The Golden Compass: His Dark Materials

by Philip Pullman

  And on a dais at the far end of the room, a mighty throne reared up high. It was made of granite for strength and massiveness, but like so many other things in Iofur’s palace, it was decorated with overelaborate swags and festoons of gilt that looked like tinsel on a mountainside.

  Sitting on the throne was the biggest bear she had ever seen. Iofur Raknison was even taller and bulkier than Iorek, and his face was much more mobile and expressive, with a kind of humanness in it which she had never seen in Iorek’s. When Iofur looked at her, she seemed to see a man looking out of his eyes, the sort of man she had met at Mrs. Coulter’s, a subtle politician used to power. He was wearing a heavy gold chain around his neck, with a gaudy jewel hanging from it, and his claws—a good six inches long—were each covered in gold leaf. The effect was one of enormous strength and energy and craft; he was quite big enough to carry the absurd overdecoration; on him it didn’t look preposterous, it looked barbaric and magnificent.

  She quailed. Suddenly her idea seemed too feeble for words.

  But she moved a little closer, because she had to, and then she saw that Iofur was holding something on his knee, as a human might let a cat sit there—or a dæmon.

  It was a big stuffed doll, a manikin with a vacant stupid human face. It was dressed as Mrs. Coulter would dress, and it had a sort of rough resemblance to her. He was pretending he had a dæmon. Then she knew she was safe.

  She moved up close to the throne and bowed very low, with Pantalaimon keeping quiet and still in her pocket.

  “Our greetings to you, great King,” she said quietly. “Or I mean my greetings, not his.”

  “Not whose?” he said, and his voice was lighter than she had thought it would be, but full of expressive tones and subtleties. When he spoke, he waved a paw in front of his mouth to dislodge the flies that clustered there.

  “Iorek Byrnison’s, Your Majesty,” she said. “I’ve got something very important and secret to tell you, and I think I ought to tell you in private, really.”

  “Something about Iorek Byrnison?”

  She came close to him, stepping carefully over the bird-spattered floor, and brushed away the flies buzzing at her face.

  “Something about dæmons,” she said, so that only he could hear.

  His expression changed. She couldn’t read what it was saying, but there was no doubt that he was powerfully interested. Suddenly he lumbered forward off the throne, making her skip aside, and roared an order to the other bears. They all bowed their heads and backed out toward the door. The birds, which had risen in a flurry at his roar, squawked and swooped around overhead before settling again on their nests.

  When the throne room was empty but for Iofur Raknison and Lyra, he turned to her eagerly.

  “Well?” he said. “Tell me who you are. What is this about dæmons?”

  “I am a dæmon, Your Majesty,” she said.

  He stopped still.

  “Whose?” he said.

  “Iorek Byrnison’s,” was her answer.

  It was the most dangerous thing she had ever said. She could see quite clearly that only his astonishment prevented him from killing her at once. She went on:

  “Please, Your Majesty, let me tell you all about it first before you harm me. I’ve come here at my own risk, as you can see, and there’s nothing I’ve got that could hurt you. In fact, I want to help you, that’s why I’ve come. Iorek Byrnison was the first bear to get a dæmon, but it should have been you. I would much rather be your dæmon than his, that’s why I came.”

  “How?” he said, breathlessly. “How has a bear got a dæmon? And why him? And how are you so far from him?”

  The flies left his mouth like tiny words.

  “That’s easy. I can go far from him because I’m like a witch’s dæmon. You know how they can go hundreds of miles from their humans? It’s like that. And as for how he got me, it was at Bolvangar. You’ve heard of Bolvangar, because Mrs. Coulter must have told you about it, but she probably didn’t tell you everything they were doing there.”

  “Cutting...” he said.

  “Yes, cutting, that’s part of it, intercision. But they’re doing all kinds of other things too, like making artificial dæmons. And experimenting on animals. When Iorek Byrnison heard about it, he offered himself for an experiment to see if they could make a dæmon for him, and they did. It was me. My name is Lyra. Just like when people have dæmons, they’re animal-formed, so when a bear has a dæmon, it’ll be human. And I’m his dæmon. I can see into his mind and know exactly what he’s doing and where he is and—”

  “Where is he now?”

