of every leaf and the movement of the clouds above, even though his eyes never left the cave mouth. Her lizard daemon acquired a ruff and raised it slowly around his neck. We had a task under the old dispensation. We had a place and a duty. Hated and feared, hut honored, too. What will happen to our honor now? Why should the ghosts take any notice of us, if they can simply walk out into the world again? We have our pride, and you should not let that be dispensed with. We need an honorable place! We need a duty and a task to do, one that will bring us the respect we deserve! The evening light slanted through the silvery leaves and the air was full of the noise of crickets and cicadas. No kings, no bishops, no priests. And we want no part of it. This world is different. Why should they take any notice of that? They want to kill us all anyway. Its billions of particles were like the stars of every galaxy in the sky, and every one of them was a little fragment of conscious thought. It was a melancholy light to see by. I mean there was all kinds of other people to help, like the gyptians and the witches. Atal mentioned a grove not far from a hot spring. Mary had been there only three days before, and nothing had seemed wrong. The two figures were silent for several seconds. Not in the vast majority of cases.
[показать]She ran the last few yards, afraid they had gone forever, but there was the chair the woman sat in, and the cooking equipment, and everything else. There was no sign of human life, and the chill in the air was increasing by the minute as the light failed. But he had hardly begun to touch it when he stopped. There is a knife that can cut openings between the worlds, as well as anything in them. Its power is unlimited, but only in the hands of the one who knows how to use it. And that person is a boy. And then there was the melting of the ice. Exploring those mountains was j his next task. Fine vapors escape from whatever is doing the living. If only we could stay here like this, and the world could stop turning, and everyone else could fall into a sleep. She turned the alethiometer over and over, her fingers stroking the heavy gold and the smooth crystal and the knurled wheels they knew so well. But he never told me why. It lay across the path, trying to move out of the way and looking at them as if it knew they meant to hurt it. His thumb claw opposed the four finger claws, letting him manipulate objects as skillfully as a human, and now he turned the knife this way and that, bringing it closely to his eyes, holding it to catch the light, testing the edge, the steel edge, on a piece of scrap iron. Cooper sat on the bunk. He licked his dry lips and waited to see what new discomfort was coming. The woman had been preparing a dish of stew, and she peeled a couple of potatoes and cut them into it to make it go farther, urging her husband to offer the travelers some other refreshment while it cooked. 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. What does he look like? He lifted her in his arms and carried her to the craft, ignoring the gunfire, the billowing smoke, the cries of alarm and confusion. Then she realized what that meant. Loading her rucksack again, she made her way down onto the coarse, rich grass of the prairie, aiming for the nearest stand of trees, four or five miles away. It was a good thing we did. Look at the little one. And we kept on talking and then there was a birthday cake. He found himself in a big square kitchen, an oldfashioned place with white china on a wooden dresser, and a scrubbed pine table, and a hearth where a black kettle stood cold. Next door there was a pantry, with two shelves full of apples that filled the whole room with fragrance. The silence was oppressive. On the horizon there was the blue gleam of the sea. A broad, slowmoving river wound through rich grassland in the middle distance, and at the foot of the long slope, among copses of small trees and rows of vegetables, stood a village of thatched houses. More creatures like these moved about among the houses, or tended crops, or worked among the trees. The floodlights swung in the wind, so that nothing seemed steady, not even the black rocks of the mountainside. Collect it carefully, every single hair. Then open another world, any will do, and put the hair through into it, and then close it again. Do it now, at once. The same emptiness there is down in the abyss. No one knew, because the edge was too fine to see. Their voices were no louder than dry leaves falling. As soon as the greetings were over, she began to speak. What about my vows? And then the ground began to shake. From somewhere very deep came a growling, grinding noise, as if the whole center of the earth were turning on itself like a vast millwheel, and little fragments of stone began to fall from the roof of the tunnel. The ground lurched suddenly to one side.
