The Golden Compass: His Dark Materials

by Philip Pullman

  The bear sergeant said nothing to her until they were on level ground. There they stopped. From the sound of the waves, Lyra judged them to have reached the top of the cliffs, and she dared not run away in case she fell over the edge.

  “Look up,” said the bear, as a waft of breeze moved aside the heavy curtain of the fog.

  There was little daylight in any case, but Lyra did look, and found herself standing in front of a vast building of stone. It was as tall at least as the highest part of Jordan College, but much more massive, and carved all over with representations of warfare, showing bears victorious and Skraelings surrendering, showing Tartars chained and slaving in the fire mines, showing zeppelins flying from all parts of the world bearing gifts and tributes to the king of the bears, Iofur Raknison.

  At least, that was what the bear sergeant told her the carvings showed. She had to take his word for it, because every projection and ledge on the deeply sculpted façade was occupied by gannets and skuas, which cawed and shrieked and wheeled constantly around overhead, and whose droppings had coated every part of the building with thick smears of dirty white.

  The bears seemed not to see the mess, however, and they led the way in through the huge arch, over the icy ground that was filthy with the spatter of the birds. There was a courtyard, and high steps, and gateways, and at every point bears in armor challenged the incomers and were given a password. Their armor was polished and gleaming, and they all wore plumes in their helmets. Lyra couldn’t help comparing every bear she saw with Iorek Byrnison, and always to his advantage; he was more powerful, more graceful, and his armor was real armor, rust-colored, bloodstained, dented with combat, not elegant, enameled, and decorative like most of what she saw around her now.

  As they went further in, the temperature rose, and so did something else. The smell in Iofur’s palace was repulsive: rancid seal fat, dung, blood, refuse of every sort. Lyra pushed back her hood to be cooler, but she couldn’t help wrinkling her nose. She hoped bears couldn’t read human expressions. There were iron brackets every few yards, holding blubber lamps, and in their flaring shadows it wasn’t always easy to see where she was treading, either.

  Finally they stopped outside a heavy door of iron. A guard bear pulled back a massive bolt, and the sergeant suddenly swung his paw at Lyra, knocking her head over heels through the doorway. Before she could scramble up, she heard the door being bolted behind her.

  It was profoundly dark, but Pantalaimon became a firefly, and shed a tiny glow around them. They were in a narrow cell where the walls dripped with damp, and there was one stone bench for furniture. In the farthest corner there was a heap of rags she took for bedding, and that was all she could see.

  Lyra sat down, with Pantalaimon on her shoulder, and felt in her clothes for the alethiometer.

  “It’s certainly had a lot of banging about, Pan,” she whispered. “I hope it still works.”

  Pantalaimon flew down to her wrist, and sat there glowing while Lyra composed her mind. With a part of her, she found it remarkable that she could sit here in terrible danger and yet sink into the calm she needed to read the alethiometer; and yet it was so much a part of her now that the most complicated questions sorted themselves out into their constituent symbols as naturally as her muscles moved her limbs: she hardly had to think about them.

  She turned the hands and thought the question: “Where is Iorek?”

  The answer came at once: “A day’s journey away, carried there by the balloon after your crash; but hurrying this way.”

  “And Roger?”

  “With Iorek.”

  “What will Iorek do?”

  “He intends to break into the palace and rescue you, in the face of all the difficulties.”

  She put the alethiometer away, even more anxious than before.

  “They won’t let him, will they?” she said to Pantalaimon. “There’s too many of ’em. I wish I was a witch, Pan, then you could go off and find him and take messages and all, and we could make a proper plan....”

  Then she had the fright of her life.

  A man’s voice spoke in the darkness a few feet away, and said, “Who are you?”

  She leaped up with a cry of alarm. Pantalaimon became a bat at once, shrieking, and flew around her head as she backed against the wall.

  “Eh? Eh?” said the man again. “Who is that? Speak up! Speak up!”

  “Be a firefly again, Pan,” she said shakily. “But don’t go too close.”

