His Dark Materials Omnibus (36 page)

“It’s true,” said Roger. “And Lyra let ’em out during the fire drill.”

“Yeah, I seen ’em!” said Billy Costa. “I didn’t know what they was at first, but I seen ’em fly away with that goose.”

“But why do they do it?” demanded one boy. “Why do they cut people’s dæmons away? That’s torture! Why do they do it?”

“Dust,” suggested someone doubtfully.

But the boy laughed in scorn. “Dust!” he said. “There en’t no such thing! They just made that up! I don’t believe in it.”

“Here,” said someone else, “look what’s happening to the zeppelin!”

They all looked back. Beyond the dazzle of lights, where the fight was still continuing, the great length of the airship was not floating freely at the mooring mast any longer; the free end was drooping downward, and beyond it was rising a globe of—

“Lee Scoresby’s balloon!” Lyra cried, and clapped her mittened hands with delight.

The other children were baffled. Lyra herded them onward, wondering how the aeronaut had got his balloon that far. It was clear what he was doing, and what a good idea, to fill his balloon with the gas out of theirs, to escape by the same means that crippled their pursuit!

“Come on, keep moving, else you’ll freeze,” she said, for some of the children were shivering and moaning from the cold, and their dæmons were crying too in high thin voices.

Pantalaimon found this irritating, and as a wolverine he snapped at one girl’s squirrel dæmon who was just lying across her shoulder whimpering faintly.

“Get in her coat! Make yourself big and warm her up!” he snarled, and the girl’s dæmon, frightened, crept inside her coal-silk anorak at once.

The trouble was that coal silk wasn’t as warm as proper fur, no matter how much it was padded out with hollow coal-silk fibers. Some of the children looked like walking puffballs, they were so bulky, but their gear had been made in factories and laboratories far away from the cold, and it couldn’t really cope. Lyra’s furs looked ragged and they stank, but they kept the warmth in.

“If we don’t find the gyptians soon, they en’t going to last,” she whispered to Pantalaimon.

“Keep ’em moving then,” he whispered back. “If they lie down, they’re finished. You know what Farder Coram said.…”

Farder Coram had told her many tales of his own journeys in the North, and so had Mrs. Coulter—always supposing that hers were true. But they were both quite clear about one point, which was that you must keep going.

“How far we gotta go?” said a little boy.

“She’s just making us walk out here to kill us,” said a girl.

“Rather be out here than back there,” someone said.

“I wouldn’t! It’s warm back in the station. There’s food and hot drinks and everything.”

“But it’s all on fire!”

“What we going to do out here? I bet we starve to death.…”

Lyra’s mind was full of dark questions that flew around like witches, swift
and untouchable, and somewhere, just beyond where she could reach, there was a glory and a thrill which she didn’t understand at all.

But it gave her a surge of strength, and she hauled one girl up out of a snowdrift, and shoved at a boy who was dawdling, and called to them all: “Keep going! Follow the bear’s tracks! He come up with the gyptians, so the tracks’ll lead us to where they are! Just keep walking!”

Big flakes of snow were beginning to fall. Soon it would have covered Iorek Byrnison’s tracks altogether. Now that they were out of sight of the lights of Bolvangar, and the blaze of the fire was only a faint glow, the only light came from the faint radiance of the snow-covered ground. Thick clouds obscured the sky, so there was neither moon nor Northern Lights; but by peering closely, the children could make out the deep trail Iorek Byrnison had plowed in the snow. Lyra encouraged, bullied, hit, half-carried, swore at, pushed, dragged, lifted tenderly, wherever it was needed, and Pantalaimon (by the state of each child’s dæmon) told her what was needed in each case.

I’ll get them there, she kept saying to herself. I come here to get ’em and I’ll bloody get ’em.

Roger was following her example, and Billy Costa was leading the way, being sharper-eyed than most. Soon the snow was falling so thickly that they had to cling on to one another to keep from getting lost, and Lyra thought, perhaps if we all lie close and keep warm like that … Dig holes in the snow …

She was hearing things. There was the snarl of an engine somewhere, not the heavy thump of a zeppelin but something higher like the drone of a hornet. It drifted in and out of hearing.

