His Dark Materials Omnibus (86 page)

“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.

“No!” she cried, and tried to move toward it, but was driven back by a spasm of nausea. Even in her sickened distress, Lena Feldt could see that Mrs. Coulter had more force in her soul than anyone she had ever seen. It didn’t surprise her to see that the Specter was under Mrs. Coulter’s power; no one could resist that authority. Lena Feldt turned back in anguish to the woman.

“Let him go! Please let him go!” she cried.

“We’ll see. Is the child with you? The girl Lyra?”

“Yes!”

“And a boy, too? A boy with a knife?”

“Yes—I beg you—”

“And how many witches have you?”

“Twenty! Let him go, let him go!”

“All in the air? Or do some of you stay on the ground with the children?”

“Most in the air, three or four on the ground always—this is anguish—let him go or kill me now!”

“How far up the mountain are they? Are they moving on, or have they stopped to rest?”

Lena Feldt told her everything. She could have resisted any torture but what was happening to her dæmon now. When Mrs. Coulter had learned all she wanted to know about where the witches were, and how they guarded Lyra and Will, she said, “And now tell me this. You witches know something about the child Lyra. I nearly learned it from one of your sisters, but she died before I could complete the torture. Well, there is no one to save you now. Tell me the truth about my daughter.”

Lena Feldt gasped, “She will be the mother—she will be life—mother—she will disobey—she will—”

“Name her! You are saying everything but the most important thing! Name her!” cried Mrs. Coulter.

“Eve! Mother of all! Eve, again! Mother Eve!” stammered Lena Feldt, sobbing.

“Ah,” said Mrs. Coulter.

And she breathed a great sigh, as if the purpose of her life was clear to her at last.

Dimly the witch saw what she had done, and through the horror that was enveloping her she tried to cry out: “What will you do to her? What will you do?”

“Why, I shall have to destroy her,” said Mrs. Coulter, “to prevent another Fall.… Why didn’t I see this before? It was too large to see.…”

She clapped her hands together softly, like a child, wide-eyed. Lena Feldt, whimpering, heard her go on: “Of course. Asriel will make war on the Authority, and then.… Of course, of course. As before, so again. And Lyra is Eve. And this time she will not fall. I’ll see to that.”

And Mrs. Coulter drew herself up, and snapped her fingers to the Specter feeding on the witch’s dæmon. The little snow bunting dæmon lay twitching on the rock as the Specter moved toward the witch herself, and then whatever Lena Feldt had undergone before was doubled and trebled and multiplied a hundredfold. She felt a nausea of the soul, a hideous and sickening despair, a melancholy weariness so profound that she was going to die of it. Her last conscious thought was disgust at life; her senses had lied to her. The world was not made of energy and delight but of foulness, betrayal, and lassitude. Living was hateful, and death was no better, and from end to end of the universe this was the first and last and only truth.

Thus she stood, bow in hand, indifferent, dead in life.

So Lena Feldt failed to see or to care about what Mrs. Coulter did next. Ignoring the gray-haired man slumped unconscious in the canvas chair and his dull-skinned dæmon coiled in the dust, the woman called the captain of the soldiers and ordered them to get ready for a night march up the mountain.

Then she went to the edge of the water and called to the Specters.

They came at her command, gliding like pillars of mist across the water. She raised her arms and made them forget they were earthbound, so that one by one they rose into the air and floated free like malignant thistledown, drifting up into the night and borne by the air currents toward Will and Lyra and the other witches; but Lena Feldt saw nothing of it.

The temperature dropped quickly after dark, and when Will and Lyra had eaten the last of their dry bread, they lay down under an overhanging rock to keep warm and try to sleep. At least Lyra didn’t have to try; she was unconscious in less than a minute, curled tightly around Pantalaimon, but Will couldn’t find sleep, no matter how long he lay there. It was partly his hand, which was now throbbing right up to the elbow and uncomfortably swollen,
and partly the hard ground, and partly the cold, and partly utter exhaustion, and partly his longing for his mother.

He was afraid for her, of course, and he knew she’d be safer if he was there to look after her; but he wanted her to look after him, too, as she’d done when he was very small. He wanted her to bandage him and tuck him into bed and sing to him and take away all the trouble and surround him with all the warmth and softness and mother-kindness he needed so badly; and it was never going to happen. Part of him was only a little boy still. So he cried, but he lay very still as he did, not wanting to wake Lyra.

But he still wasn’t asleep. He was more awake than ever. Finally he uncurled his stiff limbs and got up quietly, shivering; and with the knife at his waist he set off higher up the mountain, to calm his restlessness.

Behind him the sentry witch’s robin dæmon cocked his head, and she turned from the watch she was keeping to see Will clambering up the rocks. She reached for her pine branch and silently took to the air, not to disturb him but to see that he came to no harm.

He didn’t notice. He felt such a need to move and keep moving that he hardly noticed the pain in his hand anymore. He felt as if he should walk all night, all day, forever, because nothing else would calm this fever in his breast. And as if in sympathy with him, a wind was rising. There were no leaves to stir in this wilderness, but the air buffeted his body and made his hair stream away from his face; it was wild outside him and wild within.

