The Amber Spyglass (His Dark Materials 3)

“You say that so casually,” she said, “as if it were something I should know, too, but . . . How can it be? The Authority created the worlds, didn’t he? He existed before everything. How can he have come into being?”

“This is angelic knowledge,” said Ogunwe. “It shocked some of us, too, to learn that the Authority is not the creator. There may have been a creator, or there may not: we don’t know. All we know is that at some point the Authority took charge, and since then, angels have rebelled, and human beings have struggled against him, too. This is the last rebellion. Never before have humans and angels, and beings from all the worlds, made a common cause. This is the greatest force ever assembled. But it may still not be enough. We shall see.”

“But what does Lord Asriel intend? What is this world, and why has he come here?”

“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.”

“And is he going to attack the Kingdom of Heaven?”

Ogunwe looked at her levelly.

“We’re not going to invade the Kingdom,” he said, “but if the Kingdom invades us, they had better be ready for war, because we are prepared. Mrs. Coulter, I am a king, but it’s my proudest task to join Lord Asriel in setting up a world where there are no kingdoms at all. No kings, no bishops, no priests. The Kingdom of Heaven has been known by that name since the Authority first set himself above the rest of the angels. And we want no part of it. This world is different. We intend to be free citizens of the Republic of Heaven.”

Mrs. Coulter wanted to say more, to ask the dozen questions that rose to her lips, but the king had moved on, unwilling to keep his commander waiting, and she had to follow.

The staircase led so far down that by the time it reached a level floor, the sky behind them at the head of the flight was quite invisible. Well before halfway she had little breath left, but she made no complaint and moved on down till it opened out into a massive hall lit by glowing crystals in the pillars that supported the roof. Ladders, gantries, beams, and walkways crossed the gloom above, with small figures moving about them purposefully.

Lord Asriel was speaking to his commanders when Mrs. 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. Mrs. Coulter noticed that, presumably as a courtesy to Lord Roke, every pillar had an empty bracket at human head height so that his hawk could perch there and allow the Gallivespian to be included in the discussion.

But they did not stay in the great hall for long. At the far side, an attendant hauled open a heavy double door to let them through, onto the platform of a railway. There waiting was a small closed carriage, drawn by an anbaric locomotive.

The engineer bowed, and his brown monkey dæmon retreated behind his legs at the sight of the golden monkey with the chained hands. Lord Asriel spoke to the man briefly and showed the others into the carriage, which, like the hall, was lit by those glowing crystals, held on silver brackets against mirrored mahogany panels.

As soon as Lord Asriel had joined them, the train began to move, gliding smoothly away from the platform and into a tunnel, accelerating briskly. Only the sound of the wheels on the smooth track gave any idea of their speed.

“Where are we going?” Mrs. Coulter asked.

“To the armory,” Lord Asriel said shortly, and turned away to talk quietly with the angel.

Mrs. Coulter said to Lord Roke, “My lord, are your spies always sent out in pairs?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Simple curiosity. My dæmon and I found ourselves at a stalemate when we met them recently in that cave, and I was intrigued to see how well they fought.”

“Why intrigued? Did you not expect people of our size to be good fighters?”

She looked at him coolly, aware of the ferocity of his pride.

“No,” she said. “I thought we would beat you easily, and you very nearly beat us. I’m happy to admit my mistake. But do you always fight in pairs?”

“You are a pair, are you not, you and your dæmon? Did you expect us to concede the advantage?” he said, and his haughty stare, brilliantly clear even in the soft light of the crystals, dared her to ask more.

She looked down modestly and said nothing.

Several minutes went past, and Mrs. Coulter felt the train taking them downward, even deeper into the mountain’s heart. She couldn’t guess how far they went, but when at least fifteen minutes had gone by, the train began to slow; and presently they drew up to a platform where the anbaric lights seemed brilliant after the darkness of the tunnel.

Lord Asriel opened the doors, and they got out into an atmosphere so hot and sulphur-laden that Mrs. Coulter had to gasp. The air rang with the pounding of mighty hammers and the clangorous screech of iron on stone.

An attendant hauled open the doors leading off the platform, and instantly the noise redoubled and the heat swept over them like a breaking wave. A blaze of scorching light made them shade their eyes; only Xaphania seemed unaffected by the onslaught of sound and light and heat. When her senses had adjusted, Mrs. Coulter looked around, alive with curiosity.

She had seen forges, ironworks, manufactories in her own world; the biggest seemed like a village smithy beside this. Hammers the size of houses were lifted in a moment to the distant ceiling and then hurled downward to flatten balks of iron the size of tree trunks, pounding them flat in a fraction of a second with a blow that made the very mountain tremble; from a vent in the rocky wall, a river of sulphurous molten metal flowed until it was cut off by an adamant gate, and the brilliant seething flood rushed through channels and sluices and over weirs into row upon row of molds, to settle and cool in a cloud of evil smoke; gigantic slicing machines and rollers cut and folded and pressed sheets of inch-thick iron as if it were tissue paper, and then those monstrous hammers pounded it flat again, layering metal upon metal with such force that the different layers became one tougher one, over and over again.

If Iorek Byrnison could have seen this armory, he might have admitted that these people knew something about working with metal. Mrs. Coulter could only look and wonder. It was impossible to speak and be understood, and no one tried. And now Lord Asriel was gesturing to the small group to follow him along a grated walkway suspended over an even larger vault below, where miners toiled with picks and spades to hack the bright metals from the mother rock.

They passed over the walkway and down a long rocky corridor, where stalactites hung gleaming with strange colors and where the pounding and grinding and hammering gradually faded. Mrs. Coulter could feel a cool breeze on her heated face. The crystals that gave them light were neither mounted on sconces nor enclosed in glowing pillars, but scattered loosely on the floor, and there were no flaring torches to add to the heat, so little by little the party began to feel cold again; and presently they came out, quite suddenly, into the night air.

They were at a place where part of the mountain had been hacked away, making a space as wide and open as a parade ground. Farther along they could see, dimly lit, great iron doors in the mountainside, some open and some shut; and from out of one of the mighty doorways, men were hauling something draped in a tarpaulin.

“What is that?” Mrs. Coulter said to the African king, and he replied:

“The intention craft.”

Mrs. Coulter had no idea what that could mean, and watched with intense curiosity as they prepared to take off the tarpaulin.

She stood close to King Ogunwe, as if for shelter, and said, “How does it work? What does it do?”

“We’re about to see,” said the king.

It looked like some kind of complex drilling apparatus, or the cockpit of a gyropter, or the cabin of a massive crane. It had a glass canopy over a seat with at least a dozen levers and handles banked in front of it. It stood on six legs, each jointed and sprung at a different angle to the body, so that it seemed both energetic and ungainly; and the body itself was a mass of pipe work, cylinders, pistons, coiled cables, switchgear, valves, and gauges. It was hard to tell what was structure and what was not, because it was only lit from behind, and most of it was hidden in gloom.

Lord Roke on his hawk had glided up to it directly, circling above, examining it from all sides. Lord Asriel and the angel were close in discussion with the engineers, and men were clambering down from the craft itself, one carrying a clipboard, another a length of cable.