His Dark Materials Omnibus

by Philip Pullman

  He whispered that to Ama. She nodded.

  Then, as he was about to move, Mrs. Coulter woke up.

  She stirred and said something, and instantly the golden monkey sprang to his feet. Will could see his silhouette in the cave mouth, crouching, attentive, and then Mrs. Coulter herself sat up, shading her eyes against the light outside.

  Will’s left hand was tight around Ama’s wrist. Mrs. Coulter got up, fully dressed, lithe, alert, not at all as if she’d just been asleep. Perhaps she’d been awake all the time. She and the golden monkey were crouching inside the cave mouth, watching and listening, as the light from the zeppelins swung from side to side above the treetops and the engines roared, and shouts, male voices warning or calling orders, made it clear that they should move fast, very fast.

  Will squeezed Ama’s wrist and darted forward, watching the ground in case he stumbled, running fast and low.

  Then he was at Lyra’s side, and she was deep asleep, Pantalaimon around her neck; and then Will held up the knife and felt carefully, and a second later there would have been an opening to pull Lyra through into safety—

  But he looked up. He looked at Mrs. Coulter. She had turned around silently, and the glare from the sky, reflected off the damp cave wall, hit her face, and for a moment it wasn’t her face at all; it was his own mother’s face, reproaching him, and his heart quailed from sorrow; and then as he thrust with the knife, his mind left the point, and with a wrench and a crack, the knife fell in pieces to the ground.

  It was broken.

  Now he couldn’t cut his way out at all.

  He said to Ama, “Wake her up. Do it now.”

  Then he stood up, ready to fight. He’d strangle that monkey first. He was tensed to meet its leap, and he found he still had the hilt of the knife in his hand; at least he could use it to hit with.

  But there was no attack either from the golden monkey or from Mrs. Coulter. She simply moved a little to let the light from outside show the pistol in her hand. In doing so, she let some of the light shine on what Ama was doing: she was sprinkling a powder on Lyra’s upper lip and watching as Lyra breathed in, helping it into her nostrils by using her own dæmon’s tail as a brush.

  Will heard a change in the sounds from outside: there was another note now as well as the roar of the zeppelins. It sounded familiar, like an intrusion from his own world, and then he recognized the clatter of a helicopter. Then there was another and another, and more lights swept across the ever-moving trees outside, in a brilliant green scatter of radiance.

  Mrs. Coulter turned briefly as the new sound came to her, but too briefly for Will to jump and seize the gun. As for the monkey dæmon, he glared at Will without blinking, crouched ready to spring.

  Lyra was moving and murmuring. Will bent down and squeezed her hand, and the other dæmon nudged Pantalaimon, lifting his heavy head, whispering to him.

  Outside there was a shout, and a man fell out of the sky, to land with a sickening crash not five yards from the entrance to the cave. Mrs. Coulter didn’t flinch; she looked at him coolly and turned back to Will. A moment later there came a crack of rifle fire from above, and a second after that, a storm of shooting broke out, and the sky was full of explosions, of the crackle of flame, of bursts of gunfire.

  Lyra was struggling up into consciousness, gasping, sighing, moaning, pushing herself up only to fall back weakly, and Pantalaimon was yawning, stretching, snapping at the other dæmon, flopping clumsily to one side as his muscles failed to act.

  As for Will, he was searching the cave floor with the utmost care for the pieces of the broken knife. No time to wonder how it had happened, or whether it could be mended; but he was the knife bearer, and he had to gather it up safely. As he found each piece, he lifted it carefully, every nerve in his body aware of his missing fingers, and slipped it into the sheath. He could see the pieces quite easily, because the metal caught the gleam from outside: seven of them, the smallest being the point itself. He picked them all up and then turned back to try and make sense of the fight outside.

  Somewhere above the trees, the zeppelins were hovering, and men were sliding down ropes, but the wind made it difficult for the pilots to hold the aircraft steady. Meanwhile, the first gyropters had arrived above the cliff. There was only room for them to land one at a time, and then the African riflemen had to make their way down the rock face. It was one of them who had been picked off by a lucky shot from the swaying zeppelins.