[показать]She indicated one of the small children playing in the long grass, leaping clumsily after grasshoppers, suddenly stopping to examine a leaf, falling over, scrambling up again to rush and tell his mother something, being distracted again by a piece of stick, trying to pick it up, finding ants on his trunk and hooting with agitation. But unlike theirs it was full of little swirling currents of intention that eddied and broke off and drifted about, to disappear as new ones were born. The first unit will fight its way into the cave and kill the child, removing her head so as to prove her death. If possible, they will also capture the woman, though if that is impossible, they are to kill her. All night long, it seemed, his mother had sat on his bed in the dark, singing nursery rhymes, telling him stories, and as long as her dear voice was there, he knew he was safe. Watching carefully upward, she ventured under the canopy again to look at the nearest of the fallen objects. She pulled it upright and rolled it out of the grove, and then laid it on the grass to look at it more closely. Mary felt her friends tense with alarm all around her as they watched from the crest of the low hill and saw pod after pod hurled to the ground, kicked, rasped by the claws on the mighty legs, but of course no harm came to them from that. What worried the mulefa was that several of them were pushed and shoved and nudged toward the water, where they floated heavily downstream toward the sea. Ama could smell the astringent flavors as they drifted out with the steam. Coulter looked at him with an expression of mild and virtuous concern. He was certain that no one else could see the glitter of sly triumph in the depths of her beautiful eyes. Ama wiped her eyes, because the game was canceled by the surprise her daemon was feeling. She could see every separate hair on his head. What have you done with it? She could be thirty, maybe. A bird of the mountains. Every time she closed her eyes, something made her sway and lurch as if she were at the brink of a precipice, and she snapped awake, tense with fear. So they set off, and the numberless millions of ghosts began to follow them. Behind them, too far back for the children to see, other inhabitants of the world of the dead had heard what was happening and were coming to join the great march. He climbed with his daemon down toward the abyss, and as they went, they gradually began to see what was happening along the far side of the gulf, hundreds of yards away in the gloom. The chime goes unheard. She left the clothes on the bank and slipped into the river. She swam hard to keep warm, and then came out and huddled on the bank, shivering. Pan would help dry her, normally. Was he a fish, laughing at her from under the water? Or a beetle, creeping into the clothes to tickle her, or a bird? Will is his name. Metatron knows we have his secret. They caught me alone on the borders of your world. I was his brother. Enoch had many wives. He was a lover of the flesh. Three big explosions almost immediately afterward showed that it had found the ammunition, and the gunners leapt away, letting the barrel swing down low.
[показать]Then both the daemons bristled and looked up. Will and Lyra sensed it, too, and followed their eyes to the sky. A light was moving toward them: a light with wings. "Ah!" she cried, and reached for Serafina's arm to steady herself, for there on the iron fence around the parkland sat a bird: glossy black, with red legs and a curved yellow bill: an Alpine chough, just as Serafina had described. It, he, was only a foot or two away, watching her with his head slightly cocked, for all the world as though he was amused. "Yes, it did." The thing was a great bird the size of a vulture, with the face and breasts of a woman. Will had seen pictures of creatures like her, and the word harpy came to mind as soon as he saw her clearly. Her face was smooth and unwrinkled, but aged beyond even the age of the witches: she had seen thousands of years pass, and the cruelty and misery of all of them had formed the hateful expression on her features. But as the travelers saw her more clearly, she became even more repulsive. Her eye sockets were clotted with filthy slime, and the redness of her lips was caked and crusted as if she had vomited ancient blood again and again. Her matted, filthy black hair hung down to her shoulders; her jagged claws gripped the stone fiercely; her powerful dark wings were folded along her back; and a drift of putrescent stink wafted from her every time she moved. His words fell into Lyra's mind like heavy stones, and Will, too, felt the deadly weight of them. "D'you think they had daemons in this world?" said Will. He talked to the captain and the crew, out of politeness, but lacking Lyra's instant ease with strangers, he found it difficult to think of much to say; and in any case they were little interested in him. This was only a job, and when it was over they would leave without a backward glance, and besides, they didn't much like the bears, for all their gold. Will was a foreigner, and as long as he paid for his food, they cared little what he did. Besides, there