The Amber Spyglass (His Dark Materials 3)

“Can is not the same as must.”

“But if you must and you can, then there’s no excuse.”

“While you are alive, your business is with life.”

“No, Iorek,” she said gently, “our business is to keep promises, no matter how difficult they are. You know, secretly, I’m deadly scared. And I wish I’d never had that dream, and I wish Will hadn’t thought of using the knife to go there. But we did, so we can’t get out of it.”

Lyra felt Pantalaimon trembling and stroked him with her sore hands.

“We don’t know how to get there, though,” she went on. “We won’t know anything till we try. What are you going to do, Iorek?”

“I’m going back north, with my people. We can’t live in the mountains. Even the snow is different. I thought we could live here, but we can live more easily in the sea, even if it is warm. That was worth learning. And besides, I think we will be needed. I can feel war, Lyra Silvertongue; I can smell it; I can hear it. I spoke to Serafina Pekkala before I came this way, and she told me she was going to Lord Faa and the gyptians. If there is war, we shall be needed.”

Lyra sat up, excited at hearing the names of her old friends. But Iorek hadn’t finished. He went on:

“If you do not find a way out of the world of the dead, we shall not meet again, because I have no ghost. My body will remain on the earth, and then become part of it. But if it turns out that you and I both survive, then you will always be a welcome and honored visitor to Svalbard; and the same is true of Will. Has he told you what happened when we met?”

“No,” said Lyra, “except that it was by a river.”

“He outfaced me. I thought no one could ever do that, but this half-grown boy was too daring for me, and too clever. I am not happy that you should do what you plan, but there is no one I would trust to go with you except that boy. You are worthy of each other. Go well, Lyra Silvertongue, my dear friend.”

She reached up and put her arms around his neck, and pressed her face into his fur, unable to speak.

After a minute he stood up gently and disengaged her arms, and then he turned and walked silently away into the dark. Lyra thought his outline was lost almost at once against the pallor of the snow-covered ground, but it might have been that her eyes were full of tears.

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.”

He went outside and found Lyra standing still, weeping, with Pantalaimon as a wolf raising his face to the black sky. She was quite silent. The only light came from the pale reflection in the snowbank of the remains of the fire, and that, in turn, was reflected from her wet cheeks, and her tears found their own reflection in Will’s eyes, and so those photons wove the two children together in a silent web.

“I love him so much, Will!” she managed to whisper shakily. “And he looked old! He looked hungry and old and sad . . . Is it all coming onto us now, Will? We can’t rely on anyone else now, can we . . . It’s just us. But we en’t old enough yet. We’re only young . . . We’re too young . . . If poor Mr. Scoresby’s dead and Iorek’s old . . . It’s all coming onto us, what’s got to be done.”

“We can do it,” he said. “I’m not going to look back anymore. We can do it. But we’ve got to sleep now, and if we stay in this world, those gyropter things might come, the ones the spies sent for . . . I’m going to cut through now and we’ll find another world to sleep in, and if the spies come with us, that’s too bad; we’ll have to get rid of them another time.”

“Yes,” she said, and sniffed and wiped the back of her hand across her nose and rubbed her eyes with both palms. “Let’s do that. You sure the knife will work? You tested it?”

“I know it’ll work.”

With Pantalaimon tiger-formed to deter the spies, they hoped, Will and Lyra went back and picked up their rucksacks.

“What are you doing?” said Salmakia.

“Going into another world,” said Will, taking out the knife. It felt like being whole again; he hadn’t realized how much he loved it.

“But you must wait for Lord Asriel’s gyropters,” said Tialys, his voice hard.

“We’re not going to,” said Will. “If you come near the knife, I’ll kill you. Come through with us if you must, but you can’t make us stay here. We’re leaving.”

“You lied!”

“No,” said Lyra, “I lied. Will doesn’t lie. You didn’t think of that.”

“But where are you going?”

Will didn’t answer. He felt forward in the dim air and cut an opening.

Salmakia said, “This is a mistake. You should realize that, and listen to us. You haven’t thought—”

“Yes, we have,” said Will, “we’ve thought hard, and we’ll tell you what we’ve thought tomorrow. You can come where we’re going, or you can go back to Lord Asriel.”

The window opened onto the world into which he had escaped with Baruch and Balthamos, and where he’d slept safely: the warm endless beach with the fernlike trees behind the dunes. He said:

“Here—we’ll sleep here—this’ll do.”

He let them through and closed it behind them at once. While he and Lyra lay down where they were, exhausted, the Lady Salmakia kept watch, and the Chevalier opened his lodestone resonator and began to play a message into the dark.

SIXTEEN

THE INTENTION CRAFT

From the archèd roof

Pendant by suttle Magic many a row

Of Starry Lamps and blazing Cressets fed

With Naphtha and Asphaltus yielded light …

• JOHN MILTON •

“My child! My daughter! Where is she? What have you done? My Lyra—you’d do better to tear the fibers from my heart—she was safe with me, safe, and now where is she?”

Mrs. Coulter’s cry resounded through the little chamber at the top of the adamant tower. She was bound to a chair, her hair disheveled, her clothing torn, her eyes wild; and her monkey dæmon thrashed and struggled on the floor in the coils of a silver chain.

Lord Asriel sat nearby, scribbling on a piece of paper, taking no notice. An orderly stood beside him, glancing nervously at the woman. When Lord Asriel handed him the paper, he saluted and hurried out, his terrier dæmon close at his heels with her tail tucked low.

Lord Asriel turned to Mrs. Coulter.

“Lyra? Frankly, I don’t care,” he said, his voice quiet and hoarse. “The wretched child should have stayed where she was put, and done what she was told. I can’t waste any more time or resources on her; if she refuses to be helped, let her deal with the consequences.”

“You don’t mean that, Asriel, or you wouldn’t have—”

“I mean every word of it. The fuss she’s caused is out of all proportion to her merits. An ordinary English girl, not very clever—”

“She is!” said Mrs. Coulter.

“All right; bright but not intellectual; impulsive, dishonest, greedy—”

“Brave, generous, loving.”

“A perfectly ordinary child, distinguished by nothing—”

“Perfectly ordinary? Lyra? She’s unique. Think of what she’s done already. Dislike her if you will, Asriel, but don’t you dare patronize your daughter. And she was safe with me, until—”

“You’re right,” he said, getting up. “She is unique. To have tamed and softened you—that’s no everyday feat. She’s drawn your poison, Marisa. She’s taken your teeth out. Your fire’s been quenched in a drizzle of sentimental piety. Who would have thought it? The pitiless agent of the Church, the fanatical persecutor of children, the inventor of hideous machines to slice them apart and look in their terrified little beings for any evidence of sin—and along comes a foulmouthed, ignorant little brat with dirty fingernails, and you cluck and settle your feathers over her like a hen. Well, I admit: the child must have some gift I’ve never seen myself. But if all it does is turn you into a doting mother, it’s a pretty thin, drab, puny little gift. And now you might as well be quiet. I’ve asked my chief commanders to come in for an urgent conference, and if you can’t control your noise, I’ll have you gagged.”