His Dark Materials Omnibus (35 page)

Lyra twisted her mouth.

“Yes, I can see. Well, never mind, darling, because you
didn’t
tell me, did you? So you haven’t broken any promises. But listen, dear, it really ought to be properly looked after. I’m afraid it’s so rare and delicate that we can’t let it be at risk any longer.”

“Why shouldn’t Lord Asriel have it?” Lyra said, not moving.

“Because of what he’s doing. You know he’s been sent away to exile, because he’s got something dangerous and wicked in mind. He needs the alethiometer to finish his plan, but believe me, dear, the last thing anyone
should do is let him have it. The Master of Jordan was sadly mistaken. But now that you know, it really would be better to let me have it, wouldn’t it? It would save you the trouble of carrying it around, and all the worry of looking after it—and really it must have been such a puzzle, wondering what a silly old thing like that was any good for.…”

Lyra wondered how she had ever, ever, ever found this woman to be so fascinating and clever.

“So if you’ve got it now, dear, you’d really better let me have it to look after. It’s in that belt around your waist, isn’t it? Yes, that was a clever thing to do, putting it away like this.…”

Her hands were at Lyra’s skirt, and then she was unfastening the stiff oilcloth. Lyra tensed herself. The golden monkey was crouching at the end of the bed, trembling with anticipation, little black hands to his mouth. Mrs. Coulter pulled the belt away from Lyra’s waist and unbuttoned the pouch. She was breathing fast. She took out the black velvet cloth and unfolded it, finding the tin box Iorek Byrnison had made.

Pantalaimon was a cat again, tensed to spring. Lyra drew her legs up away from Mrs. Coulter, and swung them down to the floor so that she too could run when the time came.

“What’s this?” said Mrs. Coulter, as if amused. “What a funny old tin! Did you put it in here to keep it safe, dear? All this moss … You have been careful, haven’t you? Another tin, inside the first one! And soldered! Who did this, dear?”

She was too intent on opening it to wait for an answer. She had a knife in her handbag with a lot of different attachments, and she pulled out a blade and dug it under the lid.

At once a furious buzzing filled the room.

Lyra and Pantalaimon held themselves still. Mrs. Coulter, puzzled, curious, pulled at the lid, and the golden monkey bent close to look.

Then in a dazzling moment the black form of the spy-fly hurtled out of the tin and crashed hard into the monkey’s face.

He screamed and flung himself backward; and of course it was hurting Mrs. Coulter too, and she cried out in pain and fright with the monkey, and then the little clockwork devil swarmed upward at her, up her breast and throat toward her face.

Lyra didn’t hesitate. Pantalaimon sprang for the door and she was after him at once, and she tore it open and raced away faster than she had ever run in her life.

“Fire alarm!” Pantalaimon shrieked, as he flew ahead of her.

She saw a button on the next corner, and smashed the glass with her desperate fist. She ran on, heading toward the dormitories, smashed another alarm and another, and then people began to come out into the corridor, looking up and down for the fire.

By this time she was near the kitchen, and Pantalaimon flashed a thought into her mind, and she darted in. A moment later she had turned on all the gas taps and flung a match at the nearest burner. Then she dragged a bag of flour from a shelf and hurled it at the edge of a table so it burst and filled the air with white, because she had heard that flour will explode if it’s treated like that near a flame.

Then she ran out and on as fast as she could toward her own dormitory. The corridors were full now: children running this way and that, vivid with excitement, for the word
escape
had got around. The oldest were making for the storerooms where the clothing was kept, and herding the younger ones with them. Adults were trying to control it all, and none of them knew what was happening. Shouting, pushing, crying, jostling people were everywhere.

Through it all Lyra and Pantalaimon darted like fish, making always for the dormitory, and just as they reached it, there was a dull explosion from behind that shook the building.

The other girls had fled: the room was empty. Lyra dragged the locker to the corner, jumped up, hauled the furs out of the ceiling, felt for the alethiometer. It was still there. She tugged the furs on quickly, pulling the hood forward, and then Pantalaimon, a sparrow at the door, called:

“Now!”

