His Dark Materials Omnibus (130 page)

There was Lord Roke, lying in the open on a patch of moss. How could they not have seen him? But something had happened, for he wasn’t moving.

“Go and bring him back,” she said, and the monkey, crouching low, darted from one rock to another, making for the little patch of green among the rocks. His golden fur was soon darkened by the rain and plastered close to his body, making him smaller and less easy to see, but all the same he was horribly conspicuous.

Father MacPhail, meanwhile, had turned to the bomb again. The engineers from the generating station had brought their cable right down to it, and the technicians were busy securing the clamps and making ready the terminals.

Mrs. Coulter wondered what he intended to do, now that his victim had escaped. Then the President turned to look over his shoulder, and she saw his expression. It was so fixed and intense that he looked more like a mask than a man. His lips were moving in prayer, his eyes were turned up wide open as the rain beat into them, and altogether he looked like some gloomy Spanish painting of a saint in the ecstasy of martyrdom. Mrs. Coulter felt a sudden bolt of fear, because she knew exactly what he intended: he was going to sacrifice himself. The bomb would work whether or not she was part of it.

Darting from rock to rock, the golden monkey reached Lord Roke.

“My left leg is broken,” said the Gallivespian calmly. “The last man stepped on me. Listen carefully—”

As the monkey lifted him away from the lights, Lord Roke explained exactly where the resonating chamber was and how to open it. They were practically under the eyes of the soldiers, but step by step, from shadow to shadow, the dæmon crept with his little burden.

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.

And then everything was happening at once, too quickly: there was a burst of gunfire, and a cloud of acrid smoke billowed across the slope, though she saw no flames. The golden monkey, seeing Mrs. Coulter attacked, set Lord Roke down and sprang to her defense, just as the witch flew down, knife at the ready. Lord Roke pushed himself back against the nearest rock, and Mrs. Coulter grappled directly with the witch. They wrestled furiously among the rocks, while the golden monkey set about tearing all the needles from the witch’s cloud-pine branch.

Meanwhile, the President was thrusting his lizard dæmon into the smaller of the silver mesh cages. She writhed and screamed and kicked and bit, but he struck her off his hand and slammed the door shut quickly. The technicians were making the final adjustments, checking their meters and gauges.

Out of nowhere a seagull flew down with a wild cry and seized the Gallivespian in his claw. It was the witch’s dæmon. Lord Roke fought hard, but the bird had him too tightly, and then the witch tore herself from Mrs. Coulter’s grasp, snatched the tattered pine branch, and leapt into the air to join her dæmon.

Mrs. Coulter hurled herself toward the bomb, feeling the smoke attack her nose and throat like claws: tear gas. The soldiers, most of them, had fallen or stumbled away choking (and where had the gas come from? she wondered), but now, as the wind dispersed it, they were beginning to gather themselves again. The great ribbed belly of the zeppelin bulked over the bomb, straining at its cables in the wind, its silver sides running with moisture.

But then a sound from high above made Mrs. Coulter’s ears ring: a scream so high and horrified that even the golden monkey clutched her in fear. And a second later, pitching down in a swirl of white limbs, black silk, and green twigs, the witch fell right at the feet of Father MacPhail, her bones crunching audibly on the rock.

Mrs. Coulter darted forward to see if Lord Roke had survived the fall. But the Gallivespian was dead. His right spur was deep in the witch’s neck.

The witch herself was still just alive, and her mouth moved shudderingly, saying, “Something coming—something else—coming—”

It made no sense. The President was already stepping over her body to reach the larger cage. His dæmon was running up and down the sides of the other, her little claws making the silver mesh ring, her voice crying for pity.

The golden monkey leapt for Father MacPhail, but not to attack: he scrambled up and over the man’s shoulders to reach the complex heart of the wires and the pipe work, the resonating chamber. The President tried to grab him, but Mrs. Coulter seized the man’s arm and tried to pull him back. She couldn’t see: the rain was driving into her eyes, and there was still gas in the air.

And all around there was gunfire. What was happening?

The floodlights swung in the wind, so that nothing seemed steady, not even the black rocks of the mountainside. The President and Mrs. Coulter fought hand to hand, scratching, punching, tearing, pulling, biting, and she was tired and he was strong; but she was desperate, too, and she might have pulled him away, but part of her was watching her dæmon as he manipulated the handles, his fierce black paws snapping the mechanism this way, that way, pulling, twisting, reaching in—

Then came a blow to her temple. She fell stunned, and the President broke free and hauled himself bleeding into the cage, dragging the door shut after him.

And the monkey had the chamber open—a glass door on heavy hinges, and he was reaching inside—and there was the lock of hair: held between rubber pads in a metal clasp! Still more to undo; and Mrs. Coulter was hauling herself up with shaking hands. She shook the silvery mesh with all her might, looking up at the blade, the sparking terminals, the man inside. The monkey was unscrewing the clasp, and the President, his face a mask of grim exultation, was twisting wires together.

There was a flash of intense white, a lashing
crack
, and the monkey’s form was flung high in the air. With him came a little cloud of gold: was it Lyra’s hair? Was it his own fur? Whatever it was, it blew away at once in the dark. Mrs. Coulter’s right hand had convulsed so tightly that it clung to the mesh, leaving her half-lying, half-hanging, while her head rang and her heart pounded.

But something had happened to her sight. A terrible clarity had come over her eyes, the power to see the most tiny details, and they were focused on the one detail in the universe that mattered: stuck to one of the pads of the clasp in the resonating chamber, there was a single dark gold hair.