was that strange daemon of his, which seemed so like a witch's: sometimes it was there, and sometimes it seemed to have vanished. Superstitious, like many sailors, they were happy to leave him alone. Atal willingly let her run her fingers around the wheel holes again, and watched curiously as Mary coated one of the pieces with a film of the clear, sweet substance. "How many worlds can you enter with the knife?" said Tialys. "But where are you going?" The form of the angel seemed to condense and swirl into a little vortex in midair, and then a blackbird swooped down onto the grass at Will's feet. "Will," said Lyra, "what d'you think the harpies will do when we let the ghosts out?" "Open it wider," said Lee Scoresby. "Let us out!" "But they might still be after you," she said. "Those men." "Yeah. You're right. Course we could." "She is in the hands of Mrs. Coulter," said Fra Pavel. "And they are in the Himalaya. So far, that is all I have been able to tell. I shall go at once and ask for a more precise location, and as soon as I have it, I shall tell the Court; but..." The sun was high in the sky when they began to slow down. "We must talk to Lyra about this," said Farder Coram, "and learn how it came about and what it means." They were fishing at the time, but the river was low and the fish must have been elsewhere, so they let the net lie across the water and sat on the grassy bank and talked, until Mary saw the dry branch, which had a smooth white surface. She burned the design, a simple daisy, into the wood, and delighted Atal; but as the thin line of smoke wafted up from the spot where the focused sunlight touched the wood, Mary thought: If this became fossilized, and a scientist in ten million years found it, they could still find Shadows around it, because I've worked on it. Will did so. The priest was an immense, gray-bearded man, wearing a black cassock, with a crow daemon on his shoulder. His restless eyes moved over Will's face and body, taking everything in. He beckoned. And he caught the gun, but then Mrs. Coulter fell still, and Will became aware of a strange stalemate. Suddenly, for no reason Will could see, both angels looked up and in the same direction. He followed their gaze, but saw nothing. He had seen his cat do this once: look up alert from her half-sleep and watch something or someone invisible come into the room and walk across. That had made his hair stand up, and so did this. When they did come face to face, it happened quite suddenly. In among the press of all the ghosts, there he was, his familiar features wan but his expression as full of delight as a ghost could be. He rushed to embrace her. "It would be merciful to kill it," said Tialys. "How do you know?" said Lyra. "It might still like
We used to play hide-and-seek, she'd change like a chameleon and I couldn't see her at all, she was ever so good...” "Specters!" said John Parry. "That's the reason." "No. I think the roads made them, in a way," Mary said. "I mean they'd never have developed the use of the wheels if there hadn't been plenty of hard, flat surfaces to use them on. I think they're lava-flows from ancient volcanoes. "This way," he said, "follow me. Come away from the wood. I want to talk to you, and this is the wrong place." If Iorek wondered how any such tiny beings could cause him harm, he didn't show it; not only was his expression naturally hard to read, but he had his courtesy, too, and the Lady had spoken graciously enough. "The edge!" roared Iorek. "Hold the edge in line!" He had come a long way, and at one point in his journey, he had found himself swimming into that other world. He noticed the change in the taste of the water and the temperature of the air, but the air was still good to breathe, and the water still held his body up, so he swam on, and now he had left the sea behind and he was nearly at the place Serafina Pekkala had described. He cast around, his black eyes gazing up at the sun-shimmering rocks and the wall of limestone crags above him. Everyone waited. The man's nervousness was soothed a little by her humble tone, and the spies had the good sense to look modest and harmless. After a pause the man said: Mrs. Coulter was stunned for a second, and her hands came loose. At once the angel reared up again, beating his one free wing to fling off the golden monkey; but Lord Asriel's arms were firm around him still, and in fact the man had a better grip now there wasn't so much to enclose. Lord Asriel set himself to crushing the breath out of Metatron, grinding his ribs together, and trying to ignore the savage blows that were landing on his skull and his neck. It was a tiny woman, no bigger than Lyra's hand, and the monkey was already pulling and pulling at one of her arms so that she cried out in pain. Ama knew he wouldn't stop till he'd torn it off, but Will leapt forward as he saw the pistol fall from Mrs. Coulter's hand. She was standing on a rock three or four paces away from Will and Lyra, distinct and brilliant in the moonlight. Her little voice was perfectly clear and low, her expression confident. She wore a loose skirt of some silver material and a sleeveless top of green, and her spurred feet