She ran out. By luck a group of children who’d already found some cold-weather clothing were racing down the corridor toward the main entrance, and she joined them, sweating, her heart thumping, knowing that she had to escape or die.

The way was blocked. The fire in the kitchen had taken quickly, and whether it was the flour or the gas, something had brought down part of the roof. People were clambering over twisted struts and girders to get up to the bitter cold air. The smell of gas was strong. Then came another explosion, louder than the first and closer. The blast knocked several people over, and cries of fear and pain filled the air.

Lyra struggled up, and with Pantalaimon calling, “This way! This way!” among the other dæmon-cries and flutterings, she hauled herself over the rubble. The air she was breathing was frozen, and she hoped that the children
had managed to find their outdoor clothing; it would be a fine thing to escape from the station only to die of cold.

There really was a blaze now. When she got out onto the roof under the night sky, she could see flames licking at the edges of a great hole in the side of the building. There was a throng of children and adults by the main entrance, but this time the adults were more agitated and the children more fearful: much more fearful.

“Roger! Roger!” Lyra called, and Pantalaimon, keen-eyed as an owl, hooted that he’d seen him.

A moment later they found each other.

“Tell ’em all to come with me!” Lyra shouted into his ear.

“They won’t—they’re all panicky—”

“Tell ’em what they do to the kids that vanish! They cut their dæmons off with a big knife! Tell ’em what you saw this afternoon—all them dæmons we let out! Tell ’em that’s going to happen to them too unless they get away!”

Roger gaped, horrified, but then collected his wits and ran to the nearest group of hesitating children. Lyra did the same, and as the message passed along, some children cried out and clutched their dæmons in fear.

“Come with me!” Lyra shouted. “There’s a rescue a coming! We got to get out of the compound! Come on, run!”

The children heard her and followed, streaming across the enclosure toward the avenue of lights, their boots pattering and creaking in the hard-packed snow.

Behind them, adults were shouting, and there was a rumble and crash as another part of the building fell in. Sparks gushed into the air, and flames billowed out with a sound like tearing cloth; but cutting through this came another sound, dreadfully close and violent. Lyra had never heard it before, but she knew it at once: it was the howl of the Tartar guards’ wolf dæmons. She felt weak from head to foot, and many children turned in fear and stumbled to a stop, for there running at a low swift tireless lope came the first of the Tartar guards, rifle at the ready, with the mighty leaping grayness of his dæmon beside him.

Then came another, and another. They were all in padded mail, and they had no eyes—or at least you couldn’t see any eyes behind the snow slits of their helmets. The only eyes you could see were the round black ends of the rifle barrels and the blazing yellow eyes of the wolf dæmons above the slaver dripping from their jaws.

Lyra faltered. She hadn’t dreamed of how frightening those wolves were.
And now that she knew how casually people at Bolvangar broke the great taboo, she shrank from the thought of those dripping teeth.…

The Tartars ran to stand in a line across the entrance to the avenue of lights, their dæmons beside them as disciplined and drilled as they were. In another minute there’d be a second line, because more were coming, and more behind them. Lyra thought with despair: children can’t fight soldiers. It wasn’t like the battles in the Oxford claybeds, hurling lumps of mud at the brickburners’ children.

Or perhaps it was! She remembered hurling a handful of clay in the broad face of a brickburner boy bearing down on her. He’d stopped to claw the stuff out of his eyes, and then the townies leaped on him.

She’d been standing in the mud. She was standing in the snow.

Just as she’d done that afternoon, but in deadly earnest now, she scooped a handful together and hurled it at the nearest soldier.

“Get ’em in the eyes!” she yelled, and threw another.

Other children joined in, and then someone’s dæmon had the notion of flying as a swift beside the snowball and nudging it directly at the eye slits of the target—and then they all joined in, and in a few moments the Tartars were stumbling about, spitting and cursing and trying to brush the packed snow out of the narrow gap in front of their eyes.

“Come on!” Lyra screamed, and flung herself at the gate into the avenue of lights.

The children streamed after her, every one, dodging the snapping jaws of the wolves and racing as hard as they could down the avenue toward the beckoning open dark beyond.