  “On Svalbard. He’s coming this way as fast as he can.”

  “Why? What does he want? He must be mad! We’ll tear him to pieces!”

  “He wants me. He’s coming to get me back. But I don’t want to be his dæmon, Iofur Raknison, I want to be yours. Because once they saw how powerful a bear was with a dæmon, the people at Bolvangar decided not to do that experiment ever again. Iorek Byrnison was going to be the only bear who ever had a dæmon. And with me helping him, he could lead all the bears against you. That’s what he’s come to Svalbard for.”

  The bear-king roared his anger. He roared so loudly that the crystal in the chandeliers tinkled, and every bird in the great room shrieked, and Lyra’s ears rang.

  But she was equal to it.

  “That’s why I love you best,” she said to Iofur Raknison, “because you’re passionate and strong as well as clever. And I just had to leave him and come and tell you, because I don’t want him ruling the bears. It ought to be you. And there is a way of taking me away from him and making me your dæmon, but you wouldn’t know what it was unless I told you, and you might do the usual thing about fighting bears like him that’ve been outcast; I mean, not fight him properly, but kill him with fire hurlers or something. And if you did that, I’d just go out like a light and die with him.”

  “But you—how can—”

  “I can become your dæmon,” she said, “but only if you defeat Iorek Byrnison in single combat. Then his strength will flow into you, and my mind will flow into yours, and we’ll be like one person, thinking each other’s thoughts; and you can send me miles away to spy for you, or keep me here by your side, whichever you like. And I’d help you lead the bears to capture Bolvangar, if you like, and make them create more dæmons for your favorite bears; or if you’d rather be the only bear with a dæmon, we could destroy Bolvangar forever. We could do anything, Iofur Raknison, you and me together!”

  All the time she was holding Pantalaimon in her pocket with a trembling hand, and he was keeping as still as he could, in the smallest mouse form he had ever assumed.

  Iofur Raknison was pacing up and down with an air of explosive excitement.

  “Single combat?” he was saying. “Me? I must fight Iorek Byrnison? Impossible! He is outcast! How can that be? How can I fight him? Is that the only way?”

  “It’s the only way,” said Lyra, wishing it were not, because Iofur Raknison seemed bigger and more fierce every minute. Dearly as she loved Iorek, and strong as her faith was in him, she couldn’t really believe that he would ever beat this giant among giant bears. But it was the only hope they had. Being mown down from a distance by fire hurlers was no hope at all.

  Suddenly Iofur Raknison turned.

  “Prove it!” he said. “Prove that you are a dæmon!”

  “All right,” she said. “I can do that, easy. I can find out anything that you know and no one else does, something that only a dæmon would be able to find out.”

  “Then tell me what was the first creature I killed.”

  “I’ll have to go into a room by myself to do this,” she said. “When I’m your dæmon, you’ll be able to see how I do it, but until then it’s got to be private.”

  “There is an anteroom behind this one. Go into that, and come out when you know the answer.”

  Lyra opened the door and found herself in a room lit by one torch, and empty but
for a cabinet of mahogany containing some tarnished silver ornaments. She took out the alethiometer and asked: “Where is Iorek now?”

  “Four hours away, and hurrying ever faster.”

  “How can I tell him what I’ve done?”

  “You must trust him.”

  She thought anxiously of how tired he would be. But then she reflected that she was not doing what the alethiometer had just told her to do: she wasn’t trusting him.

  She put that thought aside and asked the question Iofur Raknison wanted. What was the first creature he had killed?

  The answer came: Iofur’s own father.

  She asked further, and learned that Iofur had been alone on the ice as a young bear, on his first hunting expedition, and had come across a solitary bear. They had quarreled and fought, and Iofur had killed him. This in itself would have been a crime, but it was worse than simple murder, for Iofur learned later that the other bear was his own father. Bears were brought up by their mothers, and seldom saw their fathers. Naturally Iofur concealed the truth of what he had done; no one knew about it but Iofur himself, and now Lyra knew as well.