She cried a great wail of anguish, and shook and shook the cage, trying to loosen the hair with the little strength she had left. The President passed his hands over his face, wiping it clear of the rain. His mouth moved as though he were speaking, but she couldn’t hear a word. She tore at the mesh, helpless, and then hurled her whole weight against the machine as he brought
two wires together with a spark. In utter silence the brilliant silver blade shot down.

Something exploded, somewhere, but Mrs. Coulter was beyond feeling it.

There were hands lifting her up: Lord Asriel’s hands. There was nothing to be surprised at anymore; the intention craft stood behind him, poised on the slope and perfectly level. He lifted her in his arms and carried her to the craft, ignoring the gunfire, the billowing smoke, the cries of alarm and confusion.

“Is he dead? Did it go off?” she managed to say.

Lord Asriel climbed in beside her, and the snow leopard leapt in, too, the half-stunned monkey in her mouth. Lord Asriel took the controls and the craft sprang at once into the air. Through pain-dazed eyes Mrs. Coulter looked down at the mountain slope. Men were running here and there like ants; some lay dead, while others crawled brokenly over the rocks; the great cable from the generating station snaked down through the chaos, the only purposeful thing in sight, making its way to the glittering bomb, where the President’s body lay crumpled inside the cage.

“Lord Roke?” said Lord Asriel.

“Dead,” she whispered.

He pressed a button, and a lance of flame jetted toward the tossing, swaying zeppelin. An instant later the whole airship bloomed into a rose of white fire, engulfing the intention craft, which hung motionless and unharmed in the middle of it. Lord Asriel moved the craft unhurriedly away, and they watched as the blazing zeppelin fell slowly, slowly down on top of the whole scene—bomb, cable, soldiers, and all—and everything began to tumble in a welter of smoke and flames down the mountainside, gathering speed and incinerating the resinous trees as it went, until it plunged into the white waters of the cataract, which whirled it all away into the dark.

Lord Asriel touched the controls again and the intention craft began to speed away northward. But Mrs. Coulter couldn’t take her eyes off the scene; she watched behind them for a long time, gazing with tear-filled eyes at the fire, until it was no more than a vertical line of orange scratched on the dark and wreathed in smoke and steam, and then it was nothing.

It was dark, with an enfolding blackness that pressed on Lyra’s eyes so heavily that she almost felt the weight of the thousands of tons of rock above them. The only light they had came from the luminous tail of the Lady Salmakia’s dragonfly, and even that was fading; for the poor insects had found no food in the world of the dead, and the Chevalier’s had died not long before.

So while Tialys sat on Will’s shoulder, Lyra held the Lady’s dragonfly in her hands as the Lady soothed it and whispered to the trembling creature, feeding it first on crumbs of biscuit and then on her own blood. If Lyra had seen her do that, she would have offered hers, since there was more of it; but it was all she could do to concentrate on placing her feet safely and avoiding the lowest parts of the rock above.

No-Name the harpy had led them into a system of caves that would bring them, she said, to the nearest point in the world of the dead from which they could open a window to another world. Behind them came the endless column of ghosts. The tunnel was full of whispers, as the foremost encouraged those behind, as the brave urged on the fainthearted, as the old gave hope to the young.

“Is it much farther, No-Name?” said Lyra quietly. “Because this poor dragonfly’s dying, and then his light’ll go out.”

The harpy stopped and turned to say:

“Just follow. If you can’t see, listen. If you can’t hear, feel.”

Her eyes shone fierce in the gloom. Lyra nodded and said, “Yes, I will, but I’m not as strong as I used to be, and I’m not brave, not very anyway. Please don’t stop. I’ll follow you—we all will. Please keep going, No-Name.”

The harpy turned back and moved on. The dragonfly shine was getting dimmer by the minute, and Lyra knew it would soon be completely gone.

But as she stumbled forward, a voice spoke just beside her—a familiar voice.

“Lyra—Lyra, child …”

And she turned in delight.

“Mr. Scoresby! Oh, I’m so glad to hear you! And it is you—I can see, just—oh, I wish I could touch you!”

In the faint, faint light she made out the lean form and the sardonic smile of the Texan aeronaut, and her hand reached forward of its own accord, in vain.

“Me too, honey. But listen to me—they’re working some trouble out there, and it’s aimed at you—don’t ask me how. Is this the boy with the knife?”

Will had been looking at him, eager to see this old companion of Lyra’s; but now his eyes went right past Lee to look at the ghost beside him. Lyra saw at once who it was, and marveled at this grown-up vision of Will—the same jutting jaw, the same way of holding his head.

Will was speechless, but his father said:

“Listen—there’s no time to talk about this—just do exactly as I say. Take the knife now and find a place where a lock has been cut from Lyra’s hair.”

His tone was urgent, and Will didn’t waste time asking why. Lyra, her eyes wide with alarm, held up the dragonfly with one hand and felt her hair with the other.

“No,” said Will, “take your hand away—I can’t see.”

And in the faint gleam, he could see it: just above her left temple, there was a little patch of hair that was shorter than the rest.

“Who did that?” said Lyra. “And—”

“Hush,” said Will, and asked his father’s ghost, “What must I do?”

“Cut the short hair off right down to her scalp. Collect it carefully, every single hair. Don’t miss even one. 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 harpy was watching, the ghosts behind were crowding close. Lyra could see their faint faces in the dimness. Frightened and bewildered, she stood biting her lip while Will did as his father told him, his face close up to the knifepoint in the paling dragonfly light. He cut a little hollow space in the rock of another world, put all the tiny golden hairs into it, and replaced the rock before closing the window.