  By this time, both sides had landed some troops. Some had been killed between the sky and the ground; several more were wounded and lay on the cliff or among the trees. But neither force had yet reached the cave, and still the power inside it lay with Mrs. Coulter.

  Will said above the noise:

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Hold you captive.”

  “What, as hostages? Why should they take any notice of that? They want to kill us all anyway.”

  “One force does, certainly,” she said, “but I’m not sure about the other. We must hope the Africans win.”

  She sounded happy, and in the glare from outside, Will saw her face full of joy and life and energy.

  “You broke the knife,” he said.

  “No, I didn’t. I wanted it whole, so we could get away. You were the one who broke it.”

  Lyra’s voice came urgently: “Will?” she muttered. “Is that Will?”

  “Lyra!” he said, and knelt quickly beside her. Ama was helping her sit up. “What’s happening?” Lyra said. “Where are we? Oh, Will, I had this dream …”

  “We’re in a cave. Don’t move too fast, you’ll get dizzy. Just take it carefully. Find your strength. You’ve been asleep for days and days.”

  Her eyes were still heavy, and she was racked by deep yawns, but she was desperate to be awake, and he helped her up, putting her arm over his shoulder and taking much of her weight. Ama watched timidly, for now that the strange girl was awake, she was nervous of her. Will breathed in the scent of Lyra’s sleepy body with a happy satisfaction: she was here, she was real.

  They sat on a rock. Lyra held his hand and rubbed her eyes.

  “What’s happening, Will?” she whispered.

  “Ama here got some powder to wake you up,” he said, speaking very quietly, and Lyra turned to the girl, seeing her for the first time, and put her hand on Ama’s shoulder in thanks. “I got here as soon as I could,” Will went on, “but some soldiers did, too. I don’t know who they are. We’ll get out as soon as we can.”

  Outside, the noise and confusion were reaching a height; one of the gyropters had taken a fusillade from a zeppelin’s machine gun while the riflemen were jumping out on the cliff top, and it burst into flames, not only killing the crew but also preventing the remaining gyropters from landing.

  Another zeppelin, meanwhile, had found a clear space farther down the valley, and the crossbow men who disembarked from it were now running up the path to reinforce those already in action. Mrs. Coulter was following as much as she could see from the cave mouth, and now she raised her pistol, supporting it with both hands, and took careful aim before firing. Will saw the flash from the muzzle, but heard nothing over the explosions and gunfire from outside.

  If she does that again, he thought, I’ll rush and knock her over, and he turned to whisper that to Balthamos; but the angel was nowhere near. Instead, Will saw with dismay, he was cowering against the wall of the cave, back in his angel form, trembling and whimpering.

  “Balthamos!” Will said urgently. “Come on, they can’t hurt you! And you have to help us! You can fight—you know that—you’re not a coward—and we need you—”

  But before the angel could reply, something else happened.

  Mrs. Coulter cried out and reached down to her ankle, and simultaneously the golden monkey snatched at something in midair, with a snarl of glee.

  A voice—a woman’s voice—but somehow minute—came from the thing in the monkey’s paw:

  “Tialys! Tialys!”<
br />
  It was a tiny woman, no bigger than Lyra’s hand, and the monkey was already pulling and pulling at one of her arms so that she cried out in pain. Ama knew he wouldn’t stop till he’d torn it off, but Will leapt forward as he saw the pistol fall from Mrs. Coulter’s hand.

  And he caught the gun—but then Mrs. Coulter fell still, and Will became aware of a strange stalemate.

  The golden monkey and Mrs. Coulter were both utterly motionless. Her face was distorted with pain and fury, but she dared not move, because standing on her shoulder was a tiny man with his heel pressed against her neck, his hands entwined in her hair; and Will, through his astonishment, saw on that heel a glistening horny spur and knew what had caused her to cry out a moment before. He must have stung her ankle.

  But the little man couldn’t hurt Mrs. Coulter anymore, because of the danger his partner was in at the hands of the monkey; and the monkey couldn’t harm her, in case the little man dug his poison spur into Mrs. Coulter’s jugular vein. None of them could move.