  She put the alethiometer away, and wondered how to tell him about it.

  “Flatter him!” whispered Pantalaimon. “That’s all he wants.”

  So Lyra opened the door and found Iofur Raknison waiting for her, with an expression of triumph, slyness, apprehension, and greed.

  “Well?”

  She knelt down in front of him and bowed her head to touch his left forepaw, the stronger, for bears were left-handed.

  “I beg your pardon, Iofur Raknison!” she said. “I didn’t know you were so strong and great!”

  “What’s this? Answer my question!”

  “The first creature you killed was your own father. I think you’re a new god, Iofur Raknison. That’s what you must be. Only a god would have the strength to do that.”

  “You know! You can see!”

  “Yes, because I am a dæmon, like I said.”

  “Tell me one thing more. What did the Lady Coulter promise me when she was here?”

  Once again Lyra went into the empty room and consulted the alethiometer before returning with the answer.

  “She promised you that she’d get the Magisterium in Geneva to agree that you could be baptized as a Christian, even though you hadn’t got a dæmon then. Well, I’m afraid that she hasn’t done that, Iofur Raknison, and quite honestly I don’t think they’d ever agree to that if you didn’t have a dæmon. I think she knew that, and she wasn’t telling you the truth. But in any case when you’ve got me as your dæmon, you could be baptized if you wanted to, because no one could argue then. You could demand it and they wouldn’t be able to turn you down.”

  “Yes...True. That’s what she said. True, every word. And she has deceived me? I trusted her, and she deceived me?”

  “Yes, she did. But she doesn’t matter anymore. Excuse me, Iofur Raknison, I hope you won’t mind me telling you, but Iorek Byrnison’s only four hours away now, and maybe you better tell your guard bears not to attack him as they normally would. If you’re going to fight him for me, he’ll have to be allowed to come to the palace.”

  “Yes...”

  “And maybe when he comes I better pretend I still belong to him, and say I got lost or something. He won’t know. I’ll pretend. Are you going to tell the other bears about me being Iorek’s dæmon and then belonging to you when you beat him?”

  “I don’t know....What should I do?”

  “I don’t think you better mention it yet. Once we’re together, you and me, we can think what’s best to do and decide then. What you need to do now is explain to all the other bears why you’re going to let Iorek fight you like a proper bear, even though he’s an outcast. Because they won’t understand, and we got to find a reason for that. I mean, they’ll do what you tell them anyway, but if they see the reason for it, they’ll admire you even more.”

  “Yes. What should we tell them?”

  “Tell them...tell them that to make your kingdom completely secure, you’ve called Iorek Byrnison here yourself to fight him, and the winner will rule over the bears forever. See, if you make it look like your idea that he’s coming, and not his, they’ll be really impressed. They’ll think you’re able to call him here from far away. They’ll think you can do anything.”

  “Yes...”

  The great bear was helpless. Lyra found her power over him almost intoxicating, and if Pantalaimon hadn’t nipped her hand sharply to remind her of the danger they were all in, she might have lost all her sense of proportion.

  But she came to herself and stepped modestly back to watch and wait as the bears, under Iofur’s excited direction, prepared the combat ground for Iorek Byrnison; and meanwhile Iorek, knowing nothing about it, was hurrying ever closer toward what she wished she could tell him was a fight for his life.

  TWENTY

  MORTAL COMBAT

  Fights between bears were common, and the subject of much ritual. For a bear to kill another was rare, though, and when that happened it was usually by accident, or when one bear mistook the signals from another, as in the case of Iorek Byrnison. Cases of straightforward murder, like Iofur’s killing of his own father, were rarer still.

  But occasionally there came circumstances in which the only way of settling a dispute was a fight to the death. And for that, a whole ceremonial was prescribed.