were bare, like the man's. His costume was similarly colored, but his sleeves were long and his wide trousers reached to midcalf. Both of them looked strong, capable, ruthless, and proud. you're Lyra." Then Lyra took one of those little red fruits. With a fast-beating heart, she turned to him and said, "Will..." And we hope you can do so soon, or we shall all die. He was so close to success now that for the first time he found himself speculating on what he would do afterward, and whether he would please the Kingdom of Heaven more by going back to Geneva or staying to evangelize this world. The first thing to do here would be to convince the four-legged creatures, who seemed to have the rudiments of reason, that their habit of riding on wheels was abominable and Satanic, and contrary to the will of God. Break them of that, and salvation would follow. "Safe," she said, looking away. "And they washed our clothes, too, or Dr. Malone did. I'll get yours. They're nearly dry..." Ama wished she could shut her ears: the gulping, crying, coughing, sobbing, pleading, retching was almost too much to hear. But little by little it died away, and only a shaky sob or two came from the girl, who was now sinking once more into sleep, enchanted sleep? Poisoned sleep! Drugged, deceitful sleep! Ama saw a streak of white materialize at the girl's throat as her daemon effortfully changed into a long, sinuous, snowy-furred creature with brilliant black eyes and black-tipped tail, and laid himself alongside her neck. He kissed her, saying, "Yes. Lyra will be safe, and the Kingdom will be powerless against her. Call him now, Marisa, my love." Then she stepped down into the boat. She was so light that it barely rocked at all. She sat beside Will, and her eyes never left Pantalaimon, who stood trembling at the shore end of the jetty; but as the boatman let go of the iron ring and swung his oars out to pull the boat away, the little dog daemon trotted helplessly out to the very end, his claws clicking softly on the soft planks, and stood watching, just watching, as the boat drew away and the jetty faded and vanished in the mist. When they began to move up through the marshes to the village, the mulefa saw how hard it was for Farder Coram to walk, and at once they offered to carry him. He accepted gratefully, and so it was that they came to the gathering ground, where Will and Lyra
There they prized it open and took out all the seeds, flat pale ovals as big as Mary's little fingernail, and examined each one carefully. They explained that the seedpods needed the constant pounding they got on the hard roads if they were to crack at all, and also that the seeds were difficult to germinate. Without the mulefa's attention, the trees would all die. Pan slipped down to the bench and curled up on her lap. They were safe together in the dark, she and her daemon and their secrets. Somewhere in this sleeping city were the books that would tell her how to read the alethiometer again, and the kindly and learned woman who was going to teach her, and the girls at the school, who knew so much more than she did. The moon was brilliant, the path a track of scumbled footprints in the snow, the air cutting and cold. Both of them felt brisk and hopeful and alive. They didn't talk till they were well away from the cave. "Anku," he said, and again they laughed, in high spirits. For the first time since coming into her presence, Will looked at the monkey daemon. His fur was long and lustrous, each hair seeming to be made of pure gold, much finer than a human's, and his little face and hands were black. Will had last seen that face, contorted with hate, on the evening when he and Lyra stole the alethiometer back from Sir Charles Latrom in the house in Oxford. The monkey had tried to tear at him with his teeth until Will had slashed left-right with the knife, forcing the daemon backward, so he could close the window and shut them away in a different world. Will thought that nothing on earth would make him turn his back on that monkey now. Mary found it very hard to say good-bye to Atal and the other mulefa. Before she boarded the ship, they gave her a gift: a lacquer phial containing some of the wheel tree oil, and most precious of all, a little bag of seeds. Suddenly they all heard a little wave breaking. It was quiet, but it was very close by. The dragonflies returned with their riders to the children, and Pantalaimon crept into Lyra's breast as she and Will moved closer together, treading carefully along the slimy path. The bird's head exploded in a mist of red and white, and the creature blundered on clumsily for several steps before sinking onto its breast. It didn't die for a minute or more; the legs kicked, the wings rose and fell, and the great bird beat itself around and around in a bloody circle, kicking up the rough grass, until a long, bubbling expiration from its lungs ended with a coughing spray of red, and it fell still. "We en't going." Time passed. Light faded and the moon rose, and the woman and her daemon fell asleep. "He led us here because this world is empty. Empty of conscious life, that is. We are not colonialists, Mrs. Coulter. We haven't