His Dark Materials Omnibus (117 page)

“No,” said Lyra, “because you’d just go and tell them. You’ll have to come along without knowing where we’re going. Of course you could always give up and go back to them.”

“Certainly not,” said Tialys.

“We want some kind of guarantee,” said Will. “You’re spies, so you’re bound to be dishonest, that’s your trade. We need to know we can trust you. Last night we were all too tired and we couldn’t think about it, but there’d be nothing to stop you waiting till we were asleep and then stinging us to make
us helpless and calling up Lord Asriel on that lodestone thing. You could do that easily. So we need to have a proper guarantee that you won’t. A promise isn’t enough.”

The two Gallivespians trembled with anger at this slur on their honor.

Tialys, controlling himself, said, “We don’t accept one-sided demands. You must give something in exchange. You must tell us what your intentions are, and then I shall give the lodestone resonator into your care. You must let me have it when I want to send a message, but you will always know when that happens, and we shall not be able to use it without your agreement. That will be our guarantee. And now you tell us where you are going, and why.”

Will and Lyra exchanged a glance to confirm it.

“All right,” Lyra said, “that’s fair. So here’s where we’re going: we’re going to the world of the dead. We don’t know where it is, but the knife’ll find it. That’s what we’re going to do.”

The two spies were looking at her with openmouthed incredulity.

Then Salmakia blinked and said, “What you say doesn’t make sense. The dead are dead, that’s all. There is no world of the dead.”

“I thought that was true, as well,” said Will. “But now I’m not sure. At least with the knife we can find out.”

“But
why?”

Lyra looked at Will and saw him nod.

“Well,” she said, “before I met Will, long before I was asleep, I led this friend into danger, and he was killed. I thought I was rescuing him, only I was making things worse. And while I was asleep I dreamed of him and I thought maybe I could make amends if I went where he’s gone and said I was sorry. And Will wants to find his father, who died just when he found him before. See, Lord Asriel wouldn’t think of that. Nor would Mrs. Coulter. If we went to him we’d have to do what
he
wants, and he wouldn’t think of Roger at all—that’s my friend who died—it wouldn’t matter to him. But it matters to me. To us. So that’s what we want to do.”

“Child,” said Tialys, “when we die, everything is over. There is no other life. You have seen death. You’ve seen dead bodies, and you’ve seen what happens to a dæmon when death comes. It vanishes. What else can there be to live on after that?”

“We’re going to go and find out,” said Lyra. “And now we’ve told you, I’ll take your resonator lodestone.”

She held out her hand, and leopard-Pantalaimon stood, tail swinging slowly, to reinforce her demand. Tialys unslung the pack from his back and
laid it in her palm. It was surprisingly heavy—no burden for her, of course, but she marveled at his strength.

“And how long do you think this expedition will take?” said the Chevalier.

“We don’t know,” Lyra told him. “We don’t know anything about it, any more than you do. We’ll just go there and see.”

“First thing,” Will said, “we’ve got to get some water and some more food, something easy to carry. So I’m going to find a world where we can do that, and then we’ll set off.”

Tialys and Salmakia mounted their dragonflies and held them quivering on the ground. The great insects were eager for flight, but the command of their riders was absolute, and Lyra, watching them in daylight for the first time, saw the extraordinary fineness of the gray silk reins, the silvery stirrups, the tiny saddles.

Will took the knife, and a powerful temptation made him feel for the touch of his own world: he had the credit card still; he could buy familiar food; he could even telephone Mrs. Cooper and ask for news of his mother—

The knife jarred with a sound like a nail being drawn along rough stone, and his heart nearly stopped. If he broke the blade again, it would be the end.

After a few moments he tried again. Instead of trying not to think of his mother, he said to himself: Yes, I know she’s there, but I’m just going to look away while I do this …

And that time it worked. He found a new world and slid the knife along to make an opening, and a few moments later all of them were standing in what looked like a neat and prosperous farmyard in some northern country like Holland or Denmark, where the stone-flagged yard was swept and clean and a row of stable doors stood open. The sun shone down through a hazy sky, and there was the smell of burning in the air, as well as something less pleasant. There was no sound of human life, though a loud buzzing, so active and vigorous that it sounded like a machine, came from the stables.