A harsh scream came from behind as an officer shouted an order, and then a score of rifle bolts worked at once, and then there was another scream and a tense silence, with only the fleeing children’s pounding feet and gasping breath to be heard.

They were taking aim. They wouldn’t miss.

But before they could fire, a choking gasp came from one of the Tartars, and a cry of surprise from another.

Lyra stopped and turned to see a man lying on the snow, with a gray-feathered arrow in his back. He was writhing and twitching and coughing out blood, and the other soldiers were looking around to left and right for whoever had fired it, but the archer was nowhere to be seen.

And then an arrow came flying straight down from the sky, and struck
another man behind the head. He fell at once. A shout from the officer, and everyone looked up at the dark sky.

“Witches!” said Pantalaimon.

And so they were: ragged elegant black shapes sweeping past high above, with a hiss and swish of air through the needles of the cloud-pine branches they flew on. As Lyra watched, one swooped low and loosed an arrow: another man fell.

And then all the Tartars turned their rifles up and blazed into the dark, firing at nothing, at shadows, at clouds, and more and more arrows rained down on them.

But the officer in charge, seeing the children almost away, ordered a squad to race after them. Some children screamed. And then more screamed, and they weren’t moving forward anymore, they were turning back in confusion, terrified by the monstrous shape hurtling toward them from the dark beyond the avenue of lights.

“Iorek Byrnison!” cried Lyra, her chest nearly bursting with joy.

The armored bear at the charge seemed to be conscious of no weight except what gave him momentum. He bounded past Lyra almost in a blur and crashed into the Tartars, scattering soldiers, dæmons, rifles to all sides. Then he stopped and whirled round, with a lithe athletic power, and struck two massive blows, one to each side, at the guards closest to him.

A wolf dæmon leaped at him: he slashed at her in midair, and bright fire spilled out of her as she fell to the snow, where she hissed and howled before vanishing. Her human died at once.

The Tartar officer, faced with this double attack, didn’t hesitate. A long high scream of orders, and the force divided itself into two: one to keep off the witches, the bigger part to overcome the bear. His troops were magnificently brave. They dropped to one knee in groups of four and fired their rifles as if they were on the practice range, not budging an inch as Iorek’s mighty bulk hurtled toward them. A moment later they were dead.

Iorek struck again, twisting to one side, slashing, snarling, crushing, while bullets flew about him like wasps or flies, doing no harm at all. Lyra urged the children on and out into the darkness beyond the lights. They must get away, because dangerous as the Tartars were, far more dangerous were the adults of Bolvangar.

So she called and beckoned and pushed to get the children moving. As the lights behind them threw long shadows on the snow, Lyra found her heart
moving out toward the deep dark of the arctic night and the clean coldness, leaping forward to love it as Pantalaimon was doing, a hare now delighting in his own propulsion.

“Where we going?” someone said.

“There’s nothing out here but snow!”

“There’s a rescue party coming,” Lyra told them. “There’s fifty gyptians or more. I bet there’s some relations of yours, too. All the gyptian families that lost a kid, they all sent someone.”

“I en’t a gyptian,” a boy said.

“Don’t matter. They’ll take you anyway.”

“Where?” someone said querulously.

“Home,” said Lyra. “That’s what I come here for, to rescue you, and I brung the gyptians here to take you home again. We just got to go on a bit further and then we’ll find ’em. The bear was with ’em, so they can’t be far off.”

“D’you see that bear!” one boy was saying. “When he slashed open that dæmon—the man died as if someone whipped his heart out, just like that!”

“I never knew dæmons could be killed,” someone else said.

They were all talking now; the excitement and relief had loosened everyone’s tongue. As long as they kept moving, it didn’t matter if they talked.

“Is that true,” said a girl, “about what they do back there?”

“Yeah,” Lyra said. “I never thought I’d ever see anyone without their dæmon. But on the way here, we found this boy on his own without any dæmon. He kept asking for her, where she was, would she ever find him. He was called Tony Makarios.”

“I know him!” said someone, and others joined in: “Yeah, they took him away about a week back.…”

“Well, they cut his dæmon away,” said Lyra, knowing how it would affect them. “And a little bit after we found him, he died. And all the dæmons they cut away, they kept them in cages in a square building back there.”