He climbed higher and higher, hardly once thinking of how he might find his way back down to Lyra, until he came out on a little plateau almost at the top of the world, it seemed. All around him, on every horizon, the mountains reached no higher. In the brilliant glare of the moon the only colors were stark black and dead white, and every edge was jagged and every surface bare.

The wild wind must have been bringing clouds overhead, because suddenly the moon was covered, and darkness swept over the whole landscape—thick clouds, too, for no gleam of moonlight shone through them. In less than a minute Will found himself in nearly total darkness.

And at the same moment Will felt a grip on his right arm.

He cried out with shock and twisted away at once, but the grip was tenacious. And Will was savage now. He felt he was at the very end of everything; and if it was the end of his life, too, he was going to fight and fight till he fell.

So he twisted and kicked and twisted again, but that hand wouldn’t let go; and since it was his right arm being held, he couldn’t get at the knife. He tried with his left, but he was being jerked around so much, and his hand was so
painful and swollen, that he couldn’t reach; he had to fight with one bare, wounded hand against a grown man.

He sank his teeth into the hand on his forearm, but all that happened was that the man landed a dizzying blow on the back of his head. Then Will kicked again and again, and some of the kicks connected and some didn’t, and all the time he was pulling, jerking, twisting, shoving, and still the grip held him fast.

Dimly he heard his own panting and the man’s grunts and harsh breathing; and then by chance he got his leg behind the man’s and hurled himself against his chest, and the man fell with Will on top of him, heavily. But never for a moment did that grip slacken, and Will, rolling around violently on the stony ground, felt a heavy fear tighten around his heart: this man would never let him go, and even if he killed him, his corpse would still be holding fast.

But Will was weakening, and now he was crying, too, sobbing bitterly as he kicked and tugged and beat at the man with his head and feet, and he knew his muscles would give up soon. And then he noticed that the man had fallen still, though his hand still gripped as tight as ever. He was lying there letting Will batter at him with knees and head; and as soon as Will saw that, the last of his strength left him, and he fell helpless beside his opponent, every nerve in his body ringing and dizzy and throbbing.

Will hauled himself up painfully, peered through the deep darkness, and made out a blur of white on the ground beside the man. It was the white breast and head of a great bird, an osprey, a dæmon, and it was lying still. Will tried to pull away, and his feeble tug woke a response from the man, whose hand hadn’t loosened.

But he was moving. He was feeling Will’s right hand carefully with his free one. Will’s hair stood on end.

Then the man said, “Give me your other hand.”

“Be careful,” said Will.

The man’s free hand felt down Will’s left arm, and his fingertips moved gently over the wrist and on to the swollen palm and with the utmost delicacy on to the stumps of Will’s two lost fingers.

His other hand let go at once, and he sat up.

“You’ve got the knife,” he said. “You’re the knife bearer.”

His voice was resonant, harsh, but breathless. Will sensed that he was badly hurt. Had he wounded this dark opponent?

Will was still lying on the stones, utterly spent. All he could see was the
man’s shape, crouching above him, but he couldn’t see his face. The man was reaching sideways for something, and after a few moments a marvelous soothing coolness spread into his hand from the stumps of his fingers as the man massaged a salve into his skin.

“What are you doing?” Will said.

“Curing your wound. Keep still.”

“Who are you?”

“I’m the only man who knows what the knife is for. Hold your hand up like that. Don’t move.”

The wind was beating more wildly than ever, and a drop or two of rain splashed onto Will’s face. He was trembling violently, but he propped up his left hand with his right while the man spread more ointment over the stumps and wound a strip of linen tightly around the hand.

And as soon as the dressing was secure, the man slumped sideways and lay down himself. Will, still bemused by the blessed cool numbness in his hand, tried to sit up and look at him. But it was darker than ever. He felt forward with his right hand and found himself touching the man’s chest, where the heart was beating like a bird against the bars of a cage.

“Yes,” the man said hoarsely. “Try and cure that, go on.”

“Are you ill?”

“I’ll be better soon. You have the knife, yes?”

“Yes.”

“And you know how to use it?”

“Yes, yes. But are you from this world? How do you know about it?”

“Listen,” said the man, sitting up with a struggle. “Don’t interrupt. If you’re the bearer of the knife, you have a task that’s greater than you can imagine. A
child
 … How could they let it happen? Well, so it must be.… There is a war coming, boy. The greatest war there ever was. Something like it happened before, and this time the right side must win. We’ve had nothing but lies and propaganda and cruelty and deceit for all the thousands of years of human history. It’s time we started again, but properly this time.…”

He stopped to take in several rattling breaths.

“The knife,” he went on after a minute. “They never knew what they were making, those old philosophers. They invented a device that could split open the very smallest particles of matter, and they used it to steal candy. They had no idea that they’d made the one weapon in all the universes that could defeat the tyrant. The Authority. God. The rebel angels fell because they didn’t have anything like the knife; but now …”

“I didn’t want it! I don’t want it now!” Will cried. “If you want it, you can have it! I hate it, and I hate what it does—”