  As soon as Iofur announced that Iorek Byrnison was on his way, and a combat would take place, the combat ground was swept and smoothed, and armorers came up from the fire mines to check Iofur’s armor. Every rivet was examined, every link tested, and the plates were burnished with the finest sand. Just as much attention was paid to his claws. The gold leaf was rubbed off, and each separate six-inch hook was sharpened and filed to a deadly point. Lyra watched with a growing sickness in the pit of her stomach, for Iorek Byrnison wouldn’t be having this attention; he had been marching over the ice for nearly twenty-four hours already without rest or food; he might have been injured in the crash. And she had let him in for this fight without his knowledge. At one point, after Iofur Raknison had tested the sharpness of his claws on a fresh-killed walrus, slicing its skin open like paper, and the power of his crashing blows on the walrus’s skull (two blows, and it was cracked like an egg), Lyra had to make an excuse to Iofur and go away by herself to weep with fear.

  Even Pantalaimon, who could normally cheer her up, had little to say that was hopeful. All she could do was consult the alethiometer: he is an hour away, it told her, and again, she must trust him; and (this was harder to read) she even thought it was rebuking her for asking the same question twice.

  By this time, word had spread among the bears, and every part of the combat ground was crowded. Bears of high rank had the best places, and there was a special enclosure for the she-bears, including, of course, Iofur’s wives. Lyra was profoundly curious about she-bears, because she knew so little about them, but this was no time to wander about asking questions. Instead she stayed close to Iofur Raknison and watched the courtiers around him assert their rank over the common bears from outside, and tried to guess the meaning of the various plumes and badges and tokens they all seemed to wear. Some of the highest-ranking, she saw, carried little manikins like Iofur’s rag-doll dæmon, trying to curry favor, perhaps, by imitating the fashion he’d begun. She was sardonically pleased to notice that when they saw that Iofur had discarded his, they didn’t know what to do with theirs. Should they throw them away? Were they out of favor now? How should they behave?

  Because that was the prevailing mood in his court, she was beginning to see. They weren’t sure what they were. They weren’t like Iorek Byrnison, pure and certain and absolute; there was a constant pall of uncertainty hanging over them, as they watched one another and watched Iofur.

  And they watched her, with open curiosity. She remained modestly close to Iofur and said nothing, lowering her eyes whenever a bear looked at her.

  The fo
g had lifted by this time, and the air was clear; and as chance would have it, the brief lifting of darkness toward noon coincided with the time Lyra thought Iorek was going to arrive. As she stood shivering on a little rise of dense-packed snow at the edge of the combat ground, she looked up toward the faint lightness in the sky, and longed with all her heart to see a flight of ragged elegant black shapes descending to bear her away; or to see the Aurora’s hidden city, where she would be able to walk safely along those broad boulevards in the sunlight; or to see Ma Costa’s broad arms, to smell the friendly smells of flesh and cooking that enfolded you in her presence....

  She found herself crying, with tears that froze almost as soon as they formed, and which she had to brush away painfully. She was so frightened. Bears, who didn’t cry, couldn’t understand what was happening to her; it was some human process, meaningless. And of course Pantalaimon couldn’t comfort her as he normally would, though she kept her hand in her pocket firmly around his warm little mouse-form, and he nuzzled at her fingers.

  Beside her, the smiths were making the final adjustments to Iofur Raknison’s armor. He reared like a great metal tower, shining in polished steel, the smooth plates inlaid with wires of gold; his helmet enclosed the upper part of his head in a glistening carapace of silver-gray, with deep eye slits; and the underside of his body was protected by a close-fitting sark of chain mail. It was when she saw this that Lyra realized that she had betrayed Iorek Byrnison, for Iorek had nothing like it. His armor protected only his back and sides. She looked at Iofur Raknison, so sleek and powerful, and felt a deep sickness in her, like guilt and fear combined.

  She said “Excuse me, Your Majesty, if you remember what I said to you before...”

  Her shaking voice felt thin and weak in the air. Iofur Raknison turned his mighty head, distracted from the target three bears were holding up in front for him to slash at with his perfect claws.