  The little wavering point of light danced through the air and fluttered around the head of the speaker. And it hadn’t been a heap of rags after all; it was a gray-bearded man, chained to the wall, whose eyes glittered in Pantalaimon’s luminance, and whose tattered hair hung over his shoulders. His dæmon, a weary-looking serpent, lay in his lap, flicking out her tongue occasionally as Pantalaimon flew near.

  “What’s your name?” she said.

  “Jotham Santelia,” he replied. “I am the Regius Professor of Cosmology at the University of Gloucester. Who are you?”

  “Lyra Belacqua. What have they locked you up for?”

  “Malice and jealousy...Where do you come from? Eh?”

  “From Jordan College,” she said.

  “What? Oxford?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is that scoundrel Trelawney still there? Eh?”

  “The Palmerian Professor? Yes,” she said.

  “Is he, by God! Eh? They should have forced his resignation long ago. Duplicitous plagiarist! Coxcomb!”

  Lyra made a neutral sound.

  “Has he published his paper on gamma-ray photons yet?” the Professor said, thrusting his face up toward Lyra’s.

  She moved back.

  “I don’t know,” she said, and then, making it up out of pure habit, “no,” she went on. “I remember now. He said he still needed to check some figures. And...He said he was going to write about Dust as well. That’s it.”

  “Scoundrel! Thief! Blackguard! Rogue!” shouted the old man, and he shook so violently that Lyra was afraid he’d have a fit. His dæmon slithered lethargically off his lap as the Professor beat his fists against his shanks. Drops of saliva flew out of his mouth.

  “Yeah,” said Lyra, “I always thought he was a thief. And a rogue and all that.”

  If it was unlikely for a scruffy little girl to turn up in his cell knowing the very man who figured in his obsessions, the Regius Professor didn’t notice. He was mad, and no wonder, poor old man; but he might have some scraps of information that Lyra could use.

  She sat carefully near him, not near enough for him to touch, but near enough for Pantalaimon’s tiny light to show him clearly.

  “One thing Professor Trelawney used to boast about,” she said, “was how well he knew the king of the bears—”

  “Boast! Eh? Eh? I should say he boasts! He’s nothing but a popinjay! And a pirate! Not a scrap of original research to his name! Everything filched from better men!”

  “Yeah, that’s right,” said Lyra earnestly. “And when he does do something of his own, he gets it wrong.”

  “Yes! Yes! Absolutely! No talent, no imagination, a fraud from top to bottom!”

  “I mean, for example,” said Lyra, “I bet you know more about the bears than he does, for a start.”

  “Bears,” said the old man, “ha! I could write a treatise on them! That’s why they shut me away, you know.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “I know too much about them, and they daren’t kill me. They daren’t do it, much as they’d like to. I know, you see. I have friends. Yes! Powerful friends.”

  “Yeah,” said Lyra. “And I bet you’d be a wonderful teacher,” she went on. “Being as you got so much knowledge and experience.”

  Even in the depths of his madness a little common sense still flickered, and he looked at her sharply, almost as if he suspected her of sarcasm. But she had been dealing with suspicious and cranky Scholars all her life, and she gazed back with such bland admirati
on that he was soothed.

  “Teacher,” he said, “teacher...Yes, I could teach. Give me the right pupil, and I will light a fire in his mind!”

  “Because your knowledge ought not to just vanish,” Lyra said encouragingly. “It ought to be passed on so people remember you.”

  “Yes,” he said, nodding seriously. “That’s very perceptive of you, child. What is your name?”

  “Lyra,” she told him again. “Could you teach me about the bears?”

  “The bears...” he said doubtfully.

  “I’d really like to know about cosmology and Dust and all, but I’m not clever enough for that. You need really clever students for that. But I could learn about the bears. You could teach me about them all right. And we could sort of practice on that and work up to Dust, maybe.”

  He nodded again.

  “Yes,” he said, “yes, I believe you’re right. There is a correspondence between the microcosm and the macrocosm! The stars are alive, child. Did you know that? Everything out there is alive, and there are grand purposes abroad! The universe is full of intentions, you know. Everything happens for a purpose. Your purpose is to remind me of that. Good, good—in my despair I had forgotten. Good! Excellent, my child!”

  “So, have you seen the king? Iofur Raknison?”