  Breathing deeply and swallowing hard to govern the pain, Mrs. Coulter turned her tear-dashed eyes to Will and said calmly, “So, Master Will, what do you think we should do now?”

  13

  Frowning, frowning night / O’er this desart bright

  Let thy moon arise / While I close my eyes.

  • WILLIAM BLAKE •

  TIALYS AND SALMAKIA

  Holding the heavy gun, Will swept his hand sideways and knocked the golden monkey off his perch, stunning him so that Mrs. Coulter groaned aloud and the monkey’s paw relaxed enough to let the tiny woman struggle free.

  In a moment she leapt up to the rocks, and the man sprang away from Mrs. Coulter, both of them moving as quickly as grasshoppers. The three children had no time to be astonished. The man was concerned: he felt his companion’s shoulder and arm tenderly, and embraced her swiftly before calling to Will.

  “You! Boy!” he said, and although his voice was small in volume, it was as deep as a grown man’s. “Have you got the knife?”

  “Of course I have,” said Will. If they didn’t know it was broken, he wasn’t going to tell them.

  “You and the girl will have to follow us. Who is the other child?”

  “Ama, from the village,” said Will.

  “Tell her to return there. Move now, before the Swiss come.”

  Will didn’t hesitate. Whatever these two intended, he and Lyra could still get away through the window he’d opened behind the bush on the path below.

  So he helped her up and watched curiously as the two small figures leapt on—what? Birds? No, dragonflies, as large as seagulls, which had been waiting in the darkness. Then they darted forward to the cave mouth, where Mrs. Coulter lay. She was half-stunned with pain and drowsy from the Chevalier’s sting, but she reached up as they went past her, and cried:

  “Lyra! Lyra, my daughter, my dear one! Lyra, don’t go! Don’t go!”

  Lyra looked down at her, anguished; but then she stepped over her mother’s body and loosened Mrs. Coulter’s feeble clutch from her ankle. The woman was sobbing now; Will saw the tears glistening on her cheeks.

  Crouching just beside the cave mouth, the three children waited until there was a brief pause in the shooting, and then followed the dragonflies as they darted down the path. The light had changed: as well as the cold anbaric gleam from the zeppelins’ floodlights, there was the leaping orange of flames.

  Will looked back once. In the glare Mrs. Coulter’s face was a mask of tragic passion, and her dæmon clung piteously to her as she knelt and held out her arms, crying:

  “Lyra! Lyra, my love! My heart’s treasure, my little child, my only one! Oh, Lyra, Lyra, don’t go, don’t leave me! My darling daughter—you’re tearing my heart—”

  And a great and furious sob shook Lyra herself, for, after all, Mrs. Coulter was the only mother she would ever have, and Will saw a cascade of tears run down the girl’s cheeks.

  But he had to be ruthless. He pulled at Lyra’s hand, and as the dragonfly rider darted close to his head, urging them to hurry, he led her at a crouching run down the path and away from the cave. In Will’s left hand, bleeding again from the blow he’d landed on the monkey, was Mrs. Coulter’s pistol.

  “Make for the top of the cliff,” said the dragonfly rider, “and give yourself up to the Africans. They’re your best hope.”

  Mindful of those sharp spurs, Will said nothing, though he hadn’t the least intention of obeying. There was only one place he was making for, and that was the window behind the bush; so he kept his head low and ran fast, and Lyra and Ama ran behind him.

  “Halt!”

  There was a man, three men, blocking the path ahead—uniformed—white men with crossbows and snarling wolf-dog dæmons—the Swiss Guard.

  “Iorek!” cried Will at once. “Iorek Byrnison!” He could hear the bear crashing and snarling not far away, and hear the screams and cries of the soldiers unlucky enough to meet him.

  But someone else came from nowhere to help them: Balthamos, in a blur of desperation, hurled himself between the children and the soldiers. The men fell back, amazed, as this apparition shimmered into being in front of them.

  But they were trained warriors, and a moment later their dæmons leapt at the angel, savage teeth flashing white in the gloom—and Balthamos flinched: he cried out in fear and shame, and shrank back. Then he sprang upward, beating his wings hard. Will watched in dismay as the figure of his guide and friend soared up to vanish out of sight among the treetops.