come to conquer, but to build." TWO - BALTHAMOS AND BARUCH "All right," said Lyra, quite happy to be moving again, with Pan and Will, alive and awake. The woman was gripping her hair tightly, forcing her head back, cramming the beaker against her mouth. The captain found a tattered old map and jabbed at it with his pipe, saying, "This valley here, we now. You take, go on." Then No-Name turned back. "My heart, Will..." she groaned, and clung to him, her wet face contorted with pain. They stood still and listened. The only sound was an endless drip-drip-drip of water from the leaves, and as they looked up, they felt one or two drops splash coldly on their cheeks. And five minutes after that, they had opened a window in the pantry next to the kitchen two floors below and climbed out into the alley. The gatehouse of the College was just around the corner, and as she said to the golden monkey, it was important to arrive in the orthodox way, no matter how they intended to leave. Mrs. Coulter turned briefly as the new sound came to her, but too briefly for Will to jump and seize the gun. As for the monkey daemon, he glared at Will without blinking, crouched ready to spring. He bent to pick up the rifle…
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
Keep behind me, Metatron, wait here, Asriel is suspicious, let me lull him first. When he's off guard, I'll call you. But come as a shadow, in this small form, so he doesn't see you, otherwise, he'll just let the child's daemon fly away." "I don't know. I didn't like it. And I'm worried about you going off on your own, or I would be if I didn't know you'd already done far more dangerous things than that. Oh, I don't know. But please be careful. Please look all around. At least out on the prairie you can see someone coming from a long way off..." "Balthamos," said Baruch gently, "don't chide Will. We need his help, and he can't be blamed for not knowing what it took us so long to find out." They looked at her: her eyes were glittering more than usual, her chin was held high with a look she'd learned from Will without knowing it. She looked defiant as well as lost, Dame Hannah thought, and admired her for it; and the Master saw something else, he saw how the child's unconscious grace had gone, and how she was awkward in her growing body. But he loved the girl dearly, and he felt half-proud and half in awe of the beautiful adult she would be, so soon. And because the Texan aeronaut was one of the very few humans Iorek had ever esteemed, he accepted the man's last gift to him. With deft movements of his claws, he ripped aside the dead man's clothes, opened the body with one slash, and began to feast on the flesh and blood of his old friend. It was his first meal for days, and he was hungry. "Ah, English!" cried the priest gleefully in English. "My dear young man! Welcome to our village, our little no-longer-perpendicular Kholodnoye! What is your name, and where are you going?" When it was cool enough, he packed it away in the rucksack and sat, ignoring the spies, to wait for Lyra to come back. King Ogunwe sat in the cabin of his gyropter, swiftly working out a plan to counter the intentions of the Consistorial Court, which he'd just learned about from the Gallivespian in his own aircraft. The navigator was scribbling some figures on a scrap of paper, which he handed to the pilot. The essential thing was speed: getting their troops on the ground first would make all the difference. The gyropters were faster than zeppelins, but they were still some way behind. So, wondering whether any lovers before them had made this blissful discovery, they lay together as the earth turned slowly and the moon and stars blazed above them. After a moment the boy appeared next to the bear: fierce-looking, with frowning eyes and a jutting jaw. And was that a daemon beside him, bird-shaped? But such a strange bird: unlike any she'd seen before. It flew to Kulang and spoke briefly: Friends. We shan't hurt you. "Will, Will...” she cried. "Thank you," she said to the boatman. "When you go back, if you see my daemon, tell him I love him the best of everything in the land of the living or the dead, and I swear I'll come back to him, even if no one's ever done it before, I swear I will." "We shall take care of the Specters," said Xaphania. Will took the knife and faced the sea. To his surprise, his hands were quite steady. He cut a window into his own world, and they found themselves looking at a great factory or chemical plant, where complicated pipe work ran between buildings and storage tanks, where lights glowed at every corner, where wisps of steam rose into the air. "Ah! And what's that?" said Lord Asriel, pointing. "That's not the wind." "Yes, that is what I heard," said the priest, to Will's relief, "But now they are leaving their homeland and coming south. They have a boat, and the people of the town will not let them refuel. They are afraid of the bears. And so they should be, they are children of the devil. All things from the north are devilish. Like the witches, daughters of evil! The Church should have put them all to death many years ago. Witches, have nothing to do with them, Will