And howling … Dogs? Sledge dogs? That too was distant and hard to be sure of, blanketed by millions of snowflakes and blown this way and that by little puffing gusts of wind. It might have been the gyptians’ sledge dogs, or it might have been wild spirits of the tundra, or even those freed dæmons crying for their lost children.

She was seeing things.… There weren’t any lights in the snow, were there? They must be ghosts as well.… Unless they’d come round in a circle, and were stumbling back into Bolvangar.

But these were little yellow lantern beams, not the white glare of anbaric lights. And they were moving, and the howling was nearer, and before she knew for certain whether she’d fallen asleep, Lyra was wandering among familiar figures, and men in furs were holding her up: John Faa’s mighty arm lifted her clear of the ground, and Farder Coram was laughing with pleasure;
and as far through the blizzard as she could see, gyptians were lifting children into sledges, covering them with furs, giving them seal meat to chew. And Tony Costa was there, hugging Billy and then punching him softly only to hug him again and shake him for joy. And Roger …

“Roger’s coming with us,” she said to Farder Coram. “It was him I meant to get in the first place. We’ll go back to Jordan in the end. What’s that noise—”

It was that snarl again, that engine, like a crazed spy-fly ten thousand times the size.

Suddenly there came a blow that sent her sprawling, and Pantalaimon couldn’t defend her, because the golden monkey—

Mrs. Coulter—

The golden monkey was wrestling, biting, scratching at Pantalaimon, who was flickering through so many changes of form it was hard to see him, and fighting back: stinging, lashing, tearing. Mrs. Coulter, meanwhile, her face in its furs a frozen glare of intense feeling, was dragging Lyra to the back of a motorized sledge, and Lyra struggled as hard as her dæmon. The snow was so thick that they seemed to be isolated in a little blizzard of their own, and the anbaric headlights of the sledge only showed up the thick swirling flakes a few inches ahead.

“Help!” Lyra cried, to the gyptians who were just there in the blinding snow and who could see nothing. “Help me! Farder Coram! Lord Faa! Oh, God, help!”

Mrs. Coulter shrieked a high command in the language of the northern Tartars. The snow swirled open, and there they were, a squad of them, armed with rifles, and the wolf dæmons snarled beside them. The chief saw Mrs. Coulter struggling, and picked up Lyra with one hand as if she were a doll and threw her into the sledge, where she lay stunned and dazed.

A rifle banged, and then another, as the gyptians realized what was happening. But firing at targets you can’t see is dangerous when you can’t see your own side either. The Tartars, in a tight group now around the sledge, were able to blaze at will into the snow, but the gyptians dared not shoot back for fear of hitting Lyra.

Oh, the bitterness she felt! The tiredness!

Still dazed, with her head ringing, she hauled herself up to find Pantalaimon desperately fighting the monkey still, with wolverine jaws fastened tight on a golden arm, changing no more but grimly hanging on. And who was that?

Not Roger?

Yes, Roger, battering at Mrs. Coulter with fists and feet, hurtling his head
against hers, only to be struck down by a Tartar who swiped at him like someone brushing away a fly. It was all a phantasmagoria now: white, black, a swift green flutter across her vision, ragged shadows, racing light—

A great swirl lifted curtains of snow aside, and into the cleared area leaped Iorek Byrnison, with a clang and screech of iron on iron. A moment later and those great jaws snapped left, right, a paw ripped open a mailed chest, white teeth, black iron, red wet fur—

Then something was pulling her
up
, powerfully
up
, and she seized Roger too, tearing him out of the hands of Mrs. Coulter and clinging tight, each child’s dæmon a shrill bird fluttering in amazement as a greater fluttering swept all around them, and then Lyra saw in the air beside her a witch, one of those elegant ragged black shadows from the high air, but close enough to touch; and there was a bow in the witch’s bare hands, and she exerted her bare pale arms (in this freezing air!) to pull the string and then loose an arrow into the eye slit of a mailed and lowering Tartar hood only three feet away—

And the arrow sped in and halfway out at the back, and the man’s wolf dæmon vanished in midleap even before he hit the ground.

Up! Into midair Lyra and Roger were caught and swept, and found themselves clinging with weakening fingers to a cloud-pine branch, where a young witch was sitting tense with balanced grace, and then she leaned down and to the left and something huge was looming and there was the ground.

They tumbled into the snow beside the basket of Lee Scoresby’s balloon.