Lyra went and looked, and came back at once, looking pale.

“There’s four”—she gulped, hand to her throat, and recovered—“four dead horses in there. And millions of flies …”

“Look,” said Will, swallowing, “or maybe better not.”

He was pointing at the raspberry canes that edged the kitchen garden. He’d just seen a man’s legs, one with a shoe on and one without, protruding from the thickest part of the bushes.

Lyra didn’t want to look, but Will went to see if the man was still alive and needed help. He came back shaking his head, looking uneasy.

The two spies were already at the farmhouse door, which was ajar.

Tialys darted back and said, “It smells sweeter in there,” and then he flew back over the threshold while Salmakia scouted further around the outbuildings.

Will followed the Chevalier. He found himself in a big square kitchen, an old-fashioned place with white china on a wooden dresser, and a scrubbed pine table, and a hearth where a black kettle stood cold. Next door there was a pantry, with two shelves full of apples that filled the whole room with fragrance. The silence was oppressive.

Lyra said quietly, “Will, is
this
the world of the dead?”

The same thought had occurred to him. But he said, “No, I don’t think so. It’s one we haven’t been in before. Look, we’ll load up with as much as we can carry. There’s sort of rye bread, that’ll be good—it’s light—and here’s some cheese …”

When they had taken what they could carry, Will dropped a gold coin into the drawer in the big pine table.

“Well?” said Lyra, seeing Tialys raise his eyebrows. “You should always pay for what you take.”

At that moment Salmakia came in through the back door, landing her dragonfly on the table in a shimmer of electric blue.

“There are men coming,” she said, “on foot, with weapons. They’re only a few minutes’ walk away. And there is a village burning beyond the fields.”

And as she spoke, they could hear the sound of boots on gravel, and a voice issuing orders, and the jingle of metal.

“Then we should go,” said Will.

He felt in the air with the knifepoint. And at once he was aware of a new kind of sensation. The blade seemed to be sliding along a very smooth surface, like a mirror, and then it sank through slowly until he was able to cut. But it was resistant, like heavy cloth, and when he made an opening, he blinked with surprise and alarm: because the world he was opening into was the same in every detail as the one they were already standing in.

“What’s happening?” said Lyra.

The spies were looking through, puzzled. But it was more than puzzlement they felt. Just as the air had resisted the knife, so something in this opening resisted their going through. Will had to push against something invisible and then pull Lyra after him, and the Gallivespians could hardly make any headway at all. They had to perch the dragonflies on the children’s hands, and even then it was like pulling them against a pressure in the air; their filmy
wings bent and twisted, and the little riders had to stroke their mounts’ heads and whisper to calm their fears.

But after a few seconds of struggle, they were all through, and Will found the edge of the window (though it was impossible to see) and closed it, shutting the sound of the soldiers away in their own world.

“Will,” said Lyra, and he turned to see that there was another figure in the kitchen with them.

His heart jolted. It was the man he’d seen not ten minutes before, stark dead in the bushes with his throat cut.

He was middle-aged, lean, with the look of a man who spent most of the time in the open air. But now he was looking almost crazed, or paralyzed, with shock. His eyes were so wide that the white showed all around the iris, and he was clutching the edge of the table with a trembling hand. His throat, Will was glad to see, was intact.

He opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out. All he could do was point at Will and Lyra.

Lyra said, “Excuse us for being in your house, but we had to escape from the men who were coming. I’m sorry if we startled you. I’m Lyra, and this is Will, and these are our friends, the Chevalier Tialys and the Lady Salmakia. Could you tell us your name and where we are?”

This normal-sounding request seemed to bring the man to his senses, and a shudder passed over him, as if he were waking from a dream.

“I’m dead,” he said. “I’m lying out there, dead. I know I am.
You
ain’t dead. What’s happening? God help me, they cut my throat. What’s happening?”