Ivanovitch, you hear me? You know what they will do when you come to the right age? They will try to seduce you. They will use all the soft, cunning, deceitful ways they have, their flesh, their soft skin, their sweet voices, and they will take your seed, you know what I mean by that, they will drain you and leave you hollow! They will take your future, your children that are to come, and leave you nothing. They should be put to death, every one." "But how do you know?" demanded Lyra. "Yes, I think it might have been, too. But before that first armored bear, there were no others. We know of nothing before that. That was when custom began. We know our customs, and they are firm and solid and we follow them without change. Bear nature is weak without custom, as bear flesh is unprotected without armor. "He came to prominence long after I was exiled," the
My daughter is now twelve years old. Very soon she will approach the cusp of adolescence, and then it will be too late for any of us to prevent the catastrophe; nature and opportunity will come together like spark and tinder. Thanks to your intervention, that is now far more likely. I hope you're satisfied." The little spy closed the resonator and gathered his equipment together. Will and Lyra had been asleep all afternoon, and they were just stirring now, hearing the noise. Lyra sat up groggily to see Mary talking to five or six of the mulefa, who were surrounding her, clearly excited; but whether they were angry or joyful, she couldn't tell. Some of the soldiers, hearing children's voices crying out from close by, looked around startled. Others, seeing a Specter making for them, so strange and blank and greedy, raised their guns and fired, but of course with no effect. And then it struck the first man it came to. So she might still be alive. The thought cheered him, and he scanned the horizon for any sign of her, but found nothing but the blue air and the sharp rock in every direction he looked. And let his wife and children return from the oppressor's scourge. She told Mary about the abyss, and about how she herself had found out. When Lyra and Will came in with the bushes, Iorek directed them in placing branches carefully on the fire. He looked at each branch, turning it from side to side, and then told Will or Lyra to place it at such-and-such an angle, or to break off part and place it separately at the edge. The result was a fire of extraordinary ferocity, with all its energy concentrated at one side. Will tried to pierce the darkness and see them more clearly, but the rain filled his eyes. "Be still, dear, be calm, hush now, drink your tea...” "We know how to deal with big people," Tialys replied, not very helpfully, and went to talk quietly to the Lady. They spoke too softly for Lyra to hear, but she enjoyed watching them sip dewdrops from the marram grass to refresh themselves. Water must be different for them, she thought to Pantalaimon: imagine drops the size of your fist! They'd be hard to get into; they'd have a sort of elastic rind, like a balloon. The lady nodded. Her stiff gray hair caught the lamplight, glinting like stainless steel, and the blue hawk she had inherited from Lord Roke spread his wings briefly on the bracket by the door. She didn't expect Atal to follow her explanation, partly because of her own imperfect command of their language, but partly because the mulefa seemed so practical, so strongly rooted in the physical everyday world, and much of what she was saying was mathematical; but Atal surprised her by saying, "What does he want with the child?" Will nodded. Lyra took no notice. Presently she sat up wearily and pulled on her socks and shoes, and they set off once more. Even from some way off, Will could see that there was trouble. Puffs of smoke were erupting from beyond the roofs, followed a few seconds later by the boom of a gun. The young man took the locket and left, smothering his resentment. Lord Roke thought of going back with him and waking Mrs. Coulter just as he was trying to replace the chain, in order to see what she'd do; but it was more important to find out what these people were up to. She bent over the alethiometer and her fingers moved swiftly. A minute later she had the answer. Once the fire was going, Will ate two oatmeal biscuits, some dried meat, and some Kendal Mint Cake, washing it down with gulps of cold water. Balthamos sat nearby, silent, and finally Will said: At once he spread his leathery wings and bounded upward, and a moment later the rest of the troop followed. It was getting darker and colder, and time was hard to keep track of. Lyra thought they walked for half an hour, or maybe it was twice as long; the look of the place didn't change. Finally they reached a little wooden shack like the one they'd stopped at earlier, where a dim bulb glowed on a bare wire over the door. Will was watching her anxiously. She looked all around, at the lake, at the jetty, at the rough path, the stagnant puddles, the dead and sodden bushes... Her Pan, alone here: how could he live without her? He was shaking inside her shirt, against her bare flesh, his fur needing her warmth. Impossible! Never! "Come with me," she said.