  “Yes. Oh, yes. I came here at his invitation, you know. He intended to set up a university. He was going to make me Vice-Chancellor. That would be one in the eye for the Royal Arctic Institute, eh! Eh? And that scoundrel Trelawney! Ha!”

  “What happened?”

  “I was betrayed by lesser men. Trelawney among them, of course. He was here, you know. On Svalbard. Spread lies and calumny about my qualifications. Calumny! Slander! Who was it discovered the final proof of the Barnard-Stokes hypothesis, eh? Eh? Yes, Santelia, that’s who. Trelawney couldn’t take it. Lied through his teeth. Iofur Raknison had me thrown in here. I’ll be out one day, you’ll see. I’ll be Vice-Chancellor, oh yes. Let Trelawney come to me then begging for mercy! Let the Publications Committee of the Royal Arctic Institute spurn my contributions then! Ha! I’ll expose them all! ”

  “I expect Iorek Byrnison will believe you, when he comes back,” Lyra said.

  “Iorek Byrnison? No good waiting for that. He’ll never come back.”

  “He’s on his way now.”

  “Then they’ll kill him. He’s not a bear, you see. He’s an outcast. Like me. Degraded, you see. Not entitled to any of the privileges of a bear.”

  “Supposing Iorek Byrnison did come back, though,” Lyra said. “Supposing he challenged Iofur Raknison to a fight...”

  “Oh, they wouldn’t allow it,” said the Professor decisively. “Iofur would never lower himself to acknowledge Iorek Byrnison’s right to fight him. Hasn’t got a right. Iorek might as well be a seal now, or a walrus, not a bear. Or worse: Tartar or Skraeling. They wouldn’t fight him honorably like a bear; they’d kill him with fire hurlers before he got near. Not a hope. No mercy.”

  “Oh,” said Lyra, with a heavy despair in her breast. “And what about the bears’ other prisoners? Do you know where they keep them?”

  “Other prisoners?”

  “Like...Lord Asriel.”

  Suddenly the Professor’s manner changed altogether. He cringed and shrank back against the wall, and shook his head warningly.

  “Shh! Quiet! They’ll hear you!” he whispered.

  “Why mustn’t we mention Lord Asriel?”

  “Forbidden! Very dangerous! Iofur Raknison will not allow him to be mentioned!”

  “Why?” Lyra said, coming closer and whispering herself so as not to alarm him.

  “Keeping Lord Asriel prisoner is a special charge laid on Iofur by the Oblation Board,” the old man whispered back. “Mrs. Coulter herself came here to see Iofur and offered him all kinds of rewards to keep Lord Asriel out of the way. I know about it, you see, because at the time I was in Iofur’s favor myself. I met Mrs. Coulter! Yes. Had a long conversation with her. Iofur was besotted with her. Couldn’t stop talking about her. Would do anything for her. If she wants Lord Asriel kept a hundred miles away, that’s what will happen. Anything for Mrs. Coulter, anything. He’s going to name his capital city after her, did you know that?”

  “So he wouldn’t let anyone go and see Lord Asriel?”

  “No! Never! But he’s afraid of Lord Asriel too, you know. Iofur’s playing a difficult game. But he’s clever. He’s done what they both want. He’s kept Lord Asriel isolated, to please Mrs. Coulter; and he’s let Lord Asriel have all the equipment he wants, to please him. Can’t last, this equilibrium. Unstable. Pleasing both sides. Eh? The wave function of this situation is going to collapse quite soon. I have it on good authority.”

  “Really?” said Lyra, her mind elsewhere, furiously thinking about what he’d just said.

  “Yes. My dæmon’s tongue can taste probability, you know.”

  “Yeah. Mine too. When do they feed us, Professor?”

  “Feed us?”

  “They must put some food in sometime, else we’d starve. And there’s bones on the floor. I expect they’re seal bones, aren’t they?”

  “Seal...I don’t know. It might be.”

  Lyra got up and felt her way to the door. There was no handle, naturally, and no keyhole, and it fitted so closely at top and bottom that no light showed. She pressed her ear to it, but heard nothing. Behind her the old man was muttering to himself. She heard his chain rattle as he turned over wearily and lay the other way, and presently he began to snore.

