The Subtle Knife (His Dark Materials 2)

“Yes, do,” said Lyra, “but fly low, and hide, and don’t let them see you.”

Will and Lyra got painfully to their feet again and clambered on.

“I been cold plenty of times,” Lyra said, to take her mind off the pursuers, “but I en’t been this hot, ever. Is it this hot in your world?”

“Not where I used to live. Not normally. But the climate’s been changing. The summers are hotter than they used to be. They say that people have been interfering with the atmosphere by putting chemicals in it, and the weather’s going out of control.”

“Yeah, well, they have,” said Lyra, “and it is. And we’re here in the middle of it.”

He was too hot and thirsty to reply, and they climbed on breathlessly in the throbbing air. Pantalaimon was a cricket now, and sat on Lyra’s shoulder, too tired to leap or fly. From time to time the witches would see a spring high up, too high to climb to, and fly up to fill the children’s flasks. They would soon have died without water, and there was none where they were; any spring that made its way into the air was soon swallowed again among the rocks.

And so they moved on, toward evening.

The witch who flew back to spy was called Lena Feldt. She flew low, from crag to crag, and as the sun was setting and drawing a wild blood-red out of the rocks, she came to the little blue lake and found a troop of soldiers making camp.

But her first glimpse of them told her more than she wanted to know; these soldiers had no dæmons. And they weren’t from Will’s world, or the world of Cittàgazze, where people’s dæmons were inside them, and where they still looked alive; these men were from her own world, and to see them without dæmons was a gross and sickening horror.

Then out of a tent by the lakeside came the explanation. Lena Feldt saw a woman, a short-life, graceful in her khaki hunting clothes and as full of life as the golden monkey who capered along the water’s edge beside her.

Lena Feldt hid among the rocks above and watched as Mrs. Coulter spoke to the officer in charge, and as his men put up tents, made fires, boiled water.

The witch had been among Serafina Pekkala’s troop who rescued the children at Bolvangar, and she longed to shoot Mrs. Coulter on the spot; but some fortune was protecting the woman, for it was just too far for a bowshot from where she was, and the witch could get no closer without making herself invisible. So she began to make the spell. It took ten minutes of deep concentration.

Confident at last, Lena Feldt went down the rocky slope toward the lake, and as she walked through the camp, one or two blank-eyed soldiers glanced up briefly, but found what they saw too hard to remember, and looked away again. The witch stopped outside the tent Mrs. Coulter had gone into, and fitted an arrow to her bowstring.

She listened to the low voice through the canvas and then moved carefully to the open flap that overlooked the lake.

Inside the tent Mrs. Coulter was talking to a man Lena Feldt hadn’t seen before: an older man, gray-haired and powerful, with a serpent dæmon twined around his wrist. He was sitting in a canvas chair beside hers, and she was leaning toward him, speaking softly.

“Of course, Carlo,” she was saying, “I’ll tell you anything you like. What do you want to know?”

“How do you command the Specters?” the man said. “I didn’t think it possible, but you have them following you like dogs . . . . Are they afraid of your bodyguard? What is it?”

“Simple,” she said. “They know I can give them more nourishment if they let me live than if they consume me. I can lead them to all the victims their phantom hearts desire. As soon as you described them to me, I knew I could dominate them, and so it turns out. And a whole world trembles in the power of these pallid things! But, Carlo,” she whispered, “I can please you, too, you know. Would you like me to please you even more?”

“Marisa,” he murmured, “it’s enough of a pleasure to be close to you . . . . ”

“No, it isn’t, Carlo; you know it isn’t. You know I can please you more than this.”

Her dæmon’s little black horny hands were stroking the serpent dæmon. Little by little the serpent loosened herself and began to flow along the man’s arm toward the monkey. Both the man and the woman were holding glasses of golden wine, and she sipped hers and leaned a little closer to him.

“Ah,” said the man as the dæmon slipped slowly off his arm and let her weight into the golden monkey’s hands. The monkey raised her slowly to his face and ran his cheek softly along her emerald skin. Her tongue flicked blackly this way and that, and the man sighed.

“Carlo, tell me why you’re pursuing the boy,” Mrs. Coulter whispered, and her voice was as soft as the monkey’s caress. “Why do you need to find him?”

“He has something I want. Oh, Marisa—”

“What is it, Carlo? What’s he got?”

He shook his head. But he was finding it hard to resist; his dæmon was twined gently around the monkey’s breast, and running her head through and through the long, lustrous fur as his hands moved along her fluid length.

Lena Feldt watched them, standing invisible just two paces from where they sat. Her bowstring was taut, the arrow nocked to it in readiness; she could have pulled and loosed in less than a second, and Mrs. Coulter would have been dead before she finished drawing breath. But the witch was curious. She stood still and silent and wide-eyed.

But while she was watching Mrs. Coulter, she didn’t look behind her across the little blue lake. On the far side of it in the darkness a grove of ghostly trees seemed to have planted itself, a grove that shivered every so often with a tremor like a conscious intention. But they were not trees, of course; and while all the curiosity of Lena Feldt and her dæmon was directed at Mrs. Coulter, one of the pallid forms detached itself from its fellows and drifted across the surface of the icy water, causing not a single ripple, until it paused a foot from the rock on which Lena Feldt’s dæmon was perched.

“You could easily tell me, Carlo,” Mrs. Coulter was murmuring. “You could whisper it. You could pretend to be talking in your sleep, and who could blame you for that? Just tell me what the boy has, and why you want it. I could get it for you . . . . Wouldn’t you like me to do that? Just tell me, Carlo. I don’t want it. I want the girl. What is it? Just tell me, and you shall have it.”

He gave a soft shudder. His eyes were closed. Then he said, “It’s a knife. The subtle knife of Cittàgazze. You haven’t heard of it, Marisa? Some people call it teleutaia makhaira, the last knife of all. Others call it Æsahættr.”

“What does it do, Carlo? Why is it special?”

“Ah . . . It’s the knife that will cut anything. Not even its makers knew what it could do. Nothing, no one, matter, spirit, angel, air—nothing is invulnerable to the subtle knife. Marisa, it’s mine, you understand?”

“Of course, Carlo. I promise. Let me fill your glass . . . ”

And as the golden monkey slowly ran his hands along the emerald serpent again and again, squeezing just a little, lifting, stroking as Sir Charles sighed with pleasure, Lena Feldt saw what was truly happening: because while the man’s eyes were closed, Mrs. Coulter secretly tilted a few drops from a small flask into the glass before filling it again with wine.

“Here, darling,” she whispered. “Let’s drink, to each other . . . . ”

He was already intoxicated. He took the glass and sipped greedily, once, again, and again.

And then, without any warning, Mrs. Coulter stood up and turned and looked Lena Feldt full in the face.

“Well, witch,” she said, “did you think I don’t know how you make yourself invisible?”

Lena Feldt was too surprised to move.

Behind her, the man was struggling to breathe. His chest was heaving, his face was red, and his dæmon was limp and fainting in the monkey’s hands. The monkey shook her off in contempt.

Lena Feldt tried to swing her bow up, but a fatal paralysis had touched her shoulder. She couldn’t make herself do it. This had never happened before, and she uttered a little cry.

“Oh, it’s too late for that,” said Mrs. Coulter. “Look at the lake, witch.”

Lena Feldt turned and saw her snow bunting dæmon fluttering and shrieking as if he were in a glass chamber that was being emptied of air; fluttering and falling, slumping, failing, his beak opening wide, gasping in panic. The Specter had enveloped him.