[показать]Well, we found out where they come from," said Kirjava. "And this is the worst thing: they're like the children of the abyss. Every time we open a window with the knife, it makes a Specter. It's like a little bit of the abyss that floats out and enters the world. That's why the Cittagazze world was so full of them, because of all the windows they left open there." Will couldn't see him anymore. He turned and climbed through after Lyra. They met at the seventh of their appointed meeting places, among the roots of a plane tree in a shabby little square, and exchanged their news. The Lady Salmakia's contact in the Society had told her that earlier that evening they had received a friendly invitation from the President of the Consistorial Court to come and discuss matters of mutual interest. And during the time she spent milking the sheep, or carding and spinning their wool, or grinding barley to make bread, she thought incessantly about the spell that must have been cast, and about why it had happened. Mrs. Coulter had never told her, so Ama was free to imagine. "We await your response." "Then some other way, but we will!" She showed them. Will thought she looked as if she remembered it very well. "Wrong place," she said briefly, and tried again. "We're going where all the others go," he said. "Seems as if I know, but I can't remember learning it. Seems as if it's along the road. We'll know it when we get there." "Let's sit down." "Yes!" She put them together and looked through. The amber color was denser, and like a photographic filter it emphasized some colors and held back others, giving a slightly different cast to the landscape. The curious thing was that the doubleness had disappeared, and everything was single again; but there was no sign of Shadows. "A long way, yes, and we're tired," said Will. "Could we buy some food and pay for shelter?" The President opened a drawer and handed the young priest a folded packet of papers. "Thirdly, the boy in Fra Pavel's testimony, with the knife that can do these extraordinary things. Clearly we must find him and gain possession of it as soon as possible. "And you, Serafina Pekkala?" Iorek went on. "What will you do now?" We have all come together to greet the stranger Mary. Those of us who know her have reason to be grateful for her activities since she arrived among us. We have waited until she had some command of our language. With the help of many of us, but especially the zalif Atal, the stranger Mary can now understand us. "And they grow by feeding on Dust," said Pantalaimon. "And on daemons. Because Dust and daemons are sort of similar; grown-up daemons anyway. And the Specters get bigger and stronger as they do..." Will went to the doorway and bowed again. Suddenly she longed for the earth again. She put the spyglass in her pocket and began the long climb down to the ground. No one had noticed: the noise of the wind and the engines and the pounding hail covered the man's cry, and in the darkness his body couldn't be seen. But there were others close by, and Lord Roke had to work quickly. He leapt to the fallen man's side, where the bunch of keys lay in a pool of icy water, and hauled aside the great shafts of steel, as big around as his arm and half as long as he was, till he found the one with the black tape. And then there was the clasp of the key ring to wrestle with, and the perpetual risk of the hail, which for a Gallivespian was deadly: blocks of ice as big as his two fists. Lord Asriel was waiting behind a great block of granite, out of sight of the Regent. The snow leopard heard them coming, and Lord Asriel stood up as Mrs. Coulter came around the corner. Everything, every surface, every cubic centimeter of air, was permeated by the falling Dust, which gave a soft clarity to every tiny detail; and in the Dust light Lord Asriel saw that her face was wet with tears, and that she was gritting her teeth so as not to sob. Her creature felt the tug at the bridle, and whether or not he understood her words, he came to a halt. Will's did, too, and both children climbed down, finding themselves stiff and shaken after the continued jolting and tensing. "And then someone passed me a bit of some sweet stuff and I suddenly realized I had been to China. So to speak. And I'd forgotten it. It was the taste of the sweet stuff that brought it back, I think it was marzipan. Sweet almond paste," she explained to Lyra, who was looking confused. 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." She flung a mental lifeline to that physical self, and tried to recall the feeling of being in it: all the sensations that made up being alive. The exact touch of her friend