  She felt her way back to the bench. Pantalaimon, tired of putting out light, had become a bat, which was all very well for him; he fluttered around squeaking quietly while Lyra sat and chewed a fingernail.

  Quite suddenly, with no warning at all, she remembered what it was that she’d heard the Palmerian Professor saying in the Retiring Room all that time ago. Something had been nagging at her ever since Iorek Byrnison had first mentioned Iofur’s name, and now it came back: what Iofur Raknison wanted more than anything else, Professor Trelawney had said, was a dæmon.

  Of course, she hadn’t understood what he meant; he’d spoken of panserbjørne instead of using the English word, so she didn’t know he was talking about bears, and she had no idea that Iofur Raknison wasn’t a man. And a man would have had a dæmon anyway, so it hadn’t made sense.

  But now it was plain. Everything she’d heard about the bear-king added up: the mighty Iofur Raknison wanted nothing more than to be a human being, with a dæmon of his own.

  And as she thought that, a plan came to her: a way of making Iofur Raknison do what he would normally never have done; a way of restoring Iorek Byrnison to his rightful throne; a way, finally, of getting to the place where they had put Lord Asriel, and taking him the alethiometer.

  The idea hovered and shimmered delicately, like a soap bubble, and she dared not even look at it directly in case it burst. But she was familiar with the way of ideas, and she let it shimmer, looking away, thinking about something else.

  She was nearly asleep when the bolts clattered and the door opened. Light spilled in, and she was on her feet at once, with Pantalaimon hidden swiftly in her pocket.

  As soon as the bear guard bent his head to lift the haunch of seal meat and throw it in, she was at his side, saying:

  “Take me to Iofur Raknison. You’ll be in trouble if you don’t. It’s very urgent.”

  He dropped the meat from his jaws and looked up. It wasn’t easy to read bears’ expressions, but he looked angry.

  “It’s about Iorek Byrnison,” she said quickly. “I know something about him, and the king needs to know.”

  “Tell me what it is, and I’ll pass the message on,” said the bear.

  “That wouldn’t be right, not for someone else to know before the king does,” she said. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be rude, but you see, it’s the rule that the king has to know things first.”

  Perhaps he was slow-witted. At any rate, he paused, and then thre
w the meat into the cell before saying, “Very well. You come with me.”

  He led her out into the open air, for which she was grateful. The fog had lifted and there were stars glittering above the high-walled courtyard. The guard conferred with another bear, who came to speak to her.

  “You cannot see Iofur Raknison when you please,” he said. “You have to wait till he wants to see you.”

  “But this is urgent, what I’ve got to tell him,” she said. “It’s about Iorek Byrnison. I’m sure His Majesty would want to know it, but all the same I can’t tell it to anyone else, don’t you see? It wouldn’t be polite. He’d be ever so cross if he knew we hadn’t been polite.”

  That seemed to carry some weight, or else to mystify the bear sufficiently to make him pause. Lyra was sure her interpretation of things was right: Iofur Raknison was introducing so many new ways that none of the bears was certain yet how to behave, and she could exploit this uncertainty in order to get to Iofur.

  So that bear retreated to consult the bear above him, and before long Lyra was ushered inside the palace again, but into the state quarters this time. It was no cleaner here, and in fact the air was even harder to breathe than in the cell, because all the natural stinks had been overlaid by a heavy layer of cloying perfume. She was made to wait in a corridor, then in an anteroom, then outside a large door, while bears discussed and argued and scurried back and forth, and she had time to look around at the preposterous decoration: the walls were rich with gilt plasterwork, some of which was already peeling off or crumbling with damp, and the florid carpets were trodden with filth.

  Finally the large door was opened from the inside. A blaze of light from half a dozen chandeliers, a crimson carpet, and more of that thick perfume hanging in the air; and the faces of a dozen or more bears, all gazing at her, none in armor but each with some kind of decoration: a golden necklace, a headdress of purple feathers, a crimson sash. Curiously, the room was also occupied by birds; terns and skuas perched on the plaster cornice, and swooped low to snatch at bits of fish that had fallen out of one another’s nests in the chandeliers.