Lyra stepped closer to Will when the man said
I’m dead
, and Pantalaimon fled to her breast as a mouse. As for the Gallivespians, they were trying to control their dragonflies, because the great insects seemed to have an aversion for the man and darted here and there in the kitchen, looking for a way out.

But the man didn’t notice them. He was still trying to understand what had happened.

“Are you a ghost?” Will said cautiously.

The man reached out his hand, and Will tried to take it, but his fingers closed on the air. A tingle of cold was all he felt.

When he saw it happen, the man looked at his own hand, appalled. The numbness was beginning to wear off, and he could feel the pity of his state.

“Truly,” he said, “I
am
dead … I’m dead, and I’m going to Hell …”

“Hush,” said Lyra, “we’ll go together. What’s your name?”

“Dirk Jansen I was,” he said, “but already I … I don’t know what to do … Don’t know where to go …”

Will opened the door. The barnyard looked the same, the kitchen garden was unchanged, the same hazy sun shone down. And there was the man’s body, untouched.

A little groan broke from Dirk Jansen’s throat, as if there were no denying it anymore. The dragonflies darted out of the door and skimmed over the ground and then shot up high, faster than birds. The man was looking around helplessly, raising his hands, lowering them again, uttering little cries.

“I can’t stay here … Can’t stay,” he was saying. “But this ain’t the farm I knew. This is wrong. I got to go …”

“Where are you going, Mr. Jansen?” said Lyra.

“Down the road. Dunno. Got to go. Can’t stay here …”

Salmakia flew down to perch on Lyra’s hand. The dragonfly’s little claws pricked as the Lady said, “There are people walking from the village—people like this man—all walking in the same direction.”

“Then we’ll go with them,” said Will, and swung his rucksack over his shoulder.

Dirk Jansen was already passing his own body, averting his eyes. He looked almost as if he were drunk, stopping, moving on, wandering to left and right, stumbling over little ruts and stones on the path his living feet had known so well.

Lyra came after Will, and Pantalaimon became a kestrel and flew up as high as he could, making Lyra gasp.

“They’re right,” he said when he came down. “There’s lines of people all coming from the village. Dead people …”

And soon they saw them, too: twenty or so men, women, and children, all moving as Dirk Jansen had done, uncertain and shocked. The village was half a mile away, and the people were coming toward them, close together in the middle of the road. When Dirk Jansen saw the other ghosts, he broke into a stumbling run, and they held out their hands to greet him.

“Even if they don’t know where they’re going, they’re all going there together,” Lyra said. “We better just go with them.”

“D’you think they had dæmons in this world?” said Will.

“Can’t tell. If you saw one of ’em in your world, would you know he was a ghost?”

“It’s hard to say. They don’t look normal, exactly … There was a man I used to see in my town, and he used to walk about outside the shops always
holding the same old plastic bag, and he never spoke to anyone or went inside. And no one ever looked at him. I used to pretend he was a ghost. They look a bit like him. Maybe my world’s full of ghosts and I never knew.”

“I don’t think mine is,” said Lyra doubtfully.

“Anyway, this must be the world of the dead. These people have just been killed—those soldiers must’ve done it—and here they are, and it’s just like the world they were alive in. I thought it’d be a lot different …”

“Will, it’s fading,” she said. “Look!”

She was clutching his arm. He stopped and looked around, and she was right. Not long before he had found the window in Oxford and stepped through into the other world of Cittàgazze, there had been an eclipse of the sun, and like millions of others Will had stood outside at midday and watched as the bright daylight faded and dimmed until a sort of eerie twilight covered the houses, the trees, the park. Everything was just as clear as in full daylight, but there was less light to see it by, as if all the strength were draining out of a dying sun.

What was happening now was like that, but odder, because the edges of things were losing their definition as well and becoming blurred.

“It’s not like going blind, even,” said Lyra, frightened, “because it’s not that we can’t see things, it’s like the things themselves are fading …”

The color was slowly seeping out of the world. A dim green gray for the bright green of the trees and the grass, a dim sand gray for the vivid yellow of a field of corn, a dim blood gray for the red bricks of a neat farmhouse …