“Skip inside,” called the Texan, “and bring your friend, by all means. Have ye seen that bear?”

Lyra saw that three witches were holding a rope looped around a rock, anchoring the great buoyancy of the gas bag to the earth.

“Get in!” she cried to Roger, and scrambled over the leatherbound rim of the basket to fall in a snowy heap inside. A moment later Roger fell on top of her, and then a mighty noise halfway between a roar and a growl made the very ground shake.

“C’mon, Iorek! On board, old feller!” yelled Lee Scoresby, and over the side came the bear in a hideous creak of wicker and bending wood.

At once the aeronaut lowered his arm in a signal, and the witches let go of the rope.

The balloon lifted immediately and surged upward into the snow-thick air at a rate Lyra could scarcely believe. After a moment the ground disappeared in the mist, and up they went, faster and faster, so that she thought no rocket
could have left the earth more swiftly. She lay holding on to Roger on the floor of the basket, pressed down by the acceleration.

Lee Scoresby was cheering and laughing and uttering wild Texan yells of delight; Iorek Byrnison was calmly unfastening his armor, hooking a deft claw into all the linkages and undoing them with a twist before packing the separate pieces in a pile. Somewhere outside, the flap and swish of air through cloud-pine needles and witch garments told that the witches were keeping them company into the upper airs.

Little by little Lyra recovered her breath, her balance, and her heartbeat. She sat up and looked around.

The basket was much bigger than she’d thought. Ranged around the edges were racks of philosophical instruments, and there were piles of furs, and bottled air, and a variety of other things too small or confusing to make out in the thick mist they were ascending through.

“Is this a cloud?” she said.

“Sure is. Wrap your friend in some furs before he turns into an icicle. It’s cold here, but it’s gonna get colder.”

“How did you find us?”

“Witches. There’s one witch lady who wants to talk to you. When we get clear of the cloud, we’ll get our bearings and then we can sit and have a yarn.”

“Iorek,” said Lyra, “thank you for coming.”

The bear grunted, and settled down to lick the blood off his fur. His weight meant that the basket was tilted to one side, but that didn’t matter. Roger was wary, but Iorek Byrnison took no more notice of him than of a flake of snow. Lyra contented herself with clinging to the rim of the basket, just under her chin when she was standing, and peering wide-eyed into the swirling cloud.

Only a few seconds later the balloon passed out of the cloud altogether and, still rising rapidly, soared on into the heavens.

What a sight!

Directly above them the balloon swelled out in a huge curve. Above and ahead of them the Aurora was blazing, with more brilliance and grandeur than she had ever seen. It was all around, or nearly, and they were nearly part of it. Great swathes of incandescence trembled and parted like angels’ wings beating; cascades of luminescent glory tumbled down invisible crags to lie in swirling pools or hang like vast waterfalls.

So Lyra gasped at that, and then she looked below, and saw a sight almost more wondrous.

As far as the eye could see, to the very horizon in all directions, a tumbled sea of white extended without a break. Soft peaks and vaporous chasms rose or opened here and there, but mostly it looked like a solid mass of ice.

And rising through it in ones and twos and larger groups as well came small black shadows, those ragged figures of such elegance, witches on their branches of cloud-pine.

They flew swiftly, without any effort, up and toward the balloon, leaning to one side or another to steer. And one of them, the archer who’d saved Lyra from Mrs. Coulter, flew directly alongside the basket, and Lyra saw her clearly for the first time.

She was young—younger than Mrs. Coulter; and fair, with bright green eyes; and clad like all the witches in strips of black silk, but wearing no furs, no hood or mittens. She seemed to feel no cold at all. Around her brow was a simple chain of little red flowers. She sat on her cloud-pine branch as if it were a steed, and seemed to rein it in a yard from Lyra’s wondering gaze.

“Lyra?”

“Yes! And are you Serafina Pekkala?”

“I am.”

Lyra could see why Farder Coram loved her, and why it was breaking his heart, though she had known neither of those things a moment before. He was growing old; he was an old broken man; and she would be young for generations.

“Have you got the symbol reader?” said the witch, in a voice so like the high wild singing of the Aurora itself that Lyra could hardly hear the sense for the sweet sound of it.

“Yes. I got it in my pocket, safe.”