  Lyra was following it all with still-dazed eyes. It had taken no more than two or three seconds, but it was enough for the Swiss to regroup, and now their leader was raising his crossbow, and Will had no choice: he swung up the pistol and clamped his right hand to the butt and pulled the trigger, and the blast shook his bones, but the bullet found the man’s heart.

  The soldier fell back as if he’d been kicked by a horse. Simultaneously the two little spies launched themselves at the other two, leaping from the dragonflies at their victims before Will could blink. The woman found a neck, the man a wrist, and each made a quick backward stab with a heel. A choking, anguished gasp, and the two Swiss died, their dæmons vanishing in mid-howl.

  Will leapt over the bodies, and Lyra went with him, running hard and fast with Pantalaimon racing wildcat-formed at their heels. Where’s Ama? Will thought, and he saw her in the same moment dodging down a different path. Now she’ll be safe, he thought, and a second later he saw the pale gleam of the window deep behind the bushes. He seized Lyra’s arm and pulled her toward it. Their faces were scratched, their clothes were snagged, their ankles twisted on roots and rocks, but they found the window and tumbled through, into the other world, onto the bone-white rocks under the glaring moon, where only the scraping of the insects broke the immense silence.

  And the first thing Will did was to hold his stomach and retch, heaving and heaving with a mortal horror. That was two men now that he’d killed, not to mention the youth in the Tower of the Angels … Will did not want this. His body revolted at what his instinct had made him do, and the result was a dry, sour, agonizing spell of kneeling and vomiting until his stomach and his heart were empty.

  Lyra watched helpless nearby, nursing Pan, rocking him against her breast.

  Will finally recovered a little and looked around. And at once he saw that they weren’t alone in this world, because the little spies were there, too, with their packs laid on the ground nearby. Their dragonflies were skimming over the rocks, snapping up moths. The man was massaging the shoulder of the woman, and both of them looked at the children sternly. Their eyes were so bright and their features so distinct that there was no doubt about their feelings, and Will knew they were a formidable pair, whoever they were.

  He said to Lyra, “The alethiometer’s in my rucksack, there.”

  “Oh, Will—I did so hope you’d find it—whatever happened? Did you find your father? And my dream, Will—it’s too much to believe, what
we got to do, oh, I daren’t even think of it … And it’s safe! You brung it all this way safe for me …”

  The words tumbled out of her so urgently that even she didn’t expect answers. She turned the alethiometer over and over, her fingers stroking the heavy gold and the smooth crystal and the knurled wheels they knew so well.

  Will thought: It’ll tell us how to mend the knife!

  But he said first, “Are you all right? Are you hungry or thirsty?”

  “I dunno … yeah. But not too much. Anyway—”

  “We should move away from this window,” Will said, “just in case they find it and come through.”

  “Yes, that’s true,” she said, and they moved up the slope, Will carrying his rucksack and Lyra happily carrying the little bag she kept the alethiometer in. Out of the corner of his eye, Will saw the two small spies following, but they kept their distance and made no threat.

  Over the brow of the rise there was a ledge of rock that offered a narrow shelter, and they sat beneath it, having carefully checked it for snakes, and shared some dried fruit and some water from Will’s bottle.

  Will said quietly, “The knife’s broken. I don’t know how it happened. Mrs. Coulter did something, or said something, and I thought of my mother and that made the knife twist, or catch, or—I don’t know what happened. But we’re stuck till we can get it mended. I didn’t want those two little people to know, because while they think I can still use it, I’ve got the upper hand. I thought you could ask the alethiometer, maybe, and—”

  “Yeah!” she said at once. “Yeah, I will.”

  She had the golden instrument out in a moment and moved into the moonlight so she could see the dial clearly. Looping back the hair behind her ears, just as Will had seen her mother do, she began to turn the wheels in the old familiar way, and Pantalaimon, mouse-formed now, sat on her knee.

  She had hardly started before she gave a little gasp of excitement, and she looked up at Will with shining eyes as the needle swung. But it hadn’t finished yet, and she looked back, frowning, until the instrument fell still.